CHAPTER 41
Joanna
Prague
Eagerly, Joanna pulled back the long muslin curtains at the window. She’d asked for a room with a good outlook at the hotel, U Tri Pstrosu – The Three Ostriches – but she hadn’t expected this amazing view. It was perfect.
The long window looked out over the length of the Charles Bridge: wide, expansive, lined with baroque statues, thronged with people – milling over the grey cobbles, browsing through the jewellery and prints on the street sellers’ stalls.
Behind the bridge rose tall trees and elegant cream buildings with orange-tiled roofs and white chimneys.
And at the far end, Joanna could see the old tower and the spires that marked the entrance into Staré Město, the Old Town.
‘Karl?v Most . . .’ She mouthed the words. The language of the Czech Republic felt peculiar and unfamiliar on her tongue. The Charles Bridge joined the Old Town to the Lesser Quarter, which led up the hill to the cathedral and the castle.
She took a step back into the room, looping the curtain to one side so that her view was unhindered.
This bridge had seen a lot, as she’d discovered from her research.
When Karl?v Most was being built, the builders had appealed for wine and eggs to mix with lime to create a strong mortar – and legend had it that one lot of eggs had arrived hard-boiled .
. . She smiled. That would be a good anecdote to add to her narrative when she wrote the copy.
The bridge had been a thoroughfare, a processional way, a venue of commerce and a place of both celebration and punishment.
In 1620 – and she’d made a note of this too – at the Battle of the White Mountain, the Czechs had been defeated by a Catholic army and the severed heads of ten Protestant nobles had been displayed on this very parapet for twelve years.
Gruesome . . . Joanna blinked, but thankfully this particular image remained in the past.
These days, the bridge seemed to be more of a meeting point.
She reached for her camera, which she’d slung on the bed, opened the window wide and lined up a shot.
The cold air rushed into the room. It was a sharp and bright November day, the sky a matt sapphire, the cobbles gleaming. Tailor-made for walking . . .
On her way here, Harriet had given her a lift to the station and Joanna had taken the opportunity of asking her if they happened to have an ancestor with red hair.
‘What?’ Her sister had stopped at the give way sign and given her another of those uncomprehending looks.
‘Take our great-grandfather William, for example,’ Joanna went on.
‘Take him where?’
Joanna ignored this. ‘Did he have red hair?’
‘How the heck would I know? I didn’t even know we had a great-grandfather called William.’
‘He could have,’ Joanna persevered. ‘You’re fair and I’m dark.’
‘And neither of us are redheads,’ Harriet pointed out with irritating logic.
‘Someone was,’ Joanna said. ‘There was a man called Rufus, and I’m sure he was a member of our family.’ Although sometimes, she was beginning to doubt his existence herself.
‘Why do you want to know?’ Harriet had asked.
She was still in that same dreamy state she’d been in since her mysterious night on the tiles and she still hadn’t said a word about it, though Joanna had tried her best to find out.
It must be another man from that dating site she was on, Joanna concluded.
And this one seemed to have hit her sister hard.
She decided not to tell Harriet about Emmy and Rufus – she hadn’t been interested before and she probably wouldn’t be now. Joanna could be secretive too. ‘No reason,’ she said. ‘I’m just curious.’
‘Maybe you should ask Mother,’ Harriet suggested.
‘Maybe.’ They exchanged a look of sad understanding. Over the past few days their mother seemed to have grown more insubstantial than ever, and neither of them knew quite what to do about it.
They arrived at Dorchester station and Joanna jumped out of the pick-up and rescued her case from the back. ‘Thanks for the lift, Het,’ she said.
‘No problem.’
‘And when I get back, we’ll . . .’ Her voice trailed. What would they do exactly? Joanna was at a loss as how to find a way through.
Now, Joanna moved away from the hotel room window.
Her room had turned out to be a suite, with a sitting room-cum-study and a desk .
. . Had they known how she planned to spend her evenings?
She let her hand trail over the wood, picked up a sheet of the silky headed notepaper decorated with The Three Ostriches’ motif.
Who would she write to as she sat at the antique walnut desk? Nicholas Tresillion? She smiled to herself. What would he find in Lisbon? And then? Would Nicholas follow her to Prague? If he did, how would she feel? Flattered? Or concerned?
She replaced the notepaper on the desk. When she came to think of it, what was the difference between exchanging profiles on an Internet dating site and exchanging profiles by email as she seemed to be doing with Nicholas Tresillion?
It seemed that for once in their lives, Joanna and Harriet were on the same page as it were.
As Nicholas had said, their emails had been intense right from the start, and they’d exchanged plenty of personal details too.
What did Joanna expect to come of it? Anything?
Did she want – or need – a pen friend now that she was all grown up?
Did she think he could be a friend – some random man who had read one of her walking brochures and written to her?
He seemed to understand what she was going through, yes; he’d had a similar experience, he’d even seen the golden ribbon.
But that was hardly enough to catapult them into closeness. On the other hand . . .
She sat down at the desk for a moment. There was more than that.
There was a subtext over and above the words he wrote that she was drawn to.
He, like her, had broken the pattern of his life and was on a journey of rediscovery.
And he had seen something that she had thought only she could see.
She opened up her email inbox. He had replied.
Dear Joanna, she read.
Love and pain – ah, don’t get me started . . .
Fair point, she thought.
I’m in Lisbon right now. I can see what you mean about the old and the new and you’ve captured that brilliantly, if I may say, in your walk along the old aqueduct.
‘Thank you,’ Joanna murmured. So, he was there already. He had done her walk.
I don’t have any siblings – I wish I did. Of course, there’s sometimes rivalry and jealousy too, but I envy you that special closeness.
Joanna thought once again of Harriet. They had never been as close as she would have liked, but maybe now, slowly and gradually . . . Joanna smiled. Nicholas was right. Having a sibling was very special. She read on.
When there’s only one of you, there can be a heavy load of expectation on your shoulders.
My father was a fisherman. He was very down to earth and led a simple, sometimes harsh but also rewarding life.
My mother sadly died when I was twelve. Dad encouraged me to study, go to university.
And it’s true that education gives you more choices, so I’m grateful for that, even though I sometimes wonder how my life would have panned out if I’d become a fisherman too.
Interesting, Joanna thought.
You won’t be surprised to hear that I also saw some sort of vision in the mulberry tree in the praca .
. . Truly! I didn’t see my parents or my daughter, but I did see a man – a man with red, unruly hair.
He was a big guy with a big smile and he was opening his arms really wide.
He certainly seemed happy to see someone.
When I blinked, he was gone, so he must have been a figment of my imagination – what else could he be?
I certainly have no idea who he is – do you?
No . . . Red hair? A big smile? Joanna sat back in the chair, her gaze drifting to the middle distance.
Could Nicholas Tresillion have seen Rufus?
The same man she too had seen with Emmy under the mulberry tree?
She thought of the sepia photograph of her ancestor.
The description sounded like him too. But again, she knew for a fact she hadn’t mentioned the colour of his hair in her copy.
She flicked back through her files to check.
No. She certainly had not. So, how could Nicholas have seen him?
It made no sense. She shivered. It was damned spooky, that’s what it was. Obviously a coincidence. And yet . . .
She got up, hefted her work bag onto the chair and started to unpack her papers, books and maps.
She must focus on Prague. She hadn’t yet decided on the route of the walk – there were several possibilities.
The old to the new had emerged as a city theme that would apply to Prague too with its architecture that ranged from the Gothic to the baroque, with mediaeval and art deco thrown in for good measure.
But maybe there was something else here, something different?
And what, she wondered, had Emmy thought of Prague back in the day?
Joanna gazed out of the window. There was a great view from here too of the arch that led through to the busy shopping street of Mostecká.
Certainly, the Charles Bridge would be central to her walk.
Images of it were everywhere; she had already seen it displayed in art shops from the taxi on the way to the hotel, printed on T-shirts and, most strikingly, in the dark rich-red hallways of the hotel U Tri Pstrosu itself.
Outside her room was an old black and white photographic image dated 1909 – only a few years, Joanna realised, before Emmy would have been here.
It showed that same archway leading to the Lesser Town, a horse and cart crossing the bridge, a man in a cap leaning on the parapet, a woman with a wicker basket.
And the statues . . . What had Emmy made of the Charles Bridge?
And what had she done with her painting?
Love is a fire, a madness, Emmy had written in Prague. Who are we thinking of? Love may undo us all.
So, who were they thinking of – and how did this fit in with Joanna’s new theory? She took the letter out of her bag, handling it carefully as always, putting it gently down on the desk and smoothing out the old creases with her fingertips.
My dearest, my heart’s love. There are so many questions, I know this. To whom do we have a duty, you and I? To ourselves and our happiness? To others? Will you make a choice or are we to be trapped for all time?
How were they trapped? Because they were unable to be together?
But why? Joanna frowned. Reading the letter with her new theory in mind changed everything.
There was a different tone in the Prague letter.
One of sadness, almost desperation. Emmy sounded so much more tortured here and she had quoted from ‘Song’, a sad poem of parting written by the metaphysical poet John Donne.
It was clear that their relationship had reached some sort of turning point, if choices were to be made.
‘Who did you choose, Rufus?’
Joanna had already half guessed the answer.
She still felt disappointed that there was no apparent blood connection between herself and Emmy, but despite this, the link between them felt as strong as ever.
She still had to find out Emmy’s story, and this must be related to the red-haired Rufus’s story.
Rufus, her ancestor, who had surely lived in Mulberry Farm Cottage.
But the questions remained – how was their story linked to Joanna’s?
Why did she feel she had to find out in order to come to any resolution in her own life?
And what did Nicholas Tresillion have to do with any of it?