Bia's War

by Joanna Larum

  “It’s lovely to see you again, Mrs Lymer.” He said. “May I introduce my business partner, David Lethbridge? I’ve brought him with me in case we need another body to witness anything. Got to keep things legal, you know.”

  Mrs Lymer smiled back at him.

  “You were always a clever lad, Anthony and I see you haven’t changed in that way, even if you have grown older since the last time we met.”

  Mr Vine laughed out loud at that, looking and sounding completely at his ease with Victoria’s grandmother. Mr Lethbridge moved forward for his turn at the handshake, and then seated himself on the stool at Nana’s dressing table. Mr Vine took the bedside chair that Victoria had vacated to answer the door, which left Victoria standing alone in the middle of the floor. She felt slightly awkward, a feeling she had never had in that room, but realised that her presence wasn’t required at that time.

  “I’ll go and wait in my bedroom, Nana,” she said. “If you need anything just shout me and I’ll come and get it for you.”

  “Good girl.” Nana said, grateful for Victoria’s tact and impatient to get this interview over, before Bia found out that she had visitors. “Perhaps Mr Vine and Mr Lethbridge would like a cup of tea before we start?”

  “No, Mrs Lymer,” Mr Vine answered. “I would love to stay and chat about the old days, but I’ve got another client to see this afternoon. But now we’ve re-established contact I’ve no intention of letting you get away with not seeing me regularly again, so I’m going to call in on my free days and we can chat for an hour or so. I think you’ve got a definite purpose for wishing to see me today, so let’s get that sorted out and your mind put at rest, shall we?”

  Mrs Lymer smiled again; gratified that he could still get straight to the point when he felt it necessary. Victoria slipped out of the bedroom and crossed the landing to her own room. She left her bedroom door ajar so that she would be able to hear if Nana wanted anything and then picked up another of her set books for her English ‘O’ level. ‘Jane Eyre’ wasn’t working its usual magic on her that afternoon though and, before long, she abandoned her attempts at revision and sat on her bed listening to the rumble of voices coming from Nana’s room. She couldn’t make out any individual words or phrases, but she could make out the difference between her Nana’s speech and Mr Vine’s remarks. Time passed quickly as she waited, constantly on edge in case the shop wasn’t busy and her mother chose to come upstairs and find Mr Vine in Nana’s room.

  Another fifteen minutes passed and then Victoria distinctly heard the telephone ring downstairs. The telephone was located in the downstairs hall near the side door and its ring was often unheard in the shop if there were plenty of customers in there. Victoria wondered if she should go downstairs and answer it, but she heard the kitchen door open and her mother’s voice as she answered the caller. She listened intently to see if she could work out the subject of the call, hoping it was a customer placing an order for delivery at the weekend, but as her mother’s voice rose in pitch, she didn’t have to strain very hard to hear.

  “He’s here now?” was the first part of the conversation that Victoria heard in full and a cold drip seemed to run down her spine. Whoever it was on the other end of the line could only be talking about Mr Vine, Victoria was sure and confirmation came rapidly after that.

  “Right! Well thank you for letting me know about it. I’ll go and sort it out straight away!”

  It was with a sinking heart that Victoria heard her mother mounting the stairs, each heavy step on each tread banging out her disapproval and bad temper. She wasn’t sure if she should stay in her bedroom or try to warn her grandmother that her mother was on the warpath, but any choice was taken out of her hands when her mother reached the top of the stairs. She strode straight into Nana’s bedroom and Victoria rushed across the landing and halted in the doorway. Her mother had come to a stop in the middle of the room and her face was purple with temper as she glared at the two men, who both rose to their feet as she entered the room.

  “I’ve just had Amy Butler on the ‘phone, telling me that young Mr Vine is in my house, by appointment, discussing legal matters with my mother. I don’t like finding out from comparative strangers what my own mother is doing and doing it in my house! I’d like to know what you think you are doing here.”

  Victoria’s mother had her hands on her hips and her face was disfigured by the angry scowl she was wearing. Victoria held her breath, embarrassed that her mother could be so rude in front of other people, but also worried that Nana wouldn’t have had time to finish what she wanted to do with Mr Vine. But it wasn’t long before Victoria was under fire from her mother.

  “I suppose you organised this, did you? How else would my mother have been able to get in touch with a solicitor, unless you helped her to do it?” Mrs Wilson was incandescent with rage, not even able to keep her mind on one subject at a time. “You’ll pay for this Victoria. I’ll teach you to go against my wishes.”

  Her mother paused to take a breath and, for the first time in her life, Victoria was able to answer her mother rationally and calmly.

  “I didn’t know that Nana wasn’t allowed to see her own solicitor,” she retorted. “You’ve never said that I had to keep other people away from her. But I would like to know why Nana isn’t allowed to see her solicitor? It’s a right that every person has, even if they’ve been arrested for an offence, and Nana hasn’t been arrested, has she?”

  Bia Wilson didn’t have a reply for this. It was an afternoon for firsts, because this was the first time that she had ever been caught without having a put-down remark ready to use and it was the first time that another person got the last word in any discussion with her. It was at this point that Mr Vine stepped into the conversation, quietly but very firmly.

  “Your Nana has never been arrested for anything in her life. She’s been a pillar of society for years.” Mr Vine spoke to Victoria, but then turned and addressed his next remarks to Victoria’s mother.

  “With-holding the right for a person to see a solicitor is an offence, Mrs Wilson, when that person has expressed a desire to be in touch with their legal representative. I’m sure you didn’t intend to commit an offence, did you?”

  Victoria’s mother had had the rug pulled out from underneath her feet and wasn’t coping well at all with it. She tried to bluster her way out of it.

  “I didn’t know that she wanted to see you,” she snapped, “So don’t be trying to get clever with me, young man.”

  Mr Vine wasn’t going to let this matter drop.

  “What is your objection to your mother seeing me?” he asked. “Why shouldn’t she talk to me?”

  Bia Wilson lost her temper and her capacity to disguise her reasoning went with it.

  “She’ll have got you here to change her will!” Bia shouted. “She doesn’t want me to inherit the shop when she dies, after the years of work I’ve put into it, so she’s going to change it to do me out of my rightful inheritance!”

  Bia almost choked as the spittle in her mouth went back down her throat. In the silence which ensued, Nana Lymer’s quiet calm voice was like music compared with her daughter’s screeching.

  “It’s no business of yours whether I decide to change my will or not, but I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that you haven’t been ‘done out of your rightful inheritance’ as you put it. But, while I’m still alive, I’d like you to acknowledge the fact that this house and shop don’t legally belong to you. They still are my property, so please don’t come into my bedroom, shouting the odds about what is happening in your house. I have no wish to be vindictive, but please be aware that I could ask you to leave at any time and then the ‘years of work’ you have put into the shop will be nullified.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!” Victoria’s mother had managed to regain her voice. “Who would look after you if I wasn’t here? Who’d put up with running up and downstairs a hundred times a day, catering to your every whim? Anyway, you’re not right in the head. What
about those nights when you wander the streets and you don’t know who you are or where you live?”

  Bia turned to Mr Vine.

  “You are aware that she’s going gaga, aren’t you?” Bia almost spat at him. “Any change you make to her will won’t be legal, you know. I can prove she’s going mental, cos the police picked her up the other night when she was wandering round the town. You have a word with the sergeant, he’ll tell you.”

  “I’m fully aware that Mrs Lymer sometimes has difficulty with her memory but I am also aware that her medical practitioner is of the opinion that her memory loss is due to stress. I have conducted all the testing I need to do today and, in my opinion, Mrs Lymer is of sound mind at this precise moment, which means I consider her perfectly capable of making whatever changes to her will that she wishes to make. May I also add that, legally, you have no right to discuss or question any aspects of her will, unless she wishes to discuss them with you. Now, Mrs Lymer, if you will just sign here where I have placed a cross and then Mr Lethbridge and I can sign it and our business today will be complete.”

  Mr Vine presented the sheet of paper and a pen to Nana Lymer and waited until she had signed at the bottom of the page. He and Mr Lethbridge then appended their signatures to the sheet and Mr Vine placed the sheet of paper into his briefcase.

  “I shall bring a copy of this for you when I call next Wednesday.” Mr Vine said as he shrugged on his coat. “It’s been wonderful to see you again and I look forward to being able to stay longer next week when I call and we can have a good old chin-wag about the old days. You take care of yourself and let me know if you need anything before next week.”

  The two men both shook Mrs Lymer’s hand and then headed for the door. Victoria’s mother had stepped back as they both passed her but she made no comment as they left the room. For the first time in her life, she had been bested in an argument and it was a bitter pill for her to swallow. If Victoria hadn’t been the object of her mother’s diatribes so often in her life, she may have found it possible to feel sympathy for her mother’s stricken expression but, instead, she enjoyed passing her mother to follow the two men downstairs to let them out of the side door. When she got back to Nana Lymer’s bedroom, her mother was still standing in the same place, staring at her mother as she lay in bed.

  “If you don’t close your mouth, Bia, a passing fly is going to get in it and that would be a bitter taste to swallow, wouldn’t it?” Nana Lymer said.

  “How dare you do this to me, Mam?” Bia whined. “I’ve waited on you hand and foot for years. Nobody else would have done it for you, none of the others in our family have bothered about you, but I’ve been here all the time, out of the goodness of my heart and then you want to change your will. Why? I just don’t understand.”

  Nana Lymer looked her up and down before she answered.

  “You have never done anything ‘out of the goodness of your heart’ in your life, Bia” Nana said. “Basically because you’ve never had a heart to do anything with. You’ve wasted a lot of years being bad-tempered and shallow and if all this makes you stop being like that then my time won’t have been wasted. But I very much doubt that you are capable of learning tolerance and kindness, given that your father and I tried to teach you but you wouldn’t listen to either of us. I’ve watched you nagging Jack until it’s a wonder that he doesn’t up and leave you and I’ve listened to you constantly deriding anything Victoria tries to do, making her feel unloved and unwanted. You don’t deserve the wonderful family you have around you, but if you end up a lonely old woman, it’ll be because you pushed everyone away from you. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like a cup of tea to sort my dry throat out. I’ve done a lot of talking today.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Victoria’s mother had been very quiet all evening after Mr Vine had left and Nana Lymer had made her speech. Victoria hadn’t dared stay in Nana’s room after tea, but she was determined that she was going to get to the end of the story before the Christmas holidays were over so, the next morning, she asked if she could sit with Nana again that day.

  “If you want,” was her mother’s terse reply. Victoria glanced across at her father when it was obvious that her mother wasn’t going to expand her brusqueness, but her father only smiled and nodded his head. Victoria decided to leave her father to sort out her mother’s sulk and made tea for herself and Nana and took it upstairs.

  “She’s not refused to let you sit with me, then.” Nana smiled, when Victoria placed her tea within easy reach.

  “She isn’t really speaking to anyone today.” Victoria replied, “So I decided I might as well make hay while the sun shines and come and listen to the rest of the story, if you want to tell me anymore.”

  “Of course I do, pet. You need to know all of it, to understand what happened. It’s not a very edifying story, I’m afraid, but it is the truth about what happened and I’ll go to my grave happier to know that the story hasn’t been lost and that I’ve got it off my chest at last.”

  “Nana! Don’t say that!” Victoria cried. “You aren’t going to die for a long time yet. Don’t think like that, please.”

  Nana smiled. “It happens to us all, pet, whether we like it or not and I’m not going to argue against it when my turn comes. Not unless I haven’t finished telling you the story, anyway. Right. Where had I got up to?”

  “William had just been strangled, Nana, and you were all standing staring at his body.”

  “Yes, I remember now. We all stood and stared at William, as though it was a perfectly normal thing to do, watching a man who had just been strangled. I couldn’t feel any grief for him, in fact I was glad that he was dead. He hadn’t deserved to live from the moment he had used young Dennison as a shield to save his own, rotten life, but the same didn’t apply to Peter and Sam. They both had worthwhile lives still to be lived and I didn’t want the pig butcher to shorten either of their lives, to prevent them from informing the authorities what he had done that night. I needed to act to save them both and I needed to act immediately, while Dennison was still distracted by having killed William.”

  “The thunder roared louder and longer than ever before and the ground beneath us definitely bucked and heaved as the thunder rolled and echoed above us. We all staggered as the warehouse floor seemed to lift as though it was trying to make us all lie prone on the floor, just like William. It gave me the opportunity to shorten the distance between myself and the pig butcher, so that I would be able to more easily slip my knife into his heart. I had thought that I would be the only person in the warehouse capable of coherent thought at that moment after William’s murder and the crescendo of noise from the thunder, but I was wrong. Sammy had let go of Peter’s arms when the pig butcher had started throttling William and Peter took advantage of his freedom.”

  “He reached Dennison before I had taken two steps towards the pig butcher and it was his deep guttural roar that alerted the butcher to the danger he was in. He spun on his heel to face Peter as Peter descended on him; hands outstretched, and grabbed him round his neck, just as the butcher had done to William. But it wasn’t Peter’s intention to throttle Dennison. He lifted him up by his neck and shook Dennison wildly, like a dog shakes a rabbit and we all heard Dennison’s neck snap as his head flopped backwards. Even over the sound of the thunder, still rumbling high above us, we all heard the bone shatter under the strain of the force which Peter was using. The pig butcher was as strong as an ox, but even he was no match for the terrible strength, fuelled by righteous anger, which Peter had within him.”

  “Peter stopped shaking Dennison then and dropped his body to the floor, stepping back from where the pig butcher now lay, equal with William and Simon on the floor. I stood stock-still and the knife slipped from my nerveless fingers and clanged to rest next to the butcher’s corpse. The thunder stopped suddenly and a terrible quiet descended on my warehouse, so deep a silence that we could all hear each other breathing.”

  “Sam was the first of
us to come to his senses. He knelt down next to the butcher and checked the pulse in his neck.”

  “‘Dead.’ Sam said, although I hadn’t expected any different. He then moved over to William’s body and checked him for any signs of life.”

  “‘Dead.’ Once again was his conclusion and it was this second repetition of the word that brought me back to my senses.”

  “‘We’ve got to get them out of here.’ I said, my mind suddenly working as clearly as though I was serving a customer in the shop. ‘We’ve got to work out a way for it to look as though all three of them died somewhere else, in some sort of accident or something, so that none of us can be blamed for their deaths. Sam, what can we do? Where can we take them?”

  “Before Sammy could answer me, Peter began to cry. I had to soothe him because we were going to need his strength if we were going to move the bodies of William and the pig butcher. I could carry Simon, but Sam and Peter were going to have to move the two men. I hunkered down next to Peter and wrapped my arms about his shaking shoulders.”

  “‘He shouldn’t have killed Simon.’ Peter wailed. ‘I don’t care about William, because he was a selfish, cruel man, but the pig butcher shouldn’t have killed Simon. Simon was my friend and he hadn’t done anything to hurt the butcher, so why did he kill him? It’s not fair, Bia, it’s not fair at all.’”

  “I know, pet.’ I said. ‘But he had lost his son and I think that had affected his mind. He didn’t really know what he was doing.’”

  “‘He knew what he was doing.’ Peter’s pet lip came out and the tears continued to rain down his face. ‘He was a wicked man and I’m glad that I killed him. I know that the Bible says that you mustn’t kill people, but he was really wicked and he deserved to die. He called me a moron as well. That’s not kind at all.’”