The Secret Book of Flora Lea: a Novel, page 31
“I want you,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Do you want me enough? Maybe that is the better question.”
Hazel wanted to be careful here; to tread lightly on shifting sand. “What’s enough? I don’t know, do you?”
Tears were in his eyes. “Maybe you were never really free of who you loved before me, Hazel.”
“Free?” she asked. “There are boxes and bags piled for three years now in your flat. Boxes and bags that belong to your ex-wife.”
“I can’t get rid of them until she comes to get them.” His teeth clenched and unclenched, a quiver at his jawline.
“Can’t or won’t?” she asked, and folded the napkin into a neat square.
He had no answer.
“Free, Barnaby? I don’t know if we’re free or caught in the past, but what I do know is what must be done right now. I must call Aiden Davies and tell him about Imogene Wright. I want to accompany him to her house. I won’t give him an option. As for Dot, maybe she won’t want to have anything to do with us. Maybe she will hate us for ruining the life she has now. But I have to follow this to its end.” She paused. “Will you be here when I get back?”
“No, love. I won’t.” He stood and the shake in his voice had Hazel feeling unsteady. “You must come to me, Hazel. If you want us, come to me. You have a choice to make.”
She faced him, feeling the urge to beg him to stay. But he turned away and walked off. She watched his backside, his dark shirt pressed against his shoulder blades, until he rounded the hallway’s end. The front door opened and closed with a bang.
Maybe she should run after him, call after him, chase him down.
But instead, Hazel lifted the phone, dialing Aiden’s number at the Thames Valley Police Station.
CHAPTER 51
March 20, 1960
“I wish you hadn’t come, Hazel. This isn’t safe,” Aiden Davies said. “I have no idea what this Imogene Mulroney is capable of.”
It was a cold day, as if spring were hesitant to arrive in Henley-on-Thames just yet. Hazel stood next to Aiden at the low white-picket gate where she’d been waiting for him. He would never have allowed her to come, so she’d arrived on her own before him. He wanted her to stay outside as he knocked on the door. That was not happening.
Hazel pulled her green wool scarf closer, burrowed her chin into its warmth. “Aiden, it might not be safe, but this is mine. I have lived this horror story for twenty years, and you won’t keep me from this ending.”
Aiden lifted his police cap and rubbed his head in that familiar motion before placing the hat on and nodding. Together they headed to the front door of a cream-colored stucco house with a thatch roof that curved around the front windows. There was no light in the windows or smoke from the chimney, as if the house were deserted. The door was painted bright green and after a quick knock, Dot Bellamy answered.
“Hello, Chief Inspector Davies,” she said. She smiled a sad smile at Hazel before looking back to Aiden. “My aunt isn’t here.”
“Where is she, Dot?” he asked.
Dot grabbed a fleece-lined coat from the wall pegs by the door and slid her arms in lethargically, buttoning it in what seemed to be slow motion, as if she were just waking. From inside, the sound of at least three dogs barked in symphony. A calico cat tried to sneak out past Dot’s legs and she shooed it inside. She walked onto the stoop and shut the door behind her. Her dusty brown shoes and loose hair tangled, she looked more the mum of a young boy than the sharp professional she’d been just yesterday. Her voice sounded exhausted. “She went to tell her daughter, Iris, just up the road. She says she will be home soon.”
“Tell her?” Aiden asked.
“She told me that when Hazel arrived at her door last week, she understood her days were numbered. She’s ready to face the consequences, and yet she wants to explain it all to her daughter.”
“Where does her Iris live?” Aiden moved away, as if to run to a place that he didn’t yet know.
“Please don’t,” Dot said, her voice choked. “There is no need to go and embarrass her.”
Aiden shook his head. “I will give her a quarter hour and then I will go to her daughter’s house.”
Dot nodded, stoic. “Yes. Would you like to come in?”
Aiden and Hazel shook their heads and Aiden answered. “We will wait out here. Fifteen minutes. That is all.”
“May I join you?” Dot asked. “May I sit with you?”
“Please do,” Hazel said, watching the woman for the child within, looking for her sister. On a concrete bench in the backyard of Imogene Mulroney’s house they sat next to each other, their heads bent together.
“How was your night?” Hazel asked. “I know this must be difficult.”
Dot smiled sadly. “I’m confused. You have to understand, Hazel, I am seeing what they did to me, but they are also my family, ones I have loved dearly for what I thought was my whole life. I cannot just turn away, or walk away. I don’t know how.”
“I’m not asking… we aren’t asking for any of that.”
Dot leaned closer to Hazel. “My sister,” she said. “I am remembering you. And yet Aunt Imogene will find herself arrested and in…” She turned away. “I can’t bear to think of it.”
Hazel sat quietly, sensing that Dot had more to say and not wanting to step on her words.
“You know,” Dot said. “So many people I have interviewed barely remember their time as evacuees. They block it out. I’ve interviewed hundreds of them; some have even tried hypnotherapy. I was lucky. I lived in a small village outside Newcastle, called Wallsend, a place they sent children away to, not from. I can’t imagine if they’d sent me away from my family.”
Hazel held her breath, waiting for Dot to realize what she’d just said, and how very wrong it was.
It happened.
Dot took a sharp breath and her hand went to her mouth. “Oh, God. I was sent away. I’m the one who can’t remember. Oh…”
Hazel nodded. “I know you can’t remember, but I promise you will.”
Dot’s body seemed to freeze as she stared straight ahead, her breathing shallow. The minutes ticked by, closing the quarter hour until Aiden returned and bellowed, “Where is Iris’s house?”
Hazel looked up and rattled off the address she had from the day she’d come here with Harry. Aiden headed over there, two streets away, as Dot and Hazel waited. Dot finally stood and looked down to Hazel. “The children who were sent away, they were forever changed. I’ve talked to them. I’ve listened to them. Some believe they completely lost their childhood. Others were so happy that they didn’t even want to return home. Some couldn’t wait to be reunited with their families. But no matter what, no matter the good or the bad, it altered them forever. The experience reshaped their life. How, my God, how could I have listened to all of them and not known I was one of them?”
“I don’t know, Dot. But we’ll find out.”
Dot shook her head and paced the garden as Hazel’s suspicion grew: Imogene was gone.
Then Aiden burst through the gate, his face red and mottled. “She is gone. Iris was inconsolable. Where the hell did your aunt go? Tell me now, Dot.”
Dot let out a cry. “Oh no, no.” She looked up. “I have no idea. I swear it. I truly thought she just wanted to tell her daughter the truth.” Dot stood and faced Aiden. “I am not lying.”
“You gave her time to get away?” Aiden’s voice was angry and tight, his teeth clenched, forcing out the words.
“No. I didn’t know. Until right now as the minutes ticked by, I didn’t know she might run.”
Hazel stood and Dot looked between Hazel and Aiden, her face fighting rising emotions. “What Aunt Imogene did was awful. Horrific. But we don’t know the reasons yet. I had a birth certificate. I am Dorothy May Bellamy.”
“I will find her,” Aiden said. “She cannot just disappear.”
Dot smiled at Aiden, so sad. “I did. I disappeared.”
Then a voice behind them, rising in high-pitched anger: “Oh, look who it is, the ever-gallant bobby of Binsey who couldn’t find a rabbit in a rabbit hole.”
They all turned to see Imogene walking around the house to the back garden. Dot rushed to Imogene, hugged her. “Auntie! You’re not gone. Thank God.”
“No, I am not gone.” She smiled at Dot and patted her arm, but Imogene’s face hardened when she looked at Hazel. “I would never leave you like this one left you.”
“Excuse me?” Hazel stepped forward, heat filling her face. Aiden caught her by the arm.
“Let her talk,” he said in a low voice so only Hazel heard him.
Hazel knew what he meant—let her dig a hole of her own tellings. Let her anger and self-justified rage explode and possibly some of the truth with it.
“Mrs. Mulroney,” Aiden said, his hand on his leather belt where handcuffs dangled off the left side, glinting silver in the sunlight. “We know you took the child known as Flora Lea Linden, who is now Dorothy May Bellamy.”
“Took her? I saved her. I bloody well saved her. She would be dead but for me,” Imogene shouted.
The woman Hazel had thought so sweet, the one at her daughter and grandson’s table over tea and biscuits, angelic in her love, was now fierce and rage-filled. Her cream wool coat was open and yet she seemed to feel nothing of the cold. Her face was contorted.
“Saved her?” Aiden asked as he unclipped the handcuffs.
“You!” Imogene said, and pointed at Hazel. “Your mother was the one who let her beautiful and perfect child go to the country without her. Who gives away their child like that? Who just sends their children off on a train to live with strangers in a town they don’t even know?”
“A mum trying to protect and save her children from war and bombs,” Hazel said, her hands clenched in fists. This woman seemed mad as a cow, her eyes now rolling between Hazel and Dot.
“Auntie,” Dot said. “What happened? Tell them what happened so they know you did nothing wrong.”
“There you were, darling girl, only six years old.” Imogene reached for Dot’s hand, held it, and pressed it to her cheek. “Six years old and alone on a blanket by a raging river while this one”—she wagged her finger at Hazel—“she ran off into the woods with that boy to do God knows what at such a young age.” She shuddered. “And left you alone.” The woman dropped Dot’s hands. “Then your teddy bear fell, that dirty thing they let you carry around.”
“Berry,” Dot said.
“You dropped it at the river’s edge and bent over to get it and there you went, tail over tea kettle into that river. Into the water. You went under, my darling. You went under the water, only your blond curls bouncing above. I ran after you. I jumped into that freezing water, grabbed you, and then yes, I took you to Newcastle. I saved you.”
“Then how was I Mother’s child?”
“My sister, Claire, my poor and beautiful sister, had lost her child your age to consumption, and God gave you to us to replace her. Your name—Dorothy—it means gift from God.”
A monstrous and unruly scream grew inside Hazel, and she let it out. “You used my sister to replace a dead child? You gave Flora to your sister like some consolation prize for her own dead daughter? Are you mad?”
“No, I am perfectly sane and I understood what God required of me. Do you? Do you know what God requires of you?” Imogene stepped forward and spat on the ground at Hazel’s feet. “I very much doubt it.”
Rage burned in Hazel’s chest. She nearly reached forward to grab Imogene, to shake her for the pain and the loss and the lies.
“So you see,” Imogene said. “I saved her, not stole her. She would have drowned if not for me.” She gazed with such adoration at Dot that Hazel momentarily felt sorry for her. “You see, my Dot, you are the one good and saved thing. You.”
“But then you took her,” Hazel said. She needed to keep this woman talking, confessing, blathering in madness.
“Yes, I took her. You people who leave children and lose husbands were not to be trusted. You people who didn’t worship at the parish but instead had your own ceremonies and didn’t even attend school, I saved her from you all.”
“Auntie,” Dot said. “Thank you for saving my life. Thank you. But still and yet you should have told the police.”
“The police? Are you serious? The inept Aiden Davies of our hamlet?” She shot him a cruel glance. “You, my darling, if not for you, I would not have been able to stand all the lives I lost, all the boys I could not rescue.”
Aiden stepped up and unclipped the handcuffs, but Imogene was focused on Hazel.
Hazel couldn’t keep quiet here—the nightmare night of Flora’s loss coming back in dark images. “How did you hide her?” Hazel asked. “We searched and searched.”
“You are all sods. She was in the church, with me.”
“No,” Hazel said. “That’s not right. I went there. You’re still lying.”
“I don’t lie,” Imogene said.
“You don’t lie? What the bloody hell? You kidnap but not lie? Absurd. And how did the other nurses not know?” Hazel asked.
Aiden spoke now, the handcuffs dangling in his hand. “We interviewed all of you. Flora was not there.”
Dot said, “You hid me in a church?” She shivered, gazed off as if trying to find an image of such a thing, a memory that might be lurking near.
Imogene rubbed Dot’s shoulder. “Oh, Dot, Dot, you weren’t in that place long at all, darling. Not long at all. Just enough time for me to pack. I just wanted you safe until I was ready to take you to Newcastle, to your mother.”
“I want to understand, Auntie. You saved me from the river, you then hid me in a church, and then you took me to Newcastle to replace a dead child of my mother’s? I became that child? Am I hearing all of this correctly?”
“You make it sound awful when it was beautiful, Dot. Beautiful.” She touched Dot’s face again. “Think of your life and your parents and your family, of who you have become because of me. Of your brothers and aunts and uncles.”
Aiden said, “Where is your mother now, Dot?”
“She passed of breast cancer three years ago.” Dot looked to Aiden. “Pa years before that, even. They took this lie to the grave with them?” Dot shook her head. “What kind of insanity is this?”
“Yes.” Imogene’s face was deranged now as if it were crumbling, crust falling off. “You were my sister’s gift for enduring suffering for good. You were and are our treasure found in hardship.” She gazed to the sky. “Our beauty for ashes.”
Aiden watched quietly but Hazel couldn’t hold back. “She was not a gift; she was your… plunder. You believed her to be treasure? She belonged with her mum and sister. With me.” Hazel bent over, placed her hands on her knees to catch her breath.
Imogene snorted. “Oh, that is where you are wrong. She always belonged with us. Look at the life we gave her.”
It hit Hazel then, a fist to the chest. It hadn’t been an owl or even her own imagination she’d heard crying in the night as she’d shivered in fever and wept at the church altar and vowed to never again see Harry or ever write another story. She’d heard Flora’s cries. So close. Flora had been right there, only feet away.
“I heard you,” Hazel said, energy rushing through her. “I was there. I thought it was an owl or my own cries, but I heard you. I went to the church in the middle of the night. I made a vow to find you. Oh, I could have saved you. I was… there.”
Imogene laughed, crude and rough. “Now get out of my garden. Get off my land and leave us alone.”
With that, Aiden was fast at Imogene’s side, the handcuffs in his hand loose and chiming in the wind. “I have been waiting a long time to say this,” Aiden said. “Imogene Mulroney, you are under arrest for the kidnapping of Flora Lea Linden on October 19, 1940. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something that you later rely on in court. Anything you do or say may be given in evidence.”
“You’re arresting the wrong person,” Imogene screamed. “My niece would be dead but for me.” She backed away, tripped, righted herself, and then ran toward her back door.
Aiden caught her in three strides and roughly took her hands behind her back and clicked on the handcuffs. Hazel watched in horror, a sliding sensation coming over her as if she were the one falling into the river.
Dot and Hazel watched Aiden Davies drag off Imogene. They heard the slam of the police car door and the siren as they took off.
Dot collapsed to the bench. “I couldn’t have left well enough alone. She begged me not to write these stories. She told me they would dredge up old wounds. I didn’t listen.”
Hazel sat next to her sister and felt the child within Dot retreating, hiding behind the false stories that Imogene had spewed into the morning air. Hazel felt six-year-old Flora cowering beneath Imogene’s lies so that Dot wouldn’t know or become who she once was.
“I am so sorry,” Hazel said. “This was terrible for you to watch. I know you love her, but you need to know that what she said about me, about Bridie and Harry and Mum—none of that is true. No one deserted you; no one was evil; no one abandoned you. You were—you are—deeply loved.”
“I don’t know what to believe,” Dot said, sitting straighter now, brushing her hair from her face and biting her lower lip. “Why would she take me if she wasn’t helping me?”
“Grief is a terrible gnawing passion that makes us do things we wouldn’t do otherwise. She’s obviously convinced herself that she’d done something true and right, when in fact…”
Dot held up her hand to interrupt Hazel. “Did you leave me alone?”
Hazel hesitated but she would not pile lies upon lies for she would collapse under the weight of them. “Yes,” Hazel said. “We did. We left you alone.”
“We?”
“Harry and I. The boy I told you about yesterday, the one who lived with us. We left you alone for a few minutes. You were asleep.”
