We drink coffee and admire the Christmas tree that came yesterday and now towers up into the stairwell. All the decorations we bought weren’t quite enough. They look a little lost on such vast branches. But the lights twinkle and the resinous smell of it reaches every corner of the house, a constant reminder of the season.
“Bit extravagant, isn’t it, love?” Dad asks Beth, who tips her eyebrows, dismissively.
“The house needed cheering up. For Eddie,” she says.
“Ah well, yes, fair enough,” Dad concedes. He’s wearing a red sweater; grey hair standing up in tufts just like Eddie’s does, and the hot coffee flushing his cheeks pink. He looks jovial, kind-just as he is.
There’s a thump on the door, which I open to find Eddie and Harry on the step, out of breath, as ever, and damp.
“Hi, Rick! I came to say hello to Grandma and Grandpa. And I told Harry he could come and see the tree. That’s OK, isn’t it?”
“Of course it’s OK, but kick those boots off before you take another step!”
Eddie is hugged, kissed, questioned. Dad proffers a hand to Harry for him to shake, but Harry just looks at it, bemused. He drifts over to the tree instead, crouches down to gaze up into it, as if trying to see it at its biggest, its most imposing. Dad shoots me a quizzical look and I mouth, I’ll tell you later. We decide to keep Eddie, since lunch is not far off, and send Harry home with a box of Beth’s mince pies, which he dips into even as he shambles off across the lawn.
“He seems a funny old thing,” Mum says mildly.
“He’s wicked. He knows all the best places to go in the woods-where to find mushrooms and badgers’ nests,” Eddie defends his friend.
“Badgers have setts, not nests, Eddie; and I hope you haven’t been playing with fungi-that’s really very dangerous!” Mum says. I see Eddie bridle.
“Harry knows which ones you can eat,” he mutters, defensively.
“I’m sure he does. It’s fine, Mum,” I say, to quieten her. “Old people don’t know that wicked means good,” I whisper to Eddie. He rolls his eyes, escapes up the stairs to get changed.
“It’s good for him, to have such an outdoor friend. He spends so much time cooped up at school,” Beth says firmly.
Mum raises a hand. “I meant no criticism! Lord knows you two spent enough time out in the woods with Dinny when you came to stay here.”
“You didn’t mind, though, did you?” Beth asks anxiously. She is all the more sensitive now to the slights of children against their parents. Mum and Dad exchange a glance, and Dad gives Mum a fond smile.
“No, not really, I suppose,” Mum says. “It might have been nice if you’d wanted to spend a bit more time with us…” In the shocked pause after she says this, Beth and I exchange a guilty look and Mum laughs. “It’s fine, girls! It was the beginnings of my empty nest syndrome, that’s all.”
“I don’t know what I’ll do when Eddie goes off to university. It’s bad enough now that he boards all week,” Beth murmurs, folding her arms.
“You’ll miss him like mad, you’ll spoil him rotten when he comes down, and you’ll find a new hobby-just like all mothers do, darling,” Mum tells her, putting an arm around her bony shoulders.
“It’s a long way off yet, anyway,” I remind her. “He’s only eleven, after all.”
“Yes, but five seconds ago he was a tiny baby!” Beth says.
“They grow up fast,” Dad nods. “And be happy about it, Beth! After six years of having a teenage boy around the house, I expect you’ll be thrilled to have him go off to study!”
“And just think of all the fun stages you’ve got before then-the arguments about curfews, and driving lessons, and first girlfriends staying over. Finding porno mags under his bed… peering into his dazed eyes in the morning and wondering what drugs he took the night before…”
“Erica! Really!” Mum admonishes me, as Beth’s eyes grow wide with horror.
“Sorry.” I smile.
“Rick, I think you’ve been teaching too long,” Dad chuckles. Beth raises her eyebrows at me.
“Smug aunt syndrome-that’s your problem. You get to watch me go through all of this and laugh into your sleeve as I get it all wrong and tear out my hair,” she says accusingly.
“Come on, Beth. I’m joking. You’ve never put a foot wrong as a mother,” I tell her, rushing on before a pause can form, before we all remember the huge wrong stride she took, not too long ago. “Come and have some mince pies-Beth’s outdone herself with them.”
Later on, I show Mum the photographs I’ve found for her. She identifies the people I didn’t recognize-more distant relatives, people now dead, faded away, leaving only their faces on paper and traces of their blood in our veins. I show her the one of Caroline, taken in New York with the baby cradled in her left arm. Mum frowns as she scrutinises it.
“Well, that’s definitely Caroline-such pale eyes! She was striking, wasn’t she?”
“But what was she doing in New York? And whose baby is it, if she only married Lord Calcott in 1904? Do you think they had one before they got married?”
“What do you mean, what was she doing in New York? She was from New York!”
“Caroline? She was American? How can nobody have told me that before?”
“Well, how can you not have realized? With that accent of hers…”
“Mum, I was five years old. How would I have noticed her accent? And she was ancient by then. She hardly spoke at all.”
“True, I suppose,” Mum nods.
“Well, that explains why she was in New York in 1904. So, who’s the baby?” I press. Mum takes a deep breath, inflates her cheeks.
“No idea,” she says. “There’s no way she could have had a child with Henry before they wed, even if that wouldn’t have caused a huge scandal. She only met him late in 1904, when she came over to London. They married in 1905, soon after they met.”
“Well, was she married before? Did she bring the baby over with her?”
“No, I don’t think so. You really would be better off asking Mary. As far as I know, Caroline came over from New York, a rich heiress at the age of around twenty-one or twenty-two, married a titled man at quite some speed, and that was that.”
I nod, oddly disappointed.
“Perhaps it was a friend’s baby. Perhaps she was its godmother. Who knows?” Mum says.
“Could have been,” I agree. I take the picture back, study it closely. My eyes seek out Caroline’s left hand, her ring finger, but it’s hidden in the folds of the ghostly child’s dress. “Do you mind if I keep this one? Just for a while?” I ask.
“Of course not, love.”
“I’ve… been reading some of her letters. Caroline’s letters,” I am strangely reluctant to confess this. Like reading somebody’s diary, even after they’re dead. “Have you got that family tree? There was a letter from an Aunt B.”
“Here you are. Caroline’s side of things is a bit sketchy, I’m afraid. I think Mary was more interested in the Calcott line-and all of Caroline’s family records would have been in America, of course.” There is nothing, in fact, on Caroline’s side, except the names of her parents. No aunts or uncles, a very small twig to one side before Caroline joined the main tree in 1905. Caroline Fitzpatrick, as she was then.
I study her name for some time, waiting, although I’m not sure what for.
“In this letter, her aunt-Aunt B-says that whatever happened in America should stay in America, and she shouldn’t do anything to mess up her marriage to Lord Calcott. Do you know anything about that?” I ask. Mum shakes her head.