Chapter 3 The Bluebird Pendant
As I parked outside Dad’s cottage, I was reminded that the garden hedge needed cutting. With his walking getting so bad and then the operation, he’d fallen behind with such tasks.
As ever, I felt a pang of sadness as I approached the old oak door.
Mum and Dad had moved to this village from London after I’d started university in Norwich twelve years ago.
For Mum it was like coming home and Dad, who ran his own small business consultancy, was a country boy at heart.
Then, five years ago, Mum had been killed in a car crash after her brakes failed, and now Dad was alone.
My current job was based in Cambridge where I was renting a tiny flat, but I’d been staying with Dad for a few weeks while he got over the hip replacement.
‘Did the morning go well?’ Dad was making sandwiches for lunch when I let myself in. He was leaning awkwardly against the kitchen worktop, his crutches to hand.
‘Let me do that,’ I said, rushing forward.
‘I’m perfectly capable, Amy, though you can get the mayo out for me if you like.’
We ate in the living room where Dad could sit comfortably.
In between mouthfuls of tuna and cucumber sandwiches, I described Farthington House and its current inhabitants.
Dad didn’t know the town well, but I’d told him about my fascination with the house and he’d been amused by Gran’s comment that the Rutherfurds were ‘high and mighty’.
He had been fond of his mother-in-law, whilst sometimes falling victim to her sharp tongue.
‘There was something really weird, though.’ I described the painting of the girl who looked like me. ‘The old lady, Julia, said she had an unusual name – Bird. That’s not someone Mum or Gran ever mentioned, was it?’
Dad swallowed his mouthful then shook his head. ‘Don’t remember anything.’
‘The artist had painted her wearing a pendant, which had a little bird on it.’
Dad looked more interested. ‘What kind of bird?’
‘It was blue.’
‘A bluebird,’ he said softly, then, after a moment, ‘Can you fetch something upstairs for me, darling? There were several boxes of things that we rescued from Gran’s house after she died.
Your mum always intended to sort them out, but we ended up bringing everything here.
I remember her showing me some bits of jewellery tangled up in a green shoebox. Nothing valuable, but maybe…’
He paused, sandwich halfway to his mouth, deep in thought.
‘Where are these boxes?’ I said, getting up.
‘Spare bedroom.’ He took a bite and chewed. ‘Top shelf of the cupboard,’ he mumbled through his mouthful. ‘Sorry, it’s a bit of a mess up there.’ There was no need to say what we both knew, that neither of us had the heart to go through any more of Mum’s things.
Upstairs in the tiny third bedroom, I opened the cupboard to be faced with shelves packed tightly with stuff.
I peeped into boxes of books and CDs, shifted bulky padded envelopes and photograph albums, telling myself to be businesslike.
Many of these things had been Mum’s and I couldn’t bear to linger.
A scrapbook with ‘Life in Tudor England by Michelle Payne’ in girlish felt pen on the front, a little heart instead of a dot on the ‘I’, made me gulp, but I hid it under a dull-looking textbook titled ‘Practical Nursing’ and carried on with my search.
I’d helped Dad dispose of Mum’s clothes and shoes in the year after her death, taking them to a charity shop some miles away so we wouldn’t risk the pain of seeing anyone local wearing them.
He’d given me the few valuable items of jewellery Mum had owned and a special watercolour she’d once painted of Gran’s house, Mum’s childhood home.
He’d have let me have more if I’d had the courage to look.
I spotted the green shoebox Dad had described at the back of the cupboard.
I eased it out, undid the ribbon tied round it and peered under the lid.
It contained, as he’d said, a tangle of costume jewellery, but also what looked like the contents of a dressing-table drawer – old make-up, a pin cushion, plastic combs dusted with talcum powder.
What on earth did Dad want with this now and how was it connected to Bird’s portrait?
I shut the cupboard then carried the box downstairs.
Dad sat with the box open in his lap, unravelling the strings of dusty beads whilst I cleared a space on the coffee table. I knelt and helped him lay them out. I didn’t remember Gran wearing any of them and when I said this, Dad agreed.
‘She wasn’t the type to wear jewellery. Maybe these were from when she was younger. There was something, though, that did come out on special occasions. Now,’ he muttered to himself, ‘what happened to it?’
We’d been through all the necklaces now.
I leaned over the shoebox then reached in and picked out a small jeweller’s box from amongst the jumble of items at the bottom.
It fitted snugly in my hands as I pulled it open.
Inside, lying on a velvet pad, Gran’s wedding ring gleamed, the gold worn thin by years of wear.
A little packet of folded tissue had been tucked next to it.
I laid the box with the ring to one side, then quickly unwrapped the packet to reveal a scrap of cardboard with a silver chain wound round it.
Unwinding the short chain, I realized what hung on it.
It was a little silver pendant of a bird in flight, the silver enamelled with cornflower blue.
We were both silent for a second, staring at it, then Dad whispered, ‘That’s the one.’
I held it up so that the bird turned slowly in the sunlight, flashing blue and silver.
My mind still couldn’t cope with what we’d found.
I laid the pendant in my palm and studied it as calmly as I could.
If this wasn’t the pendant from the painting of Bird, I concluded, then it was a close copy.
I fumbled with the catch and slipped the chain round my neck.
The pendant rested lightly on my collarbone.
At a scraping sound, I glanced up to see Dad twisting awkwardly towards the bookcase, scrabbling at something out of reach. I scrambled up to help. ‘Dad, careful.’
‘Wedding photos,’ he said, breathing heavily. ‘Can you…?’
I pulled the big album from the bottom shelf, then watched him turn the thick pages, their tissue coverings fluttering, until he found the photo he was looking for. ‘There.’ He passed the album to me awkwardly.
It lay open at a shot of Mum and Dad, the bride and groom, standing between two sets of parents. Everyone looked so young, Mum and Dad especially, Mum radiant in a full-skirted ivory wedding dress.
Dad pointed at Gran. She was in her fifties, trim and wearing a pale blue suit.
Half hidden by her blouse collar was the bluebird pendant.
Perhaps I’d noticed it before – how could I have forgotten?
I’d often leafed through this album as a teenager, wondering at how my fusty, middle-aged parents could ever have been so young and good-looking!
How was it that Gran was wearing the same pendant as the woman in the portrait?
Perhaps such pendants were more common than I thought.
Bluebirds were symbols of good luck and happiness, after all. But still…
Suddenly I heard my phone begin to ring. I handed back the album and ran to the kitchen, where I’d left it. It was Amaya, my boss, wanting an urgent answer to a printer’s query, which I was able to supply.
‘Thanks,’ Amaya said. ‘How did you get on this morning?’ She sounded rushed.
‘It was interesting, but—’ I started to reply.
‘Put it in an email,’ Amaya interrupted. ‘I need to get back to the printer or we won’t have a Christmas issue. Oh, and the holiday cottage piece. I’m pulling that forward to February. When can you finish it by?’
‘I can start it this afternoon,’ I stammered, caught off balance.
‘Amazing. So I might have it by Friday?’
Today was Wednesday and it would be a fiddly article to write. Still, Amaya’s word was law. ‘Yes,’ I sighed. ‘Friday afternoon.’
The phone went dead. I glanced at the kitchen clock. Nearly two. I switched the kettle on.
‘Lunch hour over,’ I said crisply, returning to Dad with a mug of tea. I left him leafing sadly through his wedding album and retired to the small room by the front door that Dad normally used as an office.
I opened my laptop then watched several dozen new emails slide into my inbox. The only one that caught my interest was one from Kyle at Farthington House.
‘Thank you for coming this morning,’ it said. ‘I’m about to Airdrop you the guidebook. If you’ve any useful comments, I’d be glad to hear from you. I’m better with pictures than with words, if you know what I mean!’
I touched the bluebird pendant, still round my neck, as I waited for his file to download, before clicking quickly through the pages.
The brochure was beautifully designed, I saw, bright with photographs of the house, but it was thin on information about its history and the story of the Rutherfurd family.
Thinking I’d need to take a more detailed look before advising Kyle, I closed the document.
Then I started a new email to Amaya. I headed it ‘Pitch for Article on Farthington House’.
‘Farthington House,’ I typed, ‘has been restored as an authentic Victorian mansion. The home of the Rutherfurd family, it was built by George Rutherfurd, a local businessman from a humble background, who wanted to establish himself in society. His son John inherited both the house and the brewery George had founded. He later made his mark by becoming Mayor of Farthington.’ (I had learned this from Kyle’s guidebook.) ‘With a social position to keep up, he and his father were responsible for commissioning many of the superb portraits of their family now displayed in the dining room of the house.’
I paused and reread what I’d written. All right but a bit dull. I tapped the desk with my fingernail, then added a few sentences about the thrill of walking round a fine Victorian house and finished by saying I was investigating the stories of the past inhabitants.
Signing off quickly, I sent it to Amaya, then turned with a gloomy sigh to a file labelled ‘UK Heritage Cottages’.
This was full of facts and figures that somehow had to be worked up into a sparkling piece about where readers should book next summer’s holiday.
I was about to set to work but found myself thinking about the email from Kyle.
I should at least thank him for the morning’s visit and for sending the guidebook.
I ended up writing him a detailed response, praising what he’d done to the house and suggesting very tactfully that members of the public would be interested to know more about the lives of the people who had lived there.
After hitting send, I returned with a sigh to the matter of the holiday cottages and set grimly to work.