CHAPTER 34
Joanna
Dorset
First thing in the morning while Harriet was doing her deliveries, Joanna spent some time with their mother.
‘Can you show me how you do your work, darling?’ her mother asked. ‘On your computer, I mean. I’d be so interested.’
‘Of course, Ma.’ Joanna was touched.
She brought her laptop down to the sitting room and showed her mother the different documents she was working on.
Mother peered at the screen. ‘Fascinating,’ she said. ‘If only we’d had such a thing when I was a girl.’
‘What would you have done, Mother? What would have been your perfect career?’ Joanna knew that her mother had married her father when she was only nineteen.
After that, the farm was her career – looking after Father and cooking for him and the farmhands, caring for Harriet and Joanna when they came along.
That would have been a full-time job in itself.
‘Oh, I don’t know, darling.’ Mother looked out of the window towards the Down where the hedges had lost a lot of their leaves in the latest autumn gale and the trees were tinged with the reds and yellows of the season. ‘But I always felt I wanted to work with people – in an office perhaps?’
Joanna smiled. ‘Maybe you would have been a journalist, like me.’
Mother chuckled. ‘I don’t think I would have been nearly clever enough,’ she said. ‘All these words . . . You take after your father, you know. If he hadn’t been a farmer, he would have been an academic, I’m sure.’
Joanna remembered the books that she and Harriet had heaved down and into the study a few days after she’d found them in the attic. ‘I think you’re right.’
‘But how do you communicate with your editors?’ Mother peered closer again as Joanna opened her email and showed her how it worked.
‘And then you can look stuff up too.’ Joanna illustrated this by opening Google. ‘You can find out almost anything.’
‘At just the touch of a button. Oh, my.’ Mother was transfixed. ‘How things have changed, Jo.’
‘They certainly have.’ Even in Joanna’s lifetime. Sometimes even she struggled with technology.
‘And do you know . . .’ Mother sighed as she sat back in the chair. ‘Although there were never so many opportunities when I was a girl, I’m rather glad I never had to worry about all those sorts of things. Life was so much simpler in my day.’
‘Yes,’ said Joanna. She could see that. ‘I suppose it was.’
*
When Harriet returned at ten thirty, Joanna borrowed the pick-up truck and drove to the Dorset Records Office in Dorchester. After several phone calls, she’d discovered they held microform copies of the census returns from 1841 to 1891 here, so she’d lost no time in making an appointment.
As she drove down the familiar high road, with its panoramic views of the West Dorset countryside and the coast beyond, she thought again about Martin’s visit.
She had no regrets, but it had left her feeling unsettled.
She should go back to London, she decided, if only to go to the house and collect some more of her things.
And to make sure he had put the place on the market, of course.
Perhaps now, though, he would really accept that it was over between them.
She glanced out of the pick-up truck’s window as she passed green fields with sheep, cows and horses grazing.
The wind had dropped today and there was an icy blue sky above – a promise of the winter approaching. And yes, it really was over.
So where would she live? It was time to think about practicalities, because she couldn’t stay at Mulberry Farm Cottage forever.
Harriet had made it clear that she was welcome to stay for as long as she needed to – and Joanna was grateful for that, grateful for the warmth she was beginning to feel from her sister.
But . . . Dorset? London? She missed Lucy and Steph and her other friends – though plenty of emails continued to wing between them.
On the other hand, she’d like to be closer to her family and the tranquil landscape she had once left behind.
She couldn’t continue living her life in limbo. She must decide.
Joanna parked the truck. She was a bit early, so she checked her emails on her phone before she went inside. Nothing from Nicholas yet. She wondered if she’d given him a bit too much information? There was a WhatsApp message from Toby, though. She opened it:
Good response to your Venice brochure, sweetie, Toby had written. It’s flying off the shelves.
Any complaints? she messaged back, thinking about that first email from Nicholas Tresillion. Surely other people hadn’t seen the mirage in the canal too? Surely – hang on a minute, get a grip on reality, Jo, she told herself – it hadn’t actually been there?
Course not, came the immediate reply. And Lisbon’s ready to go.
Great.
People in mulberry trees, thought Joanna. Enough to test the patience and sanity of any walker.
*
The census of 1891 – the one she was most interested in, since this would reveal who was living in Mulberry Farm Cottage at the time – proved fascinating.
The returns were arranged by parish – Symondsbury, in this case – and district, and households were recorded street by street.
But under Warren Farm Lane there were no entries for Mulberry Farm Cottage.
Joanna frowned as she scanned the narrow lines and slanted script, which was so difficult to read in places. What was going on? Was it a mistake perhaps? Where had they got to?
Eventually, she found the householder Edward Shepherd, farmer, with his wife Jane, and – wait for it – three children: William, Mary and Elizabeth.
She felt a twist of excitement. William had two sisters.
No Emmy – the name she’d been longing to see – but was it possible that one of these two women could be her?
They were the right age, and living in the right place.
*
Later, over lunch with Harriet and Mother, Joanna’s head was still buzzing with the past. When they’d cleared up, she went upstairs to get on with some work. But before she could make a start, there was a light knock at the door.
‘Yes?’
Harriet came in and dropped a large manilla envelope into Joanna’s lap.
‘What’s this?’ she asked as she opened it.
‘Photographs mainly.’ Harriet peered over her shoulder. ‘You said you were looking for old family photos. I found them in the study.’
‘Thanks, Het.’ Carefully, Joanna pulled them from the envelope. Wow. She had spent some time going through the stuff in the study herself and had found nothing but notes about the farm and ancient bills. Harriet had really come up trumps.
Joanna examined the first photo. ‘Is this Father?’
‘Yes.’
Skinny and fair-haired, wearing short trousers and a shirt, he was standing self-consciously between a stiff, upright couple both wearing black, who were presumably his parents.
Joanna thought she must have seen this photo before, years ago, but she couldn’t be sure.
She put her hand on her sister’s arm and thought she felt Harriet tremble.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Harriet said. Her expression changed. ‘I’m nipping into the village to get a few bits and pieces, OK? I won’t be long.’
‘OK.’ Joanna was happy to examine the past alone. And it was all too easy to drift, to look into the faces and slip into their worlds.
She picked up the photograph. Her father’s father, George, looked stern and rather forbidding, just as Mother had said, while Dorothea had a sweet face and a dimpled smile.
Joanna touched the images of her paternal grandparents with her fingertip.
It meant so much more when you could put a face to a name.
It was funny how she’d never bothered before; her grandparents had both died before she was born, and yet now, through Emmy, they seemed so important; they were the landscape she had come from.
She heard the front doorbell go and her mother answer it. She’d call if she needed anything. It was probably Owen coming round for afternoon tea or someone from the village dropping by. Joanna knew she should really be getting prepared for Prague. But . . .
She glanced up at Emmy’s Venetian bridge painting.
It wasn’t a modern affliction, was it – wanting to get away?
Emmy had travelled too, though she gave the impression that she wouldn’t have minded staying at home with her dearest Rufus, her heart’s love.
Why, Joanna wondered, hadn’t he gone with her?
Perhaps because her father needed her companionship and help; Rufus would have had to stay behind to look after the farm.
This made sense. Emmy’s father would have paid for the journey, she supposed.
It certainly wasn’t uncommon in those days for a daughter – married or not – to travel as a companion to a relative or friend.
Joanna was vaguely aware of the rise and fall of voices from downstairs and the sound of her mother’s laughter.
Mother was happy and occupied – that was good.
It was a shame she didn’t have more friends from the village popping by to see her.
Joanna started sorting through the photographs. Might Emmy be pictured here somewhere?