‘Look ...’ He hesitated. ‘Would you mind very much if I came with you. I’d like to tell her I think her garden’s spectacular, and I’m going to suggest it gets opened to the public.’
‘She won’t understand, but of course you can come.’
He picked up the albums. ‘I’ll bring these to show her.’
‘Howie, she really won’t understand.’
‘I’d still like to try.’
Mid-May 1972
The Turf Tavern
With beer fumes hitting Stan full in the face, he entered The Turf Tavern at opening time to see Edgar Stubbings behind the bar, whistling and dropping bags of change into the till. ‘A pint of bitter and a quiet word, please?’ he said modestly.
‘There’s your pint,’ said Edgar, placing a foaming glass on the bar top. ‘That’ll be twelve pence, please. So what’s this word about?’
‘I’m Angela Zendalic’s father.’
‘Well, I’m blowed. Take the pint on the ’ouse. I must say you’ve got a bootiful girl there. And we both like the same music, don’t we.’ He stopped to do his bad impersonation of Billy Eckstine, and laughed. ’Ow can I ’elp you?’
‘Thing is, there was some serious bother at home with her boyfriend last night ...’
‘Say no more,’ Edgar interrupted, holding up a nicotined finger. ‘’E’s a right bad-tempered little tosser. I’ve often asked her what she sees in ’im.’
‘He turned up around midnight looking for her. Drunk as a skunk and put the fear of God in us. Chucking bricks through our windows and the like.’
‘Bloody ’ell. I know ’e’s a pain in the arse, but I never thought ’e was a real psycho.’
Stan shrugged. ‘The police think he’s gone bonkers. He managed to babble out that you saw her leave on Friday night with a man. No-one knows where she is and I just wondered if you knew him.’
Edgar screwed up his face. ‘Well, I know ’im, and I don’t know ’im. ‘E’s a Don from next door. Tavistock, that is. ’Aven’t seen him in ages. Alot older than ’er. Tall, with dark ’air to his shoulders. A real gent, though. Speaks like one of the royals and always ponced up in fancy suits. Music geezer, I feel sure. ’E obviously knew her quite well. ’E was all over ’er.’
Stan knew it could be no-one else. ‘It sounds like Dr Penney, her old choirmaster. Oh, Lord. Not more complications.’
Edgar leaned down on the bar. ‘Look, mate. Your daughter’s a bobby dazzler. There’s not a man in the world who wouldn’t get the ’ots for her. If she is up for it ’e’ll be on her tail like a jack rabbit.’
Stan glared at him, banged his glass hard down, and slopped the contents on the bar. ‘I find your comments most offensive. That’s my daughter you’re talking about. Not some common scrubber.’ He walked out, his colour rising, and his chin set fair towards Tavistock College. He didn’t have far to go. Up to the top of the alley, a right turn, and round the corner onto the ancient cobbles of Long Wall.
The lodge porter, Ron Hopper, leaned out of his small glassed-over cubby-hole. ‘Can I help you, sir?’
‘I’m looking for Dr Piers Penney. I was just wondering if he was in residence again.’
‘Yes, sir. That would be Professor Penney, as he is now. If you’d like to take a seat on that bench over there, I’ll ring his rooms. Who shall I say is enquiring?’
‘Mr Zendalic. Stan Zendalic.’
Piers and Angela lay in bed, hard breathing in post-coital bliss as the phone blared out to disturb the idyll. ‘Ron Hopper, sir. There’s a gentleman wishing to see you. A Mr Zendalic. Might it be convenient?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course. Will you tell him I’ll be down in a few minutes?’
Piers dropped the phone. ‘Your father’s downstairs.’
Angela leapt up, open mouthed. ‘No! How on earth did he find me? This is mad. I’ve not seen either of my parents for three months. What shall we do?’
Piers contemplated. ‘Get dressed, leave through the side gate, and go to The King’s Arms. I’ll bring him over.’
Piers walked forward to greet Stan with his hand extended. ‘Delighted to see you Mr Zendalic. Let’s go over to The King’s Arms and have a chat.’ With a hand on his shoulder he carefully steered him out of college, more than anxious to spirit him away before Ron Hopper got too interested. Once on Longwall, Piers reassured him. ‘There’s nothing to be concerned about. Angela’s waiting for us.’ As they entered the pub together Angela rushed forward to fling herself in her father’s arms. ‘Daddy. Daddy.’
‘Oh, Angie. Thank God you’re all right.’ And so with Angela cuddling her dear old dad, and Piers playing the perfect consort, the story was told. Declarations of love from both of them. Assurances from Piers that although this would be ‘second-time-around’ for him, he was in love with Angela. He would provide her with a home and solidity, and firmly stated he would be doing everything to encourage her to a classical singing career.’
‘Look,’ said Stan. ‘All we want is her happiness, but there’s been a right old pantomime going on. Garvie knows about ...’ He nodded at Piers.
‘Oh, that’ll be Edgar shooting his mouth off,’ puffed Angela.
‘Well, that’s right, actually. I’ve just spoken to him and he gave me all the gen. That’s why I’m here. Don’t think I’m up for a row but Garvie’s gone right loopy. Turned up at ours last night – drunk and disorderly as they say – scared the life out of us and chucked a load of bricks through the windows. Ted came to the rescue, thank God. Rushed round like a dose of salts and arrested him. We got Charlie Wright in this morning to fix the damage up and he reckons it’s going to cost ten quid.’
Angela sighed. ‘Oh, I am sorry, Dad. I really am. So where is he now?’
‘He was taken off to the Oxford nick. Ted went down and they said he needs to see a trick-cyclist.’ Angela groaned and dropped her head on her hands.
‘I’ve actually known the boy for years,’ Piers told Stan, ‘and he’s always had complex problems. I think it would be a good idea if I go down myself and see what’s going on. I can give the police some background to his past, and plead that they give him a second chance. I know this sounds frightfully liberal but Sir Charles was a lovely man, and I wouldn’t want his good name and the college, being dragged through the mud.’
‘Oh, I don’t mind what happens,’ Stan said wearily. ‘As long as he’s off our backs and leaves Angela alone. I just want everything to get back to normal, and she must go home to see her mum. She’s missed her something rotten and we want to be a happy family again.’
Angela smiled her affirmation. ‘’Course I’ll come.’
Piers nodded firmly. ‘And I’ll go straight to the police station and come to No. 55 when I’m done.’ He shook Stan’s hand. ‘Mr Zendalic. Please assure your wife that I’ll look after Angela. I know it must be a shock, and you probably think I’m too old for her, but we’re very much in love.’
‘And it’s really all finished with your wife, then. For good, like.’
‘Yes. Most emphatically. Sadly she’s suffering from a nervous condition, we both see no future for our marriage, and divorce has been agreed by mutual agreement. My children are with her, in Wales, in the care of my in-laws.’
‘Okay. I’m reassured.’
They all rose to go. ‘Daddy, I must go round to Aston Street first,’ said Angela. ‘Best we get a taxi.’
‘Bad news there as well, love. He’s ruined all your stuff, and chucked it out the window.’
‘We must go, though. There’s something I need urgently.’
None of Angela’s possessions had survived impact, and she stared, stone-faced, at the sight of the scattered wreckage. However, her shock began to turn into a wave of gratitude. With his mad actions Garvie had said his piece. There would be no emotive or venomous scenes. No pleading, no shouting, no nasty accusations, or name-calling. It was over. Her building society book was already safe in her handbag, but there were some very important items she needed u
rgently from the room and she ran up the stairs.
She looked everywhere, but they were gone, and by the emptiness of the place it looked as if Garvie had cleared out too.
Edie’s joy was an exhausting hour of non-stop talking, bubbling with tears and laughter, assuming, with motherly innocence, that her daughter had ‘come to her senses’ and returned home. With her excitement unrelenting there’d been no opportunity to talk of future plans, until the doorbell rang. ‘That’ll be Piers, Mummy’.
When she brought him in, Edie looked up with a vexed face, puzzled to see them holding hands. ‘What on earth are you doing here, Dr Penney?’
‘Edie, Piers and Angela are ...together,’ Stan tried to explain. ‘You know ...A couple ...He was the man she left the pub with.’
Edie’s puzzlement faded and was replaced with a thunderous look of horror. ‘You! You and her. A married man! A married man with a family. Old enough to be her father. I don’t think so. Is that what you do? Take up with young girls like a dirty old man.’
‘Mummy, it’s not like that,’ Angela pleaded, but Edie wasn’t listening.
‘Well, you’re not having our Angela,’ she yelled. ‘She’s gone through enough carry-on with that dreadful boy, and she needs some time to recover. And so do we. So, on your bike, as they say. Go away. Back to your wife and little girls.’
‘Mummy,’ Angela tried to explain, as gently as she could. ‘Piers and I are in love. You’ve never known this, but I’ve been in love with him for years. Garvie was just something stupid.’
‘What!’ Edie thundered. ‘When you were nothing but a kiddy. So I take it he’s been interfering with you ‘for years’ and you’ve let him.’ Without waiting for any protestations she rounded on Piers. ‘We put our trust in you. Gave her into your hands without a second thought. And all the time ... It’s disgusting. You’re filthy, that’s what you are, Dr Penney. Filthy! Get him out of here, Stan.’
‘Mrs Zendalic. That’s not true at all. I love Angela ...’
‘Get out of my house,’ she yelled. ‘Now. Go. Leave her alone you ...you ...’ The word paedophile wasn’t a word Edie had ever heard of, so child molester was her parting shot as she pushed him hard on the shoulder.
Angela grabbed her bag. ‘Mummy, if you throw Piers out, you throw me out as well.’
‘Well go then! Go. I wish I’d never laid eyes on you! Worthless you are. A slut. A worthless slut!’
Stan was torn between his own resigned acceptance, and the near collapse of his wife, but even if he’d wanted to mediate there’d been no time. Angela, wild-eyed and shaking, pulled Piers out on the street. To walk away with hard thumping strides, dragging him with her. To walk away from the petty-minded, ignorant fool of a woman, whom she now hated with venom and never wanted to see again.
Thus, in those few angry minutes, the long years of love and devotion, between mother and child, were finally ripped up and cast down into the deep slough of despondent grief. There would be no post-mortem, or plans for reconciliation ‘in the fullness of time’. What was done, was done. Two consenting adults, now free to make future plans. A new life together with no shadows of the past.
‘I’m sorry,’ said the haughty receptionist, ‘but Dr Harwood’s on holiday this week.’
‘Then can I see someone else,’ Angela said. ‘Today please. It’s urgent and I am a private patient.’
The receptionist shook her head. ‘Earliest I can give you is Thursday morning at 10.00am, with Dr Barlow.’
‘Sorry. I can’t wait four days. It’s really very urgent.’
‘If you mean it’s an acute medical emergency I suggest you attend the casualty department at the Radcliffe Infirmary.’
Angela pursed her lips with anger. ‘What I mean is that I need an urgent appointment today.’
‘I’m so sorry. Thursday is the first one available.’
Angela tossed her head with frustration. ‘You wouldn’t say that if I was the Queen, would you.’
The receptionist looked up with a sneer. ‘But you’re not the Queen, are you.’
Monks Bottom; a picture-postcard hamlet, fifteen miles from Oxford and set within the Chiltern Hills. It was described as ‘idyllic’, but with having only minor road access, and no bus service, it was idyllically isolated. But Piers explained to Angela that it was the perfect place to escape the bubbling cauldron of academia, to settle down in domestic bliss, and allow him to compose to the sound of birdsong.
Old Priory Hall had been empty for five years due to a long wrangle over death duties. Standing on high ground, a mile outside of the main village, the details listed it as ‘needing extensive refurbishment’, but its assets were listed as having twenty acres of gently sloping meadow and scrubland that overlooked the panoramic beauty of the Watlington valley. With the house being empty the estate agent had suggested that they went round on their own, so Piers agreed, delighted to have the freedom to roam without the nuisance of a pushy salesman at heel. He was handed a large rusty key to the back door.
And so, in teeming rain, Piers and Angela drove in his vintage Bristol 400 up the deep mud-puddled ruts of the long drive, awestruck by the looming sight of a magnificent old cedar, but shocked to discover the truly dilapidated wreck hiding behind it. A heavy elm front door, was flanked on either side by four twelve-paned rotting windows, evenly placed between crumbling wattle and daub. A row of matching windows formed the first storey, and on the third, three dormers, like Napoleonic hats, sat open to the elements. The roof, of slipping Welsh slate tiles, was cornered by four intricate barley-twist brick chimneys in varying states of collapse, and the vast land was so taken over by elder and brambles the potential view was obscured. ‘Oh, well, we’re here, now, so we might as well go in’, Piers sighed.
Thus they turned the key in the back door to find a saturated floor, a shallow porcelain sink, and a rusty ancient range; the only clues to the word kitchen. But with further inspection to the front they found manifest joy. Wide floorboards, old flagstones, high ceilings, sturdy beams, stained glass, and an imposing mahogany staircase that announced the exquisite house it had once been, and could be again. But the most stunning feature was the sitting room (or ‘the grand hall’ as it was described), of around nine hundred foot square, with an inglenook fireplace, large enough to roast a pig.
Steeped in the wonder of newly-found love, they wandered hand in hand, open-mouthed with wishes, hopes and dreams. Touching things with amazement, even though deep layers of filth stuck to their fingers. The solid newel posts, the carved beams over the fireplaces, and the slightly distorted panes of window glass that had survived for four hundred years. The internal shutters, the high, wide doors, and the original knobs, hinges, and locks.
‘I could make this a wonderful home for us,’ Piers said. ‘Let’s go to the pub and talk about it.’
Once in The Dog and Duck, and with a Ploughman’s lunch before them, Piers explained the facts. ‘I’m an only child. My mother died ten years ago and my father last year. He was a civil servant. Worked all his life for the foreign office. Certainly not a millionaire, but he left me the family house, a huge pile in Belgravia, and I’ve just sold it for thirty-five thousand. I shall settle fifteen on Merryn and the children, and the rest I can invest in The Hall. We’ll get it totally gutted and make it our home. And as soon as I’m free we’ll get married.’ He lifted her hand and kissed her palm. ‘It’ll take a while but it will happen.’
Angela had decided she had no interest in details of the marriage fracture. It had to include the lost baby, Merryn’s infidelity, and her subsequent collapse into madness (well, she’d always known she was loopy). And she really didn’t want to know anything. Knowing meant being burdened with all the copious details, the tedious conversations of, ‘I said this,’ and, ‘she said that’, and endless updates on current situations. And worse still, she’d be expected to have opinions, and offer advice. All she needed to know was that the feeble Merryn was out of his life forever, and as to his c
hildren they were a taboo subject as well. Discussing them and their future would mean sympathy and responsibility, and – heaven forbid – entertaining them. Something else she also wanted to kick firmly under the carpet.
‘I’ve got a good feeling about The Hall for us,’ he said, smiling into her eyes. ‘My head tells me the project’s madness, but my heart tells me we must buy it, so let’s get some professional advice and take it from there.’
April 2014
Fair Cross Green,
My mother’s nursing home is a large Edwardian villa set behind high brick walls on the edge of the quiet village. The frontage displays the usual grandeur of a country house, but a large purpose-built unit is attached to the back, designed to look after its vulnerable patients in a safe, bright atmosphere of devoted care. As I drove into the gravelled car park I was, as usual, braced with anxiety, wondering what state my dear mum would be in today. Silent and staring? Agitated and fumbling? Sound asleep? Calling out with loud, pitiful shouts that no-one could quieten?
‘Howie, you must be prepared for her strange behaviour,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen her condition develop for years, and I know what to expect, but it can be a bit of a shock.’
‘Oh, I’ve seen it before,’ he replied. ‘On my travels. In my other life.’
Maybe it was my cue to ask him to enlarge, as I was desperate to do. But no. He was getting out of the car, and heaving up the bag of photo albums.
Mummy was seated in the large, secure day room that overlooked a wide lawn, calm but rigid in a high-seated chair. She was wearing a hideous crimplene dress (essential for frequent laundering) of loud pattern and dated design, but if the stylish, ethereal Merryn had known how truly awful the dress was she’d have whipped it off and thrown it out of the window. I kissed her and introduced Howie, but she didn’t move a muscle. Just stared at him intently. I showed her the flowers – no reaction – and made a big fuss of putting them in a vase, chattering on, saying things for something to say, telling her about the boys and their weekend trip to Legoland with Mark.
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