The Widow’s Secret, page 8
“Hi, Mum.”
“I hope you don’t mind something cold for lunch. I’ve been out all morning.”
“No, I don’t mind.”
Rachel took off her coat and then followed her mother into the kitchen, the most comforting room of the house, and yet it still made her feel sad.
Her father belonged here, with his booming voice and extravagant laugh. He had filled up every space he’d ever been in, including this enormous house. Without him, it felt like a mausoleum – big, empty, and cold. It had been twenty-five years since he’d died, and Rachel knew she should be used to it by now, and mostly she was. She was used to grief, felt it almost like a friend.
But coming home still felt like a shock, a remembrance of all that once had been and no longer was – the parent who loved her extravagantly, accepted her unequivocally. Unlike her mother, who always seemed so disappointed. Kind of like her husband.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” Deborah asked, sounding so very polite.
Rachel nodded, holding her hands out to the old Aga’s rumbling warmth, deriving some comfort from its ambient heat. “Yes, please.”
She watched her mother move slowly to the kettle, noting with a ripple of uneasy surprise how much older she looked. It had been over a year at least since she’d seen her last, and although Deborah was only seventy, she looked older somehow, with deeper lines scored into her face, her hair now almost entirely white.
“How have you been, Mum?” Rachel asked as her mother lifted the kettle and took it to the sink to fill. Her wrist, poking out from the cuff of her shirt, looked twig-like to Rachel and she stepped forward instinctively.
“I can do that, Mum –”
“Nonsense. I can manage perfectly well.” Deborah turned her back to her as she filled up the kettle, and Rachel watched, feeling oddly apprehensive. Her mother had always been quietly competent, a bit intimidating in the way she simply did things, and expected everyone else to as well. When Rachel had not followed her footsteps in terms of the domestic arts – cooking, cleaning, ironing, sewing – she’d felt the weight of her mother’s silent disappointment. And there were other unnamed ways in which she hadn’t measured up.
So why was she now thinking her mother couldn’t fill a kettle?
“There we are,” Deborah said with satisfaction, and Rachel watched as she moved straight back to the worktop, where she began to pour the cold water from the kettle into the old blue teapot that Rachel couldn’t ever remember her not having.
“Mum…” She hesitated, second-guessing herself because it felt so strange. “You haven’t actually boiled the kettle yet.”
“What?” Deborah turned, looking startled, and then realization flashed in her eyes. “Oh, how silly of me. I don’t know what I was thinking.” She dumped the cold water out of the teapot and put the kettle back on its ring with a little laugh. “How very silly.”
“Is everything all right?” Rachel asked cautiously. She didn’t know why she asked; her mother wouldn’t tell her if it wasn’t.
“Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t it be? Just having a senior moment. I think I’m allowed at my age.” Deborah’s lips curved up in a smile, but her gaze was dark and flat. “So tell me again why you’re up in Cumbria?”
Rachel hesitated, not wanting to let the moment go. It felt so odd – her mum was never spacey or rattled. Was having Rachel here making her nervous? Their relationship had always been so tense and stilted, but never anxiety-inducing. Not for Deborah, at least.
“Rachel?” she prompted, her voice sharpening slightly.
“A shipwreck off the coast of Whitehaven,” Rachel said, knowing she had no real choice but to let the whole matter of the kettle drop. It wasn’t a big deal, anyway. She herself had done things like that a thousand times – orange juice on her cereal, forgetting to turn the iron off. Everyone did. It didn’t mean anything.
“What kind of shipwreck?” Deborah asked, and Rachel proceeded to tell her about what she had discovered so far – the speculum oris, the slave trade out of Whitehaven.
“Such a nasty business,” Deborah said when she’d finished. She was getting some cold ham out of the fridge and arranging it on a plate with a few limp lettuce leaves. “Why would you want to dig into all that?”
“Because it’s history, and it’s interesting,” Rachel said as patiently as she could. Her mother had never understood her, or her father’s, fascination with the past. Buried things should stay buried, according to her. Don’t rake things up. Don’t muddy the already-dirty water.
“Interesting?” Deborah repeated. “How innocent people were enslaved, tortured and abused?” Deborah’s voice rang out, making Rachel feel as if she had done something wrong.
“Yes, it’s all horrible, absolutely, but learning more about the past can inform our future. You know the saying, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’,” she pressed. She had it on a magnet in her office back in Bristol, a reminder that what she did was important.
“There is a difference between remembering and ferreting about for information that can help no one,” Deborah retorted, and Rachel blinked, startled by her mother’s tone, sharp even for her.
“I didn’t realize you felt so strongly about it,” she said after a moment. She’d known her mother didn’t particularly rate her archaeological work, but she’d never been quite so openly hostile to it.
“I’m sorry.” Words that rarely passed her mother’s lips. “I don’t mean to sound so argumentative. It’s just – why look back?” She shook her head. “In any case, it’s been a difficult morning.”
“Has it?” Rachel took plates and cutlery to the table, laying it for two. “Why? What’s happened?”
“Nothing you need to concern yourself with,” Deborah answered, and now she sounded weary rather than sharp.
Rachel watched her for a moment, noting again the deeper lines running from nose to mouth, the look of resignation in her brown eyes that made them appear almost black. “Mum… everything is all right, isn’t it?” she asked uncertainly. She wondered if her mother had received some sort of medical diagnosis, and then she wondered how she’d feel about that.
Would she grieve her mother? Certainly not the way she had her father, dead of a heart attack at only forty-six, the matter of a moment, the shining sun of her universe extinguished for ever.
“Everything is fine,” Deborah said briskly. “Come and sit down, before it all gets cold.”
It already was cold, but Rachel decided not to point that out. She sat across from her mother, and gazed down at the slightly slimy-looking ham, a few sliced tomatoes that looked as if they were past their best-by date, and the lettuce. A cold lunch, indeed.
“Where were you this morning, anyway?” she asked.
Her mother shrugged. “I just had an appointment. Nothing terribly important. But there is something I need to discuss with you, Rachel, so actually I’m glad you’re here.”
“Oh?” Her mother’s tone of brisk resolution made Rachel wary. “What is it?”
“I’m going to sell the house.”
“What? But why? I mean…” She’d never liked this house, not since her father had died anyway, and yet something in her resisted the thought of losing it, the only real home she’d ever known. The only place where she could remember her father.
“Why shouldn’t I?” Deborah returned with some asperity. “It’s far too big for me. I’ve been living here on my own for nearly twenty years.” This was said with a faint note of accusation that made Rachel feel as if she should apologize for growing up. “I should have sold it ages ago. I don’t know why I didn’t.”
Rachel didn’t know either, and yet her mother seemed so much part of this house – its dark rooms, its velvet curtains and heavy furniture, its overgrown English cottage garden with the lonely fell beyond.
But it was far too big for one person; it had felt big even when it had been the three of them, with six bedrooms plus attics, and her father travelling so often for work. The house parties and weekend visits her father had once talked about never materialized.
“What will you buy instead?” she asked.
Deborah shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. We’ll see.”
“But you must have some plan,” Rachel pressed. “You could move into Windermere – perhaps a small cottage?”
“I don’t think so.” Now Deborah sounded reluctant to talk.
Rachel stared at her in confusion. “Mum –”
“I forgot to make the tea,” Deborah said, standing up. “The kettle’s boiled now, hasn’t it?”
Rachel couldn’t remember if it had or not. She watched as her mother stood up and made the tea all over again, bringing it to the table while Rachel sat there toying with a lettuce leaf and a piece of ham, her appetite having vanished, her sense of unease and disquiet growing with every moment.
“Here we are,” Deborah said with a rather brusque attempt at cheer. “Now let’s talk about something else. How is Anthony?”
Rachel hadn’t spoken to him since the other night, when he’d told her he was having dinner with Ken and Elspeth on his own. “He’s fine, I think.”
Deborah raised her eyebrows as she took a sip of tea, her lips pursing for a moment before she put her cup down. “You think?”
Rachel shrugged. “I haven’t seen him for a few days, and we’ve both been busy with work.” Which wasn’t exactly true.
“Men need attention, Rachel – far more of it than women do. You should remember that if you want to keep him. But maybe you don’t.”
Rachel blinked, stung all over again by such a brief and scathing assessment. Her mother was no feminist, but Rachel thought the sentiment was antiquated, even for her. “Women need attention too,” she said quietly. Although all too often she didn’t even want Anthony’s attention, which was part of the problem.
“It’s not the same.”
“It should be.”
Deborah frowned, annoyance tightening her features. “Why must you always be so disagreeable?”
“I thought we were just having a conversation.” Rachel took a sip of tea, nearly spitting it out when she realized it was stone cold. Her mother hadn’t switched on the kettle; had she even noticed she was drinking tea the temperature of tap water?
“Mum…” Rachel began, and Deborah’s frown deepened.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.” She didn’t even know what to ask. Something was going on, but her mother clearly didn’t want to tell her what it was. “Perhaps I should look in my old bedroom after lunch,” Rachel suggested. “If you’re thinking of selling, I could clear out some of my things.” Not that she had much left, but still.
“Very well. That sounds like a sensible idea.”
They didn’t speak much after that, and then Rachel tidied up the lunch things while her mother took her cold tea into the sitting room. Raindrops spattered against the windows as Rachel washed the dishes at the sink, the view of the grey-green fells obscured by the mist and rain.
She had a deepening sense of unease, and as she put away the leftover ham she found herself glancing around the kitchen, looking for clues as to what might be going on in her mother’s life. There were no notes on the calendar pinned to the wall, which was on last month anyway. The fridge was nearly empty, with just the ham, and a few old vegetables rattling around in the drawer at the bottom.
Now that she was standing in the middle of the kitchen looking around, Rachel realized what a lonely, neglected feel the house had. It had always been a cold, draughty place, but it felt even more so now, echoing with emptiness.
What did her mother even do with her days? She’d worked at a local library when Rachel was at school, but she’d left that job years ago when the library, like so many others, had closed. She’d never looked for another one; Rachel’s father had left her well provided for. Rachel didn’t know any of her friends, or even if she had any. Her mother, to her at least, had always been a figure of icy isolation.
She peeked into the sitting room and saw that Deborah had dozed off, so she went upstairs, the steps creaking under her weight.
Her bedroom looked much as it had when she’d left it for university nearly twenty years ago – the pink chenille bedspread pulled up tight, a bookshelf of old revision guides and history books under the window. There was a musty, damp smell in the air, and the desk where she’d studied for her A levels was covered in dust.
For a second Rachel let herself remember how life used to be when her dad had been alive – she pictured him poking his head around the door while she lay in bed reading, waiting for him to tuck her in on one of the rare nights he was home.
Is my princess still awake?
He’d tickled her and given her a smacking kiss on the cheek and then pulled her covers up right over her head, making her shriek in delight. It felt so long ago, it might as well have happened to another person. It had.
With a sigh Rachel crouched down and began going through the books on her shelf only to realize she didn’t want or need any of them. She sat back on her heels, staring blankly in front of her as the house creaked and settled around her, and the wind rattled the windowpanes. She half wished she hadn’t come, even as she recognized that it had been the right thing to do. But how could she get her mother to tell her what, if anything, was going on?
“Rachel?”
She heard her mother’s steps on the stairs, and then she appeared in the doorway, her hair uncharacteristically a little messed up. “I must have dozed off for a moment.” She glanced around the room, blinking slowly. “I haven’t been in here for years.”
“Me neither.” Rachel stood up, wincing at the pain in her knees. She wasn’t getting any younger either. “I don’t think there’s anything I want to keep, but I can help you shift things if you need to. There will be a lot to get rid of, I suppose, if you’re going to sell.” The thought brought another pang of resistance. As much as she’d come to dislike this house, she wasn’t ready to get rid of it. It felt like the last link to her father – his golf clubs still in the hall after all these years, photographs of him and awards he’d won adorning the walls.
“Yes, I suppose there will be.” Deborah’s expression was distant as she stood in the doorway, one hand resting on its frame. “I suppose I’ll just get rid of it all. It’s not as if I’ll need any of it.”
“All of it? But –”
“I had such plans for this house,” Deborah continued, almost dreamily. “Such hopes, once upon a time.”
Rachel gazed at her uneasily. She’d never heard her mother talk like this, in this vague, dreamy tone. “Mum –”
“Rooms full of children, of love and laughter, parties and promises.” She shook her head slowly as she let out a long, weary sigh, seeming barely aware of Rachel. “None of it happened the way I hoped and thought it would.”
Love and laughter? Those were two words Rachel would never associate with her mother. Even when her father was alive, Deborah Barnaby had been cool, distant, always remote. Rachel could remember how Deborah would close her eyes and angle her head away when her father kissed her cheek; the strained silences around the dinner table; how she’d come home from school to find her mother alone in the sitting room, staring into space, a cup of tea going cold by her elbow.
“Mum,” she began, but again she didn’t know what to say, and in any case Deborah didn’t seem to want to hear it. She started back downstairs without looking back at Rachel or acknowledging her at all.
An hour later, Rachel was heading back to Whitehaven, still feeling unsettled by her visit. She’d told her mother she’d come again at the weekend to help clear out, and Deborah had looked at her in surprise.
“Clear out? Why?”
“Because you’re thinking of selling,” Rachel had begun, and Deborah had made a scoffing noise.
“There’s no need to rush ahead, Rachel. You always were so impatient with everything.”
Now, alone in the car, Rachel had the urge to tell someone about the strange visit. I think my mum’s going crazy, or maybe I am. She thought of ringing Anthony, who was the most obvious person to confide in, but as usual she felt reluctant to do so. He didn’t really understand her fractured relationship with her mum. She’s a bit prickly, Rach, but she seems perfectly nice to me. Everyone did, to Anthony. He always saw the best in absolutely every person he met, which was part of his teddy bear-like charm. Rachel didn’t.
With a sigh she decided to leave off thinking about it for now. Perhaps her mum had simply been having an off day; she’d come back another day and check on her, not that her mother would appreciate her concern.
As for Anthony, he hadn’t rung her, and it felt a bit like a stalemate. Who was going to break first? And why did it always have to be like that, even if neither of them ever acknowledged that it was?
In any case, Rachel knew she needed to focus on the project at hand: the ship currently resting on the seabed, or what was left of it. She didn’t want to think about what was going on with her mother.
Her lips twisted wryly as she recognized the irony. She was happier delving into the secrets of the past than thinking about her own present, never mind her future. Both felt terribly uncertain.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Abigail
Whitehaven, 1764
“There she is. Isn’t she a beauty? Almost as lovely as you, my dear.”
James turned back to Abigail with a loving smile as she pulled her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. Although it was June, the air was chilly, the dark clouds on the horizon threatening rain.
Abigail had been married for just over a year, and her husband’s second ship, The Fair Lady, built in Whitehaven’s shipyard, was now proudly in the harbour, loaded up with an assortment of pots, pans, clay pipes, and coal, headed for Ireland and the Americas. In three months’ time, God willing, it would return to Whitehaven laden with tobacco to sell through the county and even the country.
