The Graveyard Position

by Robert Barnard

  “Barnett is generally seen in the family as long-suffering. But we may have got it all wrong.” Francis tittered as he spoke. “You’ve got to remember, Merlyn, that we’re not a close family. We never have been.”

  “Haven’t we?” said Merlyn, creasing his brow. “I know all of you, or nearly all.”

  “That’s because your mother was generally loved, and the one member of the family all the rest got on with. When she died, and when your father went to pieces, everyone felt protective of you, asked you round, slipped you five shillings.”

  “That’s true. I remember the five shillingses.”

  “But how many of them visited Clarissa, how many of them asked her, or any of the other Cantelos, to their homes? The truth is, many of them loathe each other, and the others are suspicious of each other. It’s that sort of family.”

  “It’s true,” said Edward, in genial corroboration. “They’re always in competition with each other.” He turned toward the window. Out in the garden Caroline’s husband was engaged with about a dozen children, cooking them hamburgers and sausages, and generally making sure they had a good time. If he was being forced into being a good father for the day, he was disguising it well. “And marrying a Cantelo is not much fun either,” added Edward.

  “Like buying into a high-powered business?” suggested Merlyn.

  “Something like that. Though none of the husbands of Cantelo girls was ever invited into the actual family clothing business in Grandfather Cantelo’s time,” said Edward. “I’m sure poor old Barnett would have jumped at any offer, but by the time he married Rosalind the family business was nothing more than a tidy little sum in the bank balances of the family survivors. I’m sorry for all the male mates—the female ones too, for different reasons.”

  “I got the impression Barnett is built on the same lines as Rosalind herself. True soul mates, but I may be wrong…. Do any of you know of a book, a novel, basedon the Cantelos?”

  The looks he got back were both blank.

  “Who’d base a book on us?” asked Francis. “We don’t know any novelists, or any local historians either.”

  “I didn’t suggest it was by anyone well known, or even professional. But I’ve dipped into the book—there’s a copy in the Leeds Library—and it gave the sort of impression you’ve just been giving me as well: that the family was brought up on the sort of system that set each of them against the others. Quite possibly with the best of motives.”

  “Sounds a wow of a novel,” said Edward. “But it also sounds as if someone had been observing Grandfather Cantelo and his brood.”

  “Possibly someone from the inside,” said Merlyn, “someone who had experienced the system.”

  “One of the brood, you mean?”

  “Quite possibly. The book is called Family Business, and it was published privately—”

  “You mean vanity publishing?” asked Edward.

  “—almost certainly—under the name of X. Cantelo.”

  The eyes of Edward and Francis lingered on the other faces in the room. There were, though, only two faces who were part of Grandfather Cantelo’s extensive brood. The face of Emily was dismissed almost at once, but Marigold’s was not. Merlyn noticed that Roderick Massey was observing them, hand clutched tight around a glass of whisky. He was more interested than Merlyn would have expected. Merlyn nodded toward his aunt Marigold.

  “She’s enjoying herself,” said Merlyn, looking at the brown liquid in her glass. He raised his voice and went over to her. “I say, it’s good to see you enjoying yourself, Auntie Marigold.”

  “Oh, I am,” said the old woman, her face amused but cunning. “Someone rich must have brought along this whisky. Poor Carrie could never have afforded it. I wonder who it was.”

  She looked at him roguishly.

  “You like a drop of scotch, do you, Auntie?”

  “Oh, I do. My husband—God rest his soul, if there is one and if he had one—used to have a dozen favorite malts, and taught me to distinguish among them, sight unseen…. Oh, those were the days. We had a bit of money then…. Pity this is blended, but better that than all this white wine piss.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t remember much about Uncle Stanley,” said Merlyn.

  “Lovely man. Funny too. He’d have been a semi-invalid by the time you came to live in Leeds. We married late, and Caroline was a very late first baby. But I got through it, thanks to plenty of malt whisky and the smoke from Stanley’s cigars, which I always loved. Oh, those antenatal people these days don’t know they’re born!”

  “It must be a great joy to you to have Caroline and the children around you.”

  Marigold puckered up her mouth.

  “So-so. But they’re not around, thank the Lord. I live on my own, fend for myself, with a little help from the Social Services. Carrie’s a poor thing—no spirit, and a bit sly to boot. But the girls are fine. They’ll come good.”

  “I was reading a book about the Cantelos the other day.”

  There was a pause, and Merlyn noticed Aunt Emily position herself where she could be seen by her sister. There was a sour expression on her face, and it was clear she was taking control of the situation.

  “A book about the Cantelos?” said Aunt Marigold at last. “There’s no such thing. We’re not important enough.”

  “This is a book by a Cantelo. It’s in the form of a novel.”

  “Well, I never! Who’s been publishing stuff about us?”

  “This was published thirty-odd years ago. When you were a young woman.”

  “And the world was young and gay.” She cackled. “I don’t remember a world like that. It never was for us. I only started living when I got married and moved out of Congreve Street. Stanley Sowden—Dr. Stan, people called him—was the making of me. I had never had my independence before, more fool me for not standing up for it.”

  “The author of this book was X. Cantelo, Auntie Marigold. So naturally I wondered…”

  The cackle came again.

  “The X was meant to make you think, I imagine. Well, you needn’t think of me. I couldn’t write a book to save my life. I should think it’s ten years since I wrote a letter.”

  “This was a long time ago.”

  “So you say. I never made much of a fist with a pen. I was the dunce of the school and the shame of my family. My father could have written a book. One of my brothers could have too. But the only one of the girls who could have was—”

  “Clarissa.”

  “Yes, your fairy-auntie Clarissa.”

  “Come along, Marigold,” said Aunt Emily, her interruption brutal and final. “You wanted to go into the garden with the children, didn’t you? Let’s get you out there.”

  She had stationed herself behind the wheelchair, and now directed it straight at Merlyn. He had to jump aside to let them pass, a fact that seemed to give Emily pleasure.

  “Mowed down by a wheelchair,” said the inane voice of Malachi in his ear. “Not a heroic way to go.”

  “I’m not looking for a heroic way to go,” said Merlyn firmly. “I’m much too young to be thinking of ‘going’ at all.”

  “Of course you are. And remember I’m of the same generation, even if a somewhat older branch. Sorry I’m late. I had to get two buses after work.” Malachi’s birdlike glance shot around the room, then back to Merlyn, beaming with satisfaction. “Well, aren’t we one big happy family? And there’s even one I don’t know.” Merlyn was aware that Emily had paused on her way out to the garden beside the door to the hallway, and was watching the pair of them closely. He was beginning to get very uneasy vibrations from Emily. “I think he must be Roderick Massey,” Malachi went on. “A nice-looking young fellow he is too! One has heard so much, so many things, about him.”

  “Malachi!”

  “I really don’t need bossing about, Emily,” he said, turning to face her. “I’ve had a hard day with the punters, and I came here for a bit of relaxation. Golly—whisky!” He poured himself a good-
size slug and then took a swig from it. “Luxury! Bliss! You may consider yourself guardian of the family name, Emily, but nobody appointed you that or asked you to be it.”

  “Malachi, you are a loose-tongued fool of a man, and I—”

  “You want to protect the family from me and my wayward fancies. How right! How dutiful! How completely you show yourself your father’s child!”

  “Shut it, Malachi!” The command came this time from Edward. “You can’t be drunk on half an inch of whisky.”

  “And a stiffener on the way here. Everyone needs a stiffener before facing his nearest and dearest. But you’re quite right. I’m not drunk. I am a soothsayer possessed. And the sight of a newcomer to the family circle—”

  “What is all this?” demanded Roderick Massey, pushing himself forward into the family group. “I can’t understand why everyone seems to be talking about me. Especially as, apart from Merlyn, no one has swapped a word with me so far.”

  “Embarrassment, dear boy,” said Malachi, waving an airy hand. “They don’t quite know how to approach you. Or who to approach you as.”

  “As? But I—”

  “It’s a wise child—but perhaps you don’t know the quotation. Best say no more. But—”

  “No buts, Malachi!” boomed Emily. “Just zip up your mouth.”

  “But I just wanted to say to Merlyn that he left Leeds too young to understand all this, and he was never told by Clarissa because she lived in the future not the past. It was the past she was afraid of.”

  “Afraid of?” boomed Emily again. “What nonsense! She was just a crank, a silly, credulous crank.”

  “She was a lot sharper than anyone here,” put in Merlyn. “And a whole lot nicer, kinder, more generous.”

  “You’ve got us taped, haven’t you,” said Malachi spitefully, replenishing his glass. “Or so you think. But the point is that you won’t understand the Cantelos by studying Clarissa, or Rosalind, or Emily, or any of us here.”

  Several of the family took steps forward, as if they were going to fall on Malachi and suffocate him to prevent him talking. His voice rose to countertenor pitch.

  “You’ll only find out about the Cantelos if you find out the truth about Grandfather Cantelo—clothier, town councilor, shirtmaker to the nation, and—”

  “Malachi!”

  “And—But I think I’ll let you find that out for yourself, Merlyn.”

  He downed his glass, looking around him and preening himself with self-love. The expected explosion seemed to have been averted, but family members remained around him, and their intent was clearly not benign. Merlyn cast a glance of sympathy at Roderick Massey, then went over to the window. Out in the garden the contented eating of junk food had given way to shrill voices. The children were quarreling. Anyone would think they were all Cantelos, Merlyn thought. Jackie’s and Angela’s father was trying to stop the ill-feeling, but his inexperience showed. Caroline was watching from the back door with a tiny, satisfied smile on her lips.

  As he watched, Merlyn was conscious of a shadow at his shoulder. Looking around, he saw it was Roderick Massey, his face red but imbued with sympathy. When he spoke it was with a louder voice, one fused with indignation or grievance.

  “You really were well out of it, Merlyn, all those years you were away. They’re a terrible lot, aren’t they?” His voice rose still louder. “I didn’t tell you earlier, because it didn’t seem to be the time or place. I’ve never met my father, but I have spoken to him on the phone. Paul Cantelo, that’s how I think of him now. He’s a professor of creative writing in a university in Arkansas. I wanted to know why he had taken off from Leeds and never been heard of since. He said he took off because he wasn’t my father and was sickened by family life. He said I wasn’t to have any doubt at all: I’m not his child. So you see,” he said, turning around, “I’m not a Cantelo, and my God, I’m glad I’m not! What a crew! I’ve seen football crowds that have been better behaved. I’m only glad I’m seeing the last of you.”

  And he turned and barged through the door, then out the front door to the street. Merlyn looked all around. There was no sympathy on any of the faces, merely curiosity and, on Malachi’s, a definite expression of self-satisfaction.

  He banged down his glass and followed Roderick through the family group and out the front door. Enough was enough, and with his family the saturation point was reached earlier than with most families. In fact, he would be glad when his mission was accomplished. He said as much to Danielle, on the phone to her later that night.

  “Well, things seem to be about to hot up. I’m getting to know more about my aunts and cousins, and I’ve just met a Cantelo who has apparently discovered that he’s not a Cantelo, and is quite delighted.”

  “Sounds like a sensible person. You should cast off your Cantelo inheritance.”

  “That may sound good, but you forget it would leave me with just the Docherty inheritance. Probably not much of an improvement, if any.”

  “Forget all about them, and just come home.”

  “Tempting. You know, England should feel like home, but somehow it doesn’t. I’ve been gone too long.”

  “Have you tried to make contact with your father?”

  “No, but he’s made contact with me. I found him waiting for me here in the hotel when I got back a few days ago.”

  “What did you feel?”

  “Nothing very much. He’s the same shambling, unsatisfactory piece of humanity that he always was.”

  “Popping up because he’s heard about the money?”

  “Maybe, but I don’t think so. Money was never one of his major weaknesses. Maybe he’s reappeared because he feels guilty about his neglect of me. Maybe he himself doesn’t know why he sought me out, so I’ve got no chance of getting to the bottom of it.”

  There was a pause at the other end.

  “Merlyn, what is all this about? What are you getting out of it, or hoping to get?”

  “It’s difficult to describe, but I think it’s a sort of clearance. A clean sweep. Something that had to be done before I could move on.”

  “Is that ever possible? You are what you are because of what you’ve done and who and where you’ve come from.”

  “It doesn’t feel like that. Everything I’m meeting up with here seems like a pile of dust in a forgotten corner of my life.”

  “And what are you going to move on to?”

  “To marriage with you, and a completely fresh start.”

  “Really? Well, I look forward to being asked properly. Then I can think how I will reply properly.”

  And she put down the phone, but Merlyn could imagine the teasing expression on her face.

  Chapter 10

  Déjà Vu

  The acrimonious little party at Caroline’s gave Merlyn a lot to think over, or, more accurately, to speculate about. It seemed as though he was being pointed—by Malachi, if by no one else—in the direction of Grandfather Cantelo. Why had Malachi not done this during their meal together, as payment for his treat? But Merlyn dismissed this thought as soon as it came into his mind. Malachi was a disorganized mess of impulses, and to try and detect a clear and logical path through his behavior would be a futile struggle: Malachi had acted as he did at Caroline’s to annoy his fellow Cantelos, nothing more sinister than that. He could have instinctively held back on his insinuations about Grandfather Cantelo earlier from the natural cunning that would tell him that they could form the basis for another free meal.

  The thought even struck Merlyn that the Cantelos’ obvious opposition to any revelations about Old Man Cantelo could have been staged. Any fool could have guessed that Malachi’s broad hints would only spur Merlyn on to further investigations in that direction, and this could have been exactly what they all wanted: to keep him away from…from what, exactly? And from whom?

  That possibility had to be taken into consideration, but it still seemed to Merlyn impossible to ignore the old man. He seemed to have sown in his time severa
l fieldsful of troubles—or to have had them attributed to him. Merlyn had been struck, while Roderick Massey spoke, about a non sequitur in his harangue: Paul Cantelo’s claim not to be Roderick’s father rang true, and so did Roderick’s relief. Merlyn rather suspected that Roderick had accepted Caroline’s invitation precisely with the idea of wiping the Cantelo dust from his shoes, which, stoked up by whisky, he had duly done. But there was a leap from saying that Paul was not his father to saying that he was not a Cantelo. Merlyn’s feeling on the morning after the party was that the last people he ought to go to for information were his Cantelo relations, and on impulse he slipped, later in the day, into the offices of the Yorkshire Post and various sister papers and asked to consult back files in their library. Once settled in he saw they had serried shelves of the Dictionary of National Biography, and quickly ascertained that Grandfather had not made it into those pages. He knew that Clarissa had not owned the house in Congreve Street very long before he started going there, so he put her father’s death as in the late 1970s. Luckily there was an index year by year to the paper, and he discovered an obituary for him in the issue of October 5, 1978.

  It was not very revealing. It began: “Merlyn Cantelo was born in 1905…” He guessed that the older Merlyn’s mother had had a dated and Pre-Raphaelite nostalgia for Arthurian legends, extending even to its wizard. The fairly brief notice went on:

  He inherited the family clothing concern in 1938, when it was a modest but thriving business. It survived triumphantly the wartime difficulties, and in the 1950s the Cantelo shirt—usually checks or large squared patterns and a wool-mix material—was a national success and a basic must-have clothing item for the well-dressed middle-class male. This success bolstered the firm, and enabled it to survive the switch in popular taste symbolized by the name of Carnaby Street. Cantelo was helped in his long career in the clothing industry by his loyal wife, Elspeth, and a large and talented family. His wife’s death in 1971 hit Cantelo hard, and the firm suffered, being sold in 1975. His last years were sad, and his mental decline, more notable by reason of the vigor and originality of his mind in earlier days, meant that his death yesterday was in the nature of a relief to the man himself and his family.