The Twisted Way

by Jean Hill

  This was a surprise to Janet. Unbeknown to her he had already packed his bags ready for a journey.

  ‘My luggage has been stowed in my car boot for some days,’ he said. ‘I’m only taking the minimum, just three cases containing clothes and a few keepsakes. Anything else you are jolly well welcome to. If you haven’t enough money to buy another car you can always get the bus,’ he told her callously.

  ‘The meagre bus service permitting,’ Janet said softly under her breath, a sarcastic note creeping into her normally pleasant voice. Where did he think she was going to get the cash from to buy another car? The house mortgage was heavy and they had needed two salaries to cope with it. Most of the money they had paid off to date would be interest on the loan.

  ‘The village school is within walking distance even if you do have a load of books to carry,’ he said and turned cold belligerent blue eyes towards her, a look she would never forget as long as she lived. ‘A young woman like you with strong arms shouldn’t have any difficulty,’ he expanded in a condescending way. ‘I’ve no idea when I’ll return to Enderly, but I’ll be in contact as soon as it is convenient.’

  Janet reeled with shock. She had realized for a long time that he might leave her but had pushed the idea to the back of her mind. In some ways she had to admit that she welcomed the news but reality was not at that moment palatable.

  ‘Soon as it is convenient’ … what on earth did that mean?

  The colour drained from her face, her hands shook as her legs turned to jelly and she feared she would fall to the ground. She was a ridiculous weak fool. She had been duped, lost her little brother Tom, had no baby to love and had endured several years of misery with a womanising selfish man.

  ‘We shared that car,’ she said in a meek tone. ‘I paid for it! Half of it is mine.’ Her voice trailed into a quiet whisper.

  ‘My tax and insurance old girl,’ he responded with determined swiftness. ‘I am the registered owner. Too bad, old chum,’ he ended in a dismissive and firm voice. ‘You will have the benefit of the money I paid off the mortgage with my salary. Be grateful, woman!’

  ‘Why?’ she uttered, after a few moments of empty silence, her voice becoming strained and high pitched.

  James shrugged and looked at her coolly, his bright blue eyes icy and expressionless. ‘I can’t really say old girl. You will be better off without me. I’m just a miserable old chap anyway and no good to you in my present frame of mind. You deserve better.’

  This last comment at least rang true although Janet did not appreciate how apt it was at the time. She still had the house she loved, though how on earth she was going to pay the mortgage she did not know. A deep hole of misery appeared to open at her feet ready to swallow her up, though if she was honest with herself, she had been dissatisfied with her marriage and had longed to be free for a long time. She knew that there was only one person James loved and that was himself. The description ‘a self-centred egotistical bore’ fitted him perfectly. He was a selfish, shallow man. She had let her mother down and lost Tom in a vain effort to keep this rotten husband. What a blind creature she had been. It had been easier that way but she was determined that things would be different in future. If he thought he could crawl back when he was down on his luck he would have to think again. She glared at him, hate distorting her features for a moment as an unaccustomed hardness and resolve surfaced.

  James turned abruptly away from her and heaved a noisy sigh of relief. The bloody woman did not show signs of hysteria, thank goodness. The parting was not going to be as difficult as he had anticipated. He opened the car door, lifted his lean body into the driving seat and slammed the door, which emitted a loud clang. He gripped the steering wheel, placed the key in the ignition and started the engine.

  ‘Dull as ditchwater this place,’ he shouted over his shoulder as he started to edge the car forward. ‘There are a few nice views, pretty in the usual crap Russetshire English way but that’s all. I long to savour the vibrant African heat, Australian outback and all the other interesting places I’ve read about during the past few years!’ An old map of Africa had been stowed in his bag and he was determined that North Africa would be his first destination. ‘I’ll come back if I’m broke and have nowhere else to go,’ he continued, ‘but I don’t know when. Don’t worry about me old girl.’

  Janet shuddered and gritted her teeth. It was the first she had heard about his plans. What did he mean, don’t worry about him? That was something she realized with startling clarity that she would be glad not to do again. Had he really said those dreadful things to her? She had realized that he was restless but had not expected him to depart in such an abrupt manner.

  ‘Goodbye, good riddance dreary teacher wife,’ he shouted ‘I’m off!’

  Janet stood deserted and amazed on the road outside Primrose House and watched as the small red car they had shared disappeared into the distance.

  James made his way to Dover where he sold the car to a dealer. He heaved his luggage on to a ferry bound for France and without a backward glance at the white cliffs toasted his freedom with a strong cup of coffee he laced, exhibiting extravagance and greed, with three spoonfuls of fine white sugar.

  Chapter 4

  John Lacey

  John Lacey was the only son of a wealthy merchant and entrepreneur. His father spent thirty years building up a thriving business near Newbury before he died and John inherited, to his dismay, a considerable fortune when still only a young man. Unlike many of his contemporaries and the majority of the human race he was not interested in money; he would have exchanged it eagerly for affection and love, something he had little experience of during his childhood. When he was older he would appreciate being able to use his wealth to indulge his hobby of collecting antiques and other beautiful objects he loved, and buying gifts to please his second wife, but he was a simple man with simple needs and did not crave luxuries.

  John was never able to get to know his mother well and was left with a vague memory of a quiet young woman with a thin peaky face and dark brown curly hair that lapped around her forehead and emphasised her pale grey eyes, who was always ill and suffered constant headaches. He often observed her reclining on her bed, pale and wan, whilst her long slender fingers untrammelled by household chores rested on luxurious silken bed covers. They were smooth, almost transparent and tipped with neat manicured nails, a chore untaken daily by her young maid Betsy who prattled on and on about the weather, her latest boyfriend or some other useless tittle-tattle which made no impact upon John or his mother.

  ‘Tiptoe boy, do not disturb your mother,’ or ‘no noisy toys, take care,’ were constant reminders that his mother was an invalid. Nobody ever explained to him what her illness was but he guessed that it must have been something serious. There were no motherly chats, walks in the park or birthday parties. He craved attention from this weak and listless woman but it was not forthcoming.

  He would creep into her bedroom when he knew that nobody would be watching and became expert at tiptoeing around the room to look at the objects that his mother called her treasures. He was intrigued when he saw the faded old brown photographs depicting grandparents he had never seen and who were dressed in stuffy Victorian clothes. There was one of his mother as a small child nursing her favourite doll and one of himself when he was a baby of only few months. There were a number of elegant china ornaments, figurines and delicate hand-painted vases his mother had collected over the years which were carefully arranged in a small china cabinet. When he thought she was asleep he would open the cabinet doors and run his small, sometimes dirty, fingers over them. He would perhaps collect some himself one day. He liked them and tried to remember some of the names stamped underneath the ornaments although they were not all easy to read. Sometimes he would carefully remove one of the books about antiques and china she kept on a bookshelf by her bed and turn some of the pages so that he could admire the objects portrayed in them.

  ‘Mu
m,’ he sometimes whispered in his small childish voice in the hope of getting some response, even if it was only a pat on his head, a gesture of recognition, but he rarely did.

  ‘Don’t worry me, darling,’ or ‘Run along now, me dear, it is past your bedtime,’ or ‘Go and play now, Nanny will be looking for you,’ she would say in her soft Irish lilt, and that was all would remember about her voice.

  Jack Lacey knew nothing about his Irish wife’s family and was not interested. His wife had been a disappointment to him. He had wanted someone who would entertain his business associates and provide him with several children to take over his business when he retired. In his view she had let him down. He was left with one quiet academic child who did not, in his opinion and to his regret, exhibit the promising entrepreneurial traits for which he had hoped.

  Too often the oppressive smell of the sick room pervaded the young John’s nostrils and he had been glad to escape to where the air was fresh. Rough pine stairs led up to a nursery tucked away in the attic, a room devoid of comfortable carpets, where a small camp bed was tucked into one corner in readiness for his afternoon nap and a desk and stool in another in preparation for his studies. It was sparse but his father deemed it good enough. There was one compensation: a small wooden dappled grey rocking horse named Parker that he adored. The horse had soft painted black eyes that were friendly and welcoming and John spent many happy hours rocking himself on the horse. The rocking was soothing and the current nanny, more often than not, was grateful to discover that he was occupied. He could rock himself ‘silly’ as far as the nannies were concerned so long as he did not get under their feet.

  Circumstances ensured that John developed into a quiet introverted child and although he was cared for by a variety of nannies over the years, some young, some old, not one of them was able to provide him with motherly love. He found it impossible to achieve a close and emotional relationship with any of them; his father’s choice of carers for his son was abysmal.

  ‘Behave yourself boy, look sharp,’ was the ultimate nanny’s favourite phrase. He did look sharp or had a quick slap with a large bony hand across his legs. Bedtime had been at the ridiculously early hour of six o’clock until the ‘martinet’, as he nicknamed her, left for a more lucrative post and his father considered he was too old at eleven years old for more nannies and could be sent to a boarding school about thirty miles away.

  John had got into the habit of reading his favourite books under his blankets with the aid of a torch after the martinet had done her final round and disappeared to her sitting room to drink a large glass of sherry or other favourite tipple. Reading in poor light strained his eyesight and as a consequence he was forced to wear thick horn-rimmed glasses. However, he did discover that he did not like alcohol; he helped himself one day to a sip from all the bottles, whisky, vodka and sherry, that were stashed away by the often tipsy and bad-tempered nanny in a cupboard in her sitting room, resulting in violent sickness and stomach-ache, not easily forgotten. If the martinet guessed what had happened she did not mention the incident to his father and managed to show some sympathy with his plight. Shortly afterwards she moved to her new post.

  John did not make any close friends at boarding school, he did not know how to, but at last he had some company of his own age and observed their behaviour from the sidelines. He was a loner. Most of the boys just ignored him; one or two tried to be friendly which he appreciated but he was not really concerned about his status. One or two played chess with him and discussed stamp collecting but there the interaction ended. The few that did make friendly overtures left him uneasy and unsure. He felt more comfortable without them.

  Before he went away to boarding school he would often slip into the large garden, his father’s pride and joy and second only to his business deals, where the gardener, a burly rough fellow with thick red curly hair, was pressed into keeping an eye on ‘the child’, but actually had no time for small boys.

  ‘Clear off kid,’ he would shout. ‘Amuse yerself and leave me be – I got work to do. Kids, ugh.’ He delighted in giving John a menacing smile exposing large white teeth that reminded the boy of a crocodile he had seen once in the local zoo. His eye teeth were large, sharp and unpleasant. There was a gold filling down the side of one which glinted in the sun. He could be a vampire, John thought, he had read about those. He didn’t really believe in such things but the idea sent a shiver down his spine.

  John was glad to do leave the man to his work and the further away he could get from those frightful teeth the better. He would make a den in some of the large bushes and act out his childhood fantasies. He could be an Indian, cowboy or whatever he liked. He had an imaginary friend called Roger, who joined him in his games.

  ‘Come on Roger, you can be the Chief Indian, I’ll be your best warrior,’ he would whisper so that his father or current nanny didn’t hear, or ‘Come and see my stamp collection,’ or ‘What would you like for tea? Nanny has promised sticky buns today.’ When he went to boarding school Roger was no longer needed and conveniently disappeared.

  One of his classmates, Oliver, spent a few weeks during one school holiday with him. Oliver did not really like John but was persuaded by his mother, after a rare invitation from John’s father, whose conscience had started to trouble him about the solitary life his son was enduring, to join John in his home, the renowned and luxurious Huxley House. John’s father hoped too that a companion would keep him occupied and he would not bother him so much, not that he ever saw very much of him. Oliver’s mother had a difficult baby, who seemed to be screaming most of the day and night, as well as a tiresome self-willed toddler so she was delighted at the prospect of a respite from at least one of her children and agreed with undisguised eagerness.

  ‘Do I really have to go?’ Oliver had moaned. ‘John Lacey is not much fun. He is a really dull fellow,’ but on his arrival at John’s home his initial reluctance quickly disappeared.

  ‘Lucky chap,’ Oliver told John. ‘Smashing garden and big house, cook and gardener too. Lovely grub that cook serves up. I live in suburbia in a semi-detached house and would change places with you any day. I could get rid of that pest of a brother who’s always breaking my toys. No squawking baby sister either. It’s so peaceful here. I love the lake. Have you got a boat? Elizabethan house, isn’t it?’

  He was going to enjoy himself after all. He looked with envy at the moat filled with murky brown water that surrounded the house. It conjured up pictures in his boyish mind about the films he had seen depicting Robin Hood – fighting, drawbridges and moats in which the actors fell and died dreadful deaths, arrows often protruding from their backs. A narrow stone bridge now linked the house with the rest of the large garden, drawbridges being a thing of the medieval past, but Oliver thought it was wonderful. He fancied himself as a modern day Robin Hood. His thick fair hair surrounded his head like a halo and he was convinced his vivid blue eyes were a legacy from some prestigious Saxon ancestor. The old ice house intrigued him. He had visions of illicit carcasses of deer being stashed there. The antiques and pictures of men and women in Edwardian clothes that adorned the wall above the large oak staircase in the hall interested him. He had never seen anything like them before. He loved history and was surrounded by objects in a house and grounds that stirred his vivid imagination.

  John could not reply. He nodded mutely and turned away. He couldn’t answer his questions or tell him what a barren and miserable place he thought he lived in. Oliver would not understand. Nobody had told him who the stuffy looking men and women in Edwardian clothes were and he did not care about them or the history of his home. John longed to change places with Oliver. He had a mother and father as well as a small brother and baby sister, although he did not seem to love them, especially the brother. He, on the other hand, would appreciate them. It was not fair. His own house and his opulent surroundings oozed money but what good was that without love? He could not understand why pieces of paper and filthy coin
s should be allowed to determine people’s lives. Having money and a large opulent house did not make a person feel good inside.

  There were no other relatives to spoil John, doting aunts or uncles, and he turned to his studies for solace and mental sustenance. He learned to play a number of card games and complicated chess moves; he quite liked solitaire, too. It was not, he discovered, necessary to depend on others for his hobbies and he soon learned how to be independent and rely on himself for amusement. Many indulgent hours were spent arranging his collection of foreign stamps in books. Any attempt to interest his father in his efforts fell upon stony ground. ‘Look at these Dad,’ he would say to his father, ‘aren’t they interesting?’ or ‘Are those worth much? Are they a bargain? Have I spent my pocket money wisely?’ He thought the latter at least would impress his father. After all making money was his father’s chief interest.

  ‘Will you play chess with me Dad? Please.’ ‘That’s a silly game,’ his father would reply. He really had no idea how to play chess and he did not have the time to learn such a tedious hobby. Stamp collecting, what rot. Business games, in his opinion, would do more to improve John’s mind. The boy would be better employed reading about the business world, stocks and shares, as soon as he was able to appreciate such things.

  Jack Lacey rarely held any lengthy conversation with his son. He considered him to be too young to be a decent companion. In his opinion a grunt or two was all the boy merited. Jack had a habit of wiping his face with his hands as though brushing away cobwebs and John felt he was being brushed away, too. Jack’s once pretty and promising young wife was dead and with her his hopes of a happy life. In his view children should be seen occasionally but never heard. He wanted control, total control, over the situation.