A Fire Sparkling

by MacLean, Julianne

  I moved closer and laid my hand on my father’s shoulder. “We don’t know anything for sure, and even if he was your father, you have nothing to do with any of this. You’re a good man, and you weren’t part of whatever happened back then.”

  “But if we’re related,” he argued, “and my own mother . . . how could she have kept this from me? Was she ashamed? Because she must have known what he did, what he represented, what side he was on. If not at the time, then at the end of the war when it all came out. And she was married to another man. That alone is enough to change everything I ever believed about her. You know what I’m talking about, Gill, after what Malcolm just did to you. How is it possible I never knew any of this? How could she have hidden this from all of us? Grampa Jack especially?”

  His face was flushing with color. I wished he would calm down.

  “Maybe it’s not what it looks like,” I suggested. “I take it you haven’t asked her about it?”

  “No. I just can’t believe it, because she was like a saint as a mother, and Jack was a hero in the war, risking his life to fight Hitler. I can’t imagine what he would have done if he’d found these pictures.”

  I worked hard to speak in a relaxed tone. “We still don’t know what this is. Maybe there’s some other explanation, like . . . maybe she was a spy, and her husband sent her to Berlin to seduce this man. I mean . . . who has a chest like this with a secret compartment? It’s very James Bond.”

  “Now you’re making fun.”

  “No, I’m not, because that kind of stuff really happened, you know. There were lots of female spies during the war.”

  He looked up. “I know there were, but not my mother. She would have told me about that.”

  I took a step back, not wanting to remind him that he’d just finished saying that maybe it wasn’t possible to know everything about a person—even someone you loved. Maybe good people are just better at keeping secrets.

  Dad checked his watch. “We should get going. I have to pick her up at the nursing home.”

  “I’ll come with you,” I replied, “and then we can ask her about this.”

  Dad shook his head, as if he dreaded the idea of bringing it up. “I don’t know how we’re going to do that.”

  “We’ll just show her the pictures,” I replied, “and see what she has to say about them.”

  “Hi, Edward,” the station nurse said with a smile as we walked through the main door. “She’s still at it, bless her heart.”

  The sound of the piano from the activity room reached our ears. Gram was plunking away at a fast rendition of “I’m Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover” and singing her heart out.

  The nurse waved us by. “Good luck peeling her fingers off those piano keys. She’d play all night if we let her.”

  “She certainly does enjoy it,” Dad said in agreement as we walked past a few empty wheelchairs lined up along the wall.

  Not wanting to interrupt in the middle of Gram’s performance, we discreetly entered the common room, where some of the residents sat slumped forward in wheelchairs with blankets over their legs. They stared blankly at the floor, while others sat on sofas, clapping and singing along. The piano stood at an angle in the corner of the room, so that Gram could glance over her shoulder every so often.

  She was quite a performer for a ninety-six-year-old, and I found myself clapping and singing along with the residents and nurses. When Gram finished, she turned slightly on the bench and spotted us standing at the back. Her eyes lit up, and she gestured toward me. “Look, everyone. My beautiful granddaughter’s here.”

  A few of the residents turned to look at me. I waved, feeling self-conscious under all the attention.

  “Do I have time for one more?” Gram asked.

  “Sure,” Dad replied, seeming to forget that he’d just learned she might have had an affair with a Nazi war criminal. But with her curly white hair, warm eyes, and loving smile, Gram had a sweet charisma that made it seem as if she could do no wrong.

  She looked down at the piano keys and paused a moment, trying to figure out what to play next.

  A nurse shouted from the doorway. “Play ‘Tea for Two’!”

  Gram nodded. “One of my favorites.”

  She began to play, and the nurse did a little tap dance before bowing and returning to her work.

  After waiting for what seemed an eternity for Gram to say goodbye to everyone individually, I helped her into the car. As we headed for home, Dad and I shared an uneasy look, because neither of us was looking forward to asking Gram about what he’d found.

  “Is it four o’clock yet?” Gram asked as we entered the house. I helped her remove her wool coat and scarf and hung them on the coat tree. “I always have my Saturday gin and tonic at four,” she reminded me.

  “I know, Gram,” I said with a smile, because that had been her habit for as long as I could remember. “Go and have a seat in the living room, and I’ll set up the drinks tray.”

  She laid her hand on my cheek. “You’re such a sweet girl, and so pretty. I’m happy you came to visit. I’ve missed you.”

  “I missed you too.” I took her hand in mine and kissed the back of it.

  After parking the car in the garage, Dad entered the house behind us and closed the front door. “It’s getting chilly out there.”

  Without making eye contact with Gram, he removed his coat and followed me into the kitchen.

  “It’s gin and tonic time,” I quietly said to him, “which is probably a good thing. Maybe I’ll mix her a double before we whip out those pictures.”

  Dad looked worried. “I might need a stiff one myself.”

  I rose up on my tiptoes to retrieve the bottle of Tanqueray from the cupboard over the fridge. I set it on the silver tray with three tall crystal tumblers and the ice bucket and tongs and carried the tray into the living room to mix drinks for the three of us.

  “Here you go, Gram.” I handed her an ice-cold tumbler and sat in the chair facing hers. “To another day of great music.”

  “Cheers to that.” She raised her glass and took a sip, then set it down on the table next to her chair. “So, tell me, Gillian, how is that young man of yours?”

  There was a fluttering in the pit of my stomach. “Well . . . he’s not so young anymore. He just celebrated his fiftieth birthday last night.”

  “Fifty, you say. Well, that’s still young to me.” She smiled at both of us, but Dad wasn’t in the mood for jokes or small talk. He sat forward with his elbows on his knees, waiting for me to withdraw the photographs from my purse.

  But it wasn’t that easy. I wanted to give Gram a chance to enjoy her drink first.

  “And I’m afraid,” I added, “that he’s not my young man anymore either, because I broke up with him last night, after the party.”

  “On his birthday?” Gram asked, her eyebrows lifting.

  “Yes, but don’t feel too sorry for him. I caught him with another woman. Cheating.”

  She gasped. “That dirty rascal. I always knew there was something wrong with him. I had a feeling. He was too smooth. Too charming. I’m proud of you, Gillian, for not putting up with that sort of thing. Sometimes women think it’s best to turn a blind eye to men who cheat, but I don’t agree with that at all. You did the right thing, kicking him to the curb.”

  I appreciated her support, but when I glanced at my father, he raised an eyebrow at me, as if to remind me that inside my purse, I carried pictures of her in love with a man who was not her husband at the time.

  Clinking the ice cubes in my glass, I raised it to my lips and took a sip.

  “Don’t fret,” Gram gently said. “Everything will work out.”

  I thought of Malcolm and the perfect future I’d imagined for us, only yesterday. “You think so? I’m not so sure about that.”

  Dad sat in silence while Gram did her best to bolster my spirits. “Now you listen to me. You have a good heart, and you deserve a good man. He’s out there, and he’ll find you. I d
on’t know when or where or how, but you have to trust that everything happens exactly the way it’s meant to.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at her optimism. “So, I should just trust fate to handle my love life? You don’t recommend Tinder?”

  She picked up her drink, sipped it, and set it back down. “I can’t say yes or no because I don’t know what that is. Is it something on the Twitter?”

  I chuckled. “Sort of.”

  She rolled her eyes. “It’s all gibberish to me. Back in my day, people met in the real world, not on their telephones.”

  Dad and I exchanged a glance, and I knew I couldn’t put it off any longer. Bending forward, I reached into my purse, which sat on the floor at my feet, and withdrew the photos.

  “On that note, Gram,” I said tentatively, “Dad and I found something in the attic today—a few old photographs—and we’re wondering if you could tell us about them.”

  I stood up and handed them to her.

  Her eyes fixed on the first picture, but she showed no sign of concern. I wasn’t sure if she even recognized it. Then she flipped through the rest of the photographs one by one, without looking the least bit alarmed by what we’d found. It was as if she were looking at photos of a stranger’s boring trip to a theme park.

  Dad watched her with a flicker of impatience.

  “Mum,” he said. “Who is the man in those pictures? How did you know him?”

  I held up a hand to stop my father from saying another word, because I didn’t want Gram to feel as if we were ganging up on her.

  She touched the tips of her fingers to her lips and stared at one of the photos for a long, drawn-out moment. Then she reached for her drink and took a deep swig.

  “How did you find these?” she asked.

  I felt guilty for snooping into what was obviously meant to be private, but one look at Dad reminded me that he needed answers to this extremely important question. I prayed there was a simple explanation that would make all of us sigh with relief and have a good laugh.

  But something in me knew that was highly unlikely, because I sensed my grandmother’s growing discomfort and agitation.

  I sat forward and spoke softly. “Dad went up to the attic because it needs some insulation for the winter. He was poking around, and the key was already in the lock for your jewelry chest, and he just kind of . . . stumbled across it.”

  Gram regarded me with a cold stare. I’d never seen such frostiness in her eyes before.

  She turned to my father. “Edward, this isn’t what you think it is.” She had obviously put two and two together and already knew exactly what he was thinking.

  I had to admit I was relieved to hear her say that.

  It wasn’t what we thought.

  Dad sat forward on the sofa, his eyes meeting Gram’s like a laser beam across the room. “If it’s not what I think it is, then what is it? Because it looks like you were in love with a German Nazi, when you led me to believe that you were married to an Englishman. Was that even true?”

  “Don’t say such foolish things. That marriage was real.”

  “Well, of course, there’s a marriage certificate and pictures in the attic. But it’s obvious that you were in love with this other man. Did you marry my father because he was the son of an earl? For prestige or something?”

  “No, it wasn’t like that at all. So help me God, I swear it on my life.”

  “Then what were you doing in Berlin the year after you married my father? If he even was my father.”

  Gram glared at him with a dangerous look of warning. “You don’t know what it was like back then.”

  “Only because you’ve never told me anything,” he replied. “All I remember is that big house in the country and the nanny that used to read to me at night, and then we came here to live with Jack.”

  “It was a good life,” she said, “and you had a wonderful childhood.” She spoke firmly, almost scolding him, reminding him that she had made the right choice to leave England for America.

  “Of course it was a good life. But I still need to know who this man was, because every photo says April 1940, which is very close to the time when I was conceived.”

  She sat back and scoffed, which shocked me.

  Who was this woman sitting across from us? Suddenly, she seemed like a stranger to me.

  Slowly, Gram shook her head. “I told you, you don’t know anything about it.”

  Dad regarded her with sadness. “Then tell me, Mum. Please.”

  Her expression softened, and she turned her face away. For a long moment she said nothing, and we waited, and waited. Then at last, she took a deep breath and let it out.

  “All right, Edward. If you really want to know, I’ll tell you. But I’d like another drink first. And you might want to have another one too.”

  Shaken by the note of warning in her voice, I stood up quickly to mix a fresh drink for each of them—and decided to mix another one for myself as well, because I had a feeling this might be a long night.

  PART TWO:

  VIVIAN

  CHAPTER THREE

  May 1939

  In the hours before Theodore Gibbons met the great love of his life, he was riding by train in a first-class carriage, on his way back to London while contemplating how best to propose to quite another woman altogether.

  At the age of thirty-one, Theodore had recently been appointed deputy minister at the new Ministry of Supply, which Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had created to advance the provision of military equipment to the armed forces. With the prospect of war on the horizon, Theodore couldn’t help but feel some pressure to do his familial duty as well—to marry and provide a few extra heirs for the Grantchester title.

  He was not first in line to inherit the title himself—that honor belonged to his older brother, Henry—but everyone knew that Henry could not be relied upon for much of anything. As a child, he’d been spoiled heavily by their mother and disciplined harshly by their father, which had created a temperamental young man, impossible to control. Consequently, Henry had been expelled from two prestigious boarding schools as a lad and had flunked out of Cambridge University after a year. To this day, Henry was an irresponsible rake who showed no signs of settling down and living for anything beyond his most basic desires. He hadn’t come home to Grantchester Hall in over five years, preferring his own London flat in Soho. The bachelor pad, as their mother liked to call it.

  Theodore’s father had often expressed, even in front of guests, that if he had his druthers, Theodore would be first in line to inherit and take responsibility for the estate, rather than Henry, who might eventually gamble away all that was left of the family fortune.

  Of course, for Theodore to take Henry’s place, Henry would have to die, and perhaps that was the point. Their father had never been soft or sentimental, which Theodore often considered to be the root cause of his brother’s dark side in the first place.

  But who was he to judge? He’d never been a parent himself, at least not yet.

  Although it hardly seemed the best time to be bringing children into the world . . .

  Setting his papers down on the empty seat beside him, he stared out the train window at the rolling English countryside, which seemed so far removed from his current existence in London, where he and the other cabinet ministers talked endlessly about armaments and the prime minister’s unwillingness to accept that war was inevitable.

  To Theodore’s surprise, it had been a welcome respite over the weekend to return home to Grantchester Hall for one of his mother’s famous rollicking house parties—though it had been a carefully orchestrated matchmaking plot, of course. Everyone knew it, even Theodore, when he read the letter she had written to invite him for the weekend and enlighten him about the guests who were expected to attend. It had been a short list of her favorite family friends, and Lady Clara was mentioned with the added comment, “She has blossomed into quite a handsome and intelligent young woman, don’t you think?”
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  It was true. Theodore couldn’t deny it. Lady Clara was singularly attractive, and he’d enjoyed their conversations at dinner. Afterward, they had played cards and charades with the other guests in the drawing room and stayed up until dawn, drinking far too many cocktails and speaking zealously about war and politics.

  He knew that an engagement between them would not come as a surprise to anyone, including Lady Clara herself, for she had never hidden the fact that she was enamored with him. They had been friends for years, almost since childhood. He felt a sincere affection for Lady Clara and believed she would make an excellent wife. She was sensible, pretty, and well connected socially. Her father was a duke.

  Not that Theodore cared about any of that, but his family most certainly did, and he had no desire to disappoint them, like Henry always had. Henry thrived on it, in fact.

  Theodore wondered when he would see Lady Clara again. She had mentioned more than a few times that she would be in London for the summer months, and she enjoyed the jazz clubs.

  He decided that he would stay on top of this, and despite the demands of his work—or perhaps because of them—he would remember to pay a call when she and her mother took up residence at their London house, no matter how busy he was with other matters. He couldn’t go on like this, thinking only of the possibility of war, living only for his work, as important as it was to him and to the country in times such as these. It was important to go on living, wasn’t it?

  A few hours later, the train pulled into Victoria Station. His driver, Jackson, was there on schedule, waiting to take him to Grantchester House in Mayfair.

  It was a good thing that the train had been on time because Theodore barely had an hour to dress for the dinner and dance at the Savoy in honor of a colleague’s retirement. It was bound to be a crush. Theodore wondered who might be there, besides the usual politicians and government officials.

  Little did he know he was about to meet a young woman who would change the course of his life forever, and the course of many other lives as well.

  “Theodore, is it true?” Nolan Brown asked as he leaned across the elegant table in the Lancaster Ballroom and spoke in a hushed tone.