The Last Witness

by John Matthews

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Roman had insisted he know urgently of any developments on tape, so Carlo Funicelli checked them twice a day – lunchtime and early evening – with sometimes an extra check midnight or early hours if he was downtown late.

  For the early evening session he usually stayed the longest, forty minutes or sometimes an hour, and he’d grab a sandwich and an espresso on the way in if he wasn’t heading later to a restaurant. The tapes were all on sound-activate, so the one fed from the bugs in Donatiens’ penthouse would usually play through in eight or ten minutes: the only sounds so far had been the increasingly frantic messages left by Simone, plus the occasional social or business related call, all seemingly innocent.

  But now with bugs also at Donatiens’ parents in Beaconsfield, the tape there was running longer. A lot longer: the house was a haven of activity with Odette there most of the day, her husband and her talking, dining or watching TV in the evening, and then the various calls from friends, neighbours and Claude Donatiens’ business partner or his golfing buddies.

  Funicelli quickly became bored. He started winding through for more interesting sound-bites, and almost missed the one conversation that didn’t quite fit in the pattern. He wound it quickly back to the beginning of the call.

  ‘…My name’s Waldren. Elena Waldren. I’m sorry to trouble you like this, but I’ve just come from St Marguerite’s, and they gave me your number. It’s regarding your stepson, George. I… I really need to see you and talk to you about him.’

  ‘Why… what’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing… nothing. But it is nevertheless a bit delicate, personal. Something I’d rather discuss with you and your husband in person rather than just over the phone.’

  ‘I see.’ Heavy pause, static over the line.

  ‘…And I have come quite a long way for this – all the way from England in fact.’

  Funicelli picked up on the caller’s agitation. She sounded anxious, very anxious that Odette Donatiens might not agree to see her. Whatever it was, it was important. The prawn salad roll held poised by his mouth the last ten seconds, he finally took a bite out of. Maybe that was where Donatiens was holed up: England.

  ‘Well… I suppose so. But you know – sometimes we don’t see him from one month to the next, so I don’t know how much help we’ll be. You’re sure there’s nothing wrong – he’s not in trouble or anything?’

  ‘No, no… really. Nothing like that. This is just a catching-up exercise from someone he hasn’t seen in a long, long while.’

  Funicelli munched steadily. Odette Donatiens still sounded uncertain, but it was difficult to tell which was paramount: her concern due to the secrecy or her curiosity not being immediately sated. She obviously wanted to know more than her caller was willing to give at that moment.

  The caller said that she’d just left St Marguerite’s and was still fifty miles up-Province. Odette Donatiens said that her and her husband were planning to go out that night anyway – so in the end they arranged that she should come to their house at 1 pm the next day.

  ‘My husband more often than not stops by for lunch – so I’ll make sure he’s around tomorrow when you call.’

  Funicelli stopped the tape and phoned Roman straight away.

  ‘Sounds promising. Could be the break we’ve been looking for,’ Roman agreed. He was thoughtful for a second. ‘Look – you stay there and listen to the tape live tomorrow. And I’ll make sure to get someone parked looking on at the house for when she shows.’

  ‘There was no conspiracy, no collusion between me and your mother to keep things from you. Believe me, Elena, it just wasn’t like that.’

  ‘Then tell me, Uncle Christos – what was it like?’ Elena could practically hear the swallow, the catching of breath at the other end of the line in London.

  ‘Well – all I knew was that your father tried to find young Christos, George as he was then, not long before he died. But I’d been sworn to secrecy by your mother, and in any case I had no idea where he’d gone to try and find him. There was nothing useful I could have told you, and by then you’d already narrowed it down to Montreal or Chicago. Why do you think I was urging you so hard to go and see your mother? She said she’d in turn been sworn to secrecy by your father, but I just had the feeling that if you told her that you’d finally decided to try and find him, that you were at that moment desperately searching – she’d have opened up and told you what she knew.’

  ‘Right.’ Now it was Elena’s turn to swallow hard. She almost lost a part of it, had to strain her hearing with the noise of a long trailer passing on the highway close by. She was still at the same service station where she’d leafed through directories to get the Donatiens’ current address and number and bought a ‘global-call’ card to phone England straight after their call. The phone kiosk was halfway between the service station building and the road, and at intervals the traffic noise imposed. ‘I… I thought that was just you banging the same old drum. Trying to patch up old family differences, get us all back together again.’

  ‘I began to tire of banging that drum long ago, Elena. Or hadn’t you noticed I’d hardly mentioned it the past year or so? Maybe in the back of my mind I saw it as an opportunity for some of the old wounds to be patched – but my first thought was that your mother might be able to help. Have you spoken to her yet?’

  ‘No, not yet. I wanted to speak to you first.’ The shaking was heaviest in her legs. Build-up of the emotional helter-skelter of the past days and the final twist in the tail at St Marguerite’s, or the fact that she’d now been standing for almost twenty minutes on the same phone? She noticed the cashier starting to look out the window at her at intervals. ‘Why did he suddenly decide he wanted to find him after all those years?’

  ‘Because he was dying, Elena. Don’t forget, he knew about the cancer a good three years before. In fact, the doctors only gave him eighteen months, two years. As I say, your mother hasn’t really shared the details with me – but I think he saw it as a last chance to make some amends.’

  A lump suddenly rose in her throat; she found it hard to swallow. But in the end he hadn’t made it: ‘…He was sat exactly where you are now, head in hands when he found out he wouldn’t be able to see the boy.’ The wave of empathy that hit her felt so strange, alien, that it made her shudder. She hadn’t felt that way about her father since… well, since almost the age young George had been when he left St Marguerite’s.

  ‘There’s something else, Elena. Something I do know more about, and I think should tell you now. You know that money I used to send you now and then?’

  ‘Yes.’ She’d blankly refused to touch the money left in trust for her or take any money from her father. Then when she’d run into problems, which was probably more often than she’d have liked on the hippie trail – Uncle Christos would send money. It wasn’t a fortune, but given the timing and the dire circumstances, it was practically a lifesaver each time. Then in addition he’d send generous sums for her birthday, Christmas, her patron-name’s day, Buddhist New Year – whatever excuse he could think of. She was sure she’d never have survived those years without Uncle Christos’ help.

  ‘Most of that money was from your father. I’d send a bit for your birthday, thirty, forty pounds, whatever – but he’d insist on sending the other two-sixty or seventy. Or when you had problems, a lot more. And he’d swear me to secrecy each time: he knew that if I said it was from him, you’d refuse it.’

  Elena felt as if her life was like a set of plates in a Greek restaurant. Just when she had the table set again, ‘Right. Okay. That’s what my life was like,’ some mad waiter had come along and again spun the plates into the air to fall smashing on the ground. She found it hard to find her voice; she sounded frail, tremulous. ‘But, why… why didn’t he say something later. Tell me what he’d done.’

  ‘You know your father. Proud to the end. Proud and obstinate.’

  ‘I know. I know.’ She leant against the kiosk and c
losed her eyes, sighing heavily. Suddenly it wasn’t just a problem with her tired, trembling legs; her whole body and mind felt weary, not a spark of energy or clear thought left.

  ‘I think he’d have seen it as admitting that he’d made a mistake with you. And you know your father was never very good at that – admitting he was wrong. It was the cause of probably ninety-percent of the arguments I used to have with him.’ Uncle Christos risked a small chuckle.

  ‘Is that it? Or is there something else maybe I should know – like perhaps he wasn’t a hot-shot businessman after all but secretly head of the Hampstead Hare Krishna’s. Or, surprise, surprise, he’s not dead, but living in some commune in the Himalayas along with Elvis and Lord Lucan?’ She’d aimed for humour as an escape valve, but the acid, tremulous edge in her voice left little doubt: she was angry. Angry and confused.

  ‘I’m sorry, Elena. I know how you must feel. But, no – that’s it, that’s as much as I know. As to why your father made that last trip to try and see George and what happened when he was there – only your mother knows the details. When are you going to phone her?’

  ‘Well… straight away, I suppose.’ It seemed a stupid question given how much she desperately needed to know what had happened – but she picked up the concerned edge in Uncle Christos’ voice. He was afraid it would be like his hopes of her finally seeing her mother these past years: she’d put it off and in the end would never do it. ‘I’ll call her as soon as I put the phone down now.’

  ‘That’s good. I’ll… I’ll leave you to it then. And once again I’m sorry, Elena… it was just how your father wanted it.’ Small resigned sigh, smothered by the air-rush of a passing truck. ‘Good luck with your mother.’

  But having said her thanks and signed off, standing with the dead phone and the dialling tone back again, with Lorena starting to look around expectantly from the car only a few yards ahead, suddenly she wasn’t so sure. She didn’t feel she could take any more shock revelations right now. Each one had been like a body blow and she felt like a punch-drunk boxer, sagging against the side of the kiosk for support under the relentless rain of blows, her legs aching from trembling and now her hands shaking too as she gripped the dead receiver. One more blow and she was down.

  She stood uncertainly a moment more, unsure whether to call then or wait till later and meanwhile hopefully summon more reserves and nerve to face the call. Lorena looking over anxiously also reminded her that she still had to decide what to finally do there.

  The delay hardly helped. Elena was going to wait until they were back at the hotel to make the call, but with each passing mile back to Montreal on Highway 30 her anxiousness to know pressed harder. It was like a tightening coil at the back of her neck, and as she started to get a headache and could barely summon a clear thought, she swung the car into the next available stop, a roadside diner 17 miles from Montreal.

  It was busy and, judging from the car park, popular with truckers. She ordered a mineral water at the counter for herself and pointed the waitress over to the table with Lorena for her coke and blueberry muffin. She swilled back two aspirins quickly followed by another valerian with the mineral water on the way to the phone by the washrooms at the back. She’d gained a bit more resolve and energy since speaking to Uncle Christos, but still her nerves were shot: how best to start a conversation with the mother you’ve hardly spoken to in half a lifetime?

  The ringing tone seemed slow with a slight echo to it. As a hesitant voice finally answered, ‘Hello,’ Elena put her other hand by her ear, fading out the clatter of plates and voices and the hiss of the short-order grill.

  ‘Mom, is that you? It’s Elena… Elena!’ She started with the preamble of enquiring how her mother was, then quickly lurched into not being able to even think of how to start apologising for not being in touch for so long. ‘I’m sorry, mom, so –’

  But her mother cut in halfway through. ‘You’re there now – in Montreal?’

  ‘Yes… yes, I am.’

  ‘Uncle Christos said you might phone. And it’s okay, Elena – you don’t need to apologise. You had every good reason to stay away and not see me. I understand.’

  Oh God. Elena closed her eyes and wished the floor could open up. The ready, almost fatalistic acceptance made it all the worse, made the guilt worm deeper. But then her mother too rambled for a moment about how was Gordon and her two young ones Christos and Katine, before returning to the meat of why Elena had called: her father’s trip to Montreal the year before he died.

  ‘…Uncle Christos is right that him knowing that he was dying provided the final push. But it’s not as simple as that – it had been building up for some while. Many years, in fact… going all the way back to when you discovered you could no longer have children, and then later Andreos’s suicide.’

  Elena felt the years stripped away, pictured herself suddenly again in her late teens in Andreos’s room telling him how upset she was with their father, how she felt like just running away. And him saying ‘Don’t leave,’ but never explaining why she shouldn’t: too shy to admit that he wanted her to stick around as his own emotional bolster. ‘But… but all those years. How come I never knew, or at least guessed?’

  ‘Your father was very secretive, very guarded. He felt the guilt straight away – I saw it in him where probably others didn’t – but it didn’t surface fully until years later. One of his secretaries had a messy miscarriage and couldn’t have children any more. She cried on his shoulder that it was the worst thing she’d ever endured or could imagine happening to any woman – and days later he was on the phone to the Stephanous asking about young George. Nick Stephanou had already given the boy away to the orphanage two years previous, but he didn’t have the stomach to admit that to your father. Maybe he feared your father would ask back for the money he’d paid them. So he didn’t mention the accident, didn’t mention any problems. Just said George was growing tall and doing well at school and both him and Maria were very happy and very proud. Your father would phone every year or so and get the same story – ‘Yeah, fine, at High School now you know’ – and it wasn’t until eight years later that he finally got to know the truth, when he was having trouble contacting Nick and ended up phoning his brother Sotiris. George would have been fifteen then – but what could your father do? He phoned the orphanage and they told him George had gone to a new family at the age of eight and their rule was not to pass on any details – so all he could do was just shrug his shoulders and hope that he’d gone to a good family somewhere, that he was having a good life and hadn’t suffered.’

  Good family somewhere. Good life. Elena felt a shiver run up her spine. All the years she’d thought how different she was to her father, how opposite their views were, particularly regarding her son: that her father had given him away purely to punish her and hadn’t spent a minute since wasting an ounce of emotion on what he’d done or worrying about the boy’s welfare; yet all the while his thoughts had been almost exactly the same as hers.

  ‘Your father, as he did with most things, put on a brave face, on the surface shouldered it well – but I could see the pain and guilt close beneath the surface. And he was missing you too, regretted what he’d done. He used to send you money through Uncle Christos and asked that you weren’t told – thought you’d probably refuse it.’

  ‘I know. Uncle Christos told me.’ She looked up to see their waitress heading back to the counter. Lorena was taking the first sips of her coke.

  ‘…And so practically the whole focus of his life, all his ambitions and hopes got poured into your brother Andreos. “Andreos is going to be a great successor in my business”…Andreos is going to do this, Andreos is going to do that. There seemed no limits to what Andreos might achieve in your father’s eyes. Then with Andreos’s suicide, particularly when it looked like the main reason was that he felt he couldn’t cope, couldn’t live up to your father’s expectations – all hope there too was lost and again your father blamed himself. He drunk himse
lf silly for weeks and one night I caught him gently weeping in his sleep – probably one of many he’d done so without me knowing – and he turned to me tearfully and asked what was wrong with him. “What is it about me that drives people away or pushes them into the ground? Am I such a monster?”

  Tears welled in Elena’s eyes, the café scene ahead suddenly blurred, distorted. She’d never before seen that soft, emotional side to her father; it was so totally out of sync with the image she’d long held true of him. And all she’d done was add to his guilt and suffering: the funeral had been the last time she’d seen her father, and she’d stood stoically on her mother’s side as Andreos’s body was lowered into the ground and the Priest said the prayers. Then when finally her father seemed to have summoned the courage and spirit to speak to her towards the end of the service, she’d turned abruptly and stormed off: ‘This is all your fault too. You’re to blame for this.’ ‘I’m sorry. I… I had no idea.’ Her own voice sounded distant, lost among the hustle and clatter of the restaurant. She had to shift slightly to one side as two men in blue overalls came past her from the washroom behind.

  ‘How could you? He never showed that side to anyone. When I suggested to him that maybe that was part of the problem and he should try and show his emotions more – he said that I was being ridiculous. If he wore his heart on his sleeve, he wouldn’t last a minute in business. His competitors would have him for breakfast. And besides, it just wasn’t him. So the defences would quickly come up again, that hard skin he saw as his protection from the world outside. I remember him once saying to me that that sort of thing was for “old Greek widows, wailing and gnashing their teeth.” I think with the prejudice he experienced early on, he’d fixed this strange notion in his mind that not showing his emotions would somehow make him more English and less Cypriot. Stiff upper lip and all that rubbish.’