The Tailor's Girl (16 page)

‘Nothing else coming to mind?’

Wynter shook his head truthfully.

‘Well, I think we should get you reunited with your family. I don’t see any immediate medical complications from today’s events but you need some quiet and rest. Concussion is a strange thing; you may feel fine but you could feel vaguely unwell for days – weak, too, perhaps.’

There was a soft knock at the door and Cavendish’s assistant appeared.

‘Yes, Miss Appleyard?’

‘Forgive me, Dr Cavendish, but a Mr Percival Fitch from Anderson & Sheppard left a note and this small envelope. One of his delivery boys just dropped it off.’

Wynter swung around. ‘Is it for me?’

‘Perhaps,’ the woman said. She handed the small package to Cavendish.

He put on his glasses and read the note aloud. ‘
I presume Mr Wynter has his wallet and other private accoutrements but I took the liberty of checking all the pockets of the suit he left behind. In the inside security pocket I found this, which I am returning. I do hope we have not missed him. Sincerely, Percival Fitch.
’ Cavendish took off his glasses again and handed an even smaller envelope to Wynter.

Wynter looked confused as he broke the seal and looked inside. His frown deepened as he pulled out a small, red handkerchief. He blinked and unfolded it to reveal a heart-shaped gap in the middle.

Miss Appleyard had to stifle a smile. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, and quietly left.

‘Good grief, man. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’

Wynter shrugged. ‘Nothing. Why ever would I be carrying that around?’

‘Well, it certainly points to being specific.’

‘I have never carried a red handkerchief in my life.’

‘Well, clearly you have been walking around with one and its heart is missing.’

Wynter cut him an unhappy glare.

‘Too sentimental for you?’ Cavendish quipped. The doctor took the handkerchief and stared at it. ‘Neatly done. The edge has been sewn to prevent fraying. All quite deliberate.’

Wynter nodded as he pulled on his jacket. ‘It’s still meaningless.’ He felt in his pockets. ‘Heavens! I have no money . . . I have nothing, in fact, to pay you —’ He looked mortified. ‘Wandering around with no money, no identification at all and a red handkerchief cut with a heart shape? I must be going mad.’ He gave a sound of half disgust, half despair. ‘This story becomes stranger by the moment.’

Cavendish waved his words away. ‘I’ll organise it all. We can settle up anytime.’ He pressed a button on the desk. ‘Miss Appleyard?’

She reappeared. ‘Yes, Doctor?’

‘Can you organise a driver, please, on my account to deliver Mr Wynter back to his address in Sussex?’

‘Now, Doctor?’

‘Ready to go home, Mr Wynter?’ Cavendish asked, sensing the difficult crossroads his patient faced.

‘I have nowhere else to be,’ Wynter admitted. ‘Thank you for your generosity.’

Cavendish nodded at his assistant and she closed the door. ‘Come and see me again. With your own doctor away, I’ll be glad to assist anytime, especially if you remember what has occurred. I think it would be helpful to get to the bottom of what prompted your arrival in Savile Row. If nothing else, it will surely provide some insight as to where you have been these last couple of years . . . and why you have that handkerchief; why you were wearing a well-cut suit you didn’t recognise and so on.’

Wynter ran a hand through his dark hair, smoothing it back from where a hank had fallen forward. ‘It would be very good to learn where I’ve been for the last few years, Cavendish. But not yet. I need to cope with where I am now and what’s ahead.’

‘Small steps. I completely agree. You must give yourself time, Wynter.’

He shook hands with the doctor. ‘You’ve been extremely kind.’

The man tutted. ‘Nonsense. It’s my job. And you’re an intriguing case. I . . . er, I hope the reunion is not too daunting. Here, Wynter, take my card. Stay in touch.’

Edie paced, distraught. Abe had given up trying to soothe his daughter over her husband’s tardiness; he was offering all the right placations and yet he grudgingly accepted that a couple in love share intangible rhythms. He couldn’t explain it – perhaps a biologist, or even one of those new types of philosophers or theologians who called themselves psychologists could. It didn’t need explaining, though. He’d experienced it with Nina himself.

In Edie’s case she was murmuring repeatedly, ‘I just know something is wrong.’ Abe was now resigned that perhaps she did know, and given they understood so little about Tom’s background, perhaps no one should be entirely shocked by a disappearance.

It had been hours and Shabbat had begun; Abe didn’t doubt that this man adored his daughter and fully respected her faith. Tom would not be late for Shabbat, even if he was a gentile. Abe liked to think Tom even wore a beard to emulate the preferred masculine appearance for his adopted family. He pursed his lips in sorrow to see his daughter suffering as she stared out of the window once more in what he was fast becoming sure was a vain hope for sighting her husband.

Since Tom had come into her life Edie always had a ready smile and laughter was itching to erupt. Even a look across a room from Tom could amuse Edie; they needed no words. She had made herself a new wardrobe of clothes for her pregnancy, all beautifully styled and cut. Abe imagined she probably had a drawer full of baby clothes she’d been sewing as well. The little one would be the best-dressed baby in England, he was convinced of it.

His grandchild. Abe’s heart sang at the notion. A new generation of Valentines; he hoped it might be a boy, after their Daniel.

In the doorway a tall Frenchwoman unobtrusively made pots of tea, never partaking of the seemingly endless cups she’d poured since Abe had arrived at his family’s cottage at four p.m. The statuesque woman walked as though she floated across the flagstones.

‘Can I get you anything, Mr Valentine?’ Madeleine asked.

‘No, dear, you’ve been most attentive.’

She gave a small sigh. ‘I prefer to be busy.’

‘How long have you known my daughter?’

‘I met her only today. Do you like her hair?’

‘It was a shock. I prefer her long hair, like her mother’s.’

‘But you don’t dislike it?’ she offered with a slight smile.

‘No, I don’t dislike it.’ He wanted to say he didn’t understand it. ‘I can’t dislike anything about Edie.’

She nodded. ‘I believe she and I will be good friends. I like honest people. Eden is true.’

He frowned. ‘So you don’t know Tom?’

Madeleine shrugged. ‘I have never seen him. I don’t live on this side of Epping, although it’s pretty enough. Maybe I should move.’ She smiled lazily as if teasing him. ‘She couldn’t even show me a wedding picture of them.’

Abe muttered a curse. ‘One of those unlucky things. They had some lovely memories recorded.’

‘What happened?’

‘A fire at the photographer’s studio,’ Edie said, back inside and on another pacing circuit of the cottage. ‘We lost all the film and Tom refused to have any more taken.’ She sighed. ‘He’s agreed we’ll have some photographs with our child when he or she arrives.’ She rubbed her belly absently and moved away from them.

The clock on the mantelpiece – one of Abe’s wedding gifts to his daughter – ticked past nine p.m. but only now twilight was surrendering. No one had eaten and Abe had said private prayers for Shabbat over a piece of bread and butter, which was all he was prepared to eat despite Edie’s weary encouragement. Meanwhile she refused anything but the odd sip of tea.

Abe stepped outside into the mild evening, made cooler only because it was so clear, and a dome of dark velvet, still a burnished pink at its furthest reaches from the scattered sunlight, looked studded by diamonds. He privately marvelled at the night sky in the country, which gave a gift of the heavens often so hard to see against the concentrated artificial lighting of London. He had to admit, he understood Edie’s joy of this place.

Edie was in and out of London regularly – at least twice a week – to be briefed on various jobs, do some shopping and pay visits to the community that missed her; he had her work delivered by horse and cart but he wondered now how life would change once the baby arrived. He saw movement ahead. His attention snapped fully to the shadowy figure approaching. Was it Tom? His heart leapt with hope and the thought that his son-in-law had better have a good reason for keeping them all so worried.

Abe had accepted his new son-in-law with grace, commiserated with the Levi family, shaking his head, shrugging, sighing, apologising far too often for his daughter’s seemingly outrageous decision to marry out of her faith. Samuel accepted as Samuel always would, but he suspected Dena was unforgiving, while Ben refused to discuss it. And so they hadn’t talked about it again. They were all polite but the sense of family that years of friendship had achieved was lost when Edie had accepted Tom’s marriage proposal and thus refused Benjamin. Edie’s refusal was at every gathering; it haunted every conversation he shared with Ben or Dena and yet each wore smiles, asked politely after Edie – but never Tom – and even went through motions of congratulations when he had been forced to yield the information of her pregnancy.

Even though it had been the wisest decision for Edie to leave the neighbourhood, he loathed that his precious daughter had left Golders Green. Nevertheless even on his first visit to this tumbledown cottage he could feel the love within it and sensed how much Edie enjoyed her new-found nesting instincts. She’d turned the cottage quickly into a home: running up curtains, covering old furniture he’d given them and making them look new again. She’d made bedspreads and sewn bright tablecloths. Yes, he was the first to admit that his daughter had never looked happier or more content since her wedding to Tom. A needle of familiar remorse pricked that he’d ever made his beautiful girl feel such guilt over Benjamin Levi.

Edie and Tom had been so eager to marry that the engagement had been little more than formality. Abe had always dreamed of his daughter marrying beneath the
chuppah
, but that would never be permitted. Instead, Abe had needed to wrap his mind around his daughter being married in a registry office. Given the sorrows of that night in November, Abe just wanted the sad fracture of friendship and faith behind him. By January he had accepted that Edie had never looked brighter or happier, and he was not prepared to lose his only remaining child because of her modern attitude. Yes, he wanted his beautiful daughter surrounded by elders beneath the sunlight, but only Solly attended to witness the marriage, and yes, he’d looked forward to seeing Edie being led around her husband-to-be seven times as blessings were spoken. He had also wanted to see her husband stamp on the glass beneath the linen and break it. However, despite being denied all that, it didn’t stop him setting aside his misgivings and murmuring, ‘
Mazel Tov!
’ in congratulations when the civil ceremony declared Edie and Tom to be formally married. Abe had also cast a silent prayer that Tom would not break Edie’s heart but remain true to her, for she had now given up her community for him. There was no dancing, no songs or party . . . just a simple celebration feast for the four of them above the shop as plans were made to leave Golders Green.

Abe pulled himself from his memories as the caped figure on a bicycle drew closer out of the darkness and into the thin light that Edie’s open doorway afforded.

‘Edie,’ Abe called over his shoulder. ‘The police constable is here.’

The taxi had left London behind a long time ago but they had moved off the main London-to-Brighton road and had been driving down country lanes for probably half an hour; Alex Wynter had lost track and had no watch. It was almost exactly how he remembered it, with tall hedgerows and narrow roads. A patchwork of meadows crisscrossed either side of them with softly undulating hills. They had passed woodlands with drifts of dandelions and rolled through villages with pubs that had yet to put their lights on because the days were so long now and the evenings so deliciously warm that men were drinking their ales outside.

‘Beautiful part of the world,’ the driver remarked. ‘Not that I’ve seen much north of Liverpool or south of Brighton,’ he quipped. ‘How about you, Sir?’

‘Oh, yes, I’ve travelled rather widely. The war made sure of that, but before the war I was certainly fortunate to see much of Europe before it was bombed.’

‘I was told to take you to Larksfell Hall. That’s right, isn’t it?’

‘Correct.’

‘You may have to guide me. I know London like my own face but I’m not so reliable here. Are you familiar with the directions?’

‘Certainly. I’ve lived there all my life. There’s a sharp bend up ahead and then we’ll be entering Larksfell land. The main gates are about half a mile in.’

‘Righto, Sir.’

Once they rounded the bend all the surrounds became achingly familiar and Alex felt as though he’d never left. Even the English laurels flanking their path felt the same – no bigger or smaller, no bushier, but thirty-foot high sentinels that closed off the light of dusk and reminded Alex that he would be disturbing the family settling down for the night. He wondered who might be around . . . A new anxious thought occurred as the gatekeeper’s cottage came into view: What if his brothers had died during the war? Douglas had been stationed in London when Alex was leaving for France – he may have been posted somewhere and suffered. Despite his youth, Rupert definitely would have enlisted. It was expected of the gentrified families. So many of the good young lives lost came from families like his . . . a generation of landowners and potential industrialists wiped out.

Larksfell Hall suddenly appeared as they cleared the laurel hedge, and Alex felt his heart thump once so hard he caught his breath. Home. A huge stone and gabled monument to Elizabethan architecture loomed ahead and Alex was instantly transported to the long, galleried reception rooms he’d ridden his tricycle through as a child. He could see the swallows swooping and wheeling above the house, getting ready to settle beneath the eaves for the night, and the sky was a brilliant deep blue, dying to purple, as their backdrop. The Wynter house looked magnificent – lights were glowing gently behind Renaissance-style small leaded windowpanes and his gaze searched for his suite of rooms. Far left on the first storey. Those rooms remained stubbornly darkened.

The emotion of seeing it again felt suffocating for that heartbeat and his throat choked momentarily. Boarding school, the fishing lodge in Lancashire, which he considered a second home because it prompted the happiest memories of being with his father and brothers and an uncle or two, and then the trenches were his only other places of abode.

Suddenly a shed in a small garden filled with old roses flashed into his mind and he blinked in surprise. The image was gone but in that bright moment, overriding the fragrance of rose perfume, he’d tasted sewing-machine oil, of all things. He knew that smell from his old Nanny’s nook, as all the Wynter children had called her tiny wing near their nursery. Nanny sewed on her treadle machine for them, delighting in making pinafores for his sister and shirts for the boys. Nanny – with her sausage-like fingers – bathed them and fed them and comforted them whenever their parents were not around . . . and sometimes even when they were. He had loved Nanny as he had his own mother, never grasping until much later that she wasn’t blood. But she was family to him . . . right up until the very day her kidneys failed and she was stolen from them. But it was not Nanny now who stuck in his mind. He shook his head in surprise at the unfamiliar picture that had lingered with the machine-oil smell . . . he then glimpsed a leather satchel, an old bicycle, women’s shoes, a different sewing machine, a dressmaker’s wax mannequin. He had no idea what it meant.

‘What time is it, please?’ The image snapped shut in his mind.

The taxi driver glanced at his watch. ‘Nearing eight, Sir.’

Light was fading. ‘Just pull up at the lodge, please. You can leave me there.’

‘Are you sure, Sir? I’m happy to drive you all the way to the house.’

‘No, I feel like a walk. Thank you so much. Er, will you be all right for getting back?’

‘Yes, Sir. Don’t you worry. I know my way now. I’ll just keep my eyes peeled for hedgehogs and badgers.’

‘And deer,’ Alex warned as the car slowed to a halt.

The driver jumped out and opened the door for Alex, politely touching his hat. ‘Goodnight, Sir.’

‘Night,’ Alex called and watched the car turn around laboriously before it rumbled off down the path of laurels.

The door to the gatekeeper’s house was suddenly flung back.

‘Who is it?’

‘Clarence?’

‘Name yourself, please. If you’re a scavenger hoping for food, there’ll be none to have tonight. Tomorrow, perhaps.’

‘Clarrie, it’s me.’

The elderly man squinted into the low light. ‘Me? I don’t know you from that stone pillar over there. You’ll not be getting let in tonight, whoever you are,’ he cautioned. ‘The family is not entertaining.’

‘Really? I never knew the Wynters to turn away family,’ he quipped. Clarence looked like he’d aged more than a decade. His hair was wild and white, and pushed out of place from where he’d probably been napping in his faded armchair, which carried an imprint of the old fellow’s backside. Where had that stoop come from? His hip appeared to be injured, judging by the way he limped, and Alex was reminded of his own limp, now so much a part of him he barely remembered it.

‘Family? No guests tonight. And if you were closely associated with the family, you’d know that tonight of all nights is sacred to them.’

‘Why is Friday so special?’

‘Good grief, man. Get on with you! You’re an insult. Leave them in peace. I’ll fetch my shotgun if you’re not careful.’

Alex laughed. ‘Clarrie. For heaven’s sake, man. It’s Alex . . . Lex.’ He sighed. ‘Wynter!’

He watched the man’s slightly rheumy gaze falter and guilt washed over him to see Clarrie’s chin tremble.

‘Captain Wynter?’ he whispered.

‘Oh, what’s all this captain stuff, eh? I’m Lex to you, Clarrie,’ he said, taking a stride and clutching the man into a bear hug. ‘Mmm, still smoking Savinelli English Mixture, eh? I thought you were going to give up your pipe?’

Clarrie moved back to stare at him open-mouthed in the lowering light. ‘Mr Alex . . .’ he choked out in a shaking voice and Alex suddenly worried the man might suffer heart failure. He looked ready to crumple from shock.

‘It’s me,’ he assured.

‘Back from the dead,’ Clarrie whispered, filled with disbelief.

He found a grin. ‘Yes. You don’t get rid of a Wynter that easily.’

Clarrie broke down and it hurt Alex’s heart to see his dear old friend – a person he’d loved since early childhood, someone strong and gruff but always kind – weep on his behalf.

‘Don’t, Clarrie. I’m back now. Everything is going to be fine.’

‘No, Master Alex. You’re too late.’

‘Too late?’ He helped the old man to straighten, forced him to meet his gaze in the twilight. ‘Too late for what?’

‘For Lord Wynter, Sir. Your dear father passed away, and was buried yesterday.’

It was as though Clarrie had picked up a club and whipped it as hard as he could into Alex’s belly. He gasped, as if needing to suddenly suck in a lungful of air. Alex lurched away to lean on one of the tall stone pillars that flanked the grand gates of Larksfell.

‘I’m sorry, son.’ Clarrie reached out, limping to him as though he was still uncertain whether or not the man bent and groaning before him was a ghost. ‘He slipped away peacefully. The family was around him. No pain.’

‘Why? Was he ill?’

The man shrugged. ‘I believe he died of a broken heart, Master Lex, but that’s likely not the official reason.’ He cleared his throat. ‘He was proud of his sons going off to war but he never came to terms with losing you at Ypres. He didn’t say much to the family, Sir, but we had our quiet moments walking the property and . . . well, anyway, age finds us all out one way or another. I’ll not be long behind him, I’m sure. And perhaps I don’t want to be, now that Mr Thomas isn’t around. We were boys together, you know . . . good friends, just born on different sides of the bed, if you get my meaning.’

Alex nodded, straightening but still wearing a haunted expression. ‘My mother?’

‘She’s up at the house, grieving with the family.’

‘My brothers are safe?’

‘Oh, yes. Mr Douglas and Mr Rupert are well. Mr Rupert was injured but he’s fully convalesced now.’

Relief shot through him, overriding the sadness of his father’s passing. There would be the right time for grieving. All he wanted to do right now was hug the family that had survived the war. ‘Oh, that’s so good to hear,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry to bring more shock,’ he said, speaking more to himself than to Clarrie.

‘No, Sir. Your return is just what this house needs. Your father has been ailing for years. I’m sure Mr Bramson will fill you in.’ Clarrie seemed to have gathered his wits and his voice sounded gruff again. ‘Shall I let him know you’re here, Sir?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘Would you like me to accompany you, Master Alex?’

He shook his head and squeezed the gatekeeper’s shoulder. ‘No, Clarrie. Just let Mr Bramson know ahead and I’ll walk up slowly.’

‘Right you are, Sir.’ He grinned. ‘So good to have you back, Master Alex.’

‘Clarrie, one more thing. I’m in no hurry to meet everyone except my mother. Would you indulge me and hold off making the call to Bramson for a couple of hours?’

‘Sir?’

‘It’s hard to explain. Tell Bramson to expect me but not immediately. When does everyone turn in?’

‘Not for hours normally, Master Lex. But in this week of grieving I gather there have been no communal meals of an evening. Most are living in their rooms out of respect for your mother’s mourning in particular.’

‘What time is it, Clarrie?’

The old man checked his fob watch, holding the lantern over it. ‘It’s nearing eight-thirty, Sir.’

‘I’ll wait until ten.’

_______________

Alex sat on a favourite old tree stump and thought back over the strange day. He was glad to have this peace in the dark to arrange his thoughts and emotions. His father was gone. Where had he, the eldest son, been while his family gathered around as Wynter Senior took his final breath, believing his son lost in Ypres, buried beneath many feet of mud along with tens of thousands of other innocents?

There was nothing to be gained thinking like this. No amount of soul searching would bring his beloved father back. The main thing was that he was home now – better to push his energies into rebuilding the family and continuing its fortune-making than focusing on the past.

Easy to say. It felt impossible at this moment not to tease at whose life he’d been living since the injury. He had begun to think of him as the invisible man that would accompany him into every room he entered. And each time from here on that someone laid eyes on Alexander Wynter, they would also unknowingly gaze at the stranger and ask the inevitable question, ‘Where has he been the last few years?’

But for now the man whose life he had been leading was mute and couldn’t answer their query. And if there was one thing that Alex Wynter enjoyed unravelling, it was a mystery. He’d irritated his siblings by working out their magic tricks or finding them much too fast during a game of hide-and-seek, or spoiling the conjuror’s show at the circus because he was always watching for the sleight of hand. It was hard to surprise him, too. Girls had been complaining since his teens that they could never give him anything that he didn’t already have. They whined that he never showed delight at their gifts of silk scarves, or tickets to the ballet, or ludicrously expensive bottles of cognac.

‘They should just give you a five-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, Lex,’ his mother had once offered in her traditionally sardonic way. ‘Hours of glee for you.’

His mother knew him too well, for everything money could buy was attainable for him – she also knew that people rarely impressed him either, especially by what they owned. Alex had to sadly admit to himself now that the array of glittering, gorgeous young things that vied for his attention tended to blend into a single pair of lips and a single slimline body sporting perfectly coiffed hair. Such women bored him because in general they were spoiled, used to having their own way and pouting to get it, remarkably heedless of the needs of people less fortunate.

‘When you meet someone who surprises you, Lex, then you’ll fall in love with her.’

‘But where is she, Mother?’

He recalled how his still-beautiful mother had cut him her aqua gaze and shaken her head. ‘Not in the circle you move in, darling.’

How right she was. He’d gone to war an eligible bachelor, despite one close call with Jemima Bartleby, where he had nearly agreed to settle down with a gorgeous woman who’d give him equally gorgeous children and be the perfect partner in every way except the one way that he needed, which was to be in love with her. He didn’t desire a woman who wanted nothing. He wanted an equal, someone with ambition for herself and dreams of her own, someone with skills to admire and conversation that drifted from the hottest new luncheon spot to be seen in.

‘I want that exhilarating feeling of love,’ he’d once said to his mother. ‘I’d jump off the cliff from boredom with Jemima.’

‘Oh, darling, that’s cruel. She can’t help that she’s dull. Look at her mother. She’s a mouse. At least Jemima has tried to stand out. She’s very beautiful.’

‘Yes, but vacant. I spend days with her, and can’t remember a thing she’s said.’