‘He’s paying me back,’ Edward had said several times that evening, ‘for telling him off this afternoon.’
Arriving home just after six, he had been irritated to find Liam still missing, and with justifiable anger had repeated the tale of what had passed between them in the workshop. ‘It won’t do,’ he kept saying, ‘the boy must understand that he cannot simply walk out on an employer, even though I am his father. He wouldn’t get away with it anywhere else, and he must realize he can’t get away with it now. I’m afraid there’ll have to be some plain speaking when he does come home.’
But while Edward went over the situation several times for her benefit, Louisa began to wonder whether Liam had already come home that afternoon. And if he had, what had he overheard? There had been a noise, enough to penetrate Robert’s consciousness, enough to stop him in mid-flow and make him look round the corner. They had gone together into the front garden, even glanced along the towpath, but apart from the gate standing open, there was no sign of anyone. At the time it had been disturbing, but inexplicable. Shortly afterwards, hardly on better terms, Robert had said he must go.
With awful dread that their mysterious visitor may have been Liam, Louisa had tried to find a way of telling Edward, but she had been reluctant to provoke harsh words over Robert’s illicit visit while her other son was in the house. At last Robin went out, but then Tisha arrived home with a girlfriend, and they had clung maddeningly to the garden, discussing the latest fashions and people at work in girlish, affected voices.
Wishing them far enough, Louisa was astonished to hear her garden being praised by the friend, and Tisha saying airily that yes, it was wonderful to have this touch of rural peace, so much pleasanter than living in town. Ordinarily, Louisa would have smothered a laugh at such affected nonsense, but in that moment she could have smacked Tisha for her insincerity and that desire to impress. Usually, she was inordinately keen to keep her friends on their home ground, rather than her own.
The friend eventually went home just as Robin returned. Touchingly concerned about his brother, he had offered to go out again, but Liam could have gone in any direction, and Louisa was far from convinced that he would return at all. Keeping her voice light, she had sent her younger son to bed half an hour ago, but still had not broached the subject to Edward.
At her sigh, Edward turned. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said gently, ‘he will be back. And even if he decides to stay out all night, he can’t come to much harm. It’s hardly the middle of winter.’
Twisting a handkerchief between her fingers, Louisa shook her head. ‘It’s not that.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Something else is worrying me. I think he might have come back this afternoon, when...’
The sound of footsteps on the path halted her in mid-sentence; she dashed into the kitchen while Edward slowly pushed back his chair.
She stood like someone frozen to the spot. As he strode quickly to her side, Edward immediately saw why. In shadows cast by the oil-lamp, Liam stood against the closed door, his eyes glittering feverishly, his face suffused. At first Edward thought he was drunk, but then he moved, and in the light his brows and thick, tumbled hair gleamed in contrast to his sunburned skin.
Without uttering a word the boy went to the sink, turned on the tap and cupped his hands beneath it, drinking like someone dying of thirst, splashing the rest over face and neck. As though a spell had been broken, Louisa grabbed a pint pot from the shelf, and as she handed it to him, touched his head and neck. Her gentle fingers might have been those of a torturer: as he flinched away, Liam told her harshly to leave him alone.
‘I won’t hurt you,’ his mother protested, reaching out again, ‘I only want to feel if you have a temperature...’
‘What if I have? It’s no business of yours. Get away – don’t touch me.’
Gingerly dabbing his face with a towel, he backed out of reach. But he need not have bothered, Edward thought; holding the sink for support, Louisa was staring as though Liam had struck her physically. For a second, Edward wanted to hit him, wanted to grab him by the collar and kick him up the stairs to bed. But the boy was obviously ill, his behaviour so completely out of character that Edward knew he must be calmed, not provoked.
‘If you’re not feeling well, Liam,’ he said quietly, drawing out a couple of chairs, ‘why don’t you sit down and tell us where you’ve been?’ Ignoring him for the moment, he turned to Louisa and gently persuaded her into a chair. Drawing out another, Edward seated himself and repeated his suggestion.
‘Obviously,’ he went on, ‘you’ve been in the sun all afternoon – not very wise, as I’m sure you’ll agree. But that’s the penalty you’re paying for going off half-cocked. Next time, perhaps you’ll remember it.’
Dropping the towel, Liam started to laugh. It was a harsh, mirthless sound which seemed to hurt him even more than it hurt them to hear it. ‘Oh, I’m not likely to forget this afternoon,’ he said with bitter irony. ‘Rest assured, Father, I’ll remember it to my dying day!’
‘What do you mean?’ Edward whispered, his heart plummeting in sudden fear. He glanced at Louisa, ashen-faced with shock, and knew, instantly, that something had occurred which had nothing to do with the argument in Coffee Yard. ‘What does he mean?’ he demanded of her, but with eyes only for Liam, she merely shook her head.
‘Didn’t you tell him?’ Liam demanded. ‘Didn’t you tell him who was here this afternoon and what you were discussing? Didn’t you say you were talking about me and Georgina – and that he told you it was time you told the truth?’’
By the ghastliness of their faces, Liam knew he had managed to stun them both, knew he had the upper hand for once, and the knowledge gave him a sense of tremendous power. Outside, the child which remained in him had quaked at the temerity of a frontal attack, but a lover’s pain and a man’s anger had smothered its mewling voice; that sense of power killed it outright. He wanted to hurt them, as much as he had been hurt, and was prepared to give no quarter.
‘Tell me,’ he asked conversationally of his mother, ‘has the Colonel always been your lover, or did you give him up on your wedding day?’
‘That’s enough,’ Edward hissed, thrusting himself between the two and forcing Liam back. ‘This is your mother, for heaven’s sake! Have you no respect?’
There were no denials, Liam noted. Something else in him died. Less than a foot from the man who had been his father, Liam drew himself up to his full height. He had the advantage of four or five inches. Looking down into Edward’s face, noting its greyness, its anger and distress, Liam felt no pity at all.
‘I have no respect,’ he declared implacably, ‘for either of you.’
The older man seemed to shrink before his eyes. Sagging backwards against the table, he slowly shook his head.
‘Oh, my God,’ he murmured under his breath, ‘what have we done?’ Like someone in a dream, he turned to his wife. ‘Robert was here, then? Today? Why didn’t you tell me?’
She answered faintly: ‘I don’t know. I should have – I tried to...’ With a great effort she rose to her feet, taking a step towards Liam, her hand extended like a beggar. ‘I’m sorry,’ she cried as he jerked away. ‘Liam, love, I’m sorry! It wasn’t intended – we didn’t know you were there – I don’t know what you heard, but – ’
‘Spare me your excuses! Try the truth for a change. Why didn’t you tell me before? Why did you let me go on believing something that wasn’t true?’ His mother winced and he enjoyed it, letting his voice gather power as the words rushed out in a torrent. ‘Everything I believed in is lies – everything. There’s nothing left — my life is destroyed. You’ve taken it all away and made a fool of me. I loved you – I loved my father, but he’s not my father at all. I loved Georgina, too – stupidly, ridiculously, hopelessly, but still I loved her.
‘But I didn’t know,’ he whispered, ‘I didn’t know she was my sister...’ There was a hard pain in his chest and in his throat, a pain which might have found ease in tear
s, but he forced it down, determined not to give way.
‘She should never have come here,’ Edward murmured distractedly.
‘So your lies could have gone unchallenged?’
‘No – so your pain could have been avoided! That was all your mother ever wanted – to spare you and Robin and Tisha the agony of knowing you were the children of a man she could never marry!’
‘Oh, yes, I forgot,’ Liam said with something akin to a sneer, ‘he was married, Mother, wasn’t he? So you added the sin of adultery to that of fornication – and then married your cousin in an attempt to cover it up!’ Hating her for being so much less than perfect, for destroying his image of her as a mother and as a woman, Liam never noticed the hand Edward raised against him. The fist which crashed into his jaw sent him staggering sideways, and as he flung out an arm to save himself, brought down a shelf full of crockery.
There was a second crash as Robin burst into the kitchen, sending the door juddering against its hinges, then a moment’s horrified silence. As Liam gathered himself together, ready to strike back, Robin leapt forward, pinioning his arms, urging him to come away, not to make things worse. Sparing barely a glance for his anguished mother, or his father massaging painful knuckles, the younger boy dragged Liam out of the room.
Tisha was sitting halfway up the stairs, knees tucked beneath her chin, eyes huge in a pale, shocked face. She seemed to be staring at nothing, made no response to her brother’s request, and even as Robin brushed past, pulling Liam with him, she did not move.
Gruffly, from the top of the stairs, he told her to go to bed; but for the moment he was more concerned with his brother, who, on the point of collapse, was bleeding profusely from a cut lip. In their shared bedroom Robin poured water into a basin and silently bathed his brother’s face. With no assistance he stripped off Liam’s clothes and made him lie down in the big bed they had shared since childhood. Although it was many years since they had wrapped their arms around each other in sleep, when Robin climbed in he curled around his older brother.
Tisha did not stir. She listened to her mother’s sobs and her father’s pleas, his bitter, anguished recriminations, which were directed as much against himself as anyone else. It was frightening to hear her calm, assured, beloved father so distressed, and awful to realize his vulnerability. She heard her mother crying over Liam, repeating his name like a litany; a chair scraped on the stone floor below, there was a scuffle of feet, a cry from her mother and more muffled sobs. Tisha’s heart hardened. Liam was her mother’s favourite and always had been. She would grieve for him and less for Robin, but not at all for her daughter.
Robert Duncannon’s name was repeated several times, and it slowly dawned on Tisha that the witty, handsome army officer she so admired was, in fact, her father. She realized too that Edward hated him. For the moment, however, that was less important than her need to be comforted. The secure world she so enjoyed kicking against was suddenly no more: she was suspended in a yawning, echoing void and nobody seemed aware of it. Obsessed with their own misery, her parents cared nothing for Tisha’s, while Robin and Liam had each other, and would not welcome her.
She heard Edward telling her mother to come to bed. With a cold hand round her heart, Tisha crept silently away.
Overtaken by exhaustion, neither Edward nor Louisa had the heart to face their children then. ‘Tomorrow,’ Edward said as he helped her to undress, ‘we must sort it out tomorrow. Things will seem different in the morning.’
‘Do you hate me?’ she asked as they lay together between the linen sheets.
‘How could I hate you,’ he whispered into the darkness, ‘when I’ve loved you from the moment you were born?’ He drew her, unresisting, into his arms, wiping away the tears with gentle, loving hands. He kissed her forehead as she nestled against him, knowing, in spite of everything, that Louisa needed him and always would. His bitterness and resentment were reserved for Robert Duncannon, not through jealousy, but because he had always known his capacity for destruction. And now those fears were fact.
Seeking words which would comfort her, Edward looked back over the years. Linked by the closeness of their blood relationship, the two lives seemed one. It was ironic, Edward thought, that those close links should have made his feelings for her seem so incestuous, to the extent that he had not declared himself, and subsequently lost her to Robert Duncannon. That was his biggest regret. And now the appalling irony was that Liam should fall in love with Robert’s daughter, not knowing the incestuous nature of his feelings for her.
Feeling the boy’s pain, regretting the fury which had prompted him to strike out, nevertheless Edward had to admit to a certain sense of relief. Horrible though that scene had been, now at least things were out in the open. He would not have wished it so, and his regrets were legion when he thought of the past’s lost opportunities, but always he had been bound by Louisa’s desire for secrecy. Edward knew he should have overridden her, that things should never have been allowed to come to this pass; but they were, after all, Louisa’s children, and he their father in name only. However, he had loved them as though they were his own, and in retrospect was able to understand the tension which had made him so short-tempered in recent months: a need to speak to Liam, to tell him the truth, conflicting with his loyalty to Louisa.
He did not blame her for the afternoon’s sequence of events, or if he did, he blamed himself in equal measure. Knowing the depth of her love for her eldest child, and understanding, too, her propensity for guilt, he was more deeply concerned for her than he was for the children. He felt for them, for Liam particularly. But they were young and had always been loved, and he was sure their hearts would mend. Where his wife was concerned, he was not so sure. In the old days, before they were married, she had suffered greatly. Edward did not want her to suffer like that again.
Tomorrow, he thought, when the sun was up, would be the time to gather themselves and talk honestly and openly about the past – his own as well as Louisa’s — and then, hopefully, they could begin to discuss the future.
Liam awoke with a shaft of sunlight in his eyes, just after half-past four. His head was throbbing and his mouth was sore, proving, if proof were needed, that yesterday’s events were real. Wincing with pain and unbidden memory, he turned away from the light. On the pillow beside him, innocent in sleep, Robin’s face was curiously unmarked by the grief which had broken in the hours of darkness.
Although they were different, and might not have chosen each other as friends, Liam was never more aware of the bonds which existed between them. But that was another pain he did not want to feel. For a moment he acknowledged the debt he owed to his brother. Without his intervention, Liam knew he might have done unforgivable, irretrievable damage. The grief they had shared afterwards, the tortured questions he had answered, Liam thrust aside. He would not dwell on that, just as he would not think of yesterday.
With sleep, thank God, the torture had subsided, leaving him cold and empty and capable of thought. Now was the time to go, before claims were made upon him, before apologies and explanations and other people’s pain could screw him down with guilt. Liam knew, as surely as the sun had risen and would duly set, that to be forced into Georgina’s presence after this, would be the most unbearable agony a man could imagine. He saw her eyes smiling at him, imagined her hair loose and tumbling about her face; thought of that supple, slender figure, and knew he would always want her. No matter who she was or what she was, however misplaced his heart, he would always, always love her. But he could not face her pity.
Trying not to wake his brother, Liam rolled out of bed and stifled a groan. He was hurting all over, muscles aching, skin tender, head throbbing. Dried blood had caked his lips together and left his mouth tasting foul. He felt physically and mentally soiled, and surveyed yesterday’s stained and crumpled clothes with distaste. Opening a drawer with great care, he found two sets of clean linen, and taking his suit and a spare pair of trousers from the wardrobe, crept
downstairs to wash in the kitchen.
Stuffing the spare clothing into a knapsack, together with his razor and a cake of soap, he added half a loaf of bread and some cheese, and slipped his post office savings book into an inner pocket. That, together with this week’s unspent allowance, might pay for meals and a few days’ cheap lodgings. He must trust to fortune for the rest. Knotting his tie, he slipped on his jacket and glanced in the mirror to give his hair a final brush. It was wet, but several shades lighter than his skin. Although his lower lip was bruised and swollen, the cut was much less noticeable. All in all, he thought dispassionately, he looked better than he felt, which as far as a prospective employer was concerned, was all that mattered. He hoped his journey would pass without incident.
With his hand on the door, Liam remembered something; for a moment he wavered, but need won. He went to Robin’s neat stack of photographs on the sideboard, flicked through them and found a set of portraits, postcard-sized, of members of the family. They had been isolated and enlarged from the group photographs, and there were several of each: just one, surely, would not be missed.
Guiltily, hearing a movement above, Liam pushed that portrait of Georgina between the leaves of his savings-book and rearranged the others into neatness. He hurried into the hall just as Robin came down the stairs. He was fully dressed.
Liam stood for a moment, saying nothing, then jerked his head. ‘If you want to talk,’ he murmured, ‘you’d better come outside.’
They walked around the house on the grass, and opening the gate, Liam blessed the fact that he had cured its tortured squeak; it did not occur to him that had he left it alone, his mother and Robert Duncannon might have been warned of his approach, and thus not blighted his hopes so abruptly.
Liam led the way to where he had left his bike the night before. Some instinct had made him hide it in the hedge rather than run the risk of having it taken from him and locked away. As he pulled it free of twigs and branches, Robin asked what his plans were.
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