“Just over those sand dunes,” Mrs. Price said, pointing west. “And behind here is Mr. Bevan’s land and the big house, though you can’t see it from here.”
Mr. Bevan’s land.
The big house.
“He is your grandfather, I expect, Mrs. McKay, isn’t he?” Mrs. Price said. “I wasn’t sure who was coming here, though I was told it was the owner. But you look as if you must be his granddaughter. He married a Gypsy lady, you know. But of course you know. You have the look of one yourself, though it sits well on you, I must say. I’ll get back to the kitchen. I have some soup cooking and some bread rising.”
“Is there an inn in the village, Mrs. Price?” Ben asked as she turned to leave.
“Oh, yes, indeed, sir,” she told him. “It is a nice, tidy place too. Nothing fancy, but it serves up a good dinner, it do, and is always clean. The stables too. My brother owns it.”
“Thank you,” Ben said. “I shall probably stay there for a few nights until I am sure Mrs. McKay is properly settled here. I promised her late husband, my friend, that I would, you know.”
Samantha took a bite of the bara brith when she was alone with Ben. It really was delicious, but she did not have much of an appetite. She set her plate aside and looked at him. He was gazing steadily back at her.
“He has land,” she said, “and a big house. He is still alive.”
“Yes.”
“Yet he sent my mother here to live with his sister,” she said. “He let her go to London at the age of seventeen and did not go after her. He did not go to her wedding or to my christening or to her funeral. It could not have been poverty that caused any of those things, could it?”
“Has imagining that he was poor comforted you over the years?” he asked.
“I have not needed comforting,” she told him. “I have not thought of him or wondered about him.”
But she knew as she stared at him and as he sat looking silently back that she must have done even if it had not been conscious. And she knew that the conviction that her grandfather had been poor was the only thing that had satisfied the hurt of being cut off from her mother’s family at the same time as she was being shunned by her father’s.
“I suppose,” she said, “it was because she was the daughter of the Gypsy who abandoned him. My mother, I mean. And because I was her daughter. If he knew of me at all, that is.”
“Are you going to be sorry you came?” Ben asked.
She looked beyond him to the window, which faced south. Through it she could see the land beyond the garden fence dipping away to the west and then rising again over the dunes. Through the dip she could see the sea and a strip of golden sand—just a stone’s throw from her own house. The house itself was warm and cozy. A clock on the mantel ticked steadily. It would be lulling when she sat here alone. If she sat by the open window, she would be able to smell the salt of the sea. She would be able to hear it too.
And it was allhers.
It was her heritage.
“No.” She opened her mouth to say more and shut it again.
“But—?”
“I am a bit afraid, perhaps,” she admitted. “Afraid of Pandora’s box.”
He got slowly to his feet, abandoned one of his canes, and reached out his free hand. She set her own in it, and he led her to the window.
“Look at the sea, Samantha,” he said. “I learned the trick when I was at Penderris. It was there long before we were thought of. It will be there long after we are forgotten, ebbing and flowing according to the law of the tides.”
“Our little affairs are insignificant?”
“Far from it,” he said. “Pain is not insignificant. Neither is bewilderment or fear. Or conditions like poverty or homelessness. But somewhere—somewhere—there is peace. It is not even far off. It is somewhere deep inside us, in fact, ever present, just waiting for us to look inward to find it.”
She turned her head to look at his lean profile.
“It is how you learned to master your pain,” she said with sudden intuition.
“It was, at last, the only way of doing it,” he admitted. “But I sometimes forget. We all do. It is human nature to try to manage all our living for ourselves without drawing upon…But I am sorry. I did not intend to be so obscure. Just don’t be afraid, though. Whatever you discover here, the knowing cannot bring you any real harm even if it feels painful, for these thingsarewhether you know them or not. And perhaps the knowing will bring you some understanding and even perhaps some peace.”
He continued to look out through the window, and she continued to look at him.
