The Story She Left Behind

Chapter 31 Clara

CHAPTER 31? CLARA

Lake District, England

The doctor arrived in the bedroom to check on me and declared me well: “A chill and a fever, but lucky none of it settled in your lungs.” I was to take the day slowly and rest.

In the wardrobe, I found a simple wool day dress of pale green and an evergreen cardigan with pearl buttons. Adelaide owned very nice clothes—this matched set was about as casual as I could find. Not a pair of trousers in the drawer.

I pulled my wet hair back tightly in a knot. A quick glance in the mirror showed a wan and exhausted woman. I felt ridiculously overdressed.

Carrying my breakfast tray, I emerged from the room, my face scrubbed and my hair smelling like roses. Voices called out and overlapped as if there was a gathering. I made my way down the hallway. On the landing I stopped to glance down and saw men in khaki uniforms wrestling a massive spruce tree to stand upright. It must have been twelve feet or more. They hollered directions at one another: Get it straight! Fasten it at the bottom! Lean it to the left, for bloody sake!

That was right, Christmas was only three weeks away.

I imagined my own holiday decorations, homemade and so special to me, boxed up in the attic of our home. Dad wouldn’t think to bring them down without us.

Dad.

I needed to call him.

I made my way to the bottom of the stairs without anyone noticing me. I found more men hanging garland across the entryways of each room. Along the foyer, large red ribbons were being fastened at the corners of doorways. The whole house smelled like a forest, damp and piney.

Charlie had said that the house would look a bit shabbier in the daylight, but I would use a different word: cozier . It wasn’t as grand as the night had hinted, but instead it seemed snug, created of soft corners and many rooms. The wooden banister was smoothed and faded by many hands running along its surfaces, the flowered carpet worn thin in the places where feet trampled up and down the stairs. Signs of sweet life.

I had no real idea of how big the house was, how many bedrooms and rooms, how large the acreage. It seemed awaiting exploration.

I heard a woman’s voice, and I followed it to a square garden room in the back of the house. The room was surrounded in floor-to-ceiling windows, bright in the morning sunshine.

There sat Mrs. Jameson, holding up a plate to Moira.

I took that moment to stare at her, Charlie’s mother, Mrs. Philippa Jameson. She could have been posing for a portrait in the way she sat so still, her shoulders back and her chin up, her blond hair in a lovely pile at the back of her neck, held in place with a golden clasp. She wore a subdued-blue dress with a round neckline and a strand of pearls at breakfast.

On the table sat a newspaper, and the headlines read: Third Day of a London Particular. Busy Time for Thieves.

I felt a rush of relief to be here, in this safe and warm home.

Moira spied me and smiled. “You’re up. Oh, Miss Clara, you look wonderful. Please give me that tray. You could have left it in your room.”

I handed it to her, and Mrs. Jameson looked at me now and smiled. “Well, hallo again! I have been so worried about you!” She stood to greet me, and it seemed that in her silk house shoes she floated toward me. “How did you sleep?” She held out her hands for mine and I allowed this, feeling the warmth of her kindness as she squeezed my fingers in compassion.

“Hello, ma’am. I am so sorry that my daughter and I have intruded on you in this way.”

“Intrude? I was desperate for company. Join me! How are you feeling?”

“A little weak, but the food and tea helped. Dr. Finlay is wonderful. Thank you so much for everything. I have no idea where we’d be without Charlie. And Moira.”

“Well, you look no worse for the wear, do you?” Mrs. Jameson smiled. “Sit, sit. What can I have Moira get for you?”

I sat in the thickly padded green velvet chair around a glass round table. “More of that lovely tea?”

Moira left the room and Mrs. Jameson said, “Charlie will be so happy you are up and all right. I just spoke with your charming daughter. What a little sprite she is.”

“I saw them from the window. They’re walking back from the lake.”

“They should be here soon, and now, since you are up and all right, my son might smile.”

“Mrs. Jameson, I have to truly tell you that this is the most beautiful place I have ever seen.”

Mrs. Jameson laughed cheerfully. “I am so glad you could see it. It’s my favorite place on earth.” She leaned forward. “It is a land created by fire and carved by ice.”

“That’s so… elemental and lovely,” I said.

“Yes, a volcano created this land, but glacial ice carved its seventeen lakes. Ours, out the window, is my favorite, and the most beautiful, I do believe.” She waved her hand. “See? Esthwaite Water, it sits in the palm of the earth’s hand.”

I was aiming to tell her she sounded like a poet when I heard the most beautiful sound. “Mama!”

Wynnie ran into the room and was at my side. I drew her close; she smelled of cold and earth and rain. “Where have you been, my darling?”

“In an enchanted land, Mama. Just you wait. There are gardens and a lake and a forest and mysterious stone walls, and there is a hedgehog, Mama. A Tizzie-Whizie.”

“Tizzie-Whizie? Is that a candy?”

Mrs. Jameson laughed and looked to her son. “You’ve been telling this child stories.”

Wynnie held up her arms for dramatic effect. “They are these little creatures who live near the lake, part hedgehog, part squirrel, part bee.”

“Well,” I said, “this sounds like just my kind of place.”

Charlie looked at me, his brows drawn together. It was such a warm expression, I could have been fooled into thinking that we’d decided together to come to his mother’s country house, that this was a holiday and not an emergency, that we hadn’t thrust ourselves into his life.

Wynnie clung to my hand, and I squeezed it. “I feel quite odd wearing your daughter-in-law’s clothes, but I have nothing else. I can clean our clothes today, and we will leave as soon as the fog clears in London. I promise we’ll get out of your hair as soon as possible,” I told her.

“Oh, I am very happy to have you here. Guests always bring this place alive.”

Charlie sat on the chair next to me and placed the back of his palm to my forehead, checking for fever. It was a tender gesture, and my chest filled with something very near to longing; it’d been so long since I felt it that I almost gasped. “You’re better,” he said.

“I am.”

“How do you… feel?”

“Embarrassed,” I told him. “And sorry.”

“Don’t feel either. Please. I am just so glad that you and Wynnie are all right.”

“I feel so… untethered; I need to see where I am in the world. A map. It’s as if I traveled here blindfolded.”

“Well, we’ll pull out a map and I’ll show you everything.”

“My mama loves maps,” Wynnie told them, bouncing on her toes. “Loves them!”

I looked to Wynnie. “I do; it’s true.”

Mrs. Jameson asked, “What do you like about them?”

“The art of them. The way they can shift and change. How they express what they meant to someone in that time, in that world. The overview as if I am a bird.” I stopped.

“Sometimes Mama paints on them,” Wynnie told them. “She finds old maps at the flea market or in the trash and she paints things on them like birds and trees and—”

“Wynnie, love, the Jamesons don’t need to know any of this.”

“Oh yes we do,” Mrs. Jameson said. “It’s fascinating.”

I changed the subject. “From the bedroom window I saw the lake and the mountains. What is it all called?”

Mrs. Jameson answered, her voice light and happy to talk about her land. “You’re looking at Esthwaite Water, and each fell has its own name.”

“Fell?” I asked.

“Mountain. We have Scafell and Helvellyn and Skiddaw and many more. Two doors down is Beatrix Potter’s house, called Hill Top. The farm next door is a working farm—you’ll hear the cows.”

Wynnie snapped her head to me. “Mama, I want to see where Peter Rabbit lives!”

“It is quite something, isn’t it?” Mrs. Jameson asked. Then she leaned forward with the fullest smile, her face aglow. “You remind me of Charlie when he was young.”

Wynnie lifted her head. “He looked like me?”

Mrs. Jameson burst into laughter. “No, dear. He was just as curious and precocious.”

Wynnie straightened her glasses, and I answered her unspoken question. “Yes, that’s a good thing.” I turned to Charlie. “Have you heard any news from London?”

Mrs. Jameson answered. “The wireless announced this morning that it is still terrible there. Churchill is under such pressure. He’s to make an announcement today. It must have been horrible finding your way here.”

“Yes, but Moira and your son were quite the heroes.”

“I’m so grateful they were there for you.” Mrs. Jameson stood. “Now, I’ll be off; I have an arts council meeting about the refurbishing of the Broughton Theatre, which is much needed, but will put a pause on all the productions.”

“Productions?” Wynnie asked.

“Plays. Right now, we have two of them,” she said, and patted her lips with a linen napkin, then set it on the glass table in a motion so practiced I wondered if she knew she’d done it.

“Can I see one?” Wynnie asked. “I love plays.”

“Wynnie!” I admonished.

“What?” Wynnie looked at me. “We love plays.”

Mrs. Jameson laughed. She was so elegant, with the pearls at her neck, the tinkling laugh, the high cheekbones. I felt like a sack of coal by comparison. She bent a bit to look at Wynnie. “Right now, we have Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and A World Apart , a new favorite around here. We have tickets for tomorrow night,” she said. “Front row if you are up for it? It’s a falling-down theater, but it’s a beautiful tradition.”

A warm flame rushed up my spine, but I kept my voice level. “How lovely.” A World Apart. Finneas had told us that this was the name of the adaptation, the name of the play based on Mother’s book. I placed my hand on Wynnie’s shoulder and squeezed, praying that she could read my signal to be quiet, not to say anything about her grandmother, not yet.

Something was revealing itself here—a truth or a hint. I wondered if Mother had created a word for this, a word for something emerging and not knowing what it might become.

Mrs. Jameson quietly left the room, and I turned to Charlie. “You didn’t tell her why we are here.” This was not a question.

“I did, just not everything.”

“What did you tell her about us?”

“I didn’t lie. But no, I haven’t told her about the language. I told her that when I was cleaning out Father’s library, as he’d asked, I found some old papers that belonged to an American woman’s family and that the woman—you—wanted them back. I told her you’d come on holiday and were meant to retrieve your family papers.”

“She didn’t ask what those papers were?”

“No. Dad collected all kinds of things. It isn’t that she doesn’t care about his collection; they have just always had their own interests. She trusts me to get it all in order. You must remember, she is still grieving.”

“The play,” I said.

“Dickens?”

“No, A World Apart. ”

“Yes?” He looked at me and then at Wynnie, and back again.

Wynnie answered quietly. “That’s my grandmother’s story.”

“What?”

“It’s the theatrical production name for The Middle Place. ”

He sank back in his seat. “I had no idea.”

“Have you ever seen it?” I asked, my hands shaking as I clasped them together.

“Honestly, no, I’ve never even heard of it. It must be one of their newer productions.” I wanted to shake him for the truth.

“Don’t you think your mother knows something about mine?”

He looked out to the doorway where his mother had just walked out. “I didn’t think so, Clara. But now I’m not so sure.”