The Graveyard Position

by Robert Barnard

  It was brief, less than hagiographic, but suggestive. As Merlyn sat back in his chair considering the account, several things struck him. Though the firm had “suffered” from his mental decline, there was no suggestion that it was anything other than a going concern when it was sold. Where had the money gone? So far as he knew, and in spite of what the obituary said about help from his family, none of the children (sons, it would have to be, Merlyn guessed) had gone into business with his father, and might have hoped to take over. This may have been because they realized he would never loosen the reins of his control, and would be an impossible partner.

  He got a strong sense from the obituary that the earlier Merlyn had been a first-rate businessman by the standards of the time, and that his years of decline had not only been sad, but in some way embarrassing. That would certainly bear further investigation.

  But further investigation where? Of whom? Malachi, of all the Cantelos, seemed the only possibility, but Merlyn mistrusted the man’s butterfly mind, powered by malice and some real or imagined grievances. People who had married into the family might be a possibility, but Caroline’s husband and Rosalind’s had both entered the family well after Grandfather Cantelo’s death. There was no evidence that Gerald’s wife or Emily’s husband were still of this world, or that they would cooperate if they were. Of outsiders, the family lawyer, Mr. Featherstone, might well know most, but he was by nature a close man who would say as little as possible. A good lawyer keeps his mouth buttoned.

  Then Merlyn suddenly remembered his father.

  He had married into the family in the years of its prosperity, and had been in communication with its members, at the least, during Grandfather Cantelo’s years of increasing senility. Merlyn’s father and his mother had been, so far as he knew, a close pair, so Jake would have been in on all the family secrets. Ideal.

  Doubts immediately invaded him. Because Merlyn himself had only the vaguest memories of his grandfather—memories, he rather thought, based on no more than one or two actual meetings. What picture he had of him in his mind was of an unruly gray beard and fearsome eyebrows—a physiognomy somewhere between God and the present Archbishop of Canterbury. The vagueness of his memories did not suggest that there had been much traffic between the Docherties and his mother’s father.

  Still, the more he thought about it, the more he became convinced that Jake was the best bet, or at least the best of a bad bunch. He would be inhibited by no vestigial loyalty to the Cantelos, he would be impartial, and he would be bribable. The moment this last thought came into Merlyn’s head he drove it out. He had once talked to a woman whose father had collected British folk songs. At the sight of a half crown in the palm of his hand, aged crones in remote Scottish glens had obliged in cracked tones with an apology for a tune that the man’s daughter was convinced they had thought up that very moment. And these songs had entered instantly the Folk Song Society’s treasury of British musical heritage. Mention money and you’re given what it is thought you are after. Merlyn was not conscious of knowing what he wanted as far as information about Grandfather Cantelo was concerned. He just wanted to know the truth.

  He dropped into Waterstone’s bookshop when he left the newspaper offices and bought a road map of the Sheffield area. Then he went along to the Leeds Public Library and looked up in the telephone directories J. Docherty of Carlyn Street. He knew his father would never go ex-directory. There he was at number thirty-five.

  “Daddy, I hardly know you,” sang Merlyn to himself. But it was time to get to know him. And through him to get to know his grandfather a whole lot better.

  The next day, Wednesday, Merlyn took off for Sheffield in midmorning, taking it easy, going off the motorway for a leisurely half-pint, trying to think through his tactics before he arrived. He neared Sheffield, ignored exit roads to the dreadful Meadowhall shopping center, and got to Carlyn Street about half past one. He drove slowly, and identified number thirty-five before he arrived outside it. It was a few doors away from an intersection with a major road, and had a Chinese takeaway on the corner. It was a warm day, and windows were open in the solidly built Victorian house, and voices but not words could be heard. Merlyn parked outside the house next door and opened his car window. Rap music was coming from upstairs, but now voices and words could be heard.

  “If you’d gone to fucking school today I wouldn’t be yelling at you now,” yelled Jake’s voice. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

  “I didn’t say there was. I’m supposed to be studying for GCSEs but there’s no classes today worth wasting time or bus fare on,” came back a younger voice—that, surely, of the brilliant young Jason.

  “If you think you’re brighter than your teachers you’re heading for a fall, young man.”

  “Everyone’s brighter than our French teacher. They should have brought over a French village idiot—at least the pronunciation would have been better. I get far more out of just reading the set texts.”

  “Well, go and read them in the public fucking library, and turn off that awful CD on the way out.”

  A minute or two later the music stopped. Merlyn sat looking in his driving mirror. The front door opened and a pleasant-looking schoolboy came out, banging the door behind him. He wondered if arguments such as he had just heard were commonplace, part of a regular routine.

  The house was quiet. Merlyn decided to let his father have a bit of peace, to put him in a better mood. He slipped out of the car and went to the Chinese takeaway, emerging ten minutes later with prawns and cashew nuts, fried rice, and a plastic fork. He settled himself in the car and began eating. He was halfway through his meal when a young woman breezed down the street and through the gate to number thirty-five. She was about eighteen, blonde, nubile, and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. She let herself through the front door. Merlyn waited for shouting, but beyond a call of “Hi, Jake—I’m just passing through” there was nothing. He was just finishing his meal when the door opened again and the girl came out, a well-stuffed rucksack on her back, and a small case in her hand.

  She’s leaving home, he thought, his mind reverting to the music of his childhood.

  He licked the fork, got out of the car, and stuffed the cartons and plastic bag into a bin. Then he went through the gate and up to the front door. There was a pause after he had rung the bell, then shuffling feet along the hall.

  “Merlyn!”

  Jake’s face seemed to be torn between interest (rather than pleasure) and regret at the interruption of his nap. His hair was ruffled, one of his feet was shoved into a slipper, and he looked, apart from a gleam of roguishness in his eyes, all of his sixty-odd years. He obviously decided that he was, on the whole, pleased and a touch flattered that his visit to Leeds had elicited from Merlyn such a prompt response. He stood aside and ushered him into the living room.

  “You’ll have a can, won’t you?” he asked, with appeal in his voice. Cans obviously figured big and enticingly in his day-to-day routine.

  “Just wet the bottom of the glass,” said Merlyn. “I’m sure you can drink the rest.”

  “I expect so,” said Jake, his smile conspiratorial. Merlyn’s taking the trouble to seek him out had obviously given him the confidence to be himself, and that was preferable to the rather bogus figure he had presented at their last encounter. “Roxanne should be home soon. It’s her half day at Sheffield Jail. Jason’s studying in the public library, and Sandra’s half living at home, half with her boyfriend, depending on whether she wants a meal cooked for her or whether she’s willing to do it herself. Children!”

  “And your own little girl?”

  “Win? She’s at school. I’ll have to fetch her at three-thirty if I can’t get Roxanne to do it. Here—is that enough for you?”

  “Plenty,” said Merlyn, taking the glass. He looked around the living room. Newspapers, Private Eye, school-books, compact discs, beer cans, and half-empty wine bottles covered most of the available table space and chairs, and littered the floo
r. Merlyn had a strong sense of déjà vu. “Ah, wilderness!” he muttered to himself.

  “Clear yourself a place,” said Jake, doing just that. “Some things don’t change, you notice.”

  “It’s fine,” said Merlyn insincerely, clearing and sitting.

  “So to what do we owe this honor?” asked Jake. “It’s not a fortnight since we talked.”

  “It’s information I want,” said Merlyn. “I’d like to talk about the Cantelo family.”

  “I thought we had,” said Jake.

  “No, we haven’t. We just talked about Clarissa. I’m getting interested in other figures.”

  “Why? Why don’t you just take the money and run?”

  “Because—oh, never mind. But you must have had a fair bit to do with the family, before Mum died.”

  Jake screwed up his face.

  “Not that much. While we were engaged, I suppose, because most of the courtship took place in Leeds. Quarrelsome lot, I thought them. Oodles of bad feeling flying around. After we were married and came here to Sheffield to live, I did my best to avoid them. Your mother went home to see them from time to time, but not that often. She was rather fond of Clarissa and Paul, but beyond that…” Jake shrugged. Beyond that, very little, he implied.

  “And what about Grandfather Cantelo?”

  Jake shifted very obviously in his chair.

  “Never saw much of him.”

  “What sort of person was he, in your view?”

  “Just what you’d expect from someone heading a fairly important company. A bit pompous. A bit full of himself. No—totally full of himself. Saw himself as the fount of all wisdom…. I forgot to tell you they’ve been in touch from this DNA testing place, by the way.”

  Merlyn was puzzled. Why the uneasiness? Was this an attempt to change the subject?

  “Oh yes—the Forensic Science Service.”

  “That’s them. That’s how I knew you were in the country, and still alive. I told them to get stuffed.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  “They said they didn’t really need any fresh samples, because they could access police ones I gave…years ago. You know when. We discussed it. So I didn’t see any point in wasting my time.”

  “I see…” Merlyn thought hard, and then risked asking: “Why are you so uneasy?”

  “I’m not uneasy,” said Jake belligerently. “Just wondering where Roxanne’s got to. I’d better be getting to school to fetch Win—”

  “You’re not uneasy about that. It’s since I mentioned Grandfather Cantelo, isn’t it? The man I was named after.”

  “Bloody silly name. Why name a boy after a wizard? Unless you’re into Harry bloody Potter, I suppose.”

  “You tell me.”

  “Well, it’s really a question of why your grandfather was named that, isn’t it? People always said it was because his mother was infatuated with Tennyson. Did he write about King Arthur and that lot?”

  “He did, yes. Nobody reads it these days. Where did the y come from?”

  “Search me. I expect she thought it sounded more Old World. Like the pubs that advertise ‘pub fayre.’”

  “Maybe. But why name me after Grandfather Cantelo if you didn’t like him?”

  Again Jake shifted uneasily in his chair.

  “Don’t be so bloody naive, Merlyn. He was the one with the money. We thought you’d be put down for a hefty sum in his will if we did what he wanted.”

  “Oh, he wanted it, did he?”

  “Thora was his favorite daughter. Anyway, he said that the original Merlin was named after his maternal grandfather—Ah! There’s Roxanne. I’ve got to nip off and fetch Win. Hello, love. This is Merlyn, come to pay us a visit. Won’t be a tick, then we can introduce him to his half sister.”

  Roxanne was a matronly figure, perhaps in her early forties—much younger than her husband, but his rather childish insouciance and her air of greater responsibility made this less obvious. She had reddened hair and was wearing workaday, drab clothes. She turned to the door.

  “I could go and fetch—” But the front door had slammed. Roxanne shrugged and sank down into a chair. Her smile was warm, tinged with satire. “Hello, Merlyn. You’re very welcome. I ought to set to and clear up this place a bit, but that’s Jake’s job, and I’ve had a hard day at work. Did he feed you beer? I expect you’d have preferred a coffee.”

  “I just had a mouthful. I’m driving. I think I made Jake a bit nervous.”

  “Maybe…He’s not a bad man, Merlyn, however bad a father he was to you. He’s a bit feckless, definitely lazy, goes off at tangents the whole time, and he’ll never really make anything of his life, not now. But he gets on all right with the kids—rows with them off and on—”

  “I heard him and Jason, but it sounded pretty normal.”

  “Getting him out of the house, I expect. He likes it to himself to have a snooze, watch the racing, whatever. He’s just like their real father might have been—rows and threats, but underneath, all right. We’re just a standard, normal family.”

  “When I said I thought he was uneasy, it wasn’t so much that he feels guilty about me, I don’t think. His uneasiness seemed to start when I asked him about Grandfather Cantelo.”

  Roxanne looked mystified.

  “Thora’s dad?” She shrugged again. “Don’t know anything about that. Way before my time. I know about her, just as I know about you and Deborah. I think Win’s taken Deborah’s place now. What I’m saying is we don’t talk about any of you. We’re ‘now’ people, I suppose, not people who want to churn over things in the past.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “So you’ll have to talk it over with him, I’m afraid.”

  “If he will, of course,” said Merlyn. “I get the impression that’s the last thing he wants to do.”

  “You have to force him into a corner. Make it so that it’s easier for him to talk than to run away. I have to do that all the time, even on quite trivial matters. It’s become a sort of game. I quite like it.”

  “You know the rules and the match-play techniques. I don’t think I have the skills.”

  “It’s your best chance. Here he is now.”

  Jake came through from the hallway with a small girl clutching his hand and looking at their visitor shyly. Jake was now smiling the blissful smile of one who thinks he has just circumvented a difficulty and with one bound is free. He led Win over to Merlyn.

  “This is Merlyn, darling. He’s just dropped in on a visit. We used to know each other very well, but we haven’t met up for a long, long time.” He gave Merlyn a meaningful look that meant that he considered it a bit too early to tell Win that he was her brother, or a sort-of brother. With perhaps a subsidiary meaning that with a bit of luck Merlyn might disappear from their lives once again, and explanations would not need to be given. But Merlyn reminded himself that it was Jake who had introduced himself back into his son’s life, not vice versa, so perhaps he was interpreting the expression wrongly.

  “Go upstairs and put your school things away, Win,” said Roxanne obligingly. As the little girl scampered away, Merlyn said, “You were going to explain, Jake, why I was given the name Merlyn, after my grandfather.”

  Jake’s face changed to one of obstinacy.

  “I told you: we were hoping for something nice in the will. Now give it a rest, Merlyn. You’re becoming a bore.”

  “I’m sure I am. But the fact is, Jake, I don’t remember you as particularly greedy, or as a particularly calculating person, apart from wondering where the price of your next drink was coming from.”

  “I wasn’t, Merlyn, but still—”

  Merlyn came up close to him, with a strong sense of being younger and fitter than his father. Jake took two steps back and found himself in a corner, with his face showing surprise that he’d been trapped.

  “So it was my mother who insisted that I be named after her father?” Merlyn persisted.

  “Well, she wanted it, yes.”

  Light
suddenly struck Merlyn. The reason the Cantelo family were so embarrassed about Grandfather Cantelo was that he not only went after girlies but he went after the girlies in his own family.

  “And did you get the idea later, after she was dead, that Grandfather Cantelo might have been my father? And was that why you never gave a damn for me after Mum died?”

  Jake looked at him with the terror of a trapped weasel. Then he raised his right leg and gave Merlyn’s left kneecap a hefty kick. As Merlyn bent down in agony, Jake scooted by him out of the room and then out of the house.

  “I don’t think I’ve got the hang of this game,” said Merlyn.

  Chapter 11

  In Search of Times Past

  It was six days later, the Tuesday of the next week, that Merlyn received notification from the Forensic Science Service that their investigation had concluded that he was the son of Thora Docherty, née Cantelo, by her husband John Jacob Docherty. The letter appended two pages of succinctly summarized scientific reports, which noted that the full records of the investigation would be retained at the offices of the FSS for twenty years, in case of any dispute arising from the conclusions that had been come to. The bill for the service was enclosed.

  “Eureka!” said Merlyn.

  His training as a lawyer and as an economist made him instinctively take thought before acting. Sometimes, indeed, in his job at the European Union, his department bosses had meditated for several years before taking action, or deciding not to take any, on reports laid before them, and experience told. However, Merlyn made an appointment next day with Mr. Featherstone, then drove to Stanbury and went walking on the Haworth moors to think through the consequences of the letter.

  At some stage Jake had become convinced that he was not in fact his son’s biological father, and, more important, that this son was the result of an incestuous relationship between Merlyn Cantelo and his daughter Thora. This conclusion, typical of Jake’s random thinking and undisciplined powers of reasoning, was conceived after his wife’s death, so it seemed likely that it came into his mind as a result of Merlyn Cantelo’s behavior in the last years of his life.