The Orphan's Gift

by Anne Baker

Genres: Sagas

Synopsis

Having lost her father during the Great War and her mother, a famous French impressionist painter, in a tragic accident, Aimee Kendrick is brought up by her troubled grandparents on the banks of the River Mersey. She is encouraged to believe she has inherited her mother's gift, but it is her childhood friend and fellow student Frankie Hopkins who shows greater talent.

When Frankie joins the Kendricks' textile mill to work on new fabric designs, Aimee begs her grandfather to teach her how to run the business. Working together, Aimee and Frankie become much more than friends but then they find themselves involved in family problems and it is impossible to know what the future holds.

Release date: December 12, 2019

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 352

Sample

Chapter One

December 1932

Aimee Kendrick was waiting with Frankie Hopkins for their teacher to come to the old schoolroom and give them an art lesson. Frankie opened up his portfolio and put his latest watercolour up on one of the easels. Aimee said, ‘We aren’t going to paint this morning. Miss Rathbone’s going to give us a talk on history of art.’

‘I know, but what d’you think of my latest effort?’

‘I like it, it’s very good, but you keep on painting the same view.’ She turned to look out of the window and across the Mersey to the magnificent Liverpool skyline. ‘This is it.’

‘Yes, it fascinates me and I keep trying, but I haven’t got it quite right yet. Miss Rathbone will be able to tell me what it needs to put it right.’

‘You’ve already signed it as though it’s ready to go to the saleroom,’ she giggled. ‘Francis S. Hopkins. What does the S stand for?’

‘Sebastian. That’s how my mother taught me to write it.’

She laughed outright. ‘Nobody could say that wasn’t a posh name.’

‘Everybody laughs. I don’t know why they think it’s funny. After I’d done that, I had second thoughts about the perspective.’

‘It’s perfectly all right. I think it’s a lovely picture.’ Aimee was bored with it. ‘I’m beginning to get excited about Christmas, are you?’

‘Not particularly,’ he said. ‘Christmas comes and goes but doesn’t bring much excitement for me. You don’t know how lucky you are to have all this.’ He waved his hand to encompass the comfortable house and large garden in Rock Park.

Aimee wasn’t having that. ‘You sound like a disillusioned old man,’ she said, though she knew he was only two years older than her and had just had his nineteenth birthday. ‘I’m not lucky at all because my mother lives in France and I hardly ever see her.’

‘Aimee! What d’you mean, not lucky?’ Frankie’s laugh had no mirth in it. ‘Your mother is the famous painter Micheline Durameau Lepage.’ He let her name roll across his tongue. ‘She’s at the forefront of French art, and creates lovely sunlit scenes of rural France. Everybody has heard of her, and she’s had her pictures hung in the most important galleries in France and England. You must be tremendously proud of her.’

‘I am,’ Aimee said, ‘you know I am, but I hardly see her, and my father was killed in the war. My mother married again and she’s very wrapped up in painting and her new husband.’

‘Of course she is. She’s had to concentrate hard on her career to be the success she is. What’s wrong with that?’

Aimee adored her mother. Usually she spent all her summer holidays in France with her, but this year Maman had wanted to stay in Paris to prepare for a display of her paintings in her husband’s art gallery in September.

‘Sorry, ma cherie.’ She had smiled at Aimee. ‘We’ll still have three weeks together in August, and how about coming for a couple of extra weeks at Christmas? Would that make amends?’

Aimee had said yes, though she’d felt resentful at the time, but now she had the long Christmas holiday in front of her.

Frankie said, ‘I don’t have a mother at all. She died when I was seven.’

‘But you have a father.’

‘No, I call him Dad, but really he’s my mother’s dad, my grandad.’

‘I thought I was short of relatives, but you have even fewer.’

‘I’m short of most things. You’ve got two grandparents to take care of you.’

Aimee’s grandma believed she’d inherited real artistic talent from her mother and praised her pictures highly. She had asked Maman to arrange for Aimee to have extra art lessons at home, even though she had them at school already.

‘I can’t see that you have much to complain about.’ Frankie sat down at his desk.

‘You’re right, compared with you I don’t. Sorry, I’m moaning, aren’t I?’ Aimee went over to the picture he’d put up on the easel. ‘I think this painting is really good.’

Poor Frankie did have almost nothing. Everybody felt sorry for him. Miss Rathbone thought he had real artistic flair and had suggested that he share Aimee’s lessons. He had a passion for painting and she’d said his presence might encourage Aimee to strive for the right effect.

Grandma did not agree. ‘What does that lad know about art?’ she’d said to Aimee. ‘Your pictures are better than his. Much better.’ Neither did she approve of Frankie as a companion; she thought it would have been wiser not to allow him in the schoolroom at all. Aimee liked Frankie, though, and thought Miss Rathbone was right about his talent, and he was good company too.

Long ago, before many people had cars, Frankie’s grandfather had kept the stables in the road behind Rock Park. Those of their neighbours who did not keep a carriage of their own used to send for Bob Hopkins to drive them across town. He’d probably never had much business, as it was a short stroll to Rock Ferry pier, from where a pleasant ferry trip would take them to Liverpool, and his family had fallen on hard times. Nowadays he had a cart instead of a carriage and would take suitcases to the station or collect packages. He also did odd gardening or painting jobs for his neighbours, or anything else he could pick up that would bring him an hour or two’s work. Since he’d left school, Frankie had been doing much the same, but he’d set his sights on working in a shop or an office.

He turned from his picture. ‘You’ll be going to France any day soon, won’t you?’

‘Yes, next Tuesday.’

Her grandparents took her to France for the Christmas celebrations, but they stayed only for four days as Gramps needed to get back to take care of his business. Aimee would usually be brought back to England in the new year by one of Maman’s friends. This year it was to be Miss Rathbone.

‘Here she comes,’ Frankie said, and stood to attention by his desk as the teacher came in.

‘Good morning, Aimee. Good morning, Frankie.’

Miss Rathbone had been Maman’s best friend when they were younger. They had trained together at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Aimee liked her – she was kind and generous – but she looked older than her thirty-seven years, and time had etched deep lines of disappointment and dissatisfaction from her nose to her mouth. Her wardrobe was limited, though her clothes looked as though they’d once been expensive. In the declining economic climate it appeared that, like many others, she’d fallen on hard times, and she no longer had money to spend on luxury items. She still painted in oils and watercolours, and Aimee knew she would have liked the success that Maman had achieved.

‘Let us look again at the Impressionists of the nineteenth century,’ she said, unpacking her folder of large-scale prints. ‘Today we’ll start by studying Monet’s work.’

Aimee sometimes felt she was two quite different people. In France she was Aimee, and life was luxurious, nothing too expensive for Maman to provide. At school her friends spelt her name A-m-y, and she was totally English.

Frankie Hopkins was fascinated by all Miss Rathbone could tell him about art, and he settled back to listen. He couldn’t get enough of it. He was immensely grateful to both Aimee and her teacher. They had encouraged him to paint and had shown him techniques that really helped.

He saw Aimee as a friendly face in a world that was very different to his own. Her family could provide her with extra teachers as well as a posh school. She’d shown him the paintings she was doing in her classes and he’d said, ‘I’d love to try that.’ One wet Saturday afternoon she had brought down pencils, paper and paint to their greenhouse and they’d painted together; afterwards she’d given him the materials to take home.

When Frankie was young, he was often left to amuse himself while his grandad was working, but once he’d had his eighth birthday, Dad had taken him along to help, and taught him to do the same sort of work. Nowadays, if he hadn’t found a job for himself, he worked as Dad’s assistant. Once he had heard about Micheline Durameau Lepage, though, he’d been fired with ambition to be an artist, and told his grandad of all she’d accomplished.

‘She’d have had all sorts of lessons to learn how to do that,’ Dad had said. ‘The only art lessons you’ll get are what they give you at school.’

Frankie knew that at school he’d get nothing but chalk and a slate to draw on. Aimee told him about her lessons and he could see that he’d need tuition like that if he was to succeed. It took him a long time, almost three years, before he plucked up the courage to say, ‘Will you ask if I can come to your art lessons and learn to paint too? I’d love to know how to do it properly.’

She’d stared from him to the painting of the beach he was working on. ‘You can paint as well as I can,’ she said, sounding surprised. He watched her put her head back and think about it. ‘They’d say no,’ she told him. ‘My mother pays Miss Rathbone to teach me, and I’m afraid Grandma doesn’t like you much and would see no reason for you to benefit from my lessons.’

What he liked about Aimee was that she always took him seriously. They’d spent that afternoon devising a plan that just might work. ‘Candida Rathbone talks about natural talent,’ Aimee said. ‘She says I’ve got mine from my mother. You’ll need to impress her with your talent and show her how keen you are. If she thinks you’re really good, she’ll want to teach you. She used to teach a whole class in a school once, but she’s given that up.’

‘I could paint a dozen pictures to show her,’ he said eagerly.

‘No, one or two – three at the most,’ she said. ‘Make one a portrait and one a scene of the beach or a boat, and do your very best work. She’s very kind so she just might agree, but don’t tell anyone I had anything to do with it.’ Miss Rathbone came from Liverpool and walked to Rock Park either from the ferry or the train station. ‘You can meet her on her way here and show her your paintings,’ Aimee added.

Frankie went home with one of her folders and a fresh supply of paper and paint. He had several attempts at painting the very best pictures he could. Two weeks later, he met Miss Rathbone at the park gates and persuaded her to stop and look at his work. Unbelievably, she was impressed. ‘You’ve a lot to learn by way of technique,’ she told him, ‘but with the right teaching, you could be good.’

He’d told her he was Aimee’s friend and knew she’d assumed he lived in a neighbouring house. He felt he had to tell her of his circumstances and that he couldn’t pay for lessons. ‘Let me think about it,’ she’d said.

Frankie was bursting with hope – if it had been possible for Micheline Durameau Lepage, surely it must be possible for him? – but his grandad had been less impressed. ‘You’re becoming obsessed with painting,’ he said. ‘You should stay away from that girl. It’s all right for the toffs, especially the ladies, a nice hobby for them, but it won’t do for the likes of you. You’ll have to earn your living.’ Frankie knew then that his grandad didn’t believe he’d have a dog’s chance of earning anything from his pictures.

A week later, Aimee came rushing over to his house. ‘Candida thinks you have talent and you’re worth teaching,’ she said breathlessly. ‘She asked me if I knew you, and she’s asked Gramps if you can come to my lessons, so it’s all agreed.’

Frankie took her in his arms and whirled her all round their living room. He’d never felt so exhilarated. ‘Marvellous, wonderful, I can’t believe my luck.’

Aimee was laughing with him. ‘Next lesson is two o’clock on Tuesday. I’ll come to the pear tree to get you, because you won’t know the way up to the schoolroom.’

‘Thank you, thank you, Aimee.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘I couldn’t have done this without your help.’

She giggled and spun him round. ‘We did it together. I can’t stay now because Gramps will be home soon, and then it’s dinner time. See you Tuesday if not before.’

Frankie did another jig, intoxicated with joy. Dad had been watching them from his chair by the fire he’d just lit. ‘No good will come of this,’ he said in doom-laden tones. ‘I can’t believe Mrs Kendrick is going to allow it.’

Aimee knew Grandma would not approve of Miss Rathbone taking Frankie into her art class, but as she was bound to find out sooner or later, she went home and told her. Grandma was old-fashioned and set in her ways, and Aimee knew that if she was kept in ignorance until she saw Frankie coming upstairs, it would involve him in an almighty row.

Minutes later, Gramps came home from work. Aimee watched with horror as Grandma drew herself up to her full height of five foot two and went to meet him in the hall, incandescent with rage. ‘Walter, I’m told you’ve given Candida Rathbone permission to teach that Hopkins lad in our house? What on earth possessed you?’

Gramps spoke slowly and calmly. ‘Candida says he has talent and it would be a shame not to encourage him.’

‘Not in our house,’ Grandma barked. ‘I don’t want him here. I don’t want him near Aimee. Candida can do that in her own place if she wants to.’

‘I’m sorry, Prue . . .’

‘Well put a stop to it now before it goes any further.’ She turned on Aimee. ‘You’re not to go round to his house,’ she said. ‘You’re not to encourage him. I forbid it.’

‘Grandma, please.’ Aimee wanted to say that Frankie was her best friend, but she knew that would only make matters worse.

‘I feel sorry for him,’ Gramps said. ‘He’s a nice enough lad, polite and well mannered, and Aimee likes him.’

‘For goodness’ sake, that’s what I’m objecting to. He’s quite unsuitable as a companion for her.’

Chapter Two

Aimee and Frankie had gravitated together from a very early age. The old stable where Frankie lived was in the road behind Rock Park, and a five-foot brick wall separated his garden from that of Aimee’s house. A convenient apple tree grew close to it on her side, and she soon learned to climb it to get onto the wall. It was a shorter drop down on his side, and Frankie kept a wooden box there to make climbing up easier. It was quite a long way round by road, and even Bob Hopkins came and went over the wall when he worked in the Kendricks’ garden. Frankie said he was going to build a few permanent steps on their side, but he’d never got round to it.

Years ago, Frankie had been helping to collect the grass his grandad was cutting in the Kendricks’ garden when he’d said to Aimee, ‘Dad could make you a marvellous swing on this old pear tree. You could make it go much higher than the swings in the park, because the only branch on this side is twice as high as they are.’

‘It grows a big crop of little yellow pears every year,’ Aimee said, ‘and if there was a swing there I could jump up and down on it to bring them down when they’re ripe.’

‘Yes, late summer, lovely juicy pears,’ he agreed, ‘and they weren’t easy to get down last year.’ Alongside it there was another pear tree that cropped sparingly, and the fruit had to be kept for months until it ripened.

‘I’ll tell Gramps I’d like a swing,’ Aimee decided.

A week later, she found that Bob Hopkins had bought all the things needed to make one. Frankie came with him to help. Aimee watched as they tied a piece of string round a stone and attached the other end to a length of chain. Bob Hopkins threw the stone over the high branch of the pear tree and then pulled on the string until the chain went over the branch. He attached the wooden seat to the bottom of the chain and called, ‘How high off the ground do you want the seat?’

Frankie went to demonstrate, and they soon had the other side fixed on in the same way.

‘OK, Frankie,’ Bob said. ‘Stand on the seat and jump about on it. Let’s make sure it’s strong enough.’

With mounting excitement, Aimee watched Frankie try the swing out, pushing himself higher and higher. ‘I can almost see over your house,’ he called down to them. When it was declared safe and she was allowed to try it, she was absolutely thrilled and swung on it until she was called in to eat her dinner.

Later that summer, when the pears were showing yellow between the leaves, Aimee jumped up and down on her swing to bring the ripe fruit down. She soon discovered that it could be painful if the pears hit her, so she encouraged Frankie to take over. Then they would sit on the grass and gorge on them. Sometimes there were so many that Frankie was able to take some home.

One wet winter Saturday, they spent a cold morning painting together in the greenhouse. Frankie said, ‘I’ve heard there’s a good cowboy film showing at the Palace Cinema for the children’s matinee this afternoon. I’d love to see it.’

‘So would I. I’ve never been to the cinema.’

‘I wish you could come. It’s more fun if you have a friend to go with, but I don’t have enough money to pay for you.’

Aimee went to ask Grandma for the tuppence entrance money she needed, while Frankie waited on the kitchen doorstep. She was back in moments shaking her head. ‘Grandma said no, not with you.’

‘She doesn’t like me,’ he said, pulling a face. ‘She told me I mustn’t hang about your house. Your grandfather doesn’t seem to mind me playing with you. He’s quite friendly and always speaks to me if he sees me in the garden.’

‘I wish I hadn’t spent my weekly penny on sweets. It’ll be miserable here on my own.’

The kitchen was empty. ‘Look,’ Frankie said. ‘I can see a freshly washed-out jam jar on the draining board. You can return it to the shop and they’ll give you a ha’penny. Do you have any more?’

Aimee opened a large cupboard under the sink where there was a whole shelf full of gleaming jars. ‘Grandma wants them saved for jam and chutney making, but she doesn’t do much of that.’

‘Big jars,’ Frankie whooped. ‘They’re worth a penny each. Bring two and let’s get going.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Course I’m sure. I always do it. The boys in my class at school eat jam by the spoonful when nobody’s looking to empty the jar as soon as possible. Jam jars are as good as money in the bank.’

They were walking to the cinema when Frankie bent to pick something up from the pavement. ‘Look at this,’ he said, pushing it into her hand. ‘A ring, though it’s not much good. It’s lost its stone.’

Aimee slid it onto her finger. ‘It must have been a diamond solitaire once, and quite a big one, I think.’ The prongs that had held the stone were still in place. She laughed. ‘It fits me. Is it gold?’

‘Might be.’

‘I think it is.’

‘You keep it.’

‘No, if it is gold, it’s still worth something. Shouldn’t we take it to the police station?’

‘I suppose so. We’ve still got time, and the station is on the next corner.’

Aimee took the ring off her finger and pushed it back at Frankie as they went inside. ‘You do it.’

The constable looked at it dubiously. ‘It does look like gold and it has something stamped inside. All right, I’ll log it in as lost property. What’s your name? You know that if it isn’t claimed in a month, you can have it back.’

‘I won’t want it,’ Aimee said. ‘It’s broken.’

‘I do,’ Frankie said. ‘I think it could be gold.’

Aimee was amazed at how much Frankie knew, and she thoroughly enjoyed her visit to the cinema. ‘We could do that again next week,’ she said afterwards. ‘There’s loads of jam jars in our cupboard.’

Chapter Three

Aimee greeted her grandfather as he was taking off his hat and coat to hang in the hall wardrobe. ‘Have you had a busy day?’ she asked. She got out his slippers and followed him into the sitting room, where he yawned and settled back in his armchair. She brought his whisky bottle, filled a cut-glass jug with water and set them with a glass on the table beside him, then went to the kitchen to help Grandma get the evening meal ready, as she did most evenings.

She carried the steaming tureen to the dining room, and while she waited for Grandma to ladle the soup into three bowls, her eyes went to the two pencil portraits hanging side by side on the dining room wall. One was of her father in his uniform as a second lieutenant in the Great War; the other was a self-portrait of her mother. Her grandparents revered them, although they were yellowing now even behind glass.

Gramps had told her all about her father. In November 1914, they’d been officially notified that he was missing, believed killed in battle. Grandma had never accepted that he was dead. ‘As his mother, I knew he was still breathing. I could feel it in here,’ she would say, patting her heart. Later they learned that he had been injured in battle at Arras and left for dead. Local French civilians had found him and taken him to hospital, where her mother, an art student and volunteer carer, had helped to look after him. He’d fallen in love with her, and when he recovered, they’d been married. Alec had returned to his regiment, but tragically he’d been killed just before the war ended. Aimee felt she knew no more about him than was shown in those pencil drawings.

Of course she knew much more about her mother, and was looking forward to spending the whole of the Christmas holiday with her. They were all immensely proud of what Micheline had achieved. Aimee knew Grandma was always ready to talk about her daughter-in-law, and boasted about her fame to friends and neighbours on every possible occasion.

Aimee had heard many times that once the Great War was over, Gramps had invited Micheline to England so they could meet their granddaughter. ‘You were such a smiling and undemanding little girl. As soon as Grandma saw you, nothing else would calm her but that she be allowed to keep you and bring you up in Alec’s place.

‘I was against it,’ he continued. ‘I was afraid Prue wouldn’t be able to cope and that you would be happier with your mother, but it was what Micheline wanted too. She’d had to put her painting ambitions on hold during the war, but with Alec gone, she’d thought long and hard about her future, and looking after you would have made it impossible for her to return to Paris and continue her art studies.

‘Eventually I gave in and agreed you should stay,’ Gramps went on. ‘When we heard that Alec was missing, Grandma had wept and wailed for months, and she doted on you, smothered you with love. You brought her consolation. You wormed your way into everyone’s affections, mine included, and soon neither of us could think of life without you. Micheline paid generously towards your keep, and over the following years we watched her career and fame develop. She made such a success of it that I’m sure it was the right thing for her too.’

Aimee could remember Grandma telling her that when her mother came over to see her on her fifth birthday, she’d been thrilled to find she’d grown into a very pretty little girl with a mop of fair curls. She’d picked her up and pulled her onto her knee to cuddle her, but had been shocked when she’d tried to talk to her. ‘She doesn’t understand one word I’m saying,’ she cried.

‘She’s too young,’ Grandma had said. ‘She’ll learn French in school.’

‘But she should be learning now. At what age will she start?’

‘About ten, I suppose. I was that age when I started to learn French.’

‘You had French lessons? Mon Dieu! You hardly speak French at all.’ That had been an even greater shock for her mother. ‘French should be her first language.’

Grandma knew that an ability to speak French was considered rather exotic in Rock Ferry.

‘Your mother was quite upset. She said, “That makes me feel so guilty for leaving her here. She needs someone to come and teach her on a one-to-one basis. You must find her a teacher straight away.”

‘Micheline had no friend she could call upon to do this, and we had to ask an agency to find a qualified person. Grandpa interviewed one or two candidates, and he chose Mrs Esther Kerr. I think he felt sorry for her; I know I did. Her father had been English and he’d brought her French mother to live here. Mrs Kerr had been brought up in England and was teaching French at the local convent school. Her circumstances were similar to your mother’s, and that singled her out for him.

‘She told us she was married at eighteen and a widow at twenty. Her husband was killed on the Somme. Her mother was now old and ill and Esther needed more income to take care of her.’

‘I like her,’ Aimee said.

‘Yes, we thought it a very happy choice.’

Esther had been coming three times a week for all these years, and as a result, Aimee was bilingual. She brought her books by famous French writers that they read together and discussed. She took her to see any suitable French film that came to Liverpool, and exhibitions that had a French connection. It delighted Aimee that they could talk together and nobody knew what they were saying. French seemed like a secret language here in Rock Park.

Aimee was looking forward to her lesson this afternoon. It would be her very last lesson of the year, and just to think of the Christmas holidays starting tomorrow made her feel like singing. She took the Christmas present she’d made for Esther and put it on the schoolroom table in readiness, then set out to walk to the gates at the entrance of the park to meet her teacher.

Just inside the gates was a toll cottage, and Mrs Potts, the keeper’s wife, waved to her from her garden, where she was picking sprouts. Bicycles and motor vehicles were not allowed to come into Rock Park without paying a toll, so the noises of the town were kept at a distance.

Esther Kerr was striding down the road towards her with a wide smile on her face, her skirt swinging and her auburn hair blowing in the breeze. She raised her hand in a wave as soon as she saw her, and Aimee went forward to meet her. ‘Bonjour, ma petite.’ Esther swept her into a hug. ‘Comment vas tu?’ Esther always seemed to bubble with fun and life. She was about the same age as Candida Rathbone, but she dressed more smartly and looked younger and happier.

Once back in the schoolroom, Aimee presented her with the Christmas present she’d spent the last month making. She had no fancy paper or ribbon, so she’d wrapped it in a sheet of Grandma’s tissue paper, but it was still half visible through that.

‘It looks exciting. Whatever can it be?’ Esther laughed and pulled the tissue away. ‘Is it a box?’

‘Yes, to keep your handkerchiefs in.’ Gramps had been about to throw away a wooden cigar box, and Aimee had covered it with shells she’d collected on the beach. Grandma had told her that shell work was a popular pastime in her youth, and she’d shown her how to glue them together in a pattern. Frankie had found her some varnish in his father’s stable, and she’d put a light film of it over the whole box. She was pleased with her handiwork.

‘I love it, it’s beautiful, far too good for hankies.’ Esther laughed again. ‘I have a few treasured trinkets, some brooches and a bracelet. I’ll keep them in it.’

In return, she brought out a gift-wrapped parcel from her bag. Aimee felt a surge of pleasure, ‘Can I open it now, or shall I keep it for Christmas Day?’

‘Now,’ Esther said. ‘You won’t be here on Christmas Day. I want to know if you like it.’

It was a big book about the current art scene in France, with lots of photographs. Of course, it was all in French. There was a paragraph or two about Micheline Durameau Lepage, and it showed some of her recent paintings. Aimee was absolutely thrilled and couldn’t bring herself to close the pages. At four o’clock, when Esther left, she took the book to show Grandma. It was proof that her mother really was famous.

Walter Kendrick got out of bed feeling tired and worried. His financial responsibilities weighed heavily, both for his loved ones and for his workforce. He wanted to do his best for everybody, but he was very much afraid he was heading for big trouble. The war had brought prosperity to many industries, including his, and 1920 had started as a boom year, with mills being sold for enormous prices, but by the autumn, everything had collapsed. India was a major customer for finished products but the Indian government had impo. . .