‘Yes, I’d like to know about my father,’ I told Rosalyn, ‘but not the rest of it – not Mother’s death.’
‘You can’t separate the two,’ Aunt Peggy had said. Then she’d laughed – almost hysterically. ‘Yes, that was the problem – you couldn’t separate the one from the other.’
And now – eerily – Rosalyn repeated my aunt’s very words.
‘You can’t separate the one from the other,’ she said. ‘So what’s it to be – the whole story, or nothing at all?’
‘Tell me the whole story,’ I said heavily.
‘A Cornish holiday,’ Rosalyn said, extracting every drop of drama she could from her tale. ‘It is night, and you, little Bobby, are safely tucked up in your bed, dreaming of seagulls and sandcastles. And this is just what Mummy has been waiting for. She kisses you softly on the forehead, and tip-toes from your room.’ She paused for a moment. ‘And that’s interesting, in its own right, isn’t it?
‘What’s interesting?’
‘Hotel rooms are expensive, yet you, a kid of nine, had one entirely to yourself. Don’t you think that’s just a little strange?’
Yes, looking at it that way, I supposed it was. But I definitely remembered that I did have a room of my own.
‘Where was I?’ Rosalyn asked. ‘Oh yes. Mummy tip-toes out of your room, and goes down to the beach. Only she’s not alone – she’s got her lover with her.’
‘This is ridiculous!’ I said.
Except that it didn’t actually sound ridiculous. In fact, it was beginning to fill in some of the gaps in my memory.
‘So they’re on the beach,’ Rosalyn continued. ‘Very romantic it is, what with the moon, and the sound of the tide coming in. It’s a warm night, and there’s nobody about, so one of them suggests a bit of nooky al fresco. She takes off her knickers, he pulls down his trousers – and they’re away. They’re going at it hammer and tongs, having a great time. Then guess what happens?’
‘You’ve got a sick mind,’ I said.
And yet I believed what she was telling me – I believed it all!
‘Mummy gets cramp,’ Rosalyn said with glee. ‘And not in her arm or her leg. Oh no! It’s in somewhere much more inconvenient than that.’
‘You don’t mean …’ I gasped.
‘I do mean! You’ve seen it when it happens to dogs, haven’t you? Well, it was just like that. They must have tried to move, but it would’ve hurt like hell, and even then they couldn’t have got far. And all the time, the tide was coming in … whoosh … whoosh …’
‘Stop,’ I pleaded.
‘The currents are strong down there,’ Rosalyn continued relentlessly. ‘They were dragged out to sea with him still inside her, so, naturally, they drowned.’
‘Can you prove any of this fantastic rubbish?’ I demanded.
‘Of course I can prove it,’ Rosalyn said contemptuously. ‘Jesus Christ, they were still welded together when they were washed up again. It’s all in the coroner’s report.’ She picked up an official-looking piece of paper, and waved it at me. ‘Do you want to read it for yourself?’
‘No,’ I said – because I was sure that it would say exactly what she claimed it did.
‘And that’s not even the best part of the story,’ Rosalyn said. ‘The real kicker is that the lover your mother died screwing was actually your father. Ask me who he was! Go on – I dare you.’
Who could he have been, this man Mother would never talk about?
Why had she refused to publicly acknowledge him, even on my birth certificate?
Had she kept their relationship secret because he was famous?
Or had there been an altogether more sordid reason for hiding the love affair in the shadows?
‘He wasn’t married, was he?’ I asked.
Rosalyn laughed. ‘Is that all you’re concerned about? No, he wasn’t married. Or rather, he had been – but his wife was long dead by the time he started sticking it to your precious mother.’
Thank God for that!
Forgive me, Mother, I thought. Forgive me for believing, even for a minute, that you could behave like that.
‘Who were you living with just before your mother died?’ Rosalyn asked, teasing me in the nastiest possible way.
‘With Mother, of course.’
‘Only with her? Nobody else?’
‘We both lived with Grandfather.’
Rosalyn rummaged through her pile of papers and came up with an old sepia photograph, which she handed to me.
‘Is this him?’ she asked.
It must have been twenty years since I’d seen a picture of Grandfather – and this one was taken when he was a much younger man – but I recognised him immediately. I recognised something else, too. I recognised that he … that I …
‘So you and your mother were living with your grandfather immediately before the holiday – immediately before your mother drowned,’ Rosalyn said, cutting into my thoughts.
‘Yes, I’ve already told you that.’
‘Then why did you go to live with your Aunt Jacqueline? Why didn’t your grandfather look after you?’
‘Because … because he was dead.’
‘And how did he die?’
‘He … he was drowned.’
I looked down at the photograph again. The clothes were old-fashioned, the pose unnatural – but aside from that, I could have been looking in a mirror.
‘It would have been different if they’d been cats, wouldn’t it?’ Aunt Peggy had said. ‘Cats don’t know any better, do they? They don’t mean any harm – it’s just the way they are.’
‘That’s right,’ said Rosalyn with a verbal flourish. ‘Your grandfather was also your father. Your mother was bonking her own dad!’
15
Another lifetime had passed in a few agonising seconds.
Rosalyn still stood by the table; I was still in the centre of the living room.
‘I want you to drop the story,’ I said.
Now why did I ask her to do that?
For Mother, I suppose. Whatever she’d done – whatever she’d been unable to stop herself doing – I didn’t want her memory soiled now.
But if I’m being honest, I have to admit I was also asking it for myself. Rosalyn had already robbed me of something of Mother – if I actually saw it in print, I would lose her completely.
‘I want you to drop the story,’ I repeated.
‘You’ve got be joking,’ Rosalyn replied. ‘This is the chance of a lifetime for me. After this, the paper will give me whatever I want.’
‘It will hurt me deeply if you publish it,’ I told her.
‘You’ll survive,’ Rosalyn said indifferently.
A powerful feeling was overcoming me, a sensation I’d never experienced before.
The room swayed before my eyes, then turned red – blood red.
My hands began to tingle as if they’d been punctured by a thousand tiny needles.
And there was a roaring in my head, like a huge waterfall or the pounding of a thousand horses’ hooves, which hammered out one simple message: kill her … kill her … kill her.
‘What’s the matter, Rob?’ Rosalyn gasped. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘Drop the story,’ I said hoarsely.
‘Y-yes, yes, of course I will, if that’s what you really want,’ Rosalyn stuttered.
She began backing away from me, but her eyes, like those of a frightened rabbit caught in bright headlights, were glued to my face.
‘You don’t mean it,’ I told her. ‘You’re just saying that because you know it’s what I want to hear.’
My hands were prickling unbearably – as if they’d been held too long in front of a hot fire – and I knew that there was one way – and only one way – to make the feeling go away.
‘I’m telling the truth,’ protested Rosalyn, who had now backed up all the way to the kitchen door. ‘All the papers are on th
e table. They’re yours. Do what you want with them. Burn them, shred them – I really don’t care.’
Like a fool, I glanced down at the documents on the table, and Rosalyn used the few precious seconds that gave her to open the door, step inside the kitchen and close the door behind her.
It wouldn’t do her any good, I thought as I crossed the living room. There was only one way out of the kitchen, so in seeking sanctuary there, she had done no more than postpone in inevitable.
The door would not open. Rosalyn, on the other side of it, was pushing as hard as she could. But I was much stronger than she was, and she knew it, so it was only a matter of time before she gave way.
As I increased my pressure, I could picture how strained and desperate she must be, protected from my murderous intent by only a few centimetres of wood.
The door suddenly flew open, and I half-stepped, half-fell, into the kitchen. Rosalyn had moved to the window, and was brandishing our largest, sharpest, kitchen knife.
‘Don’t come near me,’ she warned hysterically. ‘Come near me, and I’ll use this. I mean it.’
My hands itched to be round her throat. Yet if I rushed her, there was a chance she might seriously wound me, and thus escape her rightful fate.
I had been patient before – with all four of my aunts – and I would be patient now. So though my thumbs screamed out for a chance to press down on her white neck – to crush her cartilage, to choke the life out of her – I waited for the moment when her guard was down, and I could safely jump her.
Still waving the knife in my direction, Rosalyn picked up the wall phone and dialled clumsily with her free hand.
‘Police!’ she said, never taking her eyes off me. ‘I want the police.’
A few seconds ticked by.
‘Police?’ Rosalyn gasped with relief. ‘Yes, my fiancé is trying to kill me. My name’s Rosalyn Russell and my address is … yes, that’s right. Come quickly, please. I don’t know how much longer I can hold him off.’
It was then that I heard Mother’s voice. It was not as firm – or as confident – as it usually was. Rather it was like listening to a poorly tuned-in radio, which is drifting even further from the station.
But the message was clear enough.
‘Always try to put yourself in other people’s shoes,’ Mother said.
Not now, Mother, I thought impatiently. I’m too busy to do what you want at the moment.
‘Always try to put yourself in other people’s shoes,’ Mother repeated faintly.
And as faint as the message was, I could not refuse Mother twice.
I imagined how hard it must have been for Rosalyn to cope with my success when her own career was going nowhere. And then I understood that while what she was planning to do was wrong, she’d been driven to it by desperation.
She wasn’t wicked – merely pathetic.
And it was pity, not punishment, that she needed.
The first thing to do was to calm her down. Later, when she was in a better state, I would return to the problem of her story on Mother, and I would use every means at my disposal to make her drop it. I would appeal to her better nature. I would offer her money.
If necessary, I would even pretend that I still loved her.
My fiancée – my ex-fiancée, as she already was in my mind – had dropped the phone, though not the knife.
‘The police will be here in two minutes, so you’d better not try anything,’ she hissed.
‘Give me the knife, darling,’ I said soothingly.
‘Keep back!’ Rosalyn shouted.
‘You’re as likely to hurt yourself as hurt me,’ I said, taking a measured step forward. ‘Come on. Be sensible.’
Screaming at the top of her voice, Rosalyn suddenly lunged at me.
I side-stepped and watched the knife slice through the empty air where, a second earlier, my stomach had been.
Rosalyn whirled round, ready to slash out at me a second time. I grabbed her wrist, and twisted. The knife clattered to the floor.
I flung my arms around her, and hugged her tightly to me.
‘I won’t hurt you,’ I said. ‘I promise I won’t.’
‘Can’t breathe,’ Rosalyn gasped. ‘You’re smothering me.’
I loosened my grip. ‘Is that better, darling?’
She brought up her knee – hard – against my groin.
With a whoof, I sank to my knees.
‘You’ve made things even better for me, you stupid bastard,’ Rosalyn said, as I fought for air. ‘Do you know what the headline will be now? “The story Rob Bates thought was worth killing for!”’
‘Ooph!’ I said.
Rosalyn lashed out with her leg, and the pointed toe of her expensive shoe caught me an agonising blow in my sternum.
I toppled over.
‘I’ll bring you down,’ she screamed. ‘Oh yes, I’ll bring you down. This time next week I’ll be the star, not you.’
A spasm of intense agony shot through my brain as she kicked me on the side of the head.
Another kick followed.
And another.
‘I’m going outside to wait for the police, and then I’m heading straight for the office to work on my story,’ she said … kick, kick … ‘By the end of the week …’ kick … ‘the whole world will know that Rob Bates’ precious mother bonked her own dad.’
I heard the sound of her footsteps as she left the kitchen, crossed the living room, and entered the hallway. It hurt to even think of moving, but I didn’t have any choice.
I simply had to persuade her not to run the story – not to sully Mother’s reputation.
I rose slowly, and, using the walls as support, made my way painfully to the front door.
Rosalyn was standing in the corridor, calmly waiting for the lift.
‘Please, Rosalyn …’ I gasped.
She hadn’t been expecting this – by rights, after the beating she’d given me, I should have been out for hours – and when she turned to look at me, her eyes were wide with horror.
‘Don’t … want … to hurt you,’ I managed to say. ‘Just … want … to talk.’
Rosalyn gave the call button a frantic jab, then, abandoning the idea of escaping by the lift, ran towards the service stairs. I staggered after her, but in my condition I had no chance of catching her up, and half-way down the first flight, I abandoned the chase.
‘I’m sorry, Mother,’ I said. ‘I did the best I could.’
Then I turned, and made my way achingly back to the flat.
16
Rosalyn’s papers and documents still sat on the table – mocking me. I collected them up and fed them into the waste disposal system. But it wouldn’t do any good, I told myself, even as I went through the motions. Rosalyn could easily obtain other copies of the material. There was nothing I could do to stop her story now.
The doorbell rang just as I was shredding the last of the notes.
Rosalyn – having a change of heart? No, that was too much to hope for.
Then who?
If I’d thought it through logically, I would have realised it was probably the police, come to arrest me for attempted murder – but my logic was not at its best at that moment, so it was a surprise to me, when I opened the door, to see Les Fliques standing there.
‘You look like you’ve really been in the wars, Rob,’ Fliques said. ‘Mind if I come in?’
‘No,’ I said wearily.
Fliques stepped past me, and strode into the living room.
‘Nice place, Rob,’ he said appreciatively. ‘Very nice indeed. Where is she, then?’
‘Rosalyn?’
‘Yes, that’s who I mean. Miss Rosalyn Russell. Your fiancée. It was on the car radio that you were threatening her life. Quite a coincidence it should happen when I was in London for a conference, don’t you think? Or maybe it’s not so much coincidence as fate.’
‘Rosalyn’s not—’ I began
.
‘No, don’t tell me,’ Fliques said. ‘Let me find her for myself.’ He marched into the kitchen, opened the chest freezer, and peered inside. Finding nothing but frozen meals, he turned his attention to the broom closet. When he’d drawn a blank there, too, he opened one of the small, wall-hanging cabinets.
‘You surely don’t imagine that you’ll find Rosalyn in there, do you?’ I asked him.
‘Thought that would be where you’d keep them,’ Fliques said, holding up a packet of chocolate biscuits with some satisfaction. ‘Don’t mind, do you, Rob? Only I’m feeling a little peckish. It must be all the excitement.’
‘Be my guest,’ I said. ‘Where to next?’
‘The bathroom,’ replied Fliques, who had a biscuit in his right hand and had cupped his left to catch the crumbs. ‘People are always hiding bodies in their bathrooms.’
I led the way.
‘I must admit, I’m very disappointed with you this time, Rob,’ Fliques told me. ‘I mean, direct action is scarcely your style, is it? It’s far too crude.’
He pulled back the shower curtain, and did not seem unduly disappointed when he didn’t discover Rosalyn’s mangled corpse hanging there.
‘Well, at least you weren’t that obvious,’ he said.
‘You’re wasting your time,’ I said. ‘Rosalyn isn’t—’
‘Please, Rob,’ Fliques interrupted, ‘I’ve been waiting for this for years – don’t take my bit of pleasure from me.’
I shrugged. ‘All right. Where do you want to go next?’
‘The master bedroom – that’s another favourite place for folk to stash the recently deceased.’
We checked the master bedroom and the guest bedroom, and then, since the body of my fiancée still hadn’t turned up, we went back to the living room.
‘All right, Rob, I give up,’ Fliques said. ‘What have you done with her?’
‘Nothing. She left just before you arrived.’
Fliques froze. ‘Just before I arrived, you say?’ he asked – almost fearfully.
‘That’s right.’
‘And what was she wearing?’
‘A grey skirt and white blouse … Oh, and a pair of black shoes which probably have bloodstains on them. Why?’
A Conspiracy of Aunts Page 22