Up, Back, and Away

by K. Velk

  “Do you need a rest?” Miles asked. “I could come back later.” He hoped she wouldn’t take him up on the offer, but she nodded her head weakly.

  “I’m sorry Miles. I have such a terrible headache. Perhaps we can start again after dinner?”

  “Sure. Should I get the nurse?”

  “There’s a dear. Thank you.”

  “No problem.” Miles tried to sound gentle but inwardly he was seething. They had only just gotten started when she had dropped out! This might take days! Having no other choice, however, he summoned Nurse Hedger. The clock on the fireplace mantle announced that it was 12:48. He had no doubt that Jack was already at the bus stop, waiting for Ada. She was probably walking up to him even now, wondering what had gone wrong, why Miles wasn’t there himself after all his fussing. “C’mon Jack.” Miles whispered, “You’ve got to get her to agree to see me as soon as I can get back. Don’t let her do anything crazy.”

  49. Ancient Heartbreaks

  There was no further interview between Miles and Dorcas that day. Nurse Hedger said Dorrie had been overextended and she could not possibly continue without a night’s rest. This pronouncement was made as if it had been carved in stone and carried off Mount Sinai. There was no point arguing.

  The next morning, Dorrie was somewhat the worse for wear, and Nurse Hedger more disapproving.

  “I’m going to get this story out if it kills me,” Dorrie said implacably when the nurse suggested another delay for more rest. “Just let us get started please. Excuse us Sister.” The Nurse huffed, but left.

  “Where’d I leave off now?” Dorrie asked with a look of grim determination on her sunken face.

  “With Maryanne and Taffy getting together.”

  After their interview had been cut short on the previous dat, Miles had spent the afternoon wandering through Reddlegowt village and touring the Castle. It had been interesting, but he remained desperate to wrap his interview with Dorcas and get back to Sessions. He hoped this prompt might at least prevent Dorrie from backtracking.

  “Right. Well, it was just around then that Sir James returned to Reddlegowt. He had been a hero soldier in Africa. Did you know that? He rescued some British hostages from the Sudanese and the old Queen knighted him. That’s how he became “Sir” James.” Dorrie put her head back on the pillow and closed her eyes. She smiled faintly.

  “Oh and how all Reddlegowt did bask in his reflected glory then! He was devastatin’ in his uniform. I think every woman that saw him fell in love with him at least a little – but none fell harder, or longer, than Elizabeth Grimwald.”

  This news did not come as a shock to Miles. It was the worst kept secret at Quarter Sessions that Mrs. Grimwald nearly worshipped Sir James. Miles would never have guessed, however, that her idolization had begun when she was just a teenager. It was hard to believe she ever had been a teenager.

  “I know it sounds ridiculous,” Dorcas continued. “She was no more than fifteen when he returned, and he was a grown man then, nearly middle aged. Mind you, she wasn’t a fool in any respect except in this. What do the French say – ‘the heart has its reasons that reason knows not of?’ Well, that’s how it was with Elizabeth. Her love for Sir James was over her like a tent. Still is, I’d wager.”

  “It’s so strange,” Miles said. “I mean, she’s so correct all the time. How could she imagine that there could ever be anything between them?” He had been in England and 1928 long enough to know there would have been an unbridgeable social chasm between the son of an Earl and the daughter of a poor Swiss coachbuilder.

  “Well, she was a girl once,” Dorcas said. “Believe it or not. And there’s more of that girl left in the woman than you might credit. Anyway, it was also around the time of Sir James’ return from Africa that the Castle finances finally collapsed. Though no one actually used the word ‘bankrupt,’ the whole village knew the old Earl had gone bust. It came right down to selling off the farms belonging to the estate. Maryanne’s family, the Thompsons, had been Reddlegowt tenants for as long as anyone could remember but, old Mr. Thompson, he never did care for farming. When the choice was put to him to buy his farm or ship out, it wasn’t a hard one. He packed up Maryanne and her brothers and they all emigrated to Canada. By then Taffy was nineteen and Maryanne was eighteen. They wanted desperately to stay together but Mr. Thomspon said she was too young and that was that.

  “So the farms all went and the Thomspsons and many others went off with them, but even with the Castle holdings all sold off, Reddlegowt was still in trouble. Bill collectors were showin’ up here with judgments in hand. Just when things looked bleakest, though, rescue came in the form of the engagement of Sir James with young Margaret Fairlamb, of Staffordshire. You’ve heard, I suppose, that Lady Fisher comes from a pottery manufacturing family of great fortune?

  Miles nodded.

  “Of course Sir James’ blood is so blue that a silver spoon would stand right up in it. Hereabouts we agreed that the old Earl had traded his fine, titled son for the potter’s daughter and her family fortune. A lot of hard things were said. I’m ashamed to admit that I said some of them – ‘a golden key will turn any door’ and such like. We didn’t know Lady Fisher then, of course. Anyway, while most of us in Reddlegowt were enjoying a good gossip, you can imagine that there was one for whom this news fell like a hammer blow.”

  “Did Mrs. Grimwald really believe that Sir James was ever going to marry her?” Miles asked.

  Dorrie nodded. “Aye. I believe that she did. As I said, it was a kind of madness, pitiable really. Even when the Fisher’s boys came – the two sons in the first two years of the marriage – Elizabeth’s flame still burned. Then, in 1899 must’ve been, the birth of their daughter Caroline was announced. I think that’s when Elizabeth’s fantasy finally collapsed. Until then, she could tell herself that he might not really love Lady Fisher. He needed her money, but with a little girl?

  “It was during these same few weeks, following the birth of Caroline, that Taffy got a nail in his heart as well. Maryanne’s brother wrote to Taffy to say there was another fellow in Canada, a university student, who wanted to wed Maryanne. She was holding him off, out of allegiance to Taffy but her brother wanted Taffy to write and let her go. Poor Taffy was devastated. He was well into his planning for Maryanne’s return.

  “So there I was, like a hub for the spokes of these three friends. They might not be talking much to one another, but they all talked to me – at least enough so that I got all the important pieces of their stories. It was a part I would play for some time to come – one I was apparently doomed to play right up to the end. I’m not sure I have played it as well as I should have – I tried to do what I thought right…”

  She paused and studied Miles as though reluctant to say more. He understood that she had come right to the edge. A pregnant silence built up in the sick room, one that he dared not break. In that moment an idea about what she was needing to tell him flashed through Miles’ mind like an electric shock – but it couldn’t be…

  Dorrie must have caught the look of recognition on his face. “Have you guessed now what I mean to tell you next?”

  “I think maybe I have,” he said, slowly gathering his thoughts and testing his theory, “but I’m not sure that I can make it all add up. It seems impossible…”

  “What is your guess?”

  “That Taffy and Mrs. Grimwald got together while Maryanne was away in Canada – and that Morgan Davies’ birth mother is not Maryanne Thompson, but Elizabeth Grimwald?”

  “Aye. At last.” Dorcas said, softly dropping back to her pillow, looking both exhausted and relieved. “That is so. Now, you are one of the two people living today who knows the whole truth of it.”

  50. Tell Me Your Secret

  The pieces fit. It made some sense. There was a definite physical similarity between Morgan and Mrs. Grimwald. That explained why Miles felt like he had met Mrs Grimwald before! He hadn’t, of course, but there was much of his mother about Prof
essor Davies. Her eyes, her bearing, even some of her gestures were stamped clearly on her son. But still, how could it be that there were only two people who knew the secret?

  “There must be at least three people who know,” Miles said. “You, me, and Mrs. Grimwald.”

  “She doesn’t know. Never has.”

  “Well how is that possible? There’s never any doubt as to who the mother of a child is.”

  “Think back to what I told you about her parents. Can you imagine their reaction when they learned that Elizabeth – a girl of nineteen – unmarried, was with child?”

  “I guess so. They would have been beyond furious.”

  “That doesn’t half cover it. The news killed her father. He dropped dead within forty eight hours of hearing it. Had a fit of some kind. They might’ve writ ‘died of shame’ on his tombstone. It would’ve been true enough. Of course I didn’t get the whole story put together til much later.”

  “How did you find out what happened?”

  “It was Maryanne and Taffy who told me the first bit of it, eventually. It seems that Taffy and Elizabeth had met, quite by accident, at one of the follies on the Castle grounds during that sad time.”

  “A folly is like, an extra building, just for fun sort of?”

  “Yes. That’s it.”

  “I saw one at the Castle yesterday – like a Greek temple?”

  “I know the one you’re speakin’ of. That might be it – I didn’t find out ever just where the deed was done. Taffy only said he were out on the grounds making a study of some plant I suppose, and Elizabeth was mooning about, probably hoping to catch sight of Sir James. She was always trying to put herself in his way. Now Taffy and Elizabeth had never cared particularly for one another. They got along all right as school fellows, though, and they got to sharing their troubles. Both were very young and brokenhearted, and it was just a case of one thing leading to another.

  “Taffy always was a responsible fellow and he brooded over what had happened something terrible. Finally, he consulted his father. Let me tell you, there was a right proper explosion in the Davies house then, but when the dust settled Mr. Davies said that Taffy was bound to do right by Elizabeth. So, Mr. and Mrs. Davies marched him to the Grimwald’s one afternoon a month or two after the event and Taffy offered marriage.

  “Taffy told me that old man Grimwald turned white as chalk and shook something terrible. The offer was flatly rejected, of course. Gustavus said he would see Elizabeth in a coffin before he would see her married to a Davies. They weren’t of our congregation, you see, and the Davies always were an easy-going sort of people. Not of the stamp that old man Grimwald could ever approve. There was some hard talk about calling in the law. But to Elizabeth’s credit, she said that it was as much her fault as Taffy’s. She bleated out her confession of love for Sir James in front of the whole company and ran out of the house. It wasn’t a calculated move, but it was probably a wise one. The old man might have done something terrible had she stayed. As it was, while she was out ragin’ on the heath, or whatever she did for two days, her father took to his bed. By the time she got back home, lookin’ like something dropped from the jaws of a wolf, her father was dead and cold.

  “Of course, at that time no word of this was whispered outside of the Davies’ and Grimwalds’ own houses. I saw Elizabeth at her father’s funeral, of course. She looked like something carved from marble; she was white to the lips and her eyes every bit as dead as if made of stone. At the time it seemed as much as anyone would expect, to lose a father so sudden. Later I understood better. She had ruined the great hope of her life and killed her father into the bargain.

  “Old Mrs. Grimwald couldn’t get out of Reddlegowt fast enough after that. She sold out the coachworks and she and Elizabeth left for Switzerland toot sweet, as they say. Before they left, though, Mrs. Davies saw Mrs. Grimwald one last time on her son’s behalf. Taffy told me that his mother sought, and received, assurances that there was no child expected.

  “So where did Professor Davies come from then?” Miles asked impatiently. Dorcas waved her hand weakly at him. “I’m getting to that. Now, all three of ‘em was gone and looked to stay that way. Elizabeth was in Switzerland, Taffy went to a new job in Norfolk and Maryanne was in Canada. Maryanne was the only one I stayed in regular contact with for the next little while. It must’ve been the following spring, I got a letter from her telling me that her father had died, the Canadian fellow who turned her head had proved unworthy, and she realized that what she wanted was Taffy, and to return home.

  “Mind, I still didn’t know about the whole business between Taffy and Elizabeth at that point, it was her next letter dropped that bombshell. Taffy had confessed all, you see, needing to make a clean breast of things. Maryanne was terribly shocked, as I was. Such a thing had gone on right under my nose and I had had no idea! Of course, all the pieces fell into place for me then. Maryanne had forgiven Taffy, but she wanted to know from me whether there had been any village gossip. I told her there had been none, which was plain amazing, considering what a choice morsel it was. I’m proud to say that I kept my mouth shut and never told, til today.

  “Well, Maryanne came home and she and Taffy were married straightway. The whole business, it seemed, had ended tidily enough. Elizabeth and her mother were away in a foreign country and the future looked bright as could be for Taffy and Maryanne. Then, I was called on to play my part one more time.

  “I had a beau of my own in those days. He went with me, as a matter of fact, to Maryanne and Taffy’s wedding. He made me happy, but not my parents. I always was an obedient sort of girl, but for the first time I flared up and we had an argument about my beau. In the heat of it, my mother asked me if I wanted to ‘end up like Betsy Grimwald and my father to end up like poor Mr. Grimwald!’

  “It seems that even closed-mouthed old Mrs. Grimwald had needed a friend in her darkest hour, you see. She hadn’t many, but as my mother was in the church, well, she confided the whole story to her. I played dumb, and asked my mother what she meant by that comment. ‘Don’t give me that you saucy girl,’ she says to me. ‘You know what Elizabeth and Taffy got up to – and about the baby.’

  “‘But there wasn’t any baby,’ I cried. ‘Mrs. Davies asked about it before the Grimwalds left.’ My mother was in a right regular fury with me or else I am sure she would never have spoken as she did. But now she had the advantage on me she couldn’t resist letting me have it. ‘Oh, but there was a baby,’ she yells. ‘It was a very difficult birth – nearly killed Elizabeth.’

  “I was speechless. There I was thinking I knew what was what and who was who and I’d been wrong again! Worse, Taffy and Maryanne had no idea of this at all. ‘What has Elizabeth done with it, with this baby’ I asked my mother.

  “‘She’s done nothing with it!’ came the answer. ‘Them Swiss nuns who attended the birth agreed with Mrs. Grimwald that Elizabeth should be told the baby was born dead – defective and dead.”

  “Was it?” I asked. “Was it born defective and dead?”

  “’Well, it wasn’t dead,’ she admitted. ‘Defective, I suppose. Mrs. Grimwald, poor woman, told me that it had a horrible red mark on its forehead, which is as much as you could expect for such a child.’”

  “I had forgotten by this point all about my boyfriend. It was terrible to think of that poor cast-off baby. I started counting the months – it was then about a year and a half since the Grimwalds had left Reddlegowt. The baby, if it had lived, would be nearly a year old by then.

  “‘What was to be done with it?’ I asked my mother. She said the nuns were going to try to find someone to take him in. ‘But if he’s marked…’ she says, ‘who’d want him?’

  “By then it had dawned on her that she had told what she never meant to. “Here,’ she says to me, ‘you’re not to breathe a word about this to anyone. Poor Mrs. Grimwald has had enough heartbreak for a lifetime and she swore me to silence. And of course the whole point of telling Elizabeth tha
t the baby had died was to relieve her of the knowledge that she had a bastard son out there somewhere, if the child has lived.’

  “I was tempted to point out that the Grimwalds were now halfway across Europe and not likely to be much concerned with gossip in Reddlegowt, but I kept my mouth shut. I knew right away that I would have to tell Taffy and Maryanne. It was Taffy’s child too, after all. And what right had old Mrs. Grimwald to forsake a poor English baby to some foreign orphanage?”

  “So,” Miles ventured, “Taffy and Maryanne went to Switzerland and found Morgan?”

  Dorcas nodded. “Maryanne had those years in Montreal, remember, and she could jabber French like nobody’s business. Once she found out about the baby, she didn’t blink more’n once before she decided that she and Taffy must go to Geneva and find it.”

  “And, obviously, they found him,” Miles said, hoping to move their talk to its conclusion.

  Dorrie nodded. “Maryanne told me it was not hard at all. There weren’t a lot of orphanages in Geneva. Poor Morgan was still there, nearly a year old and not doing well. The Sisters said they didn’t expect him to live. He was quite a stunted little thing.”

  “What about that mark?” Miles asked. “Did they just make that up to scare Elizabeth? I never noticed any mark on Professor Davies.”

  “Oh, that was nothing,” Dorcas said dismissively. “Just a stork bite, as many babies have. And I guess his hair had well grown over whatever bit of it remained when Maryanne and Taffy got to him. A stroke of luck, it was really because it probably had kept him in the orphanage long enough for his father and new mother to claim him.”

  Miles heaved a sigh. So, at last, here was “the secret that was not meant to be.”

  “Now you’re going to tell me that neither Morgan nor Mrs. Grimwald know anything about all this?”

  She shook her head with weary relief. “Aye. That’s it. At last. You see, Maryanne fell in love with Morgan the minute she laid eyes him. A year or two later, Sir James asked if Taffy would like to take over as head gardener at Quarter Sessions and he accepted. Maryanne shaved a year off Morgan’s birthdate, to match better with their wedding date. As a child he was small for his age, and no one was ever any the wiser.