Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [181]
Once in the parlour, the two women could only hug each other and cry for some minutes. Then they began to laugh hysterically through their tears. Everything was jumbled, half questions only half answered, a nonsensical struggle to bridge the gap of nine years.
Mr Castel had explained to Dolly some of what had happened to Mary, but his version, which had come from newspapers, wasn’t accurate. Although Mary tried to give her sister the truth of it, Dolly was clearly too shocked and bewildered to take it all in.
‘I look so much older than you now,’ Mary said at one point, gazing at her sister with pride.
They had always been alike in as much as they both had dark curly hair like their mother’s and the same sturdy build, and were a little taller than most other girls in the village. But Dolly’s eyes were blue, not grey like Mary’s, and then of course there was Dolly’s more pronounced upturned nose.
The differences were in their characters. Dolly had always been the meek, practical, obedient one. For as far back as Mary could remember, she had always looked neat and tidy, her hair braided tightly back off her face, her pinafore spotless. She skirted round mud, avoided brambles, and would sit quietly on the doorstep watching as Mary played rough games with boys and tore and muddied her clothes.
Dolly was still dressed in a sober and neat manner, as befitted her position as a lady’s maid. Her blue pin-tucked dress had a high neck with tiny pearl buttons and she wore well-polished black button boots and a small straw hat with just a plain blue ribbon round it. Mary knew her to be thirty, but she looked closer to twenty, her complexion clear and unlined.
‘I haven’t had the hard times like you,’ Dolly said, her eyes awash with tears. ‘You are so thin, Mary, I remembered your face being plump and bonny.’
With Mr Castel and Mrs Wilkes looking on, it was impossible for the sisters to talk frankly. Dolly started to ask about the two children, but stopped half-way through. Likewise, Mary wanted to ask so much about her mother and father, and whether Dolly had a sweetheart, but she couldn’t in front of Mrs Wilkes and Castel.
Then, in the midst of it, Boswell came back.
Mrs Wilkes opened the door to him, and Mary heard her telling him that Dolly was already here. ‘Oh, it’s wonderful,’ she gushed. ‘They’ve been crying and laughing fit to bust.’
Boswell looked petulant when he came into the room. He had asked Castel this morning to let him arrange the meeting between Mary and Dolly. An hour ago he had gone to Bedford Square to see Dolly, only to find that Castel had already been there, and had brought the young woman here. But faced with Mary’s joy, he recovered his natural good humour and apologized to Castel for doubting him. He then turned his considerable charm on Dolly, flattering her with compliments and saying that if he had appeared obstructive it was only because he had to protect Mary.
Mrs Wilkes opened a bottle of port wine to celebrate, and suggested that maybe it would be wise for the two men to leave Mary and Dolly to talk.
‘But I promised Mrs Morgan I would escort Dolly home,’ Castel said quickly, and from the adoring way he looked at her, it was obvious to everyone that he was sweet on her.
‘I can’t stay much longer anyway, I’m afraid,’ Dolly said, turning to Mary. ‘Mrs Morgan expects me home by half past nine. But I can spend my day off on Wednesday with you.’
‘Well, perhaps, Dolly, before you have to go, you’d like to tell Mary about the inheritance from your uncle?’ Boswell suggested. ‘It’s impertinent of me to ask, but I think it’s something Mary would like cleared up.’
‘It’s quite true,’ Dolly said, clutching at Mary’s hand as if afraid that if she let go her younger sister would disappear again. ‘Uncle Peter did leave all his money to Father. A considerable sum too. Father got Ned to write to me, explaining it all and urging me to come home as there was no longer a need for me to work.’
‘So why