Down the Garden Path Read Online Free PDF Page A

blooming on that bush near the back door.”
    “Tell me again about Mum ... asking you to have the church bells rung.”
    He kept polishing the glasses. “You remember old Greenwood, Tess. He came on a bit uppish at doing overtime—all bluster, mind, he would have slept with his bells if he could. Mum wanted them rung for two reasons—to express our joy and to let whoever had left you know you were safe. We were certain she was somewhere close by, waiting. That little hot water bottle in the blanket was still quite warm, so we knew you could only have been left minutes before Mum went out for the milk.”
    “But Greenwood did ring the bells, didn’t he?”
    “Indeed he did. Kept them ringing until half the county started telephoning to ask if a war was beginning or ending.” Dad put his glasses back on. “What a day! Your mother glowing. Fergy ‘coming over queer.’ The doctor arriving and sending me off to boil water—for tea! No one who hasn’t been through the disappointment of being turned down by one adoption agency after another can know how Mum and I felt. We’d married latish, as you know, and her health not being tiptop, we’d been told our prospect of becoming parents was practically nil. I had almost resigned myself, but not Mum. She told me that she found herself talking to strangers in shops, in queues, on buses about her longing for a child. She never gave up. She kept right on praying for that miracle.”
    Unable to speak, I moved off my stool and curled up against Dad’s knees.
    “The best thing that ever happened to us; that’s you, Tessa.” Dad stroked my hair. “Our only concern at first was that we might not be allowed to keep you. But that note pinned to your blanket won the day for us in court. Remember what it said, Tessa?”
    “Tell me again.”
    “ ‘Dear Reverend and Mrs. Fields. This is your daughter, Tessa. I want none but you to have her.’ You were a gift from a loving woman. Don’t let anyone ever make you think otherwise.”
    I knew Dad was right. But questions remained. Questions that I did not ask him because he could not have the answers, and even to raise them would have seemed disloyal. He had enough to bear without me adding to his problems. I smiled and kissed him, telling him I was fine, but I went up the narrow, rather dark staircase dragging my feet.
    If my mother was such a loving, good woman, why had she parted with me? Poverty? Fergy said no one was poor anymore, but I supposed it was possible. Or could my mother have been weeks away from death—the victim of a rare disease? No. I didn’t like that idea. Don’t even think about death: I had to be able to find her. I wanted her healthy, and rich, and beautiful. That would be something for the Joyful Sounds to choke on. What if... what if Russian spies had been after her and, terrified they would get her baby, too, she had done the only thing a noble, wonderful mother could do—sought sanctuary for me at the church? Our history class had read about people doing that. Of course, the vicarage doorstep wasn’t the church proper. But I liked the idea. Mum would have liked it, too. She was always reading what she called cloak-and-dagger books.
    The idea of becoming a sort of detective in my own interest took hold of me that late afternoon. I see now that my motives were mixed, that I had both the desire to discover where I came from, and a need to do something that would keep my mind off the emptiness in the house. I went over to the window seat in my bedroom and picked up the basket that had been my first cradle, and which was now occupied by Agatha Slouch.
    Sitting her down on the window seat I turned the basket upside down in the hope of finding some previously missed clue. A name cleverly woven into the wicker perhaps. Nothing. But I was not done yet. Down the hall I went to Mum’s room (Dad now slept in the box room) and opened up the top drawer of her dressing table. Carefully lifting out a pile of