Walking in Darkness (17 page)

Especially when her mother huskily went on, ‘Sophie, I must see her again – you see, I’m ill, very ill . . .’

Sophie had looked at her sharply, hearing a note in her voice that sent a shiver of premonition through her.

‘What is it? What’s wrong with you, Mamma?’

‘Leukaemia.’

Sophie had taken a shocked breath, staring at her pallor, the dark shadows under her eyes, an air of exhaustion, a lack of energy she had noticed the minute she arrived back home. Her mother had never been a big woman, but she had visibly lost a lot of weight since Sophie last saw her, she had shrunk away to nothing.

‘Is it . . . serious?’ she whispered, but she guessed the answer before her mother spoke.

‘The doctors have given me three months.’

‘Three months . . .’ That was an even bigger shock.

‘They said I should have seen them sooner. The illness has gone too far, there’s nothing they can do for me now.’

‘But surely they are trying something? Can’t you have some treatment? Chemotherapy? There must be something.’ Her mother’s resignation made Sophie burn with rage. ‘Don’t just give in, Mamma. See the doctors again – make them try to help you.’

Her mother had gestured wearily, not wanting to talk about her illness. ‘Never mind that, Sophie. Listen, you must find Anya, bring her back to me – I can’t die without seeing her one more time, I’ve never forgotten her, tell her that, she was my first baby, I remember her more and more. I must see her. Promise me you’ll find her and bring her back to me.’

Sophie had nodded, her eyes insistent. ‘Yes, I’ll promise to do that, Mamma, if you promise me you’ll go to see your doctors again, at once, and ask them for treatment.’

Her mother had promised and when Sophie had talked to her again last week on the phone Mamma had said she was having fortnightly treatments at the local hospital. ‘They exhaust me, I get so sick afterwards, though,’ she had whispered, and Sophie had winced at the weakness of her voice.

‘Don’t give up going, Mamma,’ she had pleaded, and her mother had promised she wouldn’t.

‘Have you found Anya yet?’

‘I shall see Gowrie in three days’ time. Don’t worry, I’ll soon have news for you. You’ll see Anya soon, I promise.’

She had made that promise to a dying woman, but she made it for herself too. She had begun to realize that when she found her sister she could talk to the living, not the dead; could see Anya face to face, hear Anya’s voice answering her.

Don Gowrie got up from his chair and began restlessly walking round and round the room, to the door and back, to the bathroom and back, like an animal in a cage. She felt the frustrated rage from him, the scent of danger, and watched him anxiously.

‘Why in God’s name did she tell you after all this time? Why couldn’t she go on keeping her mouth shut? I kept my side of the bargain. She’s had a small fortune from me over the years.’

‘Is that all you think counts? Money?’ Sophie felt her chest tear with contempt and anger and grief. All these years she had thought her sister was dead, and she was alive, and all this man could talk about was money. ‘My mother loved Anya –’ she began and he broke in hoarsely.

‘I love her too, do you think I don’t? Not in the beginning, OK, not then, I hardly knew her at first, but I learnt to love her as if she was my own. I forgot she wasn’t. My God, this happened nearly thirty years ago.’ He swung and glared at her. ‘Your whole lifetime! Have you thought of that? You hadn’t even been born, I’ve had all those years with Cathy and –’

‘And we haven’t!’ Sophie was trembling with indignation. ‘My mother hasn’t set eyes on her own child all this time. I haven’t seen my own sister!’

‘If you care about your sister you wouldn’t be here!’ Don Gowrie said grimly, and Sophie froze, looking at him with pain, feeling a thorn pierce her heart.

He nodded at her. ‘Don’t look at me like that – you know it’s true. I’m terrified for her. What do you think it will do to her, to find out she isn’t who she thinks she is? You just arrive, after all these years, full of self-righteousness, talking like some avenging angel, demanding to see her, wanting her to know she is your sister – and if you tell her, you’ll destroy her life.’

‘My mother is dying,’ Sophie said fiercely.

He stared at her, his breathing audible.

‘She has leukaemia, and has been given three months to live. She wants to see her daughter again before she dies.’

‘God,’ he said in a low, shaken voice. ‘I’m sorry. I’m very sorry, but . . . look, it isn’t going to save your mother’s life if she sees Cathy, but it will ruin Cathy’s life. She has grown up believing herself to be my daughter, believing herself to be Eddie Ramsey’s granddaughter, and his heir. Now you’re going to take all that away from her.’

Sophie was icy cold now. Her knees were trembling; she sat down suddenly on the end of her bed.

He watched her stricken face, nodding. ‘You’re going to change the way she sees herself, her whole life, how she sees me and her mother, her grandfather, everything she has grown up believing to be her family, her history, her roots.’

Confusedly, Sophie muttered, ‘But they aren’t . . . she isn’t . . .’

‘But she believes they are! You’re going to take away her past and her future.’

Sophie looked at him dumbly.

He searched her face, his own tight, sombre, angry. ‘You stupid woman, you haven’t even thought about what havoc you’ll cause, have you? You’ll bring Cathy’s whole world crashing down. For a start, you don’t know Eddie Ramsey. He won’t leave his money to her once he knows she isn’t his flesh and blood.’

‘He need never know! Cathy could come and see my mother, just once, and Eddie Ramsey doesn’t have to be told anything about it.’

‘You talk so glibly about it all – if Cathy finds out how long will it be before she gives it away somehow? She’s a woman. Women can never keep secrets.’

‘You just don’t know women! They keep secrets all their life. Look at the way my mother kept your secret! Nearly thirty years!’

‘She should have taken it to the grave!’ he snapped, then realized what he had said, looked self-conscious and plunged on, ‘And then there’s her marriage – what will the truth do to that? How will her husband feel when he finds out that he is married to a totally different person to the woman he thought he’d married? He’s this classy Englishman, upper-class, rich, who thinks he married a girl from his own background, a girl with a huge fortune coming to her one day. He didn’t bargain for waking up married to some nobody from nowhere with not a penny to her name.’

Sophie’s mind clouded with doubt. She wished she could deny what Gowrie was saying, throw it back into his teeth. She wanted to see her sister face-to-face so badly that she had convinced herself that Anya would feel the same, but what if Anya refused to believe her? In her position, would anyone want to believe a story that could destroy their entire life?

Don Gowrie came and sat down next to her on the bed, took both her hands. She stiffened, pulling her hands free. He wasn’t getting round her; she already knew he was a consummate politician, you couldn’t take anything he said or did at face value.

‘You’ve heard your mother’s version, it’s only fair you should hear mine now,’ he said quietly. ‘Just listen, please. It was 1968. I only arrived in Prague that summer. I was a young and ambitious diplomat, East Europe was my special interest and I was thrilled to be sent to Prague. It was an exciting city to be living in at that time. The students were always out in the streets, in the cafés, playing music, playing chess and talking politics, talking about freedom and justice and the right to determine your own fate. They made me think in a way I’d never thought before – made me realize how lucky I was, as an American, how many things I’d taken for granted. My country had never been invaded, held down, oppressed. Freedom was my birthright but I’d never even thought about it, I’d always taken it for granted, like the air I breathed. That year was a turning point in my life for many reasons.’ He paused, sighing, staring at the floor, his face grim.

Sophie waited, not liking to break into his thoughts, wondering what visions of the past he saw. Not pretty ones, from his expression.

‘It was a very hot August,’ he slowly began again. ‘Prague was crowded, the streets were cobbled, traffic made a hell of a racket on them, my wife was delicate, even then, and couldn’t stand the city heat, the noise and traffic. More and more she stayed indoors, homesick, miserable – it wasn’t good for her, or for our child.’

Sophie had heard her mother’s version of this – Mamma had said Mrs Gowrie was highly strung, a hysteric, her moods always changing, weeping or laughing for no reason. She had spent a lot of time lying down on a sofa or not even getting up in the mornings, spending days in bed at times.

Don Gowrie sighed, his face setting into weary lines. ‘I wanted to send her back to the States, and the child too, but she didn’t want to go alone. She wanted me to come with her, and of course I couldn’t, I had a job to do. So she wouldn’t go either. I should have insisted.’ He rubbed a hand across his eyes as if they were sore, and the rims were red as if he had been crying.

Sophie felt sorry for him; the charmer, the plausible politician had gone and in their place was a real man who was full of anger and pain.

‘But if I talked about it she just started to cry,’ he said. ‘And I was afraid to let her work herself into a crying jag, that always made her worse. I’d got into the habit of giving in to her; it made life easier. So I let her stay, but it seemed better for her to be out of the city, so I looked around for a house somewhere in the country. I knew a scientist who was working in Prague at the university. He offered me his cottage in your village, Kysella. It was a small place: a couple of bedrooms, a sitting-room, a kitchen, but it had a bathroom, and there was a delightful garden; I remember a hedge of honeysuckle, the scent was overpowering on hot nights . . . and roses, old-fashioned roses, big red and pink ones, with an incredible perfume.’

His face was dreamy. Watching him, Sophie said quietly, ‘It isn’t there any more. My mother told me it was pulled down in the Seventies when they built a new road.’

He came out of his memories and grimaced. ‘Really? That’s progress for you. They tear your life up behind you as you live it. You never have time to visit your own past these days – it has usually gone when you go back there. I remember that house so well. It was a mistake for me to rent it, though. My wife wasn’t strong enough to run the house herself, or even take care of our little girl – we had brought a nanny with us from the States but she got homesick after a few weeks. She gave notice and went home. We asked the village priest to recommend someone to help out, and he suggested your mother because she was the only woman in the village who spoke any English.’

‘Yes, she learnt it from my father’s books – he was a linguist, you know, he could speak half a dozen languages.’

‘I never met him, but I remember my wife said your mother talked about him all the time.’

Her mother had desperately wanted to keep up with him, feeling that in going away to university he was leaving her far behind. When he’d had his degree he would have been able to start a good career, earn a lot of money, so she put up with their separations for months on end, but she was conscious of the gap between them and wanted to bridge it.

Pavel Narodni had been clever and ambitious, a young man with a brilliant mind. He had had a wonderful future ahead of him, and his wife had wanted to fit herself to share it.

Lucky we can’t see the future, Sophie thought; at least she had a few happy years, without any premonitions of his death during those awful days when the Russians invaded. She loved him so much – she never felt that way about Franz, I’d stake my life on it. She was fond of him, yes, but she wasn’t passionately in love, the way she was with my father. Even now, when she speaks about Papa, her eyes glow.

‘My wife couldn’t speak Czech although she had a little German,’ said Don Gowrie. ‘Of course, German was the second language to most people in your part of the country. I spoke Czech but I was rarely there. I didn’t know your mother too well; I interviewed her when she first started work for us and I saw her briefly whenever I came down to Kysella, but when I was there she kept out of the way most of the time to give me time alone with my wife and our child.’

‘Mamma says your little girl loved to play with Anya,’ Sophie volunteered.

He looked blank. ‘I guess she did, but not often when I was there. But Elly started helping your mother with her English; it gave her something to do. She was lonely out there in the country, but she couldn’t bear living the life of a diplomat’s wife. They have a lot of socialising, you know; in foreign countries they tend to live in each other’s pockets, endless parties and chit-chat. Elly hated that. She wanted peace and quiet, she went for long walks through the fields, she rambled in the woods near the village. Early nights and early mornings suited her, not parties and drinking and gossip. And she took to your mother from the start. They had more in common than you’d think. They were both mothers of little girls the same age and they both had husbands whose work took them away a lot of the time.’

And did they both feel uneasy about keeping up with a husband whose ambition drove him? Afraid that they would let him down, that his lifestyle would never suit them? Did Don Gowrie make his wife feel that, for all her family money, she was somehow a failure?

Sophie watched him, wondering what sort of man he really was behind his politician’s mask, behind the charm and good manners, the carefully chosen words, the coaxing smiles. Had he loved his wife? Did he still love her? Had he loved their child, or had she only been a means to an end – the necessary child he had to have to make certain of the Ramsey fortune? If only she knew for certain, because the next obvious question was: did he love Anya? Or was she also just a means to an end? Was the Ramsey money all he had ever cared about?

‘And then there was an outbreak of measles in the village,’ he said flatly. ‘And Cathy went down with them. My wife went into panic immediately, she always did where illness was concerned, for herself or me or the child. Elly had always been delicate herself; she was ill a good deal during her own childhood, she grew up a bit of a hypochondriac. The local doctor didn’t speak English, but your mother translated for them both. The man told my wife to keep Cathy in a darkened room, to avoid problems with her eyesight, and keep her away from other children.’