by Rachel Hore
‘And are they supposed to?’ Luke growled.
The men hadn’t seen them, they were so intent on their game, and so they left them to it and tiptoed back to where they’d left the car.
‘Well,’ Luke said, glancing behind him. ‘That was a surprise. What should we do now?’
‘Go to Mariella’s,’ Briony said grimly, opening the car door.
They returned to the winding road, which they continued along until they came to a fork and took the left-hand option down the hillside. Though they looked for a turning that might lead them to Mariella’s house, they must have gone past it, because they found themselves at the café by the graceful bridge over the river.
‘I’d forgotten how pretty it is. Shall we walk up to Mariella’s from here?’ Briony suggested, stopping the car outside the café.
‘If we can get something to drink first? I’m not ready for a climb.’
‘Good idea. I’ll text Mariella to say.’
In the welcome shade of the café there was no sign of Signor Marco, the balding proprietor. Instead a generous-sized woman with a roll of greying hair served them, his wife, perhaps. She spoke little English but beamed at them a great deal as though to make up for it. They sat outside under a bright umbrella and she brought them ice-cold lemonade. They sat quietly, hardly feeling the need to talk, they were so at ease together. Briony’s thoughts drifted back to the year before, the unease of their holiday here. She would never have guessed that things would have changed in this way. Here she was, her book finished, ready to be published in October. She knew she’d have to find the courage to step out into the world to give talks about it, maybe even on TV, the radio. Although she was nervous, she was determined to try. Her promotion had come through, too. Luke had already started proudly introducing her as a professor, even though she wasn’t strictly one until the new academic year. And the biggest thing of all that had happened was Luke. It was he who filled her with a happiness that she’d never known before. They were still taking things step by step, learning to trust one another, but the bonds between them were strengthening. His parents had been tactful, but warmly welcoming, and Martin and Lavender, too.
A young Italian couple had come in and came to sit at the table beside them. Signora Marco came across with bottles of Coke and greeted them with kisses and endearments. The young man was assured, elegant in a crisp shirt and jeans. Briony glimpsed an expensive-looking watch on his wrist, noticed the sleek phone on the table. The girl was lovely, blooming with youth and graceful, shoulder-length dark hair in a middle parting, a pretty sundress riding her thighs. She appeared faintly familiar, probably like one of her students, that must be it.
‘Who did you think that pretty girl was like?’ she remarked as they left the café.
‘What pretty girl?’ Luke replied, quite seriously.
‘The couple sitting next to us.’
‘Oh them. I hardly noticed.’
Briony laughed.
The path up to Mariella’s house was as onerous to climb as Briony remembered, and the dog barked as fiercely as before, but this time Mariella met them at the gate, embraced them both and ushered them inside. The kitchen table was spread with a cloth and plates of dainty cakes and biscuits. There was the fragrance of brewing coffee. ‘Sit, sit down,’ she bade them and set about pouring syrupy dark liquid into tiny cups.
Briony couldn’t stop herself asking straight away. ‘We went to look at the Villa Teresa. What’s happening there?’
At this a great smile spread across Mariella’s face. ‘You have already seen,’ she said. ‘I wanted to surprise you. The answer is l’amore.’
‘Love?’ Briony said, not understanding.
‘My daughter is to marry Piero Mei.’
‘Congratulations!’ Briony said politely, something teasing at the edge of her memory. Mariella’s daughter, a quiet, solemn girl stowing linen in a cupboard.
‘Please, you don’t understand. It is the Mei family who wanted the Villa Teresa. All these years. And now Ciara and Piero will marry and the Villa Teresa will be theirs.’
And suddenly it all made sense. ‘The girl in the café just now, remember?’ she told Luke excitedly. ‘I thought she looked familiar. She’s changed so much in a year, Mariella. I didn’t recognize her.’
‘She is twenty-one now, cara, but yes, you’re right. Love has made her beautiful – and a little, how shall we say, advice from her mama! And Piero, his father, he pay for the villa.’
As Mariella talked, Briony gradually realized that the Mei family – she’d not heard the name on the memorial plaque pronounced correctly before – were young Antonio’s. It had been Antonio’s father who had returned to Tuana after the war and initiated legal proceedings against Mariella’s grandfather for possession of the Villa Teresa!
‘Like the Montagues and the Capulets, a very Italian ending,’ as her father would put it later with a twinkle in his eye, bright and cheerful now that Lavender was restored to health.
Luke and Briony stayed at Mariella’s for a couple of hours talking about everything that had happened, the story behind the tragedy of Antonio, how Briony had found out about Paul and Sarah and poor Harry Andrews. Briony supposed that they would never discover what happened to Harry in the end. He had disappeared into the dusty ruins of London, just one more victim of the conflict that had destroyed the lives of so many.
They left Mariella with fond goodbyes and a promise of an invitation to the wedding, though Briony was nervous about whether they should attend, given all that had happened.
‘I will speak to Signor Mei. I want peace with everybody now.’
This idea meant so much to Briony that she embraced Mariella all over again.
When she arrived home after their holiday and she popped into college to collect her post, there was a letter waiting for her from Greg. My father asked me to send you this, which he found some time ago in my grandmother’s papers. He said you’d guess what it means. He thinks it makes sense of something she once said, about falling out with her sister.
Greg had enclosed an envelope addressed to Sarah at Flint Cottage in Paul’s distinctive handwriting. It had been torn open long ago. Briony withdrew the letter inside and read it quickly, then read it again. My dearest Sarah, it began. . . . I’m back in London . . . A peculiar feeling came over her and for a moment she found she could not move. When her thoughts began to flow again, everything began to fall into place.
This was the letter Paul had sent after his return to London which Sarah had never received, his last letter home. Diane must have taken it from the doormat. But why? Diane had never liked Paul, she remembered him hinting that in another letter. Also – her thoughts roamed – perhaps Diane was jealous of her elder sister, who was loved by Ivor, the man Diane was eventually to marry. Or perhaps her twisted intention was to help Ivor? Unhappy, enigmatic Diane. Whatever the answer, she had nearly spoiled Sarah’s happiness. Whether Sarah ever suspected this, it was impossible to know, but maybe Diane felt guilty about it for the rest of her life and that’s why she hardly saw Sarah again.
Briony refolded the letter and slid it into her bag. She’d keep it with all the others, she decided, and if she and Luke were lucky enough to have children, one day, when they were old enough, she’d show the letters to them and explain how Paul and Sarah, Jean and Martin, she and Luke, and all the children, were each part of an ancient love story that goes on and on and will never end.
Forty-eight
The park Paul had mentioned in his note was a glimpse of green between two terraces accessed through a narrow passage littered with broken glass and overgrown with weeds. It was little more than an oblong of grass bordered by flower beds rampant with blue and white blooms of creeping plants, but someone tended it, for it was neat and clean, and the grass kept short. An ancient wooden bench had been set on the verge on one side, but there was no sign of Paul. Sarah walked across and sat on the bench, her case propped next to her. Her view was of abandoned ga
rdens of ruined houses, but they were peaceful and she liked the way that nature was reclaiming them. She enjoyed the hazy sunshine seeping through the ruins and the warmth of it on her upturned face as she waited, knowing of nothing more that she could do.
Minutes passed. Four o’clock came and still she waited. Her anxiety began to build. Then she turned at a sound. An elderly man wheeling tools in a barrow hove into sight from the alley. He was a comical figure with his pot belly and his gaping waistcoat and his homely weathered face. He nodded to her, selected a large fork and began to clear dead foliage from one of the beds, dumping each load in the barrow.
It was a quarter past four and a cold breeze had risen. Sarah stood and walked across to him. ‘Excuse me,’ she said and he halted his work, leaned on his fork and doffed his cap, wiping his face with his sleeve.
‘Yes, miss.’
‘Is this the only park in this road?’
‘It’s the only one I know of.’
‘Thank you.’ She started to go back and sit down, but he spoke again.
‘You waiting for someone?’
‘Yes. A friend. It’s a pleasant place to wait though. You look after it beautifully.’
The man fitted his cap back on. ‘I like to keep it shipshape. Molly used to like this place. My wife, you know. That was where we lived before the bomb hit.’ He nodded at one of the ruined houses. ‘She died in hospital three days later. I come here to think about her.’
‘I expect the work is soothing,’ she said. ‘My father used to call me Molly when I was little,’ she told him. ‘I had a toy barrow I used to trundle about. “Look out, Molly Malone’s coming,” he’d say. After the song, you know.’
‘ “She wheeled her wheelbarra through streets broad and narra”, I know that one all right.’ The old man chuckled.
He returned to his digging and Sarah sank down on the bench once more. He had merely taken her mind off her anxiety for a minute or two, but now all hope was leaching away. Her head swam and her mouth felt dry. He isn’t coming, he isn’t coming. How long should she wait? The stupid song played in her mind. Her ghost wheels her barrow / Through streets broad and narrow . . . Molly, sweet Molly, sweet Molly Malone.
A shadow fell across the grass and she glanced up to be dazzled by the sun. She shaded her eyes and there he was.
‘My darling.’
A glimpse of a worn face before she threw herself into his arms and he held her tightly, his quick warm breaths on her neck. ‘I thought you weren’t coming, I thought you’d never come,’ she gasped.
‘I said half-past four, it’s not that yet.’
‘The note said four, here, oh there’s a smudge. Four-thirty, how stupid.’
‘Never mind, I’m here now. Still the same Sarah?’
‘Same as ever.’
A polite cough behind them. The old man, she’d forgotten him.
‘Glad he found you then. I’ll be off now. Goodbye, Miss Molly.’
They watched him stagger to a compost heap in a far corner and tip the barrow, then he wheeled it away along a path between the ruined houses she hadn’t noticed before.
‘Why did he call you that?’
‘Oh, we were just talking about his wife and my father. I rather like the name Molly, don’t you?’
‘Molly.’ He smiled and looked thoughtful. ‘I think it suits you. Darling, there’s something important I must explain.’
Acknowledgements
Great thanks, as ever, are due to my agent Sheila Crowley at Curtis Brown, my editor Suzanne Baboneau at Simon & Schuster, Maisie Lawrence, Sue Stephens, Pip Watkins, Hayley McMullan and all their colleagues who work so hard on my account, and copyeditor Sally Partington.
I am indebted to my friend and garden designer Juliet Bamber, whose patient advice about plants has once again plugged considerable gaps in my knowledge, and to historian Frank Meeres at the Norfolk County Archive, who kindly read the manuscript.
My husband David is always a source of encouragement, as are my friends and family, particularly my sons, Felix, Benjy and Leo, my mother Phyllis and my mother-in-law Elizabeth.
I would also like to thank my readers, especially the ones who write and ask when the next book is coming. I find this tremendously supportive.
By the same author:
The House on Bellevue Gardens
A Week in Paris
The Silent Tide
A Gathering Storm
A Place of Secrets
The Glass Painter’s Daughter
The Memory Garden
The Dream House
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2018
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Copyright © Rachel Hore 2018
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