“Of course you are. You look just like him. Sit down, sit down. I’ll make some tea.” She began to struggle out of her chair, her thin arms wobbling as they deployed two walking canes.
“I’ll get it, Granny. You stay put.”
From the tiny kitchenette, Zach studied his grandma. It had been four months since he’d seen her last, and she seemed less substantial every time. A wisp of a woman, her hair like the ghost of the curls she’d once had, her body the bare bones of what was once a neat, vigorous figure. Here she was, fading by degrees every day, and he had been too caught up in his own troubles to notice. With a prickle of guilt, he realized that he should have brought Elise to visit before she went to America. He vowed to do so, without fail, the next time his daughter was in the U.K. He could only hope that his grandma would be alive to see her, but it seemed highly likely. She was frail, but her eyes were bright. Zach took in the tea, and they chatted about family and his work for ten minutes or more.
“Well, go on and ask me,” she said, after a silence had fallen between them. Zach glanced up at her.
“Ask you what, Granny?” She fixed him with those bright eyes and looked amused.
“Whatever it is you’re so desperate to ask. I can see it hanging over you like a cloud.” She smiled at his guilty expression. “Don’t worry, dear. I don’t mind why you’ve come to visit, it’s just lovely that you have.”
“I’m sorry about this, Granny. But I need to ask about… about Charles Aubrey.” He’d thought she might smile, or blush, or get that happy, secretive look in her eye, like she’d always used to, but instead she sat farther back in her chair, and seemed to sink slightly, to retreat from him.
“Ah,” she said.
“You see, when I was little, it always seemed to be hinted at… to be suggested that perhaps… Charles Aubrey was actually my grandfather.” Zach’s pulse quickened. Putting this long-thought but never spoken thing into words felt outrageous.
“Yes, I know,” was all she said. Her expression was troubled, and Zach wondered about that. Her husband, Zach’s grandfather, had died eleven years previously. The truth could no longer hurt him.
“Well, I’ve been down in Blacknowle these past few weeks-”
“Blacknowle? You’ve been in Blacknowle?” she interrupted him.
“Yes. I’ve been trying to find out more about Aubrey’s life and work there.”
“And have you?” She leaned forwards in her chair, eagerly.
“Oh, yes. That is…” Zach hesitated. He’d been about to blurt out everything he’d found. But he couldn’t, he knew. The secret that Dimity had kept so carefully for a whole lifetime could not be so casually betrayed. Not even to another woman who’d loved Aubrey all her life. “I’ve found something down there. Something that makes it very important for me to know… to know whether or not I am actually a descendant of Charles Aubrey. Whether I am his grandson, or not.”
The old woman sat back again, and crimped her lips together. Her bony hands clasped the arms of her chair, and in the overheated room Zach felt sweat prickling under his arms. He waited, and for a while it seemed like he wasn’t going to get an answer. His grandmother’s eyes were looking into the past, just like Dimity Hatcher’s did, but eventually she spoke.
“Charles Aubrey. Oh, he was wonderful. There’s no way you can know, now, how wonderful he was.”
“I can see how wonderful his pictures were,” said Zach.
“Any fool can see that. But you would have to have met him, to have known him, to really know-”
“But don’t you see,” said Zach, feeling a sudden rush of irritation. “Don’t you see what that did to Grandpa? And to my dad?” His grandma blinked, and frowned at him a little. “My father, your son David, grew up with a father who didn’t love him, because he didn’t think he was his father!”
“Any decent kind of man would have loved the boy regardless,” she snapped. “I offered to leave him. I offered to take my son and set him free. He wouldn’t have it. The scandal, he said. Always so concerned with what other people thought, he was. Too concerned that we should be respectable to care if we were happy.”
“And were you?”
“Were we what, dear?”
“Were you respectable? Was your husband the father of your son, or was my dad an illegitimate… love child?” At this, his grandmother laughed.
“Oh, dear boy! You sound just like your grandpa! So pompous.” She patted his hand. “But I’m impressed that someone, after all these years, has finally got up the courage to actually ask me. But what does it matter, now? Try not to dwell on it. Everyone is allowed secrets, especially a woman…”
“I have a right to know,” Zach insisted.
“No, you don’t. You grew up with a caring father, and you were well loved and looked after. Why go digging around for something less than that? For something worse than that?”
“Because… Because my father didn’t grow up with a loving father, did he? He grew up knowing he was never quite good enough. Never quite what was wanted. He grew up as a disappointment, under the shadow of Charles Aubrey!” Zach took a steadying breath. “But that’s not the point. Well, it is the point, but it’s not why I’m here. I’ve met a woman, down in Blacknowle, who is related to Aubrey. She’s his great-granddaughter. The granddaughter of Aubrey’s daughter Delphine. Remember her?”
“Delphine? The older girl?” His grandma tipped her head to one side. “I saw them, briefly, from time to time. But I never spoke to them, really. Not to either of his daughters, or to the other one.”
“What other one?”
“The little village girl who used to follow them everywhere.”
“Dimity Hatcher?”
“Was that her name? Quite a beauty, but always dressed in rags and hiding behind her hair. I wondered if she was simple.”
“She wasn’t simple. And she’s still alive,” Zach said, before he could stop himself. “She’s been telling me all about the summers that the Aubreys spent there…”
“Has she really? Well, then, you hardly need me to-”
“Granny, please. I have to know. This woman that I’ve met… Aubrey’s great-granddaughter. It’s… very important that I know whether or not we’re related. Whether or not I’m actually Aubrey’s grandson. Please, just tell me. No more hints and shrugs.”
“You mean the pair of you are courting?” she said, with keen intuition. Zach nodded. His grandma’s fingers patted the arms of the chair in agitation. She grasped and released, grasped and released, and her face reflected a powerful dilemma. Zach took a deep breath.
“Well?” he said. The old woman scowled at him.
“Well. If you demand to know, then I shall tell you. And perhaps we shall both be the poorer for it. The answer is no. No. Your grandpa was your grandpa. I never had a love affair with Charles Aubrey.”
“You never even had an affair with him? It was all made up?” Zach was incredulous, and a storm of relief and disappointment blew through him.
“I did not make anything up, young man! We had… a liaison. And I loved him. I loved him from the first moment I set eyes on him. And perhaps I would have betrayed your grandpa… but Charles wouldn’t have me.” She pressed her lips together again, as if she’d stung herself. “There. I’ve said it, so I hope you’re happy.”
“He… turned you down?”
“Yes. He was the more honorable one, in the end. He came and found me in the room above the pub where we’d been staying. I thought he’d come to seduce me! But he’d come to break it off with me. Not that it had really started; just… the possibility. Just the enchantment. But he broke it off instead, and broke my heart into the bargain.” She laid her fingertips lightly on her chest, and sighed. “He said that… he wasn’t free to take what he wanted. To do what he wanted. He said he’d got into trouble already that summer, for doing just that, and that he had a family to think of.”