The Legacy (36 page)

I turn back to the computer, search for
American silver marks G.
Several online encyclopedias and silver-collecting guides appear. Searching entries under the letter G, it takes no time at all to find the stamp on the bell. Gorham. Founded in Rhode Island in 1831. An influential silver maker—made various tea sets for the White House, and the Davis Cup for tennis, but their primary trade was in teaspoons, thimbles and other small gift items. I find the vertical hammer head in the list of Gorham’s date marks—1902. This then I have managed to prove—whoever the baby in the photo is, and whoever his father was, and whatever became of him, this silver and ivory teething ring belonged to him. He was the fine son it was offered to. Not Clifford, not any other child Caroline lost once she had come over to England. I close my hand around it, feel my skin warm the metal; the stifled movement of the clapper inside, like a tiny, tremulous heartbeat.

It is slow work, making my way to the High Street, through knots of purposeful browsers. Shop windows ablaze with lurid banners promising unmissable bargains, ludicrous discounts; music and heat blaring out; people with four, five, six fat carrier bags, sprouting from the ends of their arms. I am barrelled this way and that and the café, when I reach it, is full to the brim. I feel a wash of irritation, until I see Dinny already at one of the small tables in the steamed-up window. The reek of coffee grounds is strong and delicious in here. I edge my way through the crowded tables.

“Hi—sorry, have you been waiting long?” I smile, draping my coat over the empty seat opposite him.

“No, not long. I got lucky with this table—a couple of old dears were just getting up as I came in.”

“Do you want another coffee? Something to eat?”

“Thanks. Another coffee would be good.” He clasps his hands on the sticky table top and looks so odd suddenly that I stare, can’t work out what I am seeing. Then I realize—this is one of only a scant handful of times I have seen Dinny indoors. Actually sitting at a table, in no hurry to be outside again, doing something as mundane as having coffee in a café. “What’s up?” he asks me.

“Nothing,” I shake my head. “I’ll be right back.”

I buy two big mugs of creamy coffee, and an almond croissant for me.

“Didn’t you have breakfast today?” Dinny asks, as I sit.

“Yes, I did,” I shrug, tearing off a corner, dunking it. “But it is Christmas,” I add, and Dinny smiles, tips one eyebrow in concession. The sunlight through the window gives him a bright halo; he is almost too dazzling to look at.

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Yes and no. There’s no record of the baby dying this side of the Atlantic, so I suppose he must have died on the other side of it, like you suggested.”

“Or . . .” Dinny shrugs.

“Or what?”

“Or, the baby didn’t die at all.”

“So where is he?”

“I don’t know—it’s your project. I’m just pointing out one reason why there might be no record of his death.”

“True. But on her marriage certificate, it says spinster. It couldn’t have said that if she’d come over with another man’s baby,” I counter. Dinny shrugs again. I pass him the teething ring. “I checked the mark on this, though. It’s a—”

“Teething ring?” Dinny says.

“Which apparently everybody knows but me.” I roll my eyes. “It’s an American mark—and it was made in 1902.”

“But didn’t you already know the baby was born in America? What does that prove?”

“Well, if nothing else, I think it proves that Caroline was his mother. When I showed Mum the photograph she suggested Caroline could have been its godmother, or it could have been a friend’s baby, or something. But for her to have kept his teething ring this whole time—she has to have been his mother, don’t you think?”

“I suppose so, yes.” Dinny nods, hands me back the ivory ring.

I gulp the hot coffee, feel it bring blood into my cheeks. Dinny casts his eyes back out to the thronging street, seems deep in thought.

“So, how does it feel to be the ladies of the manor? Are you starting to get used to it yet?” he asks suddenly, still looking out of the window, away from me.

“Hardly. I don’t think we’ll ever feel that the place is ours. Not really. And as for staying on to live . . . well. Aside from anything else, the upkeep costs alone would stop us.”

“What about all the Calcott riches village rumor has it you’ve inherited?”

“Just rumor, I’m afraid. The family wealth has been in decline since the war—and I mean the
first
war. Meredith was always complaining to my parents that they didn’t help enough—with the upkeep of the place. That’s why she had to sell off so much of the land, the best paintings, the silver . . . the list goes on. There was some money left, when she died, but it’ll be spent once the death duties are paid.”

“What about the title?”

“Well, that’s gone to Clifford, Henry’s father.” As I say his name I raise my eyes, lock with Dinny’s for a fleeting moment. “My great-grandfather, who was also a Henry, changed the letters patent by act of parliament, because he had no sons. He fixed it so that the barony could pass to Meredith, and then revert to male offspring. Her heirs-male of the body, or whatever they call it.”

“So that’s why Meredith stayed Calcott, even though she married? And why your mother is a Calcott too? But how come you and Beth are Calcotts, then?”

“Because Meredith bullied my parents into it. Poor Dad—didn’t stand a chance. She said the Calcott name was too important to cast off. Apparently, Allen just doesn’t have the same clout.”

“Odd, that she left the house to you girls if the title was going to your uncle, and she was so keen to keep the family line going and all the rest of it,” he muses, swirling his coffee around the bottom of the mug.

“Meredith
was
odd. She had no say in where the title went, but she could do what she liked with the house. Perhaps she thought we represented the best chance of keeping the family going.”

“So, after Clifford, it will be . . . ?”

“Extinct. No more title. Theoretically, Clifford could go to court again, and have it pass to Eddie, but there’s no way in the world Beth would allow it.”

“No?”

“She wants nothing more to do with it. Or the house, really. Which kind of makes my decision for me, too—we would both have to live here if we wanted to keep it.” Dinny is silent for a while. I can feel the shape of Beth’s reluctance, the reason for it, trying to coalesce in the air between us.

“Not really surprising,” Dinny murmurs at last.

“Isn’t it?” I ask, leaning forward. But Dinny shrugs, leans back from the table.

“Why are you here, then? If you know you aren’t going to stay?”

“I thought it would be good. Good for Beth. For both of us really. To come back for a while and . . .” I wave one hand, struggle for words. “Revisit. You know.”

“Why would it be good for her? It doesn’t seem to me like she even wants to think about it, let alone revisit it. Your childhood here, I mean.”

“Dinny . . .” I pause. “When you came up to the house to see her, what did you mean when you said there were things she needed to know? Things you wanted to tell her?”

“You really were eavesdropping, weren’t you?” he says, his tone ambiguous. I try to show contrition.

“What things, Dinny? Something about Henry?” I press, my heart thumping.

Dinny looks at me with lowered brows.

“I think I owe it to her . . . no, not owe. That’s the wrong word. I think she ought to know some things about when we were young. I don’t know what she thinks, but . . . some things might not have been what they seemed,” he says quietly.

“What things?” I lean forward, make him meet my eye. He hesitates, stays silent. “Beth keeps telling me you can’t turn back the clock, and we can’t go back to the way things were,” I flick my eyes up at him, “but I just want to tell you that . . . that you can trust me, Dinny.”

“Trust you to do what, Erica?” he asks, and his voice has an edge of sadness.

“To do whatever. I’m on your side. Whatever happens, or happened,” I say. I know I am not making myself clear. I don’t know how to. Dinny pinches the bridge of his nose, screws his eyes shut for a second. When he opens them again I am shocked to see tears there, not quite ready to fall.

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he says quietly.

“What do you mean?”

Again he pauses, lost in thought.

“You all done in town, then?” he says, ready to leave.

W
hen I check my phone, there are three missed calls from my flatmate, Annabel. The name seems to come from another time, another world entirely. I wonder absently if there is some problem with the rent, or the radiator in my room that keeps leaking, staining the carpet. But these questions seem so very distant, irrelevant. And then I realize: that is not my life any more. It was the life I was living, and at some point, without me even realizing it, I stopped living it. And I don’t have very long to work out where that leaves me. I go up to my room to read letters, to think. I listen to the quiet, which resounds after the bustle of town. The muted yelping of the rooks outside. No musical bird song to charm the ear, no church bells pealing, no children laughing. Just the deep quiet that so upset me at first. I let it sink back into me. How amazing, that this could ever feel like home.

O
n Tuesday I drive to West Hatch, squinting into the lazy sun. It’s not a big village. I drive around it twice until I see what I’m looking for. In front of a compact brick bungalow, a piece of sixties-built convention, there’s a battered old motor home taking up the whole of the driveway. It was new once, cream-colored with a wide coffee-brown stripe running along each side. Now it’s green with algae, bald of tire. But I know it at once. I have been inside it, sat on a padded, sticky plastic bench and gulped down savage homemade lemonade. I am almost choked up at the sight of it now. Mickey Mouse’s house. I picture Mo as she was, round and slightly wry, leaning on the door jamb drying her hands on a blue cloth as Dinny and Beth and I turned our backs to her. Mickey with his elaborate moustache, in overalls always streaked with engine oil, black grime in the creases of his hands.

A
t the door I find my nerves fluttering. Excited rather than scared. The bell makes a soft, electronic
ping . . . pong
. I never thought Mo would answer to such a bell, but answer she does. She looks smaller, older, slightly denuded, but I recognize her at once. More lines on her face, and her hair a solid, unlikely chestnut color, but the same shrewd eyes. She looks at me with a steady, measuring gaze and I’m glad I’m not trying to sell her anything.

“Yes?”

“Um, I’ve come to see Honey? And the baby. It’s Erica. Erica Calcott.” I smile slightly, watch her recognize the name and search my face for the features she knew.

“Erica! By Christ, I would never have known you! You look so different!”

“Twenty-three years might do that to a girl.” I smile.

“Well, come in, come in, we’re all in the front room.” She ushers me inside, gestures to a doorway on the left and suddenly I’m nervous about going in. I wonder who
we all
are.

“Thanks,” I say, hovering in the hall, hands clammy on the plastic flower wrapper.

“Go on in, go on,” she says, and I have no choice. “I hear you nearly met little Haydee already, on the way to the hospital!”

“Nearly!” I reply. I find myself the only one standing in a room full of seated people. It’s stiflingly hot. The view from the window wobbles slightly in the radiator haze and I feel my face flush crimson. I glance around, smile like an idiot. Dinny looks up sharply from one end of the sofa, and he smiles when he sees me.

Honey sits next to him, an empty carrycot at her feet and a bundle in her arms. There’s another young girl I don’t recognize, with shocking-pink hair and a crystal in her lip. Mo introduces her as Lydia, a friend of Honey’s, and an older man, thin and beady, is Mo’s partner Keith. There’s nowhere for me to sit so I dither awkwardly in the small room, and Honey struggles to sit up straighter.

“Oh, no—don’t get up!” I say, proffering the flowers and chocolates, then shunting them onto the table through a clutter of empty coffee mugs and a plate of rich tea biscuits.

“I wasn’t. I’m passing her to you,” Honey says, flicking her kohled eyelids and carefully maneuvering the baby toward me.

“Oh, no. No. You look comfortable.”

“Don’t be chicken-shit. Take her,” Honey insists, half smiling. “How did you find us?” she asks.

“I went down to the camp first—bumped into Patrick. He told me you were home.” I glance at Dinny, I can’t help it. He is watching me intently, but I can’t guess his expression. I drop my bag and take Haydee from her mother. A small pink face, still creased and angry, below a shock of dark hair finer than cobwebs. She doesn’t stir as I perch on the arm of the sofa, or as I kiss her forehead and smell the baby smell of brand-new skin and milky spit. I am suddenly curious to know how it would feel if this baby were mine. To be in on those secrets—the strength behind Beth’s gaze when she watches her son; the way he raises her up, makes her whole, just by being in the room. These little creatures that have such power over us. The beginnings of a need in me that I hadn’t known was there.