“Well, it’s wonderful news like I said on the phone.” Mrs. Malloy elbowed me back against the cushions. “Mr. Songer and his daughter Mrs. Joritz was very nice about helping us get in touch with you. Took quite a bit of legwork to get to that point, but me and Mrs. H. here are used to that in our line of work. They told us how you tracked them down, something about a baby blanket that Ernestine came with when you adopted her.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Merryweather said, dabbing at her eyes with a crumpled serviette, “the prettiest shade of pink and beautifully knitted. One morning I was going down the High Street with Ernestine in her pram and I just happened to stop alongside a woman pushing her baby, and would you believe she had the exact same blanket? It was an unusual pattern with a very fancy fringe, so I asked her where she’d got it. Didn’t I Frank? You remember me telling you?”
“So you did, love.” Mr. Merryweather squeezed her hand and blinked back his own tears. “She told you she’d bought it at a church bazaar in Mucklesby. And I said that seeing that our little girl came from that area there likely was a connection. So we checked around and found out the blanket from the bazaar had been knitted by this young girl, Janet Songer. We got the address and went round to see her parents. What a day that was! Mrs. Songer and her husband filled us in on Ernestine’s first months of life in that bed-sitter.
“Enough to break the hardest heart it was… thanks, Ethel love,…” he said as Ethel handed him a serviette to blow his nose, “that poor young girl dying like that, all alone in the world, and the father never showing his face around the place.”
“And her being sacked for stealing, without any proof from the way I understand it. Why didn’t she sell that brooch if she had it? That’s the question I’d have liked to ask those high-and-mighty Krumleys.” Mrs. Merryweather withdrew her hand from her husband’s to pound a fist on her knee. “They should be downright ashamed of themselves.”
“Lady Krumley wishes to make amends.” I slid my untouched glass of wine onto a side table.
“She’s a bit late.” Mr. Merryweather tucked the serviette into the pocket of his Hawaiian shirt. “When I think of the shadow cast over Ernestine’s life and the effect it’s had on her, I could howl like a baby.”
“You told her what you knew?” I was aghast.
“We didn’t want to.” Mrs. Merryweather sounded defensive. “But right from an early age Ernestine asked a lot of questions. And it didn’t seem right to lie to her. This is a small place and stories leak out, people gossip. We didn’t want her accusing us later of telling her a bunch of fairy stories.”
Having Rose, I could understand the difficulties. Ben and I were both concerned about how best to handle the situation when the time came to explain that she had been born to my cousin Vanessa and came to us when she was three months old. Mrs. Malloy, perhaps in an attempt to shift the conversation back to calmer waters, asked the husband and wife if they had thought about changing Ernestine’s name.
“We considered it.” Mr. Merryweather pecked his wife on the cheek. “We’d have liked her to be Gloria or possibly Darlene. Something with a bit of sparkle.”
“Ernestine,” his wife explained, spreading her hands in a hopeless gesture, “well, it’s… so very earnest, isn’t it? And she was such a sweet baby. We doted on her from day one.”
“Isn’t that lovely!” Mrs. Malloy looked misty eyed herself.
“We always hoped… we tried so hard to be the right kind of parents, but it just wasn’t to be. And it’s no good asking the question where did we go wrong? Sometimes nothing you do is enough. They turn out the way they want to turn out, and you just have to keep on loving them the way they are.” Mrs. Merryweather’s voice cracked. “You focus on the small comforting things like the fact that Ernestine always enjoyed cooking. She got that from me. It’s a bond. I tell myelf that when I wake up in the middle of the night. And maybe she’ll be different now that she wants to come home. We have to hope so, don’t we, Frank?” She sagged against his shoulder.
“Come home?” Mrs. Malloy produced a notebook and pencil from her handbag with a flourish. “Where is she living now?”
Both husband and wife looked completely blank, but it was Mrs. Merryweather who spoke: “But that’s what you and this other lady,” he said, waving at me, “have come to tell us, isn’t it?
“No.” Now Mrs. Malloy and I were wearing the blank expressions.
“You mean… but we thought…” Mr. Merryweather spluttered to a halt and had to cough himself back to coherence. “We somehow got the idea that Ernestine had decided to get back in touch after having washed her hands of us twenty some years ago, never so much as letting us have her address. And because we’ve moved several times since then, sometimes out of the area and back, it would make sense for her to use a detective service. We thought, Ethel and I, that you were sounding us out to find out if we were willing to see her. To be honest we’ve had mixed feelings. We love her, always will, but we’re not sure we can go back to those days of having to hide the butter for fear of being lectured for hours about our cholesterol levels. Or of trying to keep the peace by drinking nothing stronger than decaffeinated coffee. And being reviled-that’s not too strong a word-for listening to rock ’n’ roll music.”
“The day she packed her bags and walked out the door we shed a lot of tears.” Mrs. Merryweather blinked hard.
“But then you know what we did?” Her husband grabbed her in a bear hug. “This little woman and I got back into life. She got her portrait painted. We went on our first cruise. And you know what helped most? Talking to other parents who’d learned to live with being a bitter disappointment to their children. So,” he paused, “what do you have to tell us about Ernestine?”
“That Lady Krumley wishes to make amends by leaving her a sizeable inheritance.” I said.
“Well, isn’t that nice.” Mrs. Merryweather dabbed at her eyes. “That calls for a drink. How about a nice clove cordial?”
Twenty
Upon our departure from number seventeen Seashell Crescent, Mrs. Malloy and I drove to the Cottage Hospital where Lady Krumley was a patient. We now prowled its corridors, hoping to find a lift before our food supply-the bag of lemon drops and the half bar of chocolate in my handbag-ran out.
“Next time perhaps you’ll think to bring a map.” Mrs. Malloy teetered around to look back the way we had come. “I’m beginning to understand how Moses managed to spend forty years getting lost and relost in the desert. But I’m not blaming you, Mrs. H. I’m worn out after a morning spent talking to those Merryweathers. Them and their limbo dancing! It makes me wonder what it was like for Ernestine being their kiddie. Probably worn out by the time she was four and ready for the rocking chair at age twelve. But then again some little tinkers would have thrived on it and gone hot air ballooning out their bedroom window every chance they got. Or maybe it was like they said, that they didn’t discover their wild side till after she was gone. What did you think of that rude picture of Mrs. Merryweather?”
“Very realistic.”
“You can say that again, Mrs. H.! I’ve heard of them paintings where the eyes follow you all around the room, but this was worse. It wasn’t the eyes, it was the other-boobs and bobs-that kept staring at me, even when I squeezed me eyes shut. You can tell me it would be spoiling the integrity of the piece, but if that thing was to be hung in my front room I’d have to paint on a pair of knickers and a twenty-four-hour support bra. But we’ve got to be fair. Mr. Merryweather said it wasn’t done till Ernestine was out of the house. Rebelling against authority is what it’s called.”
“Whose authority in this case?”
“Ernestine’s. From the sound of it she was rather a strict child-on at them every minute about one thing or another. That sort of thing can wear you down in a hurry. My George tried it with me a few times, saying I should dress more me age and cut back on bingo and me occasional gin and tonics. Well, as you can imagine, Mrs. H., I soon told him what he could do with his advice. And it wasn’t to stuff it up his jumper. But likely the Merryweathers don’t have my backbone.”
“It’s very sad to think of parents not having any contact with a daughter in twenty years.” I kept on walking and Mrs. Malloy came teetering alongside me. Her sideways glance at my face was shrewd.
“You can stop that this minute Mrs. H.!”
“What?”
