Out of the Mist

"I can't promise anything but I'll talk to his doctor to see what we can do. If his doctor doesn't think that it is a good idea then we'll have to abide by his wishes."

"I can't ask for anything more. By the way, Felicity, that's his daughter, and I have both been invited to show some of our works in an exhibition that is being staged shortly. Even if you don't think it a good idea that we should meet him, maybe he would like to see our work, especially Felicity's, she is good."

"I'll bear that in mind when I talk to his doctor. If you leave me with your contact details I'll be in touch as soon as a decision is made."

It had taken a long and frustrating journey to get this far. Stephen Fielding had made an attempt to trace the source of Grantley's work by finding out who delivered it to the gallery or sales room and back-tracking, but the cut-outs were effective. A different courier company was used to make each delivery. The package was delivered to them by another courier company, a different one each time, the delivery was paid for in cash and the forwarding instructions were in an envelope inside the box in which it was packed, along with instructions to return the packaging to the delivery driver. There was no return address with the invoice. The delivery driver was instructed to take the used packaging and place it in a recycling bin in the nearest shopping mall, where the stores dump their packaging and which was emptied each day.

This procedure was carried out several times during the journey of each package from Grantley's workshop to the destination and the same courier company was never used more than once for each sequence of the process.

He also attempted to contact Doctor Wilkinson, but this was equally unsuccessful because the good doctor either refused to see him or refused to discuss patient details with him. Huw Williams was the last resort and it was decided that Cassandra should be the one to make the contact, given that she had previous contact with him during her time with Grantley. It had taken several attempts before Huw agreed to see her and he made the stipulation that there were no guarantees or preconceptions to be attached to the contact.

Cassandra left the meeting with some hope, but she wasn't getting too excited just yet, the next hurdle to clear, if it happens that she is allowed to approach it, was the meeting with Doctor Wilkinson.

In the mean time Cassandra and Felicity had moved in with her father, who, having his daughter and grand-daughter around, was now walking with less of a stoop and smiling more often, although he did have moments of introspection during which he seemed to withdraw and become more stooped.

Chapter 11: An explanation of sorts.

"Cassandra, I have spoken to Grantley's doctor and he would like to meet you. Are you free for lunch?"

"Tell me where and I'll be there."

Introductions over Cassandra sat at the table with Huw and Doctor Wilkinson waiting for their meals to arrive. "We have to be very certain that anything that happens from now is in the best interests of Grantley. He is well on the way to recovery but there are times when the progress seems to stall, where he seems to have flashes of memory that he is not strong enough to cope with just yet. We are treading very carefully here. We have a patient who has a prodigious talent and we have to nurture that. But he is in a very fragile mental state and anything that upsets his recovery will not only destroy him mentally but we will be deprived of that talent."

"It was his talent that has led to now." Huw said, taking Cassandra's hand in his. "He produced a bust of a very beautiful woman that was brought to me for appraisal. I knew immediately who had done it and if you ever have the opportunity to see it you will know what I'm talking about. It could have been of no one else but you and done by someone who had to have been very much in love with you."

"We knew that you had gone to England from the letters that you sent just after everything went pear shaped for him, so we made some enquiries. It was decided to send the bust to Christies for them to auction, and we let it be known around the art circles that it was the work of Grantley Benson in the hope of attracting the attention of the right people. It worked up to a point. Your husband bought it but we found out that he never told you about it. What also happened was that your father heard about it and was bidding for it as well so the price was quite high for a first work."

"I have seen it and I know exactly why Christopher kept it from me. He was trying to protect me. He tried to find Grantley without success and he thought that there was a possibility that Grantley had moved on with his life and may have not wanted me to find him. As soon as I saw the bust I knew that could not be the case, and I think that deep down Christopher realised that as well. His final wishes were for me to find Grantley."

Chapter 12: Another New beginning.

It was so hard for me to forgive the blur, the distant memory of a life lost long ago, a love lost long ago. I wanted so much to tell her that she was forgiven but I couldn't, at least not until she took her mouth from mine, then it was easy. "Cassie, how could I not forgive you." Out of the mists of the past my future stood clear and bright.

"You obviously remember my mother." Felicity said, stating the obvious.

I looked at her, I looked at her mother, I looked at both of them, they were so much alike that it would be impossible not to recognise that they were mother and daughter.

Felicity looked at Cassandra and a decision passed between them. "I am your daughter."

"My what!" I looked at Cassandra who burst into tears again and buried her head in my chest.

I heard a mumbling from down there and managed to catch a few of the words that tumbled from her mouth. "Sorry. . . . forgive . . . .daughter . . . . mother . . . . drugs . . . . marriage . . . . sorry . . . . "

I lifted her face and kissed the tears from her cheeks. "Cassie, I don't care what has happened in the past, that's all behind us. Don't get me wrong I want to know all about it but it will never make any difference to the way that I feel about you, the way I've always felt about you. Even in the mists of my depression, even when I was so out of it on drugs, hovering in the mists was you. My mind wouldn't allow me to access that image for a long time but when it did, you were the driving force behind what I did, I would hear your praise when I got it right or your gentle criticism when I didn't."

"Cassie Darling, I know deep in my heart that you would never have deliberately done anything to hurt me. It took a long time for me to get my head around the fact that I might never, ever, see you again but now that I have, nothing else matters. I knew as soon as I saw Felicity's work at the gallery that she was your daughter, there was never any doubt, her work was so much like yours."

"She's so much better than I ever was, or will be, and that talent she got from you. Do you remember doing a bust of me?"

"Yes." I was curious, how could she know about that?

"As soon as I saw it I knew, really knew, that you remembered me, you loved me still. No-one could have ever produced something like that who wasn't deeply in love with the subject."

"In my case the memory of the subject. I actually wasn't aware of what I was doing until I'd completed it and I came very close to destroying it while it was still a clay model but I couldn't. It was one of the first lucid moments that I had after they changed my medication and it remained in the back of my mind the whole time that I was recovering. That bust, even though it was no longer in my physical possession, drove my recovery."

"That bust had a far reaching effect on many other people. Huw saw it and realised that you still loved me despite what had happened so he talked it over with your doctor and they decided that they should send it over to London, where they knew I still was, in the hope that it would attract the attention of the right people. It did, my husband Christopher knew of you and how I felt about you so he bought it, but he didn't tell me about it because he wasn't sure that it would be the right thing to do at that time, but he couldn't talk to anyone about it because you had been so effectively insulated from the world that he didn't want to get my hopes up because he didn't know who to contact."

"I'll never know whether my doctor did the right thing or not in keeping me under wraps the way that he did, one half of me thinks that if I'd been able to contact you sooner my recovery might have been so much quicker, while the other half of me tells me that knowing the true story would have prevented me from forgiving you. All that I can say is that now that I know that you tried to find me and that you never stopped loving me is the most important aspect of my recovery."

"Someone else was bidding at that auction and that someone was my father. It was his way of attempting to repair the damage that he and Mother had caused, actually it was mostly Mother. He has the most amazing collection of your works and when he dies he has is leaving them all to Felicity."

The curtain was pulled back and the doctor came in. "I think that's enough excitement for one day."

"No." In triplicate.

"The sooner he is allowed to get some rest the sooner we can release him. We'll assess the situation later today and in all probability he can go home tonight."

"We'll wait for you." Cassandra kissed me. "We won't be far away."

"I'm so excited to at long last meet you," Felicity paused, then hesitantly, "Daddy, I've heard so much about you over the past few weeks that I feel that I've known you all my life and I've only just met you. Get good soon." She kissed me on the cheek. Everything that she said and did reminded me so much of the Cassandra I knew twenty years ago, the good things that I remembered, the bad things were receding rapidly into oblivion. A hurried consultation took place in which I pleaded to be allowed to take Cassie and Felicity home with me. I explained my reasons and after a short deliberation it was agreed that I should be released from hospital.

The car dropped us off at my house, my country cottage. "This is exactly as I pictured us living twenty years ago, in a little cottage in the country. This is perfect." Cassandra was in tears, happy tears. Susan opened the door for us. She took one look at Cassandra and her Irishness, long forgotten, surfaced. "Saints preserve us if it isn't the angel herself." She stared at Cassandra for several minutes. "And here I was thinking it was all in his mind."

"Susan, this is my Cassandra, and my daughter Felicity."

"I understand it all now. It's no wonder you were off with the loonies, I would have been too if I was wrenched away from someone I loved as much as you obviously loved this gorgeous creature. And here was the doctors who should know what's what about all this not recognising that your heart had been ripped from your chest and stomped on." She turned to Cassandra, "I'm sorry for my outburst but I'm so angry at his doctor and all of them people who should have recognised that he wasn't crazy all this time, just heart-broken."

"What's past is past and best forgotten." I told her. "What is important is the future and that future is clear and bright. I am alive for the first time in twenty years , I thought that I would never find true happiness again but now I have and I owe it to three women, women of the past, the present and the future. Cassie, you were dragged out of my life and you've asked me to forgive you when there is nothing to forgive. Those around us conspired for whatever reason to keep us apart but the one thing that they could never take from me, and that was my love for you and now you are back in my life for good. Susan, you have looked after me and tended to my needs, even in my times of deepest depression, something that I have only just begun to appreciate, and I would like you to stay and continue that role. Felicity, you are the future of our lives together, you are what should have been for your mother and me but you, like my life, were taken from me but not from your mother. Cassie has had your love for the past twenty years and I intend to have your love for the next twenty years, at least, that's if you want it."

Cassie hugged me and planted a long, lingering and tearful kiss on my lips. "I love your my darling, I have always loved you, do you remember what I told you the first time that we made love, that you were and would always be the love of my life and that I wanted you to be the lover in my life, you were and still are."

Felicity also hugged me and her first kiss was tentative, she withdrew a couple of inches and tears welled up in her eyes then she kissed me again, harder this time. "I'm sorry that I missed out on knowing you all of these years and I can understand why Mother has been the way she has for as long as I can remember. I too would have been dead miserable in her situation."

Susan hugged me as well. "There'll be no kissing from me. . . . well just a little one," she looked at Cassie, "This will be the first you understand, and the last. I will stay with you and look after the three of you like you are my own family for as long as you'll have me. But there will be no hanky panky, is that understood?"