The photographs skated and spun on the polished wood. They were so little and light.
‘I’m wifeless,’ Aubrey went on. ‘And a serving officer. Not to mention my injury. I can’t look after her, as much as I want to. Pamela will go to my sister in Ireland, at least until the war’s over. Hester – my sister – has four children. She was dreadfully hurt when Amelia left me and took Pamela away from us. She adored Pamela.’
I might as well have been cloven in half with an axe.
The meal seemed to be without end. We were now eating an apple pie, the pastry thick, the apples dark and wrinkled, no cream. Selwyn and Aubrey were talking about Egypt, Libya, Malta, Sicily. I interrupted Aubrey in mid-sentence.
‘I’d like to speak to your sister on the telephone.’
He gazed at me, his face softening. My misery was too clear and too awful to ignore.
‘I’d like to hear her voice. Hester’s.’
Aubrey nodded. ‘Of course, if it’s humanly possible. The lines may be too busy.’
‘I’ll make tea first.’ I pushed away my dessert. ‘Elizabeth has gone to bed.’
I put the tea tray in the sitting room where the remains of a fire hissed in the grate. Aubrey was in the hall, speaking to the operator. He was consulting a small leather address book, cradling the receiver between shoulder and ear. The sight of him brought me some way to my senses and my manners. ‘I do apologize if I’m disturbing her. If I’ve inconvenienced you …’
He gave a true, delighted smile. ‘I’d probably have asked to telephone anyway. There’s no one in the world who’ll be happier to hear we’ve found Pamela. Apart from me, of course. I’ll speak first, if you don’t mind.’
‘Of course.’
I went back into the sitting room. Selwyn was crouched by the grate in rolled shirtsleeves, mending the fire. ‘It will be very hard for my wife.’ He stood up. ‘I blame myself, as much as anyone.’ He looked up and saw it was me.
I didn’t enjoy his discomfiture. ‘Oh, Selwyn. You blame yourself, do you? How pointless.’
He stayed where he was, his face peaked in sadness. The sitting-room door opened and Aubrey put his head in. ‘Mrs Parr, Hester would be so pleased to speak to you.’
‘My dear Mrs Parr.’ The voice was deep, tremulous, brimming with tears. ‘I am Hester Browne, Pamela’s aunt, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. You saved her from the bombs!’
‘No, no, I didn’t. I just picked her up in the bus, where she was sleeping—’
‘Oh, my dear woman. Amelia never wrote back, you see, and they moved, and I never saw that little baby again. Aubrey and Amelia were utterly sundered, though it was the last thing he wanted. He was at sea, you know, and then the war … What’s she like now? Does she still have those round eyes?’
‘Yes, she does. She’s very … very ebullient.’
Hester gave a rich trill of laughter. ‘None of us Lovells ever shut up,’ she said. ‘Not even Aubrey, although what with the war, and his poor hand … Do you have any children of your own?’
‘I do not.’ I closed my eyes. ‘And I’m sure Pamela will be delighted to be part of a big family. But she’s …’
I fought for strength, for some kind of mercy.
‘Hello? Have we lost the line?’
‘I was saying that she’s been over three years here in Upton, with us.’
‘Of course, my dear. It won’t be easy. We must speak again if we can.’
I endured another bout of gratitude, and rang off.
I left the men murmuring with their tea. I didn’t care whether they were discussing the Mediterranean theatre of war or pitying me. I climbed the stairs and went into the old dressing room where Pamela was asleep. On her side, one leg flung out behind, the other bent up at the knee, the opposite arm crooked as if holding a baton in a relay. A child flitting into the next room of her life, and I would be gone, hidden by the closing door. She stirred, and blew a bubble, her fist closed around a peg doll that was still clothed in Selwyn’s handkerchief. I pulled it gently away in case she lay on it in the night and woke up. Her fingers jerked and released it. She sighed, and stirred again. I sat down on the bed, with my hand on my chin, watching her.
Some time later I heard them on the landing, Selwyn showing Aubrey to his room. One of them, I couldn’t tell who, said, ‘Goodnight.’ Then Selwyn came into the bedroom. I heard him move around, preparing for bed. Then he came up the steps into the dressing room and stood in the doorway.
‘He’s her father,’ he said. ‘We always knew he might come in the end.’
When I didn’t move or speak, he went away.
I undressed quietly and lay down beside her and watched on. She was a hot, industrious sleeper. I pulled the strands of hair from her damp cheek. It was still rounded, like her forehead, and her mouth was pushed out in the usual way, as if about to sing ‘O’. I put my face against the hair at the nape of her neck, breathing in her extraordinary scent, so that it would nourish me in the years to come.
In the middle of the night I dozed and then my eyes opened again. She was breathing with regular little snorts. I put my hand on her back, for the warmth.
Selwyn’s leather clock told me it was three, and then four. I liked that clock. It was the clock of an independent man, one who had travelled, who’d seen hot horizons, islands in a glittering sea. The case folded so beautifully into one’s hand, like a leather egg. At five o’clock I sat up, and went silently into the big bedroom. I took a sheet of writing paper from my drawer and began a letter to Pamela. I thought I’d slip it into her suitcase with her clothes. Dear Pamela, I hope that you will keep this letter after you have read it so that you can read it again because I have some very important things to say to you.
I doubted she would read it again. She was too contrary. She’d make a paper boat of it and float it in the bath. A bath in Ireland, big and cold, with clear brown peaty water pouring from a single flared silver tap. And a great Juno of a woman with tumbling chestnut hair would be scooping the water over her back and her small pale rounded shoulders, trilling at her lovingly. I had no idea what Hester looked like but I felt that only a generously built woman could possess such a rich contralto.
I carried on writing. Perhaps I could give the letter to Aubrey.
Selwyn stirred and muttered, and almost immediately afterwards I heard his voice.
‘Ellen,’ he said. ‘It’s six o’clock.’
‘Mm?’
‘What are you doing?’
The sky was light. I felt light, too, clear-headed.
‘I’ve been writing a letter.’
I heard him sigh. ‘I’d better get up. I’ll see you at eight, for breakfast.’
19
PAMELA ROSE INTO consciousness with much lip-smacking, stuck out an arm as if hailing traffic. I grasped her hand and she opened her eyes.
‘Mercy me, here you are,’ she said.
I made myself smile. ‘It’s seven o’clock. And a nice spring-like day already. I thought we’d wear our picnic dresses.’ I was already dressed in mine, a faded grey linen button-down dress with a shirt collar and wide pockets, one of them with an ink-stain but never mind, it was the most comfortable thing I owned. ‘Look,’ I said, holding her dress. ‘Do you remember this one from last summer?’
It was a simple tunic of sky-blue polished cotton checked in thin white lines. Made out of a full-skirted overall I’d intended to use for cleaning grates and silver, but never had, on account of the fabric being too fine. I had put a trim, a ric-rac of white daisies, around the bottom.
‘I don’t like those daisies any more.’
‘They’re pretty.’
She pushed herself upright in the bed. ‘Why does that man want to be my daddy?’
‘He’s always been your daddy.’ I put the dress down on the chair.
‘No, he hasn’t! How can he be a daddy when I’ve never seen him!’
I reached out and touched her cheek. She was still hot from sleeping. ‘You saw him when you were a baby. You just don’t remember.’
‘Mummy said he didn’t want to be a daddy.’