This letter is by way of a confession, and the contents reflect what I would have spoken to you about, had we met in person. I would therefore appreciate it if you would be so kind as to destroy this letter after reading.
I fear I contributed to the arrest of Leon Donat in Munich. I allowed it to be known that he was in the city and, more to the point, that he was vulnerable. My wife and I enjoy a happy marriage, but I am not an easy man, nor was I attentive to her for many years. Indeed, our grandson has helped bring us together again. Leon bettered me in business on several occasions, and for a while in the past he bettered me in my wife’s affections. I discovered she was providing him with funds to pass on to Elaine, and though I never confronted her, I realized that Leon and my wife had something I could not have—contact with Elaine. Lorraine had turned to another man before me, and had kept details of my daughter’s communications from me. My pride took the upper hand—I had the ear of men in Germany who wanted to see Leon Donat fall, so I sowed a seed of information, and allowed it to flourish.
That is my confession. Any apologies I make will never absolve me of my actions. My punishment is that Leon Donat is and always will be the better man—he would never, I know, have stooped so low.
Yours, with regret,
John
Maisie read the letter once, then took it to the fireplace, where she placed it in the grate and held a lighted match to the paper, taking a brass poker to ensure every scrap of John Otterburn’s handwriting burned.
Maisie looked at those gathered around the table in the dining room at the Dower House, her home on the Chelstone estate. It was mid-October, and the monthly Sunday lunch had become a firm entry on the calendar of all present. From the first invitation, she had instructed each and every person invited, “There will be no standing on ceremony, children will be present and we’re there to enjoy ourselves. There might well be games.” To their credit, Lord Julian and Lady Rowan walked up from the manor house for that first luncheon, and proved to be good sports when it came to sitting down in a dining room where two tables had to be pushed together to accommodate everyone who came. All told, seventeen people sat down to lunch, twenty if Leon Donat was well enough to make the journey with his housekeeper and Andrew.
At first Maisie had worried that her idea might fail, but she went on—it was time to go about her days in a different way. So much had conspired to change her in recent years, but losing James, and then her work in Spain and Munich, had altered her perspective, and not only of the world. Time had brought her back to herself. Yet she had felt as if her way of seeing life had taken on a growth of its own, and it had begun in a hospital close to the Tajo River, when she held a small newborn babe named Esperanza—Hope—in her arms. And then there was the vision that would come back to her time and again, of two little girls playing together in Munich—how they held hands in friendship, and let go when they feared they might be seen. Those things told Maisie it was time to hold on to those she loved, to bring them together, closer to her, no matter the outcome—and to take her chances as to whether they, in turn, would accept her efforts, for she was asking each to step out of his or her own world and into that of another.
With Leon Donat she had listened to the prime minister’s promise of “peace for our time” and now she remembered the cautionary words from the man she had journeyed to Munich to bring home, as he raised his glass to her. She could hear others in their company chatting and laughing around the table, and saw her father deep in conversation with Douglas Partridge. Little Margaret Rose Beale clambered onto Lady Rowan’s lap and patted a dog—Maisie wasn’t sure whose dog it was—who begged for food from a plate. There had been toasts to celebrate the reopening of Maisie’s business, discussions about motor cars and schools, about the rambunctiousness of boys, whose heart Margaret Rose would break in a few years, and the merits of a new horse in the pasture. Maisie could hear Priscilla’s voice ricocheting back and forth between Doreen and Sandra, Billy and Lord Julian, so that soon everyone was leaning forward to join in the joke. Maisie lifted her glass toward Leon Donat, not least to let him know she had heeded his message.
Maisie, we have our freedom, both of us. We are lucky, very lucky. Make sure you use it well.
AUTHOR’S NOTE