Page 83 of The Christmas Invitation
My brain was now reeling as it tried to come to terms with all this. ‘So … you seriously think George Doome was my grandfather?’
Clara nodded. ‘Nessa told me she’d arranged to spend the day with him in London before going to her godmother’s house, but they went to a flat he’d borrowed from a friend first and that’s where he seduced her … though, from what she said, that was too mild a term for it. It certainly shattered any illusions she’d had about romance and I think finally made her acknowledge her real sexuality.’
‘Poor girl! I’m so ashamed of George,’ said Henry.
‘He knew Nessa was an heiress and told her afterwards that he didn’t know why she was so upset, because he was going to marry her,’ said Clara. ‘Of course, he assumed she’d come into her capital once she was married, not that she’d have to wait till she was thirty, so when that came out in the big scene afterwards he turned very nasty.’
‘He behaved very badly. We found it hard to forgive him, though of course he didn’t realize that we knew what had happened – and he never knew about the baby, either,’ Henry said.
‘Nessa was absolutely adamant he shouldn’t be told,’ agreed Clara. ‘And he’d got his fiancée pregnant soon after Nessa, so there didn’t seem a lot of point.’
She sighed. ‘The most awful things did just get hushed up then. Nessa wanted only to leave and put it all behind her. She wasn’t interested in the baby at all and once the adoption was through and she’d gone off to America, that seemed to be the end of it.’
‘I’m glad George’s wife, Barbara, never knew about what happened,’ said Henry. ‘She was a sweet woman who put up with a lot from George over the years, but that would have really hurt her.’
By now, I was feeling so stunned and confused by all this that I was unable to speak. Henry fetched me a glass of Tottie’s mead and a whisky and soda each for him and Clara.
When I finally got my voice back, I said, ‘I still find it hard to believe that Mum could be Nessa’s baby. There’s no real proof, is there? Isn’t it just conjecture?’
But even as I spoke I was examining Henry’s features in a new light and noting similarities with my own, though his face had a bonier and more intellectual aspect.
‘We’re quite certain, though a DNA test would give concrete proof, if anyone wanted it,’ Clara replied.
‘To us, you felt like part of the family the moment you stepped into the house,’ Henry said. ‘Didn’t you feel that, too?’
‘I suppose I did,’ I agreed, though I’d also been stunned by meeting Lex on the doorstep, so it hadn’t hit me with great force at the time.
‘We always wondered what had happened to the baby and hoped she was having a happy life,’ Henry said. Then he and Clara filled me in a bit about Nessa’s subsequent life and career, with the early success of her feminist book and the scandal of her having a female live-in lover when things like that were not openly talked about.
‘Although what happened to Nessa was a terrible experience, it did seem to insert a backbone of steel into all that blancmange,’ Clara said. ‘You could see from the picture I showed you that she looked like an overweight Sugar Plum Fairy with attitude.’
‘Mum looks like an overweight Sugar Plum Fairywithoutattitude,’ I said. ‘She drifts about like thistledown, though, wherever the current breeze takes her.’
Though this time, it seemed to have blown her totally off course.
‘We must break it to Sybil that she has a half-sister and a niece,’ Clara suggested.
‘Mustwe tell anyone?’ I protested. ‘I mean, it’s lovely for me if it’s true, but I can’t see the point in stirring things up after all this time.’
‘Ofcoursewe must. We’re quite sure about it, and you must be made part of the family, however belatedly,’ declared Clara.
‘Yes, we’re very happy to have found you and we don’t want to let you go again!’ agreed Henry. ‘But why don’t we order the DNA testing kits online, to put your mind at rest? It could show up other interesting relationships, too, so it would be quite fun.’
‘That’s true,’ said Clara. ‘It might inspire you to write a little family history, Henry!’
I’d been working possible relationships out in my head and it was complicated. ‘So … if itistrue, then you, Henry, are my great-uncle? Sybil is my aunt and Mark … my cousin?’
‘That’s right, so you’ve acquired lots of relations in one fell swoop!’ Henry said.
‘But telling Sybil would surely upset her, and for no good reason?’
‘She must already know what her father was like. He and that old reprobate Piers Marten were like two peas in a pod, where women and gambling were concerned,’ said Henry. ‘There were lots of unsavoury stories circulating about them when they were younger.’
‘Sybil always managed to shut her eyes to anything she didn’t like,’ observed Clara. ‘And of course after she married – Edmund Whitcliffe, a very nice Methodist minister, much older than herself, Meg – she didn’t see a lot of her father because her husband disliked him.’
I wasn’t surprised: I don’t think I’d have liked him either. I much preferred having River as my grandfather.
‘I think we should break the news to Sybil and Mark tomorrow,’ suggested Henry, to my horror.
