The Soldier's Dark Secret

Celeste’s hackles rose. ‘I am curious, that’s all,’ she said. Even to her, this sounded like far too much of an understatement. ‘Well, would not you be?’ She crossed her arms. ‘You said yourself only yesterday, people—the ones who are left behind—desire answers. Even when we are advised from beyond the grave not to pursue them. Do not tell me that you would have folded the letter up and forgotten all about it as my mother bids me, Jack Trestain, because I would not believe you.’

‘No, I wouldn’t do that, but neither would I be sitting here pretending that it was merely a matter of satisfying my curiosity either. For God’s sake, Celeste, it’s your mother we’re talking about, not a distant aunt,’ Jack exclaimed. ‘She drowned herself. She made sure that this letter wouldn’t reach you until she was dead. She then alludes to some tragedy in her past being the reason, and caps it all with the revelation that the man you thought all your life was your father is not actually your father, and fails to inform you of the identity of the man who is.”

Jack held the letter out at arm’s length. ‘“Though I write this with the heaviest of hearts,”’ he read, ‘“knowing that I will never see you again, I am thankful that at least this time I have the opportunity to say goodbye.” Your mother’s opening words. What about the fact that she denied you the opportunity to say goodbye to her? Aren’t you upset about that?’

Celeste didn’t want him to be angry on her behalf. If anyone was entitled to be angry with her mother it was she, and she was not. In order to be angry she would need to care, and she did not. She didn’t want Jack to care either. She wanted him to treat this as an intellectual exercise, devoid of emotion. Like breaking a code. ‘You said yourself, she was most likely not in a rational frame of mind. At the end of her tether. Perhaps even a little bit out of her mind. There is no point in my becoming upset. It achieves nothing. Besides, I’ve told you, we were not remotely close.’

‘And if you say that it doesn’t trouble you often enough, you think I’ll eventually believe you.’

Celeste flinched. ‘I don’t care what you believe. Next, you will be telling me that my mother loved me despite a lifetime’s evidence to the contrary.’

‘That is exactly what she claims in her letter.’

‘Yes, from beyond the grave, safe from any challenge to the contrary. How am I to believe it when I have nothing, no evidence at all, to support it? All my life—all my life, Jack!—she pushed me away. And now this. I don’t believe her. How can I believe her? Of course I don’t believe her. C’est impossible!’

Celeste jumped to her feet, turning her back on him to stare out at the long, bland stretch of lawn, struggling desperately to get her unaccustomed flash of temper under control. ‘You have to understand,’ she continued in a more measured tone, ‘it was similar when I was growing up. Always, my mother managed to find a way of refusing to answer questions. Why have I no aunts or uncles? Why must we never speak English except when alone? Why have I no grandparents or even a cousin, as all the other children at school have? Why are you so sad, Maman? Why does Papa hate me? At least now I have the answer to that last question. Papa was not, in fact, my papa at all.’

Tears filled her eyes. Celeste swallowed hard on the jagged lump in her throat, staring determinedly out at the lawn. ‘I have endured a lifetime of silences and rejection, so really that letter was in essence one final example. Don’t tell me that she loved me, Jack. I know what she wrote, I don’t have to read that letter again to see the words dance in front of my eyes, but that’s all they are. Just words.’

‘If it doesn’t matter, if it truly doesn’t matter, then why then are you so intent on digging up the past?’ Jack put his hands on her shoulders, forcing her to turn and face him. ‘You do realise that what you discover might be hurtful.’

‘Not to me. My hurt is all in the past. All I am doing is filling in the blanks, the missing pieces of my mother’s history. I want to understand why she behaved as she did. I want to know who my real father is. I think I am entitled to know that, but I do not want to meet him, or indeed my mother’s family. I’m not expecting anyone to kill the fatted calf and welcome me into their home. I am aware that I am most likely a bastard. Knowing is sufficient for me.’

‘Your mother’s history is your history too, Celeste. You might be better off not knowing it. Sometimes it’s better to leave the past behind you.’

‘Or bury it so deeply that you can pretend it never happened, that it can no longer harm you?’ She pulled herself free of his hold. ‘But what if the ghosts refuse to stay buried, Jack? What if they continue to haunt you?’