Page 14 of Last Letter Home
‘I’m starting to receive quite a few orders for this sort of thing,’ her father continued with satisfaction. ‘There’s an art gallery opened up near the church that already sells my cards, and I reckon they’ll take some framed enlargements if I play the manager right. Look.’ He tapped the keyboard a couple of times and pictures of other local scenes slid across the screen. The mediaeval parish church, the Georgian high street, the oldest pub. All had been bathed in the same unnaturally warm light to give the impression of being olde-worlde.
‘They’re great, Dad,’ she said and they grinned at one another. He had always been a glass half-full man, absorbing himself in each new interest as it came along, resilient, never dwelling on disappointment for very long. There were times, though, when that hadn’t been helpful, but she dismissed the thought.
‘Can I show you something of mine?’ she asked. ‘I was given it in Italy.’
She pulled up another chair, logged into an internet account and found the digital version of Mariella’s filmstrip which a pal in the college archive had created for her. It took a couple of goes to open it on her father’s curmudgeonly system, but then it worked. Together they watched the jerky clip of film begin and she felt quite emotional with him here beside her. How her father would react, she couldn’t guess. It was very moving to see someone from your past on film, more so than simply a photograph because you were seeing them come to life, breathing, gesturing, maybe hearing their voice.
‘Look,’ she said, freezing the film. ‘Watch this man here.’ Her father took her place at the desk, adjusted his glasses and inspected the screen as she let the film move on.
She heard his sharp intake of breath. ‘Well, I’m blowed,’ he murmured, then, ‘Play that bit again, can you?’ She replayed the scene a couple of times, froze it again when the man’s face was clearest, and her father sat back in his chair, staring. ‘It’s extraordinary,’ he said finally, removing his spectacles, studying again that smiling face from so long ago.
‘Do you think it’s Grandpa Andrews, Dad?’
‘It’s definitely how I imagine he would have appeared at that age. And doesn’t he look like Will? I did tell you Grandpa Andrews said he’d been in Tuana. What is this building, did you say? And what about the other men, do we know who they are?’
‘I don’t, no. The place is the Villa Teresa, a mile or so from Tuana, up on the hillside.’ She told him briefly about the ruined house and garden.
‘Well, it must be him then. It’s remarkable. He would have been there in forty-three or forty-four, I suppose; he never talked much about it. I asked him once if he would do an interview for the paper for an anniversary, but he wasn’t keen, not keen at all, so I backed down.’
‘Do you have anything belonging to him from the war, Dad? Photos or letters or anything?’
‘I believe your granny threw away a lot of things after he died. Your mother was a bit upset, I remember. There may be a shoebox of stuff stashed away somewhere, but . . . now is it on the wardrobe or in the loft? Surely you’ve seen it before, though?’
‘I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned it.’
‘We’ll have a look after lunch. Ah good, here’s Lavender.’
Through the window they watched a car roll onto the drive and a petite, curvy, energetic woman with a dandelion puff of silvery-blonde hair climb out. She was wearing a tracksuit and manoeuvring a huge organizer bag. This, Briony knew, would be full of things pertaining to all the different aspects of her stepmother’s busy life, from shopping lists for the elderly ladies she visited, to a pair of yoga socks, her latest book-club paperback and her phone, loaded with photographs of her grandchildren and step-grandchildren. Lavender waved and Briony was concerned to see her face was a little thinner. Perhaps it was simply that her stepmother hadn’t put on make-up for yoga.
She came straight in and gave Briony a hug. ‘How lovely to see you. I’ll nip up and change, then we can have lunch. Martin, love, will you put the oven on at one-eighty?’ Her voice trailed down as she climbed the stairs. ‘And offer Briony some Prosecco. Just the elderflower for me.’
Martin went about his duties with every appearance of contentment. Briony followed him into the big sunny kitchen noticing all the new little touches since she’d last visited: a glass worktop protector with rabbits round the edge, a rubber-spiked doormat by the back door, a pretty china dish for the shepherd’s pie that her dad fetched from the fridge.
She felt a wave of affection for Lavender, who loved to buy new things for the house. Briony and Will hadn’t always felt warmly about her. After their mother’s death their father had adopted the stiff-upper-lip approach to grief, leaving it to his own mother to manage his teenage children after school and during holidays. He had kept Jean’s mother, Granny Andrews, at a distance, which probably hurt her deeply, though after her death he confessed to Briony that he hadn’t been able to bear her terrible sadness in addition to their own. Briony’s memories of her were fond. Granny was a calm, wise person with smiling eyes, but after losing her husband and her grown-up daughter in quick succession something seemed to break in her.
For years, Briony’s father wouldn’t consider the idea of dating again and then, when he did, the relationships didn’t last long. It was therefore a shock to Briony and Will when, in their early twenties, Lavender walked confidently into their lives.
‘Briony, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.’ Briony had almost dropped the phone in surprise at what followed: the revelation that her father was in love.
At least – probably prompted by Lavender – he had tactfully arranged introductions to take place at a neutral venue, a carvery pub on the outskirts of Birchmere. She and Will had sat opposite the new couple and, as she took in Martin’s fondness for Lavender, she’d felt overwhelmed by grief all over again. Their father couldn’t keep his eyes, or indeed his hands, off this woman. Lavender had been slim back then, a lively, friendly, large-eyed woman who hardly stopped talking. After the meal they went back to the house for coffee and Briony found it painful to see Lavender fetching mugs, a tray, teaspoons, out of all the right cupboards as though she lived there already.
She was divorced from her husband, she told them. She showed them a snap of her daughter, a pretty girl of their own age in a nurse’s uniform and with her mother’s extraordinary wiry hair.
‘I’m sure her ex couldn’t get a word in edgeways,’ Briony said cattily to Will later when he dropped her off at her student house in South London.
‘Do you suppose Dad used to look at Mum like that?’ Will wondered. ‘It won’t last, surely. It can’t. She’s not like Mum at all.’
‘She’s already put some of her clothes in Mum’s wardrobe,’ Briony warned. She’d retreated upstairs to shed a quiet tear and hadn’t thought it at all shameful to spy. After all, to protect Dad she had to know what they were up against. Time passed, though, and it became clear that Lavender wasn’t a manipulative gold-digger or an obsessive bunny-boiler. She was simply a thoroughly nice middle-aged woman who had fallen in love with a man as lonely as herself.
Now, years later, when Briony looked back, she blushed to think how selfish she and Will had been. They had their lives before them. Will was already going out with the girl who would become his wife. It had been mean of them to resent Dad finding happiness again. At the same time, their feelings had been understandable. She now knew from dealing with her students how self-absorbed and vulnerable twenty-year-olds could be. Dad finding someone new would naturally have brought back feelings of loss. She and Will had struggled with the belief that he was betraying their mother.
In time, as they loosened their ties with home, they came to appreciate Lavender, if not to love her. Briony was privately amused at her stepmother’s enthusiasms and the way that she’d domesticated her father. Saucers for coffee mugs, boxes of fruit teas, magnets bearing coy little sayings clamping the grandkids’ drawings to the fridge, all these were so unlike Martin Wood’s previous environment that Briony was amazed at his acceptance of it.
As they ate their lunch at the sleek table in the glass extension that had transformed the gloomy old kitchen, Lavender asked about Briony’s holiday and spoke with eagerness about their own forthcoming one – in a Greek island paradise with creative writing classes, outdoor yoga for her and photography for Martin.
‘That sounds fun, Dad,’ Briony said, catching her father’s eye.
‘I just do what I’m told these days,’ Martin grumbled.
