“What do you mean … you are going to change it?”
“I’m going to get rid of all the clothes in that wardrobe. We’re going to have new curtains … new carpet. We’re going to have white walls instead of pale green. We are going to take the furniture out … perhaps put it in the attic, or even sell some. Everything is going to be new, and when it is finished it shall be my room … not hers. Then you will stop remembering and being sad. She will have gone. There won’t be all those things to remind you. What do you think of my idea?”
“I … I’ll consider it.”
“Don’t do that. Say yes, I think it’s a good idea. Because it is. Here in this room … I have a feeling she is telling me what to do. She’s saying: Look after Noelle. Stop her thinking of the past. Tell her I’d rather she forgot me if thinking of me makes her sad. That is what she is saying to me.”
“Oh, Marie-Christine!” I said, and we clung together for a few moments.
She said: “It’s going to be exciting. I think we’ll have yellow curtains, because yellow is the colour of sunlight, and we’re going to send out all the shadows and bring in the sun. We shall have a blue carpet. Blue and yellow. Blue skies and yellow sunshine. Oh, do let’s do it, Noelle!”
“Perhaps you are right …” I began.
“I know I’m right. We are going to start tomorrow.”
It was Marie-Christine who found the letters.
She had thrown herself wholeheartedly into the refurbishing of my mother’s room. She had chosen curtain materials and they were being made. She had decided on the carpet, and at this time she was preoccupied with the furniture.
She was obviously enjoying the task, and I was touched by her desire to do what was best for me.
She was happier than she had been since she lost her family. She was right, too. One should not make perpetual shrines to the dead. It was a way of nursing one’s grief.
She came bursting into my room, her eyes shining. She was brandishing some papers in her hand.
“You know the bureau?” she said. “I was going through it. I thought it was one of the pieces that could go into the attic. Behind one of the drawers there was another little drawer. If you didn’t know it was there, you could have missed it. I just put my hand at the back to see if there was anything stuck there … and found it. There were letters in it. I think they could mean something.”
“What letters?” I said. “My mother’s …?”
“They’re written to her, I think. She must have kept them. She was Daisy, wasn’t she? They’re all addressed to ‘My dearest Daisy.’ “
“You’ve read them?”
“Of course I’ve read them. I think it’s an important discovery.”
“Her private letters …”
Marie-Christine looked exasperated. “I tell you, they could mean something. Here. Read them. They were in order. There is no date on them … but I found them like that.”
She handed them to me.
I read the first one.
Meningarth, near Bodmin My dearest Daisy,
I was astounded to hear the news. I feel very proud, too. I don’t suppose it’s possible, but would you feel like coming back, now this has happened? I understand, of course, how you feel, my darling. I know you hate the place and what you went through here. I know you said you never wanted to see it again. But I have a faint hope that this might possibly make a difference. Won’t it be difficult up there?
You know I want to do everything to make you happy. And there would be the child.
My love to you forever,
Ennis
Marie-Christine was watching me closely. “Read the others,” she said.
Meningarth near Bodmin My dearest Daisy,
I knew what your answer would be. I know about your dreams of fame and fortune. You can’t give up, particularly now there is a chance of its coming true. If you came back here, it would be the end of that.
So you have good friends up there.. They will do everything for you … far more than I can. They are rich and the sort of people who like to have you around. I’d be a hindrance and you are right when you say it would be the end of all you dreamed of … and the child must have every chance. You couldn’t bring her back here. When you escaped, it was forever.
I thought it might be difficult for you up there. But apparently you are getting through all the difficulties. I thought, because of the child, you might come back to me, but you say because of the child you must stay. I shall try to understand.
My love as ever,
Ennis
There was another letter.
Meningarth near Bodmin My dearest Daisy,
I am so pleased to hear of your success. You are famous now, my darling. I always knew you would get what you wanted. And the child is happy. She has everything she wants … more than she could ever have had here, and you are determined she shall never know the like of what you went through.
You are going on to even greater success. You always got what you wanted in the end.
As always, my love to you and the child,
Ennis
As soon as I had finished reading, Marie-Christine demanded: “What do you think? You are the child he is talking about.”
“Yes, I think I must be.”
“Why does he write like this? Why is he so interested in
you?’
‘He is asking her to go back and marry him.” ‘Noelle, the child he writes about is his.”
“He doesn’t say so.”
“Not in so many words … but at the least it’s a possibility. We’re going to find out, Noelle. We’ve got to. We’re going down there to …” She snatched the letters from my hands. “Meningarth,” she said. “Near Bodmin. We’re going to find Ennis. We’ve got to. Just suppose …”
“That he is my father?”
“And if he is …”
“It’s too late, Marie-Christine.”
“We’ve got to know. Don’t you want to know who your father is?”
“All we have to go on are these letters.”
“It’s a good start. Meningarth can’t be very big, or he wouldn’t have to say ‘near Bodmin.’ And Ennis … well, it’s not like John or Henry. There can’t be a lot of Ennises.”
She was excited.
“We are going to find him. We are going to find the truth!”
“It is probing into my mother’s past … finding out things she clearly didn’t want known.”
“It’s your life. You must know the truth. If she had known what was going to happen, she would have made sure you had the truth. She would want you to know. You’ll see that. It’s just the first shock of reading these letters. Noelle, we are going down to Meningarth. We’re going to find Ennis. We are going to know the truth.”
Ever since we had decided to go down to Cornwall, Marie-Christine had been in a state of great excitement, in which I was beginning to share. The best thing for us both was to have some project on hand.
Within a few days of the discovery of the letters, we were on our way to Bodmin.
The train was fairly full all the way to Taunton. After that people began to get out and our carriage was empty for some way until we reached Exeter, when two middle-aged ladies joined us.
Marie-Christine, at the window, could not stop calling out to me to look at this and that as we sped past. The glimpse of the sea delighted her, and she was quick to notice the red fertile soil of Devon.