Annie's Promise (51 page)

Prue’s voice was quite calm though there were tears running down her face, like an endless stream. ‘It nearly killed your father and it was he who refused to allow your mother to nurse, though she had conquered her past. He refused through fear for her and through the need for an edge to his
life, the same edge that defusing bombs had given him. The same edge that your mother now had to live with again. She agreed out of love, though it nearly broke her again.’

Prue rose now and still the tears were falling but it was as though she didn’t know. ‘Now, come with me, Sarah, and read the answers to all the questions you would like to ask me. It is better that way for both of us.’ Sarah followed Prue into the study stacked with the Peak Frean tins that they had sent her every year.

Prue touched the tins. ‘I sorted these out last night, while you were asleep. There is nothing in this box that is personal to me, but it might hold the answers you need. If not, come and find me. I shall be in the garden. It is where I go when I need to hold on to the present.’

Sarah sat at the desk and touched nothing for a long moment because her tears were also falling and she could not see to read. She began after Ibrahim entered and brought her lime juice with ice. All morning she read and by noon she knew the truth of her mother’s love for both her and her father, her respect for their dignity and the death of her beloved Betsy.

She left at two p.m. taking the bus back down the winding road. She had borrowed money from Prue and had asked for the address of Dr Jones in Sydney.

At two-ten, Prue telephoned Annie, telling her that Sarah had been and gone, but she didn’t know where or why.

‘Be patient, my darling Annie,’ Prue said over the crackling line. ‘Be patient for just a bit longer.’

Sarah barely noticed the long journey back through the Himalayas. She stopped at the same rest house and slept on the verandah, she ate vindaloo at lunch time and mangoes at breakfast but tasted neither. All she could think of were the letters she had read in her mother’s writing, the love, the pain, the hope, the steadfastness of the woman whom she loved and now respected above all others.

As the train rattled across the plain she didn’t feel the heat, or the stirring of the air as the fan whirred, she just felt the love her mother had always borne her and grieved for what she had done. She grieved, too, for the life her mother had led, not just the war and after, but her lack of a mother’s love. So many had come and gone. First her real mother, then Aunt Sophie, then Betsy until Sarah Beeston had taken her away. They were all dead now, except perhaps for Sophie. Sarah looked out of the window, willing the train to hurry. Except perhaps for Sophie, she echoed.

Sarah flew from Delhi to Sydney and it was strange to travel without the cacophony of hens clucking, or the singsong of Urdu, or the smell of curry, or the beating heat. She missed India already.

Sydney was bright, smart and still warm, though the summer was nearly over. The buildings were clean and European. There were cars, but no rickshaws or tongas, no dust. There was a harbour that glistened, the clipped accent that was almost, but not quite, like home.

She stayed in a hostel with other girls. She nodded and smiled when they asked if she too was travelling round the world, filling in before or after college, breaking free from the family, seeking experience.

‘Something like that,’ she said, lying on the bed in the dormitory which in some ways was the same as in Delhi, but also so very different. She looked at the address that Prue had given her. Dr Jones lived in Vaucluse. She would take the bus out there tomorrow and hope that the woman her mother had worked with in the camps still had access to hospital records. After all, Aunt Sophie had borne a child, perhaps it had been delivered in a hospital. Perhaps there was an address.

The bus left at ten and this time there was no driver gesticulating, no dust, no sea of humanity into which the driver eased. In Vaucluse the houses were large, gracious,
moneyed. There was so much space, so much sky, established gardens, an air of ease.

Sarah stood at Dr Jones’s front door. This time the woman who answered the door would not know her, would probably think she was mad.

Dr Jones did not think she was mad. She drew her out to the back garden, sat her down with coffee and listened as Sarah spoke of her mother’s wartime life and some of the years that had gone before, and all the years that had come after.

Dr Jones cupped her mug in her hands. ‘I remember your mother. I remember everyone and everything about those years. How could any of us forget? Prue writes occasionally and so I knew Annie Manon had married her Georgie Armstrong. I knew, too, that you were missing. I did what I could here.’

Dr Jones frowned at Sarah, and now the lines that Sarah had thought could be no deeper on that thin, old face, were. She continued. ‘But that is past. Your mother knows you are safe so why are you here and not at home with her?’

Sarah put down her mug, looking out across the clipped camellia bushes with their glossy leaves, their blooms had been and gone. ‘I can’t go home yet. I’ve hurt her too much. All along, people have hurt her too much. She’s gone to them with her arms open, only to see them slip away. I want to try to bring one of them back to her.’

Sarah explained that Aunt Sophie had left for Australia when Annie’s father had returned to Wassingham after the First World War.

‘He took her away from Sophie and Eric, Don too, to live at the shop with him and Betsy. Don had already been staying on and off with his Uncle Albert, he didn’t care about Sophie and Eric – I wonder if he cares about anyone – but Annie loved them, and they her. They sent her letters and cards and in one they told her that their own daughter had been born. She was called Annie too. Mum never replied, she thought she had been replaced. The correspondence died
out after she moved to Sarah Beeston’s. A few years ago she placed advertisements in the Australian newspapers trying to find them again, but there was no response.’

Sarah handed Dr Jones the details she had written down last night – the year of Sophie’s daughter’s birth, the date of their arrival in Australia, all that she knew of them. ‘Please, can you use your contacts – perhaps the new Annie was born in hospital. Or perhaps I should trace the registration of her birth, but then I won’t have an up-to-date address, though there would be something to go on.’ Sarah was leaning forward, pushing the paper towards Dr Jones.

The doctor took it, read it. ‘I would like to do this for Annie. I respected her, held her in great affection. But what about you, what will you be doing while all this is going on?’ Dr Jones’s eyes were sharp, piercing. ‘I don’t approve of posteriors on chairs while others are busy.’ She poured more coffee.

Sarah smiled as she lifted her cup. ‘I could do anything you like to help. I was going to go round the markets and retail outlets, to see what gaps there are in the markets, see what possibilities there are for Wassingham Textiles. Mum and Dad haven’t an outlet and Australia’s growing, isn’t it? But I can do that later. I’ll do anything, Dr Jones.’

The old woman stirred her coffee and smiled. ‘I think you are doing quite enough my dear. Let me use my contacts, it is more efficient. You do what you know most about.’

As Sarah left Dr Jones said, ‘Give me a week – I won’t tell your mother you are in Sydney. But Sarah,’ Dr Jones added, ‘don’t get your hopes too high, Sophie will be elderly, she might be dead.’

For the rest of the day Sarah walked around the shops, stopping at the small outlets, the kitchen shops, talking to the managers, making lists. She stayed on at the hostel and that evening a boy brought his guitar on to the steps where they were all sitting and they sang. He handed it to her and she played
Curry Afternoons
and then more gentle ones, for
Betsy. Now there was a calmness in her that she had never known before.

All week she toured the city making notes, thinking of the fabrics she had seen in India, telling the traders of these, writing down their comments.

In the late afternoon, she would stand and look at the incomplete Opera House. Yes, it would one day be as wonderful as Davy had said. She watched the yachts in the harbour, the bridge, the blue of the sky and wished that he were here with her, but knew that part of her life was over, there were some things that love could not survive and her behaviour had been one.

At the end of the week she talked to the market traders, then rang Dr Jones, scarcely able to breathe with tension.

‘I have the address you want, my dear,’ Dr Jones said and read it over the phone. ‘But remember, Sophie is old, she might not have her faculties, she might be ill, oh, any number of things. Good luck.’

That afternoon Sarah wrote to Yerong Creek and took the train two days later to Wagga Wagga where she hired a taxi and drove along a straight road with red parched earth either side, and now there was dust again. In places there were gum trees that hung limp, their bark stripped and loose. The taxi turned left over railway lines into the small township with a garage on the left, a Post Office on the right. They drove on until they reached a small bungalow with rose trees in circular beds.

Prue had grown roses. Did the English abroad always do so? Her hands were trembling. Why was she thinking of roses? Sophie had to be the same, she had to remember Annie. Sarah tried not to rush. She closed the taxi door and paid the driver. She walked up the path hearing the cicadas, feeling the warmth, seeing the corrugated iron roof.

There was a fly door on the verandah. Her pace quickened but before she could reach the wooden steps the door opened. An elderly woman came down on to the path, her face tanned to leather. An older man came after her, his leg stiff.

Sarah said, ‘Sophie? I wrote to you. I’m Annie’s daughter, she’s been trying to find you for years.’

Eric was beside Sophie now and it was he who pulled Sarah to him, holding her so tightly that she could hardly breathe. ‘You’re the image of your mam,’ he said and his voice had all the flavour of Wassingham in every syllable and so too did Sophie’s when she touched Sarah’s cheek. ‘I never thought this would happen,’ she said, holding the girl’s arm, then kissing her forehead as she had kissed Annie’s when they had left for Australia so many years ago, unable to bear living without that lovely child.

She held Annie’s daughter in her arms now and Sarah smelt lavender as her mother had done.

‘You must come and meet our own Annie,’ Sophie said. ‘She’s a bonny lass, with grown bairns of her own.’

Sarah returned to Sydney that night, but sent a telegram to her mother before she left Yerong Creek, telling her Sophie’s and Eric’s address, knowing they would come, knowing it would complete her mother’s life and that was the least Sarah could do for her.

The next day, and the next, and the next, she went to see the Opera House, to stand and stare at the ferries ploughing through the water, the boats, their sails so white. Would they come? She had left a message with Sophie, telling her mother she would be here each day, if they wanted to see her. Would they?

On Saturday, six days after she had left Yerong Creek she watched the sun cast long shadows across the water. The ferries were crowded, carrying people who would one day buy clothes and furnishings made by Wassingham Textiles, and Indian cotton and silk printed as Davy would wish. Yes, one day, whether she was there or not.

She turned and walked away from the water. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, moving out past the people who stood behind her, brushing the hair from her eyes.

‘You have no need to be, my love,’ her mother said. ‘No
need at all,’ and all the flavour of Wassingham was in her voice.

Sarah looked now, and there was Annie, her face older, thinner, her hair grey, but the smile was so wide, the eyes so full of love. How could she not have seen her? Then Annie’s arms were round her daughter, holding the thin body as close to her as she could, never wanting to let her go, feeling Georgie put his arms round them both. ‘Oh Mum,’ Sarah said and that was all. There was no need for words, not any more.

Annie kissed her daughter’s forehead, stroking her hair, her poor shorn hair and now they walked, their arms around one another until Annie stopped, laughing. ‘Oh God, I’ve left my bag where we were standing.’

Sarah squeezed their arms. ‘I’ll go.’

They watched her run, their arms around one another, and saw her stop when she saw Davy standing where they had been, saw him walk towards her and Annie felt her breath tighten as he put out his hands, and then she breathed again as her daughter took them.

Davy said, ‘I love you, Sarah, I always have. I love you, I’m in love with you. I can’t stand life without you. Will you come home now and swing from the bar?’

Sarah looked at his tanned skin, his strong face, felt the pressure of his hands. She turned and looked at her parents, at the smile on her mother’s face, her father’s too. ‘I’ve never wanted anything so much.’

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Epub ISBN 9781448183074

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Published by Arrow Books 2013

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Copyright © Margaret Graham 1993

Margaret Graham has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This novel is a work of fiction. Apart from references to actual figures and places, all other names and characters are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

First published in Great Britain in 1993 by
William Heinemann Ltd