by Kate Morton
‘And the Nathaniel Walker sketches were in the box?’ said Cassandra. ‘In with Eliza’s things?’
Clara nodded. ‘It’s strange, now I recollect it. Mum was so happy to buy them, but when we got home she had my dad carry them upstairs for her, put them in the attic, and that was the last I heard of them. Not that I thought much of it then. I was fifteen. Probably had my eye on a local lad and couldn’t care less about some old boxes my mum had bought. Until she moved in here with me, that is, and I noticed that the boxes came with her. Now that was funny, and really showed what they meant to her, because she didn’t bring much. And it was when we were here together that she finally told me what they were, why they were so important.’
Cassandra remembered Ruby’s account of the room upstairs, still full of Mary’s personal items. What other precious clues might be there now, buried in boxes, never to be seen? She swallowed. ‘Did you ever look inside?’
Clara took a sip of tea, surely cold by now, and fiddled with the cup’s handle. ‘I must admit I did.’
Cassandra’s heart was thumping; she shifted forward. ‘And?’
‘Books mainly, a lamp, like I said.’ She paused, and a crimson flush cherried her cheeks.
‘Was there something else?’ Gently, oh so gently.
Clara moved the toe of her slipper across the carpet. She watched its progress before looking up. ‘I found a letter in there too, right near the top. Addressed to my mum it was, written by a publisher in London. Gave me the shock of my life. I’d never thought of Mum as a writer.’ Clara cackled. ‘And she wasn’t, of course.’
‘What was the letter then?’ said Christian. ‘Why had the publisher written to your mum?’
Clara blinked. ‘Well now, it seems my mum must’ve sent off one of Eliza’s stories. From what I could tell from the letter, she must’ve found it in the box, amongst Eliza’s things, and figured it deserved reading. Turns out Eliza’d written it just before she left on her adventure. Nice story it was, full of hope and happy endings.’
Cassandra thought of the photocopied article in Nell’s notebook. ‘“The Cuckoo’s Flight”,’ she said.
‘That’s the one,’ said Clara, as pleased as if she’d written the story herself. ‘You’ve read it then?’
‘I’ve read of it, but I haven’t seen the story itself. It was published years after the rest.’
‘That’d be right. It was 1936 according to the letter sent. My mum would’ve been real pleased with herself about that letter. She would’ve felt she’d done something for Eliza. She missed her after she was gone and that’s a fact.’
Cassandra nodded, she could almost taste the solution to Nell’s mystery. ‘They had a bond, didn’t they?’
‘That they did.’
‘What do you think it was that tied them together like that?’ She bit her lip, paced herself.
Clara knotted her gnarled fingers in her lap and lowered her voice. ‘The two of them were party to something that no one else knew about.’
Something inside Cassandra released. Her voice was faint. ‘What was it? What did your mum tell you?’
‘It was in my mum’s last days. She kept saying something awful had been done and those what had done it thought they’d got away with it. She said it over and over.’
‘And what do you think she meant?’
‘At first I didn’t think much of it at all. She was often saying strange things towards the end. Insulting our dear old friends. She really wasn’t herself any more. But she went on and on. “It’s all in the story,” she kept saying. “They took it from the young girl and made her go without.” I didn’t know what she was talking about, what story she was on about. And in the end it didn’t matter, she told me straight.’ Clara drew breath, shook her head sadly at Cassandra. ‘Rose Mountrachet wasn’t the mother of that little girl, of your grandmother.’
Cassandra sighed with relief. Finally, the truth. ‘I know,’ she said, taking Clara’s hands. ‘Nell was Mary’s baby, the pregnancy that got her fired.’
Clara’s expression was difficult to read. She looked between Christian and Cassandra, eyes twitching at the corners, blinked confusedly then started to laugh.
‘What?’ said Cassandra, with some alarm. ‘What’s so funny? Are you all right?’
‘My mum was pregnant, that’s right enough, but she never had a baby. Not then. She lost it around twelve weeks.’
‘What?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Nell wasn’t Mum’s baby, she was Eliza’s.’
‘Eliza was pregnant.’ Cassandra unwrapped her scarf and put it on top of her bag on the floor of the car.
‘Eliza was pregnant.’ Christian tapped his gloved hands on the steering wheel.
The car heating was turned on and the radiator whirred and ticked as they left Polperro behind them. The fog had come in while they were visiting Clara, and all the way along the coast road muffled boat lights bobbed on the ghostly tide.
Cassandra stared blankly ahead, her brain as foggy as the world outside the windscreen. ‘Eliza was pregnant. She was Nell’s mother. That’s why Eliza took her.’ Perhaps if she said it enough times, it would make more sense.
‘That seems to be about it.’
She leaned her head to one side and rubbed her neck. ‘But I don’t understand. It all added up before, when it was Mary. Now that it’s Eliza . . . I can’t see how Rose ended up with Ivory. Why did Eliza let her keep her? And how did no one ever find out?’
‘Except Mary.’
‘Except Mary.’
‘I suppose they kept it quiet.’
‘Eliza’s family?’
He nodded. ‘She was single, young, their ward so their responsibility, and then she fell pregnant. It wouldn’t have looked good.’
‘Who was the father?’
Christian shrugged. ‘Some local guy? Did she have a boyfriend?’
‘I don’t know. She was friends with Mary’s brother William; it says so in Nell’s notebook. They were close until they had some kind of argument. Maybe it was him.’
‘Who knows? I suppose it doesn’t really matter.’ He glanced at her. ‘I mean, it does, of course, to Nell and to you, but for the sake of this argument, all that matters is that she was pregnant and Rose wasn’t.’
‘So they convinced Eliza to give her baby to Rose.’
‘It would have been easier for everyone.’
‘That’s debatable.’
‘I mean socially. Then Rose died—’
‘And Eliza took her child back. That makes sense.’ Cassandra watched the fog billowing amongst the long grass on the roadside. ‘But why didn’t she go on the ship to Australia with Nell? Why would a woman take back her child, then send her on a long and treacherous journey to a foreign land, alone?’ Cassandra sighed heavily. ‘It’s like the closer we get, the more tangled the web becomes.’
‘Maybe she did go with her. Maybe something happened to her en route, illness of some kind. Clara seemed certain that she went.’
‘But Nell remembered Eliza putting her on the boat and telling her to wait, leaving and then not coming back. It was one of the only things she was sure about.’ Cassandra chewed her thumbnail. ‘How bloody frustrating. I thought we’d be getting answers today, not more questions.’
‘One thing’s for sure, “The Golden Egg” wasn’t about Mary: Eliza wrote it about herself. She was the maiden in the cottage.’
‘Poor Eliza,’ said Cassandra, as the gloomy world drifted by outside. ‘The maiden’s life after she gives away the egg is so . . .’
‘Desolate.’
‘Yes.’ Cassandra shivered. She understood loss that took away a person’s very purpose, left her paler, lighter, emptier. ‘No wonder she took Nell back when she had the chance.’ What wouldn’t Cassandra have done for a second chance?
‘Which brings us full circle: if she’d just reclaimed her daughter, why didn’t Eliza go with her on the boat?’
Cassandra shook her hea
d. ‘I don’t know. It makes no sense.’
They drove past the sign welcoming them to Tregenna and Christian turned off the main road. ‘You know what I reckon?’
‘What’s that?’ said Cassandra.
‘We should get some late lunch at the pub, talk it over some more. See if we can’t figure it out. I’m sure beer will help us.’
Cassandra smiled. ‘Yeah, I usually find beer just the thing to make my mind nimble. All right if we stop by the hotel so I can get my jacket?’
Christian took the high road through the woods and turned into the entrance to the Hotel Blackhurst. Fog lurked still and moist in the gullies of the driveway, and he went carefully.
‘Back in a sec,’ said Cassandra, slamming the car door behind her. She ran up the stairs and into the foyer. ‘Hi Sam,’ she called, waving at the receptionist.
‘Hiya Cass. There’s someone here to see you.’
Cassandra stopped mid-flight.
‘Robyn Jameson’s been waiting in the lounge for the past half hour or so.’
Cassandra glanced back outside. Christian’s attention was absorbed in tuning his car radio. He wouldn’t mind waiting an extra minute. Cassandra couldn’t think what Robyn might have to tell her but she didn’t imagine it would take much time.
‘Well hello,’ said Robyn, when she noticed Cassandra’s approach. ‘A little birdie tells me you’ve spent the morning chatting with my second cousin Clara.’
The network of country gossip was pretty impressive. ‘I have indeed.’
‘I trust you had a lovely time.’
‘I did, thanks. I hope you haven’t been waiting too long.’
‘Not at all. I have something for you. I suppose I could have left it at the desk, but I thought it might require a little explanation.’
Cassandra raised her eyebrows as Robyn continued.
‘I went to visit my dad at the weekend, up at the retirement home. He likes to hear all about the comings and goings in the old village—he was postmaster once, you know—and I happened to mention that you were here, restoring the cottage that your grandma left you, up there on the cliff. Funniest look came across Dad’s face. He may be old, but he’s sharp as a tack, just like his own dad before him. He took my arm and told me there was a letter needed to be returned to you.’
‘To me?’
‘To your grandma more properly, but seeing as she’s no longer with us, to you.’
‘What sort of letter?’
‘When your grandma left Tregenna, she went to see my dad. Told him she’d be returning to take up residence at Cliff Cottage and he was to hold any mail for her. She was very clear about it, he said, so when a letter arrived he did as she asked and kept it at the post office. Every few months or so he took the letter up the hill, but the old cottage was always deserted. The brambles grew, the dust settled, and the place looked less and less inhabited. Eventually he stopped going. His knees were giving him trouble and he figured your grandma would come and see him when she got back. Ordinarily he’d have returned it to the sender, but your grandma had been very definite, so he tucked the letter away and kept it all that time.
‘He told me I was to go down to the cellar where his things are stored and pull out the box of lost letters. That in amongst them I’d find one addressed to Nell Andrews, Tregenna Inn, received November 1975. And he was right. It was there waiting.’
She reached into her handbag and withdrew a small grey envelope, gave it to Cassandra. The paper was cheap, so thin it was almost transparent. It was addressed in old-fashioned writing, rather messy, first to a hotel in London, then redirected to the Tregenna Inn. Cassandra flipped the envelope.
There, in the same hand, was written: Sender, Miss Harriet Swindell, 37 Battersea Church Road, London, SW11.
Cassandra remembered Nell’s notebook entry. Harriet Swindell was the woman she had visited in London, the old woman who had been born and grown up in the same house as Eliza. Why had she written to Nell?
Fingers trembling, Cassandra opened the envelope. The thin paper tore softly. She unfolded the letter and began to read.
3rd November 1975
Dear Mrs Andrews,
Well I don’t mind saying that ever since you made your visit, asking about the fairytale lady, I’ve been hard-pressed to think of much else. You’ll find it yourself when you get to my age—the past turns into something of an old friend. The sort who arrives uninvited and refuses to leave. I do remember her, you see, I remember her well, only you caught me unawares with your visit, turning up on the doorstep right as it was on teatime. I weren’t sure whether I felt like talking over the old days with a stranger. My niece Nancy tells me that I ought though, that it all happened so long ago it hardly matters now, so I’ve decided to write to you as you asked. For Eliza Makepeace did return to visit with my Ma. Only the once, mind you, but I recall it well enough. I were sixteen at the time, and that’s how I know it must of been 1913.
I remember thinking there was something strange about her from the first. She might of had the clean clothes of a lady, but there was something about her that didn’t quite fit. More rightly, there was something about her that did fit with us at 35 Battersea Church Road. Something that set her apart from the other fancy Ladies what might be seen in the streets back then. She came through the door and into the shop, a bit agitated it seemed to me, as if she was in a hurry and didn’t want to be seen. Suspicious, like. She nodded at my Ma as if they was known, one to the other, and Ma, for her part, gave her a smile, a sight the likes of which I never seen too often. Whoever this lady was, I thought to myself, my Ma must of known she could make a quid off her acquaintance.
Her voice, when she spoke, was clear and musical—that was the first sign to me that I might of met her before. It was familiar somehow. That voice was the sort what children like to listen to, what speaks of fairies and sprites and leaves no doubt in the mind as to their truth.
She thanked my Ma for seeing her and said she was leaving England and wouldn’t be back for some years. I remember she were awful keen to go upstairs and visit the room she used to live in, horrid little room at the top of the house. Cold, it was, with a fireplace what never worked, and dark, not a window to be spoke of. But she said it was for old times’ sake.
It so happened that Ma didn’t have a tenant at the time—nasty dispute about rent owing—so she were glad enough to let the lady make a visit. Ma told her to go upstairs and take her time, even put the kettle on to boil. As unlike my Ma as you could find.
Ma watched as she climbed those stairs, then she beckoned me quick. Get upstairs after her, Ma said, and make sure she don’t come down too soon. I was used to Ma’s instructions, and her punishments if I refused, so I did what she said and followed the lady upstairs.
By the time I got to the landing, she’d pulled the door to the room closed behind her. I could of just sat where I was and made sure she didn’t decide to return downstairs too fast, but I were curious. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why she’d of closed the door. Like I said, there was no windows in that room and the door was the only way to let light in.
There were a hole in the bottom of that door, eaten by rats, so I lay down on my stomach, flat as can be, and I watched her. I watched her as she stood in the middle of the room, turning around to take it all in, and I watched as she went to the old, broken fireplace. Sat herself down on the ledge, she did, and reached her arm up inside, then sat like that for what seemed an age. Finally, she withdrew her arm, and in her hand was a small clay pot. I must of made a sound then—I was that surprised—for she looked up, eyes wide. I held my breath and after a time she returned her attention to the pot, held it to her ear and gave it a little shake. I could tell by her face she were pleased with what she heard. Then she tucked it inside a special pocket what were sewn into her dress somehow and started towards the door.
I hurried down then and told my Ma that she were coming. I was surprised to see that Tom, my little brother, were s
tanding at the door, heaving great sighs as if he’d run some distance, but I didn’t have time to ask where he’d been. Ma were watching the stairs, so I did the same. Down the lady started, thanking my Ma for letting her visit and saying that she couldn’t stay for tea, as time was pressing.
Then she reached the bottom and I saw there were a man standing in the shadows at the side of the stairs. A man with funny little spectacles—the type what don’t have arms, just a little bridging piece what pinches the nose. He were holding a sponge in his hand, and when she got to the bottom step he clamped it under her nose and she collapsed. Instant like, crumpled into his arms. I must of hollered out then, because I earned a slap across the face from my Ma.
The man ignored me and dragged the lady to the door. With Pa’s help he lifted her into the carriage, then he nodded at my Ma, handed her an envelope from his breast pocket, and away they went.
I got a clip around the ears later, when I told my Ma all what I’d seen. Why didn’t you tell me, you stupid girl, said my Ma. It could of been valuable. We might of had it for our troubles. It wouldn’t of done to remind my Ma that the man with the black horses had already paid her handsome for the lady. As far as my Ma were concerned, there were never enough coin to be had.
I never seen the lady again and I don’t know what become of her after she left us. There was always things happening on our bend of the river, things what didn’t bear remembering.
I don’t know much that this letter will help you with your research, but Nancy said it was as well to talk to you as not. So that is what I’ve done. I hope you find what it is you’re looking for.
Yours,
Miss Harriet Swindell
47
Brisbane, 1976
The Fairyland Lustre vase had always been her favourite. Nell had found it at a trash and treasure stall decades before. Any antiques dealer worth her salt would have known its worth, but the Fairyland Lustre vase was different. It wasn’t the material value, though that was high enough, it was what it represented: the first time Nell had struck gold in unlikely surroundings. And like a gold miner who keeps his first nugget whatever its value, Nell had been unwilling to part with the vase.
