Page 58 of Last Letter Home
‘Ay.’ Mr Andrews gave a grave nod. ‘And our daughter’s interested in taking it on,’ he said with pride. ‘It nearly wasn’t ours, though. That’s why I was surprised to hear from you.’
‘We didn’t know about you, you see,’ Alison said. ‘You won’t blame us for feeling a bit worried.’
‘Worried?’ Briony repeated with surprise.
‘My dad was the second brother,’ Mr Andrews said and it dawned on her. They obviously thought her arrival indicated some claim on their inheritance.
‘So I suppose we need to know you are who you say you are. Harry’s granddaughter.’
‘I haven’t come to take anything away from you,’ Briony said.
‘There must be some mistake, I reckon,’ Mr Andrews was saying carefully. ‘Your grandpa must have been a different Harry Andrews. I wasn’t born till 1946, so I never met my uncle. He never came home after the war. In the end he was declared dead.’
‘Dead?’ Briony was bewildered. ‘But he wasn’t. Why didn’t he come home and tell you?’
The Andrews exchanged doubtful glances.
‘His name wasn’t in the book at the church,’ Briony remembered, and explained further. The Andrews didn’t know why Harry’s name hadn’t been mentioned. They rarely went to church, so had never looked.
‘Well, there we are,’ Mr Andrews said, putting down his coffee, half-drunk. ‘We thought Uncle Harry died in the war and now here you are saying you’re his granddaughter. We don’t know what to say to you, except that the farm is legally ours now.’
‘I don’t want the farm,’ Briony said. ‘Honestly. What would I do with it? Luke here will tell you I can’t be given a pot plant without killing it.’
‘That’s true,’ Luke said, with a laugh.
‘It’s not worth anything either,’ Mr Andrews said dismally. ‘All debts, and it’ll be worse once the subsidies go.’
‘No, it’s yours,’ Briony said with feeling. ‘I simply want to know what happened. I . . . I had no idea that my grandfather had gone missing, only that he’d fought in Italy in the war and presumably come home, met my grandmother in London and decided to settle down near her family. I was given some letters from that time, that’s what brought me here. I only heard about you because Luke’s parents met you.’
‘You said that on the phone,’ David Andrews reminded her. ‘Artist lady, isn’t she? Do you remember, Alison? That evening at the farm shop.’
‘Yes, they were nice,’ Alison nodded. She covered her husband’s hand with her own and they gazed into one another’s eyes. Briony realized then how much anxiety she’d caused them. They must have thought that Harry’s granddaughter had come to reclaim her inheritance, that they might lose everything. She had no idea what happened in law when someone who’d been thought dead turned out to be alive, and wasn’t sure she’d bother to find out. She had no intention of disturbing their lives any further.
As she and Luke drove away from the farm, promising to keep in touch, Briony breathed a sigh of relief. But she was full of questions, and at the bottom of the hill she pulled into a layby and stared out at the golden corn rippling like a lion’s back in the breeze.
‘What’s the matter?’ Luke asked softly.
‘Sorry, I’m having a wobble.’ She covered her face with her hands, suddenly immeasurably tired.
The way he squeezed her shoulder was friendly, sympathetic. She let her hands drop and gave him a wan smile. ‘I’m beginning to think I’m going mad. Grandpa let his family believe he was dead – why would he have done that?’
Luke shook his head. ‘Perhaps he’d fallen out with them.’
‘But even if he had, how cruel. It makes me wonder what will I find out next? I’m almost wishing I’d never been given Paul’s letters. They’re turning my life upside down.’
‘They are, aren’t they?’
They were silent for a while, then, sighing, Briony reached for the gearstick and they moved off again, slowly at first.
‘It’s curious,’ Luke said.
‘What is?’
‘How your grandfather, Paul and Sarah all seem to have been involved in something together. I mean, that note you found in your grandpa’s box that he was supposed to pass on to Sarah. Why was he never able to give it to her? Maybe if you find out what happened to any one of the three then you’ll solve the whole puzzle.’
She thought about this. ‘Yes.’ She supposed he was right. ‘But how do I do that?’
‘I don’t know exactly. Is it worth talking to Mrs Clare again? She’s the one who knew them all.’
