by Mary Nichols
She rang Donald Browning and made an appointment to interview him. She told him she wanted his comments on the fracas in the market that morning and what he thought should be done to ease the congestion while the work was going on. She rang Kennett’s too, but George wasn’t available. He was in France on council business. When she put the phone down she was jubilant. He was in France and so was Zita Younger. It would make the nationals. They would make sure it ran and ran and she would make her name as a journalist. But more importantly, Dad would be avenged.
‘What time do you think Dad’s train is coming in?’ Nick asked Alison. He had heard his father tell his mother he’d be home on Saturday, and that being a day when he did not have to go to school, he’d decided to cycle to the station to meet him.
‘Well, it won’t be in the morning because he’s coming back on the boat train and then he has to catch a train to Melsham. What d’you want to know for?’
‘No reason. Wondered what time he’d be home, that’s all.’
‘If he comes on the five-thirty and takes a cab, he’ll be here in time for tea, won’t he?’
Nick wandered off, but at half past four he fetched out his bicycle and rode to Melsham station. He had a long wait, but he didn’t mind that, he loved to watch the trains, the porters wheeling barrows of luggage, the guards with the flags and whistles, the crates of chickens and bags of potatoes bound for the London markets. And he liked the posters of the seaside. They’d gone to the seaside one year for a holiday, but they hadn’t done that lately. He didn’t know why. He supposed because Dad was always so busy, too busy sometimes to talk to him. That’s why he wanted to meet him, so they could have a few minutes together without the whole family being in on it.
The train came steaming in. He’d hide and jump out on his dad as he was going through the barrier, watch his surprise and then his smile of pleasure. Peeping from behind a pile of crates, he saw his father leave a carriage and watched as he turned to someone behind him, offering his hand. A young woman jumped out and stood beside his father, laughing up into his face. And Dad was laughing down at her as if he knew her very well and liked her a lot, which was a great surprise to Nick because he knew who she was. Mrs Younger’s daughter. Curious, he forgot all about his intention to surprise his father, and stayed hidden. He watched as his father picked up Zita’s case and slipped his other hand under her elbow to guide her towards the exit. ‘I’ll leave you here,’ he was saying as they passed him. ‘Can’t be seen together, can we?’
She laughed. ‘That would put the cat among the pigeons.’
‘I’ll come round Monday after work.’ He stopped to dig in his pocket and brought out a handful of coins. ‘Get yourself a cab.’
She took it in her gloved hand and lifted her head to his. ‘Thanks. And thanks for a wonderful time, George. Paris was fun.’
Nick had seen enough soppy films, heard enough talk in the playground at school, to know something was up. His father had taken Zita Younger to Paris and it was obviously meant to be a secret. And he said he’d go and see her on Monday. What would his mother say if she knew? Should he tell her? She’d want to know how he knew and that would mean admitting he had cycled all the way to the station and spied on his father. Perhaps she wouldn’t believe him, and if she did, what would she do? He was suddenly afraid.
He crept out of the station, looking round for his father or Miss Younger, but neither was to be seen. He fetched his bicycle from where he had propped it against the railings and cycled home as fast as his pedalling feet could take him. By the time he arrived, he had decided to say nothing.
George had hardly got into work on Monday, when Maggie Doughty arrived and asked to see him. He was in no mood to talk to her: she was always confrontational, forcing him to justify himself over some piddling little thing she’d got her teeth into and right now he could do without it. ‘Tell her I’m too busy,’ he told Susan. ‘Give her an appointment for later.’
‘I shall miss my deadline, Mr Kennett.’ Maggie had followed Susan and stood in the open doorway. ‘And I’m sure you would prefer to scotch these rumours before they get out of hand.’
‘Rumours?’ he said, waving Susan away. ‘What rumours?’
She advanced into the room and dumped her capacious handbag on his desk and removed a notebook and pencil from it before sitting down without waiting for an invitation. ‘That you used your influence to get Miss Younger one of the properties on the industrial site. They’re in great demand now the economy is beginning to pick up, aren’t they, Mr Kennett?’
It was perfectly true, but how did she know? ‘Wherever did you get that idea?’
She shrugged. ‘You know better than to ask me to reveal my sources, surely?’
‘Miss Younger won the fountain competition; she has to have somewhere to construct her model, nothing to do with me. There is no room at her flat—’
‘Would that be Ten Regency Terrace?’
He realised his mistake almost at once. ‘How should I know her address?’
‘Didn’t she have to put it on her entry?’
‘I suppose so, but that doesn’t mean I know it.’
‘I believe you do. You were seen leaving there a couple of weeks ago, quite late it was. Just before you went to France. Was that a successful trip, by the way?’
He was disconcerted but quickly recovered himself. He must be careful, the bitch missed very little. ‘Yes, it was.’
‘Good. Now, about Miss Younger.’
‘No undue influence, no favouritism, no jumping the queue. I don’t know who your source is, Miss Doughty, but I think you should check carefully before you rely on them again.’
‘So you have never been to Miss Younger’s flat?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘May I quote you on that?’
‘I don’t see why you need to quote anything at all. It’s hardly newsworthy.’
‘On its own, it hardly merits a couple of lines, but with all these other rumours…’ She let the sentence hang in the air, daring him to ask. And, of course, he couldn’t let it pass.
‘What other rumours?’
‘Melsham Construction, Mr Kennett.’
The hammering of his heart made his chest feel tight. What had she unearthed? Had Donald shot his mouth off? ‘What about it?’
‘Word is: you are its real head, not Mr Browning. And that means—’
‘Rubbish!’
‘You deny it?’
‘Categorically.’
‘Mr Browning doesn’t strike me as the sort of man to have ready money available to finance a large new company.’
‘I assume he used his savings and borrowed from the bank.’
‘So there’s no truth in the rumour that Miss Younger winning the fountain competition had something to do with persuading her father not to reveal the source of Mr Browning’s funding?’
He laughed aloud at the absurdity of it. ‘No, of course not. What can Mr Younger possibly know about Mr Browning’s financial affairs?’
‘He works for him.’
‘So, he may do, but I hardly think Mr Browning would confide in him, do you? Now, if you’ve finished this cross-examination, I have a great deal of work to catch up on.’
‘Yes, of course.’ She put her notebook away and stood up. ‘The visit to France will have put you behind. Trade promotion, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘But not all business. You did manage to take some time off. I understand you had a companion…’
She was only guessing, he told himself, she couldn’t possibly know, they had been too careful, but he had to get rid of her. ‘Some of the other delegates are also my friends,’ he said carefully. ‘So why shouldn’t we socialise in our free time? There will be a press release from the council in due course. Good day to you, Miss Doughty.’ His hand, somewhat unsteady, was reaching for the telephone to ring Toby Greenbank at the Gazette almost before she was out of the door.
She smiled as she
clattered lightly down the iron stairs. So far, so good. He might be pompous and self-righteous, but he was wriggling like a worm on a hook; she could see it in his eyes. He had never once looked straight at her. He had something to hide. Toby might insist on having proof, but it didn’t need proof. Rumours, once started, were hard to stop. He might bluster and threaten, but the public, his voters, would say there was no smoke without fire and he’d lose all credibility.
Chapter Thirteen
George collected the papers from the doormat on his way to the breakfast table next morning. Barbara poured his coffee and set the toast rack in front of him, but he ignored it and disappeared behind The Times.
Idly she picked up the Melsham Gazette. The headline on the front page almost jumped out at her. ‘Mayor denies financial involvement in Melsham Construction.’ She skimmed through it with a sinking feeling in her stomach. It was happening, the avalanche she had been expecting. Now it would rush on and on until all their lives lay in ruins. For herself she hardly cared, but it would affect so many people: the family first and foremost, the Youngers, Donald, George’s employees, the credibility of local government, because she was sure there had been coercion, bribes, favours done and received. Maggie Doughty wouldn’t rest until every bit of dirt had been dug out and splashed all over the front page, and then there’d be an outcry and the council would be forced to hold an enquiry. And supposing she was questioned? Could she lie? Did she want to lie?
‘George, have you seen this?’
He put down his paper and glanced across at her. She was holding the folded Gazette out to him, tapping it with her other hand. He grabbed it and scanned it quickly. ‘The bitch. God knows why, but she’s got it in for me. How did she manage to persuade Toby Greenbank to publish it? He told me the story wasn’t worth risking his advertising revenue. The hardware shop alone spends thousands, taking whole pages at a time.’
‘Is it true? Did you award Zita Younger the prize for the fountain to silence Colin?’
‘Of course not. The idea is ridiculous. It was a committee decision. Oh, she’s clever saying I’m denying a rumour, a rumour she started, I shouldn’t wonder. God in heaven, what are they trying to prove?’
‘That you’re dishonest, perhaps?’ she asked sweetly.
Rita picked her way over the debris to the door of her mother’s poky little hovel in Farrier’s Court. The workmen had already begun to demolish the old premises ready for the new shopping mall, though as yet Dora’s house remained untouched. The ground about it was littered with broken bricks, lumps of plaster, strange pieces of iron, broken chairs, even an anvil. The constant coming and going had churned it up into rutted mud, but Mum would be enjoying it all, laughing and joking with the workmen, making them cups of tea and showing more of her ample bosom than was decent for a woman nearing sixty. She didn’t act like sixty, in spite of her rheumatism. ‘Comes with taking me knickers off in draughty places,’ she’d said once and laughed coarsely. She loved shocking people. ‘Give a dog a bad name and he’ll live up to it,’ was another of her sayings.
The council, having purchased the land, had promised Dora, the only occupier left in Farrier’s Court, that she would be rehoused, though it would inevitably mean a higher rent. Dora, who had a philosophical attitude to almost everything, was unconcerned. ‘They can’t get blood from a stone,’ she had told Rita.
When Rita let herself in, Dora was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup in front of her and a bottle of gin at her elbow, a cigarette dangling from her lips and the Gazette in her hand. A pair of wire-framed spectacles were perched on the end of her nose. She looked up as Rita came in, dumping a bag of groceries on the table. ‘So, it’s you.’
Rita laughed. ‘Who d’you think it was, Rudolph Valentino?’ She went to see her mother every week, just to make sure she was all right. She did a bit of cleaning and washing and fetched in the groceries and then they would sit over a cup of tea or a glass of gin, sometimes both, and exchange whatever gossip was going.
‘Who’s this Maggie Doughty?’ Dora asked. ‘She’s certainly stirring it up for George Kennett. This is the second article I’ve seen lately. What’s she got ag’in him?’
‘Dunno, but Colin always swore to get even with Mr Kennett, so he might just have cooked up something, but dragging Zita’s name into it i’n’t right. She won that competition fair and square.’
‘But there’s no smoke without fire.’ Dora reached out for a bottle of gin and poured them each a glass. ‘You’ve got to find out what’s goin’ on. Nip it in the bud…’
‘Ma, Zita’s twenty-one, she isn’t going to take any notice of me. And Colin certainly won’t listen.’
‘They’ve got to be made to…’ There was a long pause before she spoke again and then it was accompanied by a deep sigh. ‘There are things you should know, things I’ve never told a soul.’
Rita wondered how long her mother had been drinking. She was certainly not herself. She had a wistful, faraway look in her eye which Rita had never seen there before. ‘What things?’
‘He was Melsham, born and bred.’
‘Are you talking about George Kennett?’
‘No, your father.’
‘You never told me that before,’ Rita said. ‘You always clammed up if I asked.’
‘No point. Water under the bridge.’ She looked into the depths of her glass. ‘Gin always makes me maudlin. I don’t know why I drink the stuff. Make us another cup of tea, love, and I’ll tell you the tale.’
Rita rose to move the kettle from the hob onto the range, the only means of heating and cooking in the house, fetched out the teapot, cups and saucers and a bottle of milk. Did that mean her mother was going to tell her what she had studiously kept to herself all these years? Why now?
‘I was coming up to eighteen and good-looking, though I say it as shouldn’t,’ Dora went on, though it sounded more as if she were talking to herself than her daughter. ‘I met him in the Dog and Duck. Oh, I know I shouldn’t have been in there, me Pa would have flayed me alive if he’d known, but that was part of the fun, doin’ suff’n I shouldn’t. I’d known him since school, but never took much notice of him until then. He’d grown from a pimply schoolboy into the handsomest man I’d ever seen. He was tall, and though he had dark-red hair, his eyes were hazel.’
‘Is that where I get my red hair from?’
‘Stop interrupting and let me get it out.’
‘OK. Not another word.’
Dora took another swig from her glass. ‘We got chatting and he offered to buy me a drink and it went on from there. My friends disappeared and at closing time we left together, very tipsy. I took him to the farm where I worked and we spent the night in the hayloft. Oh, it sounds sordid, but it wasn’t, it was beautiful. He was so handsome and sexy and he loved me…’
‘Isn’t that what they all say?’
‘I believed him. He was in the navy and we saw each other every day while he was on shore leave. He said we’d be married next time he came home. It wasn’t until after he’d gone back to sea I found I was pregnant.’
‘With me?’
‘Yes. I daren’t tell my parents. I tried going to a woman I’d heard about, but I chickened out. It didn’t seem right somehow, so I turned round and went home again. I thought he’d stand by me.’
‘But he didn’t?’
‘He was married. I didn’t find that out until I went round to his house. I thought he lived with his mother, but it was his wife who answered the door and she were pregnant too. It was a shock, I can tell you.’
‘Then what did you do?’
‘Nothing I could do. I went back home and told Ma and Pa. Pa was all for chucking me out, but Ma persuaded him it weren’t the baby’s fault and she wasn’t going to have it said she was punishing the little ’un for my sins, so he let me stay until you were born.’
‘What happened then?’
‘I came to live here.’ She stopped suddenly. ‘I’n’t that tea brewed yet? I�
�m parched with all this talking.’
Rita poured the tea and handed her a cup. She had never heard her mother so articulate, or so serious, and wondered what had set her off, but it had been an eye-opener. So much going on, so much grief she had known nothing about. She had always blamed her mother for her lifestyle, but now she was beginning to understand. ‘Did you see him again when he came back from the sea?’
‘No. He went straight off again. Maybe his wife turned him out, I don’t know. I heard he’d gone to Canada. He died out there.’
‘You still haven’t told me his name.’
‘I never thought I’d have to.’
‘So? Why now?’
‘Because it was Kennett. Fred Kennett.’
‘Kennett?’ Rita shrieked.
‘Yes, George’s father.’
Rita found it almost impossible to comprehend. Her thoughts whirled and then settled onto one salient point. ‘George Kennett is my half-brother?’
‘Yes. He’s six months older than you.’
‘My God! Does he know that?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. D’you think he’d let his wife anywhere near you, if he knew? And he certainly wouldn’t have got involved with Colin.’
‘Does his mother know?’
‘Elizabeth? Yes, she knows. When I went round to her house, she wanted to know why I was looking for Fred, so I told her.’
‘Straight out?’
‘Yes. She wouldn’t believe me, so I gave her chapter and verse. You should have seen her face.’ She chuckled at the memory. ‘But she had the last laugh. I was stuck. I had a baby out of wedlock, I couldn’t get a job, people shut their doors in my face. So I thought, what the hell, I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb and enjoy myself.’
Rita knew her mother’s reputation, few in Melsham didn’t, but was it to be wondered at? What before had been an affectionate tolerance, because she was her mother who was funny and loving and generous, turned to respect. If being common and easy-going allowed you to keep your sanity and pride, then who had any right to blame her? ‘So, I’m a Kennett,’ she murmured. ‘How should I feel about that?’