Lost Autumn
Page 1
Advance Praise for Lost Autumn
“Truly wonderful storytelling.”
—Natasha Lester, author of The Paris Seamstress
“Captivating . . . both a grand adventure and a tender reflection on how lives bump against one another, leaving bruises or, sometimes, deep wounds that take a lifetime to heal.”
—Kelli Estes, author of The Girl Who Wrote in Silk
“Grants us a peek into the private chambers of the British monarchy, where the extraordinary long to be ordinary, duty competes with desire, and nothing truly happens behind closed doors. MacColl reflects on the push and pull of life in the spotlight through a compelling mix of characters and an absorbing story I won’t soon forget.”
—Ellen Keith, author of The Dutch Wife
“I loved Maddie Bright, born writer and extraordinary young woman . . . MacColl is emotionally sure-footed, skilfully warming and chilling your heart as she dwells on royalty, humanity, the psychological ravages of war, and the persistence of love.”
—Frances Liardet, author of We Must Be Brave
“With extraordinary insight and compassion, MacColl has woven a captivating story of charming rakes, lost innocence, and the devastating consequences that sometimes result when we choose to place our trust in the wrong people. Exquisitely told.”
—Lynda Cohen Loigman, author of The Two-Family House and The Wartime Sisters
“A thoughtful, multilayered tale that probes the stories we tell ourselves about family and friendship, power and control. MacColl’s writing deftly—yet gently—explores the nature of courage and kept me guessing to the very end.”
—Kirsty Manning, author of The Song of the Jade Lily
“A deliciously absorbing, endlessly fascinating, and perfectly heartbreaking tale of royalty, obligation, lies, friendship, and redemption. . . . I sobbed my way through the final hundred pages and will be thinking about this beautiful book for a long time to come. Lost Autumn is truly a masterpiece, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.”
—Kristin Harmel, author of The Room on Rue Amélie
Also by Mary-Rose MacColl
SWIMMING HOME
IN FALLING SNOW
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
penguinrandomhouse.com
Copyright © 2019 by Mary-Rose MacColl
First published as The True Story of Maddie Bright by Allen & Unwin, Australia, 2019
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: MacColl, Mary-Rose, 1961– author.
Title: Lost autumn / Mary-Rose MacColl.
Description: New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2020. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2019040776 (print) | LCCN 2019040777 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593085059 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593085066 (ebook)
Subjects: GSAFD: Bildungsromans.
Classification: LCC PR9619.3.M23 L67 2019 (print) | LCC PR9619.3.M23 (ebook) | DDC 823/.914—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019040776
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019040777
p. cm.
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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To Bluey Joshua and Olive Rose
Contents
Advance Praise for Lost Autumn
Also by Mary-Rose MacColl
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
From Winter Skies by M. A. Bright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
From Autumn Leaves by M. A. Bright
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
From Autumn Leaves by M. A. Bright
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
From Autumn Leaves by M. A. Bright
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
From Autumn Leaves by M. A. Bright
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
From Autumn Leaves by M. A. Bright
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
From Autumn Leaves by M. A. Bright
From Winter Skies: Epilogue
Writer’s Note
A Conversation with Mary-Rose MacColl
Discussion Questions
About the Author
My barn having burned to the ground, I can now see the moon.
—JAPANESE PROVERB
From Winter Skies by M. A. Bright
LONDON, 1921
There she is on the stone bench that circles the fountain in the center of the square where she’s been sitting since early afternoon, watching and waiting as the church in front of her fades into darkness. The only illumination now is from that lamp on the side of the rectory, right where the nurse at the Sally Ann had told her it would be.
It’s April, unseasonably cold; of course it is. The baby in her arms does not stir. Of course he doesn’t.
“Fatigue,” the nurse had said. “You’re both suffering from fatigue. Are you getting enough rest?”
She’d almost laughed. Even then, she hadn’t slept in—how long was it? She was too hungry to sleep. When had she last eaten? the nurse asked. She didn’t know t
hat either.
“I’m worried about the baby,” she said quietly. “The baby,” she repeated when the nurse appeared not to hear.
“Oh, nowt to worry there,” the nurse said, sniffing dismissively. “He’ll suck the marrow from your bones before he’ll go without. Lusty, that one.”
The nurse smiled but her smile was without kindness. “You’ll perish long before he does, dearie, and keep producing milk until the end.”
A missing tooth at the lower front might have been the reason the nurse whistled on her esses. It might have been what made the smile look bitter. Perhaps underneath was a soul seeking the light.
“But you can’t stay here with a bairn. You must know that, a lass like you.”
A lass like her.
“You’ll find it easily enough. They keep the lamp burning all through the night.”
And there it was.
* * *
—
It’s one hard thing. That’s what the nurse had said, her blue eyes steely. “It’s one hard thing and then it’s over.”
She was shivering now. The mist that had gathered around them with the darkness had collected itself into a light rain. She wrapped her shawl more tightly about the child as she stared at the lamp.
She stood suddenly, awkwardly, as if her mind had made itself up and ordered her body to follow, resistance taking up residence in the large muscles of her legs as she bade them walk.
Above the lighted window was a shallow awning that didn’t quite shield them from the rain, and under the awning, a window box shaped like half a wheel. It housed a tiny crib lined with soft straw over which was a blanket. Someone had crocheted a blanket of little squares in different colors backed with thick wool. Someone had cared enough to do that.
She laid him on the straw and put the blanket on top. He didn’t cry, even though the rain was still falling and the awning was not keeping them dry.
She bent over to wipe a droplet of water from his cheek with her thumb. He only looked at her, big eyes filled with that light, brightest in babies and the dying, the inner light that ebbs and flows with the passing of years.
Years they would not pass together.
“We don’t always know the right thing,” she said, her voice surprisingly true.
The rain was more like sleet now; she mustn’t tarry. Quickly, she started turning the handle, her fingers numb with the cold.
The wheel creaked and began to turn inward. The baby stirred a moment and then settled, eyes closing. As she wound the handle and the crib moved slowly away from her, she felt the rush of cold in her belly, a cold that would never altogether leave her.
Away from her, toward his life.
He raised a hand, just an involuntary gesture, but she took it as a wave, that little hand, those tiniest of fingernails she already knew so completely.
Her last view was of the shawl, her only shawl, a brilliant blue, disappearing into the church, and a second empty crib that came around from inside to stand ready, a different eiderdown in this one, no crocheted blanket.
Empty.
She walked away and did not look back.
* * *
—
It was a morning, the second day or the third; she couldn’t be sure. On the first night, the nurse had welcomed her back at the Sally Ann as if none of it had happened. But time had become solid now; her arms, which felt heavy; her breasts, which ached or stung and leaked milk when she thought of him; that little hand waving; those light blue eyes.
She must get on. She was dressed and ready to go down to Harley Street, where there was a typing job. She stuffed strips torn from the bottom of her petticoat into her bras, just in case.
She would get the job and go to the church and say she could take him now. Now that she’d slept, eaten, and the madness had left her. Her body knows.
He is hers. She is his.
She will have to hurry because her milk will dry up and she’ll not get it back. Once she has the job, she is sure they’ll accept her with a child. Of course they will.
She walked into the dining room. The newspaper was on the table. The headline.
ANOTHER BABE PERISHES!
She took in great gulps of the text without breath.
A second baby has died in the “foundling” wheel at St. John of God Church. The church, the only London establishment to have retained such a contraption, is now the subject of an official investigation, Police Sergeant Harold Forth said earlier today.
“Mark my words: there is nothing safe about these so-called foundling wheels,” Sergeant Forth said.
The babe didn’t stand a chance, Sergeant Forth said. “The cold. It was just too cold for a little one.
“He was well cared for,” the sergeant said. “He had a blue silk shawl around him, expensive looking, but it wasn’t warm enough.”
According to Rector Martin Somerset, the bell installed to warn churchmen of a baby’s arrival had failed to ring and the chute through which the baby was placed had failed to close.
“The little tyke just gave up,” Rector Somerset said.
She put the paper back down on the counter, smoothed the creases she’d accidentally made in it.
She couldn’t remember what she was doing, why she was standing there at all. The world was moving slowly around her, herself not moving.
One of the other women was behind her. “Come on, slow coach,” she said. “Haven’t got all day to read.”
She turned. She would remember the woman’s face for the rest of her life, cheeks like little cherries, stupid brown eyes like a cow. “I’m sorry,” she said. And then she fainted.
One
BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA, 1981
I heard a thump that at first I took for a possum in the ceiling. They remind me of my brothers when we were children in this house, pounding across the wooden floors, screaming at one another over some game or claim. At night I might hear one fall from the jacaranda branches onto the roof—a possum, not a brother now—with a thud you’d think would kill any living creature, and yet I knew they survived because after the thud there was a pause, and then the scurry of feet. I should do something about them, get the possum man to set traps, but I don’t have the heart. I still miss my brothers.
Ed from across the road says they bring fleas. The possums again, not my brothers, who are all dead; boisterous noisy boys, gone too soon. Only me now. Women live longer. It’s not necessarily better.
I heard the noise again, louder, and realized it wasn’t a possum. It was the front door, someone pounding now on the door with what I took for impatience, which irritated me mightily. My hearing’s not as good as it used to be. It can’t be Ed, I thought. Too early in the day for Ed, and Ed would never be impatient with me.
Last night’s news has altogether discombobulated me. I keep seeing her in my mind’s eye, more helpless than the possums in my ceiling, more helpless even than my little boy brothers, in a trap of her own hapless making. After the letter last week, it’s almost too much to bear. I am too old for this. I want to die quietly in my sleep. It turns out this is quite a lot to ask of the Lord, who knows every hair on your head and could pluck them all out at once if the mood took him.
Other than Ed, no one knocks on my door but religions and electricals, peddling wares or schemes for redemption, and it’s too early for either of them. They don’t tend to make such a racket either. I used to like the Pentecostals. Their prayer books have pictures and they don’t have a uniform. I joined them the year before last, but I didn’t know any of the songs, so I went back to the more ordinary Catholics, whose songs have straightforward melodies. Even if you don’t know them at the start, you have them figured by the second verse.
I live in a house that attracts a particular kind of religion, one whose followers are nutty for it. Last week, I had the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Latt
er-day Saints on the same day, which is a record. Swindle is what religions specialize in, according to Ed. He is cynical. It won’t make life any easier, I want to tell him. Whereas believing in a hereafter—where my brothers and I, my parents, and others I’ve lost will be reunited—might be a comfort when I need one.
“I’m coming!” I called toward the door as gruffly as I could manage. I was in the kitchen at the back of the house, and although I’ve weaned myself from the walker, I’m still slow, ginger when I’m first on my feet, as if I broke my balance when I broke my dumb leg.
The leg itself has healed entirely, the doctor told me when he sawed the cast off, stressing that word entirely, but perhaps next time, he said, I might ask the gardener to clear the leaves from the gutters rather than getting up on the roof myself. He was one of those doctors who’d have been pointing a finger at me if all his fingers hadn’t been on duty for the sawing. As it was, he was shaking his head, a smug smile stuck to his face like it was a regular visitor. He can’t be older than fifty, and he’s not my usual doctor, Dr. McKellar, who would never be so condescending and would likely encourage me to get up on the roof if that’s what I felt like doing, which I did, obviously, or I wouldn’t have been up there and I wouldn’t have fallen off. Not only that, the assumption I have a gardener is offensive to me.
I felt like giving him a piece of my mind, the young doctor, but I refrained for the sake of ensuring he finished the job at hand without taking my leg off. It’s harder to assert your authority when the object of your irritability has an electrical saw in his hands.
I passed the television in the sitting room. It had turned itself back on—something that should probably worry me—and there again was the picture: a willowy scrap of a girl arm in arm with what I could only describe as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Her suit was the worst of it, a sky-blue two sizes too large, as if she’d only bought it that morning for the afternoon’s announcement and had a false impression of her own size in the world. It’s more innocent than wedding-white will be, the enormous jewel on her finger shown to the waiting horde like a brand on a heifer. They flashed back then to that other picture, the one that might frighten her, her skirt made see-through in the morning sun, her long legs exposed for all the world to gawk at. Of course it frightened her. That was the point.