Page 81 of The Christmas Invitation
I was glad to hear from the nurse who took me to her room that, despite being so early, the baby girl was a healthy five pounds and doing well. Nessa, who was looking pale and drawn, told me she hadn’t seen her and didn’t intend to.
‘I’m going to recuperate at Godmama’s house and we’re going to tell everyone that I’ve had my appendix out.’
‘A healthy, five-pound appendix,’ I said drily, but she’d never had much of a sense of humour and this passed her by.
‘I don’t think I’ll ever come back to England – and I’m going to focus on my career from now on,’ she told me, before rambling on about how men conned women into the idea of romance in order to dominate and control them, and a lot more like that. When I got up to leave, she tearfully begged me to keep in touch.
On the way out I asked to see the baby, who was asleep in a clinical white room with a lot of other newborns, all looking much the same.
A private adoption had been arranged by Lady Leamington with her chauffeur and his wife, who were childless, and I hoped that would work out well …
Nessa wrote me several gushing letters, enthusing about her new life, but then slowly these missives dwindled, until at last they stopped. It took a lot longer, however, before Henry and I ceased to wonder how the baby was faring and where she was …
The knowledge of George’s infamous behaviour (not to mention several other unsavoury episodes we heard about later) was to colour our relations with him for the rest of our lives. He, of course, had no idea we knew about Nessa, and he, in turn, had no idea about her pregnancy. There was no open breach: we were fond of his wife, Barbara, and their daughter, dear Sybil, but we had as little to do with him as possible.
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Den drove Tottie to church in Thorstane on Sunday morning and Teddy went with them – not to church, but to the pub with Den, for a playdate with Fred Golightly’s grandson.
Clara was working and Henry and I retired to the studio for what I thought might be the final sitting. There were still a couple of days to go until River arrived, so I would have completed both portraits in plenty of time, had I still intended leaving with him.
The house settled into quietness around us, apart from Lass’s reverberating snores when she fell asleep on Henry’s feet, and the ticking of the revived clock on the bookcase. Someone had reset the time and must be winding it up, but it wasn’t me.
Clara was having a session on her memoirs and, since she was still writing about her Oxford days, she came in occasionally to ask Henry something.
I’d just completed the last touches to Lass and was contemplating a few small background tweaks, when she returned for a third time and said that if we were finished with the sitting, she’d like us both to come to her study so she could show us something.
I thought she must have switched to her work computer and had managed to piece another inscription together – a ‘join’ as she called it – or something like that, but when I’d cleaned up and followed Henry in there, only the laptop screen was glowing.
‘I’ve found a photograph of one of the girls from my first year at Oxford University that I’d like to show you, Meg,’ Clara said. ‘She’s called Nessa Cassidy.’
She exchanged a glance with Henry that I couldn’t decipher and then brought up a picture of a plump woman in perhaps her late twenties, or early thirties, with very fair hair, a slightly tip-tilted nose, a babyishly short upper lip and a militant expression that sat oddly with all that cuteness.
‘Nessa Cassidy? I think I’ve heard of her,’ I said. ‘Wasn’t she a leading American gay feminist writer way back? There was a book …’
‘Quite right,’ said Clara, ‘long before your time, of course. She went back to the States to complete her studies after her first year at Oxford and had a big hit with her book,The Butterfly Kiss. But she died tragically young in a car accident.’
I peered closer and frowned. ‘She looks … sort of familiar. But then, I expect I’ve seen her photograph before somewhere.’
‘It’s an old photo, but Henry and I remember her very well. In fact, the memories have all come flooding back since I started writing that part of my autobiography.’
‘Do you remember when you first arrived here and we said you reminded us of someone?’ asked Henry. ‘You hoped it might have been your mother.’
I nodded, puzzled.
‘We hadn’t met your mother, but we came to realize later that it was Nessa Cassidy you resembled. It’s not so clear in thephoto, but she had your unusual light greenish-blue eyes, silver-blond hair and creamy pale skin.’
‘Really?’ I looked again, with more interest. ‘It’s hard to tell from this, but other than her colouring, she doesn’t look like me at all, does she?’ I paused, then added slowly, ‘Shedoeslook a bit like Mum, though!’
I turned to look at them both and Henry gave me an encouraging smile, as if I was a child trying to piece together a puzzle.
‘The thing is, darling,’ said Clara, ‘that we think there may be a link between your mother and Nessa.’
‘What kind of link?’ I asked, though already my mind had begun to shove the pieces together, much as Clara did with her computer joins.
‘Nessa had an illegitimate baby before she went back to the States, though it was all hushed up. We think that baby might have been your mother.’
