Alfie looked at me then, his brown eyes dull and hard, like stones. I’d expected to see remorse or sadness. Self-pity perhaps. All I saw was emptiness. ‘I didn’t have much of a childhood. Not the kind you enshrine in photo albums anyway. So I stole someone else’s. And made it mine.’ He shrugged. ‘Where was the harm? Alfred John Donovan was dead. He died as a baby. I stole a childhood that never happened, one that might have been, but sadly, never was. The worst you can say about me, surely, is that I’m some sort of… grave robber.’
In the long silence that followed, no one moved. When I found my voice I said, ‘What is - what was your real name?’
His sudden mirthless smile was shocking. ‘Darling, I thought you’d never ask! It’s Tom. No, really! Thomas Wilson. If poor little Alfie had lived, I would have remained Tom Wilson, a struggling actor, wondering whether to change my name to something more stylish, more memorable. Wondering whether to play up my dismal, deprived background or keep it under wraps, along with my Geordie accent. Didn’t want to be typecast as a car-stealing, joy-riding, crack-dealing yob, did I? Though that might have made more demands on me as an actor than playing the middle-class tossers and all-round wastes of space that have been my speciality.’
I found myself unable to meet his eye. Instead, I looked up at Marek, but he was watching Hattie who was fidgeting with her dressing gown, pulling at a button, as if she was trying to unpick it with her fingers. Marek didn’t take his eyes off her. He watched as if he was waiting for something and I thought he looked afraid, afraid for Hattie. I sensed he was about to move towards her, when she suddenly announced, ‘The baby didn’t die.’
Alfie turned on her then, his uncanny composure gone. He leaned across the table and spat out the words. ‘Of course he died! For God’s sake, Hat - that’s why I’m here! Why I bloody exist.’
‘I meant - the baby didn’t die.’ She lifted her head, opened her mouth to speak, but appeared to lose her nerve. She looked quickly at me, then at Marek, her eyes wide with terror and then her chin sank on to her chest. Looking like a shame-faced child, she murmured, ‘The baby didn’t die… He was murdered… I did it. I killed Alfie.’
Nothing But The Truth
Chapter Nineteen
Gwen
Hattie fled from the kitchen. We heard her footsteps pound up the stairs, then a door banged. Marek looked a question at me and I nodded. He strode across the kitchen and out into the hall. I supposed if anyone knew how to deal with Hattie now, it would be Marek.
I turned to look at Alfie, slumped in his chair on the other side of the table. He was white-faced and his eyes were unfocussed. He levelled his gaze at me and, with a visible effort, said, ‘Gwen, I swear to you, I had absolutely no idea.’
‘I know.’
‘I’d do a lot of things for money, but covering up murder isn’t one of them. I assumed it had been a childhood illness. Cot death or something. I never asked and Fanny never said.’
Neither of us spoke for a few moments, then I said, ‘Do you think it’s possible Hattie’s lying?’
‘Why would she lie?’
‘I don’t know. To get attention?’
‘Bit of a drastic way to steal the limelight, isn’t it? She looked to me as if she’d waited nearly thirty years to say that.’
‘Yes, I know what you mean. Poor Hattie.’
‘She killed her baby brother, Gwen!’
‘When she was six years old! She can’t have known what she was doing! Perhaps it was an accident. I can’t believe Hattie would commit murder. Not Hattie. She’s such a gentle soul.’
‘She is now. Maybe she wasn’t then. Thirty years of guilt could change anyone’s personality.’
I thought of Marek, then strained my ears for sounds of shouting or crying, or footsteps on the stairs. There was nothing and the silence was unnerving. I said, ‘Do you think the family know what happened?’
‘They must. It would explain why they went to such extraordinary lengths to keep Alfie alive.’
‘Maybe Rae didn’t know. Perhaps it was all a plot to protect her as well as Hattie.’
‘Maybe.’ After a pause, he said, ‘Will she be OK, do you think? With Tyler?’
‘If anyone knows how to deal with what she’s going through, it will be him. He used to be a psychiatrist, remember.’
Alfie said nothing for a while, but I knew what was coming. Without meeting my eyes, he said, ‘So… are you and he—’
‘I don’t know what’s going on, Alfie… I suppose I should call you Tom now.’
‘No. Nobody does. Not any more.’
‘I prefer Tom. It suits you better.’
There was another uncomfortable silence and then he let out a weary sigh. ‘I can hardly claim that you owe me an explanation, Gwen, but I would like to try to understand… what happened.’
‘It’s hard to explain. I’d suspected you were some kind of an impostor. And then I found out that you were… I was very upset. Well, that’s putting it mildly. I was in a bad way. And Marek listened.’
‘There must have been something going on between you for you to turn to him.’
‘Yes, there must, but I don’t know what it was. Mistrust of you was a lot to do with it. The knowledge I was being deceived… You should have told me, Alfie! Trusted me. I would have accepted you for who you really were.’
‘Would you? Even if I was nobody? You think I’d take that risk?’ I didn’t reply and he continued. ‘I had a lot, Gwen. The flat in London, the car, the family mansion, a certain amount of celebrity status. But none of it was mine. It all belonged to Alfie. Even my girlfriend wasn’t mine. She was Alfie’s. Why would I choose to be Tom when I could be Alfie? You see, it wasn’t just a part I played, I wanted it to be true. All of it! Rae and I had that much in common. I wanted to be Alfie. And I was. Tom died years ago. How could I have told you that? Maybe if I hadn’t cared whether or not I lost you, but I did care. Very much. And it wasn’t Tom you liked. It wasn’t him you slept with. It was Alfie. Everyone liked Alfie. Even me. Well,’ he added with a shrug, ‘I liked him more than Tom.’
I gazed into Alfie’s sad, brown eyes. I no longer felt any sexual attraction towards him but my heart - or some other organ - turned over with a sickening lurch at the thought of losing him as a friend. Perhaps that was all he had ever been. A friend I happened to sleep with. But he had been a good friend.
And a good son.
‘I remember now, something Rae said the other night, when I took up her tea. She was rambling on and half of it didn’t make any sense to me, but I realise now, when she was talking about Tom, she wasn’t referring to TDH, she was talking about you.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She was telling me about filming the documentary. What a dreadful experience it had been. She said she didn’t know how she’d got through it.’
‘A film crew invading your home isn’t a pleasant experience. A herd of elephants would show more sensitivity. Rae was pretty upset by it, even leaving aside the conspiracy element and her fear of exposure.’
‘She said something rather odd. I dismissed it at the time because I thought she was talking about TDH. She said, “Tom saw me through it… He was the hero of the hour.” She was talking about you, wasn’t she?’
Alfie nodded. ‘I sat and held her hand and cracked jokes to cheer her up while they were setting up lights. She was terrified. But she was also very proud. Proud of her “son”. She kept looking at me and smiling. You could see her dream had come true, a dream she’d cherished for eighteen years. She kept touching me, as if she was trying to convince herself I was real. It gave the film a particularly poignant quality, the whole mother-son thing. The director just lapped it up. They made me much more of a feature than we’d expected.’
‘That’s what Rae said. Tom was what the film makers were really interested in. She said they loved him. And the viewers loved him. Loved you. That’s what she meant, didn’t she?’
‘That’s where things
started to go wrong. I made too much of an impact. People sat up and took notice. And when they realised I was an actor, well, one thing led to another. It was hard for me to walk away from all the… possibilities.’
‘I do understand. I just wish you’d told me.’
He smiled sadly. ‘So do I, now. I think I did try. Well, I almost tried.’
I got to my feet. ‘I’m going to make some breakfast. I feel as if I’m fading away. Do you want some?’
‘Please. I don’t remember when I last ate.’ He rubbed at the fair stubble on his chin. ‘God, I’m tired.’
I put the kettle back on the hot plate and cracked some eggs into a bowl. Alfie opened the fridge and handed me a packet of bacon and put plates to warm. It was all so domestic and familiar, I felt a lump in my throat and dreaded I would start to cry. I’d expected him to be angry, to be jealous, not sweetly reasonable. But as I turned rashers of bacon in the pan, it occurred to me, Alfie would have been angry, but Tom wouldn’t. Tom was used to losing things. Tom was used to rejection. My eyes did fill with tears then and I was careful to keep my back towards Alfie as he laid the table.
He suddenly said, ‘Do you think I should go and see Hattie?’
I rubbed at my eyes and thought for a moment. ‘I don’t really know. I would have thought Marek would come and get us if he thought it was a good idea. He’ll do whatever he thinks best for her.’
Alfie stood beside me at the Aga, staring down into the frying pan. ‘None of this was in the script, you know. Losing my girlfriend to another man… Hattie being a child killer… What was it I said about promising you your second-worst Christmas? That wasn’t meant to include me. Or Hattie…’
~~~
Marek knocked softly on the door. ‘Hattie? Can I come in?’ He put his ear to the door and heard muffled sounds of crying. ‘Hattie, unless you tell me not to, I’m going to come in.’ He waited a moment, then turned the handle and entered the room known to the family as Hattie’s Bazaar.
Marek had never seen the inside of Hattie’s room, which served as study, sewing room and bedroom. A kaleidoscope of colours, shapes and textures assaulted his senses. Every inch of dark, wood-panelled wall was covered with quilts, wall-hangings, pictures and pin-boards, on which hung swatches of fabric, drawings, cuttings from magazines and postcards. A sewing machine was set up on a table by the window and a pile of quilt blocks awaited assembly. On a side table, spools of thread, arranged by colour, lined up in regimented rows. A bookcase was so overloaded, the shelves bowed. More books and craft magazines lay in haphazard piles on the floor where faded rag rugs sat incongruously on threadbare Axminster. Folded quilts were stored on shelves and the doors to a large cupboard hung open revealing Hattie’s fabric collection, carefully ironed and folded, stacked according to colour and forming a textile rainbow.
Hattie’s dressing table displayed little in the way of toiletries. Instead it served as a mirrored stage on which dressed dolls posed: fairies, sea nymphs, Harlequins, princesses, fantastical creatures fashioned by Hattie’s imagination. In a corner of the room stood a single bed with a red and white quilt folded at its foot, the red faded almost to pink. In places, the wadding showed through holes worn in the fabric, like wounds. Hattie lay sobbing on the bed, her face buried in a pillow.
On entering, Marek scanned the room and made a professional assessment. The curtains were drawn but he assumed the window would be closed. There was a glass of water beside the bed. He removed it and placed it on a high shelf, but the sewing table was a nightmare: a pot held rotary cutters of various sizes, a scalpel and a Stanley knife; a fearsome pair of dressmaker’s shears lay on a cutting board; a china jug stored scissors of various sizes, which Hattie no doubt kept sharp.
He pulled up a chair beside the bed and sat down. ‘Hattie, I’m here as your friend. Not as a judge. Or a psychiatrist. Just a friend. I’d like to help if I can.’
She didn’t lift her head from the pillow, so her words were indistinct. ‘You won’t want to be my friend now you know what I did.’
‘It doesn’t change anything. Not for me.’
‘You’re just saying that.’
‘No, I’m not. Look at me, Hattie. Look into my eyes and see if I’m lying.’ After a moment she turned her head and scraped back her hair to peer at him. Marek’s face was a blank, but his dark eyes bore into hers. She found it hard to look away. His eyes continued to hold hers. ‘Have you ever talked to anyone about… what happened?’
‘No.’
‘Do you remember what happened? The details?’
‘No.’
Marek felt his spirits lift but his face betrayed nothing. ‘But you remember the baby dying? Were you there?’
‘Yes. I was there… I was in Rae’s bedroom. And I shouldn’t have been. It was getting dark and I felt frightened. But I don’t remember why… Alfie was lying in his cot. I watched him. For ages. I wanted him to wake up. But he didn’t. He didn’t move. Not even when I poked him through the bars… He didn’t wake up because he was dead.’
‘That doesn’t mean you killed him. He might have died of natural causes. Or an accident… What did Rae say about it? Or Viv?’
‘It’s never been discussed.’
‘Never?’
‘No. We’ve never discussed Alfie’s death, just how to keep him alive. For Rae’s sake. And mine.’
‘So… how do you know you killed him if you don’t remember what happened?’
‘My sisters said I did it.’
Marek was thrown by this statement but his voice betrayed no emotion. ‘They might not have been telling the truth. They could have said that to hurt you.’
‘Oh, they didn’t say it to me. They’ve always tried to protect me. They’ve never even let on that they know. But I heard them. I was in the garden and they didn’t know I was there. They were talking about how Alfie died. That’s how I found out. That it was me. I did it.’
‘Are you sure, Hattie? You were very young. Perhaps you misunderstood.’
She sat up, propping herself on an elbow. ‘Why has it never been discussed then? Why has no one in my family ever talked of how Alfie died? Why haven’t they ever mentioned meningitis or whooping cough or something that could have killed a baby?’ She lay down again and covered her face with her hands. ‘It was me! I did it! My sisters said so.’
‘To you?’
‘No. But I heard them. Talking to each other.’
‘And they didn’t know you were there? Could it have been some sort of game? A terrible sick joke?’
She rolled over to face him, her eyes red and puffy, her face stained with tears. ‘They weren’t children! Viv was a grown woman. And Deb and Fanny were teenagers. It wasn’t a game, they were having a serious talk. They told me to go away and then they went into the garden, so Rae wouldn’t hear them. I followed them and hid on the other side of the hedge, so they wouldn’t know I was there. They sat on a bench, all three of them, talking. Talking about Alfie. And me. I kept really still and listened… Then when I started to cry, I crept away. So they wouldn’t hear me.’
‘And you never told them what you heard? Not even Viv?’
‘No.’
‘Can you remember what they said?’
‘Yes…’ Hattie closed her eyes and turned away. ‘I don’t remember anything about— about Alfie dying, but I remember exactly what my sisters said.’
‘Can you tell me what you remember?’
Marek watched Hattie’s face as she struggled to speak the unspeakable. Her head rolled back and forth on the pillow, then she sat up suddenly and swivelled round, so she perched on the edge of the bed, her shoulders hunched. Her eyes swept round the room, avoiding Marek’s, but he noticed her breathing quicken. Her gaze settled on her worktable. He felt rather than saw the muscles in her legs bunch, then she launched herself at the table, lunging for the scissors. But he was ready. As her fingers closed around the pair of dressmaker’s shears, Marek circled her wrist with one hand and her waist wi
th his arm, clamping her to him.
‘Let them go, Hattie! Please. You don’t have to say any more, not if you don’t want to. Look at me, Hattie! Look at me! Drop the scissors.’ Then, in a moment’s inspiration: ‘You don’t want to get blood on the quilts.’
She froze and the scissors fell to the floor. He released her wrist and loosened his grip round her waist, but didn’t let her go. She went limp in his arms and started to wail. Supporting her, he half-dragged, half-carried her back to the bed where she sat, then, with Marek’s encouragement, lay down again. He pulled the folded quilt over her, took her hand and held it loosely while she cried. He knew there was nothing anyone could say that would quiet the mind of someone who’d killed a child, so he stroked her hand and whispered soothing words, Polish phrases he hadn’t heard for almost forty years, which, when his father used to utter them, had the properties of magic charms. Even when he knew she slept, he didn’t leave, nor did he let go of her hand. When she whimpered in her sleep, he stroked her tangled hair back from her forehead, murmuring.
Hattie didn’t wake, but her sleep was troubled.
Deborah broke a long silence. ‘Who’ll tell Ma?’
‘I will.’
Vivien and Deborah stared at Frances. ‘What will you say?’
‘I’ll tell her I saw Hattie do it. I’ll tell Ma I know what happened… I know how the baby died.’
‘Poor thing.’
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