The Girl on the Cliff (16 page)

‘Yes, but should … should I and his family be holding out hope for his return?’

From the look on the man’s face, it was a question he was obviously asked many times a day.

‘While, no erm … body, has been found, there must always be hope. But it’s not for me to advise yourself or your family how long to keep that hope alive. If Sergeant Ryan is not found in the next few weeks, the War Office will be in contact and his status will be changed to “Missing, Presumed Dead”.’

‘I see. Thank you.’

Without another word, Mary stood up and left the office.

Six months later, Mary received a letter from the War Office:

Dear Miss Benedict,

Further to your enquiry about the whereabouts of Sergeant Sean Michael Ryan, it is my sad duty to inform you that his jacket, bearing his army number and
containing identification papers, has been recovered from an enemy trench in Somme, France. Although no remains have so far been found in the vicinity, we would sadly presume that, under these circumstances, Sergeant Ryan met his death in the theatre of war whilst serving his country.

Our heartfelt condolences are sent to both you, and to his family, whom we will be informing separately. On a personal note, the fact that his jacket was identified in an enemy trench provides a fitting footnote to his record. Which, I can inform you, has already been mentioned in dispatches.

At present, Sergeant Ryan is under consideration for a posthumous award for bravery.

We understand that this is little compensation for the loss of a beloved relative, but it is due to men like Sergeant Ryan that the war has been concluded in a satisfactory manner and peace has been attained.

Yours sincerely,

Edward Rankin

Mary took Anna down to the kitchen and asked Mrs Carruthers to mind her for an hour while she took a walk.

Mrs Carruthers’s rheumy eyes were filled with sympathy as she looked at Mary’s white face.

‘Bad news?’

Mary nodded. ‘I’m after needing some fresh air,’ she whispered.

‘You take yerself off for as long as you want. Me and Anna will be fine, won’t we?’ she cooed. ‘I’m sorry, dear.’
She reached out a tentative hand and placed it on Mary’s shoulder. ‘He was a lovely chap, and I know how you have waited all these long years for him to come back.’

Mary nodded numbly and walked into the lobby to don her coat and boots. Mrs Carruthers’s uncharacteristic sympathy had brought tears to her eyes and she didn’t want Anna to see her cry.

Mary sat in Cadogan Place Gardens, watching the children play and a couple strolling arm-in-arm. This new world, a world which was now at peace, and allowed the pursuit of happiness and the enjoyment of simple pleasures, was a world that Sean had helped to preserve and protect. Yet had not lived to see.

Mary sat on the bench, even as dusk fell and the other visitors in the garden left. She ran through the gamut of emotions: sorrow, fear, anger … and more tears than she had ever shed in her life.

She reread the letter twenty times over, the words fuelling her thoughts.

Sean … that huge, vital
bear
of a man. So strong … so young …

Dead.

No longer breathing. No longer part of the earth. Gone. No more gentle smile, or chiding, or laughter …

Or love.

It became dark, but Mary still sat where she was.

Once she was calmer, over the initial shock, Mary began to consider the implications for herself. They had not been married, so there was no widow’s pension for her. The life she had once imagined many years ago – a man to love her and take care of her, to protect her and provide a
roof over her head and her very own family – was at an end.

She was once again alone. Orphaned for the second time in her life.

Mary was sure, if she went back to Ireland, that Sean’s parents would welcome her with open arms. But what would her life be? Even though she had no intention of finding a man to replace their son, Mary knew that any happy activity she cared to take part in would be a bitter-sweet pill for parents in mourning. And her presence would remind them of what they had lost.

Mary rubbed her face slowly with the palms of her hands. The March air was becoming cooler now and she found she was shivering; from shock or a chill, she didn’t know. She stood up and looked around her desolately, remembering the time she and Sean had sat here together.

‘Goodbye, pet. God bless and sweet dreams,’ she whispered, and left the gardens to return to the only life she now had.

Anna was almost three now, her hair grown into a black, shiny mane, contrasting with her ivory skin. She toddled around the nursery, rarely falling over, and her natural grace entranced the entire household. Even Lawrence Lisle took to having Mary bring her into the drawing room and perform the perfectly executed curtsey Mary had taught her.

Somehow, instinctively, Anna knew the stranger who sometimes called for her was important in her life. It would seem to Mary that Anna did her best to charm him, giving him her most beautiful smile and throwing her arms open to him for a hug.

Despite her physical development, Anna was still not talking properly, although she made repetitive sounds and uttered some words, so Mary tried not to worry about it.

‘How is her speaking coming along?’ Lawrence Lisle asked one day as Anna sat with him in the drawing room.

‘Slow, sir, but from my experience, little ones develop at their own pace, so they do.’

When it was time to go, Anna threw her arms around Mr Lisle’s shoulders.

‘Say “goodbye” to me now, Anna,’ Mr Lisle encouraged.

‘G-Good … bye,’ Anna managed.

Lawrence Lisle raised an eyebrow. ‘Say it again, Anna, there’s a good girl.’

‘G-Good … b-bye’, the little girl said accommodatingly.

‘Mmm … Mary, it sounds to me as though Anna has a stutter.’

‘No, to be sure,’ Mary glossed over it nervously. The master was voicing her own fear. ‘She’s simply learning to put the words round her tongue.’

‘Well, you’re the expert in small children, but I would watch that carefully.’

‘Yes, sir, I will.’

Sure enough, in the next few months, as Anna learned more words, her stutter became too obvious to be put down to a developmental stage. Mary fretted over it, and asked advice from the kitchen.

‘Nothing to be done, I’d say,’ Mrs Carruthers shrugged. ‘Just try not to let the little’un say too much in front of the master. You know how the gentry don’t like imperfections in their kids. And as Anna’s the nearest he’s got to his own, I’d hide it from him as much as I could.’

Undaunted, Mary visited the local library and found a book on the problem. She learned that any situation in which Anna felt nervous would make the stutter more pronounced. And, as Anna’s primary carer, to make sure she herself spoke clearly, so that Anna could hear the words and copy them as best she could.

The kitchen laughed at Mary as she spoke to Anna slowly, over-enunciating her words, and encouraging the rest of the staff to do the same.

‘You’ll have the little’un stuttering in all manner of Irish and Cockney accents if you’re not careful,’ chuckled Mrs Carruthers. ‘I’d leave her be, if I were you, let nature take its course.’

But Mary was not prepared to do so and persevered with the child. Heeding Mrs Carruthers’s words, she also taught Anna to remain silent when she was in front of the master, hoping her pretty curtsey and charm would mask the problem, as she worked with Anna on the few basic words she needed to communicate with him.

Mr Lisle mentioned Anna’s relative silence on a number of occasions, but Mary continued to brush it off.

‘W-why can’t I speak to h-him, M-Mary?’ the little girl whispered as Mary took her from the drawing room and back up to the nursery.

‘You will in time, pet, you will in time,’ Mary comforted her.

It seemed that Anna, however, had developed her own method of communication with her guardian.

A few months later, after their allotted half an hour together, Mary knocked on the door to collect Anna.

‘Come.’

Mary pushed the door open and found Lawrence Lisle standing by the fireplace, his focus on Anna, who was moving around the room to the music he’d put on the gramophone.

‘Look how she dances … she is exquisite.’ His voice was no more than a whisper as he watched, enchanted. ‘It’s as if Anna knows what to do instinctively.’

‘Yes, she loves to dance.’ Mary watched proudly as the little girl, lost in her own world, flitted around the room to the music.

‘She may not be able to communicate with words as well as others, but look how she expresses herself with her body,’ commented Lawrence.

‘What is the music, sir? It’s lovely, so,’ enquired Mary as she watched the child stretch and bend and turn.

‘It’s the music to
The Dying Swan
, a ballet by Fokine. I saw it once, at the Kirov in St Petersburg …’ He sighed. ‘I’ve never seen anything quite so beautiful.’

The music finished and the needle spun round and round, the sounds of the cracks on the vinyl beneath it the only noise in the room.

Lawrence Lisle pulled himself out of his reverie. ‘Well now, there we are,’ he said. ‘Anna, you dance beautifully. Would you like to take lessons?’

The little girl hardly understood what she was being asked, but she nodded.

Mary glanced at Anna nervously and then at Lawrence. ‘Do you not think she’s a little young to be taking lessons in dancing, sir?’

‘Absolutely not. In Russia, they start at just this age. And there are many Russian
émigrés
whom I know living in London at present. I shall find out who they think is a suitable teacher for Anna and inform you.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘I l-lo-love you, M-Mr Lisle,’ Anna said out of the blue, and gave him a beaming smile.

Lawrence Lisle was taken aback by his ward’s sudden spoken words of affection, as Mary took Anna’s hand and walked her smartly towards the door before she could speak any more.

‘Mary, I am wondering whether it is appropriate for my ward to be calling me “Mr Lisle”? It sounds … so formal.’

‘Well now, sir, do you have any suggestions?’ asked Mary.

‘Perhaps “Uncle” would be more appropriate under the circumstances? After all, I am her guardian.’

‘I think ’tis perfect, sir.’

Anna turned back towards him. ‘G-Good n-night, Uncle,’ she said, and the two of them left the room.

Lawrence Lisle was true to his word, and a couple of weeks later Mary found herself in a bright, mirrored studio in a house called the Peasantry along the King’s Road in Chelsea. The teacher, one Princess Astafieva, gaunt and turbaned, smoking a Sobranie through a holder, and clad in a multicoloured silk skirt that trailed behind her as she walked, looked suitably exotic and unwelcoming.

Anna grasped Mary’s hand even tighter, her pale face pinched and fearful at the sight of the strange woman.

‘My good friend Lawrence tells me zis leetle one can dance.’

‘Yes, Madam,’ Mary replied nervously.

‘Zen we shall put on some music and see how the leetle one respond. Take off your coat, child,’ she ordered as she signalled the pianist to play.

‘Just be dancing like you do in front of Uncle,’ Mary whispered and pushed Anna to the centre of the floor. For a few seconds, Anna looked as though she might burst into tears. But as the beautiful music caught her ear, she began to sway, and her body to move as it always did.

Two minutes later, Princess Astafieva banged the wooden floor of the studio with her stick and the pianist stopped playing.

‘I have seen enough. Lawrence, ’e is right. The child
moves naturally to the music. So, I will take her. You will bring Anna here every Wednesday at three o’clock.’

‘Yes, Madam. Can you be telling me what she will need?’

‘For now, nothink, only her body and her bare feet. So, I will see you zen.’ With a nod, Princess Astafieva swept out of the room.

Mary had to cajole Anna to persuade her to return and bribe her with a pink dress with a tulle skirt which she made for her to wear to the lesson, then tea and buns in Sloane Square afterwards.

The rest of the household, too, had raised their eyebrows at Lawrence Lisle’s notion.

‘He’s having her dancing before she can walk and talk proper!’ Mrs Carruthers raised her eyebrows. ‘Must be all that time he spent in Russia that’s turned his head funny. He plays that miserable music on the gramophone over and over again. All about swans dying or sommat.’

Nevertheless, when Mary arrived to pick up Anna after her first lesson, the child was smiling. Over the promised tea and buns, Anna explained she had learned to put her feet in a funny position like a duck. And hold her hands in different positions in the air.

‘She isn’t a w-witch really, Mary.’

‘But you’re sure you want to go again?’ Mary confirmed.

‘Oh, y-yes, I want to go again.’

In the spring of 1926, Anna celebrated her eighth birthday. As Lawrence Lisle had little idea of her actual birth date, they had invented one in mid-April.

Mary looked on proudly as Anna cut the cake the master had bought for her. Anna tingled with excitement as she opened his present to her, and found a pair of pink satin ballet slippers inside.

‘Th-Thank you, Uncle, they’re beautiful. Can I p-put them on now?’ asked Anna.

‘After you’ve eaten, you can. We don’t want chocolate crumbs spoiling them now, do we?’ Mary admonished, a twinkle in her eye.

‘Absolutely right, Mary. Perhaps a little later on you will come into the drawing room and dance for me in them, Anna?’ suggested Lawrence.

‘Of c-course I will, Uncle,’ she smiled. ‘And maybe you could d-dance with me?’ she teased.

‘I’d doubt that,’ he replied with a chuckle. He nodded at his staff, gathered in the dining room, then left while everyone ate the cake.

An hour later, Anna, in her new pink ballet slippers, disappeared off to the drawing room.

Mary smiled as she closed the door behind her. There was no doubt that the bond between Lawrence and Anna had grown. When he had to go away on business for the Foreign Office, Anna would wait eagerly at her bedroom window if she knew his return was imminent. He, too, lit up when he saw her, the dour expression leaving his face as she ran into his arms.