I remembered Dad’s account of the girl who’d cried the whole way through a film. “And you sawThe Holly and the Ivy.”
Mum nodded, drew a tissue from somewhere, and dabbed at her eyes. “And I met your father. And he took me to tea and bought me pear cake.”
“Your favorite.”
She smiled through tears, fond of the memory. “He kept asking what the matter was and when I told him that the film had made me cry he looked at me with total disbelief. ‘But it’s not real,’ he said as he ordered a second slice of cake. ‘It’s all made up.’ ”
We both laughed then; she’d sounded just like Dad.
“He was so firm, Edie, so solid in his perception of the world and his place in it. Astonishingly so. I’d never met anyone quite like him. He didn’t see things unless they were there, he didn’t worry about them until they happened. That’s what I fell in love with, his assurance. His feet were planted firmly in the here and now and when he spoke I felt enveloped in his certainty. Happily, he saw something in me too. It may not sound exciting, but we’ve been very happy together. Your father’s a good man, Edie.”
“I know he is.”
“Honest, kind, reliable. There’s a lot to be said for that.”
I agreed, and as we fell to sipping our soup a picture of Percy Blythe came into my mind. She was a bit like Dad in that respect: the sort of person who might be overlooked among more vibrant company, but whose sturdiness, steeliness even, was the foundation upon which everybody else could shine. Thoughts of the castle and the Sisters Blythe reminded me of something.
“I can’t believe I forgot!” I said, reaching for my bag and pulling out the box that Juniper had given me in the night.
Mum laid down her spoon and wiped her fingers on the napkin in her lap. “A present? You didn’t even know that I was coming.”
“It’s not from me.”
“Then who?”
I was about to say, “Open it and find out,” when I remembered that the last time I’d presented her with a box of memories and said the same thing it hadn’t worked out so well. “It’s from Juniper, Mum.”
Her lips parted and she made a tiny winded noise, fumbled with the box, trying to get it open. “Silly me,” she said in a voice I didn’t recognize, “I’m all thumbs.” Finally, the lid came off and her hand went to her mouth in wonder. “Oh my.” She took the delicate sheets of austerity paper from inside and held them, as if they were the most precious items in the world.
“Juniper thought I was you,” I said. “She’d been keeping this for you.”
Mum’s eyes darted to the castle on the hill and she shook her head with gentle disbelief. “All this time …”
She turned over the typewritten pages, scanning as she read bits here and there, her smile flickering. I watched her, enjoying the evident pleasure the manuscript was giving her. There was something else, too. A change had come over her, subtle but certain, as she realized that her friend had not forgotten her: the features of her face, the muscles in her neck, even the blades of her shoulders seemed to soften. A lifetime’s defensiveness fell away and I could glimpse the girl within as if she’d just been woken from a long, deep sleep.
I said gently, “What about your writing, Mum?”
“What’s that?”
“Your writing. You didn’t continue?”
“Oh, no. I gave up on all that.” She wrinkled her nose a little and her expression cast a sort of apology. “I suppose that sounds very cowardly to you.”
“Not cowardly, no.” I continued carefully. “Only, if something gave you pleasure, I don’t understand why you would stop.”
The sun had broken through the clouds, skating off puddles to throw a layer of dappled shadow across Mum’s cheek. She readjusted her glasses, shuffled slightly in her chair, and pressed her hands delicately on the manuscript. “It was such a big part of my past, of who I’d been,” she said. “The whole lot got all wrapped up together. My distress at having thought myself abandoned by Juniper and Tom, the feeling that I’d let myself down by missing the interview … I suppose I stopped finding pleasure in it. I settled down with your father and concentrated on the future instead.”
She glanced again at the manuscript, held a sheet of paper aloft, and smiled fleetingly at whatever was written there. “Itwassuch a pleasure,” she said. “Taking something abstract, like a thought or a feeling or a smell, and capturing it on paper. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed it.”
“It’s never too late to start again.”
“Edie, love.” She smiled with fond regret. “I’m sixty-five years old. I haven’t written more than a shopping list in decades. I think it’s safe to say that it’s too late.”
I was shaking my head. I met people of all ages, every day of my working life, who were writing just because they couldn’t stop themselves.
“It’s never too late, Mum,” I said again, but she was no longer listening. Her attention had drifted over my shoulder and back towards the castle. With one fine hand she drew her cardigan closed across her breasts. “You know, it’s a funny thing. I wasn’t sure quite how I’d feel, but now that I’m here, I don’t know that I can go back. I don’t know that I want to.”
“You don’t?”
