Tara (12 page)

She wasn't mad, not even depressed. Eccentric, certainly, but she had all her faculties. Loneliness and bitterness had put those permanent scowl lines on her face, but Amy had heard her laughing with the children several times today and that meant the Mabel Randall of pre-War years was still there somewhere.

'I never told you about this place because I once swore I'd never set foot in here again while your grandfather was alive.'

'Why?'

'Because James Brady was the cruellest man I ever met and I hated him so much I could have killed him. I only came back to nurse Mother.'

'He was dead?'

'Had been for a couple of years,' Mabel said. 'Thrown from his horse in a thunderstorm coining back from Wells. They reckon he lay there all night with a broken back before someone found him. I laughed when I heard, I hoped he died in agony.'

'Father Glynn told George Collins that your mother advertised to find you. What was it like when you got back here?'

Mabel closed her eyes and let herself go back six years.

Everything had seemed so bewildering, familiar yet totally different. The train was so much faster. Temple Meads station at Bristol didn't look so huge or so grand; then there was the bus ride out through Bristol, houses where once there had been only fields. She had got off the bus at Pensford Hill thinking that it was only a short walk down the lane from there, only to discover it was miles. Her case was heavy, her shoes were too tight and when she looked out over the fields towards the farm she was puzzled to see a lake where once there had been only farmland.

But once she got to the village her heart was pounding with excitement. The sweet shop on the corner was still there, though it looked as if it had changed hands. Pearse's the baker's was now called The Old Bakery and looked very much smarter. The High Street looked narrower than she remembered, but maybe that was just because of the parked cars. She could remember boys playing cricket there with only the occasional horse or pony trap disturbing them. But as she turned towards the farm she forgot her tight shoes and the heavy case, put aside the bitter memories and thought only of seeing her mother for the first time in thirty-four years.

She was sitting out in a wicker chair by the barn, almost asleep, as Mabel turned the corner to the yard, an old lady of eighty in a navy and white print dress with a handmade lace collar, her white hair twisted up into a bun. Smaller, thinner, her once delicate skin was furrowed with deep lines, and brown from the sun. Her eyes flew open as she heard her daughter's step on the cobbles.

'Oh, Mabel.' She had struggled to get up, tottering towards her daughter on bowed, arthritic legs, arms wide open in welcome. 'You can't imagine how I've longed for this moment.'

Tears pricked the back of Mabel's eyes unexpectedly as she thought of that time now.

'It was good to see her again,' was all she managed to say, but she was ashamed to compare the welcome she'd offered Amy and the children with the joyous one she had been given by Polly. 'She had all her faculties, but she was too weak to cope with everything. You take after her, she couldn't bear mess either.'

'Was it good to be together again?' Amy wanted to know what had caused the rift in the first place, but she knew better than to rush her mother.

Mabel's face softened. She leaned back in her chair and rocked gently, her eyes closed.

'There was so much to say, so much that needed explaining. But somehow we could never get it out. Mother used to sit in this chair.' Mabel looked round at her daughter and smiled. 'I used to sit where you are and read her the paper. We gossiped about the people in the village, but never about us.'

'But you hated your father, did you talk about that?'

'I tried to once. Mother stopped me, she said she'd married my father because she loved him. If he didn't turn out to be kind of man she'd hoped for, then that wasn't his fault, but hers for being a bad judge of character.'

'She sounds like a saint,' Amy said with a wry smile. 'Do you go along with that?'

'I certainly don't. She should have stuck a knife in him.' Mabel was quite animated and flushed now, almost as if she'd spent some time considering killing her father.

'What was her answer to that?'

' "You must learn to be kinder, Mabel. To accept what is, and not to try to change people or events to suit yourself."'

'She sounds lovely, I wish I'd met her,' Amy said.

'You have a great deal of Polly in you.' Mabel saw sweet perfection in her daughter's face. The straight line of her small nose, the clarity of her complexion and yet sensuality in the lips inherited from herself. 'The funny thing is I could see it in you even when you were small. It irritated me sometimes because I knew you'd just accept things the way she did. But on balance I wish I'd inherited more of Polly and less of James.'

Amy realised that was meant to be a compliment, even if it hadn't come out like one.

'My grandfather?'

Mabel nodded and screwed up her lips in disapproval.

'He was like a mad bull. Red-haired, hot-tempered, arrogant and self-opinionated. He didn't have a friend in the world, you know. He had acquaintances, men who kowtowed to him because he was tougher and meaner, but not one real friend. I'm the same, who'll miss me when I'm gone?'

'We will,' Amy said stoutly. 'Besides, you had that breakdown, you weren't like that before Dad died.'

'I was.' Mabel shrugged her shoulders. 'I might have liked dancing and parties in those days, I might have laughed a great deal, seemed popular, but I didn't make close friends. I didn't need anyone other than Arthur. My breakdown didn't come from grief, you know.'

Amy's eyes widened. Surely she wasn't going to hear now that Mabel didn't ever love her husband?

'It was rage!'

'Rage?'

'Rage and fury,' Mabel said with satisfaction. 'Before you were born my life with him was like being on a switchback. Here and there we were up on top, but mostly plunging down to the bottom again. He was a gambler, you see.'

'A gambler? What sort – horses, cards?'

'Mostly cards, poker was his game. He was known in just about every casino, club and dive bar in England.'

Somehow that explained a great deal to Amy.

'That's why we were living in Whitechapel?'

So many times in her adult years Amy had pondered that question. So they had got trapped there as she and Bill had!

Mabel nodded grimly. 'We were only one step away from the workhouse in 1929. We had nothing left to sell, we were being chased for Arthur's gambling debts. It was January, thick snow on the ground, and I pawned my wedding ring to pay the rent on that house.'

Amy's mouth fell open. 'But Dad always seemed so . . .' She couldn't think of the right word; 'sensible' hardly seemed appropriate.

'Your father was feckless, a wonderful, stupid man. A bounder, a lazy good-for-nothing, but I loved him with every breath in my body. But the first day we spent in that filthy slum in Whitechapel I swore I'd leave him if he gambled one more penny.'

'Did he?' Amy hardly dared ask.

'No.' Mabel smiled. 'He didn't, at least not to my knowledge. He couldn't get any work, then I found I was expecting you and that's why he joined the Army. Sometimes I wish I'd turned a blind eye to his gambling, then he would have been called up for the War, but he wouldn't have been a sergeant and no-one would have expected him to be a hero. But instead he gets himself killed and leaves me.'

Amy shook her head in amazement at her mother's selfishness.

'I'm going to bed now,' she said, getting up and moving towards the door. She paused, her hand on the knob, suddenly wanting to wound her mother.

'Just tell me, Mother, did you ever wonder how Dad might have felt if he'd looked down during the Blitz and seen me on my own in the kitchen with the windows caved in, and lumps of burning shrapnel embedded in the floor?'

Mabel's eyes dropped to her lap and for a moment she was silent.

'I've had that coming to me for years,' she said in a small voice. 'I haven't forgotten any of it. Not the time I found you trying to sweep out the rats when the sewer broke open and they ran in the house. Or you scavenging for fuel for the fire with that old pram. Those memories are trapped in my head too, Amy. It was as if I was locked behind glass at that time, able to see you but unable to do anything for you.'

Amy closed her eyes. All these years she'd clung to the idea that her mother knew nothing of her suffering during the Blitz.

It was like holding a firework in her hand, ready to light it and throw it when the opportunity came to create mayhem. But Mabel had tortured herself already with those memories.

'I think we should both heed my grandmother's words,' Amy said.

'What words?'

'Accept what is, and don't try to change people or events,' Amy said haltingly.

'Apologies are useless now.' Mabel's voice shook, and she got up from her chair and walked across the room to Amy. 'One day I'll find a way to redeem myself in your eyes.'

Amy knew she should hold out her arms to her mother, but she couldn't, not yet. Instead she backed out of the door, turning to flee up the stairs.

Time was on their side. One or two bricks had been knocked off the wall between them. That was a start.

Chapter 6

Mabel

Mabel stayed in the kitchen long after she'd heard the creak of bedsprings above her. She was exhausted, but she was loath to go upstairs because she guessed Amy was crying. Until two days ago Mabel had gone to bed soon after it was dark and slept soundly until first light, but now that kind of peace was shattered.

She should have known it was folly to contact Amy. The moment she stepped out of that car with her two children, the shell Mabel had carefully built round herself broke right open.

This shell had begun to grow around her heart when she met the evangelists back in '41. They promised salvation, a purpose to her life, and in her fragile and troubled state she believed that meant she must renounce everything that had gone before. She burned everything connected with Arthur and her former life and slowly, as she immersed herself in prayer and trying to convert others, the shell grew thicker and thicker, shutting out even her daughter.

The first cracks in her armour had appeared when she came back here. To feel the warmth of her mother's love, undiluted by all the years apart, made her question for the first time the Tightness of expecting others to live by her rules.

Father Glynn's letter about Amy had further stirred up the muddy waters. Half of her wanted to remain in isolation, but the other half wanted a chance to redeem herself. But nothing could have prepared her for that moment when she first saw her daughter and grandchildren.

'All these years you've laid the blame for everything that has gone wrong in your life at others' feet,' she muttered to herself. 'Now Amy wants to know the whole story and you're scared of it.'

She knew it was right that Amy should know about her mother's past. But she couldn't know just how much it would hurt to dig up the family skeletons.

Sitting here in the kitchen with only the sound of hot coals shifting in the Aga, Mabel could sense the presence not only of Polly, her mother, but of Hannah, her grandmother. Hannah had taken her own life by drowning herself in the river after the death of three of her children from diphtheria. Who could blame her? Her husband Silas had been a cold, cruel man and James, her only surviving son, was just like him.

Mabel had felt this presence many times before, though she would never admit such a thing to anyone. They comforted her, gave her hope and now she was sure they were urging her to open up her heart to Amy.

There was so much here on the farm to evoke James Brady. Betsy's hooves on the cobbles reminded her of Papa galloping into the yard on Duke, his piebald stallion. Taking a sandwich down to Stan in the lower meadow took her back to carrying pasties and a stone bottle of cider to Papa during haymaking, and of course that bedroom upstairs!

James Brady might be six feet under in the church yard but, until she found the courage to tell Amy the whole story, his malevolence would remain, choking any hope of happiness.

But how could she explain something which had started from her own vanity, lies and deceit?

She was born wilful. Even with a father as frightening as hers, Mabel had a spirit that countless beatings couldn't subdue. That was why in August 1919 Mabel Brady, aged nineteen, the prettiest girl in the village, was embarking on her first visit to London.

'Be sure to write the moment you get there.' Polly Brady lightly touched her daughter's cheek with her own.

To a more seasoned traveller, Bristol's Temple Meads station on a hot summer morning would be a place to avoid. But to Mabel it had all the magic and excitement of a fun fair. Everything thrilled her – the huge engines shrouded in steam, people shouting above the riotous noise from pistons, guards' whistles, slamming doors. Porters laden down with luggage, and squeals of delight as people ending their journey met friends and relatives.

'Are you sure you have a handkerchief?' Polly's lips trembled, and she dabbed her own lavender-scented one to her eyes.

Polly maintained an air of genteel elegance despite a lifetime of hard work and the deaths of two sons in their infancy. In her only good dress, of blue artificial silk with pin tucks on the bodice and leg-of-mutton sleeves, she didn't look like a farmer's wife. Gloves hid her work-worn hands, a straw bonnet covered hair that was still a deep brown and her slender figure was still comely enough to attract admiring glances.

'Yes, Mother.' Mabel lowered her eyes and tried to conceal her impatience to get on the train. Already her new apple green dress was collecting smuts from the engine and she was beginning to wish she'd heeded her mother's advice and worn something old to travel in.

But the dress was a triumph! She loved its well-fitting bodice and long tight sleeves, with tiny pearl buttons from wrist to elbow. The skirt lay flat across her stomach, but was gathered at the back to create a small bustle. The length of material had been donated by a friend of her mother's, a pattern from one neighbour, the cream lace collar from another. With a ribbon of the same material on her jaunty straw hat, surely no-one would guess she was a country girl?