The House at Mermaid's Cove(27)

The path up through the valley was wetter than it had been before. Heavy rain during the night had ravaged the camellias and rhododendrons. Their sodden petals stuck to my boots as I squelched through them. The trees and bushes were eerily quiet, as if the birds had disappeared or gone into hiding. It was very different from Easter morning a year ago, when I’d walked to chapel under a burning sun, with the deafening chirp of cicadas all around.

Merle wasn’t in the milking shed. Danielle said they were all going to church later, but her mother still had a lot to do in the house. I was getting faster at milking, but with only four of us it was hard work. I thought Jack might come looking for me. I was supposed to be helping him ring the church bells, but he hadn’t mentioned it again since he’d asked me. By ten o’clock there was still no sign of him.

I got to the church early, just in case he was waiting for me there. The place was empty, so I wandered around the graveyard, looking at the tombstones. I found the place where Jack’s parents were buried. His father’s stone was shiny black. The inscription read:

JOHN AUBREY CECIL, 13TH VISCOUNT TREWELLA.

DEPARTED THIS LIFE ON FEBRUARY 5, 1942, AGED 66.

“FOR UNTO WHOMSOEVER MUCH IS GIVEN, OF HIM SHALL BE MUCH REQUIRED.”

I recognized the line from Luke’s Gospel—appropriate for a man of wealth and privilege.

I thought about the day I’d received the news of my father’s death: of the shock of learning that the funeral had already taken place. Thousands of miles away, in a remote part of Africa, I’d been the last person to be told, even though I was his closest blood relative. Sister Clare had come to find me in the operating theater to break the news. There was no comforting touch, no hug of sympathy, because nuns were not permitted to lay hands on one another.

I’d been assisting at an emergency appendectomy—the teenage daughter of one of the mineowners, who had awoken tearful and bewildered from the anesthetic. I couldn’t allow my grief to show when I came back into the room, couldn’t allow myself to cry until that evening, during the hour of recreation, when I stumbled out into the garden to sob in the shadows of the mango trees.

The burial had been arranged by my uncle—my father’s brother—who had also inherited his estate. As a nun, I was debarred from any inheritance. I didn’t mind that, of course. What crushed me was never having had the chance to say goodbye.

I ran my hand across the smooth surface of Jack’s father’s stone, wondering if that relationship had been better, warmer, than the one I’d had with my dad. Things had improved for us after the bitter row we’d had over Dan. He hadn’t wanted me to become a nun—but he’d come to see me take my vows. He’d told me how proud my mother would have been. That had made me cry.

I stepped away from the tombstone. The one next to it was the same size and shape, but older. Lichen had grown in the crevices, making Jack’s mother’s name more difficult to pick out. She was Hermione Mary Foxton, Viscountess Trewella. She had died in 1910. I stared at the inscription. I didn’t know Jack’s exact age. I’d guessed that he was in his early thirties. The date suggested that his mother had died giving birth to him.

I went farther into the churchyard, to smaller, more ancient stones. Some leaned at precarious angles. Others had toppled over. Some were so worn the inscriptions were impossible to decipher. But I recognized some of the names Merle had mentioned when we were walking through the village. There were several Badgers, including a father and son who had both drowned during a storm at sea. An ancestor of George Retallack had met the same fate. There was another more recent Retallack gravestone: HILDA, MOTHER OF GEORGE AND MOLLY, HOUSEKEEPER AT PENHELIGAN. She had died the year before Jack’s father. As I read the inscription it dawned on me that this woman must be the person Rita had mentioned when she’d been quizzing me about Jack. Molly Retallack must have repeated gossip her mother had passed on about him having a secret wife.

“Alice!”

Jack’s voice made me jump. I hadn’t seen him coming across the grass. And if I had, I might not have recognized him. He was a vision of elegance, in a chocolate-brown double-breasted suit and matching fedora. A mulberry-colored silk tie with a paisley pattern was knotted precisely at the neck, with a handkerchief of the same design tucked into the jacket pocket. I felt a treacherous surge somewhere deep in my belly.

“Sorry—I didn’t mean to scare you.” He lifted his hat in a greeting.

“I . . . wasn’t sure if you’d be coming.”

“I should have left a note for you—but there wasn’t time.” He adjusted the fedora, pulling it down to shade his eyes. “I had to go away.”

I wondered where, and why, but he was already walking back toward the church. I followed him inside. There was a low door behind the pulpit, which he had to duck to get through. It led to a tiny circular room with paint flaking off the walls and three ropes hanging down through holes in the wooden ceiling. Jack took off his hat and jacket and hung them on a hook beneath a mildewed handwritten sign.

“What’s the drill?” He glanced up at the ropes. “Which one do we pull first?”

I was looking at the sign, trying to decipher the smudged letters. “The silencer’s on,” I replied. “We’d better have a practice before we take it off. You might want to tuck your tie into your shirt—it could get caught in the rope. You’ll probably need to roll up your sleeves, too.”