It was a relief, in the end, to have all my decisions made for me. Made by Dinny. What could I tell Clifford and Mary? That Henry was alive but damaged, and although I had seen him many times over Christmas and not told them, I now had no idea where he was? And why would I even try to stay at the manor, with all of them gone? Beth, Dinny, Harry. Henry. But I didn’t go far. That was a decision I had already made, I think. There was no question of me going back to London-it would have been like walking backwards. And on the edge of Barrow Storton was this cottage to rent. Not pretty, not quaint, but fine. A 1950s two-up, two-down at the end of a short row of identical cottages. Two bedrooms, so Beth and Eddie can come and stay, and a great view from my bedroom at the front. It’s on the opposite side of the village to the manor. I can see right across the valley, with the village at its bottom, and one corner of the manor is visible through distant trees. Less and less of it now that the trees are swelling into leaf. Then the downs roll away, bounding up to the barrow on the horizon.
It makes me very serene, living here. I feel like I belong. I have no sense of there being anything else I should be doing, or working toward, or changing. I am not even waiting, not really. I make a special point of not waiting. I teach in Devizes, I walk a lot. I call in on George Hathaway for cups of tea and biscuits. Sometimes I miss the people I used to see in London-not specific people as such, but having so many faces around me. The illusion of company. But here I tend to notice the faces I do see all the more. People aren’t part of a crowd like they were. I’ve made friends with my neighbors, Susan and Paul, and sometimes babysit for them for free because their little girls wear patched trousers far too short for them and don’t go to ballet or judo or have riding lessons. There’s no trampoline in their back yard. Susan’s expression moved from suspicion to incredulous joy when I offered. The girls are good-natured and they do as they’re told, most of the time. I take them on nature walks up on the downs or along the riverbank; we make cornflake cakes and hot chocolate while Susan and Paul go to the pub, the cinema, the shops, their bed.
Honey knows I’m here, and so does Mo. I went back to see Haydee and told them where I was and they’ve both been to visit since. I polished the tarnish from the silver bell on Flag’s teething ring, brought it to a high shine and tucked it into Haydee’s cot. She grabbed it with one fat hand, crammed it immediately into her mouth. It was your great-grandpa’s, I whispered to her. I wrote down my address, told Honey to keep it in case anybody asked for it. She gave me a straight look, solemn, then arched one eyebrow. But she didn’t say anything. She’s back at school now and Mo comes around with Haydee in her pram. She walks from West Hatch, says the fresh air and movement is the only thing that makes the baby sleep. I revive her with tea at this, the furthest point of her journey. Mo walks with a waddle, her back aches, and when she gets to me she is usually hot, pulling at her T-shirt to unstick it from her breasts. But she loves Haydee. As I make tea she twitches the blanket over the child and can’t keep herself from smiling.
I have the photo of Caroline with her baby in a frame on the window sill. I never did get around to giving it to Mum. I am still proud to have uncovered the child’s identity, to have found the source of the rift between my family and Dinny’s. Mum was astonished when I told her the story. I can’t prove it all, definitively; but I know it to be true. I’ve decided to like the fact that I can’t find out completely; that I can’t fill in all the blanks-why Caroline hid her earlier marriage, why she hid her child. Where Flag was before he appeared at the manor and then fell into the Dinsdale’s loving arms. Some things are lost in the past-surely that’s why the past is so mysterious, why it fascinates us. Nothing much will be lost any more-too much is recorded, noted, stored in a file on a computer somewhere. It would be easy, not to be fascinated these days. It’s harder to keep a secret, but they can be kept. Harry is living proof that they can be kept. I find I don’t mind secrets half so much when they are mine to keep, when I am not excluded.
The manor house was sold at auction for a figure that gave me a sinking feeling inside, just for half an hour, imagining where I could have gone and what I could have done with such wealth. Clifford came to the auction but I hid from him, at the back of the conference room in a Marlborough hotel, as the figures bounced to and fro, got bigger and bigger. I could sense his anguish just by looking at the back of his head, rigid on stiff shoulders. I felt sorry for him. I think perhaps he’d hoped nobody else would come, nobody else would want to buy it; that he could snap it up for the price of a semi in Hertfordshire and tell everyone for ever that it was his birthright. But plenty of people did come, and a developer bought it. It’s being converted into luxury flats, just like Maxwell suggested, because this is considered commutable now-from Pewsey to London and back every day. I can’t imagine how it will look inside when it’s done. What will my little back bedroom be? A kitchen with black granite counters? A fully tiled wet room? I can’t imagine it, and I’m half tempted to go and see the show flat when it’s ready. Only half tempted though. I don’t think I will. I don’t want my memories of it muddied.
I think about Caroline and Meredith a lot. I think about what Dinny said-that people who bully and hate, people who are cold and aggressive are not happy people. They behave that way because they are unhappy. It is hard to find sympathy for Meredith when I have such memories of her, but now that she is dead I can manage it, when I try. Hers was a life of disappointment-her one bid to free herself from a loveless home over so soon after it began. It might have been harder still to feel sympathy for Caroline when I never really knew her, when she chose to abandon one child and then raised another without love. It would be easy to conclude that she just could not love. Wasn’t able to. That she was too cold to be truly human, that she was born flawed. But then I found the last letter she wrote before she died; and I know better.
It lay undiscovered for weeks in the writing case, after I left the manor. Because she never sent it, of course, never even tore it from the writing pad. It was there, all along, beneath the cover, the line guide still in place underneath it. Her spidery writing tumbles across the page as if unravelling; 1983 is the date. No day or month specified, so perhaps that was the best she could do. She was over a hundred by then, and weakening. She knew that she was dying. Perhaps that was why she wrote this letter. Perhaps that was why she forgot, for a while, that she could never send it, that it would be read by nobody until me, more than a quarter of a century later.
My Dearest Corin,
It has been so long since I lost you that I cannot count the years. I am old now-old enough to be waiting to die myself. But then, I have been waiting to die ever since we were parted, my love. It is strange that the long years I have spent here in England seem, sometimes, to have passed by in a blur. I cannot recall what I can have possibly done to fill so much time-I really do not remember. But I do remember every second I spent with you, my love. Every precious second that I was your wife, and we were together. Oh, why did you die? Why did you ride out that day? I have been over it so many times. I see you mounting up, and I try to change the memory. I convince myself that I ran after you, told you not to go, not to leave me. Then you would not have fallen, and you would not have died, and I would not have had to spend these long dark years without you. Sometimes I so convince myself that I did run after you, that I did stop you, that when I realize you are gone it comes almost as a shock. It hurts me dreadfully, but I do it over and over again.