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Page 62.

Chapter 15. Canterbury, 1991: Marianne Searches

With each small leg in her journey, Marianne, Countess Didier was getting a little bit closer to the secrets of her father. She could scarcely imagine what it would be like to see him. Would he hold her? Would he call her his good girl, like her mother had, his Umnitsa? Would she be whole again? It had to be the other half, the lost half, torn from the golden mantle of her mother’s love, so long ago lost. Her parents had been united once, god and goddess, at the creation of her life and her world. She had barely known her mother—a dark but nurturing force—and never met her father.

Finding Tim Nordhall was the Holy Grail of her life. So much lost, so long ago, so far away. Broken. Her soul was a poor thing lying in pieces. Beyond her wealth, beyond the love of the darlings who had raised her and given her all that they had, made her who she was—beyond all that, her mother’s love was like an unreachable but deep, true fog horn, guiding, urging, booming, breathing that word over and over without rest, without respite, without cease, to shudder across the distant sea: Umnitsa. My dear little girl. My good little girl. Winking on and off like a faithful lighthouse, courageous in storms, loving like a lioness, with the rhythm of a lifetime’s heartbeats. Marianne would not be complete until she held his hands and gazed into his eyes and said the word: Daddy.

Somehow, despite being married to a playboy and taking half a life time to grow up, she had only praise for her three boys. They had raised themselves, and kept a reserved distance from their mother. She must convince them, as well, that she had become a different person—after she finished this primordial quest in search of her own parents. Her ultimate dream was to find the long-ago, handsome Tim Nordhall—and to return to the soil of her birth near Anadyr in Siberia. She felt as if she could not start living life truly until she finished being born. Auntie Dora had nurtured her in Anadyr before the French couple came to adopt her. And grand-mère, bless her, had orchestrated Troisroses-Didier wealth to ensure that her the three boys were properly raised.

During the evening in London, she called Paris as she often did, to speak with her sons and their wives. They were all at the grande maison in Passy for a celebration. Her daughter-in-law Estelle, the youngest, was pregnant and it had just been learned it was to be a girl. The name Marie-Dora had been chosen, since there already was a two year old grandchild named Marianne. The countess spoke with each of them at length, by turns laughing or biting her lip to hold back a sob. “I miss you all so much,” she said. She promised: “Soon, I can be with you for good. It’s this—wanderlust—you know…” She papered over the urgency of her journey. They were good children, all of them. At times, her sons had seemed almost like older brothers to their wayward mother, during her wild years. How shameful it all had been. She must put it all behind her. Thank God they were so supportive. She spent half an hour on the telephone with them—they were, after all, only an hour’s plane trip or less away from her. After ringing off, she took a hot bath and slipped into bed in her Kensington hotel room for a long, sound sleep. Her dreams were troubled, but not about her children or grandchildren. A beach in Siberia…

In the morning, a hired limousine took Marianne from London south, through the Kentish countryside with its red clays and rich green woods, and into Canterbury. When she arrived, it was noon, and she was hungry. The elderly American, Jack Haywarden, had told her on the telephone that morning he would meet her, with his wife, in a shopping mall near Canterbury Cathedral.

Marianne gave the driver a generous tip for his journey back to Gatwick. Then she set out to find the retired U.S. Army colonel. She had little trouble, for he stood out even among the many tourists marching from their buses to the medieval town center.

“Madame Didier?” he said, a tall old man in a light blue sweater, who still carried himself with a certain stiffly flowing grace. With him was a small, undistinguished woman, in her 80s as he must be. The minute she opened her mouth to say hello, Marianne could put two and two together. The Haywardens were delighted at her detective work. “Yes,” Haywarden said, taking the women in arm, one on each side as if they were old friends, “I stayed here after the war. There was a lot to do in Europe, putting it all back together after the mess the fascists made. I met Andrea and never looked back.”

“I was a radio operator during the war,” Andrea said. She had dyed her hair so that it was a mild sort of shoe-polish rusty color, but silver wisps trailed over her delicate white embroidered blouse collar. The Haywardens were a playful couple, and they seemed to forever be tugging at each other, giggling, so that Marianne laughed as she found herself being rattled about. “He looked so tall and handsome in his colonel’s uniform,” Andrea said, “and of course he had more ration cards than Churchill himself.”

“I settled in Boughton-under-Blean—a village near here—and raised our kids here. Good place to be. Have you spent much time in the States?”

“I’m afraid not enough,” Marianne said. “I was sent away to a girls’ schools in Switzerland. My ex-husband and I lived for ten years in Paris, where I work as a curator in the Louvre. I recently took leave to look for my father.”

Haywarden asked delicately: “Is there a present Mr. Didier?”

“Past tense,” she said. “Oh, don’t look pained—it’s old history. I was rebelling, I’m afraid. It was the late sixties. We all hated our parents. Especially we spoiled rotten rich brats who’d been sent away. I married a wealthy Austrian insurance exec and we had three lovely sons, all French citizens and grown up now, but we divorced. Didn’t affect the title I inherited from my stepfather.”

“Oh yes,” Mrs. Haywarden said. “Old Bourbon nobility or what?”

“Bourbon, Habsburg,” Marianne said, “de Rothschild bankers.”

Haywarden nodded. “Yes. It’s like studying a lost world. Doesn’t hurt to have it hanging on your name though, does it?”

“It can hurt, Mr. Haywarden. Attracts paparazzi, unwanted notice, tabloids.” She corrected herself, conscious of his title. “Colonel Haywarden, sorry.”

“More old history,” he said, clapping a liver-spotted hand gently over hers. “Yes, I have to confess, We’ve seen photos of you in the paper. Never dreamed we’d meet you one day. Never dreamed there might be a connection with our old friend Mr. Nordhall.” They came to a touristy pub, took one look at the long queues, and decided not to eat there. “Come,” Mrs. Haywarden said, “I have an idea.” They marched through a maze of shops and plate glass walls to a large supermarket, and there was a clean, bright, modern delicatessen section with a few red plastic chairs and tables in a corner. “Not your rustic pub,” Mrs. Haywarden said, “but they have good things to eat.” Haywarden added as they walked up to the barely busy glass windows looking over the serving trays: “Comes right over from France several times a day on the ferries.”

His wife laughed. “There is also Dover sole, imported from America.”

“Dover is not far down the coast from here,” Marianne marveled. “What a strange world. Was Mr. Nordhall a nice man?” It seemed strange to be talking about her father in so third-person a manner, but then he was a stranger to her.

Haywarden shrugged. “It was long ago, but I seem to remember he was a nice enough guy. Came bursting in one night to tell me he was being framed for espionage. I thought he was crazy, but he turned out to be dead right. I kept an eye on him after that. We lunched with Allen Dulles one day near Westminster. Nordhall was reassigned and disappeared into the war, like so many fellows.”

Andrea put her arm around Marianne and said: “I do hope it turns out he was the fellow your mother—well, it just sounds like he was a nice fellow, that’s all. Now tell us about your chateau and the ski trips and the Riviera and all.”

“Dear,” Haywarden chided his wife gently.