“Ah, Mrs. Denham,” I said; “that’s because it’s not really a barn; it just looks like one. Everything inside here belongs to you now, baby, I just want you to know that before we go in, do you agree?”
Her eyes narrowed.
“You know I never agree to anything without knowing what it is first, so quit screwing around, Davey; just show me what’s in there or let’s go back to the house; I need to eat, soon, so get a move on!”
Grinning at her forthrightness, I slid the door open, and Lori gasped at the sight; there, in silent, gleaming splendour, was my father’s car collection, cars I remember him and Charlie tinkering with, revving-up, and occasionally disappearing for hours on end in. I ran my hand over my favourite; my great-grandfather’s green Bentley Speed Six, bought new by the old boy in 1933. Next to it was mother’s British Racing Green 1951 Jaguar XK120 C-type, a wedding present from my grandfather, always kept gleaming, but never driven by her; instead, she drove the low-slung shiny yellow Triumph Stag parked next to it, still looking for all the world like it was in the pits at Le Mans or ready to take a stab at the Nurburgring. My father’s everyday car, a white 1973 Jensen Interceptor was parked next to that, and over in the corner one of my father’s favourite cars; his British Racing Green 1972 Morgan 4/4 Tourer, still looking new and ready to roll; he and Charlie used to spend all day in or under that car, then disappear in it to a pub somewhere and talk about it. Another of their projects, a half-completed restoration of a 1960’s Lister-Jaguar racer was sitting on stands, all the parts and body panels piled in a pair of trailers next to it. Parked a little way from it was Charlie’s own favourite; a red 1959 Austin Healey Frogeye Sprite with the detachable hard-top that I remember he and father zooming around the country lanes in wearing their RAF leather flying jackets and looking very dashing. Lori was taken by the red 1963 Mini Cooper S with the white roof standing by itself, running her hand over the gleaming paintwork.
“It’s so cute, Davey, what is it?” she smiled.
“We think that’s a Monte Carlo team car,” I replid, “you can just see the fade-marks in the paintwork over the radiator grille where the Monte Carlo 1964 crown decal was. I don’t know if Paddy Hopkirk actually drove it, but the other two that won Monte Carlo in 1964 are at the Heritage museum in Gaydon; this is probably one of the reserve cars, that’s why there’s no number on it, just white panes; father found it in a barn, I think.
Lori was lost in wonder, looking at all that classic street steel, and I led her round to the two motorcycles parked side by side off in one corner. She looked at me quizzically as I sat astride one of the bikes, a classic Norton Commando ‘Interpol’ model, my father’s machine, and patted the saddle of the other bike, a much more glamorous machine in gleaming red and pearlescent ivory metallic paint and a profusion of chromed and stainless steel. Lori looked strangely at me but sat sideways on the saddle, her hand on the tank.
“Davey, were these your father’s as well?” she asked, and I smiled to see her perched so awkwardly on that bike saddle, the bike I’d wanted so much when I was a boy.
“This was my father’s bike,” I replied, patting the tank. “That one you’re sitting on, that’s a 1979 Harley Davidson FLH Shovelhead. It was Charlie’s bike, his ‘hog’ he used to call it, and it always made me laugh to hear something so beautiful called a hog; I know now why, but then it just seemed wrong to call it such an odd name. I wanted that bike so much when I was a little boy, and he always promised me that one day he’d get me one. After father died, he put it away in the old barn and never rode it again.”
Lori traced the shape of the tank, the sweep of the bars, the bright slick chromed binnacle down the centre line of the bulbous tank with the tips of her fingers, her lips moving silently as she saw things I couldn’t see, talking to someone I couldn’t hear, but she clearly could; the bike was talking to her, telling her about her father, about the man I’d loved as a father too, and still missed every single day.
“This was daddy’s bike?” she murmured, and I nodded, not wanting to speak and break the spell. She smiled as a single tear ran down her cheek and splashed on the tank, where she wiped it off with her jacket cuff, her eyes still unfocussed and far away, still seeing something I couldn’t. Her head lifted and she smiled brightly at me, holding out her hand for me to help her up. As I did, she hugged me tightly.
“Thank you Davey!” she whispered, “Now I can truly say goodbye to them both at last! Thank you for bringing me here to see where she came from, and for letting me see this, and for keeping it so well for him!”
My heart was overflowing with love for my beautiful sister.
“Baby-girl, I know he was your father, but he was my dad too, just when I needed one most; he knew I’d come back here one day, and so he left me this part of himself to have when he was no longer around. You don’t have to thank me; I should be thanking you; for saying yes, for having my baby, and for coming home with me; now you’re here, you can have this gift from him as well; it’s big enough to share, you know! Everything else here are just toys my father left behind; nothing here really means anything to me, none of them except that red motorcycle; that was something from Charlie, my dad, a message to say he’d always be around when I needed him. And now it’s a message to you, too, that he’s still here, sitting there when we need him.”
Lori turned to look back at the motorcycle, her hand once more tracing along the polished handlebar, before patting the tank once, then turning to me and smiling.
“You’re right, Davey, it is a message; I can feel him when I touch that bike, I can put my hands where he put his; as long as that bike’s around, he’s around. That’s good. And now, let’s go find something to eat, I really am famished, and so is poor Jimmy, by the look on his face!”
I locked the barn again and we strolled over to the house, to find Jimmy and Rosie waiting for us looking slightly less ill at ease and more relaxed. Lori announced that it was time we had something to eat, she was starving, and I was paying. Rosie mentioned that the local pub, The White Hart, did fairly good pub food, and offered to accompany us, with a shy look at Jimmy, who immediately took the hint, so we all piled into the car and Rosie directed us to the pub in question.
The food was good and filling, Lori in particular discovering she absolutely loved Shepherd’s Pie. Rosie asked us to detour over to her home, as she knew her mother would want to see us. I was more than happy to comply; my Aunt Sybil was a happy memory for me; tall and dark blonde, with golden-brown eyes, a captivating smile, and never too busy to sit and play with me, or show me how to draw a cat, or a donkey, or a wizard; she was an illustrator of children’s books, and there was a collection of her watercolours on the wall in the small library, a present to me when I was born.
Aunt Sybil was just as I remembered her; same hair, same smile, same eyes; I remembered her as being so much taller, but then, I suppose, from the perspective of a five-year old, everyone is impossibly tall. I was surprised to discover how much I’d missed her, this lady who was so much a part of my childhood, a lump in my throat when I greeted her for the first time in over 20 years. She seemed to be feeling the same way, and so we just looked at each other while memories crowded and hustled together. After an eternity, Sybil turned to greet Lori warmly, noting how much she looked like my mother, saying how I must have searched far and wide to find a girl who looked so like her, and Sophie, of course…
It took all my willpower to not flush guiltily as my aunt compared Lori to mother and Aunt Sophie, although I did get one or two penetrating glances and slightly raised eyebrows from her. After a while I noticed Jimmy was missing, so I excused myself and went out to look for him, finding him sitting in the car. When I asked him what on earth he was doing out there, he looked at me strangely.
“Doc… David, it’s obviously a family thing, I’d be intruding, so if it’s all the same to you, I’ll wait out here; it’s a fine day, I might have a snooze in the car, you carry on, I’ll be fine.”
I pooh-pooh’d that, and suddenly Rosie was there to back me up.
“Jimmy, will you please come in and meet my mother, I know she’d like to meet you!”
Jimmy caved in at that, just as obviously smitten with her as she was with him, so I left them there so Jimmy could escort her back inside. When I introduced Jimmy and the circumstances under which he came to be working for us, Sybil grinned broadly.
“I did see the story in the newspaper this morning, well done, young man, I do hope you didn’t hurt that boorish oaf too badly; I know what a Royal Marine is capable of, my father served with the Commando’s during the war!”
She smiled as she said this, relaxing Jimmy a couple of notches, and Rosie visibly preened, smiling at Jimmy and getting a shy smile back. Sybil turned to me.
“Apropos of which, your Aunt Bella was on the telephone early this morning, fulminating about that story, ranting on about how you were dragging the Denham name through the mud, and how she was going to give you a piece of her mind, and so on. Lord knows, I try to find something nice to say or think about my mother-in-law, but I just can’t help feeling we’d all be better off if God would just quietly drop a gas-stove on her! It’s a complete mystery why that old bag is still up and around haunting decent people; why she can’t just do the decent thing and fall off a cliff or get herself abducted by aliens is quite beyond me…! Anyway, David, be warned, Bella and probably your Aunt Maude and those loathsome daughters of hers will be descending on you at some point, so stand by to repel boarders!”
My heart sank; Maude was the daughter of my grandfather’s cousin, and her two horrible daughters Lavinia and Jennifer, Vinnie and Jeni for short, had made my life miserable when I was small, so much so that mother had eventually banned them from Denham Hall, which apparently caused no little friction in the family; apparently Maude regarded the Hall as her ancestral home (although none of her family had ever actually lived there, as they’d married into an off-shoot of the family) and had taken loud and vocal exception to being barred from it. I couldn’t really understand it; why would anyone want that creepy mausoleum?
I used to get nasty letters from her forwarded to me demanding that she be allowed access to the place, but the trustees were of the opinion that she just wanted to pillage the place, so enforced the ban mother had stipulated when we left for America and denied her access for any reason, even serving her with a Court order banning her from coming any closer than 500 meters, with a similar injunction being handed to her daughters; as far as the Trustees were concerned, she wasn’t me, so she and hers had no right to be there. If she’d been nicer about it, I’d have probably handed her that grotesque place, with my blessing, and let her have the headache of trying to keep it from collapsing…