The Last Dance

by Carolyn McCrae

  “Yes, Carl, he was my husband.”

  Having led him into the situation where he had to ask her intrusive, and probably offensive, questions she was not going to make it easy for him.

  He drew breath. He had come so far he just had to do it now. “I know he was your husband but is there any chance he would not be Susannah’s father? I mean...”

  “I know what you mean Carl.” She admired his bravery. Not many young men would have the courage to ask what he was asking.” She was not going to let him off lightly “Especially in these circumstances.”

  She tried to catch his eye, but he was avoiding her.

  “You are asking me if I was unfaithful to my husband, whether I had an affair, that someone else – an unknown man – could be Susannah’s father. Well the simple answer is that I was never unfaithful to my husband. I never had affairs whilst I was living with him. Certainly not until several years after Susannah was born.”

  “Oh. I had always.....” his voice tailed off, his disappointment palpable.

  “You had always hoped that I was as faithless and disloyal to him as my husband had been to me? He had affairs, I know, and your mother was certainly not his only mistress. Oh yes, for that was what she was, his mistress – for many, many years – certainly since before the war. No. Don’t interrupt. Your mother, Kathleen, had been kept by your father as his mistress for several years before she married Henry. Arnold’s father had kept Kathleen’s mother so it kept it all in the family. Interesting don’t you think?” She said this as if it had only just occurred to her.

  “They wouldn’t have cared if you were sleeping with Susannah, if you were sleeping with your sister, they’d been sleeping with each other for years. Incest was perfectly normal for them.

  “It never made the slightest jot of difference to either of them. As soon as they both got back from the war they were at it again. They had no shame, they had no consideration of my feelings. They couldn’t care less what anyone thought – and then she was pregnant. God knows how they got Henry to marry her, she didn’t care a fig for him and he probably knew it. Anyway marry him she did.”

  She paused slightly, she had the opportunity to stop there, but she was watching his face – there was no judgement in it, simply shock and pain.

  If she went on she would tell him everything and he would have to live with that for the rest of his life.

  She continued.

  She was enjoying the power that knowledge gave her and the pain it was causing. She wanted to shock this young man who sat next to her in the car in the lay-by in front of the church. She wanted to make him hurt as she had been hurt by her lost opportunities, her lost talents, the battle she was now losing against her body.

  But she knew herself well enough to know that this wasn’t about Carl, the last few weeks, and especially last night. This was about Arnold. She wanted to hurt Arnold one last time now it was too late. She wanted to hurt the man who had ruined her life, the man who this young man was so like in so many ways.

  She had made love the night before to the Arnold she had hoped Arnold would have been.

  Once he was committed and his objections had been overruled Carl had been gentle, sensitive and thoughtful in his love-making. She knew she would never make love ever again as her body’s weaknesses increasingly defeated her.

  She felt that the last time a person made love was as important as the first.

  Arnold could have been like this she had thought over and over as his son had made love to her.

  It was only months later that she was able to justify her actions to herself in these terms. At the time she didn’t think of the implications or of the effects her words would have on the lives of others. At that time she had just wanted him to hurt as much as she did.

  “We went away for Christmas that year just the four of us. It was engineered completely so that Kathleen and Arnold could be together. Henry and I were observers only.”

  He thought he knew where this was leading, it was somewhere he had been with Maureen. Maureen had been right.

  “So Henry was Susannah’s father.”

  “Yes. Henry was Susannah’s father.”

  She was not going to let him off without knowing the whole truth.

  “He raped me. Henry came to my room and raped me. It took only a few seconds. Not enough time to create a life, but it did. Susannah is the child of rape. Unloved and unwanted from the moment she was conceived. Born with the very few good features of her father and the very many bad ones of her mother she never had a chance.”

  She then proceeded to tell Carl exactly what had happened that night, exactly why she had not shared a bed with her husband for years.

  “It’s ironic isn’t it, darling” she continued as Carl tried to find some response – any response “you were born effectively a bastard, your parents were brother and sister though you were conceived in what I suppose must have been love of a sort. And then your Susannah was born in wedlock but out of hatred and malice, unwanted, unloved by her mother, unknown to her father, despised by everyone, except you. I suppose that makes you a couple worthy of each other.”

  “Fuck you,” was all he could say when she eventually stopped.

  “Very apt,” she said dryly.

  “This is not a fucking joke.” He had snapped. He wanted to hit her. Hard. He really wanted to slap her across the face. He had never been violent, never ever wanted to hurt anyone but he wanted to hurt this woman now. Why was she telling him all this stuff if she didn’t want to hurt him too.

  Carl, who had been experiencing so many emotions – pain, sorrow, regret, embarrassment – as Alicia had told her story, had reached anger. It was not an emotion he was familiar with. He had never learned to deal with it. He so rarely lost his temper. He couldn’t remember when he last shouted at anyone.

  But now he was very angry.

  He spoke slowly at first, deliberately spacing his words, making sure he found the right ones. As he spoke his anger rose and he just said whatever came into his head.

  “You all fucking knew. When you separated Susannah and me you all fucking knew. Why? Why did you do it? What did you hope to gain? You are all so fucking selfish. You were only concerned with yourselves. You’ve only ever cared about yourselves. The children – us – your children – Charles and Susie and me – we just happened to be there. That was just so fucking unfortunate for you all wasn’t it? You couldn’t carry on with your stupid fucking little mind games. You had no fucking responsibility for us. You handed us over to other people because we all got in your fucking way. You are all shits, fucking shits – I can’t think of words bad enough for what I think about you. Anything I called you would be too bland. You all knew all of this and you couldn’t fucking well bring yourselves to ease anyone else’s pain and hurt because it would mean you would all have to admit what utter shits you’ve been all your lives. You probably didn’t care how much you hurt anyone as long as you were OK. You and your precious fucking lives. What about us? What about our lives? I don’t care why you did it. You did it.”

  She slapped him as hard as she could across the face.

  “Stop it. Carl. Stop it. You’re acting and talking like a little boy.”

  “A little boy! You have just told me that my life, Susie’s life, they’re all built on absolutely fucking nothing! You tell me my parents were brother and sister! You tell me that your utter god-awful selfishness and your fucking lies are fine because you were all doing it. You were all lying. You have all always lied. And you call me a little boy!’”

  He grabbed the car keys from the ignition and, slamming the car door behind him, practically ran into the churchyard, sitting down on a tomb as soon as he was out of sight of the car.

  He had not thought that knowing Susie was not his sister could possibly cause him so much agony. The joy of knowing that they could have been, could be, together was completely lost in the knowledge that, because of this woman’s lies it was all too late.

/>   He couldn’t marry Susie.

  He couldn’t marry anyone.

  He could never have children of his own.

  His parents were brother and sister.

  He sat there trying not to think what might have been, if only that bitch hadn’t lied.

  And he had slept with her!

  He not only hated his mother, his father, Henry and that woman, he hated himself.

  It took a while, but he did eventually pull himself together. He did get himself back under control and went back to the car, where she was still waiting.

  He drove her back to her house, he packed his things and put them in the back of the car. He was leaving and he would never see her again. If she said something like ‘don’t think too badly of me’ he probably would have hit her so it was lucky she didn’t say a word as he piled his things into a case and a rucksack and left – not even ‘goodbye’ or ‘thank you’.

  He took the car back to the garage, walked to the station and caught the first train to London.

  As he sat in the empty carriage, going home, he cried for everything he had lost.

  He was embarrassed by his emotional response. He wished he hadn’t said some of the things he had said. She was right, he had been childish, he realised his vocabulary had been limited – what a pity there weren’t enough words for ‘fuck’ when you were angry. She was absolutely right he had reacted badly.

  But he knew he had had every right to.

  He went back to the Forsters and over the next few days spent many hours in his room, reading, trying to study, trying to take control of his life again. Pat and Jeff didn’t press him for explanations, they didn’t ask any difficult questions.

  They just let him find himself again. They knew he would start being Carl again when he was ready.

  He kept thinking how much he wished she had not told him. But he had wanted to know. It was just that truth didn’t stop where he had wanted it to and he now had all sorts of knowledge that he really didn’t want. He could have gone through life never knowing, possibly eventually marrying and having children.

  Maureen had known. She must have known. She had hinted that the truth would be too much. They had both asked him whether he really wanted to know.

  He had always understood knowledge to be a good thing, the only bad thing about knowledge was not having it. He now knew that that was not always the case.

  Not only had he lost Susannah, he had lost his future. He couldn’t marry now. He couldn’t have children. He would be the no issue on the family tree. His genes wouldn’t go on down through the generations to come.

  He was the end of the line.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Maureen rang me on Remembrance Sunday, after the Cenotaph ceremony had finished on the television. It was unusual for her to call.

  “Ted, I’m worried. That woman is predatory. She has absolutely no scruples. She will do exactly what she wants regardless of how many people she hurts.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “They don’t seem to have a..” she fought for the right words and ended lamely “mother-son relationship.”

  “You’re not suggesting they’re sleeping together?” It should have been a completely unnecessary question, but the more I thought about it the more it seemed a very real threat.

  “That’s exactly what I am suggesting.” Maureen was firm “and I’m very much regretting ever having put the two together. Think about it Ted, she’s vulnerable he’s caring; she’s so like Susannah – the girl he believes is the love of his life; and he’s very like the nicer bits of Arnold, not to mention very good looking, young and probably very virile.”

  “But she’s nearly 50 and he’s what.... just 21?”

  “She’s 46. And this is 1967. Stranger things happen – just read your newspapers.”

  “What do you want me to do? Is there anything I can do?”

  “God knows Ted. I haven’t a clue. Do we have to do anything? Even if they are” she hesitated before speaking the words as if speaking them made the fact more likely “sleeping together or whatever the current euphemism is. Is that so very wrong? I really don’t know. Sometimes I think it is the worst thing that could possibly happen and then I think ‘why ever not?’ If he was 46 and she was 21 no one would bat an eyelid.”

  “It’s not just the age gap though, is it? They’re practically family.”

  “But they aren’t family are they? They’re absolutely no relation to each other whatsoever. They have not lived in the same house together – she’s not his step-mother or anything, they’ve probably only met twice – if that – before last month. There is no reason to object. No real reason.”

  “Of course there’s a reason. There must be hundreds of reasons.”

  “Name three”

  “Sorry, Maureen, put like that I can’t. But both you and I have the gut feeling that it is completely unacceptable. We can’t both be wrong.”

  “Let’s hope that if there is anything between them it’s only sex. They’d soon get that out of their systems.”

  I tried not to be shocked. Or jealous.

  “Keep an eye on it Maureen, if you think there is anything I can do I will come down – of course I will. But you know you can always call me – just to talk if you need to. We both care for Alicia too much to let her make a complete fool of herself.”

  “Yes, Ted, we both do don’t we.”

  In early December I had another letter from Maureen.

  Alicia had told her what turned out to be a very edited version of her birthday trip, but did admit to telling Carl his and Susannah’s true parentage and worse, something of the circumstances.

  Maureen wrote in no uncertain terms that she thought Carl was a loose cannon – she didn’t know him well enough to be able to guess what his reactions might be. She couldn’t contact the Forsters but she knew I could.

  Someone had to make sure the boy was all right despite the revelations that had been sprung on him.

  I would have to get involved.

  And so on the next of my monthly trips to London I visited the Forsters in Dulwich.

  They made me very welcome. We had a lovely informal meal with Pat and Jeff reminding me of our brief meeting four years or so earlier, when I had worried about the arrangements after Carl’s precipitous departure from his parents’ home. We all decided it had worked out well. They asked about the circumstances of Arnold’s death and I briefly described the quiet funeral and Kathleen’s quiet life. “Carl will always be welcome here, you must tell his mother that he always has a home with us.”

  But the whole meal was not taken up with sadness, much of the conversation around that table was light hearted and Carl seemed completely at ease. I understood in that one evening how much better Carl was as a person because of his time with the Forsters than if he had been exposed to the politics and darkness of life with Kathleen and Arnold. This Carl was adult, relaxed and polite, showing no sign of the trauma or imminent breakdown I had feared.

  After dinner the Forsters left us alone to talk and I soon realised, when we turned to the subject of Alicia and Susannah, that he was under control.

  It was a talk where we had slightly different agendas.

  He wanted to know if what Alicia had said about Susie’s father was actually true or whether it had all been a rather dramatic figment of her imagination. I had to confirm that it was, as far as I could tell him, indeed true.

  I had to agree that all four parents in this imbroglio had behaved very badly. I had to agree I had known since Susannah’s wedding, though of course, by then, it was too late to do anything.

  It upset him to hear the words, but once spoken he wanted to know all about it and about Joe and the children. I needed to know if there was any way he felt the need to tell Susannah what he had found out. I told him I hoped he would do nothing rash.

  It was obvious he still cared for her a great deal. I knew that values were changing, that many young people are fickl
e and change their allegiances and loves like changing clothes but in those few minutes with Carl I realised he was different.

  He was one of those rather old-fashioned, rare, possibly unlucky, people who once they give their hearts to someone never, ever, take them away.

  It was a characteristic I recognised.

  He mentioned nothing about any relationship between his mother and his father. If he had done I would not have been able to confirm or deny anything other than the fact that Arnold’s father knew Kathleen’s mother and that some people thought it a distinct possibility. Nothing, of course, could ever be proved.

  I felt I needed to tell him something I did know to be true that he didn’t know, to clear the air completely, so I told him about Maureen.

  I told him how Maureen and I had written to each other over the years, because she had been a good friend of Alicia’s when they had both lived in the Wirral. That she had an interest in what the family was up to. I told him that I had never broken confidences, merely sending her copies of newspapers and short notes to keep her informed. When he asked me why she would be so interested in them I had to tell him. She had taken such an interest in him because she was Kathleen’s eldest sister.

  She was his aunt.

  I think of all the things I said that evening that was the one that made him feel most betrayed.

  He was quiet for a short time, peering into the fire that was beginning to die down in the grate. “Why did she play such a game? Why didn’t she say? She did seem to know a lot about us. She seemed so nice. Why didn’t she say?”

  “That I cannot answer, I believe she wanted to keep that up her sleeve, you see Alicia has never known that her best friend over the years is the sister of the woman she most dislikes, her husband’s mistress and second wife. How do you think she would you feel if she knew that?”