Nellie Grimshaw was already there, her face set with the grim determination of one used to expediting unpleasant business. Sitting next to Nellie were Callum and Jean Peterson, their questioning faces betraying the surprised discomfort of the unwary. A pale-faced, somewhat distraught lady, who was intriguingly introduced as Jean’s Aunt Agnes, was sitting opposite Nellie.
‘Please, would you like to take a seat,’ Mr Amstruthers said, waving Liam and Bridget towards the two vacant seats next to Aunt Agnes. Nellie nodded almost imperceptibly to acknowledge their arrival whilst Callum and Jean smiled bleakly.
‘Good afternoon, everybody.’ The Cheshire cultured, measured tones of Mr Amstruthers signified the start of proceedings. He was a man of arrogant charm, raised in Tarporley and now living in Alderley Edge. He referred to the playing members of the County Cricket Club, where he was a vice-president, as Johnners, Baskers and Smithers, but without any apparent good reason for the affectation. ‘Thank you for coming along to our office for this meeting. Simons will be along shortly with some tea for our refreshment but I think that we should start our business and not wait. This is a matter of some delicacy and I will apologise in advance for any upset that might be caused. I know that what I am about to explain to you will cause distress and I hope that we will be able to deal with this in a sympathetic and supportive way.’
Aunt Agnes took a white lace handkerchief from her handbag and dabbed her nose. Liam studied the once-beautiful and now maturely attractive face. Her pale, powdered skin emphasised the rouged cheeks and bright red lips. Her fair hair was swept across her finely sculpted, arched eyebrows and a rich brown fox stole hung listlessly over one shoulder. A real class act in her day, Liam thought, but could she really have been the stunning lady in the painting as had been asserted by her niece, Jean? Bridget was sitting in the seat next to Aunt Agnes and Liam adjusted his position in the adjacent chair. By leaning forward, he found that he could furtively stare at the elegant profile whilst, at the same time, feigning a keen interest in the words of the solicitor. He felt a small fricassee of excitement at the realisation that he could be now staring at the enigma that for the past five years had flickered insistently through his life, taunting and troubling like an elusive spirit.
‘Circumstances have combined to require that revelations of a most sensitive nature are laid before you,’ Mr Amstruthers continued. She must be in her early fifties now, Liam thought, but still the sort of profile that could make your bones melt. He tried to visualise her without the fox stole; imagining, instead, the emerald necklace draped round the long neck and touching the top of her breasts. Dare he ask her, later, why she had had the painting done of herself with his eldest brother, Patrick?
She lifted her head to watch, wistfully, the concerned reactions of her niece and Callum. Wisps of hair lay gently over her forehead; her nose, tilted back, eased out the slight pouchiness of her throat. Liam smelt the expensive subtlety of her perfume as she took out a delicately embroidered handkerchief to dab her eyes and blow her nose.
‘We are dealing with a matter here that resonates back to, dare I say it, the most pre-eminent family in the land. It is necessary, therefore, to treat this matter with the utmost discretion.’ A sharp blow in the thigh indicated Bridget’s awareness of his lack of concentration on Mr Amstruthers in favour of a reverie focussed on Aunt Agnes. Liam picked up a pencil and started doodling on the leather framed blotting paper in front of him. He tried to make sense of the solicitor’s comments; all caution and qualification but with no substance.
‘We must pay great heed to the security ramifications of this information and insist that you…’
‘Oh, for goodness sake, Bramwell, let’s just get to the point,’ Nellie Grimshaw said, slapping her pencil down impatiently on the blotter. ‘What he is saying is that anything that is discussed here is confidential. Just keep it under your hat or else there could be all sorts of problems. And Agnes, do stop snivelling, dear. You will finish up with a shiny nose.’
Mr Amstruthers coughed and spluttered a little before regaining his composure. ‘Yes, ah, of course. That is the essence of it. This meeting has, in fact, been called at the instigation of the widow of the late Mr Patrick Murphy, your, erm, mother, in fact, Mr Murphy,’ he said, nodding towards Callum. Recovering now from his speculations about Aunt Agnes, Liam saw the shock that engulfed his nephew. He could barely comprehend the revelation himself. Why should Callum’s retiring, unsophisticated mother have arranged a meeting at the practise of a clearly expensive King Street solicitor? His mother was a woman who instinctively avoided men in suits and had an innate fear of officialdom. And, if she had indeed called the meeting, where was she? Why was she not here at the meeting herself?
Seeming to read his thoughts, Mr Amstruthers went on to explain that the said Mrs Murphy, because of the nature of the disclosures that were about to be made, had chosen not to attend personally but had asked him to deal sympathetically with the rather delicate matters to hand. Nellie fixed him with a withering, get-on-with-it stare. ‘Ah, yes, of course,’ the now slightly disconcerted solicitor continued. ‘The reason for the meeting is that you, Mr Murphy, have indicated your intention to get married. I understand that the lady at your side, Miss Jean Peterson, is your intended spouse?’
Callum reached out for Jean’s hand and nodded his affirmation. ‘That’s right,’ he stammered. ‘But I… I… that is, I don’t understand…,’ his voice tailed off and he looked round the small assembled group.
‘I do appreciate your difficulty,’ the smoothly urbane Mr Amstruthers continued. ‘I am sorry that it was not possible to be more explicit in my letter to you. The somewhat complex nature of this whole business means that we have to exercise extreme caution in the words that we might put on record.’ He caught the fiery eye of Nellie fixed on him. ‘Well, the fact of the matter is, Mr Murphy, you asked for your birth certificate.’
Callum, becomingly increasingly confused, nodded his agreement. ‘The document registering your birth, Mr Murphy, has been held by me, along with some other important papers, throughout your life. I have to ask you to prepare yourself for a number of surprises, er, indeed, shocks.’ Aunt Agnes sniffed loudly and Nellie Grimshaw harrumphed. Mr Amstruthers leant over and passed the certificate to Callum who read the printed heading then turned the paper over to see the reverse before continuing to study the content.
‘But…, I don’t understand,’ Callum stammered, rubbing the side of his increasingly pale face. ‘I think that there must have been some mistake.’ He turned it over again, staring unseeingly at the printing on the back. Jean’s face was suddenly taut and drawn. Aunt Agnes tried to hide the terrified pain in her eyes by staring at the blotter and Nellie focussed rigidly on a painting by Leighton James of a statuesque Greek lady.
‘What’s the matter, lad?’ Liam asked, uneasy at the crackling tension. ‘Our Paddy hasn’t given you some poncy name that you didn’t know about, has he? You never knew what he might do when he had had a few.’
‘No, it’s not that. To be honest, I think that we have got the wrong person here. I just feel really embarrassed because I don’t know why my mother has done this. I think that she must be cracking up or something. I’m sorry, Mr Amstruthers. I’ll have a word with her when I get home. But don’t worry, I will settle your bill for wasting your time. I can only apologise; I just can’t think what made her do this.’
‘Callum, lad,’ Nellie spoke with quiet authority. ‘If you just hear Mr Amstruthers out. I think that you will find that there is no mistake.’
‘No, indeed, there is not. I am sorry that this has not all been explained before but circumstances forbade. I do realise that the only thing that you appear to have in common with the person on the certificate is the name Henry which is, of course, now your second name. You were given the Callum later when you were Christened and your adoptive mother chose to quietly drop the Edward out of your name altogether. But your registered name was, in fact, Edward Henry.’
Liam was stunned by this explanation. He had remembered his brother’s baby suddenly appearing but had not been surprised. As a thirteen year old lad at the time, he barely understood the never-discussed mechanics behind the birth of children. His young nephew had just appeared and that was it. His mates poked fun for a while about him being an uncle but that was all. Callum and Jean looked at each other, shocked and stunned, trying to make sense of what had just been said.
‘Mr Amstruthers, can we just clarify that?’ Bridget demanded. ‘Did I understand you to say his adoptive mother?’
‘I did, Mrs Murphy, I did.’
‘So then the person that he has been thinking of as his mother for all these years is actually his adoptive mother?’
‘Yes, that is correct. I understand that this will come as something of a shock but there were many reasons why this has not been revealed earlier, not the least of which was that his adoptive mother insisted that this should be the case. I think that she was afraid that his affection and respect for her might be lost if he was to hear of such news. Of course, he was bound to find out at some stage and it seems that we are indeed at such a crossroads.’
‘So that feckless old charmer of a brother of yours was a womaniser as well as a drunk,’ Bridget said, glowering at Liam. ‘Then he brings his mistakes home for his poor wife to take care of.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, Mrs Murphy,’ Mr Amstruthers said. ‘Perhaps we are jumping to some hasty conclusions. You will no doubt have noted that the father has not been named.’
Liam felt his head aching with the welter of revelations and trying to rationalise the implications.
‘No, Aunt Brig,’ Callum mumbled. ‘We are not told who the father was. There is no name for him on here. But what is much worse is who is named as the mother.’ He passed the certificate to Jean.
Liam watched her as her face turned a deathly white and she clutched at her throat. She looked at Callum then turned back to read the certificate again. Liam felt a sudden, sharp pain in his head as she banged her fists on the table and screamed at her quaking Aunt. ‘How could you do this to us, you horrible, evil woman? How could you stand by for all these years and watch us fall in love and not say anything? How could you watch us plan our wedding and not tell us that it was impossible for us to be married?’ She rose out of her chair and leant across the table, staring furiously at her aunt. ‘You have taken everything that you wanted in life without a care for others, and now you take this chance of happiness from us because you didn’t have the decency to tell us that you are his real mother. Well, I won’t have it,’ she sobbed. ‘Do you hear me? I won’t have it. If I can’t marry Callum then I will just live with him and you can all say what you like. And if our children are damaged because of that then there will only be you to blame.’ She threw herself back on her chair, sobbing violently, and fumbled for her handkerchief.
Callum reached over and put his arm round her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, love. I wouldn’t hurt you for the world. I just don’t know what to say.’
Aunt Agnes had now lifted her attention away from the blotter and was mouthing barely audible sounds. ‘But, Jean, darling. I… I can’t…, I mean, I don’t understand. What are you saying? I have always tried to do what is right for you. Why… where have you got this silly idea from that I am his mother?’
Jean snatched the certificate and slammed it down in the middle of the table. ‘Because that is what it says here. Look. That is why you have been brought to this meeting, isn’t it? Look what it says - Mother, Ellen Connolly. You even had the audacity to register him using your preposterous stage name. You couldn’t even be open and honest about that.’
‘Aha,’ Nellie Grimshaw snorted, holding a calming hand in the air before putting it gently on Jean’s arm. ‘Let us put a stop to all this nonsense. I can see that we are talking at seriously cross purposes here. I don’t know how all this has arisen but there is a very unfortunate misunderstanding. Jean, your Aunt Agnes and I have known each other for many years; since we were girls, in fact. We both shared a love of the theatre but Agnes was always the more serious one. Still is, as a matter of fact. She used to come with me to the music hall but then, unfortunately, I had to go with her to the opera. And that was the direction that her career took her. She had a good voice, no question about that, and she could sing the lighter stuff as well. That needs a special talent. Many a time we used to perform together but never anything too heavy.’
Aunt Agnes smiled. ‘That is very generous of you to say so, Nellie. You were a magnificent performer in your own field.’
‘Well, I didn’t do too badly for myself, I suppose,’ Nellie said, turning to Jean. ‘That is the point, you see. We both went off in different directions and we were both very successful. Agnes, though, occasionally sang under an adopted stage name. She probably thought that it would harm her reputation if she was known to be sharing a stage with me. I, on the other hand, stuck to the name that I was born with. That always was, up to me marrying Harry Grimshaw anyway, the clearly notorious Ellen Connolly.’
There were gasps of astonishment from the assembled group. Jean, wide-eyed, put both hands over her open mouth. Liam cupped his hand over the scar on his forehead then held it out, finger extended as if about to deliver some admonition. ‘Hang on now, Nellie. You can’t be Ellen. You have been Nellie for years so how can you be Ellen?’
‘Liam Murphy,’ Bridget scolded. ‘I just wonder where you have been sometime. Nellie is a common name substitute for Ellen.’
‘That’s right,’ Nellie said. ‘Nellie is what friends have always called me anyway. I didn’t expect you to know what my name used to be or what I did in an earlier life. Can’t say, now I have got a bit older, that I feel too proud of some of the things myself. But you can’t have the Mayor’s parade without the horse muck is what I always say. I’ve got a different life now and least said, soonest mended. But where you got the idea from that Agnes was Ellen Connolly, I don’t know.’
‘Oh, my God,’ Jean whispered. ‘It’s my fault. What an awful mistake. Oh, Aunt Agnes, I am so sorry. I shouldn’t have shouted at you like that. I just thought for a minute that Callum and I were cousins. I was just so angry for a moment. I am truly sorry. Can you ever forgive me?’
‘Oh, don’t fuss so much, dear,’ Agnes said. ‘I am glad to see you showing a bit of spirit. Got some of your father in you. How on earth did you come to think that I was Nellie anyway? I was D’Oyley Carte not the Gaiety.’
‘Always felt that you were a cut above the rest, haven’t you Agnes?’ Nellie said. ‘But you earned as much in one night singing with me as you did in a month with your lot.’
‘Now then, ladies,’ Mr Amstruthers purred. ‘You are each important and valued clients and it does not do to pick at each other like this. You are both bound to be a little on edge with the nature of the matter that we are dealing with.’
‘I am sorry to interrupt your peacemaking efforts between such important clients,’ Callum said, ‘but I am the one who should be on edge. I came here not knowing what this meeting was all about but with a mother who I love and respect and a father who was, admittedly, an old rogue but who was nevertheless my father. Now I find that she is not my mother and if my father was my father, then it was with another woman. Fair enough, I’m glad that Jean is not my cousin, which we were beginning to think that she was. That would have had frightening implications. But what is this all about, for goodness sake? Was my father having an affair with you, Mrs Grimshaw?’
‘Oh, dear me, no,’ Nellie said, permitting a faint smile. ‘Paddy and I were indeed old friends from a long time before. Well before he married your mother, in fact. But he was a great socialiser. Some years after I had gone to London, he met up one night with the man that you all call Eppie. His name is actually Henry Molineaux and he and I had been, shall we say, close. Henry was a dear, kind man who, for some years after I had left, still cherished the belief that our relationship had been more than just fr
iends.’
‘He wasn’t the only one, either,’ Agnes interrupted. ‘You had quite a collection who thought that they were more than just friends.’
‘I was young and keen to live life to the full,’ Nellie snapped. ‘And anyway, you weren’t exactly short of suitors yourself. What about that Army man from Broughton who threatened to shoot himself if you didn’t go for dinner with him before he went to India.’
‘It was a lot more than dinner that he had in mind,’ Agnes answered tersely. ‘And can you imagine being an army wife in India? Snakes and flies and all sorts of other horrid creatures.’
‘You never had any sense of adventure did you, dear?’ Nellie scoffed.
‘Well, perhaps not. But it didn’t do you any good going out to South Africa with your Prince Charming, did it? Royal hunting party, for goodness sake. It was you who was the big game for him, not anything running about on four legs.’
‘Oh, now, ladies,’ the desperate solicitor pleaded. ‘Perhaps such revelations are not entirely appropriate at this stage.’
‘Well, it’s alright having a sense of adventure, but it was a lot more than a snake bite that Nellie came back with. And look at all the upset that it has caused for the poor lad now.’
‘What’s done is done, and there is no going back,’ Nellie said. ‘Anyway, sticking to the subject of Paddy. It was three years since I had left Salford but Henry had heard from some friends in London that I was pregnant. When Paddy bumped into him, he had gone absent from the hospital and had got himself pretty drunk. I do feel sorry for the effect that the news had on poor Henry because I wouldn’t have wanted to cause him that much hurt. For one reason or another, Paddy’s marriage had proved childless. He got in touch with me and suggested that they should adopt the baby.’ Nellie turned her head and looked at Callum for the first time. ‘By the baby, of course, I mean you. I know that all this must be coming as a terrible shock to you and I am sorry. Your biological father had wanted you to be made a ward of Chancery but I wasn’t having any of that. What was good enough for the way that I was brought up was to be good enough for you. And I wanted parents for my child who would be loving and caring, not people who were no more than paid minders. So I agreed. It was Paddy’s idea to call you Henry because it was through bumping into Henry Molineaux that he gained a son. You know Paddy; couldn’t resist a joke.’
Rags, Bones and Donkey Stones (Sequel) Page 31