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

by Jane Sanderson

  There were twelve pies cooling on the counter and she picked one up and nibbled at it gingerly. These could be for Glebe Hall. Well, and the next lot too. There was no point keeping too many here – Michael wouldn’t touch them; they were indigestible, he told her, like ice hockey pucks in his stomach, but anyway she’d put a dozen in the tin for herself. He really was a curmudgeon at Christmas. Or perhaps it just showed more at this time of year.

  Since Josie called, the phone had rung twice more but Annie had ignored it: floury hands, and anyway there was no one she wanted to speak to. Michael could answer – he was upstairs, doing what exactly she didn’t know – but he hadn’t bothered either. The answerphone wasn’t on, so it just rang and rang until the caller lost heart, but when it happened for a third time Annie decided she’d probably better pick up. Slowly, hoping it’d stop, she washed and dried her hands, then padded to the hallway, closely shadowed by the puppy. For a few moments Lottie looked at Annie and Annie looked at the phone, and then she sighed and lifted the receiver.

  ‘Mum?’

  Andrew spoke before she did, and she was utterly astonished to hear him. They talked on Christmas Day, every year, not on 20 December.

  ‘Andrew! What is it? Is Riley all right?’

  ‘Why didn’t you answer before?’ he said, ignoring her question. ‘I know you’re in.’

  ‘But I didn’t know it was you,’ she said.

  He gave a sharp laugh, which struck her immediately as odd. He sounded unlike himself: brittle and a little terse. And close: much closer than usual.

  ‘Andrew, there’s no delay on the line,’ she said.

  ‘Look, Mum, I’m outside your house, in a car. I brought someone I think you ought to meet and I just wanted to speak to you before I—’

  She let go of the receiver and it fell, clattering against the table, knocking against the wall so that Lottie sprang backwards in fright and scampered off back to the kitchen. Annie ran to the living-room window and flung open the curtains and there was Andrew, lit by a streetlamp, helping a woman out of the driver’s seat of a discreetly expensive black car. Andrew! Here in Hoyland, not at home in Byron Bay. Annie felt her bowels turn to liquid and her heart threw itself wildly around her chest like a bird in a box. She was afraid to move: afraid to hear his bad tidings, for why else could he be here except to break something to her? It must be Riley. She pictured him dead at the foot of a tree or the bottom of a cliff and burst into tears, and she was crying as Andrew walked down the path, followed by the woman. Who was she? In the dark it was impossible to tell, but Annie was still staring, still sobbing, still trying to work things out, when Andrew shouted, ‘Mum! Open the door for God’s sake,’ and she jolted into action. Both of the front doors were locked and bolted and her hands were shaking, but she got the first one open then turned on the little porch lantern that immediately dropped soft yellow light onto her visitors. There was Andrew, in front. Then the woman stepped out from behind him and Annie found she was looking through the glass directly into the familiar grey eyes of Martha Hancock.

  It was Michael who let them in, in the end: Michael who heard the hammering of a fist on the front door and accepted, finally, that he must leave off cleaning the hairs of his violin bow and venture downstairs to investigate. It was an extraordinary sight that greeted him: his mother backed against the wall and all tucked in on herself as if she was braced for a bomb blast. She was emitting an unnatural lament, an inhuman, unending moan. Michael had to step around her to unlock and open the door to Andrew. The brothers regarded each other coldly. Michael entirely ignored Martha.

  Andrew pushed past him and faced his mother, placing his hands on her shoulders and shaking her, not roughly, but certainly firmly.

  ‘Mum, hush,’ he said. ‘Open your eyes.’

  Martha said, ‘It’s too much for her,’ and her voice seemed to jolt Annie to her senses; she fell silent and forced herself away from the support of the wall. Michael glared at the stranger and said, ‘Who the hell are you?’ and Martha looked at Andrew, so he spoke for her.

  ‘This is Martha Hancock,’ he said. ‘My other mother. Mum thought she was dead, didn’t you, Mum?’

  Annie, ashen, rigid in her miasma of shock, said nothing, then Lottie, emboldened by the sound of visitors, trotted from the sanctuary of the kitchen to sit by her. Gratefully Annie bent to scoop up the soft, warm body in her trembling hands. The little dog licked her face and Michael made a noise of disgust as if this was the last straw in an already barely tolerable situation.

  ‘Let’s sit,’ Andrew said, pushing open the door to the living room, and Michael, on principle, turned to go back upstairs but Annie reached for his arm and said, ‘Please, Michael,’ because she really needed him now; needed to shelter behind his instant dislike of the stranger, Martha. To face her alone … well, Annie couldn’t, she just couldn’t. Michael looked startled to be called upon and widened his eyes at her as if to say, ‘Now you want me,’ but he didn’t resist, only shook his head soberly at Andrew like a disappointed teacher at an incorrigible child, although his brother was beyond being rattled by such minor taunts. After all, Andrew had discovered that his mild, devoted mother had lived much of her life believing herself to be guilty of manslaughter. He’d discovered that she’d left Martha Hancock unconscious in a stretch of river in Coventry. He understood, for the first time, why the family had bolted from the home he’d loved to this one that he never loved and never could. He was shocked, profoundly shocked, at the layers of secrecy and denial, and when the four of them filed into the living room it was Martha he chose, sitting beside her on the sofa, near enough to her to indicate a certain closeness, a fledgling understanding. Michael stood by the fire and fidgeted, poised for flight, and Annie sat in an armchair with the puppy on her knees for added courage, looking at Andrew who wouldn’t, at the moment, look at her.

  Martha said, ‘This must be the most terrible shock,’ which didn’t sound like the opening gambit of a woman bent on revenge, so Annie turned her pale blue gaze upon her nemesis. The younger woman had aged, but serenely, gracefully, the delicate lines on her face only emphasising the refinement of her beauty. There were no pouches or jowls, only elegant angles and gentle hollows. Her hair was much shorter than Annie remembered, falling just below her jawline and expensively cut into a thick waterfall of layers, and although there was grey in it, there were other colours too, shades of blonde, dark to light, framing Martha’s lovely face. There were no scars, or none that Annie could see. She’d have liked to look away, but she found there was a siren pull in those grave grey eyes and Annie could only stare; she was careful to fix her expression into one of neutral detachment.

  ‘Right,’ Andrew said. ‘We’re going to talk about everything.’

  They look like a team, thought Annie: Andrew and Martha, side by side on the sofa, with the same beautiful mouth and the same expressive eyes and the same self-assured way of holding themselves. It would have been a long drive, from Durham. The pair of them must have talked and talked and talked. Well then, Annie thought: it’s over. Time to let go.

  35

  Martha Hancock hadn’t died, that much was obvious. But even so Annie could barely believe her story: not dead in the mire of the Sherbourne but only briefly unconscious, with a wound on the left side of her head and – news to Annie, this – a broken wrist and a badly wrenched ankle. She’d come to in the concrete tunnel of water, crawled along it until she smelled fresher air, hauled her broken body up the bank, and dragged herself back to her lodgings. It shouldn’t have been possible, but the human spirit isn’t easily snuffed out, Martha told Annie, with a sort of pious wisdom.

  ‘No,’ Annie said, ‘I suppose not.’ She was thinking of Vince, not Martha: now there was a flame that guttered but wouldn’t die.

  ‘It all came back in dribs and drabs, but not for a long while,’ Martha was saying, utterly composed, as if she was catching up with an old friend. ‘At first I couldn’t remember anything much, but any
way I seemed to know where I lived, when I crawled out. I just limped back to the lodgings. A man tried to help, but I ignored him, and anyway he didn’t try very hard.’

  She’d probably got herself back and into a hot bath before she, Annie, made it home with the fish and chips. All those years! She’d been so certain that Martha was dead, but now she wondered if she’d simply willed it to be so.

  ‘Looks like you botched it, Mother,’ said Michael, but no one paid him any notice.

  ‘What about the police?’ Annie said.

  Martha shrugged, and even after half a lifetime, Annie recognised the gesture. ‘They didn’t get involved. Well, I didn’t report you, so they wouldn’t, would they?’

  ‘Why? Why didn’t you report me?’

  Martha looked at Andrew with a sort of wistful regret. ‘I decided to give up,’ she said, looking back at Annie. ‘I was young, and the fight just seemed to leave me, and I couldn’t remember any more why I was so set on taking him off you. Also, I thought Vincent might come to find me if I had Robert. I mean, Andrew.’

  ‘Oh, he would have,’ Michael said, ‘if he hadn’t lost his marbles. Instead we were stuck with him.’

  ‘But the bones?’ Annie said. ‘The bones in the Sherbourne?’ She was barely making sense, but Andrew must have filled Martha in on all the details.

  ‘Some other poor soul,’ she said.

  Her voice had altered in these intervening years, thought Annie. She’d lost the Durham lilt and now you wouldn’t be able to guess where she was from, north or south. The harshness was gone too, the indignant, mocking anger of her younger self; now, she kept her voice steady and soft, as if she was telling this tale of her resurrection in a library or by a loved one’s sick bed. She seemed possessed of infinite patient understanding: a martyred saint. Annoying, thought Annie; at least the furious anger of the young Martha had felt authentic. She wondered about Alf: wondered if she should tell him he could close the case again, and then she remembered that he’d only re-opened it in her fevered imagination. She wondered whose those bones were, now she knew whose they weren’t.

  Meanwhile Martha kept talking in her low, wise voice. She went back to Middlesbrough, she said, took A-levels at night school, studied English literature and French at Durham University, worked for the British Embassy in Paris. Andrew watched her with rapt attention, but he must have known all this stuff already, thought Annie, who was rattled by the story of unmitigated success. She glanced at Michael, and he caught the look and rolled his eyes, so that she knew he felt the same.

  On went Martha, and she was moving serenely through the years of her life: met her husband in Paris, had four children – three girls, one boy, all in their thirties now. Madeleine, Eloise, Marie-Claire, Dominic. Andrew’s half-siblings, she said with a coy smile that Annie hotly resented. They had a home in Durham, as well as in Paris, but Martha found she was drawn more and more to England as she grew older, especially now she was alone, since Jean-Luc, her husband, had died: a heart attack, ten years ago, on the Paris Metro.

  ‘Rush hour?’ Michael said. He looked very glad he’d stayed.

  Andrew scowled. ‘Apologies for my brother,’ he said to Martha. ‘He’s extraordinarily unpleasant.’

  Martha said, ‘That’s all right,’ and she bestowed a generous smile on Michael, who took a step backwards as if her uncommon beneficence might be contagious.

  ‘So, anyway,’ Martha said, smoothly resuming the narrative. ‘Jean-Luc knew all about Robert.’

  ‘Andrew,’ said Annie.

  ‘Sorry, yes, Andrew. The children have always known about you too,’ she said, turning to him. ‘I told them I hoped you’d come and find me one day, of your own accord. That’s why I’m Martha Hancock Guerlin, not just Guerlin. I wanted to make it easier for you if ever you came.’

  She said her surname with a rolling, guttural French ‘err’ at its heart, which sounded pretentious to Annie, as if she, Martha, was advertising her sophistication, her otherness, to Annie Doyle and this poky, provincial front room. Annie wished Andrew didn’t look so impressed, but all he said was, ‘Do you hear that, Mum? A family that doesn’t keep secrets?’

  ‘Well,’ Michael chipped in, ‘what should she have said? “Here’s your beans on toast, love, and oh by the way, I left your real mother for dead in a muddy river.”’

  ‘Did you tell your children what happened?’ Annie asked.

  Martha nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but they’ve been raised in the presence of a forgiving God.’

  ‘Pardon?’ Annie said. She remembered Martha’s God as more of a hellfire and brimstone type.

  Martha dipped her head, lowered her eyes; everyone waited. ‘We’re Baptists,’ she said. ‘We follow in the footsteps of Jesus.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Annie. She didn’t look at Michael but she could feel him smirking. Andrew’s expression remained defensively serious. He only smiled when Martha looked at him, and Annie felt a sad nostalgia for her steadfast, ardent little boy.

  ‘Oh right,’ Michael said. ‘I see. Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. Is that it?’

  Annie stared at him, astonished at the things he knew.

  ‘Following Jesus requires faith and surrender,’ Martha said by way of an answer. ‘There’s incredible joy to be found in letting Him take the lead.’

  ‘Right,’ Michael said. ‘Well, that explains a lot, anyway.’

  ‘Look,’ said Andrew, ‘this isn’t actually about Martha, it’s about Mum.’

  ‘And Jesus,’ Michael said.

  ‘Shut your mouth,’ Andrew said through his teeth, goaded into anger. ‘This is all a bloody joke to you, isn’t it?’

  ‘Boys,’ Annie said, as if they were six and nine, fighting over Lego, and so Andrew turned his fury onto her.

  ‘You!’ he said. ‘I don’t even know you! You behaved monstrously!’ Martha laid a calming hand upon his knee, twisting the knife in Annie’s heart.

  ‘But she would have taken you from me,’ Annie said, simply.

  ‘I would,’ Martha agreed. ‘I would.’

  ‘You’ve lived all these years, all these decades, like a woman in hiding,’ Andrew said.

  ‘Well … have I?’ Annie said. She looked back now, and her life didn’t seem so very strange. Or perhaps it was only that she had become accustomed to its oddness. Mind you, thought Annie, there was nothing odder than this: that Martha was here now, and seemed to bear her no grudge. She must have led a very happy life indeed, after that bad beginning.

  ‘Yes, you have,’ said Andrew, ‘a life in denial.’

  Annie examined the backs of her hands.

  ‘I looked after your father,’ she said, ‘and all the time he hated me.’

  ‘So?’ Andrew said. ‘What does that prove?’

  ‘It proves I knew I didn’t deserve to be happy,’ Annie said.

  There was a potent silence, then Andrew said, ‘You should get therapy, Mum,’ and there was no softening of his tone, no shifting of allegiance. He was livid, thought Annie: furious. He was speaking not from concern for her state of mind, but anger at her entire way of being. ‘You must be round the bend. Crazy. Anybody would be, living with all that guilt.’

  ‘Guilt?’ she said.

  ‘You have to confront it.’

  ‘I couldn’t have loved you more,’ she said. ‘You were a happy boy.’

  ‘Your secrecy, your guilt makes a mockery of the love.’

  ‘No!’ she said, stung by this injustice. ‘One doesn’t cancel out the other. I did what I did because I loved you with all my heart.’

  ‘Hang on,’ Michael said, slowly. ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles.’

  Martha and Andrew both frowned, but Annie understood him.

  ‘Was I there?’ Michael asked. ‘An alleyway? You told me to count, then I found that book and we had fish and chips.’

  Annie nodded. She knew he’d remember, in the end.

  ‘You had fish and chips?’ Andrew sa
id. ‘You never have fish and chips.’

  ‘Oh,’ Michael said. ‘Is that why?’

  ‘How could you eat, Mum, after battering Martha senseless?’

  ‘Battering,’ said Michael. ‘Very droll.’

  ‘Michael, you really are a prize fucking prick,’ Andrew said. Martha glanced at him with a sort of painful surprise, but then, thought Annie, what did Martha know about Michael and Andrew? What did she know about the way they were with each other? Nothing. Nothing at all. She knew nothing, really, about any of them.

  All at once, Annie found she’d had enough of this enforced retelling of things past. There was simply too much to say; it would’ve been better to have not even begun. After all, what did any of it matter now, aside from the fact that saintly Martha Hancock was joyously alive and Andrew had found her? She wondered if Martha intended to lead him onto the path of righteousness; there was something in the woman’s eyes – a soft, hopeful light – that suggested she would at least try. The saving of Andrew’s soul would be Martha’s personal mission now, thought Annie, and she stood and tucked Lottie under her arm.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I really should get on with my mince pies.’