The postcard, p.33
The Postcard, page 33
Callie didn’t need a mirror to know she looked like a tramp, with straggling hair, and wearing makeshift dungarees and headscarf. Her formal clothes were creased and crumpled in a bag, but a good wash might smarten them up enough to pass muster.
How would Dolly feel about being hoicked onto pavements, tied up all day while her mistress found work and a room? Dolly had rescued her from the booze and the bars and given her a new life. Perhaps she’d be better off staying here where the children fussed over her. She was plumper and her coat was glossy. How could Callie take her back into a world where dogs were unwelcome?
Callie sat stroking the old girl, knowing what Dolly had given was precious: her utter loyalty and affection without question, and in return all she needed was respect and sustenance. Dolly had brought her back to life, helped her feel responsible for someone other than herself. This old sheepdog was the nearest thing Callie had to a child, a furry substitute for Desmond. The dog deserved a decent old age, settled, peaceful. She was sleeping a lot lately as if she was slowing down towards her final rest. Tramping streets would be cruel. Years of neglect and cold stone floors had made her arthritic. ‘I can’t take you away from this, no matter how much I’ll miss you,’ Callie sobbed. ‘If I go, I go alone.’
It was an agonizing choice to make. Part of her knew that it was time to go back into the world again. Perhaps there was still the chance to be useful. Now she was sober she could see things much more clearly. Here, she was just hiding away, licking her wounds as Dolly licked hers. They were two of a kind, but she was still young enough to find some purpose. There was a bit of St Maggie’s school discipline inside her heart that would never go away. ‘Onwards and Upwards’ was their motto. She had life when others she had known now had none. She owed it to them to move on. It was never too late for a second chance, but where and when would depend on this next bit of the journey.
Why do I have to leave behind everything I love? she cried. Why must I always travel alone?
She scrubbed up for the London trip, digging out her black skirt and jacket, old-fashioned now, in the 1950s style, but serviceable enough. Petal dyed her greys into an ash blond tone and then Callie put her hair up into a French pleat. She’d drawn her pension to buy a train ticket and room for the night. She knew she would go to the old War Ministry offices and fill in forms, but as to her return, she wasn’t sure.
Taking Dolly for one last walk along the river bank, she tried to explain why she was going away and until she was settled she must live here in the camp. ‘I’m coming back for you as soon as I’m settled, I promise,’ she whispered. Even as she was speaking, however, she had this feeling that perhaps this was goodbye for good.
Her confidence and resolve lasted all through the journey down from Gloucester, but when she arrived at Paddington, her legs were trembling at the noise and bustle of passengers striding out in front of her. She was sweating, wanting to flee the busy street, the hoot of car horns and roar of engines revving. How could she have forgotten how fast and busy it was here? She felt like a stranger in a foreign land, unnerved by faces all around her. Memories of Leipzig flooded back, disorientating her, making her want to flee.
There was no hurry to make her way to Whitehall. She felt no energy in her limbs to navigate the once familiar streets. What she needed was a little booster. Once she’d sampled a snifter, she’d soon be able to face the world again. Didn’t she deserve a reward for all her restraint in the past months? Here, conveniently, was a public house. Callie opened the door and sleepwalked inside.
44
What are you doing here? Melissa was staring over the waters of Dalradnor loch, drinking in the fresh spring air, watching ripples shimmering silver and gold in the sunlight. What has this place got to do with me? Why have I given up my Easter vacation to come so far north on a whim? This was the place Libby Steward said might hold the key to Lew’s heritage. What a crazy undertaking when she should be studying for her oral examinations.
It was a fee from her last solo performance in The Creation that had allowed this extravagance.
Yes, it was a beautiful country, the air was crisp and cool, the scenery stunning, but that was not the point of the visit. She was here to ask questions, but where to start?
She’d been reluctant to set out on this quest. Perhaps it was a mistake to refuse Mark’s offer of help yet again, but now she was here she’d better make the expense worthwhile.
One of these days, he’d take the hint and lose interest in her mission, but his persistence was confusing. She wasn’t used to having a guy offering to help her out. Cilla and Angie, her friends in college, thought he was cute and had offered to take him off her hands. He was definitely single, Mel had discovered early on. The Sarah he’d mentioned was his big sister, with whom he shared a flat so they could split the bills. How could her friends understand that as much as she liked him, he didn’t fit in with her future plans?
‘Our courses are so demanding,’ she tried to explain to them. ‘Then there’s rehearsals and performances. I need to have extra tuition.’
‘Excuses, excuses . . . He’s got under your skin and you’re running scared.’ Cilla laughed, hitting the nail bang on the head as usual. Why was she compelled to spurn Mark’s offer and head up here with only the knowledge that she would find Phoebe Faye’s grave, take a look at a house and do a quick tour of the Trossachs with time for little else?
Mark had found her Caroline’s shortened form of a birth certificate. What shocked her most was that she’d been born in the next street to her own flat in Marylebone. What a strange coincidence. So how did Phoebe come to be living in the wilds of Scotland?
There was just one post office and general store on the village Main Street. The woman in the shop was not local and knew nothing about Miss Faye but pointed Mel to the Radnor Inn, which nestled among the white painted cottages. There, she ordered a round of sandwiches and a drink.
‘And what brings an Aussie lass to these parts?’ the landlord said with a wink as he pulled half a pint of cider.
I’m looking up an old actress called Phoebe Faye and her family for some research. I wondered if anyone might remember them,’ Melissa replied.
‘Cannae help you with that but I know a man who might . . . Wullie Mackay over there, he’s our history man. Hey, Wullie, come and tell the young lassie about yon history books you write.’
From the snug an old man sauntered towards her with a stick and wispy white hair. ‘Oh, aye. Now who may you be?’ He held out his hand.
‘What can you tell me about Dalradnor Lodge and Phoebe Faye?’ She might as well be direct.
‘It’s just a holiday let now. It once belonged to the Seton-Ross estate, used for the shooting season, and then to Miss Faye, after her fiancé was killed in the war. There was a niece but we’ve not seen sight nor sound of her for years.’
‘Would that be Caroline Boardman?’
‘The one to be asking about her would be Netta at the farm, the Dixons’ old place. They’ll be knowing all about her. Have you got a car? I can show you the way.’
Mel swallowed her lunch, offered him a beer and then found herself driving the old man up a farm track, trying to explain to him her tenuous connections to Miss Faye.
‘One of the Dixon girls went to Australia to join her husband after the war. She never came home, but few could in those days. Married an airman from there but I dinna ken his name. Netta was the youngest sister, left to see to the farm with her parents and brothers. She’ll be the one to ask.’
The farmhouse was a long white building with a milking parlour attached. Dogs barked at their arrival and a woman in an apron came out to greet them.
‘Now, Isabel, I’ve brought Miss Boyd, all the way from Australia. She’s trying to find oot about the folks frae Dalradnor Lodge before the war. I think your aunty might be able to fill her in a wee bitty.’
‘Netta’s full of tales from the past. I never know what’s true and what’s her romancing,’ Isabel replied. ‘But come away in and see for yourself, Miss . . .?’
‘Melissa Boyd, and thank you’
‘You’re no’ a relation of Jessie, are you?’
‘Jess Boyd was my grandmother,’ she nodded and smiled. ‘But I never knew her.’
‘My goodness, wait till I tell Aunt Netta. You’ll have to shout, her ears are not what they were, but they can always catch a good crack o’ gossip.’ They were ushered down a passage to a sitting room-cum-bedroom with a fire in the grate.
‘Netta. This lady’s from Australia. She knew your sister, Jessie.’
The old lady with white hair fluffed out like a meringue was sitting in a chair crocheting a blanket at great speed. She examined Mel from top to toe. ‘She’s no’ a Dixon, by the look of her. Sit down, you’ve come a long way, hen.’
Mel tried to explain who she was and how her father died, leaving her a note. She pulled out the famous postcard. ‘All I know is Jess kept this hidden and Dad had a notion it was something to do with him, but I don’t know who Desmond was.’
Netta stared at the letters on the back. ‘Desmond? He was the wee boy Jessie took out with her on the ship. He was an orphan, or so we thought. Jessie was his nurse and when his grandmother fell ill she took it into her head to take him with her. Things didna go well with her marriage and there was a divorce. I think the man took against the boy. Then she settled and married again but she never darkened our door again.’
‘And this Desmond came from the village?’
‘Oh, my, there was a right mix-up. His mother returned late from the war to find him gone and Miss Faye fair took it bad. They had a falling-out. Folks say the shock killed her.’
‘It’s Desmond she’s asking after, Netta,’ Isabel butted in, raising her eyebrows in impatience.
‘He belonged at the big house, Miss Callie’s wee boy. There was no husband on the scene, as far as we could tell. She’d lived in Egypt for a long time. She went to the war. No one saw her after. Jess didn’t write home, just a card at Christmas. I think she was ashamed of being divorced . . . I cannae help you any more. We all felt terrible for Miss Faye. She was a kind soul, right enough. Her niece never showed up at the funeral . . .’
‘Have you got any photographs of any of them?’ Melissa knew she must seize the moment while Netta was linked to those past times.
Isabel began rummaging in a cupboard fixed into the wall. ‘There may be some in the old document box. We keep meaning to sort out her old photos and put names to people on the back before they get forgotten.’
Netta put down her crochet hook and sifted through them with her bony fingers. ‘There’s Jessie’s wedding.’
Mel stared at a bride in a pretty frock and a young man in RAF uniform outside a church porch. There was another of an older woman with hair scraped back standing next to an unmistakable boy in short trousers. Mel blurted out with excitement, ‘That must be my Dad!’
On the back was written: Louie. Ruby Creek. Christmas 1946.
‘I’d love to take a copy of this. I’ve no photos of him as a boy. It’s definitely him.’ It was the weirdest feeling to be staring at such an innocent roguish grin. She’d known that grin even in his last days. There was a charming innocence in this face, but a toughness too.
‘You keep it, Melissa. Fancy you being Louie’s daughter. I dinna ken what happened to the Desmond boy,’ she sighed, and continued with her knitting.
‘Could they be one and the same you were searching for? Sounds mighty fishy to me, but there’s one more place you might find out more,’ Wullie offered. ‘We could always look at the parish records.’
They stayed on for tea, Melissa filling the family in about the Boyds’ successful building supplies business in Adelaide. Netta told her what they knew about Miss Faye and the Seton-Ross family.
Then it was back to the village and the manse. Wullie introduced her to the minister, who found the register for them to browse through, pages and pages of old names she didn’t know until she came to 1939 and a baptismal entry, a name she’d known the minute Netta Dixon had told her story. Here was the proof in black and white: ‘Desmond Louis Lionel Lloyd-Jones. Baptized Easter Sunday 1939. The mother was Caroline Rosslyn Lloyd-Jones. Father Tobias Lloyd-Jones (deceased).’
‘I think you’ve got your answer now,’ Wullie smiled.
‘I think this deserves a celebration,’ Mel replied. ‘And a big thank you all round.’
Now she could go back knowing she’d found Lew’s real identity, solving the mystery of his rightful family. Now she could get on with her own life. That was as far as she needed to go, surely? But questions kept tumbling around in her mind. What was Caroline doing that made Jess take her son so far away, and why if she was coming to Australia in 1947 did she return home empty-handed? How could she leave her little boy in Australia knowing he belonged with her? Why did no one tell her father who he really was? All these strange questions still needed answering.
It wasn’t enough just to know the bare facts. If a job was worth doing and all that . . . No use leaving all these puzzles hanging in the air, she sighed.
It was almost dark when she stood at the gates of Dalradnor Lodge, peering up the driveway to the tall house with the stepped roof. She could hear children shouting as they played out in the twilight and then a voice calling them inside for the night. If this was Caroline’s rightful house why had she never returned? Oh, hell! This whirlwind visit was not the end of her quest but, as Churchill had once said, ‘the end of the beginning’. To answer all these puzzles, she’d have to find Caroline, if she was still alive.
45
1966
Callie woke up on the bench of a deserted station, not knowing where she was or how she found herself here. She recalled being in London, but where was Dolly? Then she remembered her dog was at Sunset Camp, and safe. She was stiff from sleeping rough, her tongue was furred and her hands were twitching. She could smell the spirits on her lips but the rest was a blur. She felt sick and shaky, unable to focus, her body weak as if she had been crushed. Her skirt was soiled and wet. What had she done now? How could she be in this state and not remember?
There’d been crowds and the traffic and a fear of suffocating . . . Yes, the mist was clearing . . . She’d needed a drink to steady her nerves. The last thing she could remember was sitting in a bar.
Looking around, Callie was flooded with fear, seeing this wasn’t anywhere she recognized, but at least her handbag was in her lap. Did she ever get to the Ministry? She recalled the tall white stone buildings towering over her as she stumbled off the bus and up the steps to the foyer. There was a man in uniform who had asked with whom she had an appointment but she’d brushed past him.
‘Take me to the bloody traitor who betrayed us . . .’ She could hear the echo of her shoes on the stone steps, the hush of officials around her as she was shouting. This must be a bad dream, surely? It was terrifying not to recall another thing. She felt groggy and faint as she rose up gingerly.
‘Ah, there you are.’ A woman in a tweed suit marched down the platform. ‘You’re awake and ready to come now?’
Who was this figure looming over her? What had she done? Was she safe?
‘Who the hell are you?’ Callie demanded.
‘Oh, don’t start that again. You know who I am, Charlotte,’ came the brusque reply.
Why was she calling her Charlotte? ‘I’m not Charlotte.’
‘You are as far as I’m concerned, and don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. We’ll get some tea down you and out of those disgusting clothes. You look ridiculous.’
Am I dreaming? Callie thought again, staring up at the woman, a little older than herself, in a trilby hat with a feather perched at the side. There was something familiar about her, though, but she was too befuddled to know where they’d met before.
‘Where are we? I don’t remember.’
‘Little Brierley Halt, our nearest station. We’ve come off the milk train. Thought you’d better sleep it off before I take you to see the girls. My goodness, Charlotte, you know how to wreck yourself,’ she said, holding out a hand. ‘Madge Cottesloe, but you’d know me as “Marcelle”, for my sins.’
‘Marcelle . . . Charlotte . . . Beaulieu Abbey all those years ago. Was this the large army officer who got herself stuck on the net ropes at Arisaig on the survival course?
‘Arisaig?’
‘Exactly, hole in one . . . You went on to glory and I failed spectacularly . . . They put me out to grass until the war ended. I gather you got the worst of it.’
Callie suddenly felt sheepish and embarrassed about what was coming next.
‘You came to HQ, shall we say a little worse for wear. I was told to make sure you survived the traffic. Had a rough ride, I gather. Still, that’s all in the past. Thought I’d better find you a billet, judging by the state of you. You’re finding civvy street not to your liking? Have you been living rough?’
‘Where are you taking me? Am I being kidnapped?’ Callie said as she was bundled into an ancient Morris estate wagon.
‘Just depends how you look at things. Got to get that poison out of your system and get you compos mentis. You can take it from there. It’s up to you.’
Callie sat in silence, staring out with half-shut eyes. She was in no state to jump out of the vehicle and the mad woman next to her was ex-SOE so she knew all the tricks. May as well sit back and be resigned to whatever fate had in store.
Madge lived with her companion, Alfie, in a tumbled-down manor house in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by fields, sheds and stables. Alfreda was an ex-army nurse who took one look at the state of the new arrival and bundled her into the bathroom, such as it was, to wash and change into clean clothes: dungarees and a work shirt. They ate a hearty breakfast, which Callie tried to face but managed only toast.
