The Shifting Fog (26 page)

Flicked through the pages—photographs, invitations, menus, diary entries—scanning for dates. 1896, 1897, 1898 …

There it was: the household photograph of 1899, its shape familiar but its proportions different. Two long rows of straight-faced servants complementing the front line of family. Lord and Lady Ashbury, the Major in his uniform, Mr Frederick—all so much younger and less tattered—Jemima, and an unknown woman I took to be Penelope, Mr Frederick’s late wife, both with swollen stomachs. One of those bulges was Hannah, I realised; the other, an ill-fated boy whose blood would one day fail him. A lone child stood at the end of the row near Nanny (ancient even then). A small blond boy: David. Full of life and light; blissfully unaware of all the future had in store.

I let my gaze shift from his face and onto the rows of staff behind. Mr Hamilton, Mrs Townsend, Myra …

My breath caught. I stared into the gaze of a young serving maid. There was no mistaking her. Not because she resembled Mother—far from it. Rather, she resembled me. The hair and eyes were darker, but the likeness was uncanny. The same long neck, chin tapered to a dimpled point, brows curved to give a permanent impression of deliberation.

Most surprising of all though, far more so than our resemblance: Mother was smiling. Oh, not so as you’d realise unless you knew her well. It wasn’t a smile of mirth or social greeting. It was slight, little more than a muscular tremor, easily excused as a trick of the light by those who didn’t know her. But I could see. Mother was smiling to herself. Smiling like someone with a secret—

—I apologise, Marcus, for the interruption, but I have had an unexpected caller. I was sitting here, admiring the gillyflowers, telling you of Mother, when a knock came at the door. I expected Sylvia, come to tell me about her male friend, or complain about one of the other residents, but it wasn’t. Rather it was Ursula, the film-maker. I’ve mentioned her before, surely?

‘I hope I’m not disturbing you,’ she said.

‘No,’ I said, setting aside my walkman.

‘I won’t stay long. I was in the neighbourhood and it seemed silly to head back to London without popping in.’

‘You’ve been at the house.’

She nodded. ‘We were shooting a scene in the gardens, the light was just perfect.’

I asked her about the scene, curious as to which part of their story had been reconstructed today.

‘It was a scene of courtship,’ she said, ‘a romantic scene. It’s actually one of my favourites.’ She blushed, shook her head so that her fringe swung like a curtain. ‘It’s silly. I wrote the lines, I knew them when they were mere black marks on white paper—scratched them out and rewrote them a hundred times—yet I was still so moved to hear them spoken today.’

‘You’re a romantic,’ I said.

‘I suppose I am.’ She tilted her head to the side. ‘Ridiculous, isn’t it. I didn’t know the real Robbie Hunter at all; I’ve created a version of him from his poetry, from what other people wrote about him. Yet I find …’ She paused, raised her eyebrows self-deprecatingly. ‘I fear I’m in love with a figure of my own creation.’

‘And what is your Robbie like?’

‘He’s passionate. Creative. Devoted.’ She leaned her chin on her hand as she considered. ‘But I think what I admire most about him is his hope. Such brittle hope. People say he was a poet of disillusionment, but I’m not so sure. I’ve always found something positive in his poems. The way he found possibility amid the horrors he experienced.’ She shook her head, empathy narrowed her eyes. ‘It must have been unspeakably difficult. A sensitive young man thrust into such a devastating conflict. It’s a wonder any of them were ever able to resume their lives, pick up where they left off. Love again.’

‘I was once loved by a young man like that,’ I said. ‘He went to war and we exchanged letters. It was through those letters I realised how I felt about him. And he about me.’

‘Was he changed when he came back?’

‘Oh yes,’ I said softly. ‘There were none that came back unchanged.’

Her voice was gentle. ‘When did you lose him? Your husband?’

It took me a moment to realise what she meant. ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘He wasn’t my husband. Alfred and I were never married.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, I thought …’ She motioned toward the wedding picture on my dressing table.

I shook my head. ‘That’s not Alfred, that’s John: Ruth’s father. He and I were married sure enough. Lord knows we shouldn’t have been.’

She raised her eyebrows in query.

‘John was a terrific waltzer and a terrific lover, but not much of a husband. I dare say I wasn’t much of a wife either. I’d never intended to marry, you see. I wasn’t at all prepared.’

Ursula stood, picked up the photograph. Traced her thumb absently along the top. ‘He was handsome.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That was the attraction, I expect.’

‘Was he an archaeologist too?’

‘Heavens, no. John was a public servant.’

‘Oh,’ she set the photograph down. Turned to me. ‘I thought you might have met through work. Or at university.’

I shook my head. In 1938, when John and I met, I’d have called a doctor for anyone who suggested I might some day attend university. Become an archaeologist. I was working in a restaurant—the Lyons’ Corner House in the Strand—serving unending fried fish to the unending dining public. Mrs Havers, who ran the place, liked the idea of someone who’d been in service. She was fond of telling anyone who’d listen there was none knew how to polish cutlery quite like the girls from service.

‘John and I met quite by accident,’ I said. ‘At a dance club.’

I had agreed, grudgingly, to meet a girl from work. Another waitress. Nancy Everidge: a name I’ve never forgotten. Strange. She was nothing to me. Someone I worked with, avoided where I could, though that was easier said than done. She was one of those women who couldn’t let well enough alone. A busybody, I suppose. Had to know everyone else’s business. Was only too ready to interfere. Nancy must’ve taken it into her head I didn’t socialise enough, didn’t join in with the other girls on Monday mornings when they cackled about the weekend, for she started on at me about coming dancing, wouldn’t let up until I’d agreed to meet her at Marshall’s Club on Friday night.

I sighed. ‘The girl I was supposed to meet didn’t show up.’

‘But John did?’ Ursula said.

‘Yes,’ I said, remembering the smoky air, the stool in the corner where I perched uncomfortably, scanning the crowd for Nancy. Oh,
she was full of excuses and apologies when I saw her next, but it was too late then. What was done was done. ‘I met John instead.’

‘And you fell in love?’

‘I fell pregnant.’

Ursula’s mouth formed an ‘o’ of realisation.

‘I realised four months after we met. We were married a month later. That’s the way things were done back then.’ I shifted so that my lower back was resting on a pillow. ‘Lucky for us war intervened and we were spared the charade.’

‘He went to war?’

‘We both did. John enlisted and I went to work in a field hospital in France.’

She looked confused. ‘What about Ruth?’

‘She was evacuated to an elderly Anglican minister and his wife. Spent the war years there.’

‘All of them?’ Ursula said, shocked. ‘How did you bear it?’

‘Oh, I visited on leave, and I received regular letters: gossip from the village and bosh from the pulpit; rather grim descriptions of the local children.’

She was shaking her head, brows drawn together in dismay. ‘I can’t imagine … Four years away from your child.’

I was unsure how to answer, how to explain. How does one begin to confess that mothering didn’t come naturally? That from the first Ruth had seemed a stranger? That the fond feeling of inevitable connectedness, of which books are written and myths are fashioned, was never mine?

My empathy had been used up, I suppose. On Hannah, and the others at Riverton. Oh, I was fine with strangers, was able to tend them, reassure them, even ease them into death. I just found it difficult to let myself get close again. I preferred casual acquaintances. Was hopelessly underprepared for the emotional demands of parenthood.

Ursula saved me from having to answer. ‘I suppose there was a war on,’ she said sadly. ‘Sacrifices had to be made.’ She reached out to squeeze my hand.

I smiled, tried not to feel false. Wondered what she would think if she knew that far from regretting my decision to send Ruth away, I’d relished the escape. That after a decade of drifting, through
tedious jobs and hollow relationships, unable to put the events of Riverton behind me, in war I found my thread of purpose.

‘So it was after the war you decided to become an archaeologist.’

‘Yes,’ I said, my voice hoarse. ‘After the war.’

‘Why archaeology?’

The answer to that question is so complicated I could only say simply: ‘I had an epiphany.’

She was delighted. ‘Really? During the war?’

‘There was so much death. So much destruction. Things became clearer somehow.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I can imagine that.’

‘I found myself wondering at the impermanence of things. One day, I thought, people will have forgotten any of this happened. This war, these deaths, this demolition. Oh not for some time, hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, but eventually it will fade. Take its place amongst the layers of the past. Its savagery and horrors replaced in popular imagination by others still to come.’

Ursula shook her head. ‘Hard to imagine.’

‘But certain to happen. The Punic Wars at Carthage, the Peloponnesian War, the Battle of Artemisium. All reduced to chapters in history books.’ I paused. Vehemence had tired me, robbed me of breath. I am not used to speaking so many words in quick succession. My voice when I spoke was reedy. ‘I became obsessed with discovering the past. Facing the past.’

Ursula smiled, her dark eyes shining. ‘I know exactly what you mean. That’s why I make historical films. You uncover the past, and I try to recreate it.’

‘Yes,’ I said. I hadn’t thought of it like that.

Ursula shook her head. ‘I admire you, Grace. You’ve done so much with your life.’

‘Temporal illusion,’ I said, shrugging. ‘Give someone more time and they’ll appear to have done more with it.’

She laughed. ‘You’re being modest. It can’t have been easy. A woman in the fifties—a mother—trying to get a tertiary education. Was your husband supportive?’

‘I was on my own by then.’

Her eyes widened. ‘But how did you manage?’

‘I studied part time for a long time. Ruth was at school in the days and I had a very good neighbour, Mrs Finbar, who used to sit with her some evenings when I worked.’ I hesitated. ‘I was just fortunate the educational expenses were taken care of.’

‘A scholarship?’

‘In a sense. I’d come into some money, unexpectedly.’

‘Your husband,’ said Ursula, brows knitting in sympathy. ‘He was killed at war?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘No, he wasn’t. But our marriage was.’

Her gaze drifted once more to my wedding photo.

‘We divorced when he returned to London. Times had changed by then. Everyone had seen and done so much. It seemed rather pointless to remain joined to a spouse one didn’t care for. He moved to America and married the sister of a GI he’d met in France. Poor fellow; he was killed soon after in a road accident.’

She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry …’

‘Don’t be. Not on my account. It was so long ago. I barely remember him, you know. Odd snatches of memory, more like dreams. It’s Ruth who misses him. She’s never forgiven me.’

‘She wishes you’d stayed together.’

I nodded. Lord knows my failure to provide her a father figure is one of the old grievances that colour our relationship.

Ursula sighed. ‘I wonder whether Finn will feel that way one day.’

‘You and his father … ?’

She shook her head. ‘It wouldn’t have worked.’ She said it so firmly I knew better than to probe. ‘Finn and I are better this way.’

‘Where is he today?’ I said. ‘Finn?’

‘My mother’s minding him. They were at the park for ice-cream last I heard.’ She rolled her watch around her wrist to read the time. ‘Goodness! I hadn’t realised it was getting so late. I’d better be going, give her some relief.’

‘I’m sure she doesn’t need relieving. It’s special, grandparents and grandchildren. So much simpler.’

Is it always so, I wonder? I think perhaps it is. While one’s child takes a part of one’s heart to use and misuse as they please, a
grandchild is different. Gone are the bonds of guilt and responsibility that burden the maternal relationship. The way to love is free.

When you were born, Marcus, I was knocked sideways. What a wonderful surprise those feelings were. Parts of me that had shut down decades before, that I’d grown used to doing without, were suddenly awakened. I treasured you. Recognised you. Loved you with a power almost painful.

As you grew, you became my little friend. Followed me about my house, claimed your own space in my study and set about exploring the maps and drawings I’d collected on my travels. Questions, so many questions, that I never tired of answering. Indeed, it is a conceit I allow myself that I am responsible, in some part, for the fine, accomplished man you have become …

‘They must be in here somewhere,’ said Ursula, searching her bag for car keys, preparing to leave.

I was beset by a sudden impulse to make her stay. ‘I have a grandson, you know. Marcus. He’s a writer of mysteries.’

‘I know,’ she said, smiling as she stopped fossicking. ‘I’ve read his books.’

‘Have you?’ Pleased as I always am.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They’re very good.’

‘Can you keep a secret?’ I said.

She nodded eagerly, leaned close.

‘I haven’t read them,’ I whispered. ‘Not right the way through.’

She laughed. ‘I promise not to tell.’

‘I’m so proud of him, and I’ve tried, I really have. I begin each with strong resolve, but no matter how much I’m enjoying them, I only ever get halfway. I adore a good mystery—Agatha Christie and the like—but I’m afraid I’m rather weak-stomached. I’m not one for all that bloody description they go on with these days.’

‘And you worked in a field hospital!’