Secrets of the Past

by Estella McQueen

Astrid came forward. ‘All right, we know enough. Our lovers have escaped, Mary Ellen sails for America, and Richard eventually sells the house. Let’s end it here.’

  ‘I don’t think I can do this on my own…,’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s tiring, it’s upsetting-’

  But Charlie’s thoughts came quick. ‘Amelia didn’t have time to complete the quilt. It shows how quickly, how precipitately she left.’

  ‘If you’re running away, you seize whatever opportunity you can get – you don’t worry about finishing your sewing,’ said Astrid.

  ‘We got it wrong,’ he said. ‘Mary Ellen didn’t hide the letters from Amelia and Harry because of Tunney’s instructions, or because it was the morally correct thing to do. She did it to protect the lovers from harm. She knew that if Tunney ever read a single word sent between them, violence would ensue. If it meant ending the affair, then so be it, at least Amelia would be kept safe from Tunney’s rage. She assumed that if Amelia’s love for Harry was allowed to wither and die, the young wife would come to her senses.’

  ‘Which, as we know, was very naïve of her,’ said Astrid.

  ‘But that’s not all that was going on in her life…,’

  ‘Meaning?’

  He looked again at the sketch of Mary Ellen, laid it on top of the embroidered quilt. This time the vision was instantaneous.

  A young girl not much more than a child is being dragged from the Library. Richard is pulling her roughly by the arms, she is tripping up the Great Stair, she can’t find her feet. Richard doesn’t care, his face is set. Upstairs she must go. He takes her right up to the top floor of the building. He drags her along the corridor towards a room at the far end. He bundles the weeping child within. ‘Stay there!’ he shouts, wiping sweat from his face. ‘Be still!’ He takes a key from his pocket and locks it from the outside.

  There are thumps and bangs from behind the door, the young girl kicks at it wildly. ‘Please Papa, let me out! I’ll be good. I promise I’ll be good.’

  Richard waits outside the door until the girl falls silent. He listens, his ears straining. No sound, no movement. Until – harsh, agonized sobs burst forth from her chest. Satisfied that she can come to no harm, Richard then retraces his steps down the Great Stair.

  *

  ‘Oh God,’ said Charlie, ‘I feel sick.’

  ‘What is it?’ Astrid was by his side. ‘You’re not going to keel over again are you?’

  Charlie moved across the floor towards the window. ‘Richard doesn’t want her, but he feels duty bound.’

  ‘He could have sent her away somewhere. Got rid of her.’

  ‘But he didn’t,’ said Charlie. ‘She’s here in the house. The whole time. To ensure his somewhat warped protection, she knows she must obey him. Was that why she followed his instructions, submitted to being made practical use of? But when she could bear Amelia’s misery no more, she rebelled. At great risk to herself…,’

  Astrid took a more pragmatic view. ‘His daughter’s a bastard; his wife’s carrying on with another man; it’s a wonder Tunney didn’t fling himself down the steps!’

  He began to pace about. ‘Why would Mary Ellen hide the letters in Amelia’s own room? If they’d been discovered in situ, both women would have been finished. All Richard’s worst suspicions confirmed. And why, at the very end, when she knew that Amelia was ready to escape, didn’t Mary Ellen give them back to her?’

  ‘Not enough time?’ said Astrid. ‘In too much of a hurry? You’ve already said she left in a rush.’

  Despite Astrid’s presence he was expectant, waiting for the images to form as easily as they’d done only minutes earlier. The light was fading; the grey shadows were beginning to fill the corners of the room. If he stayed here long enough he was sure Mary Ellen would arrive to finish the story.

  The room remained empty. She wouldn’t come. ‘It’s no good. I can’t see her properly; I still can’t understand her motives… I can’t describe it… I need to be moved.’

  ‘Moved? How?’

  ‘I need something emotional – to set me off.’

  ‘All right.’ Astrid hesitated. ‘Tell me about Adam.’

  He was perplexed.

  Astrid picked up the pencil portrait again. ‘I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t think it would help.’

  ‘You want to find out my secrets,’ he accused. ‘You want me to reveal my woes.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I want you to wallow. Tell me about the last time you saw him. Tell me why you keep his photo in your wallet?’

  ‘Because I want to remember what he looks like, why do you think?’

  ‘But it’s Adam that makes you sad…,’

  ‘I’m not sad. Why do you keep saying that?’

  ‘When you split up, what happened? Why didn’t you stop them from leaving? Why didn’t you make them stay?’

  ‘I did try.’ He faltered. ‘No, that’s not true. There was a massive fight; I didn’t want to prolong the upset…,’

  What was she trying to get him to admit to? She was prying into his personal life, for the sake of it. All this eye wash about being ‘sad.’ It was rubbish. Making him think that unburdening his soul was part of the process. Making him yield himself up to her.

  ‘Give me everything you can,’ she said. ‘Tell me. Let me make sense of it. Trust me with it.’

  Trust her? He had an awful vertiginous feeling that there was nowhere left to go, all other routes were blocked. ‘If I tell you, you can’t use it against me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t, you know I wouldn’t. I just want you to get it out.’

  ‘It’s no big deal. It’s happened to a million men before me, and it’ll happen again to a million more.’

  ‘Apologies Sisterhood,’ Astrid murmured, ‘you’re in for a rough ride for the next ten minutes.’

  ‘Ten?’ he said. ‘It’ll take two.’

  ‘As long as you need, then.’

  ‘All right. I’ll tell you. But don’t blame me if it doesn’t do the trick.’

  ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Tug at my heartstrings.’

  Adam. It wasn’t difficult to think about him. It wasn’t like he had to force himself to do it. If anything, he had to force himself not to. Memories that once existed in hard concrete form, melted, slipped, slithered and oozed out of the cracks in his brain, never to be seen again. Recollections that had once seemed solid and indestructible floated away from his mental grasp, like cigarette smoke being chased by the wind. But Adam remained a clear and fixed presence inside his head. A tenant for life.

  How long had he been in the boy’s life? Five years, six at the most? Enough time to form the closest of attachments; for his stomach to plummet whenever Adam fell off his bike or banged his head; for his heart to pound if he lost sight of him in the supermarket. Enough time to crack up with helpless mirth at Adam’s Wallace and Gromit impersonations, or to join in the endless games of Pokémon which he invariably lost but happily indulged in anyway.

  He’d loved being favoured with the boy’s attention, the sheer physicality of his squirming limbs, the little hand holding tightly to his.

  ‘That’s some bed head you’ve got there, kiddo, you’re like Shock Headed Peter,’ he’d said to Adam one morning.

  ‘Who?’ said Melanie. ‘What are you talking about?’ She said that to him, a lot. What are you talking about? I don’t understand you. In fact, I’m sick of you.

  Melanie was prone to saying that she’d been landed – like a fish – and that he didn’t appreciate what she’d ‘given up’ to be with him. He took it as a joke, of course when she said she’d taken him on when no one else would. She didn’t mean it, and he knew she didn’t. But when she started to stay out late on a regular basis and was cagey about where she’d been, he began to feel the first real twinges of worry. Classic signs of an affair, although she swore not. He began to do the same – a childish tit for tat – an ‘if you’re staying out, then so will I.’ But, he reasoned, it was done on an equal b
asis, and there was nothing that couldn’t be mended with a little tinkering, a little fine tuning. Until one evening she told him quite casually she’d had enough.

  ‘It’s over,’ she’d said, ‘run its course, time to call it a day.’

  Sitting in front of Corrie with a plate of fish and chips on his knees, the sauce dribbling over the edge of the plate rim, staining his trousers, he’d pleaded with her not to go.

  ‘I can put it right,’ he’d said, knowing full well he couldn’t.

  ‘It’s not like that,’ she’d said.

  ‘What is it like then? Tell me.’

  But she couldn’t. She didn’t know herself.

  In the end, separation wasn’t as daunting as he’d persuaded himself it would be. That awful, nauseous feeling of finality was bad, but it was bearable. Once they’d started, they almost free wheeled to the finish. Even so, when it came, it was nothing like the scene he’d anticipated – a regretful parting of the ways; a promise to maintain civil relations for Adam’s sake, an ordered timetable of days out and sleepovers and holiday arrangements. He’d seen others do it; he knew they could manage it themselves.

  So what went wrong?

  ‘Melanie,’ he said, ‘Adam doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. Don’t do this to him.’

  ‘I’ll tell him when I’m good and ready. He is my son. I think I know him better than you.’

  A petrified Adam began wailing in fear. His desperate, instinctive reaction – something bad is happening, something really, really bad – was like nothing Charlie had ever experienced before. The pain of non-anaesthetized disembowelment couldn’t have sounded worse. He didn’t remember ever screaming like that as a child himself. Couldn’t recall anything to match it. And he, Charlie, the man Adam called ‘Daddy’, had somehow caused this fear and pain. How had he done that? Where had it come from?

  The only way to make it stop was to give in, and let Melanie do what she wanted.

  ‘Go on then!’ he’d said furiously. ‘Do it!’

  So she did. She left. Took the boy, and went.

  A short cooling off period, that’s what he’d assumed. The best thing for all concerned. When the dust settled, they’d rebuild their relationship. They’d be friends again, good friends. She’d let him know when he could come and visit; she’d let him know when he could have Adam for weekends.

  But she never did. He made endless calls, sent message after message. He heard nothing back.

  A clean break it was called. Out of sight, out of mind.

  And he was so angry with her for doing that to him. He’d never felt anger to match it. As though she’d never intended their partnership to be a permanent arrangement in the first place, and he was the mug for taking it all so seriously.

  He’d loved Adam as his own, and now he’d become something he never knew existed: an ex Dad. A former parent. It was a status he could barely comprehend: that of anonymous bloke who once had a brief hand in the boy’s upbringing. Things like that didn’t happen to conscientious, caring men like him.

  And like an illness, a terminal disease, he never recovered from it, never felt properly well again, couldn’t function as he’d once been able to. Even now, all these years later, it could stop him in his tracks –

  *

  His eyes had misted over. Astrid approached him, took hold of his hand and stroked the ridge of his knuckles. It was an odd gesture, like she’d picked the most awkward part of him to caress. She hadn’t expected him to be so easily moved.

  ‘I wasn’t pretending to love him,’ he said. ‘I really did.’

  ‘No half measures with you, are there? It’s a brave thing to do, take on another man’s child. Why didn’t you adopt him, officially?’

  ‘We were married, that’s why. As far as I was concerned, the boy was ours, hers and mine. How was I to know that she was going to claim prior possession?’

  ‘But you’re in touch now.’

  ‘Barely. Melanie doesn’t find it necessary to update me on Adam’s progress in the world. She sent me their address, eventually. For birthday cards, she said, and Christmas. She was in the habit of sending school photos for a while – ’

  She nodded. ‘The one in your wallet.’

  ‘You can get all sorts these days,’ he brooded, ‘key rings, book marks, you can have your child’s image captured in a block of Perspex if you want. Adam’s picture is on somebody else’s mantelpiece now, dangling from someone else’s key ring…,’

  ‘You mean -?’

  ‘There’s a new man in his life. That’s what Melanie wanted to tell me; that’s why she didn’t bring Adam with her. Too confusing for him. There. Now you know. Pathetic, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m not used to offering well-chosen words of comfort,’ Astrid said, ‘I’ve never felt very qualified to pass judgment on other people’s trials and tribulations, but don’t you feel better for telling me?’

  ‘A means to an end,’ he said shortly, ‘there’s no need to feel sorry for me.’

  ‘The one I pity, is Adam. For not having you in his life. Any boy would feel proud to have you as their Dad.’

  It had worked exceptionally well, this process of picking him undone. The tears in his eyes were tears that she’d put there. A trickle was moving down his face. He flicked a finger across his cheek.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘I’ll leave you alone. If you need me, you know where to find me.’

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Charlie walked to the library and sat alone in the quiet. The portraits of Harry and Amelia gazed down upon him, their handwriting fragments surrounding him from every angle. His mind was as buzzed up as a snow shaker. He mustn’t think too closely; he must allow it to wash over him, this tide of grief; encourage it to subsume his consciousness. Otherwise he’d start to recover, and that’s not what he needed. He needed to feel bad, wretched.

  Still only mid morning, and yet everywhere appeared to be growing dusk. There was someone in the room with him. A female figure. Charlie didn’t alter position, he remained motionless; the figure would approach when she was good and ready.

  Mary Ellen understands very well why a man would choose to keep the woman he loves at arm’s length, would rather put her out of his mind. It will do him no good, otherwise. And Harry’s pride is injured. If his work keeps him fully occupied, so much the better. But circumstances change. Harry doesn’t know that Amelia has lost another child. He doesn’t know that Amelia is likely to do away with herself before long.

  And so Mary Ellen decides to make their impossible love, possible. She appeals to Harry’s impetuous nature, knowing that he will rise to the challenge, his clever mind will come up with something bold and extravagant.

  *

  Through the window on the first floor, Mary Ellen keeps watch as the reunited lovers leave the house and make their way through the park, until finally she can see them no more, and they have disappeared safely into the dark.

  She makes sure to lock the doors and remove any evidence of their flight, and then goes back to her room, but she cannot sleep. She lies on her bed, rolls over on to her side, intermittently peers out through the curtains as the dawn rises and reveals the mist settled over the park.

  She rises later that day to make the final arrangements for her own departure. She is tardy in entering the breakfast room, trepidation apparent in her face. Her father is not there. But she hears whispers. Amelia is gone, nowhere to be found. She hurries up the Great Stair, just in time to see Richard enter the Taffeta Silk bedroom.

  Mary Ellen stands behind him, observing through the tiniest gap in the door as he crouches down on the floor. What is he doing? He lifts the floorboards and places a box in between the gaps.

  Without turning around, Richard says, ‘The box is not to be disturbed. Amelia is gone, and you Mary Ellen, too, will flee and no one will see the letters and the diary again for a very long time.’

  She gasps. Her father has known all along.

  Mary Ellen has kep
t the lovers apart to protect them from Richard’s wrath; she has told him over and over that there are no letters between Amelia and Harry. And now here he is placing the material in a box, under the floor of a room his wife will no longer use or occupy.

  And when Mary Ellen approaches her father and questions his actions, he obscures his face so that she will not see the tears in his eyes. ‘Such histrionic foolery! Why go to such extreme lengths to outsmart me? It wasn’t in the least bit necessary, but if it amused you to play such games with me, well, so be it. I must allow you to enjoy your triumph.’

  ‘You’ve read them all? And my diary?’

  ‘I know everything,’ he says, ‘all your secrets, your fears, your desires, the life you thought I took no interest in.’

  ‘Forgive me,’ she says. ‘I wanted Amelia to be a good wife; I wanted her to love you and make you happy - where I could not…,’

  Then he looks at her as if for the first time in his life. ‘Forgive you? It is I who begs your forgiveness!’

  ‘What for?’ she replies in muted voice.

  ‘Everything,’ he says. ‘I have been lacking in all ways. I have been a poor husband to my wives, and a useless, neglectful father. No matter how hard I’ve tried to keep it in check, my behaviour has grown worse. I tormented Amelia incessantly, and that is why the poor innocent babies have died. God’s judgment upon me!’

  Mary Ellen’s eyes are blue grey, tears are brimming. The tiny flowers on her dress are embroidered; it is not patterned fabric, it is decorated material. Expensive Indian silk. She is wearing her best dress to go away in.

  Richard’s hair is grey at the temples and above his ears. The ring on his finger winks in the light as he passes his hand across his forehead. ‘I have been ashamed of you all my life,’ he says, ‘when I should have been ashamed of myself.’ Mary Ellen does not answer. ‘I solemnly promised your mother that I would take you in and raise you. She had not the wherewithal to provide you with a decent upbringing or an education; she knew it would be better for you to be taken from her and placed in my care. Some fathers would turn their backs on a child such as you, but not I. I performed my duty. And my first wife cared for you as though you were her own, notwithstanding her fragile health. If only she hadn’t died! It affected you in a most singular fashion. You were not yourself. You behaved in an extraordinary manner. Angry, tempestuous. But when I remarried, what could be better occupation for you, than to become a companion to Amelia? It kept your mind free from that troubling idleness and fancy that you were wont to indulge in.