Emma and Her Daughter Page 2

  It was hard to meet Ruby’s eyes because Emma didn’t like what she saw in them. Their wonderful hazel colour had dimmed – as though there was a veil of something over it. And Ruby’s curls – so thick and lustrous, like chestnuts the second they fall from the shell in Emma’s memory – were thinner and straggly. Greasy, too. From where Emma stood she could smell days’ old cooking.

  ‘Oh, gawd, Em, you’re the last person I want to see. If I blink can you bugger off again? Then I can believe I’ve imagined it. Go back where you belong. Canada, id’n it?’

  ‘Vancouver,’ Emma said, wanting this conversation to end yet unable to move from the spot. ‘You know well enough where I’ve been living. But I can’t go back.’

  I can’t go back because Seth is dead – has been for two, long years now – and there is nothing for me there now. But she didn’t think Ruby would be able to dredge up a smidgeon of compassion for her if she told her.

  ‘Well, you always were a stubborn bugger, Emma Jago, and I can see you id’n goin’ to do as I ask. So, I’ve got a question fer yer. Fallen on ’ard times, ’ave yer? Come to take Seth’s cottage back?’

  ‘I’m not short of money, if that’s what you mean,’ Emma said, sadness making her voice sound different, even to her own ears. ‘Shingle Cottage is mine now … now Seth’s dead.’

  Ruby was staring hard at her, making Emma feel uncomfortable. Emma searched for compassion in Ruby’s eyes but saw nothing but hostility.

  ‘Dead?’ Ruby said. ‘You never said. You’re supposed to be my friend. All those letters we sent to one another back and forth across the bleedin’ Atlantic. Why didn’t you tell me somethin’ as important as that before?’

  Ruby’s voice was accusatory. As though she now had a valid reason for not letting Emma in over what was, in law, her own doorstep.

  ‘I couldn’t bring myself to write the words to tell you. It made it seem too real to do that. Seth died two years ago. He jumped into the harbour and saved a woman from drowning. But his arm got caught up in some fishing gear and it was ripped off just above the elbow. Gangrene set in and—’

  ‘Bleedin’ ’ell, Em,’ Ruby interrupted. She sounded, Emma thought, as though she didn’t quite believe what she was hearing. ‘You waited long enough to tell me. I imagine you’re gettin’ used to it by now. Anyway, ’e didn’t die with a bullet in ’im like some did, did ’e? Escaped the war nicely, didn’t ’e, doin’ a spot of fishin’ over in Canada?’

  ‘Ruby! That’s an unkind and very unfair thing to say. And the war’s long over. Besides, fishing—’

  ‘Don’t give me no excuses, Em! ’E dodged the war by leavin’ England when ’e did, knowin’ there were rumours of war flyin’ about like midges in May, and that’s the truth of it. But I’ll tell you one thing – since the bleedin’ war some people ’as got a livin’ death and I’m one of ’em.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Emma said.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you. It’s like this fer me now.’ Ruby hissed the words out between clenched teeth. ‘I’ve got company. So you can’t come in ’ere. Understand?’

  ‘Tom?’ Emma said.

  Tom was Ruby’s husband. Emma had had their wedding photograph on the mantelpiece beside her own for years now. In it Tom was smiling, so handsome, so in love with Ruby. And she with him. This scenario she had in front of her was wrong – all so very wrong. It was as though Emma had stepped into a nightmare.

  ‘What do you think?’ Ruby rolled her eyes heavenwards – and you’re an idiot for even thinking that, Emma Jago, the gesture said.

  ‘But I don’t understand,’ Emma said. ‘In your letters you—’

  ‘Look, Em, it took me years to learn to read and write but I learned pretty quick that you can’t believe everythin’ you read. Now, are you goin’ to bugger off or am I goin’ to ’ave to get Stephen out of that bed up there to come down and do it fer you?’

  So, Ruby’s letters had been all lies. The accounts of picnics in Battery Park with Tom and the children, Alice, Sarah and little Thomas – so like his father with his huge, almost coal-black eyes and his cheeky grin, Ruby had written in almost every letter – had been figments of Ruby’s obviously well-honed imagination. And Tom, where was he if someone called Stephen was in Ruby’s bed?

  But was Emma any better than Ruby really? Hadn’t Emma’s letters to Ruby been all lies, too? Was not mentioning Seth after his death an omission of the truth just as much as a lie was?

  It had taken her most of the time from the moment she’d seen Seth’s coffin lowered into freezing Canadian earth for her to sell the fishing business. So many potential buyers had simply walked away when they discovered it was a woman selling it – as though she was a lesser form of life. But she’d persevered, for Fleur’s sake as much as her own. In his will Seth had stipulated that money was to be put aside for Fleur to inherit on her twenty-fifth birthday and so Emma had done her best to make sure that was as much money as possible.

  What would Ruby’s children be inheriting she wondered now as she trudged up the hill towards the cliff top. Did Alice, and Sarah, and Thomas even exist? It was a Saturday. Surely the children should be somewhere around on a Saturday if they weren’t at school?

  After Seth died it had only been Ruby’s letters that had kept Emma going. Ruby had even said in the letter Emma had received only a month ago that she’d been to the cemetery and laid flowers for Emma’s parents and her brother Johnnie who were buried there. Would there be evidence of those flowers if Emma were to walk to St Mary’s now? Emma didn’t think she’d be able to bear the pain if Ruby had lied about that, too. She would go to the cemetery soon, but not just yet, because she was still in shock at the state Ruby was in. She didn’t need to see the headstones to remember her parents and Johnnie, they were forever in her heart. She would leave a visit to the cemetery until she felt stronger in herself, until she felt more settled in her new life.

  She wished with all her heart she’d told Ruby about Seth’s death before having to blurt it out on the doorstep of Shingle Cottage. She might have had a more cordial welcome if she had. Might.

  ‘Bleddy freezin’ up there it is, missus. And a wind enough to rip a couple of layers of skin off.’

  Emma, head bent as she picked her way carefully over puddles on the narrow, stony path, looked up. She hadn’t heard anyone approaching, but then would she with this wind? The man didn’t look threatening – or sound it – she decided, so she struggled to dredge up a smile in greeting.

  ‘Good morning. And I agree, it is quite brisk,’ she said, slowing her pace, not that she was going to stop and engage this man in conversation. She pushed her shoulders up nearer her ears and hunkered down into the beaver fur collar of her coat. ‘For April.’

  But it wasn’t the coldness of the day so much that was chilling her. Ruby had seen to that.

  ‘For any bleddy month, missus,’ the man chortled, and Emma wondered if he might have been drinking.

  ‘If you’ll excuse me,’ she said, having to step off the path, rough as it was, onto the grass to get past him. ‘I need to get on.’

  ‘Not from these parts, are you?’ the man said, stepping sideways now to let Emma through. ‘Accent like that? American, is it?’

  ‘No,’ Emma said.

  She hurried on. No was as much as this stranger needed to know, and as much as she was prepared to divulge. But what a surprise he’d given her with his comment – she hadn’t realised she was speaking differently these days; that she’d picked up the accent of those around her in Vancouver in the fourteen years she’d been there.

  But she had been from ‘these parts’ for the first, almost, twenty years of her life. This place was as much a part of her as her eye and hair colour were. It was why she’d come back.

  The man had been right. The wind was stronger now as she battled against it, past the fort on Berry Head built to keep Napoleon out, except he had never come this far. She was being buffeted on all sides now as the wind whip
ped in off the channel.

  The sea – zinc bucket grey with scrappy, uneven strings of foam the colour of dirty dishwater – seemed to have a life of its own as it heaved and swelled and rolled and crashed noisily. The same sea that had claimed her parents and little Johnnie.

  Emma, planting her booted feet down firmly with every step to stop being blown away, walked as near to the edge of the cliff as she dared.

  How easy it would be to jump now, leave all her cares and heartbreak behind her. More than a few desperate people had jumped from this cliff top, but Emma wasn’t going to be one of them, life was too precious to her for that, even though she knew the wind would take her breath – her scream as she fell perhaps – away. There would be no witnesses. There would be hardly a soul to mourn her either – except Fleur.

  And Fleur was waiting for her back at the Grand Hotel in Torquay. She had to stay strong for her, because Fleur was still mourning her father. And something good had to come out of Emma’s decision to return to the place that had shaped her, formed her; the place where she had fallen in love – not once, but twice.

  Her first love had gone. But where, Emma wondered, as she turned and headed back towards the town and the railway station for the journey back, was her second love now?

  ‘Matthew,’ Emma whispered into the wind, letting it take the softness of the sound of his name, so that in a split second it was as though she’d not spoken at all.

  ‘Bella, bella, bella.’

  Fleur Jago was doing her best to ignore whoever it was who was repeating the same word, over and over. She didn’t feel like being flirted with in the slightest, not now her ma had left her to her own devices while she was out gallivanting, catching up with an old friend. Hah! All right for Ma, wasn’t it? She still had a friend. Fleur had had to leave all her friends behind in Vancouver, hadn’t she?

  ‘Bella, bella, bella.’

  ‘Oh, shut it,’ Fleur hissed, only a fraction above a whisper, through clenched teeth. ‘Or speak English, for crying out loud.’

  ‘Bella, bella, bella.’

  ‘Oh, go tell it to Sweeney!’ Fleur mumbled. Honestly, did he have no other word in his vocabulary? He was probably some wizened old man who thought he was God’s gift to women. There were a few like it in the hotel. One had even winked at her across the dining table two nights ago. Ugh!

  Fleur brought her book, Tess of the D’Urbervilles – which she was reading even though her mother had forbidden her to for some stupid reason – closer to her face. She’d have to remember to hide it under the mattress before her mother got back, wouldn’t she? Or there’d be an almighty telling-off.

  Whoever it was trying to engage her in conversation laughed.

  ‘I still see you! You still si bella,’ the voice said, and Fleur could hear his laughter in the words. And the voice was young, not old, wasn’t it?

  He wasn’t in the least put out by her rudeness and he wasn’t giving up, was he? Would it hurt to take a peek at him? Slowly, Fleur lowered the book, first so only her lashes rested on the top of it, but gradually getting lower so she had the speaker in her vision now.

  Oh! Fleur made a perfect O of her mouth behind the book. She swallowed.

  Well, this was a turn-up for the books. So far England, and Torquay, had been boring, boring, boring. This hotel – the Grand – was anything but in Fleur’s opinion. It was filled with people who had to be, oh, at least fifty years old, sixty maybe.

  But the boy standing grinning at her, leaning against the front bumper of a small van, was about the same age as she was. Perhaps a little older.

  ‘You like read?’ the boy said.

  He moved away from the van’s bumper, stood up and stretched – much like a cat does. A warm flicker of something made its way up Fleur’s spine as she watched him. That flicker made her squirm slightly in her chair – but it was a pleasurable squirm; a new feeling. She rather liked it.

  CASCARINI’S it said in green letters edged with gold on the side of his van. ITALIAN ICE CREAM.

  Fleur licked her lips. She’d eaten a praline ice cream for dessert only the night before. Had this glorious boy delivered it? But it was too cold out here on the terrace, even wrapped in her ma’s fur coat – better get it off and back in the wardrobe before she got back – to be eating ice cream now, even though the sun was bright in the sky.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be around the back with that van?’ Fleur said. ‘Tradesmen’s entrance or something?’

  ‘I finish deliver. I see you on way to tradesmen’s door. I come back to see you.’

  ‘Well, you’ve seen me now. Twice. You can go away again.’

  Why was all this stuff coming out of her mouth? She didn’t mean any of it. How glorious he was. Glossy, black curls that glistened in the April sunshine. A large, hooked sort of nose, but it gave his face life, accentuated his full lips somehow. And those eyes of his – like two, miniature, highly-polished coals in his tanned face – as he stood smiling at her, were mesmerising.

  ‘I can, but I no want,’ he said. ‘I am Paolo.’ Then he pointed to the name on the side of his van.

  ‘Paolo Cascarini?’ Fleur said, doing her level best to make some sort of Italian pronunciation of the name. She’d heard enough Italian spoken in Vancouver to know how the words should be pronounced. And Russian and Volga German and Yiddish for that matter, although she wouldn’t care if she never heard any of them again.

  ‘Si. And you?’

  Fleur shrugged. She knew what her ma would say if she were to be caught chatting to delivery men – not that she cared what her ma thought, not really.

  Fleur hadn’t wanted to come to England in the first place. And in April for goodness sake! Okay, so this was the English Riviera she’d been brought to – warmer than most other places in the country – but it wasn’t Cannes, was it?

  ‘I think,’ Paolo said, ‘you is pretty if you smile.’

  ‘Do you now?’

  ‘I good Italian boy. I no lie.’

  His eyes held Fleur’s and she felt her own widen and lift at the corners. As though they had a mind and a life of their own her lips parted and she smiled.

  ‘I right,’ Paolo said. ‘Bella. Si bella.’

  ‘Oh, I bet you say that to all the girls!’ Fleur laughed.

  ‘Not here,’ Paolo said, his face breaking into the broadest grin Fleur had ever seen as he waved an arm in an arc to the hotel behind her.

  But you’ve said it to a few, no doubt, Fleur thought. And would more than likely say it to a good few more in the future.

  Paolo began to walk towards her. Slow steps. As though waiting for her to tell him to go away or shout for a member of staff to do it for her. He had one foot on the bottom step of the terrace now.

  ‘You holidays?’

  Fleur thought to correct his English. But decided against it. His way of speaking had charm to it – it was warming her in a way even her mother’s best fur coat wasn’t.

  ‘No,’ Fleur said.

  Paolo had both feet on the first step now. And still he was smiling at her.

  ‘You no live here?’ he said.

  And Fleur thought she read fear in his voice that she might and that if she did, he’d stand not a single chance of talking to her again if the owner found out.

  ‘Thank God, no,’ Fleur said.

  ‘I no understand,’ Paolo replied.

  He walked up the next two steps and sat himself down on the top one by Fleur’s feet, turning his body sideways to look up into her face.

  ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you this,’ Fleur said, ‘but my pa died and my ma can’t live in Canada any more without him, so she’s come back to the place where she was born. Only I don’t mean this hotel. And not Torquay either.’ She pointed out across the bay. ‘She’s over there at the moment.’

  Paolo’s forehead became a mass of deep, tanned furrows. He hadn’t understood all of that, had he?

  ‘I so sorry about your papa,’ Paolo said.

  Ah, so
he’d understood that much.

  ‘And me,’ Fleur said. ‘He was the best pa a girl could ever have. And I miss him. I will always miss him.’

  A lump rose in Fleur’s throat which she thought might choke her. Her eyes welled with tears. She’d thought she was over that raw grief, but she obviously wasn’t. And now here she was, making a complete fool of herself in front of a foreigner she’d only just met – albeit a very sympathetic and handsome one.

  ‘I lose my mama,’ Paolo said. ‘In London. Big bomb. The whole road go. Papa and I were in café that day. The guerra. You understand guerra?’

  Paolo mimed shooting a rifle, making bang, bang noises, then clutching his chest. His ma had been killed by the Germans, hadn’t she?

  ‘Yes. I understand the word. It means war.’ The Italian word was very similar to the French for war – guerre. ‘I’m sorry about your mama.’

  Fleur folded her hands in her lap and stared down at them.

  ‘So,’ Paolo said, suddenly brightening. ‘We are both sorry. We have both sad. But now we see one another we sad no more. For a little time? Si? I tell you my name, but you no tell me yours.’ He looked pleadingly at Fleur, the way a puppy looks pleadingly for food. How could she deny telling him her name?

  ‘My name’s Fleur Jago. And … oh my God!’ Horrified, Fleur saw a taxi was pulling into the drive and she could see her mother was in the back of it. ‘Got to go,’ she said, leaping from her chair. ‘My mother. My book. This coat. I …’

  Fleur fled from the terrace. Her ma would undoubtedly give her a telling-off for taking her coat without having asked first, if she were to find Fleur wearing it.

  She raced into her mother’s bedroom, shrugging off the coat as she went. She yanked out a wooden hanger, emblazoned with the hotel’s name, rammed the coat onto it. Hung it up. Then she raced to the window.

  Paolo was only just opening the door of his ice cream van. He looked up and waved – as though he’d known which window she would be looking out of.

  Fleur waved back.

  Well, well, well … coming here might not have been such a rotten idea after all.