The Secret Keeper

Thirty-three

Greenacres, 2011


THEIR MOTHER had requested the song and she wanted to listen to it in the sitting room. Laurel offered to bring a CD player into the bedroom so she didn’t have to move, but the suggestion was quickly dismissed and Laurel knew better than to argue. Not with Ma, not this morning when she had that otherworldly look in her eyes. She’d been like it for two days now, ever since Laurel got back from Campden Grove and told her mother what she’d found.

The long slow drive from London, even with Daphne talking about Daphne the whole way, had done nothing to diminish Laurel’s exhilaration, and she’d gone in to sit with her mother as soon as they could be alone. They’d spoken, finally, of everything that had happened, of Jimmy, and Dolly, and Vivien, and the Longmeyer family in Australia too; her mother told Laurel of the guilt she’d always harboured about having gone to see Dolly on the night of the bombing and urged her back inside the house. ‘She wouldn’t have died there if not for me. She was on her way out when I arrived.’ Laurel reminded her mother that she’d been trying to save Dolly’s life, that she’d been delivering a warning and she couldn’t possibly blame herself for the random landing places of German bombs.

Ma had asked Laurel to bring in Jimmy’s photograph—not a print at all, but an original—one of the few vestiges of the past she hadn’t locked away. Sitting there beside her mother, Laurel had looked at it afresh: the dawn light after a raid, the broken glass in the foreground shining like little lights, the group of people emerging from their shelter in the background, through the smoke. ‘It was a gift,’ Ma said softly, ‘it meant such a lot when he gave it to me. I couldn’t have borne to part with it.’

They’d both wept as they talked, and Laurel had wondered at times, as her mother found a reserve of energy and managed to speak—halt- ingly but with urgency—about the things she’d seen and felt, if the strain of old memories, some of them desperately painful, would prove too much; but, whether it was gladness at hearing Laurel’s news of Jimmy and his family, or relief at finally having let go of her secrets, she seemed to have rallied. The nurse warned them that it wouldn’t last, that they weren’t to be misled, and that the dip when it came would be swift; but she smiled, too, and told them to enjoy their mother while they could. And they did; they surrounded her with love and noise and all the happy, fractious crush of family life that Dorothy Nicolson had always loved best.

Now, while Gerry carried Ma to the sofa, Laurel thumbed through the vinyls in the rack, looking for the right album. She went quickly, but paused a moment when she reached the Chris Barber Jazz Band, a smile settling on her face. The record had belonged to her father; Laurel could still remember the day he’d brought it home. He’d got out his own clarinet and played along with Monty Sunshine’s solo for hours, standing right there in the middle of the rug, pausing every so often to shake his head in wonder at the sheer virtuosity of Monty’s skill. All through dinner that night he’d kept to himself, the noise of his daughters washing over him as he sat at the head of the table with a glaze of perfect satisfaction lighting his face.

Infused by the memory’s lovely emotion, Laurel pushed Monty Sunshine aside and continued turning through the records until she found what she was after, Ray Noble and Snooky Lanson’s ‘By the Light of the Silvery Moon’. She looked back to where Gerry was settling their mother, pulling the light rug so gently to cover her frail body, and she waited, thinking as she did what a boon it was to have had him back at Greenacres these past days. He was the only one in whom she’d confided the truth of the past. They’d sat up together the night before, drinking red wine in the tree house and listening to a London rockabilly station Gerry found on the Internet and talking nonsense about first love and old age and everything in between.

When they spoke of their mother’s secret, Gerry said he didn’t see there was any reason to tell the others. ‘We were there that day, Lol; it’s a part of our history. Rose, Daphne and Iris—’ he’d shrugged then, uncertain, and had a sip of wine—‘well, it might just upset them, and for what?’ Laurel wasn’t so sure. Certainly, there were easier stories to tell; it was a lot to cope with, especially for someone like Rose. But at the same time, Laurel had been thinking a lot lately about secrets, about how difficult they were to keep, and the habit they had of lurking quietly beneath the surface before sneaking all of a sudden through a crack in their keeper’s resolve. She supposed she’d just have to wait a while and see how things turned out.

Gerry glanced up at her now and smiled, nodding from where he’d perched near Ma’s head that she should start the song. Laurel slid the record out of its paper sheath and put it on the player, setting the needle on the outer rim. The swell of the piano opening filled the room’s silent pockets and Laurel sat back on the other end of the sofa, laying her hand on her mother’s feet and closing her eyes.

Suddenly, she was nine years old again. It was 1954 and a summer’s night. Laurel was wearing a nightie with short sleeves and the window above her bed was open in the hopes of luring in the night’s cool breeze. Her head was on the pillow, long straight hair splayed out behind her like a fan, and her feet were resting on the sill. Mummy and Daddy had friends over for dinner and Laurel had been lying in the dark like that for hours, listening to the gentle tides of conversation and laughter that rose sometimes over the mumbled sighs of her sleeping sisters. Periodically the scent of tobacco smoke drifted up the stairs and through the open door; glasses chinked together in the dining room, and Laurel basked in the knowledge that the adult world was warm and light and spinning still beyond her bedroom walls.

After a time there came the sound of chairs scraping back beneath the table and footsteps in the hall and Laurel could imagine the men shaking hands, and the women kissing one another’s cheeks as they said, ‘Goodbye,’ and, ‘Oh! What a lovely night,’ and made promises to do it all again. Car doors clunked, engines purred down the moonlit driveway; and finally, silence and stillness returned to Greenacres.

Laurel waited for her parents’ footsteps on the stairs as they went to bed, but they didn’t come and she teetered on the rim of sleep, unable quite to release herself and fall. And then, through the floorboards, a woman’s laugh, cool and quenching, like a drink of water when you’re thirsty, and Laurel was wide-awake. She sat up and listened as there came more laughter, Daddy’s this time, followed quickly by the sound of something heavy being moved. Laurel wasn’t supposed to get up this late at night, not unless she was ill or desperate to use the toilet or woken by a bad dream, but she couldn’t just close her eyes and go to sleep, not now. Something was happening downstairs and she needed to know what it was. Curiosity might have killed the cat, but little girls usually fared much better.

She slid out of bed and tiptoed along the carpeted corridor, nightie fluttering against her bare knees. Quiet as a mouse, she sneaked down the stairs, pausing on the landing when she heard music, faint strains coming from behind the sitting-room door. Laurel hurried the rest of the way down and knelt as carefully as she could, pressing first one hand and then her eye hard against the door. She blinked against the keyhole and then drew breath. Daddy’s armchair had been moved back into the corner, leaving a large clear space in the centre of the room and he and Mummy were standing together on the rug, their bodies clasped together in an embrace. Daddy’s hand was large and firm against Mummy’s back, and his cheek rested against hers as they swayed in time to the music. His eyes were closed and the look on his face made Laurel swallow and her cheeks heat. It was almost as if he were in pain, and yet somehow the opposite of that, too. He was Daddy, and yet he wasn’t, and to see him that way made Laurel feel uncertain and even a little envious, which she couldn’t understand at all.

The music kicked into a faster rhythm and her parents’ bodies drew apart as Laurel watched. They were dancing, really dancing, like something from a film, with clasped hands and shuffling shoes and Mummy spinning round and round beneath Daddy’s arm. Mummy’s cheeks were pink and her curls fell looser than usual, the strap of her oyster- coloured dress had slipped a little from one shoulder and nine-year-old Laurel knew that if she lived to be a hundred she’d never see anyone more beautiful.

‘Lol.’

Laurel opened her eyes. The song had ended and the record was turning by itself on the table. Gerry was standing over their mother, who’d drifted off to sleep, stroking her hair lightly.

‘Lol,’ he said again, and there was something in his voice, an urgency that brought her attention to him.

‘What is it?’

He was looking intently at Mummy’s face, and Laurel followed his gaze. When she did, she knew. Dorothy wasn’t sleeping; she’d gone.



Laurel was sitting on the swing seat beneath the tree, rocking it slowly with her foot. The Nicolsons had spent most of the morning discussing funeral arrangements with the local minister, and Laurel was now polishing the locket her mother had always worn. They’d decided— unanimously—to bury it with Ma; she’d never been one for material possessions, but had valued the locket specially, refusing ever to take it off. ‘It holds my dearest treasures,’ she used to say, whenever it was mentioned, opening it to show the photographs of her children inside. As a girl Laurel had loved the way the tiny hinges worked, and the pleasing click of the clasp when it caught.

She opened it and closed it, looking at the smiling young faces of her sisters and brother and herself, pictures she’d seen a hundred times before; and, as she did, she noticed that one of the pieces of oval glass had a chip in its side. Laurel frowned, running her thumb over the flaw. The edge of her nail caught it, and the glass shifted—it was looser than she’d thought—falling out onto Laurel’s lap. Without its seal, the fine photographic paper lost its tautness, lifting in the centre so that Laurel could glimpse beneath it. She looked closer, slid her finger under and pulled the photograph out.

It was as she’d thought. There was another photo beneath, of other children, children from longer ago. She checked the other side too, hurrying now, as she drove out the glass and pulled the picture of Iris and Rose free. Another old photo, two more children. Laurel looked at the four of them together and gasped: the era of the clothing they were wearing, the suggestion of immense heat in the way they were all squinting at the camera, the particular stubborn impatience on the lit- tlest girl’s face—Laurel knew who these children were. They were the Longmeyers of Tamborine Mountain, Ma’s brothers and sister, before they were lost in the terrible accident that saw her packed up on that ship to England, tucked beneath Katy Ellis’s wing.

Laurel was so distracted by her find, wondering how she could go about tracking down more information about this distant family she’d only just discovered, that she didn’t notice the car on the driveway until it was almost at the fence. They’d had visitors all day, popping in to pay respects, each of them offering up yet another story about Dorothy that made her children smile, and Rose cry even harder into the large supply of tissues they’d had to buy in specially. As Laurel watched the red car’s approach though, she saw this time it was the postman.

She walked over to greet him; he’d heard the news, of course, and passed on his condolences. Laurel thanked him and smiled as he told her a tale of Dorothy Nicolson’s surprising abilities with a hammer. ‘You wouldn’t have credited it,’ he said, ‘a pretty lady like her nailing fence palings into place, but she knew just what to do.’ Laurel shook her head along with his wonder, but her thoughts were with the onetime cedar-getters of Tamborine Mountain as she took the post back with her to the swing seat.

Among the mail, there was an electricity bill, a leaflet about a local council election, and another largish envelope besides. Laurel raised her eyebrows when she saw it was addressed to her. She couldn’t think there were many people who knew she was at Greenacres, only Claire, who never sent a letter when a phone call would do. She turned the envelope over and saw that the sender was Martin Metcalfe of 25 Camp- den Grove.

Intrigued, Laurel tore it open, pulling out the contents. It was a booklet, the official museum guide from his grandfather James Metcalfe’s exhibition at the V&A ten years before. ‘Thought you might like this. Regards, Martin,’ said the note pinned to its cover. ‘Come and see us next time you’re in London?’ Laurel had a good idea she might; she liked Karen and Marty and their kids, the little boy with the Lego plane and the faraway look in his eyes; they felt like family in a strange, muddled-up way; all of them joined together by those fateful events of 1941.

She flicked through the booklet, admiring once again the glorious talent of James Metcalfe, the way he’d succeeded somehow in capturing more than a mere image with his camera, managing to tell an entire story out of the disparate elements of a single moment. And such important stories, too—they were a record, these photographs, of a historical experience that would be almost inconceivable without them. She wondered if Jimmy had known that at the time; if, as he captured small instances of individual grief and loss on film, he’d realised the tremendous memorial he was sending forward into the future.

Laurel smiled at the photograph of Nella, and then paused when she came to a loose photo, pinned at the back, a copy of the one she’d noticed in Campden Grove, the picture of Ma. Laurel detached it, holding it close and taking in each of her mother’s beautiful features; she was putting it back, when she noticed the final photograph in the booklet, a self-portrait of James Metcalfe, taken, it said, in 1954.

It gave her a strange feeling, that picture, and at first she put it down to the crucial part Jimmy had played in her mother’s life; the things Ma had told her about his kindness and the way he’d made her happy when there was little other light in her life. But then, as she looked longer, Laurel became more certain that it was something else making her feel this way; something stronger; more personal.

And then, suddenly, she remembered.

Laurel fell back against the chair and gazed at the sky, a smile spreading wide and disbelieving across her face. Every-thing was illuminated.

She knew why the name ‘Vivien’ had struck her so strongly when she heard it from Rose in the hospital; she knew how Jimmy had known to send the anonymous thank-you card for Vivien to Dorothy Nicolson at Greenacres Farm; she knew why she’d been experiencing little jolts of deja vu every time she looked at that Coronation stamp.

God help her—Laurel couldn’t help but laugh—she even understood the riddle of the man at the stage door. The mysterious quote, so familiar yet impossible to place. It wasn’t from a play at all; that’s why she’d had so much trouble—she’d been racking the wrong part of her brain; the quote was from a long-ago day, a conversation she’d completely forgotten until now …