Ivy Tree Read Free Page B

England?" he asked, not so much ignoring my red herring as oblivious of it. He seemed to be pursuing some very definite line of his own.
    "I suppose in my great-grandfather's time. Would that be somewhere about the middle of the last century?
    About then, anyway. The family settled first at a place called Antigonish, in Nova Scotia, but after my father married, he—"
    "What brought you back to England?" The singleness of purpose that seemed to be prompting his questions robbed the interruption of rudeness. Like an examiner, I thought, bringing the candidate back to the point . . . Certainly his questions seemed to be directed towards some definite end. They had never been quite idle, and now they were sharp with purpose.
    I said, perhaps a little warily: "What brings anyone over? My people are dead, and there was nothing to keep me at home, and I'd always wanted to see England. When I was little, Granny used to talk and talk about England. She'd never seen it, but she'd been brought up on her own mother's stories of 'home'. Oh yes, I heard all about 'bonny Northumberland', and what an exciting city Newcastle was—I almost expected to see the sailing-ships lying along the wharves, and the horse-trams in the streets, she'd made it all so vivid for me. And Hexham, and Sundays in the Abbey, and the market there on Tuesdays, and the road along the Tyne to Corbridge, and the Roman Wall with all those lovely names . . . Casde Nick and Boreovicium and Aesica and the Nine Nicks of Thirlwall ... I read about it all, too. I've always liked history. I'd always promised myself that some day I'd come over, maybe to visit, maybe—if I liked it—to stay."
    "To stay?"
    I laughed. "That's what I'd told myself. But I hadn't seen myself coming back quite like this, I'm afraid. I—well, I was left pretty badly off. I got my fare together, and enough to tide me over till I got a job, and that's my situation now. It sounds like the opposite of the usual story, doesn't it? Usually the lone wolf sets out to the New World to make his way, but I—well, I wanted to come over here. The New World can be a bit wearing when you're on your own, and—don't laugh—but I thought I might fit in better here."
    "Because your roots are here?" He smiled at my look. "They are, you know. I'm sure I'm right. There must have been someone, some Winslow, 'way back in the last century, who went to Canada from here. Probably more than one, you know how it was then; in the days when everybody had thirteen children, and they all had thirteen children, I'm pretty sure that one or two Winslows went abroad to stay. Whitescar wouldn't have been big enough, anyway, and nobody would have got a look-in except the eldest son . . . Yes, that's it, that explains it. Some Winslow went to Canada, and one of his daughters—your great-grandmother, would it be?—married an Armstrong there. Or something like that. There'll be records at Whitescar, surely? I don't know, I wasn't brought up there. But that must be it."
    "Perhaps."
    "Well," he said, with that charmingly quizzical lift of the eyebrow that was perhaps just a little too well practised, "that does make us cousins, doesn't it?"
    "Docs it?"
    "Of course it does. It's as plain as a pikestaff that you must be a Winslow. Nothing else would account for the likeness; I refuse to believe in pure chance. You're a type, the Winslow type, it's unmistakable—that fair hair, and your eyes that queer colour between green and grey, and those lovely dark eyelashes . . ."
    "Carefully darkened," I said calmly. "After all, why go through life with light lashes if you don't have to?"
    "Then Annabel's must have been darkened, too. By heaven, yes, they were! I remember now, when I first came to Whitescar she'd be only fifteen, and I suppose she hadn't started using that sort of thing. Yes, they were light. I don't even remember when the change took place! I was only nineteen when I came, you know, and straight from the back of beyond. I just