“I’d like a little walk.”
“Oh, will you? I wonder if he’s missed them yet. If he hasn’t, he soon will.”
I took the spectacles and Nanny Crockett said she must be going. Jack Carter would be here at any minute and he didn’t like to be kept waiting.
“Then you’d better go down,” said Mrs. Ford.
“Well, goodbye. Nanny, and don’t forget, any time… and there’ll be a cup of my best Darjeeling for you.”
I went with Nanny Crockett to the gate and we had not been there more than a few minutes when Jack Carter drove up. Nanny Crockett climbed up beside him and I waved as the cart trundled off.
Then I made my way to the church. The Reverend Arthur James was delighted to receive his spectacles, and I made the acquaintance of his wife, who said with mock severity that he was always losing them and this would be a lesson to him.
I was invited in but I said I had to get back as Kate would be waiting for me. I came out of the rectory and found myself walking through the churchyard. It is strange the fascination such places have. I could not resist pausing to read some of the inscriptions on the gravestones. They were of people who had lived a hundred years ago. I wondered about their lives. There was the Perrivale vault. Cosmo was buried there. If only he could speak and tell us what really happened.
My eye was caught by the sight of a jam-jar, for in it were four exquisite roses-pink roses with a blueish tinge about them.
I could not believe my eyes. I went close to look. There was the cheap headstone, inconspicuous among the splendour of the other graves; and I knew that those were the very roses the loss of which Littleton the gardener had been mourning this very day.
For some moments I stood staring at them.
Who had put them there? I thought of the meadow sweet, obviously picked from the hedges. But these roses . Who had taken the roses from the Perrivale garden to put in a jam-jar on the grave of an unknown man?
Why had Kate shown me the grave?
I walked thoughtfully back to Perrivale Court. The more I thought of it, the more likely it seemed that Kate was the one who had taken the roses and put them on the grave.
She was waiting for me when I returned and I had not been in my room for more than a few minutes when she came in.
She sat on the bed and looked at me accusingly.
“You’ve been out again,” she said.
“Yesterday you went to see that man and today you were with Mrs. Ford and when I went up there you’d gone again.”
“The rector left his glasses behind and I took them back to him.”
“Silly old man. He’s always losing something.”
“Some people are a little absentminded. They often have more important things to think about. Did you hear all the commotion this morning about the roses?”
“What roses?” She was alert and I knew instinctively that I was on the right track.
“There were some special ones. Littleton had taken great care with them and was very proud of them. Someone took them. He was furious.
Well, I know where they are. “
She looked at me cautiously.
I went on: “They are in the graveyard on the grave of the man who was
drowned. Do you remember? You showed me his grave. There was some meadowsweet in the jam-jar then. Now there are Littleton’s prize roses.”
“I could see you thought the meadowsweet was awful.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, wild flowers. People usually put roses and lilies and that sort of thing on people’s graves.”
“Kate,” I said, ‘you took the roses. You put them on that grave. “
She was silent. Why? I wondered.
“Didn’t you?” I persisted.
“All the others have things on them… statues and things. What are a few flowers?”
“Why did you do it, Kate?”
She wriggled.
“Let’s read,” she said.
“I couldn’t settle down to reading with this hanging over us,” I said.
“Hanging over us! What do you mean?” She was bellicose, a sign of being on the defensive with her.
“Tell me truthfully why you put the flowers on that grave, Kate.”
“Because he didn’t have any. What are a few old roses? Besides, they’re not Littleton’s. They’re Stepper’s or my mother’s. They didn’t say anything. They wouldn’t know whether they were in the garden or on the grave.”
“Why did you feel this about this man?”
“He hadn’t got anything.”
“It’s the first time I’ve realized you have a soft heart. It’s not like you, Kate.”
“Well,” she said, tossing her head, “I wanted to.”
“So you cut the flowers and took them to the grave?”
“Yes. I threw the wild flowers away and got some fresh water from the pump …”
“I understand all that. But why did you do it for this man? Did you . know him?”
She nodded and suddenly looked rather frightened and forlorn-quite unlike herself. I sensed that she was bewildered and in need of comfort. I went to her and put my arm round her and, rather to my surprise, she did not resist.
“You know we are good friends, don’t you, Kate?” I said.
“You could tell me.”
“I haven’t told anybody. I don’t think they’d want me to.”
“Who? Your mother?”
“And Gramps.”
“Who was this man, Kate?”
“I thought he might be … my father.”
I was astounded and for the moment speechless. The drunken sailor . her father!
“I see,” I said at length.
“That makes a difference.”
“People put flowers on their fathers’ graves,” she said.
“Nobody else did. So … I did.”
“It was a nice thought. No one could blame you for that. Tell me about your father.”
“I didn’t like him,” she said.
“I didn’t see much of him. We lived in a house in a horrid street near a horrid market. We were frightened of him. We were upstairs. There were people living downstairs. There were three rooms with a wooden staircase down the back into the garden. It wasn’t like this. It wasn’t even like Seashell Cottage. It was … horrible.”
“And you were there with your mother and your father?”
I was trying to picture the glorious Mirabel in the sort of place Kate’s brief description had conjured up. It was not easy.
“He didn’t come home much. He went to sea. When he came back … it was awful. He was always drunk … and we used to hate it. He’d stay for a while … then he’d go back to sea.”
“And did you leave that place then?”
She nodded.
“Gramps came and we went away … with him. That’s when we came to Seashell Cottage … and everything was different then.”
“But the man in the grave is Tom Parry. You are Kate Blanchard.”
“I don’t know about names. All I know is that he was my father. He was a sailor and he used to come home with a white bag on his shoulder and my mother hated him. And when Gramps came it was all different.
The sailor . my father . wasn’t there any more. He was only there for little whiles anyway. He was always going away. Then we got on a train with Gramps and he took us to Seashell Cottage. “
“How old were you then, Kate?”
“I don’t remember … about three or four perhaps. It’s a long time ago. I only remember little bits. Sitting in the train … sitting on Gramps’s knee while he showed me cows and sheep in the fields. I was very happy then. I knew that Gramps was taking us away and we wouldn’t have to see my father any more.”
“And yet you put flowers on his grave.”
“It was because I thought he was my father.”
“You’re not sure.”
“I am … and then I’m not. I don’t know. But he might have been my father. I hated him and he was dead … but if he was my father I ought to put flowers on his grave.”