by W. Soliman
Even so, tension simmered just beneath the surface, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before the cracks started to appear. Dad turned in not long after Harry. Not up to spending time alone with Brenda, I feigned fatigue and followed his example.
The following morning Harry, Gil and I set off for a long ramble over the moors. It was early April and a bitter north wind bit into any parts of our flesh we’d been foolish enough to leave exposed. Neither Dad nor Brenda suggested coming with us, the latter offering to provide us with a packed lunch instead, implying she’d quite like us to stay away all day. I was happy to go along with that and enjoyed a day of fresh air and exercise with my son. But it was a day that could have taken place in Brighton. We hadn’t come all this way to deliberately avoid spending time with the people we’d come to see. And that was precisely what I was doing, mainly because I still hadn’t decided how to broach the real reason for my visit.
My opportunity arose that evening. Brenda provided us with a supper that Harry and I wolfed down, hungry after our day in the fresh air. Brenda ate as much as I did but Dad merely pushed his food round his plate. Much to Gil’s delight, most of it finished up in his bowl. As soon as the food was cleared away I put Harry to bed. His eyes were drooping and he was tucked up, sound asleep by eight o’clock. Brenda had a performance that evening and was gone by the time I came back down from seeing to Harry.
I poured myself a large whisky. Something told me I was going to need it. Then I took the seat opposite my father and searched for the right words to express what was on my mind.
“Have you seen a doctor?” I asked.
He didn’t pretend not to understand me and merely shrugged. “What’s the point?”
“Well, you’ve lost a lot of weight, you have no appetite and no energy. There’s obviously something wrong with you. You ought to get yourself checked out. They can do a lot nowadays.”
“By prodding and poking and being intrusive? No thanks, I’ll take my chances.”
“It might be something that’s easy to treat.”
He lifted his bony shoulders and said nothing. That particular subject was obviously already exhausted so I broached the one that lay unspoken between us instead.
“You know about Jarvis?” I asked.
“Yes, you phoned to tell me. There’s nothing wrong with my memory.”
It was too much to expect any expressions of regret at Jarvis’s passing but I was unprepared for the degree of bitterness lancing through his words. “He left everything to me, you know. His house, his savings, everything.”
“Well, that’s what I would have expected.”
“He left me some of Marianne’s papers too.” Marianne was Jarvis’s wife. She’d been confined to a wheelchair for much of her life due to a freak reaction to an over-the-counter pain medication. My father’s bland expression underwent the narrowest of adjustments at the mention of her name. I had his full attention now. “Including her bank statements.”
“Really.” He stared at the flames licking round a log that gave off a pungent aroma as it crackled its way to disintegration. “Why are you telling me all this?” he asked a little too casually.
“Well, if you need money…” His bitter expression caused my words to stall.
“Thanks, but we’re fine.”
“I can see that.” I glanced around the neglected kitchen and let my scepticism show.
“If you don’t like the way we live, there’s nothing to keep you here.”
“It’s not that. I just don’t like to think of you going without when I can help.”
“Keep your money, we’re doing fine. Besides, Jarvis wouldn’t have wanted you to share it with me.”
I sighed. Why did it always have to be this way with us? We could never be together for any length of time without falling out. I should have known this time would be no different. Dad allowed his disappointment in me to be apparent and for some reason that made me feel guilty. I’m one of the most resolute people I know, not given to taking crap from anyone. Except when I get with Dad and one other person in my life. Beneath my father’s indifferent gaze I seemed to regress to childhood, eager to earn a few words of approval from an exacting parent.
Annoyed with myself for being such a wimp, I took a large gulp of my drink and went for the jugular. “Why did Marianne lend you two hundred grand just before Mum died?”
My question took him completely by surprise, just as it was supposed to, and for the first time his reaction was entirely genuine. “None of your business,” he said after a prolonged pause.
“So that’s all you’re going to say about it, is it?” I was starting to get annoyed. “Don’t you think I deserve more of an explanation than that?”
“No, I don’t. It has nothing to do with you. It was a personal matter and I have no intention of discussing it.” He eyed me with cynical detachment. “If that was your reason for coming up here then you’ve had a wasted journey.”
“Was it something to do with Mum?”
He looked at me for a long time before he spoke. “So, you think Marianne and I conspired to bump her off, do you?” His eyes narrowed with contempt. “Is that your latest theory? The conclusion you’ve drawn after years of stumbling about trying to find answers where none exist?”
“No, that’s not what I meant—”
“Well, I can see why you might think so,” he said contemplatively, talking over my interruption, “given your low opinion of me.”
“It isn’t what I think.” But my voice didn’t sound particularly convincing even to my own ears. Hardly surprising. I always lost objectivity when I talked about Mum’s murder. She was assassinated by an unknown assailant right in front of me over twenty years before. That was when I stopped playing the piano and joined the police force, looking for answers. I had yet to find any. “It’s just that reading those diaries was a real wake-up call. It brought it all flooding back like it was yesterday, and threw up a load more questions, too.”
He drew a deep breath. “If you’ve been able to forget about it for more than five minutes at a time, then all I can say is that you’re a fortunate man.”
My father spoke with quiet dignity, the utter devastation in his faded eyes convincing me he’d not been involved in the murder. I breathed a sigh of relief and ought to have left it at that. But I couldn’t. I was causing him further pain by raking over the coals but now that I’d got him talking about it, expressing his true feelings without attempting to spare mine, I had to delve deeper.
“Jarvis told me that his affair with Mum was discreet but Marianne’s diaries paint a very different picture. If she’s to be believed, then he took pleasure in flaunting it in front of her. Do you think that’s true?”
“Marianne had a lot of reasons to feel bitter about life.” He shrugged. “But much as I disliked Jarvis, I don’t think he would have been deliberately cruel to her.”
I got up and threw another log on the fire, watching as a shower of sparks flew in all directions before fizzling out. “I haven’t been able to stop wondering why Jarvis gave me those papers,” I said. “The only conclusion I’ve been able to reach is that he thought Marianne was involved in some way. After all, you have to admit that Mum’s killing came at a very convenient time and meant Jarvis didn’t finish up leaving her.”
My father suddenly looked very tired and every one of his seventy-four years. “This obsession you have with your mother’s death isn’t healthy. It’s caused you to waste a rare and special talent that could have changed your life. It’s cost your marriage to a woman who was good for you. It’s prevented you from committing yourself emotionally to anyone else and turned you into a part-time father to a boy you obviously adore.” He leaned forward in his chair and fixed me with a penetrating gaze, showing more interest in me than he’d done since the event that changed our lives and drove
a wedge between us all those years ago. “You’ve thrown it all away, and for what?”
“You weren’t there when it happened,” I said, sounding peevish and, frankly, very lame.
“And you weren’t the only one to love your mother. I idolised the ground she walked on and even if she had left me for that bastard, I would still have carried on loving her. You’ll find out for yourself, if you’re ever lucky enough to discover such an abiding love, that it’s simply not possible to turn it on and off at will.”
I was too stunned to speak. The animation in those rheumy eyes, the passion underlying my father’s words, told me he was speaking from the heart. Never in all the years since Mum’s death had he opened up to me in this way and I felt we’d finally bridged a huge divide.
“Understand this,” he said emphatically. “Whatever that money was for, it certainly wasn’t used to have your mother bumped off. If you believe for a single moment that I’d be capable of even considering such a thing, then I’m truly sorry for the person you’ve become.”
“I believe you.”
And I was relieved beyond words that I did, ashamed of the doubts which had briefly plagued my mind.
“Good.” He leaned back in his chair. “And if you also believe that I loved your mother as much as I say I did, then you’ll understand why I don’t want to see a doctor. If my time’s finally up then I’m more than ready for what comes next.” He struggled to stand up and headed for the stairs. “I’ve been ready for more than twenty years.”
“Yes, but even so—”
“Help yourself to another drink, Charlie. Good night.”
And he was gone, leaving me to ponder upon our extraordinary conversation in the large untidy room, which suddenly seemed very quiet.
“Had a row, have you?” Brenda’s voice startled me. I hadn’t heard her come in and she was the last person I wanted to see right now. We’d coexisted for over twenty-four hours without falling out but that happy state of affairs couldn’t last much longer, especially since Dad wasn’t around to play referee. She slumped into the chair my father had just vacated, a glass of what looked like gin and tonic in her hand. “I’m surprised you lasted as long as you did.” She sighed. “Why did you bother coming up here? You only upset him.”
“That’s not my intention.”
“Perhaps not but it’s still the way it is. Every time he looks at you, he remembers just what a talented pianist you were and that you threw it all away to embark upon a wild goose chase. It drives him demented so he tries not to think about it but I don’t think he’ll ever forgive you.”
“It’s my life.” I sounded as petulant as Harry did when I ticked him off about something and he knew he was in the wrong.
Brenda chuckled. “Well, all I can say is that I hope your obsession has made it a happy one.”
“I’m not obsessed, exactly.”
She made a derisive sound in the back of her throat, something between a burp and a grunt, but didn’t dignify my statement with a response. None was necessary since we both knew she was right.
“I just want answers,” I said mildly. “Surely that’s understandable. My mother’s brains were blown all over me but everyone seems to think I should calmly accept that shit happens and move on.”
“You’re not the only one hurting. Your father still misses her every single day.”
I elevated my brows. Brenda took pleasure in goading me whenever we met and I couldn’t remember her ever speaking to me as though she cared about my feelings.
“Oh, he might not actually say so but I see it in his eyes. He gets this faraway expression, doesn’t hear me when I speak to him, doesn’t seem to remember what he was doing two seconds before. That’s when I know exactly what he’s thinking about.”
“And it doesn’t bother you?”
“Of course it bothers me! What a bloody stupid question.”
I almost smiled. It was a relief to discover that the acerbic Brenda was still alive and kicking.
“But I have the sense to know there’s sod all I can do to change things, and so I make the best of it and get on with my life. I don’t waste time with pointless regrets and nor should you. I’m second best to your saintly mother and always have been. Still, I knew that’s how it’d be when I married Robert so there’s no point complaining.”
“So why did you? Marry him, I mean.”
“I should have thought that would be obvious even to a cold bastard like you.” She shifted her bulk until she found a more comfortable position. “I loved him from the moment we met and, what’s more, I still do.”
“I understand that but you didn’t know my mother, not really. You don’t know how remarkable she was so you can’t judge him or me for missing her. You came along afterwards.”
She shook her head slowly, a spiteful half smile playing about her lips. I knew then that she was about to reveal something I probably wouldn’t want to hear.
“For an intelligent man, you’re sometimes exceedingly dense.” She took a deep breath and a long sip of her drink, making me wait for what seemed like an eternity before she spoke again. “My affair with your father started two years before your mother died.”
“What!” I leapt out of my chair, spilling whisky over my jeans without really registering the fact. “You’re joking. Dad was devoted to Mum.”
“Yes, but she was playing happy families with Jarvis. Robert waited, suffering in silence, hoping she’d get fed up and come back home. When she didn’t, he decided to give her a taste of her own medicine. I was up for it, as the kids say nowadays, made sure he knew it, and that’s how it started.”
I sloshed some more whisky into my glass and slowly sat down again. “I had no idea,” I said, feeling stupid for not having considered the possibility.
“I know. Robert was adamant that you shouldn’t get wind of it. He felt you ought to benefit from having two parents permanently in your life, at least until you left school. He’s got old-fashioned ideas about that sort of thing. That’s why he feels so strongly that you ought to have made a go of things with Emily, if only for Harry’s sake.”
“Did Mum know? About you and Dad, I mean.”
“I think so but she never actually said anything.” Brenda lit a cigarette and blew smoke at the ceiling. “Robert’s attempts to make her jealous backfired and if anything I think she was glad that he’d found someone else. It would have made it easier for her to leave when the time came.”
I shook my head. How had I not known these things? It seemed so obvious now. Snatches of conversations I’d overheard that abruptly stopped when my presence was noticed. Angry telephone conversations, missed appointments. But most of all, the tension that was always there between my parents. It could all now be explained.
“What did you and Robert argue about just now?”
Brenda’s voice brought me back to the present. “About Jarvis. He left everything to me and I offered Dad money.”
Brenda chuckled. “That wouldn’t have gone down too well. He’d starve before he took a penny from that man’s estate.”
“Yes.” I grimaced. “So much for my good intentions.”
“Well, I don’t share his principles so if you feel like spreading some of your inheritance in my direction, I’ll make sure your dad benefits without knowing where it came from.” She shuddered. “God alone knows, we could do with a bit of extra to make our lives more comfortable.”
I had to admire her nerve. She’s never had a good word to say for me, but that clearly wouldn’t stop her tapping me for a loan. No, make that a handout. “I’ll pick up the heating bill, if you like.”
“Thanks.” She dipped her head. “That will help. But to get back to Robert, your offering him money wouldn’t be enough to make his lose his rag and storm off to bed. I assume that’s what he did because he usually
waits up for me. Come on, what else did you fall out about? I know there’s more.”
I didn’t see any reason not to tell her. “I found out Marianne lent him a load of dosh just before Mum died and asked him what he wanted it for.”
She slapped one palm against her fat thigh and roared with laughter. It was the last reaction I’d expected. “And you assumed he used it to hire an assassin?”
I couldn’t meet her eye. “The thought did briefly cross my mind.”
“Oh, Charlie!” Brenda shook her head, causing her multiple chins to wobble. “You really know how to rub him up the wrong way.”
I spread my hands. “I didn’t want to believe it.”
“Oh well, that makes it all right then.”
“Look, Jarvis obviously wanted me to know about the money so you can’t blame me for being curious.”
“And he wouldn’t tell you?”
“No.”
She leaned back in her chair and dealt me a look. “You should have asked me.”
“You!”
“Yes.” Her noxious smile caused deep grooves to appear on either side of her mouth. “Your father borrowed the money because I asked him to.”
“You?” Shock was causing me to sound more moronic by the minute.
“I was fed up with playing second fiddle, no pun intended.” Her halfhearted attempt at a self-deprecating joke didn’t altogether conceal her glee at making this latest revelation. “To your mother and to you. I wanted Robert and me to make a life together but knew it would never happen, not all the time Julia was still dithering about what to do. And so I gave him an ultimatum. Get me that money or it was over between us.”
“I see.” I didn’t, not really, but I couldn’t seem to string a coherent question together. “But what did you want it for?”
“I didn’t. It was for Paul.”
“Paul.” My gut contracted at the mention of the only person other than my father who could intimidate me. “Ah yes, that would explain it,” I said almost to myself. “Now it’s starting to make sense.”