The Many Lives of John Stone

  Then I caught sight of the person I presumed to be Isabelle d’Alembert. She stood a little apart from the rest of the group. She was of medium height, slight, and was dressed in shimmering, pearl-gray silk. Unlike most of the ladies in the room, her dark hair was arranged in a simple style and she wore no headdress. I think she must have been the youngest in the group by several years: I guessed she was about my own age. The young lady was not conversing with any of her companions but nor did she look ill at ease. In fact, she was staring out of a window, apparently deep in thought. She did have fine eyes. They were large and gray, the color of storm clouds.

  I stared at her for far longer than was polite, coming to my own conclusions about her looks. A sixth sense must have told her that someone was observing her, because she turned to look straight at me. For a moment I sensed her puzzlement and then her eyes widened and I was certain that she recognized me. She smiled, and such was the electric effect of that first acknowledgement that I had to turn away. When I trusted myself to look again I saw that a haughty-looking man, rather stiff around the shoulders, had offered his arm to Isabelle and was leading her away. I wondered if this could be her father. As the pair proceeded down the room, I noted how the crowd parted in front of them. On the point of disappearing into the Salon de la Guerre, I saw Isabelle pause and turn under the plaster relief that portrayed a triumphant King Louis trampling his enemies into the ground. Her eyes searched the crowd where I had stood a moment before. I told myself that it must have been my face that she had hoped to see.

  Giant Colorful Birds

  July, Mansfield.

  Spark is astonished to learn that she used to live so close to Stowney House when she was a child. Mum casts an eye over John Stone’s letter and shrugs before passing it back. She resumes drying the cutlery. “He’s got nice handwriting, I’ll say that for him. No one ever invited me to Stowney House. I’ve never met John Stone.”

  “Do you think I’ll remember it? How old was I?”

  “Four? Maybe five? You know what I’m like with dates. Anyway, what does it matter? It’s ancient history.”

  “Come on, Mum! Don’t you think it’s a coincidence? A random guy whose picture I took in New York turns out to be the man who arranged Dan’s internship. Then he offers me a holiday job. And now I discover we were neighbors in Suffolk when I was little—”

  “No. You were in New York because he arranged Dan’s internship. And it was you who asked him for a holiday job. Though why you couldn’t have got a job at the canning factory like everyone else, I don’t know. You could have had a five-minute walk to work. If you wanted to go away, you could’ve saved up and gone off somewhere hot with your mates. Somewhere with a bit of nightlife. Not Suffolk.”

  “It’s not about the nightlife—it’s about getting some experience!”

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid!”

  “Oh, Mum!”

  Spark hangs mugs on hooks under the blue Formica shelf. Why do families have to be so difficult? Mum sorts cutlery into the drawer, throwing in each knife, fork, and spoon with more force than is necessary. Spark walks over to her and gives a hug. She’s rewarded with a smile.

  Presently Mum says: “We weren’t neighbors. It was a good half mile to Stowney House. And it was a registered charity that helped our Dan. John Stone just works for them.”

  “But it was John Stone who organized it, wasn’t it? I know you’re not thrilled about Dan being in New York, but it was a brilliant internship to get—”

  “So you’re saying I should tug my forelock to him? The gentleman from the big house taking pity on us poor folk? John Stone is nothing to me.”

  Spark watches Mum staring fixedly out of the kitchen window and it occurs to her that John Stone’s help—for which she’s supposed to be forever grateful—in fact took her son away from her. Mum pulls at the collar of her blouse, her gaze resting on the abundant hanging baskets, still dripping from watering, that adorn the concrete wall. Lilac petunias and pink geraniums scramble for supremacy in the sweltering yard. What a shame, thinks Spark. Mum had been in such a good mood this morning.

  “Have you got something against John Stone? Because if you have, you’d better tell me now. You haven’t changed your mind about letting me go, have you?”

  “Don’t be daft.”

  Spark doesn’t entirely believe her. Oh, heck. But it’s hardly as if she’s going on a polar expedition. If Mum can’t cope, she can be home again in a couple of hours like Dan says. In any case, if she gets lonely it might even encourage her to go out.

  “Mum, did you ever meet a woman called Martha?”

  “Who?”

  Spark follows the lines of the letter with her finger until she finds the right place. “Listen—John Stone talks about her. He says: ‘In fact, I met you on one occasion, though I was away for much of that summer. However, I heard from my housekeeper, Martha—’ ”

  “Housekeeper. Nice for some—”

  “ ‘. . . that you broke into the garden of Stowney House so often that she became quite attached to you. If it had not been for an incident with our water mill you would probably have continued to visit, but we felt, at the time, that our land was not safe enough for such a young child, so Martha took you back to your mother to tell her what you had been doing. Of course, you were extremely young, so you may have no recollection of your adventures at Stowney House.’ Do you know anything about a water mill, Mum?”

  “I suppose you think I was being a bad mother—letting a five-year-old run wild in the middle of the countryside. Letting strangers get ‘attached’ to her child.”

  “No!”

  “You were always wandering off. I couldn’t stop you. You were adventurous. But you always came back—”

  “Mum! This isn’t about you. It’s about John Stone.” Spark flashes a broad smile at her. “Your mothering skills have always been perfectly adequate.”

  “You little . . .” Mum chucks a tea towel at Spark.

  Spark catches it and throws it back. “So do you remember meeting Martha?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “And?”

  “There’s not much to tell. I opened the door and found a woman on the front step doing up the buckles of your sandals. You were patting her hair—it was very curly and black, I remember. She didn’t say much—she just handed you over. It was embarrassing.”

  “Was she nice?”

  “I don’t know! I suppose she must have been good with children. I could see you’d wrapped her round your little finger.”

  * * *

  In just two days Spark will be at Stowney House. She tells Mum she’s going to make a start with her packing. Instead, she lies flat on her back on her narrow bed. The room is hot and airless, and soon her book slides out of her fingers and falls to the floor. She is drifting in and out of a dream: a dream that seems so real she wonders if sleep has nudged some long-forgotten memories into the light of day. She rolls off the mattress and starts to pace up and down in the gap between her bed and the window. With each pass she tugs at the patterned curtains. How do you tell the difference between remembering something that happened and remembering something that you imagined because you want to remember?

  She tries to retain the random images that keep appearing, like the fragments of colored glass that shift and fall as you rotate a kaleidoscope. It occurs to her that these images are familiar: This isn’t the first time she has dreamed about these places. It’s just that she’s never before made the connection.

  A watery landscape, with a sky that went on forever, and reeds that towered above her and whispered and swayed in the wind, and the call of birds. A land choked with brambles and birch saplings. She was sliding flat on her belly under arching, barbed canes, holding them with the tips of her fingers so they didn’t spring back. Vicious, clawlike thorns tore at her bare legs and snagged her cardigan, pulling out long threads, which she had to unhook one by one.

  What she recalls most vividly, thoug
h, is a thorn that caught deep in the delicate fold of her eyelid like a cat’s claw. She had to hold the bramble cane still so it didn’t rip her skin. Finally she pulled out the thorn with fingers made slippery by tears. What made her carry on, beating her slow, painful path through the brambles? Did she know what lay beyond?

  There is a second memory, and this one conjures up a sound of splashing. A man—he has his back to her—stands in front of a fountain that sends a jet of foaming, sparkling water high into the air. Somehow she knows that a fish glides beneath the surface in the mossy green shade. It is large and white, and its scales gleam like silver.

  In her cramped bedroom Spark runs her fingers through her wavy, fair hair so that it stands up on end and she looks like a dandelion clock. The fish had a name, and one that made her laugh, but it has slipped her mind. Could that man have been John Stone? Is that why, in the coffee bar in New York, he looked at her so strangely? Yet how could he have recognized her? Even if he has a good memory for faces, she was only four or five.

  Spark hears Mum climbing up the stairs. She braces herself for a sarcastic comment about how much packing she hasn’t done but, instead, she hears the bathroom door open and close. As she stares at the light filtering through her curtains, more fragments of the past rise up; the memories adhere to one another, like drops of mercury. She is sure she can remember a second man in the gardens of Stowney House. And a woman. They were moving from tree to tree like giant, colorful birds.

  Mum pushes open the door. She heaps towels on top of the wicker chest of drawers.

  “In case they expect you to provide your own,” she says, eyeing the empty suitcase but holding her tongue.

  “Thanks, Mum.”

  “Anything else you need? I don’t suppose they expect you to bring your own sheets—”

  “Mum?”

  “Yes?”

  “Tell me you’re going to be all right.”

  Mum stoops to kiss Spark on the top of her head. “You worry too much, Stella Park.”

  Spark flings her arms around her. Mum pushes her away to examine her face. She wipes away a tear from Spark’s warm cheek with the sleeve of her cardigan. “Crocodile tears! Don’t start, love, or you’ll set me off.”

  * * *

  Spark gets on with her packing. Mum reads the paper in the sunny yard and the smoke rises up and enters Spark’s bedroom through her window that will only ever open a crack. By the time Spark has finished, the unsettling images from her childhood have submerged once more, diving like ocean creatures down into the deep.

  Homing Pigeon

  July, Suffolk.

  “Martha! Martha!”

  When John Stone arrives back home at sunset, there is no sign of Jacob in the garden, and his calls echo through a deserted house. He places the mirabelle plums and some green exercise books he purchased in Holborn on the kitchen table. Then he goes off in search of Martha. He is accustomed to her hurrying out to welcome him. Now, as he strides from room to room, opening and closing doors, an old anxiety starts to creep over him. Martha normally avoids entering the long gallery, but he puts his head around the door to check all the same. From her carved and gilded frame, a dark-haired girl with eyes the color of smoke looks down at him; he blows her a kiss before retreating into the hall.

  “Martha!”

  Long ago he would return to an empty house, knowing that he and Jacob would soon be scouring the riverbanks and marshes for Martha. It was grief for her lost children that drove her there. Sometimes they would hear her calling out their names into the wind, children who had never set foot in Suffolk, and whom she would never again greet on this earth. Yet she was not mad. John Stone and Jacob came to understand that she was compelled to do this, over and over again, until her sorrow had run its course and she could permit herself to forget them. Each time John Stone would wonder if they would find her, facedown, floating in the river. But his fears proved groundless: Martha never wanted to die.

  It is in the breakfast room that he finds her, singing to herself as she makes up a bed for Spark. He loves the purity of her lilting voice; he stands on the threshold and listens. When Martha turns she jumps at the sight of him.

  “John! You gave me a fright! I didn’t expect you back so soon!”

  “It’s seven o’clock.”

  “Upon my life I thought it was half past five at the outside.”

  “This is a surprise. I thought you said one of the attic rooms would do for Spark—”

  “It’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind. She’ll be grand here.”

  John Stone looks around him, at the hand-blocked wallpaper, the Japanese prints, and the twin ormolu mirrors, tall as a man, that reflect the fountain. “It’s the most beautiful room in the house. Do I gather that now you know who she is, you’re feeling happier about entertaining our visitor?”

  Martha tucks in the flap of the linen pillowcase. “Of course I am. I’m curious to see how little Stella has turned out. She was a precious child. Is she still bonny? I bet she’s a beauty—but then, that would hardly be surprising.”

  “Well, you’ll see for yourself soon enough. When I told you who I thought she was, I thought it might—”

  “Turn me against her?”

  “Yes.”

  “No one gets to choose their parents. And her mother gave her to a stranger to raise, after all. So, did you find out for sure that Thérèse is her mother?”

  “I have her letter. Thérèse didn’t admit to being Spark’s mother—that would have been far too simple—although, in truth, the girl’s face is the only evidence you need. What she did say was that the father was a cook of some sort on the coast and that he had been of great service to her—”

  “I see. And this cook’s wife took little Stella in?”

  “Apparently.”

  “That was good of her. And does the child know who she is?”

  “No.”

  Martha, hugs the pillow to her for a moment. “Then, for the love of God, John, we should not be the ones to break it to her. It wouldn’t be right.”

  “And if Mrs. Park decides to say nothing?”

  “Would it not be kinder, in any case, to leave the girl in blessed ignorance? Let her be satisfied with the family she thinks she has. She can still be our Friend.”

  “If it were you,” says John Stone, “wouldn’t you prefer to know the truth about yourself?”

  “What you don’t know, you can’t grieve about.”

  A scraping sound in the hall announces Jacob’s arrival. Grunting a little, he maneuvers a heavy upholstered armchair across the threshold. Martha has asked him to fetch it from an upstairs study. John Stone steps forward to help him and they place the chair in front of the French windows.

  “John.” Jacob greets John Stone with a slight incline of the head. His expression is grim. “She’ll be trouble.”

  “Good evening, Jacob,” says John Stone pleasantly. “I see you’ve made a start on the hedges—”

  Jacob interrupts him. “It’s not too late to tell her to stay away.”

  “Actually, it is,” he replies.

  “She’ll be comfortable here,” says Martha, glaring pointedly at Jacob, who ignores her.

  “If you’d have told us it was Thérèse that put up the family in the cottage, we’d have driven the child away from the start.”

  John Stone sighs. “I wanted to spare you from unnecessary anxiety. What was I supposed to do? Evict an innocent family from their home? And, if you remember, I was away most of that summer, and when you told me about her visits I advised you to discourage her from coming—”

  “I didn’t invite her, John!”

  “I’m not blaming you, Martha.”

  “The sweet thing had the instinct of a homing pigeon. She kept coming back. Perhaps she sensed, child though she was, that there was a connection of sorts.”

  Jacob grips the back of the green velvet chair. “I thought you had more sense. It will turn out badly.”

&
nbsp; “It will turn out well!” John Stone almost shouts at him. “Do you truly think I would bring Spark here, to the home I have shared with you all these years, if she didn’t have my trust?”

  Jacob aims a large gob of spittle into his handkerchief and heads back toward the hall. “She doesn’t have mine.”

  John Stone shouts after him. “I would ask you to make her welcome! Don’t drive away a potential Friend!”

  When John Stone turns around he sees that Martha is staring at his left hand. He draws it quickly behind his back and squeezes the twitching fingers tightly in his good fist.

  “What’s the matter with your hand?”

  “It’s nothing. I’m tired.”

  “Will you not let me have a look at it?”

  “It’s nothing that a bite of supper won’t cure.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, John. You must be half-starved after your journey. I’ll set to right away.”

  “Martha—”

  “What is it, John?”

  “When Spark arrives, remember to protect yourself a little. You have such a warm heart. Will you do that for me?”

  All the happiness drains from Martha’s face. She nods briskly, walks out of the door, and doesn’t look back. John Stone listens to Martha’s offended retreat back to the kitchen. He has picked at the scab of her pain. Worse, he has implied—again—that he does not have confidence in her. She deserves better from him. And what if Jacob is proved right? What if, in trying to help the two of them, he is about to make a catastrophic error of judgement? You are tired, John Stone counsels himself. Eat. Rest. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.