‘May I come in, Eleanor?’ she asked.
Ellie, who was too startled to speak, just nodded and stepped back for the older woman to enter.
‘Oliver,’ Ellie stammered to her brother who had come forward to meet his sister’s visitor. ‘This is Ria Stirling, Theo’s mother.’
The look of amazement that crossed his face was rapidly replaced by one of cold courtesy.
‘I don’t blame you,’ said Mrs Stirling, who had not missed the outraged look that passed between brother and sister. ‘In your place, I’m sure I would do the same. May I sit down? I won’t keep you long, but I think this meeting... discussion, whatever you want to call it, is overdue.’
Slowly beginning to emerge from the shock of their unexpected visitor, Oliver offered her a seat and a drink while Ellie took her coat.
‘This is charming, Eleanor,’ she said, glancing round. ‘And that I do recognize. It’s one of your father’s, isn’t it?’ She indicated the watercolour of the garden at Delcourt as it had once been, hanging above the fireplace.
Ellie nodded. ‘Mrs Stirling, you must forgive me, I don’t wish to sound rude, but will you tell me why you’re here? Surely you cannot believe that any intervention from you will stop Oliver and I from fighting your son’s plans to redevelop Linton’s Field.’
Ria looked so gravely back at her that Ellie almost laughed and said ‘You look just like Theo,’ but restrained herself as Oliver handed their visitor a large gin and tonic.
‘No, I wouldn’t do that. I wanted to see you both. Your wife, Jill isn’t it,’ she said to Oliver, accepting the drink, ‘told me I would find you here, which is a relief. It will save me the pain of having to repeat all of this.’
‘Repeat what, Mrs Stirling?’ asked Oliver, as bewildered as his sister.
‘Do you think you could call me Ria, you see I feel I know you both so well.’
She didn’t wait for a reply and simply continued: ‘Theo has for far too long taken the blame — and indeed the pain — for events that were not of his making. I saw you in Venice, Eleanor, and for the first time I realized that it was wickedly unfair to allow the next generation to carry the burdens of their parents’ mistakes.’
Ellie and Oliver looked at each other, already bristling at what seemed to be the prelude to another round of accusations against their father.
‘No, please, it isn’t what you think. I’m going to tell you the whole story — and I have your father’s permission. Reluctant permission.’ She smiled faintly, reading their disbelieving expressions very accurately.
‘Dad?’ Oliver repeated blankly. ‘Gave you permission? Why? What for?’
‘John has always shied away from confrontation — I think you know that,’ she continued. ‘But then so did I. Until this week. Such a mistake to make,’ and she smiled so sadly, Ellie found she wasn’t regarding her with such hostility, just curiosity.
‘Mrs Stirling... Ria... just tell me what it is you want us to know?’
‘I want you to know what you’ve always known. Your father stole some plans that could have ruined Robert...’
It was as far as she got. Brother and sister were on their feet, greeting this news with total, incredulous silence.
Finally in a strangled voice, Oliver said, ‘Mrs Stirling, I think you should leave. This is just disgusting... to come here... to accuse him... I just can’t believe it.’
Ria’s distress was evident. She looked at them and in a voice that was barely audible said: ‘You must believe me, because there is so much more to it... to understand why he did it.’
They waited in silence as Ria, struggling to find the words, continued. Ellie glanced nervously at Oliver. He was looking at Ria with an odd expression.
‘I think we should listen to Ria, Ellie,’ he said, motioning his sister to sit down. ‘We’re listening, go on.’
She gave him a grateful look and told them the whole story.
‘When I came to live in Willetts Green all those years ago, I was there under protest. I hardly saw my husband, he was such a workaholic, and when he wasn’t working it seemed to me he spent more time helping out other people who were down on their luck than keeping me company. No, not your father,’ she said quickly. ‘Robert was attracted to John’s talent and had asked him to paint my portrait long before he knew how desperate his financial situation was.
‘It was only later that he suggested he re-financed him so that with some of his money worries off his shoulders he would be able to concentrate on what he does best – paint. I was livid. It seemed to me that having my portrait painted was to keep me amused and entertained while my husband worked longer and longer hours. But I liked John — you couldn’t help it. He’s charming, such good company. We used to talk a lot during the sittings. He told me that Alison wouldn’t marry him because financially he was in such a mess...’
‘But that isn’t true,’ Ellie protested. ‘Dad can’t have believed that. It’s a family joke he was waiting for Alison to propose... he’d never have got round to it himself.’
‘I know,’ Ria replied. ‘But I didn’t know it then. Well, and this is the hard part...’
She twisted her glass in her hands and looked from one to the other with a look that was hard to interpret. Almost pleading for understanding, thought Ellie.
‘What’s so hard about it?’ asked Oliver gently.
‘Well, the hard part is this. Your father and I had a brief, thoughtless affair.’
Ellie thought a gun had gone off behind her head. Ria Stirling and her father. Impossible. But even as her brain reeled she knew Ria was telling the truth. Her hand flew to her mouth. Oliver, for some reason, didn’t look all that surprised.
‘Affair?’ Ellie finally croaked. ‘What do you mean, affair?’
‘What it usually means,’ said Ria, almost sheepishly. ‘It was stupid. Born out of loneliness, a great deal of self-pity on both sides and the very selfish actions of two people who didn’t know when they were well off.’
‘Were you... in... love?’ Ellie could hardly get the words out. Her father, and Theo’s mother. The world was falling apart. She wasn’t shocked at the morality of it, just the fact that it had never occurred to her as even a remote possibility.
As if reading her mind Ria said, ‘You know under any other circumstances, your father and I would have been mildly attracted to each other as some people are, and that would have been it. Far too aware of what we had to lose to risk a meaningless fling. However, the circumstances were not usual. We both felt no-one appreciated us, we were rather spoilt really. So before we came to our senses we, um, well, we were in the middle of an affair.’
Ellie couldn’t take her eyes off her.
Ria was looking anxious.
‘Oh, believe me, for a very short while we were — I suppose — in lust. But love? No, it was all make believe. We talked for a while about being together, but it was impossible. John had no money to support me and well, I was used to a degree of comfort. I remember it was all rather desperate stuff. We knew without financial help there was no future.
‘I was going back to the States with my daughters who had finished the school year, and I wanted to see Theo, who had finished Harvard and was fighting off my husband trying to drag him into the family business.
‘John and I agreed to meet one last time — at a restaurant en route to the airport. Robert had asked me to take the plans with me to deliver them personally to the London office — it was often done when something is that sensitive. But I wanted to see John before I left. I didn’t have time for both. I thought it would be a simple matter to get him to deliver them for me. Robert would never have known.’
For a moment she stopped and gazing at their intent faces said:
‘I’m not very proud of any of this, or what we did. You must believe that.’
Oliver looked down at the carpet and then straight at her.
‘It is immaterial whether we believe that or not. Just at this moment Ellie and I w
ant the truth, that’s all. Don’t we, El?’
Ellie nodded.
‘Well, John and I met, all very melodramatic, but we parted, he to take the train to London, me to take a plane to New York. About two weeks later I got this panic-stricken phone call from John. Oh, first of all he lied, then he blurted out the truth.’
Ellie suddenly couldn’t conjure up a picture of her father’s face. The smiling, charming, often brattish John Carter was not recognizable in this portrait being painted by Ria Stirling. Or was he?
It was growing dark; Ellie switched on the lamps and even though it was April it was chilly enough for a fire. Ria watched her as she moved around the room.
‘You must believe me, Eleanor, please. You can speak to your father...’
‘No,’ Ellie said sharply. ‘No. You tell me what happened.’
‘Well, John said he couldn’t just let me go, not like that. He saw a way of making money. He thought Robert had so much it wouldn’t matter if he lost the odd contract. So he took the plans to London, but before he delivered them, he went to a photocopier’s and had them copied. It was quite a big document, so he went off for a walk. He didn’t want the guy in the shop to become too familiar with how he looked.
‘Then he took the train to London and delivered the original to Stirling House as I had asked and took the copy home. After that he contacted Basil Oldburn, whom he had met when he was painting his daughters, and they had a conversation that left John in no doubt that Oldburn would be prepared to pay a lot for the plans.’
‘And Basil Oldburn split on Dad,’ interjected Oliver.
Ria gave a flat laugh. ‘Not on your life. Basil would have carved Robert up at every opportunity. I think he offered John about twenty-five grand for them. A fortune at that time. The plans were exchanged, but before Basil could deliver the cheque — heavily disguised as a huge fee for a special painting commission — all hell broke loose.’
Oliver refilled Ria’s glass, Ellie shook her head in bewilderment.
‘But how was Dad linked to any of this? Who gave him away?’
‘The photocopier’s. They ran off the first few pages and apparently they were damaged — or didn’t print very well. The guy in the shop put them on one side and after John had left, some industrious assistant noticed them and the man who did them couldn’t remember whether he had replaced them. So they sent them to Robert, assuming he knew all about the copy, with a covering note explaining. Robert was appalled. Immediately he ordered an enquiry. It was a simple matter then to trace the cheque back to your father.’
For the first time Ellie allowed herself to see her father as other’s did. Stupid, weak, feckless Pa. Couldn’t conduct a bus let alone an affair or a theft.
‘So when Robert discovered the source, he naturally confronted John and there was, I gather, a terrible scene.’
Ellie didn’t even have to look at Oliver. The raised voices, the murderous rage of Robert Stirling. Dad’s ashen face. The dreadful silence after Robert had gone. Aunt Belle rigid with anger. Terrible scene? How inadequate.
Aunt Belle. No wonder. Oh God, Aunt Belle.
‘Then John phoned me.’ Ellie dragged herself back to the present as Ria began to make sense of the last fifteen years. ‘I was traumatized. Everything had got desperately out of control. John insisted he had done it for me, so that we could be together. I was horrified. Two weeks back in New York, I was beginning to see what a mistake the affair had been, how much better off I was with Robert. Believe me, please believe me, I never thought John would do such a thing.’
‘Neither did we,’ said Oliver drily. ‘What happened then?’
Ria reeled off a list of events that even Ellie and Oliver realized must have seemed insurmountable at the time: Oldburns whipping a lucrative deal from under Robert’s nose with the kind of muscle that could only have come from inside information; Oldburns backing out of the picture; John helpless to make Oldburns honour their agreement without admitting his role in their company coup; Ria begging John not to implicate her, desperate to save her marriage; John facing a future without Alison, who would leave him.
Something, someone had to call a halt to it all. Ria was only too aware that while her reputation remained intact, John Carter’s flaky character could not be relied on. So they struck a bargain. In return for his silence, Ria would make sure that Robert dropped all charges against him.
But how to do it was harder to organize. Enter Theo.
Ellie looked quickly at Oliver, who was clearly having his own problem coming to terms with the appalling fact of their father’s lack of judgement, his stupidly.
‘So what did Theo do?’ asked Ellie.
‘He got the first plane over to England, found Robert intent on having John put behind bars and set about convincing him that the scandal would be very damaging to the firm and the family. Oldburns would make sure a theft looked like company incompetence.
‘Remember, John was just as much to blame as me. And he was very anxious that Alison should never find out. So Theo took what he considered to be the safest course of action. Your father couldn’t sell Delcourt because it was in such a dreadful state of repair — Theo says, he wouldn’t have slammed a door in case the lot crashed around his ears — so Theo said he would buy it from him. That way John at least had a chance of buying a smaller, more manageable property outright, using the rest of the money to pay off his debts and start again somewhere else.
‘John jumped at the chance. He had never really liked the house. It had, I believe, been your mother’s and after she died he tried to sell it, but it was difficult as it needed so much doing to it.’
Aunt Belle’s accusation that the house had been invaded by cowboys came back. Ellie felt as though her teenage years and all that followed were floating into place like missing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle lost after all that time. What puzzled her was how Theo had explained such a generous act to his father, Robert.
‘Oh, he didn’t,’ said Ria. ‘It has always been mine and Theo’s secret — oh, and John’s of course. Theo has always said it was his oddest investment. Robert has always thought John Carter left town under his own steam. And he did, but he drove a hard bargain. Er... by this time, I think you’ve both realized your father and I were united only in wishing we had never laid eyes on each other. He agreed to sell Delcourt provided he could have a cash settlement as well.’
Ellie thought she would die of shame. ‘A cash settlement? What the hell was that?’
Ria eyed her with cynical amusement. ‘You’ve been dealing with Theo and still haven’t worked out where he excels? Money, my dear, or at least the investing of it.’
Ellie had no problem believing her.
‘Theo refused. But I made him go back and do a deal. In the end Theo agreed to John’s demands but only if Alison were the caretaker of the money and the bank. John told Alison that it was from the sale of the house and for tax reasons it should be in her name and remain so. Whether she believed him or not I don’t know, but that’s what happened. The cash was a lump sum investment for you two. Alison chose to have it invested in the rest of your education. The sale of the house went towards paying off John’s debts.
‘It was Alison who insisted that she used her own money to buy the house in Devon and take you all there. Oh, don’t look so amazed, frankly at the time Theo was glad to see the back of you — and me for a while.’
For the first time Ria’s voice broke. She had always known that Theo had loved her but his willingness to help sprang solely from a desire to protect his father.
‘Don’t forget as a result of Oldburns getting those plans, Robert — or rather Theo — had practically to rebuild the company from scratch.’
It was Oliver’s turn to look horrified. He shook his head, trying to absorb that the man he was campaigning against had been the very man to give him the opportunity in life his own father would have denied him.
‘I had half guessed there was something more to the business of st
ealing plans,’ he said in disbelief. ‘I was older than Ellie, I could put two and two together. But I could never have guessed what you have just told me.’
Well, that’s it, thought Ellie, the final humiliation. She was in a job because Theo Stirling had made sure she had had a decent education and living in a flat that because of him she was able to afford.
And Alison. Thanks to Alison, John Carter had not been able to fritter the money away, as Theo, as anyone who knew him, knew he would.
If there was a dark hole, in a country so remote that it wasn’t even on the map, it was unlikely that at that moment, it would not have been deep enough or secret enough for her to hide away in. Mortified, she could hardly bring herself to look at Ria, who was addressing an equally stricken Oliver.
‘Theo and I were so relieved, you see, that the problem appeared to be solved,’ she was saying. ‘It never occurred to either of us until he met Eleanor recently just how deeply affected you had both been. John always gave me the impression that you were so gypsy-like you could live anywhere.’
Ellie, who had been sitting staring silently at Ria with the memory of her defiant assertion to Theo that she was independent ricocheting around her head, asked in a quiet voice: ‘Why didn’t he just tell me all of this? Why bid for the land next to Oliver’s?’
Ria sighed. ‘That son of mine has an overdeveloped sense of loyalty. I told you. He couldn’t break his word to me, he didn’t want to betray your father. He couldn’t... never expected... I mean,’ she sounded confused, looking appealingly at Ellie and finished lamely, ‘he never expected to meet with such opposition once you inadvertently found out. That was my fault as well.
‘What worried me was that I could see history repeating itself. I found out about the piece of land from a chance conversation with Sally. You know, Sally Broughton, his godmother? A dear woman, but really, there are moments when I think it might have been better if I had never discovered anything at all about Linton’s Field. Sally knew about it from someone on the planning committee. You know what these environmentalists are. Ears everywhere.
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