Down the Garden Path (6 page)

“That is the whole point.” I leaned my elbows on the table and trusted my wistful look was in evidence. “I am not by rights a vicar’s daughter. I am in reality a nameless nobody who doesn’t even have a proper birthday.”

Harry leaned back in his chair. “So tell me, what’s the crime? Do you want me to kidnap half the population of the U.K. between the ages of thirty-five and sixty and hold them hostage until one of them confesses to being your long-lost mother? Let it go, Tessa. You’ve had wonderful parents. Do you plan to disown them when you find the real thing? And have you ever considered that perhaps you are being a little greedy? One father, one mother is the general rule. Hold on a minute ... are you asking me to break into some welfare office or courthouse—wherever adoption papers are stored—and sneak your file out under my raincoat? No, that can’t be it, because you said something about me villain, you victim. Right?”

“Right. And you wouldn’t do any good trying to filch my records because I already know that officially I didn’t exist before arriving at the vicarage. But you are kind of on the right track. This does concern my search for my origins.” I pushed my cup towards him and he refilled it. “Thanks.” I took a sip and hoped that I could get through my explanations without Harry thinking I had lost all touch with reality.

“Last week I went on a day coach trip to Stratford.”

“A bit touristy but harmless.”

“Stratford is only relevant because it explains why I happened to be in Flaxby Meade, which is ...”

“Quaint. But minus the Bard to give its thatched cottages and sloping green meadows substance. Actually, it does happen to be the birthplace of...”

“Will you please stop interrupting! Such a jolly little group we were—I don’t remember when I last saw a heartier throng of middle-aged women in grey berets and navy blue blazers. We broke our journey for morning coffee at a wizened little Tudor cafe just inside Flaxby Meade. Nothing exceptional about the place except the really terrific Chelsea buns, but it was while we sitting at the tables with their blue-and-white-check cloths that something momentous happened. The coach driver was taken deathly ill.”

“What fun for one and all,” said Harry.

“I don’t mean to sound heartless, but it wasn’t as though the poor man died, and it was all so providential. You know what Fergy would have said. ‘It was
meant.’
One minute he was fine—jolly and fat—swilling down his tea at a corner table, chatting to a sweet white-haired old lady, a local, not a member of our group, and the next thing he was crawling on his hands and knees to the Gents. Only the Ladies was closer. He almost fell through the door, nearly getting trampled by a stampede of frantic women.”

“What’s the punch line? Had the sweet old lady stirred a teaspoon of arsenic in his tea? Okay, I’m sorry—continue your tale.”

“Thank you. I don’t know the cause of the man’s indisposition—maybe eating smelly kippers for breakfast—but it gave us, the passengers, an hour to kill before his replacement arrived. One of the women in the grey berets, an enormous creature exhaling command, suggested we take a look at ...”

“Ah-ha, let me guess.” Harry closed his eyes. “The monastery ruins?”

“Clever! We do know our guide to Warwickshire, don’t we? You’d think with my vicarage background I’d be all het up about Gothic relics, wouldn’t you? But, Harry, they sort of scare me. Much more so than graveyards where you can feel fairly secure the remains are safely underground. Then, when I got there, I remarked to one of the rubble buffs—just to be chatty—that had those pillars of stone been five instead of five hundred years old, the town council would have ordered them carted away. I nearly got murdered. Only in the very nick of time was I rescued by one of Dad’s soul mates. Bump! Bump! Down the lane that ran in front of the Ruins came this bubble car ... up it pulled, and the driver hopped out, introducing himself as the Reverend Egrinon Snapper.”

“Odd name.”

“He was an odd little man altogether. Not at all like any clergyman I ever met. Fergy declares you can tell one by his walk, and this one didn’t walk anything like Dad. He kind of slithered. He also had frizzy orange hair and a nose that could pick locks, but he certainly was ...”

“Charming?” Harry enquired.

“Let’s say convivial. Spotting a mini-congregation he leapt right into the pulpit. He couldn’t stop talking about those old Gilbertese monks.”

“Gilbertine.”

“Probably. He told us he was on holiday from Kent and spent part of every day sitting in what had been the refectory, soaking up atmosphere. Communing with the spirits, which according to him beat communing with the natives—a sullen, close-mouthed lot, he said.”

“Even the local clergy?”

“I don’t know.” I took a sip of tea and munched down thoughtfully on a forkful of pie. “But I could imagine Egrinon rubbing my placid Dad the wrong way. Even for a Protestant there was something overly enthusiastic in his recounting the excesses of monastic life. Seven-course dinners off gold plates, lurid ambition, monks slothing on their bunks all day reading dirty Geoffrey Chaucer. Henry the Eighth should have had Reverend Snapper on the payroll at the Dissolution. You should have seen how his nose quivered when he said the brothers didn’t get their sensual thrills only from books. His topper was a Scandal Most Sordid!”

“The monk who impregnated the village virgin and got her with unholy child?”

“You are swift.” I took another sip of now cold tea, “But I suppose that is an old story in more ways than one. What makes this one grislier is that the monk hanged himself.”

“Fascinating.”

I glared at him. “Don’t you dare sneer. It was all very sad. The wretched girl’s family booted her out of the house. And don’t tell me that was the done thing in those days. Even for the sixteenth century (and this happened shortly before the Dissolution) they must have been hateful people. Where could she go? Pretty ironic when you think that the usual source of succour would be the monastery.”

“It may still have been. Going on the premise that all monks are brothers, that baby was not short of uncles. Wouldn’t surprise me if the jolly old chaps set to and raised the little tyke while Mummy went gadding off to be a nun as penance for her sins.”

“How can you snicker like that! You’re exactly like the Reverend Snapper. He positively seethed with delight when relating how that poor girl barely survived the stocks and a dunking in the village pond, to say nothing of the death of her spineless lover. Standing in those Ruins I could feel her horror, feel how she must have felt when her baby—a little girl—was born. Who would dare help her even if they wished? Okay, I know I sound soppily sentimental, but there is a reason. That young mother wrapped her child in a blanket, put her in a basket, and left her on the doorstep of some local gentry, people who were childless and kind. She also left them a note which read ‘This is your daughter Tessa.’ Oh, Harry, can you imagine how I felt when I heard that! The monk’s name was Tessail. Those people did raise her and she grew up to marry a cousin of the family.”

“Very interesting, though long-winded. But ...” I sensed rather than saw Harry stiffen in his chair.

“But nothing. The cousin inherited the property through an entail or something, and Tessa’s descendants still live in the old ancestral, Cloisters—a house that, ironically, was built on the monastery land a few years after the monks were given the push.”

“Jolly good. All’s well that ends well.” Harry stood, stretching languidly, muscles rippling under the wool shirt.

“Not entirely.” I didn’t have to fake the wistfulness in my voice. “Tessa never knew what became of her mother.”

“So saith your gleeful little cleric. What an incurable dreamer you are, Tess.” Moving towards me he twined a loose strand of my hair around one of his fingers. “The legend would lose much in the telling if the fallen woman had ended her days fat and happy, swilling down mead at the local tavern. Don’t glare at me. I don’t want you agonizing … seeing yourself as the reincarnation of this namesake.”

“Harry, that isn’t it at all.”

He stepped away from me. “Give yourself a break, Tessa. You can’t blithely assume, because your own history bears something of a resemblance to a dubious folk tale, that your mother ever lived anywhere near Flaxby Meade. All right. I’ll grant you are dealing with an interesting coincidence. But thousands of day trippers will have heard some version of the story you were told. If this is to be fantasy time, I suggest that some woman found herself pregnant under difficult circumstances and decided her child would have a better chance in life if presented to the world with a romantic flourish.”

I took a patient breath. “Please listen. We have the legend. We have F.M.’s easy proximity to Kings Ransome and now we discover the Monk’s Pottery. Conveniently placed, I might add, right next door to the cafe. And guess what I found among the monk salt and pepper shakers? A monk flask. An absolute double of the one left in the basket with me.”

Take that Harry. Start taking me seriously.

But he didn’t. He was now leaning up against the kitchen counter quirking a compassionate smile at me. Every moment brought greater clarity that he was not, after all, the man for me.

“The following day,” I said, “I paid a second visit to Flaxby Meade by car. What I hoped for I am not really sure. I know enough about small villages, even discarding the Reverend Snapper’s dour commentary, to realize that I would accomplish nothing by tapping on cottage doors, making discreet enquiries into my origins. So there I was, back in the cafe eating Chelsea buns, when inspiration struck. The inspiration that is to start you and me upon a life of crime.” I smiled—bewitchingly I hoped—up at him.

“Will it be something lip-smackingly vicious and obscene?” He inched a shade closer and panted into my neck.

“Hardly, considering whence came my inspiration,” I said, eyes on my hands, primly folded over my governess frock. “I got my fabulous idea from two elderly but sprightly spinsters. They were sitting at a corner table when I noticed them. It would have been impossible not to notice them. All they needed were signs round their necks marked Endangered Species. Amazing. I had believed that women like that were extinct outside of books. And speaking of books! The legs of their table were hidden by stacks of books. Library books.”

“Could I interest you in a glass of cider to wet your voice?” Harry had turned and was rummaging in a cupboard. “Sorry to interrupt, but before you get too far along, I think I had better admit that I have never felt that manly urge to knock little old ladies over the head....” He paused, holding a glass in each hand. “However”—the word came out slowly as he poured the cider—”roll out the yarn—what did these funny old birds look like?”

I stood up and we tapped glasses. “The shorter one was wearing a pale lavender-blue twin set above a long striped wool skirt, cherry net gloves even while she ate just like the Joyful Sounds, and a preposterous hat. A goldfinch perched in a nest of feathers! But the other one ...”

“Her friend?”

“Sister, as it turned out. She was wearing an inky-blue-and-red peasant dress, lime-green patent shoes, a muddy dishcloth shawl, and the most enormous dangly earrings. Enough to knock her silly every time she moved her head! A head of suspiciously black hair all swept up into a great big thundercloud. She looked like an aged beatnik. Strange. They were both strange!”

Harry downed the last of his cider. “I don’t know. They sound the spitting image of two of my father’s elderly relatives.”

“Really?” I nearly got sidetracked. “I didn’t know you had any relatives except that aunt in Devon. You positively must have her get in touch with Daddy. Anyway, seeing their piles of books made me think it wouldn’t be a bad idea to spend the morning hunting up a definitive work on that weak-kneed Tessail and his victims. Then I heard the old girls talking. They were discussing Regency romances. You know—earl meets girl, et cetera. Let me tell you, they were passionate on the subject, squabbling over who should get first dibs on
The Highwayman and the Hangwoman.
It was rather sweet really. Whatever would they do if one cold and blustery night a highwayman did come leaping at them out of the bushes? I was sitting there hidden away behind a potted plant sprouting plastic oranges and lemons, toying with the notion, when the waitress went up to them—all of a bob and curtsey—and spoke to them by name. The Name. The name of the family who took in the first Tessa.”

I walked slowly across the kitchen and then turned back to face him, “It was all
meant,
you see.”

“Meant?”

“Yes. When I heard that name I knew what I had to do.”

“Pass yourself off as a member of some historical society, enquiring if the old girls knew of any twentieth-century take-offs on the old family saga?” Harry was smiling as he pulled at a loose thread in his shirt. “You needn’t have gone to all that trouble. If you really think those two old ladies can help you, I ...”

“Would what? Recommend the direct approach? Harry, you don’t listen. I have been describing two women past sixty, living in a fantasy realm where the most daring intimation of sex is a bare ankle. Let us suppose that twenty years ago a member of their family or household had a child, and all was hushed up. Would they glibly spill the beans at the first ‘Hello—does the name Tessa Fields ring a bell?’ No. Of course they wouldn’t—but perhaps if they were to get to know me ...”

“That shouldn’t be too difficult,” said Harry thoughtfully, and I felt a little spurt of hope. Despite himself, he was becoming interested.

“Well, it wouldn’t be difficult to get to know them casually, I am sure. One can always manage something of that sort. But that wouldn’t be enough. I would need time. Quite a bit of time in which to break down their defences. And the only way to achieve that would be to somehow wheedle a visit to their house.”

“Afternoon tea?”

“Oh, no.” Absently I stuck a pin back in my hair. “I am sure I would need to remain for at least a week. And that is where you come in, Harry. In the guise of a modern highwayman.”