Joe cleared his throat. ‘She’s still here in the region, are you saying, your friend?’ he asked in a strangled voice.

‘Of course. Like me, she’s much changed. Married—to a veteran of Verdin, widowed, two children … life leaves its mark. But she’s right here. And happy now. Come with me and meet her, show her the photograph. She’d be very interested …’

‘No, no! Thank you.’ Joe’s refusal was more brusque than he would have wished. ‘Water under the bridge, as you say,’ he murmured. ‘Kinder to let it flow away.’

A footman appeared and looked about him in surprise. No lord, no steward, no Miss Makepeace. His eye lighted on Joe.

‘Sir. The kitchen would like to know the numbers for dinner tonight. Have you any idea …?’

‘Make that eight adults and three children. That would be safe. What have we on the menu, Marcel?’

‘There’s boeuf gardiane. Oh, and cook told me to tell you, sir—she’s made a soufflé glacé à la framboise for dessert. “A bitter-sweet send off”, she said I was to say. If that makes any sense?’

‘Tell Marie-Jeanne it makes a good deal of sense, will you? Thank you, Marcel.’

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Surrey, England, late September 1926

‘Lord! Rotten Bramley time again!’ said Joe, trampling over the windfall apples in the grass. ‘What are you doing, Dorcas, mooning about down here in a damp orchard? You ought to be indoors packing your trunk. Socks to be counted, pencils to be sharpened. Look—I’ve brought you the geometry set I promised. Aren’t you in the least little bit excited at the prospect before you?’

‘Of course! I’m terrified but looking forward more than I’m scared. Just. I was saying goodbye to my youth. It’s the right season for it, isn’t it? Every leaf that plops on to the ground reminds me. Four years of school to come. Intensive years. I’ve got a lot to make up before matriculation. If I want to get into Imperial College I shall have to work through every holiday as well.’ She turned a determined face to Joe. ‘I shan’t see you again for …’

‘Four plus three is seven,’ he supplied cheerily. ‘Seven years. I shall be in my dotage by then and you’ll be the one bringing me gifts. You know—knee rugs and mint imperials in a two ounce bag. How’s Orlando? I haven’t seen him since I got back.’

‘He’s well. Productive and hard at it. He’s got a show on in a London gallery in December.’

‘How lovely! You must get me an invitation.’

They stared at each other, their minds not engaged by the trivialities they were uttering.

‘There’s something I must ask you, Joe, before Lydia calls us in for supper.’

‘Fire away.’

‘You didn’t ever tell him, did you? That you’d found my mother? It’s important.’

Joe was silent for a moment. ‘No. I haven’t spoken of her since he asked me to stop my search. But how on earth …?’

‘She told me herself.’

‘What!’

‘I got to know her pretty well. She told me her friend Carla had unwittingly given her away to you.’

‘But how did you ever put two and two together?’

Dorcas grinned. ‘I found out the truth in five minutes. I felt very guilty, knowing that you were blowing a gasket, working on the problem. But I asked you to stop as soon as I could.’

‘Five minutes? What can you mean by that?’

‘That first night I spent at Madame Dalbert’s house, looking after the boys, they were a bit upset … you know … ripples from an adult world disturbing them. When they’d cleaned their teeth I offered to read them a story and sing a song or two. That’s always calming. The little one, Marius, bragged that he could sing in English. He knew a special going-to-bed song, he said. He started to sing.’

Dorcas shivered and Joe put his warm scarf around her shoulders. ‘I was devastated! He sang words to the tune of “Golden Slumbers”. Do you know it? It’s rather a dirge but an easy tune for children to carry.’

In her clear voice she launched into the old song:

‘Golden slumbers kiss your eyes,

Breakfast awakes you when you rise.

Sleep, Nanny’s dumpling,

Do not cry,

And I will sing a lullaby.’

‘Dorcas, those aren’t the right words. Surely it’s “Smi-iles awake you” and “Sleep, little darling”, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right! You’ve met Nanny Tilling who brought me up? Well, you’ll know what I mean when I say she’s a bit eccentric. Over-bright to be a nanny, Orlando says. She was brought back out of retirement to help my mother look after me the first year of my life, before she ran away. Nanny was easily bored by stories and songs and used to invent her own happy endings and change the words to songs to make more sense. Those words were Nanny Tilling’s version of what she thought was a boring piece of nonsense. My mother learned the English song from hearing her sing it and she passed it on to her French children. Her second brood. Marius and René are my half-brothers.’

‘And there I was, chasing about, offending village priests, arm-wrestling news editors, and you knew all the time.’

‘I’m sorry. And, before you ask—I know about my father. My real father. She told me that too. I think she knew she’d never see me again so she made a clean breast of everything. And she was very concerned that I should know the truth about her leaving me squalling in my cradle. You’ve probably guessed—my grandmother! Orlando’s mother. God rot her! The moment I was weaned, she ordered my mother to leave. She chose a moment when Orlando was away from home, being treated for his lungs in a London clinic. If my mother refused to go, Grandma was going to tell the police that she’d stolen a necklace of hers. And with the attitude of the law being what it is concerning gypsies, she’d spend the next few years doing hard labour in Holloway. Either way, she was going to have to leave her baby in Orlando’s care since her son was unaccountably fond of it. Granny gave her a hundred pounds and told her to take the train out in the morning. My mother was alone, despised, friendless and very, very angry. She decided to go home to France and try to come back for me later. At least, that’s what she told me, but she could just have been saying that, couldn’t she?’

The slight appeal in her voice left Joe speechless and searching for an answer she could believe in.

But before he could flounder into a comforting formula, Dorcas rallied and decided to take a positive line: ‘Anyway, my mother showed a bit of spirit and—’ she gurgled—‘having been accused of the theft of Granny’s best pearls anyway—she took them! Made off with them and sold them in Paris. The money tided her over until she found employment in a hotel kitchen.

‘After the war, she went back to her home and was taken in again by her parents. She married a man, a local man who’d been wounded in the war, and they had two sons before he died. Her cooking skills were well regarded and when she was widowed and penniless again, the lord gave her a job in the kitchens at Silmont.’

‘She must have been mortified to catch sight of Orlando on the other side of the red baize door!’ said Joe.

‘Yes. That’s why she was so insistent no one should ever pass through it. And when you burst in regardless and announced you were an English copper—well, you can imagine the turmoil! She still expects a hand on her shoulder demanding the return of those pearls!’

‘Poor Marie-Jeanne! And I shocked her a second time, turning up with you in the kitchens. She was so overcome—now I realize at the sight of you, Dorcas—she collapsed. But she managed to recover herself pretty quickly. It must have been a trying time for the poor woman. Still, I think we came to an understanding, Marie-Jeanne and I.’

‘I think she rather liked you … Now listen, Joe! I’m telling you all this so you’ll see how important it is to me that you don’t get drunk and reveal all to Orlando. He’s as dear to me as any real father. I don’t want to distress him. And it would curdle things, cause mistrust, if he suspected I thought of him as anything other than my father. He’d be forever thinking I was about to run off on another wild-goose chase, looking for my own flesh and blood. Well, I’m not! I’ve decided flesh and blood’s overrated. Look at the trouble it caused at Silmont! I love the Dalberts but I knew when it was time to come home. To Orlando, Nanny Tilling, Yallop, Auntie Lydia. To the people I’ve chosen to love and who care for me. I think a child’s character is formed by the people around her, the loving faces she sees every day. She inherits their morals, their language, their physical gestures.’