This Much is True: How far will a mother go to protect her shocking secret?

by Jane Sanderson

  ‘Like a tart’s boudoir,’ Annie murmured.

  She could see that Michael liked the stripes, though. He admired their uniformity, their impeccable straightness. While Annie gazed at her old view – unaltered, except there were more cars parked on the road now, and the cherry trees were bigger – Michael began a tally, burgundy stripes first. He counted out loud, but in a whisper.

  Annie let her mind slip back to when she had been a child in this room; she was always alone, and while she hadn’t always been precisely unhappy, she had no recollection of happiness either. She remembered, suddenly and vividly, a Christmas pantomime she never saw: the promise of fun, a longed-for treat that dissipated in the mysterious London smog along with her mother. She looked at Michael; his face was a scowl of concentration.

  ‘What would you say to living here, Michael?’ Annie asked.

  ‘Fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty.’ He stopped counting and left his finger on the sixty-first stripe. ‘I might like that, if I had this room all to myself and Andrew didn’t live here with us. Sixty-one, sixty-two …’ Off he went again, her odd-bod boy. She watched him for a while. He was almost content these days, happier without the unforgiving daily scrutiny of Vince. If Andrew could possibly be removed from his life, she was quite certain Michael would even start to smile now and again.

  ‘You must learn to love Andrew,’ she said, pointlessly.

  He ignored her, absorbed by his stripes and numbers. He had a new schoolteacher, a young man, who told Annie that Michael’s extraordinary affinity with patterns and numbers could be turned into a good thing. Michael liked him. Or at least he didn’t dislike him. ‘Try him with the piano,’ the teacher said, last time Annie had seen him at the school gate, ‘or a violin. You’ll find he flourishes.’

  Annie didn’t know. She hadn’t a musical bone in her body, although Vince could hold a tune. Well, he could once upon a time. It was a long while since she’d heard him sing.

  Andrew was clomping up the stairs, just for the joy of the racket he was making. She left the room to meet him, so that Michael could complete his inventory in peace. Andrew said, ‘Hello, Mummy,’ and Annie said, ‘Hello, pet,’ and they clattered back down the stairs together and started a game of hopscotch on the black and white tiles. She could buy a piano now, Annie thought. A piano and a violin: why not? She pictured a glossy black baby grand in the bay window of the drawing room, and, secure on their stand, a violin of polished maple and a horsehair bow. Outside, in the garden, she’d have a swing and a slide for Andrew, and a wooden climbing frame, or a treehouse in the big old lime.

  What about Vince, though? His growling demeanour forced itself into her daydream and made her forget the game she was playing with Andrew. She looked up, as if he might be outside, about to come in. He’d always wanted her father’s money, she thought. Perhaps this house could be the new start they needed; perhaps here, where Martha Hancock had never darkened the doorstep, she could make Vince love her. For a few foolish seconds she let herself believe this, but then her shoulders sagged as she remembered who she was: just Annie Doyle, who had to claim another woman’s child in order to be loved. Oh Vince would come back all right, of course he would, lured by the house and the money, and she’d regain the respectability of a resident husband. Then he’d hate her all the more because of his own weakness, and she’d allow and endure it because Vince was her price, her cross to bear. She knew this now. There could be no happiness, beyond the happiness she took from Andrew. But that was enough. That would do.

  ‘Your turn,’ Andrew said. He wasn’t really grasping the game, but he did know that he wasn’t meant to be the only one hopping. He studied her face silently for a while then said, ‘Are you sad, Mummy?’

  ‘No, I’m not!’ she said brightly. She sniffed, and wiped her nose quite recklessly on the sleeve of her blouse. ‘It’s only the dust.’

  30

  The years passed, the boys grew. Vince’s illness was given a name and from that very day he deteriorated, as if the diagnosis was a curse. He was foul-mouthed, lusty, offensively helpless. In their big, beautiful house Michael and Andrew watched their mother become Vince’s round-the-clock carer, his nurse, his nanny. Michael hated his father for the demands he made and despised his mother for endlessly meeting them. Andrew, cut from different cloth, pitied Vince and admired Annie, but these days he loathed Michael, and Michael loathed him right back: always had. They were an unhappy quartet, on the whole, although Michael’s music gave him pleasure and Andrew … well, Andrew’s natural disposition was for sunshine, not cloud, and rare was the day that Annie didn’t thank God for him: God, and her own iron will, that kept him for herself.

  Martha was gone, of course, but not forgotten, at least not by Annie. For his part, Vince hadn’t mentioned her since he left the house in 1970 to sell plastic downpipes in Tamworth, and Annie sometimes wondered what his strangely diminished brain had done with her name, her face, the memory of their grand passion. Knowing what she knew, Annie could think about Martha without pain; the longer she was gone, the more reasonable Annie felt towards her. She felt a sort of detached, impersonal sorrow that Martha Hancock hadn’t been able to lead a harmless, anonymous life up in, oh, where was it? Annie couldn’t remember exactly where her foe came from, although she knew it was in the north east, Vince’s old stamping ground, back in his heyday.

  But when human remains were discovered in the Sherbourne and reported on the national evening news, all pity evaporated and Annie’s heart once again beat fast with terror. The girl was reduced to a collection of bones, dragged from the water after nine years of lonely decay, but there she was in Annie’s mind, glowing with good health, lit by the bright internal flame of that maddening, casual beauty and the insolent certainty of youth. There were no photographs on screen, because nobody knew who she was; the remains of a body believed to be a young female, said the newscaster. But Annie could see her, clear as day. ‘So you thought you were rid of me?’ Martha said, through the medium of the television. ‘Well, think again.’ Her grey eyes were full of steel.

  Now then, thought Annie, clutching the arms of the chair, trying to breathe. Now then.

  The Doyles were in Cornwall when this happened, at the end of a short, doomed attempt at a family holiday. Vince had been given new medication, which had tamped down his wildness so that now he was mostly just quietly malevolent. So Annie tried to seize the day; they were a family, she told herself, and they deserved a family holiday, and anyway, there was all Harold’s money in her bank account and nothing much to spend it on. So that was why they found themselves in Padstow, staying at the Metropole, a hotel that had once been grand enough for Edward VII, before he was king. Michael and Andrew had a single room each, and Annie and Vince shared a twin. Annie would have liked a room to herself, but Vince couldn’t be trusted alone. Left to himself he’d put on his clothes in the wrong order, or entirely forget to clothe his lower half, and there was no saying what he might do in the middle of the night: whom he might accost, where he might end up. He needed watching, and even so, in spite of the vigilance of Annie and the boys, he’d become a well-known public nuisance by the end of their first full day.

  They should just have stayed away from the beach; Annie, seeing the sea for the first time in her life, found the swell made her feel dizzy and sick, so she had to sit with her back to it while still trying to keep an eye on Vince, whose new pills couldn’t adequately subdue his interest in scantily clad women. Like a little boy spoiled for choice in the sweet shop, he ogled the young female sunbathers and not discreetly, not even silently. Then, just at the moment that Annie turned away from him to unpack the sandwiches, he managed to lunge at a girl as she walked past him to the sea. The fuss that ensued! Andrew wrestled his father down and pinned him to the sand, but the girl screamed and her father and brothers were at the scene in a trice, demanding retribution. In the end the Doyles packed up the towels and the folding chairs and the picnic,
and left the cove before Vince was lynched. A crowd had gathered, the young woman at its centre, and there were catcalls as the Doyles made their exit. It was a good ten-minute walk along the estuary from Harbour Cove back into the town and all the while Vince grumbled and swore, while Annie nudged him onwards, trotting behind and beside him like a diligent sheepdog, and the boys, burdened by all the paraphernalia of a day on the sand, hung far enough back to seem unrelated to their parents.

  Now, four days later, they were in the hotel in that deathly late-afternoon hiatus before dinner in the hotel’s hushed and upholstered dining room. The weather had turned, and although it was May it could have been February; the sky was leaden and the rain pelted the windows like persistent handfuls of fine gravel. The forecast promised no improvement, but anyway tomorrow was their last day and it was a relief all round. Today they’d endured a visit to a tin mine near Penzance, and Annie was still feeling the strain of maintaining a chirpy interest in the face of relentless rain, Michael’s vicious boredom and Vince’s vacillating moods. Andrew made heroic efforts to enjoy himself, but it was never easy in this family of misfits, and now the boys had loped gratefully back into their rooms and closed the doors. Vince, for the time being depleted, was slumped on a wing chair, facing the television; he stared at the screen in a state of gloomy torpor. Alongside, in a matching chair, sat Annie, because the news was full of Mrs Thatcher’s election victory, and she found herself drawn to the screen to witness the unfolding events.

  ‘Look at that,’ she said to Vince. ‘A lady prime minister, would you credit it?’

  Vince heard her but chose not to show it. She never really knew if it was his illness she was dealing with, or merely his habitual ill humour; the dementia had long been an excuse for all kinds of cruelties of which he had actually always been entirely capable. When his neurologist first identified the cause of his memory lapses and foul-mouthed outbursts, Vince had only grinned and said, ‘Licence to please myself, then.’ The consultant had been shocked; he’d expected sorrow or fear from his patient, not this grimly humorous defiance. But that was Vince for you, Annie had said at the time, trying to cover her own embarrassment as well as the consultant’s, then Vince had said, ‘Oh fuck off the pair of you,’ and left the office.

  So she didn’t press him now, didn’t repeat her comment, because if he answered at all it’d only be nastily. Andrew, always her ally, said she was saintly to put up with it, but of course Annie knew what she was, and it wasn’t a saint. Putting up with Vince was her lot in life: a kind of atonement.

  She didn’t bother with the news as a rule but this evening she couldn’t take her eyes off it. She was riveted by the pious composure of Mrs Thatcher, quoting Francis of Assisi over the melee of the press pack and the baying crowds. Annie had never voted in a General Election: in any election, come to that. She didn’t feel qualified to take a view. But she thought, now, that she might have voted for Mrs Thatcher, just because it was one in the eye for all those men.

  ‘What a hubbub,’ Annie said. Vince said nothing.

  ‘There’s as many folk jeering as cheering,’ she said.

  They sat in silence and watched. Mrs Thatcher was a bit like Vince, thought Annie; she answered the questions she liked, ignored the ones she didn’t.

  ‘Look, they’re going in now,’ Annie said. ‘I’d love to see inside. I wonder if they’re putting the kettle on.’

  She did this a lot: talked to Vince as if there was nothing wrong between them. It was for her own benefit really, because the silence, if it continued too long, mutated into menace. This evening though, Vince seemed only passive. She looked at him side on for a long moment, studying him quite openly as if he was an exhibit in a museum. Over the past few months he’d deteriorated physically as well as mentally; he’d lost weight and his face had become lean and angular, more like it had been when he was young, except it had an indoor pallor and there were deep lines from his nose to the corners of his mouth. The stubble on his chin and jaws was grey, his sharp nose was slightly hooked, his eyes were hooded: like a predator, a raptor, Annie thought now. And then, just as she was about to look away, he cut her a glance of such pure and withering dislike that she had to hug herself to ward off the chill. He’d forgotten so many names and faces over the years, he’d forgotten what was and wasn’t appropriate behaviour, but he never forgot how much he hated her. He turned away again, satisfied.

  And then, as if Vince himself had cued up the item, Mrs Thatcher was gone and Martha Hancock was on the news. The remains of a body believed to be a young female. Annie was horror struck. Her fingers tightened on the arms of the chair and she forgot to breathe for so long that when she remembered, it came in a gasping rush, as if it were she that’d just been dragged from the water. Vince was watching too, but he registered no particular interest, so there was that to be grateful for. Annie wanted to lean forward and turn off the television but instead she watched helplessly as the images rolled out on the screen: a senior police officer reading a statement, the steep mud-brown slope of the Sherbourne’s banks, the yellow and black crime-scene tape cutting off access to the public, the corporation dogsbody who chanced upon the remains. Everyone was very sombre, very serious, and Annie sat, in a red plush wing chair in a Padstow hotel, the only person in the entire world to know who it was they had there. She knew her name, the colour of her hair, the particular grey of her eyes, the shape of her lips, the confident swing of her young hips, the slenderness of her ankles, the perfect pink of her complexion, all zipped up now – what little was left of it – in a plastic body bag. The screen switched back to the studio newscaster and Annie, rigid in her chair, watched his lips move. Beside her, Vince was lightly snoring.

  ‘Mum?’

  She leapt in her chair and turned around, clutching her heart. Andrew had come into the room, dressed for outside in an anorak and a woolly hat. His face wore its usual uncomplicated smile. Annie tried to smile back, but she was consumed by dread, steeped in it, as though Martha’s ghost was right here in the room, waiting to reveal herself.

  ‘I thought I might go for a walk,’ Andrew said.

  ‘In this?’ Her voice sounded tight and strained, and she coughed to disguise it. She looked at the rain-lashed window, then back at Andrew.

  ‘Yes, in this.’ He was a fresh-air boy, always preferring outside to in. He glanced at the television screen, showing images of Margaret Thatcher again. ‘Did you see Coventry on the news just now?’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t notice,’ she said. ‘I think I dozed off.’

  ‘Dad?’

  Vince stirred and looked round at his son. He rarely ignored Andrew. ‘What?’

  ‘You okay? Did you see Coventry on the news?’

  Annie forced herself to be calm. ‘It was all Mrs Thatcher on our telly.’

  ‘No,’ Andrew said. ‘They’ve found human remains in the river.’ He widened his eyes. ‘Grisly.’

  Vince furrowed his brow, puzzled, and Annie blessed the fog that often clouded his ability to process new information. She looked at Andrew and shook her head fractionally, which meant he wasn’t to bother his father. Her breathing had steadied and she’d released her iron grip on the chair arms. This too shall pass, she told herself. She could already sense Martha retreating, and anyway, Andrew only had to appear before her to remind her that she never really had a choice.

  From down the corridor the halting strains of a new piece percolated from Michael’s bedroom. Out of the question to come away without his violin: you might just as well have asked him to leave a limb behind. Annie hoped he wasn’t disturbing anyone. He wasn’t a considerate person; he would never think about his fellow guests, never imagine that Stravinsky wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

  ‘Did you ask Michael if he wants to go?’

  Andrew rolled his eyes. ‘As if,’ he said.

  ‘Oh Andrew,’ Annie said.

  ‘Do you want to come, though?’

  His generosity swelled her heart and she tr
easured him anew, her gift of a boy. How lovely it would be to walk out of the hotel with him and through the seaside town with its shops and boats and wet, dark harbour walls. How proud she felt, that this charming boy was her own.

  ‘I can’t, pet,’ she said. She indicated Vince with her head.

  ‘I’ll sit with him if you want to get out.’

  She smiled. ‘No, you go, pet.’

  ‘Righty ho,’ he said.

  ‘Be back in time for our evening meal, won’t you?’

  ‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

  She raised her eyebrows at him. ‘Cheeky,’ she said.

  He grimaced. ‘Well,’ he said, pulling a face. He found the dining room stuffy and over-dressed, and conversation round their table was strange and unstable. ‘We should have fish and chips on a bench outside, looking at the boats.’

  ‘Oh, should we?’

  ‘You could make an exception, now we’re by the sea.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not tonight,’ and she looked away, back at the television, so Andrew just sighed and left. Fish and chips, thought Annie; whoever decided they were a treat? Greasy and heavy, they sat in the pit of your stomach like a dead weight. Herself, she hadn’t touched them for years.

  Next day they left for home. In Annie’s fantasy family holiday she had imagined a last-day picnic on the grassy cliff top overlooking Hawkers Cove, but rain still filled the sky and anyway, even Annie no longer had the heart for the fight. So in spite of the fact that they’d paid for one more night half-board at the Metropole, they loaded up the Austin and left Padstow in the insipid light of a watery dawn, creeping away unnoticed, leaving their keys on the reception desk along with a note saying thank you. Annie navigated and Vince drove, because – oddly – the actions required to handle a car remained intact in his memory so that when he was behind the wheel he was at his most lucid, rising manfully from the marshy depths of his dementia to the responsibility of the task in hand. In any case, Annie couldn’t drive. Well, she could, but she couldn’t pass her test. She’d taken it five times so far, and on each occasion her nerves had let her down. ‘There is such a thing,’ the examiner had told her last time, as he failed her again, ‘as being too cautious.’ So Annie must practise incaution, a quality she didn’t understand, and meanwhile Vince remained in charge of the family car, although without Annie as the conscientious co-pilot, they could end up anywhere.