“Lady Caroline, she was. 1905, as I remember Mother telling me.” George rubs his chin, squints into the past. “Must have been,” he concludes. “She married my old man in the autumn of ’05.”
“Caroline was my great-grandmother. Would you like to see a picture of her?” I smile. I have it with me, in my bag. The New York portrait. George’s eyes widen with delight.
“Why, yes, look at that! She looks much the same as I remember her! Nice to know the old gray cells haven’t packed all the way up just yet.”
“You knew her?” I am surprised at this.
“Not knew her, so much-the likes of her didn’t come around to tea with the likes of us. But when I was a lad we used to see her, from time to time. She opened the church fête a couple of times, you know; and then there was the big bash we had for the coronation in fifty-three. They opened up the manor gardens, put some bunting around and the like. About the only time I remember them doing something so community-minded. The whole village poured in to have a gander, since, even for a bunch of toffs, and if you’ll pardon my saying, miss, the Calcotts have always been tighter than a gnat’s chuff. None of us was ever invited in for any other reason.”
“Please, call me Erica,” I tell him. “So, did your mother say anything else about her time working for Caroline? Like why she was accused of theft, if she said she didn’t do it?” At this, George looks a little sheepish.
“It’s a bit of a wild story, that one. Mother was always very straight, very honest. But most people had trouble believing what she claimed, so after a long old while she finally stopped talking about it. But I do remember, from when I was a lad, that she reckoned she knew something she wasn’t supposed to. Found something out she wasn’t supposed to-”
“What was it?” The air expands in my chest, makes it hard to breathe.
“I’ll tell you, if you give me half a chance!” George reprimands me with a smile. “She said there was a baby vanished from the house. She didn’t know whose baby it was-it just appeared one day, which was one of the things that made people doubt her. Babies don’t just appear, after all, do they? Some gal had to have carried him and birthed him. But she swore it-that there was a baby in the house, and that it vanished again, just as quick as it arrived. And about the same time, one was found out in the woods and the tinkers-Mo’s people-took it all round the village, asking who it belonged to. Nobody put their hand up, so they raised the child. But my mother could not let it lie-she swore blind to anybody that’d listen that that baby was in the manor house one day, and that Lady Calcott took him out and left him. So, of course Lady C wanted her gone. Accused her of stealing some trinket, and that was that. She was out of there so fast she never had time to get her coat on. Make of that what you will. Some in the village said my mother cooked this baby story up, to get her own back, you understand? To bring some heat on the Calcotts who’d left her without a job to go to. And maybe, maybe there’s some truth in that. She was so very young when all this went on, my mother. No more than fifteen or so. Perhaps she was too young for such a responsible position. But I can’t credit her just lying about something like that. Nor stealing, for that matter. She was straight as a die, my old mum.” George stops, stares into the past, and I realize I am holding my breath. My heart bumps painfully, makes my fingers shake a little. I tap one nail on the blurred baby in the New York picture.
“That’s the baby. That’s the baby that appeared at the manor. The baby that Caroline dropped out in the woods. Your mother wasn’t lying,” I tell him. George goggles at me and I feel the blessed relief of closure, of solving a puzzle, however distant from me it may be.
I tell him what I know, what I have gathered from her letters, from this photo, the teething ring, and the missing marsh flag pillowcase. And the age old animosity toward the Dinsdales. I talk until my mouth is dry and I have to swig cold coffee to wet it. And when I am done I feel bone weary but glad. It feels like finding something precious I thought I’d lost; like filling in a huge hole in my past-in our past. Mine, Beth’s, Dinny’s. He is my cousin. Not two families at war, but one family. At length, George speaks.
“Well, I’m staggered. Proof, after all these years! My mother-if she can hear you from wherever she is, believe me, my love, she’s doing a little victory dance right now! And you’re sure about all this, are you?”
“Yes, I’m sure. It probably wouldn’t stand up in a court of law, or anything, but I’m as sure as I can be. That baby came with her from America, and somehow she kept him hidden while she married Lord Calcott. But then he wound up here at the manor, somehow, and she had to get rid of him. That’s the part I’m most in the dark about-where he’d been in the meantime, and if she was married before and had a baby, why keep it hidden? But it’s too much of a coincidence. The baby that vanished and the one that was found have to be one and the same.”
“It is a pity that all those people who called my mother a liar aren’t around to find out better.”
“What was your mother’s name?” I ask, on a whim.
“Cassandra. Evans, as she would have been back then. Hold on, I’ll show you a photo.” George moves over to the dresser, opens a drawer and rifles through it. The picture he gives me is of Cassandra Evans on her wedding day. Cassandra Hathaway, as she had recently become. A small, delicate-looking girl with a determined glint in her eye and a broad smile. Smooth skin, dark hair caught up in coils, a garland of flowers pinned to it. Her dress is simple, shift-shaped with a panel of lace in the bodice and touches of net at the collar. This girl saw Grandpa Flag while he was still Caroline’s fine son. She might have known what it was that Caroline longed to confess to her Aunt B. I stare into the grainy dark spots of her eyes, trying to see that knowledge there.
I leave Corner Cottage a short while later, promising to go back and visit. “A new entente cordiale between Calcotts and Hathaways!” George announced, quite delighted, as I left. I hadn’t the heart to say I might never be back; to the village, the manor, any of it. Unexpected, the way this thought makes me feel, when for twenty years or more I have lived away quite happily. I feel at the edge of a terrible sadness, a deep pool of it that I could fall into, never climb out of; just as Beth feared I would at the dew pond. And yet I haven’t even unpacked, back at the manor. My clothes are still in my case. They are in disarray, like me. I’ve lurched out of my established trajectory and now I am freewheeling, uncertain of where to go next.
I think about blood as I drive back to the manor. About those little traces, the little tendencies all our ancestors have left in us. My propensity to clown in awkward situations; my mother’s ability to draw; Beth’s grace; Dinny’s straight brows and jet eyes. A blizzard of tiny traces, whirling at the core of each of us. I think about my blood and Beth’s. About Dinny’s, about Grandpa Flag’s. And Henry’s of course. Henry, the last scion of the Calcott line. He showed us Dinny’s blood once, up at the barrow. I think even Henry was a little shocked by it, just for a second. Shocked and then pleased, of course. Jubilant. It was the summer he disappeared, but it was early in the holidays. It might have been the first time they’d seen each other that year, but I don’t know for sure.
I’d seen boys fight before, of course. At school, in the far corner of the playground where the side of the games hall shielded the combatants from the watchful eyes of the break monitor. The corner. That’s what it was called. Whispered from ear to ear during lessons-the next assignation, the next death match. Gary and Neil in the corner at lunchtime! The scandal always thrilled me, although the fights never lasted long. Coat pulling; somebody spun around, thrown to the ground. Hair yanked, perhaps; a kicked shin, bruised knees. Then the monitor would notice the crowd, or one boy would start to cry. The victor won the right to escape, the loser had to stay and protest that nothing had happened.