Sea Music. Sara MacDonald

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      Lucy thinks. ‘No, I suppose not,’ she says. ‘I think my first memory is either you taking me to a fair at night. Or getting smacked by Anna for locking that horrible au pair in a cupboard.’

      ‘You were, let me see, about four and a half when I took you to that fair. You hated every minute. You were coming down with a bug and the crowds bothered you. The horrible au pair, I’m not sure … five, maybe six.’

      They make their way to the till. Barnaby grabs some small seed trays, two packets of Virginia stock and a small bag of compost.

      ‘For Martha?’ Lucy asks.

      ‘Yes, I thought it might be something for her to do.’

      Back in the car, Barnaby says, ‘What you have got to remember, Lucy, is that Martha arrived in a strange country, younger than you are now, having left everyone she loved, to live with strangers. We have no idea of the conditions she left behind her. She had the rest of the war, frightened and lonely, to imagine what might be happening to her family. Knowing that they probably would not survive.’

      Barnaby glances at Lucy as he drives. ‘I do not know what state of trauma she was in when she and Fred met. All I do know is that your grandfather never let Anna or me ask her questions about the war or about her life in Poland.’

      ‘I know. Anna told me she never knew anything about Martha’s childhood. I can understand about the years just before the war, but I can’t understand why Gran would not want to talk about her childhood if it was happy. I mean, everyone looks back on the happy bits of their lives, don’t they?’

      ‘When I was very young, Lucy, when I had fallen or had a temperature, she sometimes used to sing to me without knowing she was singing in Polish. As I listened, the sound always seemed to turn into a lament. She would stop suddenly and I would put my hand up to her face and she would hold it there, flat against her cheek, her own hand over it. Small as I was, I felt the enormity of her sadness without, of course, understanding why.’

      Lucy swallows. Cannot speak.

      Barnaby goes on, almost to himself. Lucy cannot ever remember him talking to her like this. ‘When I was growing up I longed to know; felt Anna and I would be enriched by knowing. We only had tiny snippets: a recipe, a childish game. Fred would tell both Anna and me that we only had the right to know the things Martha wanted to tell us. Maybe one day she would be able to speak of happy times in Poland. If not, we would have to understand.’

      ‘Now,’ Lucy says slowly, ‘even if she wanted to tell us anything, she can’t. It’s not fair for Gran to end up like this. God is cruel.’

      ‘Life is cruel, darling. I often think – I may be quite wrong, of course – that Anna might often be … tricky –’

      ‘Difficult, you mean, Barnes.’

      ‘Don’t interrupt me. Anna might often be … difficult because Martha and Fred must have been adapting to each other, to life after the war, to all that had happened to them both, when she was born. Even when I was a child I can remember them being very wrapped up in each other, very concerned for each other’s welfare.’

      ‘Were you lonely, then?’

      ‘All children are lonely sometimes. Our generation had a different relationship with their parents. Fred and Martha were the most loving of parents, but there was more distance between us than your generation has, on the whole, with their parents. Boarding school, as you know, accentuates that distance.’

      They turn in the gates. It is early afternoon and Martha will be resting and Fred will be asleep under the paper. Mrs Biddulph will be listening to The Archers. As they pull up in front of the house, Lucy knows this is the time to ask Barnaby about the documents she found.

      She opens her mouth, and Barnaby says, suddenly, very quietly, ‘Maybe life is not so cruel. Martha, returning to her childlike state – maybe now she can remember happy times in Poland, memories she blocked because they were too painful to remember.’ He pulls the key out of the ignition and turns to Lucy. ‘Maybe the sadness now is mine and Fred’s, because we can remember her when she was young and bright and full of fun. I am so afraid I will forget how she once was.’

      Barnaby’s face. The line of his mouth held in a loss he feels everyday and hides. Lucy leans forward and hugs him, her head pressed away, hard into his shoulder. For the first time she feels the sheer weight of his tiredness in caring for Martha and Fred, day in and day out, without reprieve.

      ‘I am so glad we talked,’ she says into his shirt.

      ‘So am I, darling.’ He kisses the top of her head. ‘Come on, let’s go and get some bread and cheese while everyone sleeps. Then we’ll put those primroses under the tree.’

      As Lucy waters the primroses on Abi’s small grave she realises it is the first uninterrupted conversation she and Barnaby have had for ages. Mostly they are both too busy or too tired by the time Martha and Fred are in bed.

      She thinks of her own father, whom she has never met. Anna does not even know where he is any more. Claudio Pedrazzini – she has a cloudy photograph of him standing squinting into the sun in Milan. She could bump into him and never even know. Barnaby says one day she will probably want to try to trace him. She has inherited none of his musical talent, but, so Anna says, much of his laid-back nature.

      She wonders, as she presses the wet earth down over the roots, if he ever, in idle moments, thinks about her. She has been lucky; she has always had Barnaby.

      Lucy walks across the garden to put the watering can back into the falling-down garage, full of ancient bicycles and rusty paint tins. She thinks that her first instinct in not telling Barnaby about the papers she found was right. Either Barnaby knows and it is some secret he thinks should be kept, or it would be one more thing about Martha to make him sad. It isn’t her business. It is Gran’s. If there is a secret, it is not hers to give away.

       Chapter 12

      Lucy, finishing her early shift at the hotel, drives slowly home. It is an amazingly beautiful morning with no clouds. Cold but clear. The trees are unfurling pale virgin leaves, like tiny fists. Spring is everywhere, and Tristan will soon be gone to a cold and hostile place where spring comes late.

      She stops the car and fishes in her bag for her mobile phone. She gets out and goes to sit on the sea wall, watching a fast sea swell and crash on the rocks below her. After she and Barnaby talked about Martha she felt better, for a while. When she is busy, she can push away the image of that strange piece of paper in the brown envelope, but her mind keeps returning to it.

      What else lies up there in the trunk? What other shock lies in that faded box? At first, she did not want to know. But as the days slip by and leaving for London gets closer, she feels torn between wanting a glimpse of something that might settle her anxiety, and a longing and equal dread of knowing the truth.

      She has not told Tristan. It is not something she can discuss on the phone. Talking about it will make it real instead of lying like a dark place on the edge of her mind. Lucy wants to believe there is a simple explanation. She wants to believe everything is exactly as she has always been told all her life. The story of Gran’s arrival in England in the war. The romantic meeting and falling СКАЧАТЬ