‘God,’ he said in a low, shaken voice. ‘I’m sorry. I’m very sorry, but . . . look, it isn’t going to save your mother’s life if she sees Cathy, but it will ruin Cathy’s life. She has grown up believing herself to be my daughter, believing herself to be Eddie Ramsey’s granddaughter, and his heir. Now you’re going to take all that away from her.’
Sophie was icy cold now. Her knees were trembling; she sat down suddenly on the end of her bed.
He watched her stricken face, nodding. ‘You’re going to change the way she sees herself, her whole life, how she sees me and her mother, her grandfather, everything she has grown up believing to be her family, her history, her roots.’
Confusedly, Sophie muttered, ‘But they aren’t . . . she isn’t . . .’
‘But she believes they are! You’re going to take away her past and her future.’
Sophie looked at him dumbly.
He searched her face, his own tight, sombre, angry. ‘You stupid woman, you haven’t even thought about what havoc you’ll cause, have you? You’ll bring Cathy’s whole world crashing down. For a start, you don’t know Eddie Ramsey. He won’t leave his money to her once he knows she isn’t his flesh and blood.’
‘He need never know! Cathy could come and see my mother, just once, and Eddie Ramsey doesn’t have to be told anything about it.’
‘You talk so glibly about it all – if Cathy finds out how long will it be before she gives it away somehow? She’s a woman. Women can never keep secrets.’
‘You just don’t know women! They keep secrets all their life. Look at the way my mother kept your secret! Nearly thirty years!’
‘She should have taken it to the grave!’ he snapped, then realized what he had said, looked self-conscious and plunged on, ‘And then there’s her marriage – what will the truth do to that? How will her husband feel when he finds out that he is married to a totally different person to the woman he thought he’d married? He’s this classy Englishman, upper-class, rich, who thinks he married a girl from his own background, a girl with a huge fortune coming to her one day. He didn’t b
argain for waking up married to some nobody from nowhere with not a penny to her name.’
Sophie’s mind clouded with doubt. She wished she could deny what Gowrie was saying, throw it back into his teeth. She wanted to see her sister face-to-face so badly that she had convinced herself that Anya would feel the same, but what if Anya refused to believe her? In her position, would anyone want to believe a story that could destroy their entire life?
Don Gowrie came and sat down next to her on the bed, took both her hands. She stiffened, pulling her hands free. He wasn’t getting round her; she already knew he was a consummate politician, you couldn’t take anything he said or did at face value.
‘You’ve heard your mother’s version, it’s only fair you should hear mine now,’ he said quietly. ‘Just listen, please. It was 1968. I only arrived in Prague that summer. I was a young and ambitious diplomat, East Europe was my special interest and I was thrilled to be sent to Prague. It was an exciting city to be living in at that time. The students were always out in the streets, in the cafés, playing music, playing chess and talking politics, talking about freedom and justice and the right to determine your own fate. They made me think in a way I’d never thought before – made me realize how lucky I was, as an American, how many things I’d taken for granted. My country had never been invaded, held down, oppressed. Freedom was my birthright but I’d never even thought about it, I’d always taken it for granted, like the air I breathed. That year was a turning point in my life for many reasons.’ He paused, sighing, staring at the floor, his face grim.
Sophie waited, not liking to break into his thoughts, wondering what visions of the past he saw. Not pretty ones, from his expression.
‘It was a very hot August,’ he slowly began again. ‘Prague was crowded, the streets were cobbled, traffic made a hell of a racket on them, my wife was delicate, even then, and couldn’t stand the city heat, the noise and traffic. More and more she stayed indoors, homesick, miserable – it wasn’t good for her, or for our child.’
Sophie had heard her mother’s version of this – Mamma had said Mrs Gowrie was highly strung, a hysteric, her moods always changing, weeping or laughing for no reason. She had spent a lot of time lying down on a sofa or not even getting up in the mornings, spending days in bed at times.
Don Gowrie sighed, his face setting into weary lines. ‘I wanted to send her back to the States, and the child too, but she didn’t want to go alone. She wanted me to come with her, and of course I couldn’t, I had a job to do. So she wouldn’t go either. I should have insisted.’ He rubbed a hand across his eyes as if they were sore, and the rims were red as if he had been crying.
Sophie felt sorry for him; the charmer, the plausible politician had gone and in their place was a real man who was full of anger and pain.
‘But if I talked about it she just started to cry,’ he said. ‘And I was afraid to let her work herself into a crying jag, that always made her worse. I’d got into the habit of giving in to her; it made life easier. So I let her stay, but it seemed better for her to be out of the city, so I looked around for a house somewhere in the country. I knew a scientist who was working in Prague at the university. He offered me his cottage in your village, Kysella. It was a small place: a couple of bedrooms, a sitting-room, a kitchen, but it had a bathroom, and there was a delightful garden; I remember a hedge of honeysuckle, the scent was overpowering on hot nights . . . and roses, old-fashioned roses, big red and pink ones, with an incredible perfume.’
His face was dreamy. Watching him, Sophie said quietly, ‘It isn’t there any more. My mother told me it was pulled down in the Seventies when they built a new road.’
He came out of his memories and grimaced. ‘Really? That’s progress for you. They tear your life up behind you as you live it. You never have time to visit your own past these days – it has usually gone when you go back there. I remember that house so well. It was a mistake for me to rent it, though. My wife wasn’t strong enough to run the house herself, or even take care of our little girl – we had brought a nanny with us from the States but she got homesick after a few weeks. She gave notice and went home. We asked the village priest to recommend someone to help out, and he suggested your mother because she was the only woman in the village who spoke any English.’
‘Yes, she learnt it from my father’s books – he was a linguist, you know, he could speak half a dozen languages.’
‘I never met him, but I remember my wife said your mother talked about him all the time.’
Her mother had desperately wanted to keep up with him, feeling that in going away to university he was leaving her far behind. When he’d had his degree he would have been able to start a good career, earn a lot of money, so she put up with their separations for months on end, but she was conscious of the gap between them and wanted to bridge it.
Pavel Narodni had been clever and ambitious, a young man with a brilliant mind. He had had a wonderful future ahead of him, and his wife had wanted to fit herself to share it.
Lucky we can’t see the future, Sophie thought; at least she had a few happy years, without any premonitions of his death during those awful days when the Russians invaded. She loved him so much – she never felt that way about Franz, I’d stake my life on it. She was fond of him, yes, but she wasn’t passionately in love, the way she was with my father. Even now, when she speaks about Papa, her eyes glow.
‘My wife couldn’t speak Czech although she had a little German,’ said Don Gowrie. ‘Of course, German was the second language to most people in your part of the country. I spoke Czech but I was rarely there. I didn’t know your mother too well; I interviewed her when she first started work for us and I saw her briefly whenever I came down to Kysella, but when I was there she kept out of the way most of the time to give me time alone with my wife and our child.’
‘Mamma says your little girl loved to play with Anya,’ Sophie volunteered.