Making It Up (20 page)

What to do? They eye the gully without enthusiasm, but the dog is useful, they are fond of it, and neither is going to chicken out in front of the other. So there is nothing for it but to get in there and effect a rescue.

They slither down the rocks. They bash a path through the bushes, collar the frantic dog, and prepare to climb back out.

And then they see it. Some sort of seat, wedged between boulders, half-smothered in brambles; a rusted frame, amid which there are rags of material and a bundle of collapsed sticks or something. They peer closer; they understand. And they are out of there like a dose of salts, back up the rocks and away, bawling at the dogs. They are not going to hang around here; this is not one for them—this is for the
carabinieri
.

 

Sarah Low said to her friend and colleague Clare, “I have had a very odd letter. An official letter from an official person at a very official address—the Foreign Office, no less—asking if I am my father's daughter. If I am, they will be in touch again with some information.”

“Dear me,” said Clare. “And are you? There's not some dark family secret?”

“None that I know of.”

“Money? An unexpected inheritance?”

“I think not,” said Sarah. “I think,” she went on after a moment, “that it is going to be something about my half sister. Penelope.”

 

 

Sarah has received, wrapped in polythene, a rectangle of water-stained, sun-bleached, insect-chewed leather, attached to a long strap, equally degraded. This was once a handbag. You can open it, still. It has a flap, like an envelope, and on the front of the flap there are three rusted metal initials: PML. These initials made identification possible. They set in train the process of consulting files and lists, collating, eliminating, searching, enlisting the help of Somerset House—the process that led to the arrival of that letter. The initials, the bag, its contents, the strap by which it hung across its owner, have lain on an Italian hillside for nearly fifty years, waiting to give testimony. They have lain there since before Sarah was born.

The bag had contents, which are also neatly wrapped. A pair of sunglasses, quite well-preserved. Some Egyptian coins. A corroded circular metal object and an equally corroded metal tube. These last, she realizes, are a powder compact and a lipstick. She finds them peculiarly disturbing. They are mundane, and intimate. She imagines them back in pristine condition: the shiny compact, with some pretty design on the front, and the mirror within (there are shards of glass); the lipstick selected for shade and brand. Elizabeth Arden? Max Factor?

There is also a wodge of fibrous brown matter. It is possible to see that this is many-leafed, like a mille-feuille. Even so, she would not have realized what it was were it not for the inventory that accompanied the package. This is the remains of a British passport. How are the mighty fallen.

It would have been one of those old blue ones, she thinks. The real McCoy—the dark blue gold-embossed stiff-covered booklet from the days when a British passport was just that, and no qualifying coda about European Community. It would have had a photograph in it; somewhere in this wodge of matter there is the ghost of a face, a face that would be eerily familiar.

She has seen photographs of her half sister. She has seen in them her own myopic look—the thick-lensed glasses, the look that is a legacy from their father. And his nose, she has seen—his slightly beaky nose on that face, echoing her own.

In the family albums, photographs of Penelope cease. She is there, and then she is not. Everyone else gets older; babies and children appear. She is simply an absence. There is one further item in the package, separately wrapped. This is clearly recognizable as a locket, still attached to the chain on which it hung around a neck. The locket is heart-shaped; it is blackened and battered—there is a dent at the back, the hinge is broken. It is just possible to make out intricate patterning on the front, and there are inlaid chips of some other material. She rubs at one with her finger and sees that it is blue. Some of the chips are missing; there are tiny empty sockets.

 

 

“A Comet,” Sarah tells Clare. “Apparently they were rather given to dropping out of the sky. It was 1956. In the run-up to the Suez crisis. She'd gone out to Egypt to teach in a language school, and then Brits were advised to get out. She was twenty-three.”

“After all this time . . .”

“Quite. And now there's only me. Closest surviving relative.”

“And you never even knew her?”

“Of course not. I was the second family, by the second marriage. She was just a legend. A sad legend, mentioned less and less.”

“Oh my goodness,” says Clare. “And now I suppose you'll have to do something about . . . well, arrangements.”

 

 

In the chapel of the crematorium, there is a miasma of embarrassment. Hardly anyone here actually knew her; they are attending the funeral of a stranger. Most of them are unknown to each other; various people are unknown to Sarah. The mourners do not fill the room—far from it. They are scattered about, glancing furtively at one another. A couple of cousins remember Penelope, vaguely (“But we never saw her that much, you know. All the same, we felt we must be here”). A very old man has gamely struggled up from Bournemouth, leaning on a stick; he knew her father well (“Nice girl—such a shame”). The cousins' husbands are dutiful but a touch restive, wondering about traffic conditions and the route home. Clare has come, and a few more of Sarah's friends. There is an elderly woman who was at college with Penelope (“Thank goodness I happened to spot your notice in the paper”), attended by a patient daughter. And there are others, as yet unidentified.

They wait in silence, staring at the coffin, on which there is laid a sheaf of white lilies. And then the priest arrives, the mourners rise to their feet, and the process of dispatch begins.

 

 

Sarah tours the room. There is finger food, soft drinks, a glass of wine for those who would prefer. She has done her duty by the cousins; Clare is looking after the old chap from Bournemouth. And now this man is bearing down on her, one of the strange faces noted earlier. He carries a plateful of food and has preferred red wine.

“Tom Sayers. I was in Cairo.”

In fact, it emerges, he ran the language school at which Penelope taught, for that brief time she was there. “We old Egypt hands tend to keep in touch, and someone told me about this, so I thought I'd come along.”

“That was good of you.”

He inclines his head, graciously. He must be eighty, at least. “I thought there might be some people I knew here. And one's not that busy these days. An outing's quite welcome.”

“I take it you do remember my sister,” says Sarah. Cool, now.

“Oh, indeed I do. Mind, there were quite a few expat girls around. My staff came and went like anything. Here today, gone tomorrow. Some of them left more of an impression than others. The bombshells, you know—and she wasn't that. Nice girl, though. Tall, wore glasses.” His glance strayed over Sarah's shoulder. “Truth to tell, I don't see anyone here I recognize from Cairo days. Pity.”

“I'm sorry you've wasted your time.”

He waved his glass at a passing waiter. “Red for me. Not at all, not at all. I wanted to pay my respects anyway. Nice girl, as I say. Of course, one heard all about the crash at the time. Terrible thing. And we all took those flights home. There but for the grace of God, one thought.”

Sarah eyed him. This old horror had lived to be eighty, shoving his way through life. There is no selective system, none at all. Let's not talk about God.

“Please excuse me,” she said. “There are people I haven't yet spoken to.”

She had written to the aunts and the uncles and the cousins. You will remember my half sister, Penelope, she wrote. Well, there is this news . . . I feel we should commemorate her, she wrote. A small event for family and friends. I very much hope that you will be able to come. It occurred to her that these were quite the oddest letters that she had ever had to write. And, no doubt, for others to receive. Puzzled spouses and partners would say: Who? Elderly aunts would be anxious about travel arrangements and frame guilty excuses.

She had put a notice in selected newspapers: discreet, succinct. There might be others interested.

And there were. For now there is this second stranger standing before her, explaining himself, but hesitantly, with diffidence. He, too, had been in Cairo. John Lambert. He had known her sister. He had known her very well. At first, his diffidence makes it hard for him to get to the point. He, too, had been teaching in Cairo, at the university. He had met Penelope soon after they both arrived. And . . . well, they had become quite close. Very close. In fact, he says, eventually, the idea was that we were going to get married, in due course.

“Oh . . . ,” says Sarah. “Oh, good heavens. I don't think my father ever said . . .”

He tells her that nothing was exactly formalized. She hadn't told her parents or anyone. “People got engaged in those days,” he says. “The ring and so forth. We hadn't got around to that, but it would have come.” He smiles, embarrassed. “I hope you don't mind hearing this, but I felt I'd like to tell you.”

Sarah said, “I'm so very glad you're here. And of course I don't mind.”

“It was a shock, coming across your notice. It's something you do at my time of life”—a wry grin—“You tend to trawl through that page to see who's popped their clogs. And so I saw it. It made me feel very odd, I can tell you. It's not that I don't think of her—I often do. But it made the whole thing seem new again. Hearing about the crash, back then. What one felt. And I sat there looking at your notice and thinking that if that hadn't happened, my life would presumably have been very different. My wife was pouring me a cup of coffee and I thought: I'd never have known you. You'd be somebody I never met.”

Sarah nodded. There seemed no appropriate comment.

“Mind, I'm devoted to my wife.”

She gazed at this man: lean, slightly stooped, long thin jowly face, old enough to be her father. Somewhere behind and beyond all this there lurked another person entirely—a man who had been young with her sister. Penelope had stopped; he had continued. But he carried her still in his head; she survived in his mind, an untransmittable image.

Fazed by this thought, Sarah hardly heard what he was saying. She saw her father's old black-and-white photos: that face with resonances of her own, the height and build that reflected hers. But this man would see her in color.

He was talking about Egypt, back then.

“Terrific place to be if you were young and up for anything. And then of course it fell apart. The Suez crisis. We Brits were persona non grata. Best to get out, if you were in a position to do so. Most of us were on short-term contracts anyway. She left a month before I did. We were all set to get together back home.” He pulled a face, shook his head.

Sarah said, “I'd like to hear more about that time. I wonder if we could meet again?”

He looked alarmed. “We live up north, you know. I don't really come to these parts. I don't think my wife . . .” He paused. “You look like Penelope. It's eerie, seeing what she might have been like when she was older. I suppose . . . I suppose I could write to you. Actually, I'd find it quite helpful to put a few things down.”

“Please,” said Sarah. “I'd be so glad if you would.”

 

 

At forty-seven, Sarah occasionally felt that life had her by the scruff of the neck. Mostly, you could ignore the passage of time; that is to say, you tamed it, you reduced it to diary pages, to dates and days of the week, to the setting on the alarm clock or the start of a television program. You ignored the darker implications, the stalking footsteps. And then, once in a while, she would wake in the night, often after some dream in which she had been a child again, or some younger self, and would lie there thinking: I am forty-seven, for heaven's sake, and I don't know how this has come about. It was as though there were some baleful presence alongside, forcing her to stare at this unrelenting fact: look, look hard, and don't you forget it.

She was alone, but not lonely. Once, she had lived with a man. She knew all about being half of a couple—about living with someone else's views, foibles, habits, their way of folding a newspaper, washing a plate. She knew that curious fusion of companionship and private distance; she knew about good sex and bad sex and sudden quarrels and the warm glow of reconciliation. She had wondered about having a child, and believed that he did the same, though nothing was said. And then something happened: feeling had withered, she no longer smiled at the sound of his key in the lock, she found herself treasuring time to herself. And she saw that this was so for him too. They became like courteous strangers, skirting any serious engagement. And, eventually, fell apart.

Sometimes, nowadays, she missed all that. At others, she relished her independence and self-sufficiency: the freedom to do what you wished without consulting anyone else, the small comfortable indulgences of solitude. She had friends, she had her work, she spent much of her time with other people; she felt herself largely fortunate.

That said, she knew that there were gaps. There was the significant gap of childlessness. There was her solitary status, which, while now statistically respectable, one understood, still offended against expectations. The man with whom she had once lived was married, with offspring; so were many of her friends and colleagues. She would not, now, have children, and accepted that; she balanced the regrets that sometimes surfaced against the satisfactions of an unfettered life. So far as companionship was concerned—love, even, if one were to be so specific—she kept an open mind. Maybe, but quite possibly not; and if not, so be it.