‘And so when I came back to England I went to Plymouth first. They told me she’d come here. So how did you end up with my daughter?’
I told him about the raid, the fleeing buses and the well-meaning women. In my mind I picked Pamela up from the back seat, in her dirty blanket, and felt her hot cheek against the side of my neck.
‘What a shambles. What the hell was she doing in Southampton?’
‘I believe her mother … I believe there was a man.’
He nodded, fingering his chin. That part made sense to him.
*
‘Amelia danced before she walked, she told me. Born to it. She hated being still. She was ill with Pamela, bed rest from the fourth month until well after the birth. She grew … baleful. Blamed us both, I think, me and the baby, for hobbling her. She fell back in love with Pamela the minute she set eyes on her. Not with me, however.’
Southampton had released us at last and we had travelled into, and out of, Waltham. Now we were in open country. He gave a sigh and stared out of the window.
‘We parted in ’thirty-six. Pamela was barely a year old. I came home from leave and the house was empty. Not so much as a hairpin. I tracked her down to a place along the coast – she hadn’t gone far – but it did no good. We divorced soon afterwards. She was happy to provide a corespondent. She said she was sorry, she knew she was to blame. She’d blundered. I was a mistake. And sometimes the price of freedom is higher than we’d wish, but worth it all the same.’
Freedom. What freedom was worth that, tearing a child from her father? Sending the child out alone to wreak havoc? Because havoc she had surely wrought.
He smiled. ‘To be fair, she was a good mother.’
I found my voice, such as it was. A poor croak. ‘How do you know? If Pamela was only a year old when you left.’
‘When Amelia left.’ His correction was mild. ‘Do you have children?’
I shook my head.
‘A year’s long enough to tell.’ He looked around him. ‘This is a pretty place.’
And so it was, on a breezy late March afternoon. The high brick walls lichen-covered, the meadows well-watered, the houses with shining windows. One could hardly believe that we were at war.
‘This is Upton. We get off here.’
I stood for a moment on the triangle of grass by the bus stop in the main street. Pamela would still be at Lucy’s house. ‘She’s in the care of a friend this afternoon,’ I said at last. ‘It’s this way.’ We began to walk up the road.
‘She won’t know me, of course,’ he said suddenly. ‘I’m worried I’ll frighten her – with my arm in a sling.’
He had no idea what she was like. How could he know? ‘Pamela won’t be frightened of a sling. When she was six she had one herself, for a sprained wrist. A cartwheeling injury.’ I stopped walking. ‘Is that all your worry? Not one question about how she is?’
He turned back to me, stricken. ‘She hasn’t left my mind since I arrived at the Crown Hotel. When I see her I’ll know how she is.’
We reached the steps up to the Hornes’ cottage. He went first, climbing in an awkward way, swinging round towards the rail. The steps were steep, and he had one arm bound to his body. By the time we reached the top he was breathing much harder than the labour merited and I saw the apprehension in his face, the pallor and wide eyes, and he looked even more like his daughter.
Lucy and Pamela were in the garden, standing, both bending, and with their backs to us, in the long grass beyond the apple tree. ‘Maurice,’ Pamela was saying. ‘Oh Maurice, do eat your grass.’
‘My God, my God,’ Aubrey murmured at my side. At the click of the gate Lucy straightened up.
‘Here’s Ellen now,’ she said. ‘Oh.’
Pamela came towards me, ahead of Lucy. ‘He won’t eat it. He’s a stubborn tortoise.’
Lucy’s eyes flicked from man to child, from child to man, the rest of her face unmoving.
Aubrey held out his uninjured hand to her. ‘This is my friend Lucy Horne,’ I said hastily, because she was taking his hand with a stiff nod and no words. Aubrey turned to Pamela.
‘Hello Pamela. I’m Aubrey.’ He pointed at the tortoise. ‘Is this Maurice?’
Pamela stood, doubtful. ‘Beg pardon, but who are you?’
‘Aubrey. I told you.’
She frowned. ‘Yes, but who is that?’
Aubrey began to laugh, gently in delight. ‘I’m someone who’s interested in tortoises.’ He moved forward and stood in front of me, and bent down to Pamela. ‘Did you tickle Maurice on the nose? That’s the way to start. We need a long, juicy piece of grass.’
‘It would be nice if we could eat grass,’ Pamela said as she led him away. ‘It’s not on the ration. Everybody knows that. We could have grass buns, grass cakes. Grass lemonade. Look at your poor arm. Did you get bombed? Grass jelly. Grass …’
It was liquid, like birdsong, her voice. They stood now where Pamela had stood with Lucy, in the wilderness beyond the apple tree. Except that he was with her now, and Lucy was beside me.
‘Jesus Christ, Ell,’ she whispered.
We opened up the dining room, ran a duster over the walnut table, set out the pink Venetian glasses – a deep, lucent pink, the colour of ripe Victoria plums. ‘Don’t wait up for us,’ I told Elizabeth. ‘I’ll clean the plates and the pan while the water’s hot.’ And her mouth set in a line, the lips almost vanishing: disapproval of this idea, and pity for me at the same time.
We ate a chicken we’d killed, the last of the kale, bolted and bitter, some potatoes. I cut up his portion for him in the kitchen but all the same he worked at his food. It was his right hand which was injured, and he wasn’t yet clever with his fork.
Selwyn set down his glass with minute care, his face drawn. He’d listened to Aubrey’s account, waved aside my apology for not telling him about Mrs Berrow. That hardly mattered any more. Now he began to address Aubrey.
‘It’s simply that – well, here you are, without … I’m sorry, it seems absurd to say it, but—’
‘Without any actual evidence?’ Aubrey said mildly. ‘I know. I don’t even have her birth certificate. But I do have friends and family, of course, respectable people, who’d swear in court that I’m the Surgeon Lieutenant Commander Lovell who married Amelia Pickering, and that we had a child, a baby girl called Pamela.’
‘My dear man, I didn’t mean to offend—’
‘No offence taken. And then there’s my face, of course. Give Pamela a short back and sides and she could be me at the same age.’
I put my hand over Selwyn’s, which was clenched around his silver napkin ring.
Aubrey was reaching under his sling, into his inside breast pocket. ‘I’ve got some photographs.’ He withdrew a small brown envelope which he placed on the table. The flap was lifted. I could see that it was stuffed with photographs, too tightly for a single hand to take them out. ‘Mrs Parr, if you’d be so kind.’
I picked up the envelope and began to pull out the photographs. The first was of a baby for all the world like a small monkey, with huge eyes beneath surprised brows.
‘Here she is.’ He smiled. ‘More bushbaby than human being. She had a dreadful couple of months at the start, you know. She wouldn’t feed. That’s why she was so thin.’ More images slid out in my fingers. Pamela as an older baby, crawling. Now standing, feet apart, arms above her head, hands enclosed in the large fists of an elderly woman. They and a black Labrador were flanked by stone gateposts. ‘That is Ireland, County Waterford. My sister’s house. The lady’s her late mother-in-law. That dog I believe is called Winnie. Pamela was a year and a few days.’ He looked up at Selwyn. ‘My wife severed relations with me shortly afterwards.’
I withdrew another photograph, and there he was himself, smiling, carrying a once more tiny Pamela, holding the hand of a woman in a cloche hat. The brim shaded her face so that only her mouth was visible. The lips were parted, black in the sunshine. ‘That’s Amelia.’