II
It was a bitterly cold December day when Tom landed at Heathrow Airport.
In New York, the last traces of autumn’s Indian summer still lingered in the city, and he had needed only a coat these last two weeks.
In England the leaves on the fields and orchards visible to him as they began their descent were unswept, frozen on the ground, lemon-yellow and crab-pink-orange remnants of the great, calamitous summer of ’68, when everything had been upended.
The great glass windows of the Arrivals hall were like a cathedral, shining wintry light on the passengers stumbling half asleep from the plane to waiting families or taxis.
‘Tom! Over here, old boy!’ Tom, struggling with his tattered kitbag, the strap of which had half worn away, looked up at the sound of his name and stopped dead in the hall.
‘No!’ he cried, and then clapped his hand to his mouth, a smile breaking across it. For his father was leaning on a barrier.
‘Tom, my Tom!’ Edward Raven exclaimed, shifting along the barrier to a gap where he embraced his son. ‘My darling boy!’ Unshed tears shone in his eyes as he gripped Tom’s face. ‘Darling boy!’ he said again. ‘Welcome! Welcome home.’
‘What – why are you here?’ said Tom, laughing. He pulled off his hat, dashing tears from his cheeks as he did. The sight of his father – it was lemon on a cut, and his heart hurt as he embraced him, knowing that it was pain because it was love.
‘Why? Tom, I had to be here! Of course I did.’ But he seemed to understand the meaning behind the question and hugged him tight without saying more.
Eventually Tom, drawing back, managed to ask, ‘Are you all settled in the house?’
‘Yes, my boy, very cosy. I cried my heart out, leaving the old cottage, but you know the roof had caved in during the last winter. Made it rather tricky.’
‘Henry told me, in his letter.’
‘It got the fireplace – huge hole right above so no heat. And the range, it rusted away, dreadful, really. By the end I was sleeping and living in the bedroom and the outhouse.’ He rubbed his hand on his head.
‘I can barely believe my luck, ending up at Sevenstones, dear boy. Your kindness is beyond anything.’
‘I’m awfully glad, but, Dad, it’s nothing to do with me.
It’s the Caldicotts, bless them both.’ He paused for a moment, squeezing Edward’s shoulder as the other passengers surged past him, the drivers in peaked caps picking up suitcases, a gaggle of air stewardesses adjusting their hair, a family of many generations crying and hugging in a group.
Without being able to stop himself, he heard himself say, ‘We had that marvellous time at Sevenstones, after my accident. And then you went away, and you didn’t say goodbye, Dad. ’
His father sucked in air between his closed teeth.
‘Sorry,’ Edward said. But he felt he couldn’t get in the car, really go any further, until it was said. And they were so bad at this, at finding their way now when for years it had been just them, two halves inside the tight, cosy shell of the cottage. ‘Dad – I do understand but –’
‘Jenny wrote me a letter, Tom. At Sevenstones, that magical fortnight. She pushed it under my door, Tom, after we’d had words that afternoon. It was about what they’d done to Teddy, the lobotomy, how they’d dragged her away, how Jenny had had to watch.
‘They tricked her,’ he said. ‘Told her that her brother was coming to visit her at Sevenstones. Teddy and Jenny were waiting there. Some clinic in Virginia, some doctor who’d done it all before, with male nurses stronger than Teddy or Jenny.
Teddy tore one of her nails off, she fought them so hard.
She ripped a piece of wood from the doorframe.
Jenny tried to stop them. But it was no use: they simply sedated Teddy and bundled her into a car.
Can you imagine it.’ He put his hand over his eyes.
‘I think the burden of carrying it with her had been too much for Jenny, all those years. She knew she was dying. But –’ He swayed to one side, as a man in a suit and bowler hat swerved past them, racing towards Departures.
‘I couldn’t stay, after I knew. I’d found it so hard to give you up, but I’d told myself it was for the best. Then to hear that, that because of me, really, they’d cut her brain out, made her a zombie – Teddy!
Ha! The girl with a mind like wildfire, racing everywhere.
’ He swallowed, his eyes bright. ‘Tom, in the war, there were these trails of fire you saw when you hit one of their planes. You’d watch it hurtling to earth, streaking flames, plummeting into the sea.
I kept thinking of that,’ he said softly, his voice cracking.
‘That’s what they did to her. Because of me.
And the shame of it – not knowing, not helping her, abandoning her to it – I hated myself for what I’d done to Irene, bringing this baby to her, the product of my affair with Teddy.
Then Irene died, and look what they did to Teddy.
The shame of it all – my boy, I was always the least important part of your story, your life.
I thought to myself, I’ll take myself back off to Scotland, clear out of it. ’
Behind them came the roar of a plane taking off.
The hardest parts of it all were over. Nothing could hurt him now. He saw, through a haze, Teddy’s hands in Alice’s, the long summer eve, the two women, thousands of miles away.
‘But, Dad. That’s utter madness,’ said Tom, shaking his head. ‘You must know that it was. You were my world.’
And he took out of his pocket the treasure he’d been holding on to since he’d got on the plane. The little wooden carved house. He put it in his father’s outstretched hand and his father’s raw, swollen fingers closed around it in a tight grip.
‘You’ve kept it, my boy.’
‘Of course.’
‘All those years.’
‘All those years, Dad.’
Their hands, touching.
‘I met my mother, over there,’ said Tom. ‘I saw Teddy, Dad.’
‘What?’ his father whispered.
‘Yes. Dad, she’s – very different, I think, to how you’d remember her.’
‘I’d forgotten. You’re so like her, darling boy, you’re so like her …
God! How stupid I’ve been. I loved her, Tom.
You’ll never – no one will ever know love like it.
There’s the truth. That’s what you came from.
Love, my boy. Ah –’ His face was beaded with perspiration.
‘Teddy Kynaston. You saw her. Tell me. Tell me all about it.’
There was so much Tom wanted to say, so many words of hurt and pain and recrimination, but all he could think, standing there, was this: I still have him. He’s here. He tried to do the correct thing.
He loosened his father’s hands on him and slid the little wooden house back into his pocket, then picked up his case. ‘I will. Let’s go home.’