by Paul Kelly
Two days later I met Steven in town and he looked a lot better than I had first met him at the Hotel in Scotland when I had spoken to him about any worry he might have. He grabbed my hand and asked me if I had seen anything of Celine since we last met and I told him I had indeed seen her, but I did not want to elaborate on her past experiences with the gang and more so with the business with Angus, so I smiled happily showing how content I was with the meeting and he waited anxiously to hear what I had to say. I told him that I thought she would make a splendid nurse and the reason why he had thought there might be something unsavoury in her past was simply because her parents had died when she was very young and she had been brought up by relatives, which satisfactory though that was, it was not at all like her love for her parents and of their love for her.
Steven accepted all that I had said and after another hour of chatting, he left me to return to my work at the office and I felt sure that Celine would be much happier with her work at the hospital after my appraisal with the man she loved, but my work in the office was very quiet that day and I kept thinking of Emily’s other brother, Gerard whom she told me she knew he was Gay. I thought that Celine might know this doctor who was the friend of Gerard, but I was sure she would know nothing of his sexuality, however again being the nosy bugger that I am, I decided to contact Celine again at the hospital and ask her if she knew the doctor, but how to go to the hospital without a valid reason was another problem until I remembered that Steve’s friend was called Roger someone or other, but what was his surname? Now I did have a problem, but whether it was by a stroke of luck or simply my curiosity getting the better of me, I do not know but that same evening when I was going home to Somerset Close, who should I meet, coming from her hospital shift duties... but Celine. She looked very smart in her uniform and I could tell by the look on her face that she was very pleased to see me. I told her I was just going home to Emily but that I had spoken to Steven and he was very well and looking forward to meeting her again, but that he might have to go soon again to see his friend Roger who was a patient in hospital and again, by a pure stroke of luck, Celine knew who Roger was and that he was in ward nine and she had known that he was friend of Steven since Steven had mentioned this to her when she first met him at the hospital.
“How very interesting,” I said very quickly as I knew that time was short for Celine and myself, but with my curiosity again, I asked Celine if she knew of a doctor in the hospital who was a particular friend of the Southdown family and she stood still for a moment before she told me that the doctor would have to be doctor Khan as everyone knew that doctor Khan who was a French citizen and who had been born in Paris was very fond of Gerard Southdown, but no more was said and I remembered that Smokey had told me in prison about his family and how Gerard was studying to become a doctor and that he was in France at that time and I presumed that Celine was rather innocent of the friendship and could only talk about it in any way because she was so fond of Steven’s brother.
I thought that the information that Celine had given me was extremely interesting when I thought about the friendship that Gerard Southdown had for the French doctor Khan and all I had to find out now was the young doctor’s Christian name and I knew it would not be very long before I would have that information. All I had to do was to tell young Gerard that Nurse Celine had told me how attractive one of the doctors at the hospital appeared and she thought he might be French from the name Khan... if that was a French name, but she did not know.
Strangely enough all my work at the builder’s offices next day seemed to pass very quickly as I knew I would have to make another visit to Alfie Southdown Senior very soon as I understood he was more than delighted with his special son Gerard. .. a little more delighted and proud of Gerard than he was of any other member of his family I presumed, but I just couldn’t visit Alfie Southdown with flowers... could I, so I bought a large bottle of Scot’s whiskey as I noticed that Alfie had a particular like for that whiskey more than any other on the market when we were at the wedding in Barnstable.
I thought it best to tell Emily that I should make a visit to her father as it had been such a long time we had seen him since the wedding and she was pleased and surprised that I should show such concern and kindness... but she said she would have to take a ‘rain check’ as she had some examiners coming to the school that day and would I give her father her love... and the visit was made and happily too for Gerard was in the house when I went there.
Alfie made me very welcome and Gerard stood up when I went into the lounge which made me realize what a nice gentle young man he was and I could feel sure that any other person would feel the same as I did. Alfie told me that Gerard had just come from Paris where he had become a surgeon in one of their hospitals there and that was one of the reasons why he was unable to come to the wedding in Barnstable. Alfie also told me that Gerard was unlikely to marry as he was Gay and I was rather surprised that a father would describe his son in such a manner and to appear so proud that what he said was true.
Gerard smiled as his father spoke and then he added his own part of the conversation which surprised me even more.
“Felix, I have heard a lot about you from Steven who unfortunately had to serve some time in prison and we are all so happy for you to be married to my sister Emily, but as you can understand, God creates us all in a different way. You are a man and Emily is a woman... both different but created by the same God and here am I created in a very different way but I am still a human being. I will never marry in the proper sense of the word, but I am happy in my profession as I can do so much to preserve life.”
I watched Alfie’s face as Gerard was speaking and there could be no doubt of the pride that shone through his eyes as Gerard spoke. To me, it seemed like the true love of a father for his son and I could think of no other love like that...
My idea of a person being gay was very different to what I had thought before and I saw Gerard Southdown as a very admirable person; a master of life and death and a good friend of Doctor Khan who Gerard told me he had met in Paris when he was studying in university there and that his full name was Assim Khan. He was a muslim, born of a German father and a French mother in Paris and Gerard had a little trouble when he first met Assim as he knew nothing of the muslim faith and he wondered what he should do or say to Assim as he did not want to offend him in any way, but Assim put him right and told Gerard that he was just a man as Gerard was and that he lived as any other man, doing what men did, and Gerard understood as they became great friends realizing that everything was so simple about life... a man was a man and a woman was a woman.
Chapter Fifteen
My work at the office was sound if boring, but I got a very big surprise one afternoon when I got a phone call from Emily asking me to come home as soon as possible when my work at the office was finished and I sensed there was indeed a surprise when I did get home and Emily threw her arms around me in a very different way to what she usually did. Of course we loved each other and we were often seen as a passionate pair, but that didn’t concern me in the least, but when Emily told me that she was four months pregnant, I could have fainted with joy and to be even more literal, I nearly pissed myself.
We had been married for over ten years and nothing like this had ever happened before despite that fact that we made passionate love very often and used no contraception in any way.
We immediately phoned the family to let them share our joy and started to think of names whether we would have a little girl or boy.
A healthy child was all we wanted and the sex didn’t concern us at All. We would welcome a child whether it was a boy or a girl and hoped with all our hearts after having waited so long with so much hope that we would have many more children. I was thirty five years of age and Emily was thirty seven, so I hoped everything would be alright for us both.
The family were wonderful about our news and even they sugge
sted suitable names, with Emily’s father Alfred suggesting that the child should be called after him, but the others giggled at this enthusiasm as we didn’t yet know whether it would be a boy or a girl, however it was Steven who insisted that whatever we called our baby, be it a boy or a girl, it should never be called EVERARD and Alfred scowled.
“Have a little respect for your dead mother,” he cried.
Despite All my jangled thoughts regarding what was to come in my life, I just had to settle the affairs of the office as I had employed 23 young apprentices and already 12 of them had qualified and as the company was getting larger, Freddie decided to give it a title and he called it SOUTHDOWN BUILDING COMPNY LTD and entitled him to be considered as SIR Frederick Southdown, especially now that he had moved in with society, as Emily told us that Freddie was involved with a lady of title and that she lived in a mansion, but he denied any such existence and assured us that Freddie Southdown would always be just Freddie Southdown.
All this was exciting news but the thought of a little baby coming into my life and calling me Daddy was something ‘out of this world’ and although I was proud of this, I had bad thoughts about my own birth and my life as a teenager... that was something that Emily knew little about and I wanted it to stay that way. I also hoped that my ‘little one’ would never ever find the news of my own birth and in my heart I cursed the woman who had me in her womb and then told me to bugger off when she wanted to move on.
I did my work at the office with little if any enthusiasm, but I realized I would have to keep my job, more particularly now that I would have more than one mouth to feed and I knew I was grateful to Freddie for giving me such authority over his staff, but when I reflected on the vocations that Emily and her brothers had, I felt as though I was no less than a pauper. I felt like a poor bugger who was last in his class at school and that was because someone had told me about that comparison as I had never ever been to school myself, but the feeling was nevertheless real to me.
However it was very revitalizing to think of a young surgeon who was born in Paris and who worked in a hospital in Glasgow, Scotland where many a young boy and girl would grow up to get married and have children of their own, due to the vocation of this young man from Paris who would be a single person all his life and also to reflect on another young man from Glasgow, Scotland who trained to become a surgeon in Paris and because of his vocation too, there would be many a young boy and girl in Paris who would grow up together and get married and have children of their own, due to the vocation of this young man from Glasgow who would remain single all of HIS life. I thought about life as we saw it and how utterly blind we can be to the quality of life that stared us in the face daily.
I watched Emily as she was sick in the mornings and I would bring her a cuppa before I toddled off to my own vocation as a bloody idiot, where my contribution to the bump that Emily had in her belly was so bloody insignificant and yet so vital in its own little way and after waiting for seven and a half months, Emily gave birth prematurely to a little boy who had to be kept alone in a ward near his mother until he was sufficiently well to go home with his parents... and the we gave him the name that would have made his grandfather proud. We called him Alfred... Alfred Marr in other words and whether there is something physiological in names or not, our wee laddie seemed to respond to that name immediately and even when he cried, we would call his name, Alfie and he would suddenly appear silent and look around the room to hear who was talking.
Emily quickly responded in body and nature to what she was always like and we had a wonderful time together taking Alfie to the park and joining him in the swings. Life was simply wonderful for me and I tried so hard to forget my youth where everything was so different. I wanted to think that with only little Alfie, we might be able to have a brother or a sister for him, but we had waited so long for our first little one, that it seemed as though we might hope forever, but where I would indeed hope fervently for more children, it was Emily who prayed that we might have more... in due course.
All of the family were overjoyed for us and we thought that life was taking on a nice, pleasant atmosphere and we should simply enjoy each day as it came, but as with life in general, we had to accept the ups and the downs and I had a telephone call from Celine when I was sitting at my desk in my office and she told me that Angus had approached her and insisted that she should see him again and even have dinner with him, but Celine did not want anything like that and she asked me what she should do.
I told Celine to meet me at a local café if she could either in her lunch hour from the hospital or after she had finished her duties in the evening and she gave me a time of 8.30 in the evening and I could see her at the hospital gates, if that was a suitable arrangement for me, which it was.
I didn’t have to wait long for Celine to appear and she looked very worried. Apparently Angus had told her that if she didn’t agree to meet him he would ‘deal’ with Ellie and Celine thought that to mean that Ellie might be in serious danger as Angus was a very hard and cruel man if anyone upset him. I suggested that Celine should tell Angus where I was working and I might be able to deal with the matter if I could have direct contact with Angus where we could make some sort of a deal where I might let Angus know that I was not at all happy with his ideas and if he didn’t want to stop, I might go to the police. Celine was worried about my suggestion that I could go to the police if Angus did not toe the line, but she agreed to give Angus my office address and left me with a good wish and she went into the Nurses Home for the night. I went home too and Emily was concerned that I had come home later than I usualy did, but when I told her that I had met Celine as she had something to ask me about some matter concerning Steven, she accepted that and we had super together whilst Alfie screamed his head off as he had lost his teddy bear.
I didn’t have to wait long for Angus to come to see me and he barged through the office doors where our young receptionist Milly, tried to stop him in vain. He literally threw her against the wall and I could hear her screaming for help.
As he barged through my office door he screamed for me to keep my bleedin’ ‘ands orf his gal and I stared at him as if to let him know that I knew nothing of what he was talking about, but he went on, “I knows your fuckin’ kind and I wants yer to leave my Ad alone.”
Angus then must have realized by the way I looked at him that he was barking up the wrong tree and he cooled down a bit as I told him either to sit down where we could talk or get to hell out of the office and after a session of heavy breathing, he sat down and crossed his fat legs making the chair creek and I sat in a chair near him.
“I have had nothing to do with Ad,” I said using the name that he called Celine as I was sure he knew nothing of her baptismal name and certainly nothing of her love for Steven and he grunted and closed his eyes a few times.
“An’ I knows yer wants to be fucking about wiff my Ellie too and that MUST STOP. You can’t fuck two gals at once.”
I had to smile at this last remark as I was sure he was capable to using more than two girls at once if they were willing to oblige. I think Angus thought he was a gift to any woman and from my last thought of having met him I think he felt he could have any MAN he wanted too, but at that last time when he put his hand on my knee I had told him to bugger off only to receive a kiss from his hand as it touched my lips.
“Now get out and be careful not to insult my receptionist when you go as her husband is a professional boxer and he could knock the shit out of you as fast as look at you. Now bugger off.”
I knew that Milly would smile at the description I had given Angus of her husband as she was still a single girl, but had thought quite often of how nice it would be to have a boxer or a footballer as her man.
She peeped into my office after Angus had gone and asked me if I could arrange for the boxer fella to meet her.
Two days later I had another call
from Celine who was on duty at the hospital and she told me that an ambulance had just brought Ellie into the Accident and Emergency unit where she had later been transferred to the maternity unit, badly beaten and unconscious and I left my office and rushed off to the hospital.
I had only arrived at the maternity ward when I was told that Ellie had died and that her baby would only just have been formed as they suspected that she was something like three months pregnant and I wanted to get my hands on Angus and do what I knew was necessary, but Celine met me as I was leaving the hospital and told me that the police had only just arrested Angus and he was at a local police station.
I went home feeling useless and wished I had beaten Angus to pulp when he had been to see me in my office, but I felt sure that Celine would give evidence about him and his active life until he was sent to prison for a very long time.
Eventually I heard that Celine did go to court where Angus was being questioned and she acted as a witness where the jury found him guilty of murder and he was sentenced to go to prison for twelve years.
I knew this would not help poor Ellie and as I was thinking how sad she had been in life, I remembered that Celine had told me that Ellie was not quite all there and that she was rather simple with a screw loose or something like that.
I smiled at that thought as I remembered on the occasion when I had been talking to Ellie and she had her forefinger up her nose, but as I started to talk, she put that same finger into her mouth and smiled and in that moment I was sure there was something amiss with dear Ellie.
Chapter Sixteen
It was on the Thursday after Ellie’s death that she had to be buried in a public pat of the cemetery as she had no relatives and Celine and I arranged to be at the funeral so that at least she would have some friends with her when she would be put down the six feet into the ground. It all seemed so sad and I knew that Celine was sobbing quietly to herself when all of a sudden I could see several faces around the coffin and I was confused as to who these people could be until I got a better look and I could see Charlie Billiter, standing with a very stout woman whom I imagined to be his wife or partner but when I looked closer I could see that it was Sheba and she had a baby in her arms. I looked to see if Steve was there and then I remembered he must be dead for the past ten years or so, and I concluded that Celine must have told Ellie’s friends that she had died.