Chapter 33
After she’d finished her eggnog, Roo went back to the cabin to polish up her poetry for the talent competition. Tim went to the galley to insist on helping. Jane, after two eggnogs, drifted off into a nap. Henry regarded her fondly.
‘What a lovely old lady,’ he said quietly to Grace.
‘Yes, she’s quite a girl,’ Grace replied. Jane’s gentle fragility belied a strength she could only guess at to have survived all she had.
‘She reminds me very much of my dear old mam. Compassion of Ruth, wisdom of Solomon personified.’
‘Do you have children, Henry?’
‘Don’t think so,’ he replied with a crooked grin. ‘If I ever get out I’d like to settle and have bairns. I never thought about the future when I was young.’
‘You’re only young now.’
‘I won’t be when I get out, Grace. If my plan doesn’t work I’ll be facing a lot more years and they’ll be extra hard to serve.’
‘If it helps, I’ll pray for you,’ said Grace. She still prayed, every night, not that he answered her. She wasn’t even sure she believed in God any more. She hadn’t analysed it, she just habitually kept on praying and kept on being disappointed.
‘Thank you, I’ll take your prayers. I had an interesting discussion with Jane about faith yesterday.
She believes in different things to me and yet strangely we are very similar.
In a way her belief seems stronger than any religion.
To be grateful for every moment given to us.
To be kind because you can be, without any notion that it somehow puts you in the Lord’s good books for what comes after, is holier than holy. Kindness is a much-underrated quality.’
‘I don’t suppose you get a lot of kindness in… where you are,’ said Grace.
‘Would you be surprised if I said we do, in the form of empathy, respect, listening, goodwill, sharing what we have, especially as we have very little. For many it can be a lot to take in, that loss of liberty, however culpable you are. I think I’ve seen every walk of life in prison over the years, from doctors to beggars, from those who had all the advantages of life to those who were doomed before they even came out of their mothers’ wombs.
Prison is a great leveller and every small kindness shines like a diamond in a mine.
I say “small”; I found out very early in my sentence that there is no such thing as a small kindness.
Each one has a tremendous weight.’ Henry smiled.
‘Your husband is a very kind man, Grace. It emanates from him like a light.’
Another one telling her how Frank appeared to them. It was revealing to see him as others saw him.
‘I’m rarely wrong in my judgements. I think I have a gift for seeing people as they are, however convincing their facades may be.
For instance, I would say that Frank is a good man, he radiates strength.
Tim, also – but someone who sees his faults before his virtues.
Roo, a young lady who has no idea of her capabilities and when her bud finally starts to bloom, she will be magnificent.
In Vincent I see a man who wants very much to love and in Elizabeth, a woman who wants very much to be loved. ’
‘And me? What do you see with me?’ asked Grace, wanting to know, but afraid of the answer too, because Henry, she suspected, wouldn’t be someone to sugar-coat it.
‘I think you are lost in your own life, Grace. I would also say you are ignoring the guide rope that is in reach of your hand.’
‘My son died, Henry. I don’t think I can ever get over it.’
Grace swallowed down the huge lump of sadness that rose in her throat.
‘I don’t think you can ever get over something so traumatic.
But you can learn to live with it; then in time it will lose its jagged edges and become like a pearl in an oyster.
All that love you had for your son is tearing around inside you with nowhere to go.
You must find a place for it, Grace. You must give it a home. ’
‘Would you have been alone today, Tim, if you hadn’t been trapped on a train with us lot?
’ asked Frank as he lifted the turkey out of the oven, which seemed to sizzle and hiss in protest at the move.
He switched the heat up by degrees and put in the Yorkshire pudding tins with the fat in the bottom.
They reminded him of Sunday lunches at home when he was a boy, such happy memories attached and he wondered, in time, what sort of memories would be evoked by this Christmas dinner. Mixed, he imagined.
‘Yep. I’d have driven home early this morning after the event.
Good job I always overpack, isn’t it? Vestigial habit from my days on the road, having a spare of this and that just in case.
And I had a ready meal in the freezer for today.
I’m not that bothered about Christmas any more because… well, I think I told you.’
‘Have you thought any more about what you’re going to do?’ Frank shut the oven door and straightened up.
‘I’m going over to see her.’
‘I’m glad, Tim. What changed your mind?’
Tim opened his mouth to tell Frank about the letter that should be ashes in his grate but had somehow turned up in his suitcase, but he would have thought he was gaga.
‘I’ve had time to think,’ he replied instead. ‘I don’t want to regret anything else. So, however much the ticket costs, as soon as I get home – if I ever do – then I’m packing a case and booking a single ticket to Tauranga.’
‘Bloody hell, Tim,’ said Frank. ‘I’ve been to Tauranga.
Grace’s sister lived near there. We went out a few years ago to see her when Billy joined the army; I thought it would cheer her up and stop her worrying.
It’s beautiful, mate. It’s like paradise.
You’ll love it. Go be with your girl, Tim.
I don’t want to be a scaremonger, but you never know what’s around the corner and I’m grateful that in the last conversation I ever had with my son I told him I loved him and I was proud of him. ’
He’d wondered since if he’d had some sort of premonition that made him say it when his boy had rung up and told him he was going on a field exercise, so wouldn’t be in touch for three weeks.
It had brought him the smallest comfort to recall that their last words to each other had been significant.
Billy had laughed and said, ‘Yeah, and I love you too, you soft old git.’
Tim nodded rather than speaking because he couldn’t. Two days ago, he had been annoyed that the snow had robbed him of a night in a swanky hotel, and a five-hundred quid wage, plus petrol, because he doubted he’d get paid. But what had happened to him instead was priceless.
‘Are you prepared for the after-dinner talent show?’ asked Elizabeth, as Vincent set up the fire in the lounge for later. All someone would need to do was put a match to it and – job done.
‘As I can be,’ he replied, his attention distracted by one of the old newspapers he’d just ripped and twisted into screws.
‘I hope these weren’t part of the décor and we’ve destroyed them.
I mean, look at the headlines: Timothy Evans hanged.
British troops land in Korea. Literary giant George Orwell dies.
King postpones trip due to ill-health. And I mean George the Sixth, not Charles. I’m sort of worried now.’
‘I’m sure it will be fine. If they were valuable, they wouldn’t be kept here as obvious fire-starters. They’d be in a magazine rack for reading.’
‘You don’t sound very convincing, Elizabeth.’
‘I’m sort of worried too.’ Then she burst into laughter, that lovely bell-like sound, bells on a one-horse open sleigh.
‘Oh, bloody ’ell.’
‘It’ll be fine, I’m sure.’ She sounded a little more convincing now.
Vincent got up from his knees and moved over to one of the armchairs. ‘Lovely, this room, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it’s beautiful.’ Elizabeth’s eyes roamed around it yet again, taking in the inlaid walls, the shiny jacquard cushions in varying shades of blue, the heavy brocade curtains, soft velvet sofas and chairs, Roo’s expert decorations, including two large nutcracker soldiers at either side of the door into ‘Old Tom’. She really had gone to town for them.
‘I think they might have to drag me off this train when we finally get going and land at Eskford. Then, depending on what the roads are like, we either train it north or double-back to the car and I drive,’ said Vincent, though he didn’t really want to think about it. Not yet, anyway.
‘You really don’t have to come with me if I have to catch the train.’
Vincent gave her his best disapproving look. ‘I think we’ve had this conversation before. Either way, when you get to Topston Manor, I will be carrying your suitcases.’ He doffed a pretend cap: ‘M’lady’, and she didn’t like that he’d done that, for a reason she couldn’t quite figure out.
‘Your fiancé will be glad to see you, I bet; to know that you’re safe. He must be going a bit potty.’
‘Yes,’ she said, with a sigh she wasn’t even aware of making. Vincent noticed and it told him too much.
‘So when’s the big day then?’
‘We… haven’t decided that yet. There are a lot of things to consider, people to consult and a suitable date to be found for all,’ replied Elizabeth, in a tone that she realised sounded more as if she were talking about orchestrating a funeral rather than a wedding.
Then again, the more she was away from her father, her workplace, her fiancé, the more her vision was clearing, the more it did start to feel like a funeral rather than a wedding. A funeral of her remaining freedom.
‘Suitable date for all?’ Vincent probed.