“If you think for one moment I would steal any of the goods you brought back you misjudge me. This, and he pointed to the cheque, is legitimate. My family’s house, my mother’s savings, my savings. You know nothing of me if you think I would steal as you did.”
“So you’re blackmailing me because you know of my wartime sideline and I’m blackmailing you because I’ve guessed your dark family secret. It is not a basis for friendship is it?”
“We were never friends.”
“There is no need to be.”
“You must always do what you have to do to protect them, Max, all of them. I will be at the end of the telephone if they need help you cannot give. But we will not meet again.”
And they didn’t for 23 years.
Chapter Eleven
In June 1976 I graduated, my university career finally, successfully, completed.
I had a final drink with Joy before setting off to Cheshire for the long promised, and long dreaded, reunion with Max. Although I owed him so much I returned armed with so much knowledge above and beyond the formal learning of my degree.
On a whim I decided to call in on Maureen. It wasn’t far out of the way and it was nearly a year since I had seen her. I needed to ask her why she had never told me she was David’s secretary.
She opened the door to me with the familiar hug but as we sat in her garden drinking coffee I was aware that something was wrong.
“It’s David he’s in hospital.”
“How long?”
“Do you mean how long has he been in hospital or how long has he got?” Maureen was characteristically forthright.
“Well both really.”
“He was taken in yesterday. They don’t think anything is imminent, there is so much they can do nowadays, so much more than when your mother was ill.”
“Is it cancer then?”
“I’m afraid so. But, as I say, they can do so much these days. They won’t operate but they will stabilise him. What he’ll hate most is his loss of independence. He has a lovely room and the hospital is more like a hotel in some ways, there are lovely grounds and when he’s a bit better he will enjoy that.”
“But he’s not going to get better is he?”
“No my dear.”
“Can I …”
“Of course you can stay here tonight. Go and visit him. Carry on up north tomorrow. I’ll phone Ted and explain.”
Now wasn’t the time to tackle Maureen about the past.
David was propped up in bed and looked remarkably uncomfortable but pleased to see me.
I had never visited anyone in a private hospital before and was amazed at the room. Maureen was right, it could have been a good hotel. David had his own bathroom, television and telephone, there were several nice pictures on the wall. I looked around the room thinking it wasn’t a bad place to die. There was a lovely view out of the window over the grounds of the hospital towards a lake with swans serenely causing slight ripples across the surface. I noticed the window was sufficiently low for the occupant of the bed to be able to see the view as well.
“Ah Annie, I hear you did well.” He sounded tired but alert.
“Not badly.”
“I’ll have none of that. You did us all proud. Maureen told me. But did you learn the things you wanted to?”
“I’m getting there, David, I’m getting there. There are mysteries but the bits of the jigsaw are beginning to fit together.”
“Not too clearly I hope. Not until I’m dead and that, I trust, will be some years in the future. And my girl, I forgive you for abandoning us these past two years.”
I was saved from having to respond by the telephone ringing. He reached over and lifted the receiver.
It was a very strange phone call, David said little but the gaps between his answers were short.
“Yes.”
“If it is necessary.”
It didn’t seem like a social call but David must surely have retired years ago.
“Very well.”
“Leave it with me.” Without a ‘goodbye’ he put his finger on the bridge of the phone cutting off the caller but obviously intending to make another call.
“Annie, can you leave me for a few moments, some tea? I believe there is a machine in the corridor.”
By the time I had walked ten yards and poured two cups from the machine and returned he had finished that second call. It must have been as short and to the point as the first one.
We sat looking out of the window sipping at the boiling tea in silence for a few minutes before David broke the silence that had not been entirely comfortable.
“You were wondering about those phone calls? They tell me he has woken up. The Indian has woken up.”
“The Indian?” I had no idea what he was talking about.
“You know I told you how Edith and I met?”
“Yes, that day she and Maureen went to the hospital.”
“Well let me tell you the rest. Much of it you undoubtedly know already and there will be some gaps which you may have to fill but I think perhaps now you need to know.”
“It is not possible to retire you know Annie. There are always things to be done, loose ends to be tied.”
“The Indian is a loose end?”
David didn’t answer so I asked him if he wanted a drink of water. Still there was no answer.
When he did speak again it was with deep sadness. “Oh Annie, my dear young Annie, he is a loose end. I have been waiting for this to happen. The Indian will be wanting revenge for what he thinks we stole from him. He will want to harm us, you, any of my family. He will feel we have cheated him, ruined him. Mistakes were made but we do not know, we cannot know…”
I sat with him a few more minutes all the time wondering how anyone could know of the connection between David and our family and, if they did know, whether David’s fear that we were in danger was a realistic one.
“I believe Vijay has woken up, he has decided the time has come.”
“Vijay?”
“He is undoubtedly behind the trouble your cousin Graham has caused in the family.”
“What trouble?”
“Things have been happening while you have been away. You will have a lot to learn when you return. Ted Mottram will tell you what you need to know but in everything he tells you read the hands of Vijay. He will find people who have grudges against your family and he will use them.”
We were interrupted by a knock on the door and the arrival of a nurse so I had to leave and try to remember all that David had told me.
On my visit the following day David seemed much weaker and he wanted to talk of other things
“Annie. I love seeing you every day but I am not going to die yet. My life hasn’t been saved, lives can never be saved as we all will die, but my death is being postponed. Death is only ever postponed.”
He gave me no chance to interrupt or disagree.
“You must go back up north to Max and to your friends. But remember what I have told you. There are people who wish our family harm. Promise that you will keep alert, watch out for events that go ill for your family and find out who is behind it. It will be Vijay.
“I promise I will be vigilant.”
“And I promise I will not die till we meet again.”
It was a promise he kept.
I did not keep mine.
Chapter Twelve
Charles said Carl and I taking my children and living together in Cambridge was a bad idea and his final words as we left Sandhey were hardly encouraging.
“When it doesn’t work out you know the children will always have a welcome here.”
“That sounds like you have such confidence in me.” I couldn’t stop the sarcasm that frequently came into my voice when I talked with my half brother.
“It shows that I have absolutely no confidence in you.” His reply was just as I had expected.
Carl and I had waited years to be together. So many misunderstandings had kept us apa
rt but Ted had cleared them all up and now, as the wonderful summer of 1976 came to an end, we were going to be together. All my plans of getting a job and finding out what happened to David’s missing fisherman were forgotten. David’s warnings that harm would come to his family seemed a million miles away from the realities of love in the sun-drenched summer.
The only important thing in my life was that Carl had asked me to live with him. He didn’t seem to mind that he was taking on a complete family though ‘family’ was probably the wrong word. I hadn’t lived with my children for years and it was Max who insisted that we take Josie, Al, Jack and Bill. I didn’t realise that Carl had thought it all through no more than I had. We had not considered that I and four children aged between 12 and 7 might be far more than he either wanted, or was able, to cope with.
We had spent a little over a month getting to know each other after 13 years apart. I hadn’t seen my children since Jack’s fourth birthday in 1970. None of us knew each other. It was, as Charles anticipated, a disaster waiting to happen.
“We’ll be fine.” I answered Charles. There was no way I was going to suggest that I had any doubt whatsoever.
The car was unnaturally quiet as we drove to Cambridge. The children seemed to be on their best behaviour, there was no shouting and argument but neither was there any laughter or teasing. I sat next to Carl still excited by our closeness, determined to be confident. But I still played my superstition game. If the third vehicle in the opposite direction is a lorry everything will be work out. If there’s a red car before I count to 20 everything will be all right. Whenever one of my tests failed I’d try again until it succeeded. I so wanted everything to work out. After all, we were risking everything on the feelings we had had for each other years before that had been rekindled in the few short weeks of the summer.
Had we loved each other all the years we had been apart? Of course we had. Did we love each other enough to make this work? Of course we did. Were we thinking of anyone else but ourselves? Of course we weren’t.
There was no honeymoon period as the moment we arrived at Carl’s house we were facing up to unpleasant realities. Carl had said his house was large, but what had seemed large for a man on his own was not so generously proportioned when shared with a woman and her four children.
The argument that began the moment we got into the house over who would have which bedroom was only ended, after what seemed hours of shouting and bickering, when Carl agreed to move all his books out of the box-room. That first day did not auger well.
I did my best to pack all the things we had brought with us away unobtrusively but when the van arrived the following week with all the children’s clothes and toys, bicycles and books, along with all the other things that had been essential in their lives, I despaired of our fitting into the house, let alone keeping it tidy.
“Whose are those bloody things?” Carl yelled on the first evening when he tripped over the pile of boots and shoes I had been trying to tidy away in the cupboard under the stairs.
It seemed that every day Carl would find fault with something as I tried to sort out the house. There were boxes and piles of books and toys on the floor and it probably was difficult for him to find things but I didn’t think he tried very hard to understand.
It was soon obvious that he didn’t want to change anything about his life. He was busy with his work at the university and he was planning a series of television programmes about The Duke of Wellington to be made in Spain. He seemed happy that he had someone to come home to, someone to talk over the events of his day with and to make love to but he was not happy about practically everything else. The music the children played was too loud; their games too raucous, their choices of television programmes were not his.
I had dreamed for years of being with Carl, being able to see him every day. I had imagined intimate conversations, eating in dimly lit restaurants while we discussed our work, for I had always hoped to work with him on his radio and television projects. Instead of interesting things to talk about at the end of the day my conversations were largely made up of complaints about my life being an unending cycle of housework and incessant arguments with the children about homework or tidiness or noise. As the weeks passed I found it difficult even to suggest to him that I had ambitions of my own which could be as important to me as his career was to him.
Perhaps I had expected too much.
In the early days Carl and I talked about the problems. We discussed getting a larger house, one that was ‘ours’ rather than ‘his’, where he could have his books out on shelves instead of having been hastily piled on the floor in our bedroom. We talked about how it would all be better if the children were happier at their schools, if they tried harder to get on with us and with each other, if we all had more space, we wouldn’t feel quite so like rats caught in a trap. ‘Is that how you feel?’ I had asked him. ‘Don’t you?’ he had answered rhetorically. When I mentioned getting a job he argued that it would be best to spend my time finding somewhere better to live. ‘When we’re settled you could look for something then.’ It seemed to make sense but I hadn’t missed the point that he was not going to offer me a job on his team. I didn’t know then that the project in Spain had fallen through and he had had several subsequent proposals rejected. People who had bought into his ideas and sponsored his projects were not returning his calls.
The highlights of my days were when the postman brought me a letter from David or Maureen or Ted. I would read and re-read their gossip and the memories they gave me of a life that seemed so far away and so long ago. I would write short, non-committal notes about how busy we both were, how the children were doing well, how Carl and I were settling in to life together. I wondered if they realised everything I wrote was a lie.
By Christmas, about three months into our new life, we both knew what a mistake we had made but we were both too stubborn to admit failure. Perhaps Carl was right and moving house would help. It just took a lot longer than I hoped.
I didn’t want to go to Hoylake for Charles and Holly’s wedding the following Spring. I didn’t want the upheaval of taking the children, though they had been specifically invited. I didn’t want to watch Holly being unbearably smug as she married my brother, well aware that Carl hadn’t once mentioned our getting married. I didn’t want Ted to see through the lies of my letters. So I wrote saying we couldn’t make it, we were desperately busy, it would be too difficult. He must have known they were just excuses.
Carl and the boys seemed happy enough with the decision, it was only Josie who said rather wistfully that she would like to have gone, she was fond of Uncle Charles and would have liked to have seen Uncle Ted again. I said, at 13, she was far too young to go on her own so she sulked at home.
It was December before we could move into the new house.
“I can’t believe it took you a year.” Carl said as he carried boxes to the hired van in between shouting at the boys to help a little more.
“It might have taken less if I’d had some help. You were all so picky.” My resentment made me shout at everyone. The new house in the village of Hemingford Greys a few miles outside Cambridge, seemed to have everything we needed but Carl refused to buy it in both our names and that made me feel even more insecure. His argument, that I wasn’t contributing anything, hardly seemed fair when it was he who had stopped me getting a job, he who had made sure all I had to do with my time was look after the house and the family.
“Christmas is definitely cancelled.” I said as we sat around the table for our first meal in the new house. “I can’t possibly do all the shopping and cards, and presents in less than a week. It’s just all too much.”
I hadn’t thought life could possibly be so difficult and began to understand what being unsettled really meant. We lived out of boxes for weeks. I didn’t know where to shop, we had no routine, every day was a trial, none of us knew where our clothes were, finding anything was impossible, arguments were incessant and became mor
e and more bitter.
And Carl began to spend longer and longer away from home.
I knew I wasn’t managing and that made me even more depressed. The children had each other, as they always had. Bill made friends easily at the small village school but Al and Jack kept to themselves and seemed always to be getting into fights. I was called to see the headmistress about their behaviour too often and she didn’t accept my excuses that they had had a disrupted childhood and would be fine once they had settled down. Josie was doing well at the local comprehensive, always hard working and conscientious, she reminded me of myself at her age, concentrating on the school work to blot out everything else.
Carl had his work to worry about, even I could recognise that it wasn’t going well. He spent less and less time at home, and when he spent my 32nd birthday away I realised he probably had another woman to help him ignore his problems.
It seemed I was the only one who had nothing to keep me sane.
I hadn’t made any friends in the village, I didn’t want to get involved with the WI or raising money for the church and I had rebuffed all overtures of friendship from neighbours. I had no excuse for being so lonely but that didn’t make it any easier to cope with.
Receiving an invitation to Linda Forster’s wedding to Ramesh Kambli didn’t help at all. Ted’s letters had told me how Linda had bought Charles out of the business they had started together and Linda and Ramesh had moved south, to Sevenoaks in Kent, and now they were getting married. There was no question of attending their wedding as it was to be held at his family home in Bombay but the invitation still caused arguments. Carl still made no mention of our getting married.
When Carl was away I left it to Josie to get herself and the boys to school. I had to wait until they had all gone before I could face the mess. When I did get out of bed I would lounge around the house in tracksuit bottoms and a tee-shirt, not knowing where to start to organise the house, the meals and the family. Once a week I would drive the ten miles to the supermarket where I would throw ready made meals, frozen chicken pies, frozen chips and baked beans into the trolley. I soon began to add plastic litre bottles of wine.
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