by Ruby Soames
‘Florence.’
‘Florence, that’s it. Florence, not to have it. She couldn’t have been under any illusions about his intentions. She chose to have it’.
‘I am the it, Mrs Hardwick.’
‘I know, my dear … I know. Sorry. This must be very difficult for you. Oh dear. I’ve been through so much lately that I have become quite numb – I forget. I’m not nice to be around anymore, I know that. It’s all this –’ she wriggles in her seat as if trying to dislodge a bubble of indigestion, ‘all this anger.’
I remember the disappointment on my mother’s face when my birthdays came and there was no card, or when I graduated and Robert, her boss, was there in place of my father. I look over at a silver-framed photo of Henry dressed in a blonde wig and suspenders at some legal fundraising event.
‘Internet’s a marvellous thing. I found you in less than a minute. I suppose having a celebrity boyfriend makes it even easier – sorry, fiancé – congratulations – hope you make a better job of marriage than I did.’
I look again at the photo of Henry: one disguise after another. On seeing me looking at him, Caroline shudders.
‘It’s a shame that it’s too late for you to meet him.’
‘I did meet him – I was with Henry the day he died.’
She frowns trying to puzzle out what I’m saying. ‘You? Met him?’ The crease in between her eyebrows deepens, ‘You met Henry?’
‘I was one of the last people to see him alive.’
The Chinese bowl we’ve been using as an ashtray overturns in her lap.
‘I followed him to Barbados. I was his bridesmaid. And I was at the party, that afternoon, we were stranded together on that island and then … I was there before he died.’
Just when she thought she was beyond being surprised by anything. ‘Oh my God! Did he … did he … know who you were?’
‘I’d stayed in a cave during the storm deliberately to be alone with him. To tell him who I was – I was at a low point in my life, I had nothing to lose and I hoped confronting him would resolve things in my mind.’
‘Good God! So you met her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Isn’t she just frightful?’
‘Yes,’ I answer.
‘Of course, I’d like to blame her,’ says Caroline, ‘it’s easier than to accept I fought so hard to keep Henry who, when it came down to it, just didn’t care about any of us. I want to believe that she bewitched him or forced him – but now that he’s dead, I can see that he was unhappy, he’d always been unhappy. And I was too! All those years, we played this silly game of pretending – believing that if it looked OK, it would be OK. We defended, protected and used up everything we had to keep ourselves going in our own sad, deluded misery – and why? Only because we’d invested so much in it!’ She’s quiet while she fully takes in what she said. ‘As you can see, I’ve got all the time in the world for a long story, tell me everything!’
I text Joseph to say I’ll be home late while Caroline brings up some of her late husband’s vintage wine from the cellar. She starts a little fire and then she sits back and says, ‘OK. Right from the start.’
So I tell Caroline my life story. She presses for details. She gulps, gasps, slaps her thighs and lights another ‘ciggy’ for us both. I have never had such an appreciative audience. She knows all the characters: Roy and Bunny Templeton-Crest, Peter even. I finish with the scene where Yuleka bursts into my hotel room accusing me of ruining her honeymoon.
‘Ah. So you’ve had first-hand experience of my nemesis!’ She puts a hand over her mouth to stop herself laughing or crying or something. ‘If ever I deserved a punishment, I damn well got it! That woman’s taken everything from me. The house is up for grabs, all our friends are too embarrassed to call, my children loathe me, I’m paying extortionate fees to the only tutorial college who’ll take Barnaby and I’m up at five every morning making sandwiches for business men so I can pay the blasted gas bill!’
‘Why would you deserve punishment?’
She drops to her knees, shuffles over to me and puts her hands to her face gathering the strength to speak.
‘I’ve had a secret for a long time, telling you that secret was the first thing I wanted to do when I was free from Henry. It’s why I’ve been following you around.’
‘What is it?’
‘The letters, cards, drawings … things you sent Henry over the years … he never received them.’
‘But I sent them to him.’
She drops to one side, relief emptying her out. ‘I intercepted them.’
‘But they were sent to his office –’
Her voice becomes a whisper. ‘His personal secretary was his old house matron from Eton – she’d fallen on difficult times. She was absolutely bloody useless but she was devoted, just so grateful for the job. She’d have done anything for us – particularly for me. She knew about you and she guarded “the secret” – destroyed everything you and your mother sent. The day you came to Henry’s office – do you remember?’
Of course I remember.
‘He didn’t know you were there – never found out. She called me. I panicked, told her to send you back. I thought it was blackmail and it was cruel – Henry may have done the same, who knows.’ She readjusts her seating position, crawls over to the photograph of Henry and stares at his face. ‘I suppose there are some things he isn’t entirely to blame for. I didn’t want the shame, the complication, the living evidence that he’d betrayed me. He didn’t know you tried to get in touch. I’m very, very sorry.’
Her words act like a torch lighting up and awakening dark, hidden pain.
‘You’ve every right to be angry. I got in touch with you to tell you this, and to say if there’s anything I can do to make it up –’ she trails off.
It doesn’t take long to answer.
‘I want his name on my birth certificate.’
She pauses. ‘Money would be easier.’
Sending things to Henry had been an important and clandestine project in my childhood. The only secret I’d ever kept from my mother. I am angry but mainly sad. Sad for the child who looked up his work address in the Yellow Pages, who bought stamps and stole envelopes from when I’d visit mum at work. And now I learn that everything went straight to the bin.
‘Do the boys know, about me?’
‘They do now. But it’s all been shattering for them. Their father’s affair, the divorce, the death, and then learning they have an estranged sister … Barnaby’s the worst effected, he’s young. Sensitive. You saw how I have to hide all my belongings around the house: if it isn’t nailed down, he steals it. He’s taken everything – jewellery, the family silver, even my bloody nail scissors. Everything.’
‘Why?’ I ask.
‘Revenge. Resentment. Who knows?’
‘And what about your other son?’
‘Tom? He’s in the City, got a lovely girl. Tom will be all right.’
My visit seems to have given her a new lease of life – as if I had arrived on her doorstep with an olive branch in my beak – I do want peace, true, but I’m sitting with a woman who tore up a child’s drawings and letters to her father.
I stand up and put my coat on.
She grabs my arm. ‘I’m terribly, terribly sorry Sarah – we should have done something for you. I was weak.’ I draw my arm away from her. ‘Thank you so much for coming to see me: I would have understood if you hadn’t. I’ve many regrets in my life – but this weighed the heaviest.’
I tug at the Hardwick front door until it opens to let me out into the cold night air.
4
Dear Daddy,
I’m looking out at the autumn sun setting over the rooftops of my university town – yes! here I am: my first night as a law student. Mum and Robert drove me down, we had lunch on the way – I was too nervous to eat – mum cried, which was embarrassing! I’m sharing a room with Joanna who’s very posh, she went to Roedeen Girls’ Boarding school. She’s
studying Classics though she doesn’t know why. Luckily she’s OK about me having Lancelot and Guinevere, my guinea pigs, although she did ask if we were going to eat them at some point. I’m hoping that’s public school humour!
Everyone’s in the bar or going out for meals but I thought I’d get a head start on our readings. Kamilla had a party for me last night which ended just as mum and Robert were loading the car to drive me here, so I’ll probably crash out soon.
So far the other students seem friendly, some of them invited me to see a play tomorrow starring a boy called Joseph West who all the girls are already in love with. All they seem to think about is sex and getting drunk, no one wants to talk about jury reform or Guantanamo Bay!
Love,
Sarah xxx
5
I walk along the Thames until the turning for Sloane Square tube station. Before crossing the road, I look back along the river to the tall, red tower block I grew up in. Mum’s probably getting ready for bed now, I could walk over and tell her about this afternoon but I’m too churned up. Caroline’s voice is still in my head stirring up a rage.
I fight with the buttons on my coat. Caroline had made me invisible to my father. That’s a story I could tell myself to exonerate my father because I’m still trying to protect him – why? Because he’s half of me? Why? Because he’s not here and they are? Because I still can’t let go of the idea that daddy is still waiting in the wings to come out and love me? The weight of my coat falls from my hands. Do I still feel not good enough for him?
That house, those mollycoddled boys, her pearls … the way she talked about my mother – called me ‘it’ – I rest my head against a lamp post in front of the Thames as my fists tighten in fury. I pull at my scarf, outrage pounds through me.
Suddenly arms clasp me from nowhere. ‘Stop! Don’t do it!’
We struggle until he releases his grip and I look at his face. This isn’t a random mugging. I’ve seen him before.
The young man at Henry’s wedding in Holland Park. In Barbados – at the Wedding of a Thousand Dreams. At the Scuba diving school … and when I was in the cave, sinking beneath the water level, struggling for breath, he was on the motorbike and left Henry dead.
‘Are you going to kill me too?’ I ask.
‘I’m trying to stop you from killing yourself!’ he shouts, tightening his grip.
‘What?’
‘Don’t do it!’
‘You think –?’ I stare at the serious look in his eyes. ‘You think I’m going to jump?’
He releases me, stands back and I laugh. ‘I was looking for my Oyster Card!’
He slaps his forehead, grinning. ‘I’m Tom. Your half-brother.’
‘You were with Henry when he died.’
‘I just wanted to talk to him.’ He stares at me, willing me to believe him. ‘You know he wouldn’t take our phone calls, open our letters, agree to even see us – his own children!’
‘Sounds about right,’ I say rolling my eyes.
‘Yeah, you’d know.’ He looks up at the charcoal night. ‘All we’d ever done was to try to get his approval, his attention – we longed for his affection – and then, at the end of it all, he said he was ashamed of us because we couldn’t stand on our own two feet! He said he was going to give everything – everything! – to Yuleka because “she is the only person who’d ever loved him!” He holds out his hands to emphasise his point – I have the same mannerism. ‘So I went to Barbados to try and make him see the mistake he was making.’
‘You must have been very angry with him.’
‘I had a right to be – with him, and with that woman we call “the incubus” – but also with mum. Only a few months ago she told us about you – that all along we had a sister we never knew about. On top of everything! The two of them, always lying. All our lives, my brother and I were used as props to make a deceitful man, his miserable wife and his loveless marriage look right. I went to Barbados to confront him. Yes, when I realised he was still on that island without her I came out to see him – but I didn’t push him – I didn’t! He slipped when he turned his back on me –’
Tom looks out at the traffic but we both see the same thing. Henry falling, Tom standing over him. He whispers, ‘But I let him fall,’ he sniffs, looks across at the power station. ‘Come on, you must have hated him too.’ He waits for me now. He’s pale, he has dark rings under his eyes and his pupils are eerily dilated.
And now my turn: ‘He told my mother she was “the one”. So she believed he was always coming back for her, for us. We never heard a thing from him.’ I look into Tom’s face. ‘From the age of seven I used to write to him, even went to his office to plead for help, but I was turned away. Henry, Caroline – even Henry’s secretary – kept me out!’ I realise I’m shouting. I catch my breath while we look at each other, gathering information. I want him to understand what it felt like for me to be on the outside. ‘Yes, I was angry, but … I’m not anymore.’
Tom drops his arms to his side and speaks gently, ‘Please – Sarah – don’t imagine we were getting the love and happiness you didn’t have. And he broke my mother’s heart over and over again … I didn’t mean to cause his death … It was typical that he died turning away from his family.’
I lean against the river’s barrier and look up at the streetlights. ‘I won’t tell anyone what I saw.’
He whispers, ‘Thank you.’
‘It was you who called the rescue police, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes – obviously I had to be anonymous. And I came back, watched you, made sure you were alright.’
‘You brought me those flowers – and the card, didn’t you?’
‘I wanted to talk to you, my sister, but I didn’t know if you knew about us or if you wanted to. And then your mum turned up!’ For a moment he laughs, making me laugh. ‘Anyway, my main concern was to try and talk father out of that stupid marriage – and hey, you seemed to be having a rather busy time of it!’
‘Yes, it was an eventful holiday.’
‘That man, Peter Lyle, he used to look into your room when you were changing.’
‘What?’ I ask.
Tom laughs. ‘I didn’t intend to follow you but as we were on the same mission, sometimes we crossed over … and I liked you.’ He takes in a deep breath, ‘Look, this is going to sound really lame but, if there’s anyone I could have chosen to be my sister, it’d be you.’
‘Thanks,’ I say and mean it. We turn our backs to the Thames and walk in silence to Sloane Square. It’s the tail end of rush hour. At the gates, before going through the barrier, I say goodbye.
‘Sarah, look, I shan’t say “let’s get together soon” or anything like that – I know you probably have a lot of mixed feelings about us, we’re a rather shabby bunch, my brother and I, we’re in a lot of turmoil and mummy’s totally bats … but … we’d like to … get to know you … if ever, whenever, however you’d like to. I don’t know how one usually does these things, but –?’ He stops there as though amazed he got so far finding the words for something so complex to express. ‘Bye Sarah,’ he says and wraps his arms around me. We stay like that for a long time, connected, warm: brother and sister.
Joe’s on the roof in the Jacuzzi being ‘bubbled up’ as he calls it. Elvis is stretched out near him but far enough away to avoid getting wet.
I flop down and Elvis hops onto my lap.
‘There you are,’ says Joe. ‘I haven’t been able to get in touch all afternoon and then the mysterious text – where have you been?’
I take off my jumper. ‘I went to see the late Henry’s wife, Caroline Hardwick. And I met Tom, my half-brother.’
‘You’ve been crying?’
‘It was heavy. Kiss me.’
Joseph’s body against mine feels so good.
‘Tell me. First, drinks. Second, get your clothes off.’
I pour us both a glass of champagne, take the rest of my clothes off and lower myself into the warm water with a groan
of pleasure.
Then I tell Joseph about the day. The only part I keep from him is that Tom was the last person to see Henry alive. Such is the power of family loyalty.
When I finish my story I feel Joseph laughing next to me. ‘Chelsea home, country houses, brothers schooled at Eton! You are not the girl I met!’
‘No! I’m posh! The Hardwicks date back to the Tudors!’
He laughs as the water tickles our noses. He holds me tight and says, ‘It’s not your fault – I love you anyway, even though,’ he says nuzzling into my hair, ‘your dad used to hunt deer.’
‘I know who I am now, what I came from, and I’m OK. It’s time to move on.’
6
‘Don’t Elvis and Cha-Cha make beautiful bridesmaids?’ asks my mother.
We look at them wagging their tails as she adjusts the last bit of lace on their collars.
‘Adorable,’ says Simon with tears in his eyes.
‘Sure there aren’t too many flowers?’ she asks again.
‘You can never have enough flowers darling!’ says Wayne adding another rose to his lapel. Simon nods at him in strong agreement while dabbing powder on my face.
‘Sarah – the car’s waiting!’ Anika calls up the stairs. ‘Joseph wants to know what you’re doing?’
‘Tell him I’m on the phone to the Samaritans.’
Mum slaps my hand. ‘Sarah – listen – Ferdi’s got something to tell you.’
Ferdi hands me my bride’s bouquet. ‘The library at the Paradise Beach Club is, from today, going to be known as the Wests’ Library!’ He smiles his Ferdi smile. ‘Isn’t that wonderful news?’
‘Great!’
‘And they want you and Joseph to stay there sometime next year to inaugurate it. They’ll pay all your costs.’
‘We’d love to, Ferdi.’
‘And you look like a princess. Princess in a good way.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment. You look pretty snazzy too, Ferdi!’
Simon raises his arms at me. ‘Don’t keep us waiting too long or Cha-Cha will need another piss.’