Homecoming Girls (21 page)

‘Thomas did!’ Georgiana was very surprised. ‘Why was that?’

Dan sat down again. ‘He said I’d been unsettled and thought I should stretch my wings.’ Thomas hadn’t said that, though it was the sort of thing he might have said, Dan thought.

‘And would your father object?’ she queried. ‘Will he not miss you in the business?’

He lifted his chin and looked at her. ‘Probably not, though if I should return home there’d be a place for me.’

‘And?’ she queried. ‘What will you do whilst you’re there? It’s a big step to take.’

Dan looked down at the floor and chewed on his lips. ‘I’ll be totally honest with you, Mrs Dreumel. I wouldn’t have thought of going if Jewel and Clara hadn’t gone.’ He raised his eyes to hers and took a breath. ‘It’s because of Jewel.’

Georgiana nodded. ‘I rather thought so,’ she said, adding
softly: ‘I hate to dash your hopes, Dan, but I don’t think that Jewel is ready for a commitment. She has certain matters to sort out for herself. Did she tell you why she’s gone to America?’

He shook his head. ‘She was becoming bored, I think. She hadn’t anything to occupy her.’ He tried to recall what reason Jewel had given when she’d first told him she was going away, but he had been so shocked by the revelation that he had only thought of how devastated he would be without her.

‘No. That wasn’t why,’ Georgiana explained. ‘Jewel has gone to America to discover her roots. She was a small child when I brought her to England. She barely remembers her father, and her birth mother died soon after she was born.’ Have I done right in telling him, she wondered as she added, ‘It’s important to her that she finds out more about her ancestry.’

Dan was silenced. He’d almost forgotten that the Dreumels were not Jewel’s real parents and part of him wondered why it would matter. But I know who I am, he thought, therefore it’s not something I’ve ever considered. I suppose everybody wants to know their back history.

‘It wouldn’t make any difference to me,’ he murmured. ‘About Jewel, I mean.’

Georgiana gazed at him. ‘This concerns Jewel alone,’ she said quietly. ‘It isn’t about you, Dan.’

‘Yes,’ he said humbly. ‘Sorry. So would you consider it, Mrs Dreumel? Would you consider allowing me to accompany you?’

San Francisco

Maria apologized for the unkempt state of the overgrown garden. ‘Pinyin cuts the grass at the end of summer,’ she explained.

Jewel wasn’t listening, at least not to Maria. She was listening to other voices, the ones in her head. To Renzo laughing as he chased her round the yard, the garden which in her child’s memory had been so large and now was minuscule.

Maria unlocked the door with a flourish and beckoned Jewel to step inside her father’s house. It was as if she were the proud caretaker showing a visitor round a stately home or museum. She indicated to Clara that she should follow Jewel, but Clara laid her hand gently on Maria Galli’s arm and motioned that they should wait.

Jewel stepped over the threshold and memories came rushing back. She recalled the mirrors on the wall, which she had never been tall enough to reach. Her father had to lift her up to see her reflection. A rocking chair, a small sofa, bookshelves, two easy chairs. No table; wasn’t there once a table? She took a breath; there was a faint odour, not of damp as there might be in a house in England that had been shut up for years, but of a slight mustiness, like crisp autumn leaves just fallen from a tree, or the faint scent of sandalwood, reminiscent of the wooden balls kept in the bottom of a blanket
box. A sound, too, which seemed to be haunting her, one she had heard before. A clatter, like dried peas in a baby’s rattle.

She lifted her eyes; the draught from the open doorway was blowing the beaded curtain that hung over the middle door and it was swinging gently, one string of wooden beads slapping into another. She walked towards it. This was where the aroma came from. How strange that the scent had lasted so long. She clutched a handful of beads, holding them to her nose and opening up elusive dreams of the room beyond. This room, then, was where all her childhood memories were kept, waiting for her to set them free and give her the answers she was looking for.

She parted the curtain and slipped through. There was the bed, and a chair and a small table.

Lift me up, Papa
. Her voice was a childish treble.
Lift me up
. He had picked her up to sit on the bed beside him. Or wait! Had someone else lifted her? A pair of steady hands. But whose? Someone who had clasped her fingers and walked with her down the hill. Someone who had taken her into the church and had sat with her hand over her eyes as if she were praying. Her? She?
Gianna?
A small kernel of resentment unfurled itself inside her. Had Gianna stolen her away from her father? Her beloved Papa, who had read to her whilst she was tucked beneath his arm, so cosy and secure, and who had tried to show her how to write her name. You’re named after a beautiful English lady, he had said, but she had never met anyone else with the same name. She sat down on the chair at the side of the bed and closed her eyes and tried to remember.

He’d sat with her and kissed her cheek; and then he had said, ‘I have to go on a long journey. A journey only for grownup people.’ He had explained that she couldn’t go with him. And of course now she knew why.

A tear ran down her face. He had loved her, of that she was certain. She felt the warmth of that love as she glanced round the room, the room Maria had tended over the years, leaving most things exactly as they had been before.

She could hear the whispered voices of Maria and Clara and she rose from her seat and lifted the curtain. ‘Thank you for waiting,’ she said. ‘I needed to be alone.’

‘It ees the same, yes?’ Maria asked. ‘Just as your papa said. He said, in case you came back. All but the table,’ she added. ‘He said that we might have that.’

Jewel wiped her eyes and nodded. So he did hope that one day she would come back. ‘Did you ever meet my mother?’ she asked.

‘I think not,’ Maria mused. ‘We had been ’ere only short time when we heard the bambino cry. It was the first time we heard it; it was you,’ she added, smiling. ‘But I no see your
madre
. I would ’ave remembered. Pinyin say you ’ave a Chinese mother.’

‘How did he know?’ Jewel asked eagerly. ‘Did he know her?’

Maria shook her head. ‘I think he saw you and know you ‘ave Chinese in you.’ She seemed embarrassed and gave a little shrug. ‘I think she die.’

How could Pinyin have seen me from next door, Jewel wondered? Did he come into the garden, and why don’t I remember him?

‘Has Pinyin always worked for you?’ she asked as they walked back to the restaurant. ‘At the shop, I mean?’

‘Si.’
Maria nodded. ‘Sometimes he work for me when I bake the bread. He come to wash the baking things and the oven. Maybe once, twice a week. We ’ave no money to pay him for more, but still he like to come. Then after your papa die and we build the restaurant he come more.’ She laughed. ‘We ’ave more money then.’

‘I think I might speak to Pinyin,’ Jewel confided in Clara as they walked back down the hill. They had said goodbye to Maria and to Lorenzo, who insisted they come back the next day as he had been too busy to have a proper conversation with them. He held tightly to Jewel’s hand before they left.

‘I mustn’t lose you again,’ he had said earnestly. ‘Promise me that you won’t disappear.’

Jewel had blushed. ‘I promise,’ she whispered, and knew with certainty that she wouldn’t.

‘Why?’ Clara asked. ‘Why do you wish to speak to Pinyin? You can’t speak to every Chinese person that you meet, Jewel, in the hope that they might have known your mother!’

‘How old do you think he might be?’Jewel asked, completely ignoring her cousin’s advice. ‘Forty, do you think? If he is,’ she went on without waiting for an answer, ‘that would make him in his twenties when he first came to work for Maria, and so he would remember me when I was a baby.’ She paused for a moment to take hold of a fence as they negotiated a particularly steep part of the hill, which they had elected to walk down rather than take a cab. ‘But I don’t remember him at all.’

‘You don’t remember Maria’s husband either,’ Clara reminded her. ‘So there’s nothing strange in that.’

‘That is true,’ Jewel agreed. ‘I recall Maria because she often fed me at their house and sometimes she brought food to ours.’ She gave a little frown as she searched her memory. ‘She – she brought dishes of pasta to Papa when he was ill, I think, and I used to eat with Renzo in their kitchen.’

Clara smiled. ‘There you are, then,’ she said softly. ‘It’s all coming back. Don’t rush the memories. Give them time. By the way,’ she added diffidently, ‘I agreed to meet Federico at the restaurant tomorrow, if you intend – erm – to be there?’

Jewel turned to her with a look of astonishment. ‘Federico? Is that the man who came across to the table?’ When Clara nodded, she said, ‘But you don’t know him, Clara! You haven’t been introduced. You don’t even know his family name.’

‘I do. It’s Cavalli. And he’s Lorenzo’s friend, isn’t he?’ Clara said defiantly. ‘So I have been introduced and it’s not as if I’m going elsewhere with him.’ She blushed. ‘I only said I would meet him to have a cup of coffee. And I agreed only because you would be there, and Mrs Galli,’ she added sheepishly.

‘Well,’ Jewel said, as they trod carefully down some steep
steps and at last gained the lower pavement, ‘I suppose it will be all right. But you know, Clara, we neither of us would be meeting anybody in such circumstances unless our parents were with us, and we must remember what Papa said about never going anywhere unless together.’

‘I haven’t forgotten,’ Clara told her. ‘That’s why I agreed to meet Federico at the restaurant. I knew we’d be chaperoned there.’

Jewel gave a giggle. ‘How wayward we are!’ she said.

‘But how silly it is,’ Clara answered. ‘We are both sensible young women and know when not to take chances; besides, we often see Thomas and Dan without our parents present.’

‘Oh, but that’s different,’ Jewel declared. ‘They’re our friends and we’ve known them all our lives. We know that we’re perfectly safe with them.’

As they entered the hotel they heard a rumble and both turned back to look outside. ‘Thunder,’ Clara said. ‘Perhaps it’s going to rain.’

‘The air is heavy,’ Jewel agreed, ‘but it’s still sunny.’

Another rumble, and two large vases standing in the reception area wobbled. A bell boy rushed up to them and put a hand on each, steadying them.

‘What was that?’ Clara said. ‘Not an—’

‘Earthquake!’ Jewel said. ‘They have them often, apparently. If there’s a big one, Papa – Wilhelm – said we must go outside immediately.’

‘Goodness!’ Clara said. ‘Should we go outside now?’

‘Miss!’ The desk clerk called over to them. ‘It’s all right. It’s only a tremor. We get them frequently. Nothing to worry about. We haven’t had a big one for a long time. Not that I can remember, anyway.’

‘So is it safe to go up to our rooms?’Jewel asked him.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Perfectly safe.’

But they were a little apprehensive and that night they both lay very still in their beds, waiting expectantly for the beds to shake and the pictures on the wall to shift. However, nothing happened and eventually they drifted off to sleep.

The next day they took a horse cab up to the restaurant. ‘San Francisco is so
huge,’
Clara said, looking about her as they moved out of the quiet street where the hotel was situated and into the busier thoroughfare. ‘I overheard someone at the desk saying that it’s one of the largest cities in California. I find it quite overwhelming, and very noisy.’

‘Do you?’Jewel said. ‘I think it exhilarating! It’s exciting and lively.’ Her eyes sparkled as she spoke and Clara wondered if there was some other cause for Jewel to be so enthusiastic. Like meeting a handsome, charming Italian by the name of Lorenzo.

Lorenzo was again writing on the glass and singing as the cab drew to a halt. How happy he seems to be, Jewel thought. I’ve never heard a man singing out in the street before. He turned to greet them with a beaming smile and kissed their hands, lingering longer over Jewel’s dainty fingers, Clara thought with amusement.

‘I’ve created a special dish for luncheon,’ he declared. ‘And my mama has made a cake! It is
a jewel
of a cake!’

They both laughed. ‘A jewel of a cake?’Jewel asked.

‘Yes. Come and see.’

He led them into the restaurant, where cups and saucers and plates were set on a white-clothed table. In the centre was a glass cake stand with a splendid cake on it. They both bent over it.

‘Oh, look!’ Clara enthused; she was a keen cake baker, unlike Jewel, who had never made one. ‘Gemstones! Candied orange and lemon for amber, golden sultanas, angelica – what could that be? Opal perhaps? And cherries of course for rubies. How wonderful!’

‘How very kind of your mother,’Jewel said shyly.

‘Ah, she is so pleased to see you again,’ Lorenzo said, adding softly: ‘Back where you belong.’

The door behind them was pushed open and they all looked up. ‘Fed!’ Lorenzo said. ‘Didn’t expect to see you again so soon!’