Settling the Account (86 page)

‘He doesn’t look a bit like you.’ Sarah
studied the photograph, frowning in concentration as she looked at
the tiny faces. ‘Did he have dark hair, too?’

‘No, red. Flaming red hair, Mal had.’

Sarah broke the silence that fell between
them while Amy was lost in her own musings. ‘Do you have any other
photographs? I’m very fond of them.’

‘I’ve got one of Mama,’ Amy said, delighted
at the excuse to show off her treasure. ‘It’s in my room, I’ll get
it.’

‘Is your room off the kitchen?’ Sarah asked
when Amy returned. ‘I’d somehow assumed the main bedroom was off
the parlour in these cottages.’

‘It is. That’s Dave’s room now.’

Sarah’s face hardened. ‘Do you mean to tell
me he evicted you from your bedroom when his father died?’

‘No, not a bit of it,’ Amy said, stung to
David’s defence. ‘Dave wanted me to have that room, but I made him
take it. This is his farm now, it’s only right that he has the big
bedroom. Anyway, I like my own little room better than that
one.’

She grasped at the chance to change the
subject. ‘Look at my picture. This is Mama, here.’

Sarah studied the photograph. ‘Oh, yes,’ she
said softly. She raised her eyes to look at Amy. ‘She was very
lovely.’

She returned her attention to the picture.
‘Do you remember her?’

‘A tiny bit. I was only little when she
died, but I do remember her, only just.’

‘You’re lucky,’ Sarah said. ‘Are you in this
one?’

‘Yes, I’m the baby Mama’s holding.’

Sarah smiled. ‘I can’t say I recognised
you.’

‘And this is Pa, and these are John and
Harry.’

But Sarah seemed only mildly interested in
the others; her attention kept returning to Amy and her mother.
‘It’s a lovely photograph,’ she said, handing it back to Amy at
last.

‘Yes, isn’t it?’ Amy placed the photograph
on the mantelpiece, beside the one of her with Charlie and the
children, then sat down and began pouring the tea. ‘Now, you must
tell me everything you’ve been doing lately.’

‘Is that a polite reminder of what a poor
correspondent I’ve been?’

‘Well… I haven’t heard from you for a little
while,’ Amy said carefully. She had written to Sarah, telling her
of Charlie’s death, as soon as the fuss of funeral arrangements and
the stream of visitors in the days after the service had given her
an opportunity. Sarah had written a reply so short that it had come
close to being curt. Since then Amy had had a few brief notes, but
even those had ceased to arrive over the past month or so. ‘I know
you’re busy, though.’

Sarah put her cup down on its saucer, stood
up, and paced across the room and back with rapid strides. ‘If you
knew the letters I’ve started and never finished—or the ones I’ve
hurled into the fire, or torn up and thrown in the waste paper
basket,’ she said bleakly.

‘You don’t need to worry like that,’ Amy
said, startled. ‘Just write about any old thing, I love hearing
from you.’

‘I wanted to get it
right!
’ Sarah
said, turning a wild-eyed face to Amy.

She saw Amy’s anxious expression, and her
shoulders slumped a little. ‘You’ll be wishing you’d gone into that
show, rather than be faced with me in such a mood.’

‘No, I’d have missed you if I’d done that!
I’d have been awfully disappointed.’ Amy reached out a hand for
Sarah’s, but Sarah’s face was turned away.

‘I don’t like going to things like that just
now, not while I’m in mourning,’ Amy went on, filling up the
awkward silence. ‘People don’t want to see me all in black when
they’re having a nice time. Anyway, it wouldn’t seem quite
respectful so soon after Mr Stewart died.’

‘Such deceptions we’re forced into by social
pressures,’ Sarah said in a low voice.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The thought of you in black. Thank heavens
you’re not wearing it today.’

‘Oh, it’s not practical around the house,’
Amy said, brushing an imaginary crease out of her blue flowered
cotton dress. ‘I wore it at home for the first three months, but
now I only wear proper mourning clothes when I go out.’

‘But it’s such a lie, isn’t it? Mourning,
for goodness sake! You’re not mourning him!’

‘Sarah, don’t talk like that, please!’ Amy
said, deeply shocked. ‘It’s not respectful.’

‘But you’re not!’ Sarah protested. ‘How
could you possibly be mourning a dreadful man like that? You must
have
detested
him,’ she said, practically spitting the word.
‘A coarse, brutish creature like that.’

Amy took a deep breath, and steeled herself
to be stern. ‘That strikes me as a very strange way to speak to a
widow, Miss Millish.’ Sarah looked up sharply at being addressed in
such a manner, but Amy made herself go on in the same stiff tone.
‘I’m afraid if you keep speaking like that I’ll have to ask you to
leave.’

‘No!’ Sarah’s face was suddenly ravaged with
fear. ‘Don’t send me away, please don’t.’ She alarmed Amy by
dropping to her knees in front of her. ‘If you send me away now,
I’ll never, ever have the courage to come back again.’

Amy reached out to stroke Sarah’s hair. ‘I
don’t want to send you away. But I can’t let you talk about Mr
Stewart like that.’

She struggled for the right words to express
her thoughts. ‘We had our problems, him and I. But all he had in
the world was Dave and me. I did my best to look after him before
he died, and now he’s gone I do my best to treat his memory with
respect. I wouldn’t even allow Dave to speak of his father like
that, so I can’t let anyone else, can I?’

Sarah’s mouth softened into something close
to a smile. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t be what you are if you acted
any differently.’

Amy gave a little shrug. ‘I don’t know. This
is just how I am.’ She smiled at Sarah’s awkward posture. ‘Sit
down, why don’t you? Your tea must be getting cold.’

‘What? Oh, yes,’ Sarah said, regarding her
neglected cup in vague surprise. She sat down and took a quick sip
from the cup, then stood again and resumed her pacing.

‘Goodness me, you are fidgety,’ Amy said,
mildly amused. ‘You’ll be tiring yourself out, rushing around like
that.’

Sarah stopped her movement to stare at Amy.
‘And you’re like a deep pool of stillness in the middle of a storm.
No matter how the world buffets you, you take it serenely.’

She paced again, stopping from time to time
to study the photographs on the mantelpiece or to stare out the
window, then resuming her rapid movement. ‘I’m always like this
when I’m trying to make up my mind to something. Or when I’m
trapped inside by the weather just when I feel like being outside
and active.’ She smiled pensively. ‘Mother used to scold me for
it—she said it was dreadfully unladylike, stalking about the room
like a man. Poor Mother, I always was something of a mystery to
her.’

‘She must have been very proud of you.’

‘I don’t know. But I do know she was very
loving.’ She turned on her heel and crossed the room again.

‘Really, Sarah, I’ve never seen anyone as
restless as you!’ Amy had the slight impression as she said it that
she had once seen someone, long ago. But she could not quite call
the memory to mind, though she was vaguely troubled by it. ‘You’re
sure you’re comfortable?’

‘I’m as comfortable as the situation
allows.’ Sarah stopped pacing, turned and faced Amy.

‘Amy, I’m… oh, God, how do I do this?’ she
said, her voice shaking. ‘It’s not covered in any of the books of
etiquette that Mother used to delight in giving me.’

‘Whatever’s wrong?’ Amy asked, concerned at
the sight of Sarah’s troubled face. ‘What is it you want to
do?’

‘I…’ Sarah crossed rapidly to Amy and sat on
the floor at her feet. Amy thought with relief of the good sweeping
she had given the floor the previous day. ‘I want to return
something to you. Something I think you must have lost a long time
ago.’

Sarah twisted away and reached under her
collar to undo a fine, gold chain, then slipped her hand down the
front of her bodice and took hold of the chain, still facing away
from Amy.

She turned back to Amy with something
clutched in her hand. ‘I wore this on a velvet ribbon for years,
but the velvet got so worn that I was afraid I’d lose it. I still
have the ribbon at home. This is yours, Amy.’

She stretched out her hand, and Amy
automatically held out her own to take it. Something small but
surprisingly heavy slipped onto her palm. Amy stared down at a gold
brooch in the shape of the letter ‘A’.

For a moment she gazed at the brooch in
confusion, wondering why it looked so familiar. Then memory leapt
the twenty-one years since she had last seen this brooch lying in
her hand. A tiny, dark-haired baby had been nuzzling at her breast,
and Amy had held out the brooch to the woman who was to take her
daughter away.

Amy’s heart gave a great, convulsive leap as
it started beating again. The brooch was threatening to slip from
her hand; she clenched her fingers over it so tightly that she felt
the edges dig into her palm.

‘Ann,’ she whispered. ‘You’re Ann.’ She
stared at the face so close to hers and wondered how she could not
have known before.

‘Yes,’ Sarah said, her voice barely audible.
‘I hope I’m not too much of a disappointment.’

‘You’re… you’re perfect.’

‘Oh, no I’m not.’

‘You
are
,’ Amy insisted. ‘You’re just
what I’ve longed and longed for you to be. Look at you! You’re
pretty, and you’re clever, and you’ve had all sorts of education.
You can do anything you want to, and you’ve got a beautiful house
and lovely things. Everything I wanted for you and I knew I’d never
be able to give you. That’s why I gave you away, Ann… Sarah. But…’
She shook her head in a futile attempt to stop it spinning. ‘But
how…?’ So many questions were tumbling over themselves that she
could not think how to start asking any of them.

Sarah smiled at her. ‘Unlike you, I haven’t
just had a rather dramatic shock. Sit quietly and drink your tea,
and I’ll tell you the whole story as well as I’m able.’

She took her own chair and settled her hands
in her lap. ‘Shall I start with how I found you? Or do you want me
to go further back?’

‘Can you start with when you were a baby?’
Amy said faintly, her mind still reeling from the effort of trying
to match the tiny baby with the assured young woman who sat beside
her.

Sarah gave a little laugh. ‘I can’t remember
quite that far back, but I’ll do my best.

‘I think I was about six years old when I
first found out that you existed. I remember coming home one day
absolutely beside myself because a child at school had told me that
Mother wasn’t really my mother. Of course I blurted it all out to
her, full of righteous indignation, and expecting her to tell me
what a lie it was.’

‘What did she tell you?’ Amy whispered.

‘She did it very nicely. She sat me on her
lap and said of course she was my mother.

‘But I’d had another mother first, she told
me. When I was very small another lady was my mother. But while I
was still a little baby my first mother got very sick, and she knew
she wouldn’t be able to look after me properly. So she went to see
a lady who looked after children, and she asked the lady to find me
a new mother.

‘This lady knew that Mother and Father
wanted a little girl exactly like me, so when my first mother died
she gave me to them to look after.’

‘But I didn’t…’

‘No, I’m very aware of that. It made it
easier for Mother to explain it in that way, I suppose. And it
satisfied me at the time. She gave me the brooch and the ribbon
that day, too—she told me they’d belonged to my first mother. And
she told me your name had been Amy. I was allowed to wear the
brooch sometimes as a special treat, but most of the time Mother
kept it tucked away safely.’

Amy became aware of the brooch still
clutched in her hand. ‘It’s yours, Sarah. It belongs to you.’

‘You’re quite sure?’

‘Yes. I wanted you to have it, and I still
do. It was the only thing I had to give you.’ She put the brooch in
Sarah’s hand and closed her fingers over it. The storm of emotions
that had buffeted her since Sarah’s revelation abruptly overwhelmed
her. She buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

Sarah put an arm around her shoulders. ‘You
gave me a wonderful home.’

‘That’s what I wanted,’ Amy said through her
sobs. ‘I wanted to keep you, too. It nearly killed me to give you
away.’

She fumbled at her sleeve for a
handkerchief, failed to find one and sniffed noisily.

‘Have mine,’ Sarah said, pushing a
lace-edged handkerchief into Amy’s hand.

Amy blew her nose and felt a little
recovered. ‘But your name doesn’t begin with A. Not the name they
gave you.’

‘I still have the names you gave me. Sarah
Ann Elizabeth, my name is. That’s what I was baptised as. Quite a
mouthful, isn’t it? I nearly had Amy tacked on the end of it,
Mother told me much later, but Father drew the line at that. He
said sentiment was all very well, but I’d never learn four names
off by heart.’ She smiled fondly at the memory. ‘
 
“My silly, sentimental Helen,” he used to call
Mother. “And of course I wouldn’t have you any other
way.”
 
’

‘They must have been very kind.’

‘The kindest parents one could wish for a
child. Mother meant her little deception kindly, but she must have
regretted not having been quite honest fairly soon. She was hearing
me my prayers that evening, and I’d got up to “God bless Maurice in
Heaven”—he was my brother, he died when I was only three.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Amy said quietly.

‘Oh, I hardly remember him. He was a great
big boy of thirteen, and he was at school in the daytime, so I
don’t think I can have seen much of him. I remember wearing a black
arm band for a long time, and Mother cried a lot at first and she
never wore bright colours again, but I forgot him quite quickly. He
was the only child Mother and Father ever had of their own.