Up, Back, and Away

by K. Velk

  “Take it from me, one thing I’ve learned in these last few months is that the world is full of surprises and mysteries. I think it’s safe to hold onto that, although maybe not very comfortable.”

  Jack smiled. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “You could walk with me once more to the big house,” Miles replied. “I have to have a meeting with Grimmy and I could use a little reinforcement.”

  54. The Truth Will Out

  Miles found Mr. Scott in his office. He explained that the news from Dorcas had some bearing on his own situation and that he needed to get home as quickly as possible now. He knew Mr. Scott was too discreet to ask questions, and he didn’t – even when Miles handed him forty gold sovereigns and asked him to deliver twenty each to Rhonda and Violet when they left service at Quarter Sessions. Mr. Scott only nodded and said that he would do so, adding, that he was personally sorry to see Miles go, and that he thought Lady Fisher would be as well. He suggested that her Ladyship would not like Miles to leave without a chance to say goodbye. Miles’ heart sank. He knew it wouldn’t be right to slink away, but he dreaded having to part from her in person.

  “OK. If she wants to see me, let me know. I was just going to check my room one last time. Would you ask Mrs. Grimwald to come see me there?”

  Mr. Scott raised an eyebrow but said only, “I shall ask her.”

  Miles was, admittedly, engaging in a little psychological warfare by asking that she come to him. He thought it would put her off balance. Besides, his room was the scene of her crime. It was the right place to confront her about what she had done – which was common theft however she might have justified it in her own mind. His cheeks burned when he thought of her searching his room, rifling his things. She must have found the iPod on Saturday while he had been in the office collecting his pay. What was the word for this feeling? Oh yes. Violated.

  He needed only a few minutes to look around for anything he might have overlooked and to straighten his room. Then he found that his clever maneuver might not have been so clever after all. He was left to sit on his bed and wait. Mrs. Grimwald knew a little about psychological warfare herself, apparently. It was nearly an hour, one of the longest ever, before he heard her heavy shoes on the winding stairs.

  He had left the door open just a crack. He saw her shadow as she hesitated in front of it, no doubt debating whether she should walk in like she owned the place or do the polite thing and knock. In the end, she pushed the door open in a way that suggested she was seeking permission to enter while at the same time simply walking through. He knew then that he had her. She wore the same steady expression she always seemed to have, but she was acting, pretending. Miles sensed her insecurity and pounced. He stood and faced her, eye to eye.

  “I want my property. Hand it over.”

  “Who are you?” she asked with a little tremor in her voice. “Who are you really?”

  “I’m Miles McTavish.”

  “But you are not quite what you pretend, are you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, drop it. I have that, that, device, whatever it is. And,” her eyes narrowed, “I heard you talking to Ada. I heard what you said, about where you were from.”

  The idea that he and Ada had been spied upon sent another spike of anger through Miles. Mrs. Grimwald had lurked outside the sewing room that day, watching and waiting, gathering intelligence before springing on them. He pictured her straining to hear what Miles was saying to Ada, and waiting for her moment to catch them out.

  “You had no right – you with your listening at keyholes, sneaking around, and stealing!”

  Her face reddened.

  “Oh, but I do! It’s my job to see that this household is run properly. I certainly can’t stand by and allow an interloper, an alien, to…to invade our home.” He sensed her doubt, and her fear.

  He had meant to be firm in this encounter. Firm, not cruel. After all, Mrs. Grimwald had been lied to and betrayed by those closest to her, by those who had held her trust. Her whole life might have been different if her mother had told her the truth about her baby. But that look on her face as she stared Miles down was full of loathing. Everything in his field of vision turned to red…

  “That’s always your justification for your sneaky dealings, isn’t it? Just doing the right thing, the correct thing. But I know you. I’ve got your number. You’re a schemer and you’ve been scheming all your life. All to put you where you want to be – always under cover of perfection and piety. But despite it all you haven’t gotten what you’ve wanted most, have you? So close, but yet so far. You’re deluded about Sir James, you know. You’re nothing to him but a useful servant.”

  She took a step back.

  “You have no right… You are… unnatural,” she spat.

  “I’ll ask again! Where is my property?”

  “I destroyed it!” she said, unconvincingly.

  He took a step toward her, clenching his fists. She took another step back.

  “You didn’t!” he growled. “You wouldn’t dare…” Her face was inches from his and to his shame and surprise, he burned to clout her pale, powdered cheek.

  Instead, though, he hit her harder with a whisper than he could have with his fist

  “Oh Mrs. Grimwald, I know all about you.”

  She flinched. “I don’t know what you mean?” Her eyes blinked with the speed of hummingbird wings.

  “Oh, you know! You know what you did. You and Taffy, out on the grounds of Reddlegowt Castle one day about thirty years ago? About a bastard baby born in Switzerland. You know!”

  She staggered. “It’s not possible…”

  “Here’s one other thing I am here to tell you. All kinds of things are possible – things you could never dream of in that pinched little world of yours. Now get me my iPod!”

  “Your what?”

  “The little metal thing you stole from my jacket pocket. Give it to me right now!”

  “Is it blackmail then?” she yelled through hot tears. “I knew as soon as I set eyes on you that something wasn’t right – that you had come to upset things, knock them out of balance. You don’t belong here!”

  “Oh but that’s where you’re wrong!” he yelled in his turn. “Wrong again Mrs. Grimwald! I do belong. I was sent here by a force you have never understood, and with two purposes. You heard me tell Ada about one of them – but you and your secret were the other. I was sent to find a ‘secret that wasn’t meant to be.’ And I have found it.”

  She was frozen. Her terror was obvious and something about it was pitiable. Miles’ furor ebbed slightly.

  “You have taken what doesn’t belong to you and you must hand it back.”

  “Or else?” she said.

  “Don’t push me.” He stepped in closer. She was a tall woman, but Miles had gained twenty five pounds of muscle in his English summer and at least two inches in height. They stared at one another, and she blinked first. Without looking down she reached slowly into a pocket of her dress and fished out the iPod, dangling it by the cord like a little blue mouse.

  And then, to Miles’ dismay, she crumpled. Her legs gave way. If he hadn’t caught her and steered her to the chair she would have dropped right to the floor. He worried for a moment that she was dead but then he saw her eyelids flutter.

  “I knew one day you would come,” she breathed. “Someone would come. I had hoped that everyone who knew was dead now, but there’s no hiding, never any hiding, ‘There is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known. That which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.’ Oh, I have been a fool!”

  Miles caught her hand and patted it. It was cold as ice. “No!” he said. “No! You’re wrong. You’ve got it all wrong. I was sent to uncover a secret, that was my charge, but it’s not meant to punish anyone.”

  How had he allowed himself to get so angry? He had wanted to push her down, and he had done so. But it see
med now she had only been a fortress of cards. In her swoon, she was light against him as a child– just skin and bones. He tried to sound gentle when he spoke again.

  “I see now – it was to right an injustice that I was sent, one done to you in part.” He needed all his agility to keep her off the floor. Her head rolled on her neck. He patted her hands and her face frantically.

  “Wake up. Wake up!”

  “Who told you?” she managed.

  “I think you know, not that it matters. In any case, she never meant you any harm. She knew your secret and kept it to help you, and to help Morgan.”

  Mrs. Grimwald righted herself, but the look of mastery that she perpetually wore was gone. She looked confused. “What’s he got to do with any of this?”

  Miles was glad now that she was sitting down.

  “Look. What I’m going to tell you. I don’t understand it all myself but I swear it’s true. I was sent here from my home in Texas, from my home in 2012, by Morgan Davies. You see, Morgan once made a similar journey, but in the other direction. He is in America. He is a Professor. That’s all true. But I know him as an old man, retired from teaching. He runs a bicycle shop, specializing in vintage English three speeds. He does it to keep busy and because he has always loved those bikes.”

  “But it’s impossible…” she said again. “He can’t be more than thirty.”

  “I’m here, aren’t I? And this, do you want to know what it is? Do you think it exists anywhere else in the world in 1928?” He pulled out the iPod and handed her the earbuds. “Put these in your ears.” He prayed that she had not drained the precious battery trying to figure out how to use it. He knew there was a little classical music somewhere in the music library. He unlocked it, pressed the power button and the iPod lighted up, to his everlasting relief. He scrolled to “classical” and found the Andante Cantabile by Tchaicovsky. He pressed play. Mrs. Grimwald caught her breath and her eyes widened. Miles let her listen for about half of the six and a half minutes of the track.

  “It’s a music player. That’s all. Nothing sinister. Just something that has yet to be invented.”

  “It’s incredible. Like an orchestra in a book of matches.” She spoke softly, and was as docile as a kitten.

  “Now, I have something else to tell you,” Miles announced. “This is the important part. The reason I’m here. Don’t interrupt. I don’t have much time.” Miles methodically told her about Taffy Davies and the message he got on the Somme battlefield. She sat still as a stone and listened.

  “Morgan left so quickly after his mother died that some very important business was left unfinished – the secret of his birth. I think he was meant to know it. I think you were meant to know it.”

  There was a long silence. Miles could see that she scarcely dared to speak. Finally, in a whisper, she asked, “What have you come to tell me?’

  “You know, don’t you?”

  “The baby…”

  “It never died in Switzerland,” Miles said softly. “They thought they were doing you a favor, your mother and the nursing sisters, telling you that. But it wasn’t true. Your mother told a friend what had really happened, and about a year after he was born, word of the baby got back to Taffy and Maryanne. They went straight to Switzerland. They found Morgan, and they adopted him.”

  All composure now deserted Mrs. Grimwald. She cried out once, a wild sound of pain. Then she covered her face with her hands and wept tears of desolation. Miles went to the haversack and found the letter that Maryanne had addressed to Elizabeth Grimwald.

  “Maryanne wrote this for you, just before she died. I think it was meant to go to Morgan, and from him to you – if he chose to give it. He doesn’t know the truth either, not yet anyway. I think he would want you to have this.”

  She wiped her eyes with the sleeves of her tweed jacket and took the envelope. With trembling hands she shook out a thick letter and a little stack of snapshots. The pictures were of Morgan as a baby and as a boy. The back of each photo was dated and the location noted. She looked at them silently, with tears running down her cheeks.

  “It was kind of her, to put in the pictures. I wasn’t paying attention as I would have done, if I had known.” She glanced at the letter. “I won’t read it just now, you understand… But tell me, if you will stay a little,” she said meekly. “Tell me about him, about the life he has lived.”

  Though Miles was burning to be away, he could hardly leave Mrs. Grimwald so demolished and so full of questions. So he sat on the edge of his bed and explained. He told how Morgan made his way from the Birch Gate in Vermont to New York City; how he won a scholarship to study at Columbia University. He told her about Annie Laurie Davies, daughter of a Texas rancher, and their five grown children, and the students, thousands of them, that her son had taught over his long career as an esteemed professor of English at one of the best universities in America. He told her about the books he had written and about the Britannic Wheelman. He told her how he had stumbled into the shop and how the place and its owner had captivated him.

  “He also told me, in case you’re wondering, that he never once even visited England again after he left.”

  She smiled weakly. “Miles. There are no words, I suppose, for me this is, what to call it? Grace? Thank you. I am quite undone. You will tell him, when you get back, that I was glad to know at last? What madness! So strange, yet you are here, and I suppose you may get back.”

  “I will tell him, everything.”

  “Maryanne was a fine mother to him. I know she was his real mother, in all the ways that count, but I would not be sorry for him to know the truth. You will explain it?”

  “I have already promised that I would.” Miles felt pity for her, but now his anxiety to be away was becoming unbearable. He was about to hop up, leaving her with a last warning not to tell anyone the truth about his origins when a knock came to his rescue.

  “Pardon me. Mrs. Grimwald? Miles?” Mr. Scott’s face appeared at the door. While the scene must have filled him with questions, he betrayed no curiosity. “Lady Fisher would like to see you Miles, before you go. She’s waiting in the library.”

  “I do have to go now Mrs. Grimwald,” Miles said softly.

  She smiled up at him. “Yes. Yes. I suppose you must. Good luck to you, Miles. Good luck and God speed.” Miles cast an appealing glance at Mr. Scott who returned the look with an almost imperceptible nod. They shook hands wordlessly. Miles grabbed the haversack and ran down the stairs. As he rounded the first bend he heard Mr. Scott ask gently, “Elizabeth, are you all right?”

  55. Fare Thee Well

  Miles the under-footman had enjoyed using the backstairs and passages at Quarter Sessions. He always felt a bit like a magician when he popped out through a doorway concealed nearly perfectly in the oak paneling. Now, for the last time, he worked his way through the back passage that allowed him to emerge in the Gallery. The long Gallery was one of Miles’ favorite places in the house and hurried as he was, he couldn’t resist pausing just a moment.

  The dark walls were hung with paintings of the past and present owners of Quarter Sessions, their family members, and the occasional royal portrait. He had come to regard the people in the paintings as the presiding spirits of the place. He had stolen moments here whenever he could, while shuttling coal, or trays of tea, or brooms and mops, to pause and study them. His favorite portrait was of Hugh Le Vide, the founder of the estate. Hugh had a furious expression and a bald head. “Le Vide,” Mr. Scott had explained, meant “the bald.”

  Miles also especially liked the painting of the two lost Fisher sons, Andrew and George. It was enormous, nearly life-sized he supposed. It showed both young men in their Army uniforms relaxing in front of the drawing room fireplace. It was hard for Miles to believe that they were now long dead and gone, at least by the common reckoning. (He had learned a few things about the past in his short life; primarily that the past wasn’t so gone as he had once supposed).

  He said a silen
t farewell to Le Vide and Andrew and George and all the others who stood over the hall. The portraits had a certain occult power, and he couldn’t help feeling that their subjects were wishing him luck as he rapped gently on the door of the library.

  “You must go then? You’ve quite made up your mind?” Lady Fisher asked as she crossed the room to meet him.

  “It isn’t easy, believe me, but I know now that I have to go.” Miles shook her offered hand and followed her to the table where she had been sitting. “I guess really I have known that all along, somewhere deep down. I am sorry though. I wish I could have it both ways.”

  She sat and motioned for him to do the same. He hesitated for just a moment, not wanting to be rude but worried about further delay.

  “I won’t keep you, I promise Miles,” she said as though she had read his mind. “It is such a bother in life, not being able to have two mutually exclusive things when both are desirable.”

  He sat. “Thank you for everything.”

  “Where will you go now? Back to America?”

  “Well,” he took a deep breath. “Yes. I will. But, first I am going to try and find Ada. I know it will sound strange to you but I believe she belongs in America.”

  “It doesn’t sound strange to me at all,” Lady Fisher replied, lighting a cigarette. “I have been worried about that girl for such a long time.” She exhaled a blue cloud and Miles tried not to cough. “I know she has something special – but she’s so terribly ripe for exploitation. We couldn’t seem to make her understand. Girls that age are so naïve, so hopeful. You just might be the saving of her, Miles. Who knows? Certainly Miss Everett and I now have failed on that score.”

  “Oh but you helped her a lot! She knows it too – only she’s so stubborn. The thing I’m really worried about is whether I can find her now. I don’t know London at all.”

  Lady Fisher opened a leather folder that lay before her. She took out a piece of paper and pushed it in Miles’ direction.