Widows & Orphans

by Michael Arditti

  The mystery of how Adele had found out was solved by his next caller. After pledging his support ‘moral, practical and liquid if you just want to get soused’, Ken described how, to the fury of the entire office, including Trevor, Brian had written up his arrest on the Mercury website. ‘No doubt it’s a taste of the balanced, informed reporting we can expect from Newscom,’ he said, as if the decline in journalistic standards were the true offence. Having promised to ring him if there were anything he needed, Duncan hung up and contemplated this latest blow. If his mother, who had no access to what she dubbed ‘the interweb’, had heard what had happened, the news must have spread all over town. For now he was concerned solely with Jamie and Ellen. However painful it was to repeat a story that seemed more unreal with every telling, he owed them an explanation – or at least an account. He dialled Jamie’s mobile, only to lose heart and instead ring Linda, whose outraged incredulity (‘If they can muddle up babies in a maternity unit, they can muddle up hard disks at a computer shop’) reduced him to tears. Despite a nagging doubt over her unwillingness to put Jamie on the line if he had indeed ‘rubbished’ the charge as she claimed, he rang off feeling reassured.

  Musing sourly that the one virtue of his arrest was to remove any need for sobriety, he poured himself another tumbler of whisky and rang Ellen.

  ‘Duncan, thank God! I’ve been so worried. Did you get my message?’

  He glanced contritely at the flashing nine. ‘I’m sorry. I haven’t played any of them back yet.’

  ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘I should hope not!’ he said with a rush of anguish.

  ‘I mean I can’t believe it’s happened to you. Neil showed me the Mercury website. Did you know that people can write comments underneath? Whatever you do, don’t read them,’ she added quickly.

  ‘I can’t. I don’t have a computer. I could go down to the office but they’ve probably changed the locks … or at any rate the password.’

  ‘It’s not a joke!’

  ‘I know. Ellen, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why? You haven’t done anything.’

  ‘Of course not,’ he replied, unsure if it had been a question or a statement. ‘I mean I’m sorry that this has flared up around us. Just when we should be … when we have been … when we will be so happy. Oh God, Ellen, I want to see you so much.’

  ‘Me too. But there’s no way I can get away right now.’

  ‘I could call a cab and come to you. Unless I’m already on a minicab blacklist throughout Francombe.’

  ‘It’s not a joke!’

  ‘I know, but I have to keep my sanity somehow. Shall I come round?’

  ‘No, not this evening. Tomorrow will be better. I’ve got Neil … he keeps saying “it could have been me”.’

  ‘What could? Nothing could. It’s all some terrible nightmare. You do believe me, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course I do. Everything will be easier tomorrow.’

  While he had hoped for a more emphatic endorsement, he told himself that an element of caution was inevitable. After all, she had been married to Matthew for nineteen years without realising that he was committing a multimillion-pound fraud. Moreover, she had had to endure her mother’s insinuations that his attraction to her cloaked an attraction to her children. Under the circumstances it was remarkable that she had any faith left in him at all.

  ‘Believe me, it’ll sort itself out. And whatever else we mustn’t let it spoil our Valentine’s Day date.’

  In the event, Duncan spent the evening with his mother. He had quit Mercury House first thing the previous day, unable to face the questions, suspicions and, most painful of all, the sympathy of the staff, and had driven to Ridgemount where Adele greeted him with moist eyes and the veiled reproach that she had been up all night. Alison, whose cool head had never been more welcome, at once began organising both him and his defence, promising that straight after breakfast she would ring Malcolm and ask him to find the leading London lawyer in his field since they couldn’t trust anyone in Francombe, a remark that revived Adele’s tears.

  Alison’s misgivings were confounded when, on Friday morning, Victor rang with the news that the police had provided him with the forensic evidence for which he had been pressing. Analysis of the hard drive showed that all the offending files had been created in two sessions with none having been accessed or modified since then. The sessions in question were between 6 and 9 p.m. on Thursday, 30 January and between 6 and 10 p.m. on Wednesday, 5 February. Duncan’s immediate task was to account for his whereabouts during each, which turned out to be remarkably straightforward for, although the police had impounded his pocket diary, along with his entire collection of DVDs and his battered Penguin edition of Lolita, Sheila kept an office diary into which all his engagements were transferred. Alison drove straight to Mercury House, returning with proof that on the evening of 30 January he had chaired a protest meeting at the Morley Road refugee centre attended by, among others, two police community support officers, and on the evening of 5 February he had taken Ellen to Brighton to see a touring production of Tosca.

  Victor arranged for him to attend the police station that afternoon with details of both events, along with credit card receipts from the Brighton theatre car park and Terre à Terre Restaurant. Duncan’s relief was qualified since, as he revealed first to Ellen and then to the police, Neil had been at his flat on both occasions, purportedly working on his local history project. Later that evening, when they were due to be at the Metropole, twisting and shaking to the retro sounds of The Crimplenes, Ellen rang with the news that Neil had been arrested after school and she had accompanied him as his ‘appropriate adult’. Confronted with the evidence, he had made no attempt to deny his guilt, while steadfastly refusing to offer any explanation, even after the interviewing officer warned him that being over the age of ten he risked prosecution. He claimed that he bore Duncan no grudge and when, as though in a last-ditch attempt to justify their tactics, the officer asked whether Duncan had ever done anything to him ‘like the men in the pictures’, he shook his head.

  Now it was Neil who was charged with possessing indecent images, but the CPS lawyer requested that in the first instance he be sent for psychiatric evaluation. After examining the report, the CPS decided that no public interest would be served by putting him on trial and that a prosecution might endanger his already fragile mental and emotional state. It ordered instead that he be referred to the social work and psychiatry team at the North Francombe Child Development Centre (the venue intensifying Ellen’s sense of shame). Duncan, severely shaken by Neil’s pathological malice, was grateful at least that he was to undergo treatment. Ellen persisted in the belief that Barbara was to blame for having poisoned Neil’s mind, but Duncan was less convinced. It was patently clear that Neil had set out to entrap him, feigning a reconciliation to gain access to his computer and then damaging its hard drive so that the images would be exposed.

  He tried to be as angry as so many others were on his behalf, but his overriding emotion was grief. How could someone so young be so full of hate? This was far more than the routine resentment of a boy for a man whom he suspected of trying to take his father’s place. While loath to pre-empt the experts, Duncan saw it as an attack on men – or at any rate father figures – in general. He had been wondering how he would ever repair a relationship with a person who detested him so much, when Ellen relieved him of the need. In the two weeks since Neil’s arrest they had met only twice. Although he had more time than ever at his disposal, she was determined to devote each spare moment to her children, as if somehow the freedom she had allowed herself over the past five months had been the root of all their trouble. She invited him to tea at the Sea Breeze Café, which, despite being on the Promenade, boasted a vast photograph of a tropical beach across its back wall. Extracting his promise to hear her out, she told him that she had decided to leave Francombe in July.

  ‘But you can’t!’ he said, stirring his glass
cup so violently that coffee splashed on to the table.

  ‘You promised,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ve discussed it with the team at the Centre and they’re happy as long as Neil continues his treatment elsewhere. I shan’t do anything until after Sue’s GCSEs. Ruining one person’s life is enough –’

  ‘That’s not true. You’ve ruined no one’s life. What’s more, you’ve transformed mine!’

  ‘You promised! I thought we’d find somewhere near Bedford. The psychiatrist thinks Neil needs to rebuild his relationship with his father.’

  ‘In a prison visiting room?’ Duncan asked bitterly.

  ‘At first, yes.’

  ‘What does Matthew think about it?’

  ‘He doesn’t know.’

  ‘And Sue?’

  ‘She wants to live with my mother in Dorset,’ Ellen said, taking a deep breath. ‘She says if I don’t let her, she’ll leave home and become a … Let’s just say that recent events have left us all scarred. And whatever my own feelings about Barbara, I can’t deny how well Sue gets on with her. Besides, she’s much more mature than I was at her age. She won’t let any of her grandmother’s nonsense rub off on her. And I don’t seem to have any other options.’

  ‘I can think of one.’

  ‘Don’t, please!’

  ‘Marrying me and staying here where we can make a home for us all.’

  ‘With a boy who hates you so much he contrived to have you charged with the most abhorrent crime? Be reasonable, Duncan, it’s not going to happen.’

  ‘If I can forgive him, surely you can?’

  ‘The only person I can’t forgive is myself. I’ve spent my life claiming that I put my kids first. It’s been my credo … my rationale. Then the first chance that comes my way, I blow it.’

  ‘They’re not babies. They don’t need twenty-four-hour care. In a few years’ time they’ll leave home and lead their own lives.’

  ‘That’s their privilege, not mine. I’m going now. I don’t know what else to say.’

  ‘Say nothing. Take some time – as long as you need – to think it over.’

  ‘I already have. I’ve beaten myself up till I’m black and blue. I do love you, Duncan – not respect, not like, not fancy, though all of those things too – but love. Yet you know that isn’t the be-all and end-all. If you love me, you won’t make it hard.’

  ‘No, that’s not fair. “Give me up, Duncan, because it’s the honourable thing to do.” But I won’t. I’ve given up too much in my life. I won’t do it again now.’

  ‘You don’t have a choice. I must go. Will you get the bill or shall I?’

  ‘Fuck the bill! I’m sorry … No, I’m not. Fuck the bill and everything else.’

  ‘I want to make a clean break. This is a small town and we may – we’re bound to – bump into each other. I’ve finished working with Rose so it won’t be at Linda’s. But if we do meet, I hope it can be as friends.’

  ‘This isn’t real. Is this how it feels when the doctor tells you you’ve got terminal cancer?’

  ‘But you don’t. You’re going to live and find someone else, not someone who loves you more – I don’t think that’s possible – but someone who loves you more easily. Do you remember what Charlie Lyndon said when we went round after the show?’

  ‘She said a lot of things,’ he replied flatly.

  ‘But one thing in particular: that you had the memory of her youth on your face. It struck me as beautiful.’

  ‘It struck me as rehearsed.’

  ‘I wish I could have said it. I wish I’d known you in my youth, then all of this would have been very different. But you’ll always have the memory of my love.’

  ‘So that’s all we have left: memories?’

  ‘The most precious ones, at least for me.’

  She stood up and walked away, taking a note from her purse and handing it to the manager at the counter. Duncan sat at the table, oblivious to his surroundings, until the waitress asked if there were anything else he wanted and he saw that he was still stirring his coffee. He hurried out and returned to Ridgemount, where he found scant consolation. What was to have been a temporary arrangement until his marriage had now become permanent. As Adele alternately petted and scolded him, welcoming the company and resenting the intrusion, he felt as if his life had turned full circle. With time stretching out before him like a physicist’s theorem, planning the party offered a welcome distraction.

  Alison and Malcolm arrived on the eve of the big day. With her old room stacked with books and boxes from Mercury House, they were sleeping in what to Duncan’s embarrassment Adele insisted on calling the Egyptian room after the papyrus scrolls and basalt busts of Ramesses and Nefertiti. Tim and Graham came down with their parents but preferred to stay at the Metropole, ostensibly to use the power showers and functional razor points, although Duncan suspected that its proximity to the Sugarbaby nightclub was the true draw. Having absented themselves for the day so as not to ‘pre-empt the party’, Graham went kite-surfing in the squally sea and Tim, ever the asset manager, was taken on a site visit of the pier. They turned up at Ridgemount at six, greeting Duncan with outstretched hands as though to stave off the threat of familial kisses, while addressing him as ‘Uncle’, as though to account, if only to themselves, for an otherwise implausible intimacy.

  Elated at seeing her two elder grandsons, Adele stood up unsteadily, kissing them and stroking their cheeks. ‘It’s not possible! You both get more handsome every day. You’re the spitting image of your grandfather, Graham. Doesn’t he remind you of your father, Duncan?’ Duncan agreed, eager to dispense with the compliments before the arrival of Jamie, who was a carbon copy of Linda’s father, Jack. Indeed, he sometimes wondered if the weakness of Jamie’s paternal genes were nature’s revenge for his having thwarted it over the KS. At first he was disappointed to see so little of himself in his son, but having borne the burden of parental expectations all his life he had come to welcome the reminder that Jamie was his own man.

  Jamie arrived a quarter of an hour after his cousins, face scrubbed, hair combed and liberally doused in aftershave, which Duncan suspected was less in honour of his grandmother than of his girlfriend. Linda had confided that Jamie had begun dating a fellow pupil from Francis Preston who, giving him added kudos, was in the year above. He had made Linda promise to say nothing to Duncan, which she maintained was out of shyness but which he imputed to lingering anger over his arrest. While his exoneration had been reported both in the Mercury and on its website (albeit with far less prominence than the original story), the ‘no smoke without fire’ adage seemed to strike a particular chord with teenagers. Jamie had been vilified and ostracised on account of Duncan’s alleged crime and, to make matters worse, the actual culprit was someone whom he had repeatedly warned his father not to trust.

  Jamie’s new self-confidence was evident as he sauntered over to Graham and Tim and high-fived them. Even more notable was his unsolicited greeting of Chris, especially since he had refused all Duncan’s appeals to visit him after the attack. Across the crowded room Duncan was unable to hear what they were saying but, as Chris touched his collarbone and held out his hand, he appeared to be replying to a question about his injuries. The girlfriend might be vain, vulgar, empty-headed, tattooed and even a member of the BNP, nevertheless Duncan owed her a permanent debt of gratitude for so validating Jamie’s masculinity that he no longer regarded Chris as a threat.

  ‘Duncan,’ Adele called, rousing him from his reverie, ‘isn’t it time to serve the champagne?’

  ‘Of course, Mother, I’ll open it.’

  ‘Not you, darling. Knowing you, you’ll have somebody’s eye out,’ she said, with a genial laugh to mask the emasculation. ‘Leave it to Graham and Tim. They know what they’re doing.’

  ‘Not Graham,’ Alison interjected.

  ‘Don’t worry, Ma, I won’t have a wobble.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Adele asked. ‘Have you hurt your wrist?’

  ‘
No, Granny, I’m on my twelve-step programme.’

  ‘Is that something you do for Lent?’

  ‘No, for life. I’m a recovering alcoholic.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’re twenty-three years old.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘You shouldn’t say such things.’

  ‘But I’m proud of my sobriety. One hundred and eighty-two days.’

  ‘Young people today, they exaggerate everything,’ Adele said to Enid Marshall and Lillian Faulkes, who for years had been fed the myth of the perfect grandsons. ‘One bad hangover and, hey presto, they’re alcoholics.’

  While Graham and Tim served the drinks, Duncan gazed affectionately at Alison who was talking to the two townswomen. Whatever their differences in the past, he was deeply grateful for her support over recent weeks. Catching her eye, he raised his glass before crossing the room to rescue Henry from Catherine Lightwood, who combined the presidency of the Francombe and District Horticultural Society with that of the East Sussex Humanists.

  ‘I owe you for that,’ Henry said, as they escaped into a corner. ‘She’s read a couple of articles about the discovery of the so-called “god particle” at Cern and seems to think that she’s penetrated the mysteries of the universe.’

  ‘Other than that, how’s the play, Reverend Lincoln?’

  ‘Meeting Chris wasn’t as painful as I’d feared. I wouldn’t go so far as to call him friendly but he thanked me for my witness statement.’

  ‘What did I tell you?’

  ‘I’m still watching out for ground glass in my food.’

  ‘We’ll swap plates.’

  ‘It’s the first party I’ve been to since … for a couple of months. You never know who’s heard the rumours.’

  ‘I feel much the same myself.’

  ‘Yes, but you weren’t charged.’