Chapter 9
Inever fall asleep on trains. That’s why it’s utterly shocking to blink on the moving vehicle as we accelerate from a stop and find a paper fluttering against my face, placed there while I was not sleeping.
I pluck it off my nose. It’s a scrap like the ones in my jar of words. In angular, precise printing, it says: Holiventure. In which Merryn and AJ have a holiday in an adventurous fashion.
Suppressing a grin, I turn to my husband who is definitely sleeping.
Trust no one, Gould warned, but here at least is one person I can trust completely.
My carefree, fun-loving husband sleeps as passionately as he lives, sprawled across the seat and restless.
Terrible snores erupt from his nose. Then he shifts, kneeing my hip.
After a dramatic series of snorts and grunts, he yanks his cap lower over his eyes and lets out a long, gusty breath.
With careful fingers I slide his money pouch out from his waistcoat pocket, dodging the sleepy hand that attempts to bat me away, and I spread the coins over my lap. My fluttering heart needs security and a plan.
Two half-crowns, six florins, four shillings, three pence.
Accounting for a shared room at two shillings a night, plus food and bus fare around Cornwall, we have roughly a week to explore the coast and find my past. And that past had better include a home, for we don’t have train fare back to Cheltenham.
I’ll be back for you, Cec. I vow it.
Every farthing will be spent building a case so I might keep that promise. Even if finding my past costs me everything. We’re firmly committed to this journey now, and there’s no returning. Come what may. Or we fail, and face—
I can’t breathe.
I reach across AJ and jiggle the lower window up, releasing fresh air into our stuffy third-class compartment. I close my eyes and lean back as a salty sea breeze hits my face. Wisps of memory needle me at the mere scent of the salty wind.
I shall never forget the moment Dr. Bartlett had liberated me with a few words. He’d not declared me cured…but hopeless. “There is no more progress modern science can make,” he’d told Lady St. Laurent.
The release had been immediate. I quite enjoyed my current state. Adored it, actually. I loathed that anything should dislodge it.
Lady St. Laurent bristled at the doctor’s pronouncement, however. “You claimed it wasn’t permanent.”
“A bit of a misnomer, perhaps,” he said. “You see, the deeper centers concerned with the making of new memories are not, in fact, destroyed, but the nerve tracts through which impressions travel appear to be impeded, which—”
“Dr. Bartlett, I am paying you in the King’s pound notes. I expect information delivered in the King’s English.”
He sighed. “It means her memories haven’t vanished, Lady St. Laurent.”
And there…there lay the threat.
“Her mind is merely having trouble retrieving them.”
“Well, then…fetch them back.”
“I’m afraid it isn’t that simple. You see, we recall things because we’ve formed associations with the events as we’ve stored them. Place yourself back in that context, and you’ll retrieve the memory associated with it. But sometimes the brain blocks those to protect you from…something.”
Something.
But what?
From that moment on, I’d turned sharply away from those tiny sparks of memory. Sometimes they’d float by with the scent of a certain tea. Perhaps on a song. But I never gave them space to flourish.
Until now. One cannot live in society forever as a hobbled-together collection of broken pieces. Sooner or later the flaws are pointed out and you are made to fix them.
A thunk jars me. A heavily bearded man in a rumpled coat is sprawled in the aisle, shoved out of the seat he tried to take two rows back. He rises with a grunt, blinking exceptionally blue eyes, and when he nears, it strums a chord of familiarity.
How curious.
I pat the empty aisle seat beside me. With a quick nod, he kneels to stow his handmade box below the seat. He cannot unbend his body, so I leap up and wrap an arm around him, easing him back up.
“Thank you. Thank you, dear lady.”
That scent. What is it?
A sense of familiarity on the remembered notes of a melody.
The water is wide, I cannot get o'er,
And neither have I wings to fly;
Give me a boat that can carry two,
And both shall row, my love and I.
I look for something recognizable in his worn face.
“Are you on holiday?” I ask with a polite smile, and he works his mouth behind his full mustache, his eyes framed by pleasant wrinkles.
“Ahhh, dat would be a nice ting. But no, I go for to work. They need many nice things in their fancy houses by the sea.”
Paint. It’s paint I smell. “Are you an artist?”
“Something of the sort,” he says. “I build the furniture.” He sinks into the seat beside me with a deep sigh and slouches back.
“They want me to make them chairs and couches and all the chaise lounges, but I cannot be sitting in them myself. Is funny, oui?” His aged face is warm and inviting.
He gives a soft laugh and shakes his head. “Such a mess I am.”
I smile. “No, not a mess.” I point at the stains on his palm. “Just…artistic. Actually I caught the scent of paint when you boarded.” I inhale and a memory tickles again. One my mind cannot quite reach. What is it?
“No, no.” He shakes out his oversized coat and the aroma intensifies. “Is the mineral spirits and turpentine. I use it to finish the furniture. Is the same they use, the artists, to thin the paint.”
Yes. Thin the paint. Of course. The aroma is slightly off-putting, but I find myself wishing he’d sit beside me the entire trip.
He digs through his bag and draws out a slender box made of dark wood, and lays his hand on top. “Is rosewood. I have not enough left over to make whole furniture, so I make box. And this”—he runs his fingertip along the lighter border—“is cherry.”
“It’s lovely.” Simple scrollwork and a single rose grace the front of the box, but the rest is smooth and polished.
He smiles, seeming pleased that I approve of his work. “Is for you, miss. Take it.” He shoves it into my hands.
“Oh no, I cannot pay—”
“Is gift. For your kindness.”
I swallow. I’ve done nothing of great consequence.
“I want you have it. A whole train, and only you are kind.”
I thank him warmly and cradle the box, which seems to gratify him more than payment.
AJ is now awake and he’s staring at me. “Good morning, sleeping beauty.” He raises one eyebrow. “Finding connections already, are you? Someone you once knew?”
I shake my head. “Merely a fellow passenger.”
“Whose language you speak.”
The kaleidoscope shifts and I see clearly.
He hasn’t been speaking with an accent at all—he’s been speaking another language.
And I understood every word.
My past self is a curious mystery whose pages I am turning almost by accident. I smile at him. “Pardon, but where are you from?”
With a wide grin, he says, “You should know it. The old country, France. Just as you are, no?”
I must be, if I speak French.
Then why are we traveling to Cornwall?
God has generously splashed out his most vibrant oil paints on this edge of the world, this lush green and blue tip of England.
I disembark beside AJ at the Newquay station, senses alert for the first tingle of familiarity, but Cornwall itself catches me off guard.
Voices are loud and robust, carrying from one open window to another.
Hills rise and fall like waves, with thatched-roof houses balancing on steep, cobbled streets.
Within minutes of disembarking, I am among crowds of strangers near the wharf. There I lock gazes with a bearded man in a stretched-out sweater who stares at me. Stares as if he knows me. My face floods with warmth even as the sea breeze tickles my skin.
I turn instinctively from that rush, the assault of oncoming memories, but I pivot my mind. Pivot my body. I must embrace this.
The sun is low in the late afternoon sky, casting long shadows over the naval ships huddled at the coastline.
I lean into the wind, drinking in a long gulp of salty air, and the formless knowing that sweeps over me.
Waves slapping the shore and slick fish piled everywhere, the air thick with briny wetness.
All I can see are snippets of what was, my story played out in tiny pinpricks, flashes that vanish too quickly for me to truly see them.
The water is wide, I cannot get o'er,
And neither have I wings to fly;
Give me a boat that can carry two,
And both shall row, my love and I.
Ansel vanished immediately to find food, but I was drawn to the water.
So I am on my own now, staring back at the man who is still staring at me from beneath a shelter on the pier, and I’m trying to match some feature, some angle of his face with the man in my dream. If he’s aged a bit, grown a beard…
I swallow. I keep my eyes on him as I move toward the shelter, dodging crowds. The small building that frames him says, “Newquay Orchestra,” promising music and delight on a summer evening. He looks down as I near, fiddling with something in his hands.
Whittling. He’s whittling, with slow, careful strokes as a pipe dangles from the corner of his mouth.
Up close, he’s considerably older than I thought.
Weathered cheeks, stooped back, nose rounded and red from the drink.
He seems not to even notice me as I approach, so I crouch a bit—he is slouched in a chair now, his legs angled out in a crooked V—and smile. “Good day.”
He blinks at me, the intruder, but his look is benign. No recognition. “’Lo.” A quick nod, and he returns to whittling.
I open my mouth to say more, but my gaze latches on one of many papers tacked to the side of this brown-shingle shanty behind him.
The edges flutter as the wind kicks up, but when the paper blows flat against the wall again, the sight of a woman’s face hits me in the chest with such force I stumble backward.
Dark, silken curls tickling my face. The scent of rosemary and lavender and the feel of satin. My mind backpedals instinctively from the memory, but I dig in. Invite it. A song. Long, low, and lovely, gently probing my conscious mind. I stare at her picture.
Sleep, little child, let your dreams take flight…
A kiss on the forehead, sparkling eyes backing away.
Stay with me, Mummy. Stay here this time.
Yes. Yes! My mother. That label falls over her like a glove.
But she leaves. The ache immediately finds a familiar place between my ribs. I smooth that paper flat against the side of the building, and the sea air becomes the only breath in my lungs because I cannot breathe.
“You’m a powerful sight like her,” the whittler says, not looking up. “Thought you might’ve been.”
“Who is she?”
He’s silent for a long moment, but it isn’t awkward, because I’m staring at the picture of my mother. The real-life form of my dreams.
At last, he says, “Only bit o’ music ever come from here. A woman, sang like a thrush, so they said.”
My gaze flicks to his face screwed up tight. “You were in love with her.”
“Ev’ry man ’round ’ere fancied ’er sommat awful. Right beauty, she were.”
I tug the paper from its pins and hold her close. Isabella de Montfort, the flier says, along with a theater and the date—May the third, 1906. “But this theater’s all the way in London.”
“Aye, that it is, miss. But she’s from these parts, and folks be right proud o’ her.”
My fingers tighten on the paper. “Does she sing here sometimes?”
He shifts on his chair, and the V of his legs angles the other way. “Not if she can ’elp it. Too big for old Cornwall, she is.”
My heart pitters and sinks. She’s alive, though. Somewhere out there, my mother’s alive, possibly wondering if she’ll ever see me again.
Why didn’t you search for me, Mum? Why didn’t you come?
My edgy gaze finally settles on the paper again.
Isabella de Montfort sings Giuseppe Verde’s La Traviata
I close my eyes and the music of her voice sweeps over me.
Sleep, little child, let your dreams take flight
For you are my heart, and my love, my light.
Opera. My lovely, melodic mother sings opera. This floods my mind, settling into the cracks. “Is she still alive?”
A shrug. “Was some years ago.”
“Where…where can I find her family? Are they still about?”
He pauses his whittling and shrugs again. “Best check over to Dunn House, a ways up the coast. Can’t recall exactly, it’s been that long.”
I close my eyes and words flash across my vision. Hideth is the only one my searching mind can grasp as the words skitter away.
Hideth what?
“Where—”
“Merryn!” AJ’s shout carries across the roar of waves and wind.
The man’s face shutters, and I know he’ll accept no more prodding.
But the name stirs me. Dunn House. No memory is attached, but the grandeur of it matches the sense of enormity and awe surrounding my childhood.
I’m certain that if I can step inside it, I can feel my way back to all that happened there.
The people, the events—they’ll all come rushing back.
Then, perhaps when the inheritance comes in, I can travel to find my mother.
My mother!
I turn and AJ is leaping down the steep stone steps that lead from the center of town.
A bag of food swings from one hand. It looks rather large.
How many of our coins has he used to purchase it?
He’s naturally extravagant—lavishing affection, patience, time—and now I wonder if it’s a blessing or a curse.
“I told you to stay put.” He’s out of breath.
“I never listen well.”
He smiles. “I know.”
I turn back to introduce him to this stranger, but the man and his whittling are gone.
Then I spot him, farther down the beach.
He’s walking along the shallows beside a stooped woman with silver hair puffed like cotton—two halves of the same whole.
They progress slowly down the beach together, and he grabs her arm when she points at the sand and lowers herself to collect a rock.
Then he helps her rise and they continue, leaning on one another as heavily as two trees that have grown together. Cut down one, and the other will die.
An ache swells inside and I peek at AJ. I have such a thing—it’s in my grasp.
Yet perhaps it doesn’t truly belong to me.