‘Mum, what is it about bees that fascinates you so much?’ Trixie asked on the third evening, after they had lifted the lids on the hives and Grace had explained all the things a beekeeper has to look out for before putting them to bed until spring.
‘Let’s go and sit on the beach, shall we?’ Grace suggested. ‘I love sitting on the dunes and gazing out to sea. Come, we’ll take a couple of blankets and we won’t tell your father because he’ll only worry.’
A cold wind swept up the beach and the sea was dark and agitated. Clouds raced across the sky, playing hide-and-seek with the stars. They positioned themselves on a grassy dune and wrapped the blankets around their shoulders. Trixie lit a cigarette. Grace gazed out to the end of the world and wondered what happened on the other side. What came after?
‘You know what fascinates me about bees, Trixie? Life. That’s what’s astonishing about them. Their God-given creativity. Human beings can build cars and planes and fly to the moon. But it’s an intelligence beyond our understanding that makes the body work. Scientists could probably create a body and a brain but they couldn’t create intelligence, they couldn’t bring the body to life. It’s an intelligence beyond our understanding that governs the bees and their intricate way of life as well. We couldn’t produce honey, but these tiny little creatures make enough for themselves and for us and don’t complain. I find that extraordinary.’ She turned to her daughter and smiled sadly. ‘And it connects me to my youth and my father, who I loved so much.’
‘Did he approve of Dad?’
‘He loved Freddie. He knew Freddie was right for me long before I did.’ She chuckled. ‘He told me not to be so far-sighted that I’d miss what was under my nose. He was right, of course. I’d known Freddie all my life. We were very close, but I’d never thought of him in that way. He’d always been more like a brother.’
‘You’ve been married about fifty-five years, Mom. That’s quite an achievement.’
‘Yes, it is,’ she replied softly.
‘Dad’s always been remote, you know, hard to get close to. I think he’s mellowing with age.’
‘He’s a sweet and kind man underneath.’
‘That’s what you always say.’
‘Because I know him.’
‘And because you love him?’
‘Yes, I love him. We’ve been through tough times but I never contemplated leaving him. Your generation gives up the moment things get difficult. We have a sense of duty you don’t have. Even when . . .’ She hesitated, and her gaze was swallowed into the night. ‘Even when things got very hard, I never, ever contemplated leaving him.’ Her voice rose in a question, as if she couldn’t quite believe it. As if she had only just realized what that meant.
Trixie watched her closely. She knew so little of their past because they never talked about it. But that sentence was heavy with suggestion, opening a crack in a door through which Trixie glimpsed the allusion to a secret life.
‘I wish you would find someone to share your life with, Trixie,’ said Grace. ‘I’d feel happier going if I knew you were settled.’
‘Mom, happiness isn’t all about finding a man, you know. I don’t need a husband and children to make me happy. I have my job and my friends. I’m very content.’
Grace looked at her daughter gravely. ‘Listen to me, darling. Life is nothing if you don’t love.’
‘I love you,’ she replied with a shrug, and tears stung behind her eyes.
‘I know you do, darling, and you love Jasper.’
Trixie stubbed out her cigarette in the sand. ‘That was a long time ago,’ she answered quietly.
‘Darling, love doesn’t necessarily diminish over time and your first love is sometimes the strongest. But you have to let him go. You can’t let a heartbreak in the past ruin your chances in the present.’ She closed her eyes and laughed bitterly. It was a lesson her father might have tried to teach her, had he lived.
‘No one comes close to Jasper, Mom. That’s the truth. No one.’ Trixie’s eyes glittered in the flame as she cupped her hands around her lighter. ‘There, I’ve said it out loud. No one can compare to him.’ She looked defeated. Small, suddenly, and lost.
Grace put her arm around her daughter and drew her close. She pressed her cheek against her hair and sighed. ‘I can’t tell you who to love. The heart chooses for you and there’s nothing anybody can do about that. I love you, Trixie. You’ll always be my little girl even though you’re grown-up now with a life that’s independent of me. I’m proud of you.’ She squeezed her eyes shut, unable to bear the thought of parting. ‘I just want to be reassured that you’re all right.’
That night Trixie couldn’t sleep. She went downstairs and sat smoking on the swing chair, gazing out over the gardens and the sea beyond. She remembered love and what it had felt like. As much as she told herself she didn’t care about marriage and a family, in truth she cared very much. She didn’t yearn for children, but she yearned for someone to love. She longed to put her arms around a man and know that he loved her back. Her thoughts turned to Jasper, as they always did when she drank too much and grew morose. She wondered what he was doing now. Whether he had married and had children. Whether he was still playing the guitar, or whether he had lost it along with her and Tekanasset.
As she allowed her thoughts to wander she caught sight of a shadow by the bees. At first she thought it was her mother, but she was asleep upstairs and for some reason she sensed the presence was a man. She stood and walked around the side of the house. There was no one there, just the hives and the cold wind that blew in off the ocean. She remained a moment, listening to the waves and the slow rhythm of her breathing. She couldn’t see anyone but she still felt as if she wasn’t alone. A cold shiver rippled over her skin. She inhaled a final puff and threw her cigarette into the grass. As she did so her attention was drawn to the shed at the bottom of the garden. It was as if someone had tapped her shoulder and pointed. As if someone wanted her to look at the door, which was now ajar and rattling softly in the wind.
Slowly she wandered down the path. It was dark but for the silver light of the moon that caught the damp branches of leafless shrubs and glistened. She pushed open the door and stepped inside. In all the years she had lived in this house she had never set foot in her mother’s garden shed. There had never been any reason to. Now she switched on the bulb that hung from a wire on the ceiling and looked about her. Her heart began to thump guiltily as she realized this was her mother’s private place. Like Grace’s sitting room, the shed was disorderly. There were gardening tools, packets of fertilizer and seed, boxes of dry bulbs, equipment for the hives, empty honey jars and old, disused crownboards and frames. It smelt sweet and musty. She glanced about, not sure what she was meant to be looking for.
Once again she felt the very strong presence of someone nearby. She glanced over her shoulder to find nothing but the draught blowing in through the door. She took a deep breath and silently asked, ‘What do you want me to find?’ She stood waiting a moment, expecting to be told. But no one answered. The door rattled, causing her to jump. Then her eyes lifted to a mahogany box on the shelf above the door frame. It was the last place she would have looked, being above her head and hidden beneath a pile of gardening books. Her heart rate accelerated as she reached up and brought it down. Hastily she lifted the lid. She gasped as she discovered within two thick piles of airmail letters tied up with string.
She lifted the first and saw that they were addressed to Miss Bernadette Short at the Beekeeper’s Cottage in Walbridge. Her heart stumbled. Walbridge: that was where Jasper came from. Trembling, she looked at the address on the other bundle of letters. Captain Rufus Melville, written in her mother’s distinctive hand, to the British Forces Post Office. She didn’t recognize that name and had never heard her mother speak of him. At the bottom of the box were two other letters in the same handwriting as the ones to Bernadette, addressed simply to Miss Grace Hamblin. On the back of the envelopes was the family crest of
lion and dragon that had been on the back of Jasper’s envelopes. The blood pulsated in her temples. She couldn’t ask her mother what it all meant because if she had wanted her to know, she would have told her.
She sank to the floor and read the two to Miss Grace Hamblin first. One was a letter written after her father’s death, the other a note wishing her luck on her wedding day. Both were signed Rufus and had an embossed R at the top of the page, like the J on Jasper’s. They must be related, but how? One was called Duncliffe, the other Melville.
Confused, she untied the bundle of letters addressed to Bernadette, which was loosely bound with garden string. She realized immediately that ‘little B’ was not Bernadette at all but Grace, and that they had devised the false name to avoid being discovered. By the dirty stains and creases on the paper, she presumed her mother must have read them many times over the years.
Rufus Melville’s letters were romantic and sweet, with sketches of bees haphazardly placed among the words. He wrote profusely about the war and his experiences, and the ferocity of his love. He repeated his desire for a future together in every letter. The last one was dated September 1942.
Once she’d finished reading the letters from Rufus to her mother, she picked up the other pile and tried to untie the string. Unlike Rufus’s letters, the string was tightly knotted and not of the gardening variety. The blood began to pulsate in her temples as she realized that these letters were the ones Grace had written to Rufus, which for some reason had been returned to her. From the spotless paper and unyielding knot it seemed that Grace had never opened them but simply placed them in the box for safekeeping. Now Trixie set about unpicking the tie. She wished she could just cut it.
It took her a long while, but she was determined to read the letters. Suddenly it seemed vitally important, as if her mother’s survival depended on it. At last the string loosened and she carefully unthreaded the knot and began to read. It was apparent from the very first lines that her mother loved this man. Trixie’s heart raced as she skimmed the words. They were poetic and charming and full of news as well as reminiscences about a bee swarm and the first time he had kissed her in the woods. Tears welled in her eyes. She didn’t know whether she was crying for her mother’s love or for her father’s loss.
She didn’t notice the hours passing, so engrossed was she in the large pile of her mother’s love letters. The more she read, the more astonished she became as her mother’s secret life unfolded before her. Then, one letter stood out amongst all the rest. The envelope, like all the others, was addressed to Captain Rufus Melville, but the letter inside was to Freddie. Trixie’s face flushed as she realized to her horror that if her mother had sent Freddie’s letter to Rufus, there was a good chance that she had sent Rufus’s letter to Freddie. Trixie put her hand to her mouth and gasped at the implications. Did her mother know that she had done this? Why would she read her own letters to Rufus? Of course she wouldn’t. She’d read his letters to her. What were the chances that she wasn’t aware she had made such a terrible error? And what were the chances that Freddie did?
The last letter Grace had written to Rufus was in March 1943, seven months after Rufus had stopped writing to her. In those seven months Grace’s letters had become increasingly frantic. Why had Rufus stopped writing? Why had her letters been returned? Had he died in action?
It was past four in the morning when she finally finished the last letter. She didn’t feel tired at all. Her body quivered like a horse at the starting gate, much as it had done in her cocaine days. She was fired up and full of questions that needed to be answered.
Then her mind sprang back to the time her mother had sobbed quite uncontrollably at the thought of losing her to Jasper. They had been sitting on the swing chair. She remembered it very clearly because her mother’s grief had been so acute that it had seemed out of all proportion. What if she hadn’t been crying about Trixie, but about Jasper’s father, who was dead? Trixie put her head in her hands and groaned. Suddenly everything shifted into sharp focus. It made sense now. Rufus must have been Jasper’s father. That’s why her parents knew he’d never marry her. They knew the family. They knew what they were like and they both knew that Grace had loved Rufus. As for the different names, there was bound to be a simple explanation. An English tradition of titles she wasn’t aware of.
But that didn’t answer the question of why Rufus had returned all Grace’s letters. If he hadn’t died in the war, what had ended the affair? She couldn’t ask her mother – she sensed her mother didn’t know anyway – or indeed her father.
There was only one person who might be able to help her get to the bottom of it and that was Rufus Melville’s son, Jasper. It was a long shot: after all, she hadn’t known about her mother’s affair, so there was every chance that he hadn’t a clue about his father’s, but it was worth a try.
Chapter 22
Trixie had never been to England. She hadn’t thought it odd before: after all, England was very far away and her parents had rarely spoken about it, but it was odd, considering that England was where they had both grown up and where they had married. If only she had taken the trouble to ask them about their lives, but she had been so engrossed in her own little dramas that she had never imagined her mother had lived a drama of her own. She hadn’t imagined her mother had suffered a broken heart, either. She had believed her incapable of understanding when Jasper had ended their relationship. How wrong she had been.
Now that Trixie had discovered her mother’s affair, she understood why she had never been taken to England: neither parent wanted to revisit the past. Moving to America had probably been a fresh start for both of them. It had put distance between Grace and Rufus and given Grace and Freddie a chance to rebuild. Or so it looked to Trixie, staring out of the window of the plane as it slowly descended into London.
She felt guilty sneaking to their home town without telling them. It was snooping and intrusive. Like snooping through her mother’s old love letters, she thought uncomfortably. She wondered how much this visit had to do with Rufus Melville, and how much more it had to do with Jasper Duncliffe.
It had been easy to arrange the trip. The London-based designer Rifat Ozbek was popular in New York, and he had granted her an interview at Claridge’s. After that she’d take the train down to Dorchester in Dorset. Her assistant had booked her into the Fox and Goose Inn in Walbridge. She’d explore from there. She didn’t know what to expect and she hadn’t dared ask anyone in the office, even though two of the girls were British.
From the window of the aeroplane her first impression of London was of a dull, grey city of toy-sized houses and tree-lined streets, whose autumn leaves broke the monotony with welcome splashes of orange and yellow. Heavy cloud hung low and persistent, as if always there, like the wet tarmac that glistened feebly in the lacklustre light.
She made her way through passport control and customs and outside to the taxi rank. Her spirits lifted at the sight of a London cab, and she enjoyed her drive into the city like a child enjoying her first ride on a merry-go-round. It didn’t seem real. She gazed out of the taxi window in wonder, taking in the big red buses, the quaint townhouses and the pretty, narrow streets, cluttered with umbrellas. She had made the mistake of telling her cabbie that she was new to London, so he took it upon himself to be her guide, pointing out all the landmarks in such a strong cockney accent she could barely understand him.
They passed the Natural History Museum, Harrods, the Duke of Wellington’s house at Hyde Park Corner and, in an expensive detour, the cabbie took her past Buckingham Palace and St James’s Palace, finally reaching Claridge’s from the south. London was thrilling. She wished she had more time to see the sights. She wished she had someone to share them with.
Claridge’s did not disappoint. With its scarlet carpets and white mouldings it was like stepping back in time to an age of grandeur and elegance. Trixie was reminded of one of her mother’s favourite television series, The Pallisers, which she had at hom
e on video and occasionally watched. Set in the mid-nineteenth century, the series had supplied her first and lasting impression of England. Now, as she stepped through the revolving doors, she savoured the familiar sounds of English accents and silver spoons on china cups with a pleasant sense of nostalgia and déjà vu.
She gave her bag to the concierge to store and took a small case to the ladies’ room to freshen up before her meeting. It had been a long flight and she felt like a crumpled dress in need of ironing. Staring at her face in the mirror, she wondered whether Jasper would find her much changed.
Rifat was a charming and engaging man who entertained her throughout lunch. It wasn’t until she was on the train bound for Dorset that she turned her thoughts back to her mission. She’d start at the Beekeeper’s Cottage. If Jasper lived in a big house on a grand estate she didn’t imagine she’d have any trouble finding him. Judging by the fuss that was made over his return, she doubted he’d have gone anywhere. ‘His sort’, as his father liked to call them, put duty before anything else. Perhaps it was duty that had prompted Rufus to send all Grace’s letters back? Had he, like his son, sacrificed his love for tradition? Had he done it with sorrow or with cold calculation? Had both men lived to regret their decisions?
As the train cut deep into the English countryside the suburbs melted into undulating green hills and forests. Even in the drizzle the vibrant autumn colours seemed to blaze like flames against the soggy grey sky. Townhouses were replaced by farms and picture-book cottages, and cars gave way to cows and sheep grazing peacefully on rolling hills. Fields were boxed in by hedges, and from a distance those squares looked like a patchwork quilt of varying tones of green. Trixie stared out of the window, uplifted by England’s wistful beauty, wondering how often her parents had stared out onto the same scenery.
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