I took a sip of tea, my throat becoming suddenly dry in her presence. In the same white dress that she had arrived in and under the glow of the morning sun, she looked ethereal, and I found myself staring, like a young boy, at her lips, marveling at their naturally dark plum color. I cleared my throat and focused on my shoes briefly to empty the image from my head and fill it once more with the words I’d rehearsed.
“Mariette, I’m afraid your arrival has been a bit of a shock for my mother, as you can imagine. She lost her son, and then to learn four years later that she has . . . that she is told she has a grandson.”
“I know how it looks, Rudy,” she said, my name spoken with her hand to her throat. “But I can assure you that I knew your brother intimately and that I loved him for a period. And as a result of our love, of your brother’s love for me, we had a child. A child that he never got to see.”
The force with which she expelled these words took me aback. I felt that she was sterner than she needed to be, as if she expected an adverse response.
“I have come a long way to tell you this at an expense I can scarcely afford. I am here because I felt you needed to know. Edgar would have wanted you and your mother and brother to know.”
As alluring and confident as she was, there was still much doubt at my end.
“It may have been prudent to write perhaps. Mother loathes the element of surprise.”
“Writing is not my strong point. Besides, I thought a letter would not have given as much substance as to present the boy in person.”
“Where do you come from?”
“Just outside of a town called Bailleul.”
It was a name that I had read in Edgar’s letters, amongst a handful of other places.
“Do you have family there still?”
“No. The town was reduced to rubble. Our orchard has a crater the size of your drawing room, and many of our animals were taken by Germans.”
I felt a pang in my chest at her loss, but I still could not rely on this as truth.
“Why did you wait so long to come here?”
“I did not plan to at first. Samuel was ours: Edgar’s and mine. I did not wish to share him with strangers. Then as my son grew, I wondered what Edgar would want me to do.” She paused briefly, appearing pensive and wary of the words that would follow. The mention of Edgar’s name, I felt she knew, was painful for me. “It was not a decision I made lightly. I must admit I was fearful about meeting you. As time wore on I realized that by bringing Samuel here I was also returning Edgar in a way, to the place he loved. I began planning it two years ago, saved up the money to come when I felt that Samuel was old enough to travel.”
She looked at me directly then, willing me to challenge this.
“Then I must ask the obvious question. Do you have Samuel’s birth certificate?”
“You have to understand that there were times when the urgency of the situation did not allow for the orderly rules found in a place free from war.”
I wondered if it was her intent to show that I knew little of the hardship she spoke about. Regardless, I felt some guilt.
“But I have a certificate of marriage.” She pulled a piece of paper from her carry bag and placed it on the table in front of me. I stared at their names, if indeed it was she, Mariette Lavier and Edgar Stuart Watts, sealed in script. “I also have this, which was given by a dear friend of ours as a gift.” She handed me a small silver spoon engraved with the name Samuel Edgar Watts.
For several seconds I was torn between mistrust and longing before the first feeling momentarily fell away. The names on the certificate could have been cleverly forged if not for the signature of my brother. It looked rushed, but it was undoubtedly his. My heart felt crushed with emotions. If she weren’t there, I would have run my fingers over the writing, touched perhaps one of the last pieces of paper Edgar held, the last words he might have written.
“How did he die?” I asked.
Her voice softened then. She could see that I was having difficulty looking at her.
“I suspect I know only as much as you and your mother. He was fighting at the front, and then . . . there were so many dead. Some were unrecognizable. That is all I know. I tried to learn more, of course, since.”
She reached then across the table and put her hand over mine. I would have leaped across the table and cried into her shoulder, but she was a stranger and I was a man groomed with rules about such intimacies.
“Will you tell me about him and as much as you can?” I asked, trying hard to strengthen the sudden frailty of my speech and fearful that my stutter might return.
She told me then how she had met him on his leave, in the town near where she lived. She was instantly taken with his unforced charm and decency above all.
“He was a true gentleman but even more so a soldier. I know the men loved him, and he loved them also. He would do anything for them.”
Edgar had been sent to the town of Bailleul to recuperate from a minor injury. They met when she was delivering fruit from her father’s orchard to Edgar’s place of convalescence. He was later billeted at her house. They were friends first, she said. After he returned from his next campaign, they were married. It was wild and impetuous, she said, and her father was not happy about it at first, but Edgar completely won him over. They were married; then Edgar went missing shortly after.
“He was very different from other men,” she said.
“How so?”
“He was silent, sometimes distant, but yet incredibly present also. That probably makes no sense to you.”
It did. Edgar could express deep caring without the use of words, and he noticed everything even when you thought he didn’t.
“Do you have any letters he might have sent you?”
She shook her head.
It was difficult to fault her story, but there were still many holes to fill. If he had married, why didn’t he write home about it? He had written frequently in the early days. Why not about this? Was he carried away with their relationship with no time to write? Or was he ashamed of something?
The situation I found myself in was certainly unusual, and one I thought I could somehow free myself from with perhaps a small sum of money and a promise of written correspondence. But I was yet to understand that I was already trapped by Mariette, and shortly with no want for release.
“He used to talk about your holidays at the beach. He had a collection of shells in his room.”
Peggy and the child were crossing the lawn toward us, the boy pointing toward his mother.
“It was Edgar who told me that his mother might have difficultly liking me but that you perhaps would better deal with the situation. Which was why I chose not to talk to your mother yesterday. I know it was impolite, but I thought that she would throw me out, and I had no other address or knowledge of your employment that I gained upon my arrival. Perhaps it would have been easier there. I am sorry I caused such a spectacle.”
“You were right to have me summoned,” I said, wondering whether Mother might have been as charitable concerning accommodation.
“Edgar was a good man, and he would have been a good husband and father, too. I cannot tell you how his death broke my heart.”
Something struck me suddenly.
“Did anyone else from his regiment know you?”
She reached for the certificate, quickly returning it to her bag.
“There was a man, but I don’t remember his name. He came and told me that Edgar was killed, and then he was gone. I should have asked more questions. I should perhaps have sought him out.”
So there really was nothing that she could tell me. Was it all too convenient? I had to ask myself. Yet there was detail that she had said about Edgar. No one would have known about the trips to Blackpool when we were small and the collection of shells that Edgar kept in a box in his room. I could not have imagined Edgar discussing such things with other men. But even as I thought this, I doubted it also. Who knows what peo
ple discuss when they lie for hours in wait for the enemy, and with no guarantees for the morrow.
Peggy was now carrying the child, who had begun to cry.
“He never found out he was a father,” Mariette said, rising from the table, as Samuel’s cries brought an end to this turn of conversation. “I know my arrival must come as a shock to you. There is much to absorb.”
Mariette stepped gracefully down the stairs toward Peggy and the child.
“He was suddenly upset by something,” said Peggy. “The poor mite heard a noise and thought there were wild animals lurking behind the oak trees. I tried to show him there was nothing there to hurt him.”
“He is too young to understand much . . . not yet four, and he scares easily,” said Mariette, the boy climbing between the women, across to his mother. “If you will excuse me.”
“Of course,” I said, standing, as she passed me briskly to enter the manor. I sat down again numbly, the information overloading my brain, as the child’s wails faded behind me.
“Are you all right?” Peggy asked at my side.
“I’m not sure,” I said, watching the wind disturbing the surface of the water, my own thoughts scattered.
“You should have a rest today. I will get you some water.”
“No, thank you, Peggy. It is probably you who needs the rest. Thank you for looking after the child.”
She started to walk away and then stopped.
“There is something there,” said Peggy.
“What are you talking about?”
“The boy. There is something there of Edgar. Not that it is any of my business.”
“Peggy, it is every bit your business also.”
She graciously nodded, then left to see my mother.
Mariette’s story was believable, from her description of Edgar’s character to the things he said about me. But there was still something about her visit that did not sit well. Why now? Saving the money to come here sounded feasible, but the excuse that she grew to suddenly realize what Edgar might want her to do seemed rehearsed. Was she here only to present the child, or was she biding her time to tell us more?
CHAPTER 4
Mariette didn’t come out of her room for several hours, and there was no noise from the child. I went to the library to inspect the photographs on the wall. I was curious at what Peggy had said. But I couldn’t see the resemblance. The child, if he was Edgar’s, did not look like any of us as children. He was olive skinned and narrow shouldered, and his eyes weren’t as deeply set. But such distinctions proved nothing. The look of the child sometimes counted little toward birthright. We did all carry features of our parents, but we were all very different as well. Edgar with Mother’s walnut-colored hair but Father’s bright-blue eyes, Laurence very much like Mother with her hazel eyes, and I dark-haired and blue-eyed like Father. Though Peggy was only ever looking out for our interests, I presumed that she could also be feeling sympathy for the child.
I was dreading lunch. When Mother took a dislike to someone or something, one could rarely turn her around. I knew she would have woken up thinking this problem had gone away, that I would have made that happen; Mother was habituated to her various instructions being followed without question.
First to arrive at lunch, I found that the table was set for only two; Peggy advised me that Mariette had excused herself from joining us for reasons unknown, but one, I imagined, had something to do with my mother. Mother came in with a little more color to her cheeks. She wore a lavender dress to the floor, pearl earrings, and her hair in a chignon. She was still very handsome, and the resemblance between my mother and Laurence was striking. I stood up to pull out the chair for her.
“Are you feeling better?”
“You know how I’m feeling,” she said.
“The weather is beautiful today,” I said. I wanted the lunch to be light and not subject to my mother’s fluctuating and often despondent mood.
“Don’t try to distract me from what is happening. Peggy told me that she is still here. And the child.” The last word was spoken with a resentful undertone.
The change in my mother was significant when she learned of Edgar missing. She never fully recovered from the news and had found very little joy in anything. Father had perhaps taken a little of the joy out of her life toward the end of his. But it was Edgar’s death that caused a permanent melancholy, which had further aggrieved her physically. I had felt her grief, and understood, though looking at her today, I had to wonder why she didn’t concentrate on her two living sons. Laurence, a bit of a fop, may have been that way in part because he’d had the least attention of us all. And I, well I certainly didn’t have the charisma of Edgar, but I was here at least to look after her welfare.
“Mother, she has a child and is still very tired from travel. I must allow her the benefit of the doubt. She has said some things that do indeed tell me she knew him. Loved him even.”
She tut-tutted and looked away, and I was concerned that she would have another episode.
“Mother, please, if you will. Just keep an open mind. If for nothing else but to indulge me.”
I passed her the photograph and told her that I had seen the marriage certificate and about the things that Mariette had revealed, in particular what she knew about us. Mother stared for many seconds at the granular image of Edgar as she swallowed back her emotion, her feelings carefully checked. My news had clearly affected her; her hands trembled as she passed back the picture.
“So she knew him!” she said. “That doesn’t necessarily relate to paternity, does it? Forgery is not hard to come by. She could have heard about him or overheard a conversation he’d had with someone else. She could have planned this visit the moment she learned of his death.”
She was steely despite her ailing health. I wondered if she felt somewhat bitter about this other life of Edgar’s, the years in France we’d been excluded from.
“I’ll admit,” I said. “There are many avenues to be explored.”
“Do you believe her? Please tell me you aren’t just enamored with her. She is very pretty, Rudy, but sometimes women are most cunning, and they use many devices to get what they want.”
I wondered then if Mother had used some herself.
“Mother, I can only go by what I’ve heard. On that basis the case she presents seems plausible. I can’t just send her away. We would have to live with that if it turned out to be true . . .”
“The Flemish have had it hard. I feel sorry for them. They have lost homes, they have lost much. But there are also some who exploit that sort of hardship and use it to full advantage.”
I could not discount what Mother said, even though the undertone was a shade more discriminatory than speculative. She was suspicious of every foreigner.
“I think we should go to the police,” she said. “They will sort it out. She needs at least to be taken somewhere else while we examine any documentation.”
“Mother, I don’t think that’s necessary. I will question her further and get to the heart of it. I will seek help from Roland, and if I feel that she is not telling the truth, I will indeed send her away.” Roland Alderman, our family lawyer, had been in my parents’ employ since before I was born.
My mother sat there sadly, staring at her plate of food. She was very thin, and I did worry so about her health.
“I can’t deal with this just yet,” she said.
I nodded and patted Mother’s hand. “I will take care of everything. I will take some leave to help Bert with some of the house maintenance and sort out the business of Mariette and her son while I’m here. And where possible I will keep them out of your way for the time being.”
It wouldn’t be hard. My mother spent a great deal of time in the villa.
“Then promise me that you will be guided by your head, Rudy. You have had it in the clouds for much of your life.”
“Yes, Mother,” I said to humor her. It was not unusual for Mother to bring up my personality at these
times, and in doing so highlight her preferences. But I was used to it. “You must eat something.”
I watched her sip soup and eat a roll with butter, satisfied at least she would not leave the table without something. Our conversation turned to matters relating to the estate. She had been scrupulous about every penny since my father’s death, and part of the property management, in Edgar’s absence, had been passed on to me. She asked me to inspect her accounting for the farming leaseholds, several of which were becoming more uncertain.
As was our custom I let Mother be, to sit in peace with a sherry. I kissed her on the cheek, my hand on her shoulder. She grabbed my hand and held it a few seconds, encasing it greedily in her own, as if she should lose me, too. And it was one of the rare moments that she showed how much she loved me. Perhaps it was only need, but I felt her reaching for a connection. I wanted to tell her that everything would be all right. But I couldn’t of course. Edgar was not coming home, Laurence was still being an ass, and our financial situation was worsening with each passing year. I loved my mother, and I would tell her if she’d let me. But I had never really understood her expectations of me. She was complex.
I read through the mail—several bills and an invitation to a meeting to discuss the future of the county’s conservation—before stepping out into the foyer. Peggy met me on the way through to the kitchen and advised me that she had taken a tray of food to Mariette and left it there beside them, both asleep.
I took the opportunity to find Bert bundling hay on the grazing pasture close by, to learn that the maintenance budget was fully spent for that month. He said he was wondering if he could sell one of the younger horses since I was now so often in Manchester and there was no one to ride them, whether the money for the sale could go toward several repairs.
It made sense, but I went into the stable and stroked the nose of Sheriff. He seemed happy to see me, rubbing his face against my shoulder and then tapping his feet. It had been a while since I had paid him attention, and he needed a run, he was telling me. I saddled him and rode far across the meadows and glens, up the rocky hills in the north and down the winding tracks to the woods where we had all ridden as boys, each with our own horse. I walked Sheriff then until I found the circle of trees we used to sit against to talk.
In a Field of Blue Page 3
