Meredith took the paper and glanced at it, then raised her eyes to meet Patsy’s. “Thank you,” she said, and looked down at the paper again. “Now that I know she could be only a few miles away, I feel rather strange.”
“Do you mean about seeing her?” Patsy asked, her brow furrowing.
“Yes.”
“Perhaps you’re afraid.”
“Do you know, I think I am.”
“I’ll go with you to Tan Beck House.”
“Thank you, but perhaps I should go alone, Patsy.”
“Shouldn’t you phone her first?”
“I’m not sure. In a way I prefer to see her face-to-face before she knows anything about me. If I phone first, I’ll have to start explaining myself.”
“You’re right. So do it your way.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
It was with some trepidation that Meredith walked up the path to the front door of Tan Beck House.
For the past thirty minutes she had been sitting in Patsy’s Aston-Martin, trying to gather her courage to go there in search of Kate Sanderson.
Since her apprehension had seemed only to increase the longer she sat, she had, in the end, turned on the ignition and driven back down the road.
As she had alighted from her car a moment earlier she had seen that the lovely old stone house was substantial but not overly large, the kind of house a vet or a doctor or lawyer would live in. It was well kept, with a freshly painted white door, sparkling windows, and pretty lace curtains; an array of spring flowers brought color and life to the beds in the garden on either side of the flagged path.
Now she stood at the front door, her hand on the brass knocker. Her nerves almost failed her. Taking a deep breath, she banged it hard several times and then stood back to wait.
The door was opened almost instantly by a youngish woman with dark hair who was dressed in a gray sweater and matching slacks under a green-striped pinafore.
“Yes, can I help you?” she asked.
“I’m looking for Mrs. Grainger. Mrs. Nigel Grainger. Is she at home?”
The young woman nodded. “Is she expecting you?”
“No, she’s not.”
“Whom shall I say is calling?”
“I’m Mrs. Stratton. Meredith Stratton. She doesn’t know me. I’m a friend of a friend. I was hoping she could help me with something.”
“Just a minute,” the young woman said, and leaving the door ajar, she hurried across the highly polished floor of the small entrance foyer.
She returned within seconds, opened the door wider, and said, “Mrs. Grainger would like you to come in. She won’t be a minute, she’s on the phone. She told me to take you to the sitting room.”
“Thank you,” Meredith said, stepping into the foyer and following the young woman, at the same time glancing around quickly, wanting to see everything.
She noticed a handsome grandfather clock standing in a corner and a collection of blue and white porcelain effectively arranged on an oak console table.
Showing her into the sitting room, the young woman said, “Make yourself at home,” and disappeared.
Meredith stood in the middle of the room, thinking how welcoming it was, struck by its warmth and charm. It was of medium size, tastefully decorated, the walls painted red, with bookshelves running floor to ceiling on two of them. The woodwork was a dark cream, hand-painted to resemble faux marble, and there was a dark red and blue Oriental rug in front of the stone fireplace. Between two tall windows an antique desk faced out toward the back garden and a small lawn. Beyond were rolling moors and an endless expanse of blue sky filled with scudding white clouds.
Meredith turned away from the window at the sound of footsteps. She held her breath as she waited for Mrs. Nigel Grainger to open the door.
At the first sight of her Meredith’s heart dropped. This was not the beautiful young mother of the red-gold curls and bright blue eyes whom she had worshipped in her childhood dreams.
Mrs. Grainger was a woman in her early sixties, Meredith guessed. She wore beige corduroy pants and a white shirt with a navy-blue blazer, and she looked like a typical country matron.
The woman hesitated in the doorway, looking at Meredith questioningly. “Mrs. Stratton?”
“Yes. And hello, Mrs. Grainger . . . hello. I hope you’ll forgive this intrusion, but I came to see you because I’m hoping you can help me.”
“I’m not sure how, but I’ll try,” Mrs. Grainger said, still poised in the doorway. “You’re American, aren’t you?”
Meredith nodded. “Mrs. Grainger, I’ll come straight to the point. I’m looking for a woman called Kate Sanderson. Annette Alexander of Place Vendôme in Harrogate gave me reason to believe that you and she are the same person. Is that so?”
“Why, yes, it is. I’m Katharine Sanderson Grainger, and I used to work at Place Vendôme, years ago, before I was married.” Kate frowned, the quizzical expression reflected in her eyes again. “But why are you looking for me?”
Meredith was extremely nervous. She had no idea how to tell Kate who she was and, momentarily, she was at a loss for the right words. Finally she said in a tremulous voice, “It’s about . . . about . . . it’s about Mari.”
Kate Grainger looked as if she had been slapped in the face, and slapped hard. She recoiled, gaped at Meredith, and took hold of the door to steady herself.
Then quickly recovering her equilibrium to some extent, she asked in a tense voice, “What about Mari? What is it you want with me? What do you want to tell me about Mari?”
“I . . . I knew her, Mrs. Grainger.”
“You knew my Mari?” Kate cried eagerly, sounding breathless. She took a step forward.
Meredith could see her better now. She noted the vividness of the blue eyes, suddenly filled with tears, the reddish-gold hair, paler than it once was and shot through with silver, recognized that well-loved, familiar face, touched by time but still quite lovely. And she knew with absolute certainty that this was her mother. Her heart tightened imperceptibly, and she was seized by an internal shaking. She wanted to go to Kate, put her arms around her, but she did not dare. She was afraid . . . of rejection . . . of not being wanted.
“You knew my Mari,” Kate said again. “Tell me about her, oh, please tell me . . .”
Choked up, unable to speak, Meredith simply inclined her head.
“Where? Where did you know my little Mari? Oh please, please tell me, Mrs. Stratton. Please,” Kate pleaded.
“In Australia,” Meredith answered at last in a strangled voice.
“Australia.” Kate sounded outraged, and she drew back, her eyes wide.
“Sydney.” Meredith’s eyes were riveted on Kate, who was shocked and also puzzled.
“She loved you so much,” Meredith said, her voice a whisper.
Kate reached out, grabbed the back of a wing chair. She gripped it tightly to support herself. “You speak of her as if she’s . . . you speak of her in the past tense. She’s no . . . dead, is she?”
“No, she’s not.”
“Oh, thank God for that,” Kate exclaimed, sounding relieved. She went on. “I’ve prayed for her every day for years and years. Prayed that she was all right, that she was safe. Please, Mrs. Stratton, tell me something. Did she send you to me? Send you to find me?”
“Yes.”
“Where is my Mari? Oh, do please tell me.” Kate’s emotions were very near the surface, her feelings visible on her strained face. Who was this woman bringing news of Mari? News of her beloved child, lost to her for so many years? She began to tremble.
Meredith took a step forward, drew closer to Kate. Kate’s heartache was written on her face, and Meredith realized how distraught she was. And also how sincere.
Groping around in her mind, she sought appropriate words to explain to Kate who she was.
Stepping closer to Kate, she looked into her face, and before she could stop herself, she said, “Mam . . . it’s me . . . Mari. . .”
Kate co
uld not speak for a moment, and then she exclaimed, “Oh my God! Oh my God, Mari, is it really you?” Kate took hold of Meredith’s hand and drew her to the window. “Let me look at you. Is it you, Mari, after all these years?” Reaching out, she touched Meredith’s face tenderly with one hand. “Is it really you, love?”
Tears were spilling out of Kate’s eyes, trickling down her face. “Oh Mari, Mari, you’ve come back to me at last. My prayers have been answered.”
Meredith was also crying. And the two women, separated for almost forty years, automatically moved into each other’s arms, held on to each other tightly.
Kate was sobbing as if her heart would break. “I’ve waited for this day for over thirty-eight years, prayed for it, begged God for it. I’d given up hope of ever seeing you again.”
Mother and daughter stood holding each other for a long time, drawing comfort from each other as they shed their tears of sorrow and joy . . . sorrow for the past, for all those years they had missed together . . . joy that they had been reunited at last, before it was too late.
They sat together on the small sofa in the library, a tray of tea and sandwiches on the coffee table in front of them. But neither of them had touched the sandwiches which the young housekeeper, Nellie, had prepared.
They held hands, kept staring at each other, searching for similarities. And there was a kind of wonderment on their faces. It was the special wonder a mother feels when she sees her newly born child. And in a way, Mari was newly born for Kate that day.
“I never came to terms with my loss,” Kate said, her voice soft, echoing with sadness as she remembered all those grim years she had endured without her only child by her side. “I thought of you every day, Mari, wondered about you, yearned for you, longed to hold you in my arms.”
Meredith stared deeply into those marvelous eyes. “I know, Mam, I know. It was the same for me always, and when I was very little, especially. I was always wondering about you, wondering why you’d sent me away from you, why you didn’t want me. I never did understand that.” Meredith brushed the tears away from her eyes. “How did you . . . lose me? How did we get separated?”
“It was a terrible thing and it really started with Dr. Barnardo’s Home . . . do you remember that day when you were five, when you found me passed out on the kitchen floor?”
“Oh yes, I went to fetch Constable O’Shea.”
“He’d arranged for an ambulance. I was put in Leeds Infirmary and he took you to the children’s home. I never blamed him, he didn’t know what else to do, since I didn’t have any family. Anyway, I was in hospital for about six weeks. As soon as I was on my feet again, I went and got you, and we were together at Hawthorne Cottage, the way we’d always been. But about a year later, in the spring of 1957, I became ill once more. I took you to Dr. Barnardo’s myself this time. I’d nowhere else to put you. Dr. Robertson was worried about me, he wanted me to go into the infirmary for some tests. It was there that they discovered I had tuberculosis. Seemingly it had been dormant for several years. Suddenly it had flared up, fanned no doubt by undernourishment, worry, stress, fatigue, and a rundown condition in general. Tuberculosis is very contagious, it’s airborne, and I couldn’t be near you, Mari, for your own sake. The doctors at Leeds Infirmary sent me to Seacroft Hospital, near Killingbeck, where I was treated. I was in quarantine for six months.” Kate paused, took hold of Meredith’s hand, held it tightly, and looked into her eyes. “I sent you messages all the time, Mari. Didn’t you get any of them?”
“No.” Meredith returned her mother’s intense look. “Why didn’t you come and get me when you were better?” she asked, a hint of resentment flaring. She pushed it down inside her.
“But I did! As soon as I was released from Seacroft Hospital. I was on the mend, no longer contagious, taking antibiotics. Streptomycin, actually. But you weren’t there anymore. The people at Dr. Barnardo’s told me you had been adopted. I was in shock. Distraught and angry. And heartbroken. I didn’t know how to find you. I had no one to help me, no family, not much money. It was like battering my head against a brick wall. They just wouldn’t tell me anything, and there was no way I could get you back.”
Kate shook her head sorrowfully, found her handkerchief, and wiped her streaming eyes. “I was utterly powerless, helpless, Mari, and so frustrated. I’ve never really dispelled my anger, it’s still there inside. It’s gnawed at me for years. What happened ruined my life. I have never recovered from the loss of you, never really been happy, or had any peace of mind. I’ve always been haunted, worried about you. My only hope was that one day, when you were grown-up, you might want to meet your biological mother, and that you’d try to find me.”
Meredith, who had again been moved to tears by Kate’s words, exclaimed, “But no one adopted me! They lied to you at Dr. Barnardo’s. They put me on a boat with a lot of other children and shipped us all to Australia. I was in an orphanage in Sydney.”
“An orphanage!” Kate was stunned. She stared at Meredith in horror as the terrible truth dawned on her. “What kind of thinking is that? It was stupidity to send you from an orphanage in England to another one at the far side of the world. And why?” She closed her eyes for a moment, then snapped them open. “They said you’d been adopted by a nice family, that you were living in another city in Britain. It was my only consolation . . . that you were growing up with people who cared about you, loved you, and were good to you. Now you’re telling me you were never adopted.”
Kate was shaking.
Meredith soothed her, tried to calm her, then explained. “Well, I was adopted, but in Sydney, of course, not in England. When I was eight. But it was only for two years. The Strattons were killed in a car crash when I was ten. They weren’t very nice people. Mr. Stratton’s sister put me back in the orphanage.”
Stiffening on the sofa, grasping Meredith’s hand tighter, Kate said in a fearful voice, “The Strattons didn’t hurt you in any way, did they? Abuse you?”
“No, they didn’t. But they weren’t very loving or kind.” Now, staring at Kate in bafflement, Meredith went on. “If you didn’t give them permission to send me to Australia, then how could Dr. Barnardo’s do that? I mean, they did it without your consent.”
“Yes, they did.” Kate drew away slightly, and now it was her turn to give Meredith a piercing stare. “All of a sudden you sound as if you think I’m not telling you the truth. But I am, Mari. You must believe that.”
“It’s not that I doubt you. I just don’t understand this whole thing.”
“Neither do I. I’ve never been able to understand it. All these years it’s been like living a nightmare.” Kate extricated her hand from Meredith’s and stood up.
Slowly, she walked across to the desk, opened a drawer, and took out a large envelope. Tapping it, she said, “A few years ago in the late eighties, I read some articles in the Observer. And what I read truly frightened me, filled me with horror, not to mention sorrow. The articles were about child migrants being sent alone to Australia and put in homes and institutions. At the time I prayed that you hadn’t been one of those children. I suppose I clung to the belief you were living somewhere in England with your adoptive family. Now my worst nightmare has come true.” Kate’s voice faltered and she was close to tears again. “You were one of those children, Mari.”
Fighting her tears, Kate paused, and then after a moment she asked in a low voice, “You are telling me the truth, aren’t you, Mari? You weren’t abused, were you?”
“I promise you I wasn’t . . . I wasn’t, Mam. I was in mental anguish, and I cried myself to sleep for years, missing you so much. It was such a loveless upbringing. And, of course, I had to work hard, we all did, scrubbing floors, doing mountains of washing. And we weren’t very well fed. But no, I wasn’t physically or sexually abused.”
“Just mentally and emotionally,” Kate said, anger surfacing again. “Imagine, sending you and other little children twelve thousand miles, all the way across the world just to put you in
another institution. It was ludicrous.”
Kate walked back to the sofa and sat down, still clutching the envelope. Finally she gave it to Meredith. “The articles were entitled ‘Lost Children of the Empire.’ I kept them. You can read them later. They’ll make your hair stand on end.” She shook her head. “No, of course they won’t . . . you lived through it . . . lived what the journalist wrote about.”
“Why did you keep the articles?”
“I don’t know. Later, Granada Television made a documentary about the child migrants. I watched it with growing horror. It left its terrible imprint on me, I’ve never been free of it.”
“So Dr. Barnardo’s sent a lot of children to Australia. Hundreds. Is that what you’re saying?”
“No, Mari, thousands. Over a hundred and fifty thousand, actually. Probably even more, but it wasn’t just Dr. Barnardo’s. Many other worthy charities were involved in the child migration schemes.”
“Such as?” Meredith asked, staring at Kate questioningly.
“The Salvation Army, the National Children’s Home, the Children’s Society, the Fairbridge Society, and a variety of other social and welfare agencies operating under the aegis of the Catholic Church, the Church of England, the Presbyterian Church and the Church of Scotland.”
“Good God!” Meredith exclaimed, aghast. “It was enormous.”
“I’m afraid so,” Kate answered. “And a lot of those children, especially the boys, were made to work outside in the blistering sun, doing all manner of chores, bricklaying, building dormitories. And they were often horribly abused—sodomized by the priests. It was a horrendous life for them.”
“But how could it happen? I mean, why didn’t the government intervene?”
“The British government weren’t going to do that. They were part of it. And what they did to us, to mothers and fathers and children, was unconscionable.”
“It was also illegal,” Meredith pointed out. “Hasn’t anyone thought of suing the British government? I certainly feel like it . . . all those wasted years, all those years of grief.”