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Chapter 10

Chapter 10

After this feast Daphne declared that she must either prostrate herself for two hours to digest it all or they must go for a brisk walk in the snow on Highbury Fields to blow the cobwebs away. Kathleen naturally chose the brisk constitutional, though she sneered that London snow was rather dirty compared with what they had in New England.

Just before they left the house, Kathleen, as if it were the merest afterthought, said, "Oh, there was just one thing. You remember that album of old photographs I borrowed from you - years ago?"

"Oh, yes, dear," Daphne replied in her fluttery tone. "Could I just have another quick peep in it,

please?"

"Now? Can't it wait? We're all dressed to go out." "Just a quick peep? Dear Aunt Daphne? Please? I'll forget it if I don't."

"Oh, very well!" With impatient grace, yet intrigued

at the girl's earnestness, she went off to fetch it. Kathleen turned directly to the photograph of Jenny Bright- and saw at once that her memory had not played tricks with her. The resemblance between Jenny, twenty-five-odd years ago, and Teresa today was uncanny. "What's the fascination of that old photograph?" Daphne asked, watching her closely. "Just the way Papa's looking at her."

"At whom?"

"Jenny Bright."

"Ah!" Daphne clasped hands in an apparent rapture. "That was her name! I've so often tried to remember it. Jenny Bright of course! But how clever of you to know it! Come on, let's go out. You've seen it now, and I'm starting to roast in these furs. They went out into the crisp, sulphur-laden air. A gang of schoolboys who were

snowballs at a party of superior schoolgirls paused in

fretful respect for them to pass by. "That's not a very chivalrous thing to do," Daphne told them. "They started it, missis." One of the boys showed her his satchel, which bore the marks of several impacted snowballs. Tut tut! And you fell for it!" she replied. "When I

was a little girl, young men your age were much too

clever to fall for tricks like that." Dubiously they weighed their new-minted snow balls against their burgeoning dignity and decided she was right. They pelted a dog, instead, which dodged them nimbly, looked deeply hurt, then followed them, hopefully panting for more.

Watching them go, Daphne murmured, "Give me the right fulcrum and I'll move the world, said ... someone or other. Aristotle."

"Archimedes," Kathleen told her.

"It works with men, too," she said delicately, ignoring the correction. "A useful little fact for any woman to know."

"Can you tell me about Jenny Bright?" Kathleen asked as they stepped into the Fields, where patches of snow were still virgin. "Is there some family secret about her?"

"How d'you know her name at all?" Daphne

countered.

Kathleen shrugged. "I've just heard it mentioned from time to time."

Daphne laughed. "I'll believe anything but that." "Oh all right!" She owned up at last to having lifted the photograph so as to peek at the name on the back. "And you knew I did, too," she accused, "because you saw it was straight when I returned it."

"Honesty is like traffic, dear. It flows in both directions." Kathleen sighed and promised to try and remember

that. "Anyway?" she prompted impatiently.

"D'you need me to tell you that your father was once rather sweet on her? I should have thought the photograph made that clear."

"How did they meet? It sounds so romantic."

"He sailed as cabin boy on her father's ship, the Hiawatha, I think she was called. They traded between Tilbury and the Baltic. Actually, he was a bit more than cabin boy certainly by the time he finished. - He got his papers under old Billy Bright on that vessel. A three-masted schooner, she was. A beautiful vessel."

"And what happened to her - Jenny, I mean?" "She went down on the Goodwins. There was a terrible storm one night - eighteen-sixty, if I recall." "Good heavens! I never heard of that. Was Papa

there, too?"

"No, he had measles or something - one of those diseases it's rather nasty to get when you're grown up. Mumps? I really don't recall. Perhaps it was 'sixty one or two. My memory isn't what it was. But she certainly drowned. Went down with all hands."

"Poor Papa!" She paused and ran her eye over the long terrace of elegant houses that made up the Crescent, all cream and ochre and silvery grey in the watery afternoon sun. The scene could have changed little over the past quarter of a century. Perhaps he had stood here, too, after that fateful storm, grieving his heart out for poor lost Jenny - and vowing that, come what may, he would shelter and look after her

child. Their child. "Did you know them very well?" she asked. "The Brights? Did she always sail with him?"

"From the time her mother died. She'd have been sixteen or seventeen then. She sailed as ship's cook. On coasters the hands bring their own grub and take turns in the galley. But on tramps the master is responsible for their vittles and for providing a cook."

And did she always sail with them? I mean, was there ever a period when she didn't? A few months, perhaps?"

Daphne halted and grasped her by the shoulder. "D'you mind telling me the point of all these questions, dear? You've obviously learned something about her and you're trying to see if it fits. Why not just tell me?"

When it came to the point Kathleen found she simply couldn't. She pretended that Neil had been told the yarn by an old shipmate and he had passed the story on to her during his last spell ashore. "According to this old salt, you see, Jenny had a daughter. And ... gracious!" She rolled her eyes and swallowed hard. "It's jolly awkward. Could the baby possibly have been you know?"

Daphne sank into thought, delicately caressing her lower lip with a lavender-gloved finger. "What a question, Kathleen, dear!" she said at last. "I know." The girl made a hang-dog face.