Len
There was a long moment. Mary Margaret could see various emotions warring on Reg's face. Some of it was annoyance for his daughter calmly eavesdropping a private conversation, but the rest of it was a mix of sadness and still-strong grief.
He finally answered, "Yes. That's why Auntie's here."
"Come in," said Mary Margaret. "Sit beside me."
Timidly, Maddy did as she was told. Her whole expression and bearing told Mary Margaret that the girl hadn't deliberately eavesdropped. That theory was proved by Maddy's next comment, "Sorry daddy -- I didn't mean to listen. Only, I got to the door, and it was open and I heard Auntie Nun mention mummy's name...and I know that you still miss her...and I didn't want to get in the way...and..."
"It's all right, darling," Reg cut in gently, clearly reading the signs that suggested tears were not far off.
"An' I'm sorry about the tree," she added as she sat down, but before anyone else could say anything. "I just wanted to see the view."
"I'm sorry for yelling," Reg replied. "But you scared me. Promise me you won't do it again."
Maddy nodded, setting her chestnut coloured bunches swinging vigorously. "I promise."
Silence descended. Mary Margaret wished she knew an easy way to broach the subject, but Len had always been the one who was good at that sort of thing, and then Reg found the words for himself:
"I first met your mother when we were kids," he said. "I was a sulky school boy not much older than you, Maddy. Your mother was even younger. Three or four, I think."
"Three and a half," put in Mary Margaret softly.
Reg nodded and smiled. "The three of you went everywhere together, but all I really remember is the little girl who so desperately wanted to help her mother and who'd..." Unexpectedly, Reg chuckled. "You'd never believe this, Maddy, but your Auntie Nun had a very sweet lisp."
"Oh Reg you horror!" Mary Margaret exclaimed, blushing. "Heavens, of all the things for you to remember!"
Maddy, meanwhile, giggled. "Did you really lisp, Auntie Nun?"
"Yeth," Mary Margaret retorted, reducing her niece to a further fit of helpless giggles.
The laughter served to loosen Reg's tongue and he now continued softly, a far away look on his face, "They say that everyone has someone who makes them complete -- who makes them a better person. Someone who's their soul mate. I think something in me recognised that in Len from the very first moment I met her. The rest of me -- the fourteen-year-old schoolboy me -- dismissed her and her sisters as yet another irritation and interruption to my summer." He stopped and smiled. "That's a story for another day. You want to know about your mother, Len, not about the sulks of a schoolboy."
"I can't imagine you sulking, daddy," Maddy observed thoughtfully.
"Oh, he could, when he chose," said Mary Margaret, a smile on her face.
"I thought nuns were supposed to be above petty retribution," Reg retorted, his turn to blush.
"They are, under most circumstances," Mary Margaret replied, giving him a most un-nun-like grin.
Reg rolled his eyes, and for a few moments, the only sound to be heard in the den of Plas Gwyn was the ticking of the clock on the mantle-shelf. "I suppose, your mother and I properly met twelve years later. It wasn't that I lost touch with the Maynard family, just that our lives didn't really coincide that much -- not as a whole. I saw Jack quite a bit -- your grandfather," he added for Maddy's benefit, "but beyond the odd trip to Yorkshire, I didn't see Len again until I took up my first post as a qualified doctor, at the Sanatorium on the Görnetz Platz in Switzerland." Here, Reg once again chuckled. "The first time Len and I properly met was hardly under ideal circumstances. You see, your mother's family is very big..."
"I have eight other sisters and brothers," Mary Margaret contributed. "By blood. There's another five or six who are wards or adoptees."
Maddy's eyes were wide. "Wow!"
"Len, Con and I were the eldest -- we were triplets," Mary Margaret explained. "Then followed Stephen, Charles and Mike, Felix and Felicity are twins, then there was Cecil and lastly Phillippa and Geoff, the second twins."
"Then there was the three Richardsons," Reg threw in, "plus Erica Standish and Marie-Claire."
Maddy's eyes looked as if they were liable to drop out of her face. "Wow!"
"My mother," said Mary Margaret, "is a wholesale creature."
Reg managed a chuckle at that. "Certainly one term for it."
"You must be heaps older than Auntie Phillippa and Uncle Geoff," said Maddy.
"Thirteen years, to be accurate," said Mary Margaret.
"Which is how," Reg put in, "You, Con and Len ended up having to rescue baby Cecil from a madwoman."
Maddy gave a squeak. "A madwoman?"
Mary Margaret nodded. "Cecil -- Cecilia Marya to be proper -- was a really pretty child and the poor woman, whose own daughter had been called Cecilie and who had died about eighteen months before we met her, mistook Cecil for her Cecilie."
Maddy gasped. "What did you do?"
"They rescued her," said Reg. "Quite some job, too. The woman's old maid, Bette, had already travelled down to the san to get help -- after Cecil had been kidnapped -- so there was a party of us coming up from the san, but by the time we got there, all the excitement had been done and dusted."
"What did mummy do?" Maddy wanted to know.
"She was very brave," said Mary Margaret. "She was the one who distracted Frau Schumacher for a good fifteen minutes or so, which let Con rescue Cecil. In the struggle, Len ended up twisting her ankle, but it worked out well."
Reg nodded. "We -- the party from the san -- met Con and Cecil on the path coming down, so I saw Con and Cecil home, then waited at Freudesheim for Jack, Len and Margot -- Auntie Nun," he added, seeing Maddy frown, "to get back. Which they did very soon afterwards, and while Jack saw to Margot's wrist -- what had you done?" he added.
"Oh -- I tripped over a rock on the journey up to Frau Schumacher's house," Mary Margaret answered.
"Ow!" winced Maddy.
"Ow," agreed Mary Margaret. "But while I was being patched up..."
"I got to meet your mother," Reg finished. "I bandaged up her ankle, and we talked a little bit. And as daft and as soppy as it sounds, I thought she might have been the nicest person I'd ever met." He sighed. "Over the next couple of years -- with Jack's permission, I hasten to add -- Len and I got to know one another."
"Painting," said Mary Margaret in an ominous tone of voice.
Reg chuckled. "Now who's dealing in old memories?"
"Painting?" asked Maddy, puzzled.
"It was in your mother's last term at school," Reg explained. "Which was the summer term. Len had been out somewhere, painting. On returning, she tripped over." At this, Maddy started to giggle, obviously having worked out where it was likely to go. "She ended up covered in paint -- which mightn't have been too bad, except that I happened to wander by at exactly the wrong moment. She was head-to-foot covered in oil paint. She had a smear of a turquoise colour right across her nose; burnt umber, black, and a royal purple colour across the bodice of her frock while her skirt was positively rainbow hued."
Maddy's giggles erupted into full-blown laughter.
"She was," said Mary Margaret, "a truly revolting sight. But it got worse."
"It certainly did," Reg agreed. "I hurriedly escorted her back to school, but unfortunately, she got seen by a couple of the middle school, and by the time I rang up at tea time to make sure she was all right, the story had gone around the school that the prefects -- your mother was Head Girl -- had been taking part in a paint fight. I have to admit, I got a complete earful from Len that night. She apologised the next day -- and explained -- but I hardly made matters any better; when she got to the bit about the prefects' paint fight, I started to laugh." Reg chuckled. "She wasn't impressed."
"Small wonder," said Mary Margaret severely. "I knew you and she had a bit of a tiff over that -- I never knew you'd actually laughed."
"Margot, be fair!" Reg pleaded. "Even Len admitted, later, that it had been funny."
Mary Margaret relented. "All right -- but I do think we'd better stop there. Before someone," at which she gave her niece a meaningful look, "might end up with hysterics."
Maddy made a valiant effort to stop laughing. "I won't, Auntie Nun -- I promise!"
"All right then." Mary Margaret glanced at the clock. "Although I shall have to be going soon -- I must to get back to Hereford tonight."
Reg nodded. "Of course."
For a few moments, silence ruled once more.
Into the silence, Maddy said softly, "Daddy -- can we meet Granny an' Granddad Maynard?"
