Postcards from the Past (3 page)

‘He’s a relation,’ his mother said evasively. ‘You have relations down in Cornwall. No, not Granny. Other relations. I’ll tell you when you’re older.’ But, in the end, it was Granny who told him.

And now the memories shift and change. He was in the potager with Billa on a hot June afternoon. With the scent of the herbs and the lavender drifting on the warm air, Granny’s potager was a magical place. When her husband died in the Levant mining disaster in 1919 she was twenty-one years old. Old Matthew St Enedoc allowed her to stay in the cottage as long as she could pay the peppercorn rent, so she got a job at the old butter factory and channelled all her passion into her six-month-old daughter, Mary, and the garden at the back of the cottage.

She grew the necessary vegetables – as many as she could in her small patch – but she loved flowers and, in amongst the vegetables, she planted her favourites. Delicate sweet peas climbed amongst the pea-sticks, yellow-headed sunflowers peeped from the willow wigwams that supported runner beans, lavender grew at the edges of the narrow paths. Nasturtiums tumbled over the stone wall alongside campanula, geranium and dianthus. Between the lettuces and beetroot and chard, with its red and yellow stems, grew clumps of herbs: fennel, basil, chive, rosemary, thyme.

The young widow cherished her garden almost as passionately as she cared for her child, who trundled around beside her, falling over, chasing a butterfly, sitting down suddenly to examine a stick or a stone. The child grew, attended the little village school, became beautiful – and, all the while, the rumours of another war grumbled like distant cannon-fire. And then young Harry St Enedoc came calling. His father had died and he was their new landlord. He drove a smart shiny car and he was kind and amusing. The two women were shy to begin with and then began to relax. He drank tea in the little parlour, teased Mary and complimented her mother on the delicious cake, before continuing along the lane to the butter factory.

‘He’s nice,’ said Mary, eyes glowing, cheeks bright as the poppies in the potager.

‘Yes,’ answered her mother, watching her daughter with a mix of fear and heart-aching compassion. ‘A bit too nice for us, perhaps.’

But Mary wasn’t listening; she twirled a strand of hair dreamily and presently wandered out into the lane …

But on that June afternoon eighteen years later, when he and Billa were picking peas in the potager, Granny hadn’t yet told Dom this story.

Billa was angry. She talked and talked as she twisted the pea pods from their stalks, telling him that her mother was going to marry this man called Andrew and that he had a son called Tristan who would live with them and that life could never be the same again. Billa was fourteen; Dom was nearly eighteen. For five years, during the long summer holidays, she and Dom and Ed had been inseparable. Today, her barley-fair hair was snagged by the leaves and her pansy-blue eyes gleamed with tears. She looked up at him, mouth trembling, and, without considering his action, Dom put an arm around her and held her close. To his surprise – and pleasure – she flung both arms round him and clung to him.

‘Whatever shall we do?’ she sobbed. ‘It won’t be the same now, will it? Everything will be spoiled.’

He held her, comforting her, and then he saw Granny watching them from the little path. Something in her face made him disentangle himself quickly, though he treated Billa gently, bringing her on to the path where Granny took control and led Billa into the cottage.

Granny made tea, listened to Billa, and then walked with her back to the old butter factory, leaving Dom with some digging to do in the potato patch. He worked hard, driving himself in the hot sunshine, until Granny came back and told him, sitting there on the little bench amongst the scents of the potager, about young Harry St Enedoc and his fast, smart car.

She explained that Harry hadn’t known, that he’d gone off to war a few months before Mary, weeping and distraught, told her mother the truth about secret meetings in the woodland along the stream – and the result that was growing in her womb. And her mother thought hard and fast about what must happen. She imagined the local talk: hot gossip licking its lips as it passed from tongue to eager tongue. She thought of her cousin Susan, in Bristol. Susan had done well for herself but she had been widowed young, and was childless, and might welcome some company during these dark days of war. So Mary was sent across the Tamar, away to Bristol, to help cousin Susan, and presently, when the news spread that Mary had found a nice young sailor called James Blake and that a child was on the way, her old friends and neighbours in Cornwall were very happy for her. And when three years later, in 1942, that nice young sailor was killed at sea, well, by then it was a very common story and people were sympathetic but not shocked or even surprised.

Dom was both. He sat on the little bench, his mind whirling with this amazing story. Granny watched him. She didn’t touch him and made sure to keep her voice firm and light.

And then, she went on, Harry St Enedoc came back from the war. He’d been torpedoed twice and wasn’t in very good shape but he’d got married along the way and he was now planning to convert the old butter factory. He’d asked after Mary and that was when she, Granny, had told him the truth.

She sat in silence for a moment, as if remembering the shock on Harry’s face. ‘Oh my God,’ he’d said. ‘Oh my God, I never knew. I swear I didn’t, Mrs Tregellis.’ And she’d believed him and made him some tea and told him about Mary and about Dom – and showed him a snapshot of his six-year-old son.

Harry hadn’t doubted it or denied it. He’d stared at the snapshot and said: ‘I’ve got a little girl. Wilhelmina. And my wife is expecting another baby.’ He’d looked at her then – and he’d seemed like a child himself for all his twenty-eight years. ‘I can’t tell Elinor,’ he’d said. ‘I can’t. She’d never forgive me.’

And somehow things were managed between him and Granny. When old Mr Potts in the adjoining cottage died Harry put both cottages in Granny’s name in trust for Dom. He paid for school uniforms and any fees over and above Dom’s scholarship, and helped however he could. But he didn’t go to the little house in Bristol, and Mary and Dom only came to Cornwall when the St Enedocs were away. Granny travelled by train to see her daughter and her grandson until Harry St Enedoc died when Dom was twelve and he was considered old enough to travel to Cornwall alone on the train.

Another little silence whilst Granny watched him and Dom remembered that first visit to Cornwall on his own on the train; Billa and Ed running into Granny’s kitchen to meet him, commenting on how alike he and Ed were. He sat with the sun on his back and tried to grapple with the thought that Billa was his half-sister.

‘They don’t know?’ he said to Granny quickly. ‘Billa and Ed and their mother? None of them?’

But it seemed that Mrs St Enedoc knew. When Harry died, his will made it clear but Mrs St Enedoc refused to tell her children. Even when Dom began to spend his summer holidays with Granny she continued to refuse to tell Billa and Ed, despite Granny’s pleas that they should know the truth.

‘But I’ve told her that she must tell them now,’ said Granny. She stood up, pausing for a moment to pass her hand lightly over Dom’s bent head. ‘And if she doesn’t, then I shall tell them myself.’

She went away, leaving Dom sitting with his hands clenched between his knees, trying to come to terms with such cataclysmic news, wondering what he would say to Billa.

But it was Ed who saved the day: Ed, running down the lane with Billa trailing behind him, who flung himself at Dom, shouting with delight, ‘I knew it really all the time. I just knew it. You’re our brother, Dom. Tris might be going to be our stepbrother but you’re our
real
brother.’

Dom looked over his head to Billa, who hesitated; she looked nervous and awkward.

He thought: she’s only fourteen. I must deal with this. I must be the strong one.

He grinned at her. ‘It’s a bit of a shock, isn’t it? But Ed’s right. It explains lots of odd things … and feelings, and why we’re all so close.’ And he saw her relax a little.

‘Dom will sort Tris out,’ said Ed eagerly. ‘Tris the tick; Tris the toad. Dom will put him in his place.’

And a few months later, as Dom hurried along the lane with the good news of his place at the Camborne School of Mines, the shadows moved under the ash tree and a boy stepped out.

‘So you’re the bastard,’ said Tris.

*   *   *

Now, Dom comes out of his small study into the hall and glances through the half-open door that leads to the parlour that Granny kept so neat and clean. Sitting in a deep, comfortable armchair, one foot tucked beneath her whilst the other rests on the back of Dom’s golden retriever, his goddaughter Tilly is watching television. Her long, thick, fair hair is plaited and she holds the end of it, drawing it through her fingers as she watches a wildlife programme. Her father was Dom’s junior assistant at Camborne twenty-five years ago, when Tilly was a baby, and it is he who phones when Tilly throws up her job at the hotel in Newquay. He and Tilly’s mother have just taken up a post in Canada and he asks his old friend and mentor if he will look out for his daughter.

‘You know Tilly,’ he says ruefully to Dom. ‘She was asked to organize the place and bring it into the twenty-first century and she took them at their word. She really believed they meant it and she was so excited about it. Of course, there have been all sorts of rows and now Tilly’s given in her notice. Which means she has nowhere sensible to stay and she refuses to leave Cornwall and her friends and come out to us. She’s sleeping on a friend’s sofa. Could you manage for a week or two? She’ll get herself sorted out very quickly. She won’t want to be a nuisance.’

‘Tilly wouldn’t know how to be a nuisance,’ Dom says. ‘And I’d love to have her here if she wants to come. Though she probably won’t.’

But Tilly does want to; and she turns up in a rather battered little car with all her worldly possessions – including her surfboard on a roof-rack – and moves into the bedroom at the end of the cottage that once belonged to old Mr Potts. She sets up her laptop to work on her CV. She already has a part-time job with a friend who is running a private scheme – U-Connect – that helps non-computerate and elderly people in rural areas to come to terms with the internet. It’s still rather experimental but Tilly is enjoying it, though she doesn’t quite see it as her life’s work. For three nights a week she works at a local pub.

‘This is just so grim,’ she says now to Dom, hearing him in the doorway but not looking round. ‘These huge frigate birds have flown into the gulls’ nesting site and are simply walking about eating the babies while their parents are out foraging. Poor little things; they’re so helpless. I can’t bear it.’

‘Yes,’ says Dom. ‘Well, it’s tough being part of the food chain.’

Tilly looks round at him, frowning. ‘That is just so callous.’

He shrugs. ‘What d’you want me to do about it? It’s how nature works.’

She stares at him. ‘Why are you grumpy?’

‘I’m not grumpy.’ He has no intention of telling her that he’s been on an excursion to the past. ‘Don’t watch it if it upsets you. Like a cup of tea?’

‘Yes, please,’ she says, turning back to the carnage. ‘Oh, look. It’s the bower birds. That’s much better. Don’t you just love them? Isn’t his bower beautiful? He looks like a really camp dress designer in his atelier.’

‘If you say so.’

Dom goes out into the kitchen, followed by Bessie, and pushes the kettle on to the hob. He opens the back door and lets the dog out into the cold night. The white moon hangs like a lamp high above the mist that pours along the valley floor, rising above the stream, curling across the garden; downstream, an owl’s wavering cry echoes in the silence.

Dom leans in the doorway, waiting. A hungry vixen, her lean belly low to the frosty earth, her tail dragging, slinks along the hedgeline. She pauses, turns to look at him, then vanishes up the bank. Dom waits; the kettle behind him begins to whistle.

What does Tris want? he thinks.

Bessie reappears, tail wagging, and they both go back into the warmth and the light of the kitchen.

*   *   *

‘But what does Tris want?’ asks Billa, the next morning. ‘After all these years? What can he possibly want?’

They sit together at the oak gate-leg table that belonged to Granny, in the small square room off the narrow kitchen where the French window leads into the garden. Today it is closed against the bitter chill of the February day but the sunshine picks out the colours of the cushions in a wicker chair and gleams on some pieces of china arranged behind the glass doors of an old oak wall cabinet. Bessie lies by the door, nose on paws, watching a robin pecking up the crumbs that Dom scattered earlier.

‘I can think of no good reason,’ answers Dom, who has been awake most of the night worrying about it. He reads the postcard again. ‘I see that he doesn’t use your married name. There has been no contact at all, has there, since Andrew walked out taking Tris with him?’

Billa shakes her head. ‘Once the honeymoon period was over the rows began. Married bliss lasted a year, maybe two. Perhaps Andrew believed that there was much more money than there actually was, though he always seemed very well-heeled. Our father left all the shares in the company to Ed and me although, by the time he inherited, Grandfather had been quite profligate. And then there was the war. Perhaps when Andrew saw that there wasn’t that much cash around he decided to get out.’

‘And your mother kept everything in her own control? It was odd, wasn’t it, that there was no will when she died? I remember you writing and telling me something about the will.’

They stare at each other and fear flickers between them.

‘There
was
a will but it was the one she made before Daddy died. She left everything to him and, if he died first, everything was left equally to me and Ed. Our solicitor thought it was odd that she never made another will after she remarried but in the end we decided that she simply hadn’t got around to it…’