After the wedding Bella had gone away for a few days Rachael wondered now where she could have gone and came back to find the new kitchen.
Apparently she’d pointed out a photo in a magazine to Dougie, said what a picture it was and he’d copied it exactly. His mother had left him some shares and he’d blown the lot on it.
It was the washing machine which pleased Bella most though, as she said wryly to Rachael, it would have been more handy when the old lady was alive and she had bedding to do every day.
The kitchen was tidier than Rachael had ever seen it. Bella had obviously cleaned the floor just before she died. On the window sill there were plants which needed watering but she’d never bothered much about those. In the drawers and cupboards there was nothing to give a clue to her past.
Rachael moved on to the small parlour where Mrs. Furness had sat in the evenings before taking to her bed. Nothing much could have changed since then. There was an upright piano, small dark wood tables with crocheted runners, framed embroidered samplers, a standard lamp with a fringed shade. The photos were of Dougie with his first wife, Neville as a small boy. In her day Ivy Furness must have been a fit and active woman. Dougie’s first wife had died, quite suddenly, of a brain haemorrhage when the boy was two and Ivy had taken the family on. It occurred to Rachael that Neville must have regarded her almost as his mother. Perhaps he’d been closer to her than to
Dougie. It would be interesting to find out if he’d been more assiduous about visiting her than his father.
Dougie’s first wife had been a beauty; from her Neville had inherited the black hair, the brown skin, the intense eyes. Bella had spoken of her occasionally, without jealousy.
“She was only a girl when they met, a bit wild by all accounts. Look at her picture. You can see why he fell for her.”
She was a southerner, still at art school, visiting relatives in the area. He’d bumped into her on the hill. She’d been sketching the lead mine. The completed picture still hung in the living room given pride of place over the mantelpiece.
“Don’t you mind?” Rachael had once asked.
“Of course not. We both came with a history.” But her history was never discussed, and Ivy Furness’s parlour revealed none of its secrets, nor did the living room with its view of the hills, and the enormous painting of the mine, a constant reminder of Dougie’s first love.
There had been talk of turning Ivy’s parlour into a bedroom for Dougie when he first came back from the hospital, but, as Bella said, the bathroom was upstairs and she was hardly going to wash him at the kitchen sink. In the end social services had provided a st airlift so they could keep the bedroom they’d shared since they were married, probably even before that. Bella had never been a great one for convention.
Someone must have been into the room since the night Bella died to collect Dougie’s suit for the funeral. Perhaps Neville had come when they were out on the hill. Rachael hadn’t heard a car. But he had taken the clothes and gone. That was all. The room still smelled of disinfectant and of Bella’s perfume. Rachael searched it as meticulously as elsewhere, but without expectation of finding anything.
If Bella had wanted to keep secrets from Dougie this would be the last place she’d choose.
The room which they called Neville’s, the room where she’d slept off Dougie’s whisky, had been stripped of everything except a single bed and a wardrobe. Her place at Edie’s was still full of schoolgirl clutter. Even if she got round to buying a flat of her own she thought it would still be her room, with the curtains she’d chosen, her stencils covering the wall. This was impersonal. Nothing belonging to Neville had been left behind.
That left a third bedroom, which Rachael had never seen before. It was reached by two steps down from the landing, at the back of the house.
It was small, with a sloping roof and a big cupboard containing the hot water tank. There was a narrow divan, covered with a cream quilt, still slightly crumpled as if someone had been sitting on it. By the divan was a desk, of the kind you would once have found in a schoolroom with a lift-up lid and an inkwell. Even though the surface had been sanded and painted with red gloss the scratched indentations of graffiti were still visible.
Inside the desk was a wooden box, inlaid with marquetry and mother of pearl. Once perhaps Bella had hidden it more carefully, but after Dougie’s stroke there had been no need. The two steps from the landing meant he would never visit this room. Rachael took the box to the bed and opened the lid.
At first she was disappointed. It seemed to contain the details of quite a different person, Isabella Rose Noble. There was a birth certificate in that name, dated 16 September 1942 giving the place of birth as Kimmerston, Northumberland. Next came a certificate of education dated 1963. Isabella Rose Noble had attended a teacher training college in Newcastle and was qualified to teach primary children. Only when Rachael shook a faded newspaper cutting from a brown envelope did she connect Isabella Noble with Bella Furness. At first the cutting meant nothing to her. There was an article about a child swept away by a flooded river. The body was never found. But the article was cut off in mid-sentence so she turned the paper over and read the other side.
There was an obituary taken from a local paper, dated 1970. There were two columns of print and a photograph. The man looking out at her was dark and full-faced. His name was Alfred Noble. He had died at the age of seventy, so the photograph, of a florid middle-aged man, must have been taken many years before his death.
All these details Rachael took in later. What she thought first, when she looked at the cutting, was that it was a picture of Bella. The square face, the thick dark eyebrows were the same. If the hair had been longer and if Alfred Noble had been wearing the chunky gold earrings which Bella loved, the two would have been identical. Was Alfred Noble Bella’s father? If so, why had she said her maiden name was Davison?
Rachael went on to read the smaller print. Alfred Noble had died in tragic circumstances after a long illness. This was not a news report but an eulogy.
Councillor Noble had served the town of Kimmerston well for thirty years before giving up his duties. HI health had also dictated his retirement from his position as postmaster. The funeral had taken place at the Kimmerston Methodist Church where he had served as steward. He would be much missed. He was described in the obituary as a widower but there was no mention of surviving children. Surely there would have been if Bella was his daughter, but how else could she explain the coincidence of the birth certificate, with a date which tallied with Bella’s age, and the startling resemblance?
Proof was provided by another photograph, a glossy coloured one in a presentation cardboard frame. It showed twelve children aged between five and seven in a school playground. Some sat on a wooden bench, others stood behind them. There were prim girls in pigtails, tousle-haired boys with gappy grins. Th one side, quite dashing in her short skirt and crocheted top, stood Bella. Written on the back in sloping handwriting was: “Corbin County Primary School 1966. Miss. Noble with Class One.”
Attached to the photo by a rusty paper clip was a handwritten letter.
The address was Corbin County Primary School, Corbin, Nr Wooler, Northumberland. It was dated April 1967 and it acknowledged, with regret, Miss. Noble’s resignation: “I understand you feel that family circumstances make this necessary, but trust that it will be possible for you to return to the profession in the future.”