Page 82 of The Christmas Invitation
‘But just because my colouring reminds you of her, it doesn’t necessarily mean thereisa link,’ I protested.
‘There’s a bit more to it than that, and you’ve just said yourself that your mother looked like Nessa,’ Henry said. ‘But let’s go into the drawing room and discuss it more comfortably. The others won’t be back for ages yet, and there’s a lot to tell you.’
Once we were established around the fire, Henry said, ‘I’m afraid this will all come as a shock to you, though we hope it’s a nice one. We’ve had time to get used to the idea, because we’ve suspected you were Nessa’s granddaughter for a few days, especially once you’d told us your mother was adopted and had the same unusual hair and eye colouring as yourself.’
‘But that can’t be unique to us, and Mum having been adopted could well be just a coincidence, too,’ I pointed out.
‘We’ve never metanyonewho looked like Nessa until we set eyes on you,’ Henry said.
‘Let me tell you about Nessa, Meg,’ said Clara, and described her first term at Oxford and meeting the half-American girl whose room was next to hers.
‘Nessa was small – what they called then a Pocket Venus – and most people thought her very pretty. She took her studies seriously and had ambitions to work in journalism, but in other ways she could be very silly and talked a lot of romantic nonsense about men and love. But she had pashes on girls, including yours truly, so I suspected she was a lesbian long before she did.’
‘I expect deep down she knew and she just pushed the thought away because she wanted to conform to the norm. This was 1959, after all,’ said Henry.
‘Very true, dear,’ said Clara. ‘Nessa talked a lot of romantic twaddle about looking for her perfect Sir Galahad and then, unfortunately, she convinced herself she’d found him … and he took advantage of her.’
‘But he married someone else before she realized she was pregnant,’ finished Henry.
‘That’s all very sad,’ I said, still entirely unconvinced that there was a connection, ‘but I reallydon’tthink—’
Clara did her human steamroller impersonation and just carried on as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘We hadn’t even got to the swinging sixties by then, don’t forget, and the pregnancy was quite advanced before she realized what was happening. I just thought she’d put on a lot of weight. But anyway, she confided in me and then decided to tell her godmother, who lived in London, and she helped Nessa to hush it up.’
‘But surely she would have had to leave university when her bump showed?’ I said, interested now, though still disbelieving.
‘Shedidmanage to conceal it till the end of term. Then the baby was born early by caesarean section and immediately adopted,’ said Henry.
‘How awful for her,’ I said, sympathetically. ‘To go through all that and then have to give up her baby.’
They exchanged glances again, like twins sharing a thought.
‘She wanted to go back to America and put it all behind her,’ Clara said. ‘Which she did, and eventually we lost touch.’
‘I still don’t feel it has any connection to me,’ I said. ‘Anyone might have similar colouring to mine and Mum’s, and just because this Nessa had a baby and my mother was adopted …’
‘There’s a bit more to it than that, my dear,’ said Henry. ‘And it doesn’t reflect well on my family.’
I wondered what on earth was coming next!
‘When Henry and I saw you and Mark sitting on the sofa together the other day, the similarity of your profiles was too striking to be dismissed. It confirmed what we already suspected.’
I stared at them in astonishment. ‘But … I don’t look anythinglikeMark! And what has he to do with anything?’
‘In colouring, you’re totally unlike, but the high cheekbones, straight nose and pointed chin are just the same,’ explained Clara. ‘You look a little like Henry, too. It’s a Doome family resemblance.’
‘Which is hardly surprising, because weareall related,’ said Henry. ‘I’m afraid the man who seduced Nessa was my elder brother, George – Mark’s grandfather. He visited me soon after I went up to Oxford and unfortunately met Nessa then.’
‘She was really very pretty, if you liked the type,’ said Clara dispassionately.
‘She was certainly George’s type,’ Henry said drily, ‘and he always had to have what he wanted, no matter what the cost.’
‘We were settling in and enjoying university life and being together again,’ Clara said. ‘I was just happy Nessa wasn’t dogging our footsteps all the time, like she had at first.’
She pondered the past, then shrugged. ‘We were very young and engrossed in ourselves, I suppose. Anyway, to continue this sorry tale, late in the autumn term, Nessa went off to London for the weekend, ostensibly to visit her godmother – but I’d glimpsed her getting into a car with George.’
‘Yes, that gave us a bit of a jolt,’ said Henry. ‘We’d suspected they’d stayed in touch, but hoped it would fizzle out, because he was engaged to an heiress. He always loved money, so long as he didn’t have to earn it.’
‘Nessa was an orphan and would come into money one day, too,’ Clara said, ‘but at that time her guardians gave her an allowance, a very generous one.’
