Chapter 29 Charlie
CHAPTER 29? CHARLIE
Lake District, England
Charlie hadn’t slept worth a damn. There was within him a strange desire to look in on Clara, check her fever, rest next to her until she woke up.
Instead, he reached over to the bedside table for the biography of her mother and read where the book opened up.
March 25, 1927
Martha Fordham— Mother of Bronwyn Newcastle Fordham
Benjamin Oster— Interviewer, chief of police, Bluffton, South Carolina
Martha Fordham: As a child, Bronwyn would instruct me to leave an empty chair at the table for her imaginary friends.
Benjamin Oster: She had more than one?
Martha Fordham: Oh yes, she had many. There was Beethoven and Chopin. Then there was Emjie and Dingy.
Benjamin Oster: Beethoven and Chopin are real.
Martha Fordham: Sir, those two are dead , so if I am saving a place at the table for them, they are therefore imaginary.
Benjamin Oster: Yes, I hear you. I understand. Your daughter had a wild imagination.
Martha Fordham: Has. She has a wild imagination. She believes in what we can’t see. She believes in her make-believe.
Benjamin Oster: Where do you think she’s gone?
[ Long pause on the recording ]
Martha Fordham: I wouldn’t know. She hasn’t spoken to me in years. I want her to… [ pause ] I want her to come home. But that is something I have wanted for a very long while.
Charlie slammed shut the book. He’d learned enough from Brian Davis. He wanted to learn the rest from Clara and Wynnie.
He left his room and walked into the hallway. The sound of workmen who’d arrived from Windermere with a truckload of greenery were filling the house with garland and ribbons, with wreaths and swag and flowers, echoed below. Charlie greeted them as he walked downstairs and entered the drawing room to find Wynnie standing at the window, staring out at the wide expanse of the back gardens that flowed into pastures bordering the lake.
“Good morning,” he said, and she turned to him with a dreamy look on her face.
“Mama is asleep. She’s still sick.”
“Yes, I know. Dr. Finlay says she needs rest and she’ll be okay. He’s coming back this morning to check on both of you.”
Wynnie wore a wool dress that must have been in the small bag Clara had brought with them. Her hair stuck up and out in a thousand directions, and it made him smile. She was such a lively but polite child, as if the opposing forces didn’t battle within her but partnered into something so charming she seemed to vibrate with sweet mischief.
She was—he disliked this term but could think of no other—an old soul. She was so fully recovered it was as if the girl who had almost died in that poisonous air had never existed except for the soot Charlie spied in the whirl of her ear, the one spot the washcloth didn’t reach.
Her glasses were clean now, and she lifted her finger to move them higher on her nose. “Outside. It looks like the places Mama paints,” she said, and rested that same finger on the window.
He thought of Clara in front of an easel and wondered about her work. He should have asked her about her art, and he would as soon as she awoke.
He came to Wynnie’s side, and together they silently watched the sheep next door move toward the low hills and a flock of blackbirds unsettling from a low hawthorn tree. Sometimes, busy with his life and concerns, he forgot to stop and notice the sheer beauty of this place. Through Wynnie’s eyes he again noticed the mosaic of crags, fells, and lake, a dramatic beauty that changed with every cloud cover and blue sky.
Wynnie sighed. “Can I go out there? Please?”
“First let’s sort you some breakfast, shall we?”
She turned and smiled. “Yes, please.”
“I’ll send up a tray for your mum.”
“She cried out a lot in her sleep,” Wynnie said, brushing back her hair, her lips now trembling. “Her cheeks were so hot, and…”
“I know you must be frightened. But she’s just got a chill, that’s all,” Charlie said, hoping his words were comforting to an eight-year-old. “Dr. Finlay says her lungs sound fine and that she’ll be all right. She just needs some sleep.”
“It’s because of me,” Wynnie said. “She worries so much about me.”
“No!” Charlie set his hand on her shoulder and bent down to look at her round blue eyes, so like her mother’s. “It is the weather and your grandmother’s papers and a mean woman who wanted to steal money. None of this is your fault.”
“That’s what Mama would say, too.” Wynnie took off her glasses and wiped her eyes with the backs of her palms. “Then she’d tell me I am the best part of everything.”
“Well, I believe she’s right.”
She smiled, and it seemed real now. “She will say we shouldn’t have come here, but don’t let her think that, okay?”
He nearly laughed. “And why is that?”
“Because she wanted to see those papers and that letter so badly, and she would have always, always wondered. And because I got to eat clotted cream and scones.”
He shook his head. “Great point there. Now let’s introduce you to eggs and soldiers.” He reached out his hand for hers and led her down the hallway.
Charlie and his mother watched Wynnie polish off her eggs with soldiers. They sat around the circular glass breakfast table in the garden room. His mum chatted incessantly with Wynnie, asking about her life in South Carolina, about her favorite books and games, about her journey on the ocean liner. Wynnie was gregarious and open, glancing at Charlie every few sentences as if checking that she wasn’t doing anything wrong.
Charlie was reminded of his mum’s lovely ease with children. The three of them around the table was a comfort after the escape from London, and he found himself wishing Clara would rouse to join them.
“Why are so many people here?” Wynnie asked quietly, the crumbs of her second scone on her chin and jumper. Charlie reached over and brushed her cheek, and she smiled at him.
“Christmas,” he told her.
“Yes,” Mrs. Jameson said. “Tradition. Our family always decorates on the same day every year. The eighth of December.”
“Why the eighth?” Wynnie asked with a curious tilt of her head.
“It is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in the Catholic Church.”
“Immaculate what?” Wynnie asked.
Charlie laughed and squeezed her shoulder. “It is part of Christmas,” he said. “Mum can explain later.”
Wynnie grew serious and nodded. “Well, I love traditions. We have some, too. We always guess the gift before we open it, and we always decorate Easter eggs on the back porch.”
“That’s so lovely,” his mum said. “And wouldn’t it be lovely if you could see all of this at Christmas?”
Wynnie sat straighter. “That would be wonderful!”
“Only three weeks away,” she said.
“I think Mama will want to go home. We haven’t had very good luck in England.”
Charlie’s mum let out a beautiful laugh, a sound he hadn’t heard since Father passed, and it warmed him. She’d nearly canceled the yearly Christmas decorations, but Charlie had convinced her otherwise: Father would not want you to cancel the thing that brought both of you so much joy.
“My first Christmas without your father. I don’t quite know if I can do it,” she’d said.
“I will be here. We’ll do it together,” he’d told her.
Now Mum stood and smiled down at Wynnie. “Why don’t you two have a walk around Esthwaite?”
Charlie looked to Wynnie. “Can you do that?”
“Yes, it’s good for me, or that’s what Mama is always telling me when I want to just read on the couch. ‘Let’s get some air,’ she always says.” Wynnie imitated her mama’s voice, and again Pippa laughed, and Charlie felt hope, like a small crocus bursting through the frost. “What’s Esthwaite?” Wynnie stumbled over the word, lisping at the sounds.
“That’s the name of the lake,” Charlie said. He looked to his mum. “Don’t I need to help you?”
“No, there are plenty of people to bring down boxes and hang ribbons. Now go on, the two of you.”
Charlie held out his hand for Wynnie and she took it. If his mum wanted to ask about why Wynnie and Clara were in her house, she held those questions inside. When they’d arrived last night and made sure Clara and Wynnie were safely in bed, he hadn’t lied to her, but he hadn’t told her everything .
“Explain it all to me,” she’d said.
And he’d told her. “Dad stored some papers in his library that belonged to Clara’s mother, something he’d possibly bought at an auction. I don’t actually know. I contacted Clara, and she planned a trip to England to come retrieve them. That’s when the fog descended.”
“Some papers?”
“Her mother was an author.”
“Oh,” she’d said, “one of your father’s collections.”
That information was enough for Mum, as other things were on her mind. He’d felt a twinge of guilt.
That was the thing with half-truths—they were usually meant to protect someone. Charlie just wasn’t clear yet about exactly who he was protecting, or, for that matter, who his father was keeping safe by holding this satchel from the beginning. But one thing was clear—none of them knew the full story, and he was just as much in the dark as anyone.
Once they were out the back door, he led Wynnie across the flagstone porch, through the silent garden, and down the soft wet grass toward the lake. Wynnie was bundled in a coat and hat and mittens Mum had found in the upstairs closet. She was chattering away.
“Did you live here? It’s as pretty as Papa’s place on the bay, but not the same. Different but same,” Wynnie said.
“It is pretty. I forget that sometimes,” he told her. “Thank you for reminding me.” He smiled down at her.
“Emjie brought me here before,” she said, and stopped. “Those stone walls and that little island in the middle of the lake and the geese everywhere.”
“Emjie?”
“You can’t see her, but she’s right here.” Wynnie held out her hand and then laughed. “She threw a little pinecone at you.”
“Oh, you have an imaginary friend,” he said, relieved that he could now follow her logic. He led her across the lane to the sloping pasture leading to the lake’s edge.
“Invisible, not imaginary,” Wynnie stated with stern surety.
“Ah,” he said. “Would she mind if I told you both all about where we are right now?”
“That’s what she wants, too,” Wynnie said. “We want to know the name of every tree and plant and bird we see.”
He laughed, and the sound echoed across the valley and settled in the lake where he’d spent much of his childhood. He sometimes felt he could see the reflection of his boyhood in Esthwaite Water, a time when he was as close to his brother as the tree’s roots to the land.
He tried to fulfill Wynnie’s wish. “This lake is called Esthwaite Water. There’s another over there.” He swept his hand behind them. “It’s called Windermere and is much bigger; we can’t see it from here, but we can walk there. Both are glacial lakes, carved by ice.”
“Ice-carved lakes,” Wynnie said. “Wow.”
“And the forest there”—He lifted his face to the mountains that looked down at them—“is called Grizedale.”
“You are making that up!” she said.
“Indeed, I am not.”
She started to run, her arms wheeling in front of her as she made her way to the shoreline. He ran after her. It had been years, too many, since he’d run through this pasture, and the feeling was freeing, making him feel young as he caught up to her at the ice-skimmed edge. A mirror to the sky above, the waters held white and silver clouds, the naked branches of winter, and the body of the fells that rose above them.
He wondered how his family was tangled up with this little girl, how only his father knew the answer.
Boulders were scattered along the edge of the lake, and Wynnie clambered to the top of one. “It’s the most beautiful lake I’ve ever seen,” Wynnie exclaimed as she held out her arms as if to hug the body of water. “Bigger than any lake I’ve ever seen. It’s like the place in Swallows and Amazons .”
“The place in that book is just one lake over,” he told her with a grin. “But much bigger.”
“I knew it! I can see the little sailboat and the—”
“It is something,” he said. “And do you know about the Tizzie-Whizies?”
“Tizzie-Whizie?”
He made his voice low and singsong, a storytelling voice. “At the lake’s edge, there are creatures who live along these waters. They have a hedgehog’s body and the tail of a squirrel and wings like a bee.” He spread his arms, flapping them like a fool.
She laughed and poked him. “You’re making that up!”
“Ah, if I am, I’m not the only one.”
“Have you ever seen one?” She glanced around.
“I thought I did once, but it disappeared when I drew closer.”
“I believe you!” she said with a grin. “My mama illustrates books about a hedgehog. Her name is Harriet, and she only has one ear.”
“Does she have the tail of a squirrel or wings of a bee?”
“No! But Harriet is the cutest hedgehog you’ve ever seen, even if she is different from her friends.” Wynnie then mused, “But there must also be fairies here.”
“Yes, there are fairy hills near that people say are gateways to a secret world.”
“A secret world.” Wynnie’s face clouded over. “That’s where Emjie was stuck for a long while in Grandma’s book.”
“Tell me about Emjie.”
“She’s my best friend and the main character in Grandma’s book. She got stuck in the dark place, and that’s why Grandma wrote a sequel—to get her out. Which she must have done because she visits me. Emjie is the one who taught me to see the smudgy edges of people who are also in the dark place.”
“Dark place?”
“Yes, like lies or meanness.”
“Do you see any smudges on me?” He meant to ask this as a jolly question, but it came out serious and worried.
“No!” she said.
“Ah, good.” He felt a turn in subject was needed and asked, “Have you read the sequel that gets her out?”
“No, it’s written in… well, you know.”
“I do,” he said.
“I don’t know what she went through to get to the other side, which is what I want to know. Because the ending is no fun without the middle parts.”
He laughed and wanted to lift her up in a grand hug. “Indeed,” he said, “the middle parts make the ending worth it.”
They stood silent at the edge of the lake for a while, watching a kestrel swoop overhead and listening to the rustling of something unseen behind them and the long low of a cow from the farm nearby. Finally he told her, “I think we should head back in case your mama is awake.”
She nodded, and he extended his hand to help her down from the boulder. Along the way he pointed at the red squirrel who ran across their path. He explained that the sheep they saw dotting the fields with their silver-and-white coats and their wise, tender faces were called Herdwick sheep, and nearly every specimen of that breed lived in the Lake District. A peregrine falcon flew overhead, screeching, and he pointed it out to her, telling her it was the fastest bird in the world. He named the field elm and the bilberry, the English oak and the sycamore.
She tilted her head and her wool hat tipped as they looked up at the back end of three stone cottages. “Are those yours, too?”
“They are part of our land, yes.”
“Who lives there?” She squinted into the distance.
“An aunt and a second cousin—one from either side of the family—and the groundskeeper,” he told her.
They reached the crest of the hill behind the cottages, and Charlie led her toward an unfinished stone wall encircling a small garden. He meant to cut around to the far side and cross the lane back to the house, but Wynnie stopped and placed her hand on the stones. Green and yellow lichen softened the edges; ferns sprouted from the cracks. “It’s not finished,” Wynnie said, and then smiled at what Charlie assumed was her imaginary friend, “but it will be soon.”
“Yes, Cousin Isolde adds to it all the time,” Charlie told her, and then he pointed at the cottage a hundred yards away.
Wynnie lifted her hand to her mouth, bit the edge of her mitten, and pulled it away so she might set her bare hand on top of the stones. “Mama is going to love this. She loves anything that’s like The Secret Garden or anything that has flowers that grow inside.”
“You have a good mama,” Charlie said. “You’re lucky.”
“You do too.”
“Yes, I do.”
“You know…” Wynnie removed her hand and turned earnestly to Charlie, “you’re lucky you have a brother. I’m the only one, and because of me, Mama can’t have any more kids, and I almost didn’t live. Isn’t that strange? To think about just not being here at all when I am right here!”
“Strange and wonderful.”
“She would never leave me,” Wynnie said.
He wondered why there, suddenly, Wynnie needed to say such a thing.
“No, she would not.”
As they made their way back to the house, Charlie looked up to the window of the room where Clara slept. He felt relief when he spied her there, a silhouette. He waved and she lifted her hand, palm up as if showing them something they needed to see, something set free.
“Mama!” Wynnie said, and skipped toward the house.