by Mary Nichols
Maggie, grasping at straws, consulted the register of births and deaths at St Andrew’s church and found the record of Zita Younger’s birth. Nothing out of the ordinary there: father Colin Younger, mother’s maiden name, Rita Symonds. While she was at the record office, she decided she might as well go back a generation. And then she found it. For some reason Dora Symonds had named the father of her daughter, probably hoping to shame him or get maintenance from him. Frederick Kennett. Jeez, that would be a story and a half!
‘No, Maggie,’ Toby said firmly when she brought him a copy of the birth certificate. ‘The mayor’s a popular figure and his mother has just died. The fact that Fred Kennett strayed from the straight and narrow is neither here nor there and does not reflect on his son. If you are so determined to discredit George Kennett then you should concentrate on his business activities.’
‘That reporter woman was sniffing around,’ Rita told Dora. ‘I don’t know what she wants but she’s making me nervous.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘Nothing. What’s to tell? She wanted to know if I was proud of Zita and I told her of course I was.’
‘Let’s hope she doesn’t start putting two and two together. Forty years! God, after all that time, it’s coming back to haunt us.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ Rita said firmly. ‘We don’t have to admit anything. There’s no proof.’
‘You’ve got to tell Zita the truth, so she knows to keep mum if that woman starts asking questions. I don’t trust the newspapers…’
‘OK. I’ll go tomorrow after I’ve finished work.’
Barbara showed Maggie into George’s study. He looked up at her with open hostility. As if he hadn’t enough on his plate, he was expected to answer this woman’s stupid questions. Barbara ought never to have let her in, but she was here now and it wouldn’t do to rub her up the wrong way. He motioned her to a chair. ‘What can I do for you, Miss Doughty?’
‘Mr Kennett, is it true you own Melsham Construction and that Mr Browning is merely fronting it?’ Barbara, leaving the room, heard Maggie’s question clearly before shutting the door. She stood leaning against it, her heart beating uncomfortably fast, not deliberately listening, but unable to walk away.
‘Of course it isn’t true,’ George said. ‘And if you print it, I shall sue.’
‘Mr Browning worked for you for how many years?’
‘I don’t know exactly. Fourteen, fifteen.’
‘And he was always loyal?’
‘He appeared to be. But no doubt he was working towards going it alone. I’ve accepted that and bear him no ill will.’
‘And Mr Younger. Did the same thing apply to him? He’s family, isn’t he?’
‘What the devil are you talking about?’
‘You surely knew that his wife is your half-sister? No, probably not, or you wouldn’t have been screwing her daughter. Your own niece, Mr Kennett.’
Barbara waited, hardly daring to breathe, for George’s reply. It seemed a long time coming. And then he blustered. ‘Where did you get that tarradiddle from?’
‘From the register of births, Mr Kennett. It’s there in black and white. Rita Symonds, baseborn to Dora Symonds, father Frederick Kennett. Would you like to comment?’
‘No, I would not. And if you publish one word, I’ll see you never work in journalism again.’
Barbara felt sick. She knew it was true. The signs had been there all along. Elizabeth’s antipathy towards Rita, her insistence she meant trouble. For over forty years Elizabeth had lived with the knowledge that her husband had betrayed her and had an illegitimate daughter, now it was all bubbling to the surface again. At least Elizabeth had been spared any more pain and upset.
Barbara began to wonder about her own particular skeleton. How long would it be before that started rattling its bones and bursting out of its cupboard? It made her afraid for Jay-Jay, until now only on the periphery of events. Please God, don’t let him be hurt, she begged, wondering what penance she could make to keep him from suffering. Thank goodness there was nothing on his birth certificate to arouse suspicion.
She didn’t want to hear any more. She went up to her studio, put a canvas on her easel and began daubing it with paint. Anything was better than her tortured thoughts. She wasn’t aware that Maggie had left, nor did she hear George go out a few minutes later.
George parked the car in the town hall car park and walked to Zita’s flat. Work on the market had finished for the day and the open space, surrounded by wire fencing, was a clutter of sand, bricks, paving and diggers. He walked round it, his anger growing with every step. If he wasn’t careful, he’d lose it all. He could cope with business problems but personal traumas he had never found easy. And when one led to the other and got all mixed up, he began to panic.
He looked furtively about him before entering the block of flats and climbing the stairs. Zita had rung him several times at work, demanding to know why he had not been to see her. He had tried fobbing her off, but she had threatened to go to the press with her story. He had to shut her up.
‘Oh, it’s you.’ She opened the door in a faded dressing gown. Her hair had just been washed and hung damply round her cheeks. Without make-up her face glowed. A few weeks ago it would have turned him on, but now he was repulsed. ‘About time too.’ She turned her back on him to go back inside.
He followed and looked round the familiar flat. It was still as untidy as ever, although there were now no unfinished sculptures to add to the mess: they had been taken to her new workshop by some of his labourers. ‘What do you want from me, Zita?’ he said, refusing to take a seat. ‘You must have known it had to end.’
‘Course I did. I’m not complaining. It was good while it lasted, but you might have had the decency to come and tell me to my face and give me a little something to be going on with. I’ve had to give up my job to work on that fountain…’
‘My mother died.’
‘I heard. I’m sorry. But you could have come after the funeral.’
‘What difference would that have made, except to prove that bitch, Doughty, right?’
‘So it’s the press you’re afraid of, accusations of bribery and corruption. She came to see me, you know, wanted to know who paid the rent of my workshop.’
‘What did you tell her?’ His voice was sharp.
‘I told her I did, then I threw her out.’
‘Thank God. You won’t talk to her again, will you?’
She laughed. ‘I’ve got nothing to tell her. But you’re here now, so we might as well make the most of it.’ She turned towards him and slipped off her robe. She wore nothing underneath it.
‘For God’s sake, cover yourself up,’ he said angrily.
‘Embarrassed are you? Now, there’s a surprise! You wouldn’t have reacted like that a few weeks ago.’
‘A few weeks ago, I didn’t know your feckless mother was my sister, did I?’
She stared at him, uncomprehending. ‘Say that again.’
‘Your mother is my half-sister, we had the same father. Don’t you understand plain English?’ He laughed harshly.
‘I understand English, not the rubbish you’re talking.’
‘You don’t want to believe it? I didn’t either but that doesn’t stop it being true.’
She stared at him for a moment, wondering what game he was playing with her, but the anger in his eyes was all too real. She began to laugh. Her grandmother’s secret was out at last. Gran and Elizabeth Kennett’s husband. Oh, it was funny. She was doubled up with mirth. He strode over to her and shook her. ‘Stop it! How dare you laugh!’
‘Why not? It’s rich.’ She pulled herself free of him. ‘No wonder your prim and proper ma hated my gran.’
‘It killed her. Knowing what we’d done killed her.’ His face was white except for two bright spots on each cheek, his eyes burning, his control on a knife-edge.
‘You shouldn’t have told her, then.’
‘I didn’t. Nick did.�
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‘How did he find out?’
‘He saw us getting off the train when we came back from Paris.’
‘You could have fobbed him off. You’re good at fobbing people off.’
‘You and your family ruined everything for me. Everything. My mother said you would. She predicted it years ago.’
‘You didn’t think so when you were fucking me, did you? You thought I was the best thing since Adam and Eve.’
‘Shut up.’
‘No, you shut up. You used my dad. You knew he wasn’t all that bright and you took advantage of him. You used me too…’
‘You’ve done your share of using people. You wanted to win the fountain competition so badly, you’d have jumped into bed with anyone. I wish I’d never thought of it.’
‘Oh, you poor thing! My heart bleeds for you.’ She had been more shaken than she was prepared to admit, and all she wanted was to be alone to think. She was sick of him, sick of herself, sick at what they’d done. She hoped her mother never found out. ‘Get out!’ she shouted. ‘Get out and leave me in peace.’
‘I’m going, but I want your word you won’t speak of this to the press. And keep that father of yours away from them too, or I’ll have him back inside before he can blink.’
‘How dare you come here and threaten me, you rotten bastard. Get out! Get out now!’ Furiously she picked up a chisel and came at him, arm raised.
He backed away, opened the door and stepped out onto the landing. She followed him out, not bothering to keep her voice down. ‘You’re rotten through and through, Mr High and Mighty Mayor. You’re worse than my dad ever was. You might shut him up, but I’m not like him. I think I will go to the papers after all. They’d pay well for a story like this.’
He looked fearfully about him, expecting doors to open up and down the stairway. ‘Shut up, Zita. Go back inside. You’re making a spectacle of yourself.’
She laughed harshly. ‘I don’t care. You’re the one who’s got it all to lose, not me.’
He tried to bundle her back into the flat, but she fought him like a wild cat. ‘Come on, Zita, don’t be a little fool,’ he said placatingly, trying to relieve her of the chisel. ‘Let’s go back inside and talk about it quietly.’
She stopped struggling suddenly and he let her go. She bent to pick up a large vase that stood just inside the door and threw it at him. He leant back against the banister to avoid it. He heard the sound of splintering wood a split second before the banister gave way.
Three flights down, Rita was just coming in at the front door when his body hit the ground, followed by a pot which shattered beside him. She stood and stared at him for several seconds and then looked upwards. Her naked daughter was leaning over the top, looking down. Suddenly the girl’s screams filled the cavernous space.
It was Rita, brought by the police, who told Barbara what had happened. She would rather it had been Rita than anyone. Rita understood how she felt and she didn’t need to pretend. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel grief, because she did – you couldn’t live with a man for fifteen years and have his children without feeling something – but that grief was tempered by a huge surge of something akin to relief which she was reluctant to admit, even to herself. They had been living with a bomb waiting to go off, a situation so fraught something was bound to happen. She had been very afraid, and now that particular fear had been dissipated she was left with the guilt. She sat at the table in the dining room, her face chalk white with the shock of it. Not only with the fact that George was dead, but the manner of it.
‘I’m sorry.’ Rita, sitting facing her, was almost as stunned as Barbara. She had witnessed it, seen the body fall, heard Zita’s screams which had brought everyone else out of their homes to peer down into the stairwell. Torn between rushing out again to call an ambulance and going to her daughter, she had chosen to climb the stairs to Zita, leaving others to look after George. Later, the police had come. ‘It was an awful way to go.’
‘Why was he there? Surely he wasn’t still…’ Barbara’s voice faded to nothing.
‘No, course not. Zita said he’d come to ask her not to speak to the press. She wouldn’t anyway. What had she to gain?’
‘Do you know what happened?’
‘Zita was too upset to say much; it took ages to calm her down enough for the police to take her to the station.’
‘They haven’t arrested her? Oh, my God, will it never end? Rita, I’m so very sorry. You must be feeling dreadful.’
‘Yes, but it was an accident. He leant on the banister and it gave way. They’ll let her go when she’s made a statement.’
‘It was my fault.’
‘How can you possibly say that? Barbara, no way should you blame yourself. Now, shall I make us both a cup of tea?’
She bustled out of the room and Barbara sat staring at the wall in front of her. The Market of Old Melsham seemed to stare back at her. A lifetime encapsulated in a picture: good and bad, happy and painful. It was George’s fixation with the market that had caused all this trauma. But it was more than that and older than that: it was about how they dealt with each other, their marriage. And it must have been as bad for George as it had been for her: he couldn’t cope with the disappointment any more than she could. They had both been to blame. They had been glued together by guilt. She couldn’t believe it had all come to a sudden and violent end. She couldn’t cry, her eyes were gritty, dry as dust.
Rita returned with the tray and handed her a cup of tea. ‘Drink that, I’ve put a dash of something stronger in it.’
‘Thank you. The children… I must fetch them home…’
‘Do you want me to do it?’
‘No, I must. You go back to Zita. She’ll be needing you.’
‘Will you be all right? I’ll ring Lady Isobel, shall I? She’ll come.’
‘No, I’d rather be alone with the children. Perhaps later…’
Rita left and she was alone, alone with her tumbled thoughts. What to do? What to say to the children? There would be a funeral to arrange, callers to deal with, George’s business affairs to sort out. How was she going to cope with it all? And the children… Oh, God, her poor, dear children.
Forcing herself to be practical she got out her car and fetched them home. They cried, they cried a lot, and who could blame them? They had loved their father and to have him suddenly snatched away had devastated them. They clung together, all four, until she broke away to get them some tea. No one ate anything. No one wanted to talk. Alison was trying to be grown-up and not cry, but every now and again a huge sob escaped her. Nick was white-faced and feeling guilty: he blamed himself for telling everybody about Zita Younger. Jay-Jay sobbed. He had loved George in the uncomplicated way of a small child. That night she heard him crying in bed and got up to go to him. She sat on the edge of the bed, stroking his beautiful red-gold hair from his face. It was then she wept too, scalding tears that would not stop.
‘It was nobody’s fault,’ she told Alison and Nick next evening as they sat in the drawing room, nursing cups of cocoa with uneaten sandwiches beside them. The day had been taken up with practicalities, informing people who had to be told, fielding telephone calls of condolence, taking in flowers and messages, talking to the undertaker and the rector, deciding on the hymns and the order of the funeral service. Not until now, with Jay-Jay safely in bed, had they had a chance to talk. ‘It was an accident. The council doesn’t want a scandal any more than we do. It would sully all the work your father did for the town and ruin the jubilee celebrations. They are going to issue a statement that he was in the flats on council business. The tenants put in a complaint about the dangerous state of the banister and he had gone to see for himself.’
‘Who’s going to swallow that?’ Nick asked.
‘Everyone, if we believe it ourselves. Mrs Younger will say the same.’
‘Course she will,’ Alison said. ‘She’d want to protect her daughter.’
‘Yes, just as I want to prote
ct you and Nick and Jay-Jay.’
‘You didn’t think about that before.’ Alison hadn’t meant to bring that up, but it had just come out. ‘When… You know…’
‘I did, you know. You children have always been my first concern, ever since you were born. I shut my eyes to a lot of things to keep you all safe. You don’t know the half of it and God forbid you ever do. But I’ve never been more hurt and miserable than I have since Christmas. I didn’t invite Mr Barcliffe…’
‘But you didn’t turn him away.’
‘I had no reason to. Nothing happened between us, but it was what I did, or rather what I allowed to happen, that triggered off the upset, though what your father did was—’ She stopped, unwilling to hurt them any more than she had already. She put out a hand and laid it on her daughter’s. ‘I’m sorry, darling. I should have sent Mr Barcliffe away, but he is Aunt Penny’s brother. A friend, that’s all.’
‘Are you…are you going to see him again? I mean…’
‘He is Penny’s brother, Alison, I am bound to see him, but if you mean will I seek him out, then no, I won’t. My regret, and it’s a profound one, is that you were hurt. Can you forgive me?’
‘I s’pose so.’
It was as much as Barbara had any right to expect and she forced a smile. ‘We’ve got a long week ahead of us and we need to stick together. No doubt, there’ll be rumours, but we’ll just ignore them. The public image your father set so much store by will follow him to his grave and I wouldn’t have it any different.’
George’s funeral service, held on a day of cold, blustery rain, was attended by everyone of importance in the town, including Gordon Sydney, the new mayor, who had taken over the mantle of office a couple of months earlier than expected. There was a eulogy from Tony Bartram, who spoke of George’s selfless devotion to serving the community and how the new fountain would be a fitting memorial to him. Barbara, flanked by her children, listened with black-veiled head bowed. She could hardly take it in. The last week had been hectic, but now it was over and she was saying a final goodbye to her husband. It didn’t seem real somehow. She was thirty-five years old and for fifteen of those years George – and her children – had been her life, influencing everything she did: what she wore, where she went, what she ate, even the way she thought. Now she was alone. Oh, she had the children, who were precious to her, and good friends, but they did not stop her feeling that whatever happened next was down to her.