by Jean Hill
Janet’s short-term memory had become so poor that she soon forgot the funeral as she was helped by Matthew and Robbie to the wheelchair and taken to her car so that Robbie could drive her the short distance down the road to Jasmine Cottage. A spread of cold meats and salad and a selection of sweets were waiting together with wine to toast Matthew’s grandfather’s memory in a way that he would have wished. Janet was confused and forgot after a while why she was there but was enjoying the unaccustomed company. Robbie helped her to the dining room where she was able to sit on a firm high-backed chair next to a small table.
‘It is a lovely day,’ she said to Felicity as a blank and worried expression appeared on her pale, lined face. ‘It has made quite a change. I not sure who all these people are dear.’
Felicity’s thin mouth crinkled into a sardonic smile. Felicity gave the impression to many people that she was cold hearted, lacking in conscience and very intelligent. The latter was far from the truth but she was, for the majority of people, a difficult person to understand.
Felicity’s thoughts wandered when she entered Jasmine Cottage. She looked forward with increasing fervour to the lunch that had been promised but she found herself repressing a shudder when she looked at the dining room walls painted with dull beige emulsion paint that had seen better days and the thin, almost threadbare, faded, beige curtains chosen to match many years earlier by the late Alice Mace. She estimated that the curtains would benefit from a jolly good wash though they could fall to pieces if they were not handled with care. She considered that would be an appropriate end for the dreadful things. Two clumsy home-made wooden chandeliers hung at precarious angles from the ceiling, their skimpy imitation candle bulbs coated with thick dust which served to reinforce her initial feeling of disgust. The carpet below her feet was matted with wear and displayed numerous marks where blobs of food had splattered down over many years to penetrate the surface and had not been cleaned. She looked with disdain at the cheap prints that hung on the walls and then considered for a few moments how satisfactory and enjoyable it would be to be able to dispose of Jeremy and Matthew. That was more interesting to her than the tatty old furniture and fittings. One down and two to go ... She would certainly welcome their absence from her life. The aroma of cooked meats reached her nostrils and her thoughts switched to the food set out on a large dining table covered with a crisp white linen cloth. She moved forward as soon as it was announced by Jeremy that the guests should help themselves to the funeral lunch, and piled a plate high with meats, salads, new potatoes, quiche, three crisp brown rolls and several pats of butter. She continued to daydream whilst she tucked heartily into her meal. Hmm ... no more tasteless egg sandwiches or Eccles cakes now that the old man was out of her life. Hurrah! She was for a few moments almost as restless as she had been as a child although her turbulent nature was now hidden with cunning skill from those closest to her. Lavender-scented spray polish muffled the smell of cheap whisky that followed in Jeremy’s wake as he staggered round in a weak attempt to mingle with his guests. Felicity felt nauseous for a few moments when he passed by but she soon recovered her appetite and served herself with a slice of fruit cake and a portion of cheesecake. She had forgotten about Janet and when she remembered her just before she finished her sweet she was relieved to see that she was eating some lunch and was being waited upon by Robbie. For one moment she almost felt a tremor of regret for her thoughtless behaviour but soon dismissed any feeling of guilt. The old bird had enough people to run round her. No harm had been done.
Robbie however was uncomfortable. He saw Felicity as a disturbed and tormented woman and he wondered why. Perhaps something had happened during her childhood to twist her mind. Like most people he could not understand her but he would watch and wait. What a gluttonous woman she was. There was no real proof that she was involved in Peter’s untimely death. However, if she was, she would slip up sooner or later and he would be waiting to pounce. That thought cheered him.
Janet glanced round in a vague way with little interest but, like Felicity, did observe that the furniture in Jasmine House was cheap and old which surprised her. Most of it looked as though it had come from a second-hand shop. The dining-room chairs in particular were worn and scuffed and parts of the carpet, between matted patches, almost threadbare. She was puzzled. The Mace family had a good business, or did they? They were a typical middle-class family. It did not make sense.
Janet dismissed the poor surroundings as being of little consequence, indeed they would, at least for her, soon be forgotten, but Felicity continued to smirk with a cruel and satisfying feeling as she looked at the faded furniture, sagging settee springs and worn old rugs. No wonder they are after Aunt Janet’s money, she thought. They will not be lucky if I have anything to do with it. Greedy creatures! She drifted once again into her own private world and considered how she could eliminate the rest of the Mace family if she got the chance. She would enjoy that. Her mind raced and her heart beat faster as she mulled over the possibilities. The old grandfather clock in the hall struck a tremulous three and she stopped daydreaming about the demise of the Mace family and attempted to make some stilted conversation with a few of the uninteresting-looking mourners who were drifting around the room with bored expressions. They consisted mainly of a few of Peter’s very old friends from the village and some of his past clients. What a dull lot she thought and as for the wine ... ugh, cheap and nasty. After making an effort to take a few sips during the few minutes after Jeremy made a sad speech about his father and glasses were raised by the guests, she disposed of the wine that remained in her glass in a handy plant pot when she thought that nobody was looking. Ghastly stuff. Ugh, she told herself. I wonder where they purchased that rubbish! The food was not bad but she understood that had been provided by the Green Man and they had a good reputation. It was a pity they had not provided the wine. She knew that they had a good cellar and did not stock any junk. She was surprised that the Mace family could afford such a good spread if the contents of the cottage were a true measure of wealth but the meal, together with her new outfit, had made an otherwise miserable day worthwhile.
The disposal of the contents of her wine glass was seen by Robbie who looked at her with increasing interest as she moved with stealth round the dining room and later the lounge into which a number of the guests had drifted. She glanced at him for a moment and he gave her a polite innocuous nod. There was something lurking under the surface that was dangerous: misdirected rage or was it bitterness? He was unsure. Cold bitch, he almost said out loud. She does know something about Peter’s death. His suspicions deepened and as he felt an unpleasant nagging settle in his chest he exhaled deep and long. Who would be next?
Chapter 12
Doctor Alistair Anderson
The boy sobbed quietly. His stepfather John Peters had banned him to his bedroom once again for some trivial misdemeanour, although he expected that his mother would intervene and he would soon be released from captivity. Alistair was only five when John Peters had come to live with them. He had never known his real father but had been a happy child living in the hotel his mother Judith had inherited from her parents when he was just two that had been his only home since he had been born. The boy was doted on by the young African maid who assisted his mother to make the beds, dust and clean the small Cape Town hotel’s eight bedrooms. He was spoilt too by the large motherly woman who undertook the cooking and who kept a tin of small treats ready for his visits to her kitchen. It was a world in which he had been content until local accountant John Peters had married his mother. John, a conscientious man and self-professed disciplinarian did, Alistair understood in his childish way, love his mother and tried to be a good father to him, but did not show him any love. It was Judith’s first marriage and Alistair, although young, knew she was thankful to have a husband who helped her in the hotel and could remove some of the burden of the day-to-day organisation from her shoulders but he couldn’t help himself wishing that sh
e had married someone nicer than John Peters.
‘Mum,’ he asked many times, ‘tell me how you met my real dad.’ The answer became more important now that John Peters had entered their lives.
Judith would oblige, usually at bedtime after she had read him a story and tucked him in for the night. A few minutes expanding on the life of James Anderson became part of their routine. The story of the strong tall James she had met whilst on holiday in Tunisia was embellished and expanded into a romantic tale.
‘We met on a silken sandy beach, gold and clean, where the blue sea lapped continuously,’ she would say and told him about the Tunisian souks, houses, Roman ruins and camels, embroidering the truth in an effort to provide a romantic backdrop. She did not mention the poverty they had witnessed.
‘We travelled to Cape Town together, across the sandy desert, and we fell in love.’
‘What did he look like?’ Alistair liked to ask. ‘Oh, handsome, tall, an adventurer ...’ she continued in an effort to embellish the story in a way that she thought would please the child she adored. ‘He had thick dark hair and stunning blue eyes, just like your eyes. Lovely deep voice ...’
‘Why did he die?’ ‘Your father became ill darling. He caught malaria, there was nothing that could be done for him. The poor man died before you were born but if he had seen you he would have loved you as much as I do. We wanted to get married but he already had a wife in England. He no longer loved her as much as he loved me ... and would have loved you too.’
It was what he wanted to hear but his mother knew that Alistair was astute and suspected that her memories were not accurate. A young imagination had, however, been fired. As he grew older he became ambitious and anxious to remove himself from the clutches of the pedantic John Peters and his desire to pursue knowledge about his biological father took second place. He attended medical school and when he qualified he changed his name from Peters, the name he had taken after his mother’s marriage, to Anderson. Doctor Alistair James Anderson. It felt right. His real father would have been proud of him.
Unlike the invidious James, Alistair was kind and loved children and animals but his blue eyes and deep voice stamped him as James’s son, the baby he had told Judith he did not want and had he lived would have abandoned in the same way that he had abandoned Janet.
When James died Judith arranged his funeral. She had promised James to send Janet his wedding ring together with a letter he had written to her but in her grief this was overlooked. She did not consider Janet was important but after a few months her conscience troubled her and she decided she should write to her. After all, it was only fair that she should know that she was now a widow.
‘Dear Mrs Anderson,’ she wrote. ‘You must be concerned about the whereabouts of your husband James. I am so sorry to tell you that he died a few weeks ago in Cape Town, South Africa, after suffering a bout of malaria. He has been cremated.’ How much she should tell this woman, this stranger, his wife he had claimed he no longer loved, she did not know. She decided to describe herself as a friend he had met on his travels and wrote that there was no point in Janet travelling to South Africa. She signed the letter ‘Judith’ but did not enclose the letter James had written to Janet, her own address or the wedding ring he had worn around his neck which would have given Janet the closure and proof that her disastrous marriage had ended. Judith was pregnant, grieving and struggling to come to terms with the death of her lover. Her parents were frail and she was involved in running the small hotel, which would soon be her own, and that was enough.
Alistair obtained a prestigious job in a large clinic. He never felt John Peters was a real father to him and John Peters had made it clear over the years that he only tolerated the boy for the sake of his mother. Alistair thought that the man was welcome to the money he gained from the sale of the hotel after Judith’s death; after all, he had worked hard at his mother’s side for a good number of years. Alistair told him that he only wanted a few of his mother’s possessions, which included a watch that had belonged to his biological father, some brief notes his mother had written about James’s funeral, James’s death certificate, the letter his father had written to Janet and the wedding ring. John had found them tucked away at the back of a dressing-table drawer after Judith’s death and felt honour bound to tell Alistair about them.
‘They are no use to me,’ he told Alistair. ‘They would only end up in a dustbin. What she ever saw in that philanderer I cannot imagine.’
Alistair smiled. He wondered what on earth she had seen in John Peters. John was described as a charming and considerate man by many of the hotel guests. On the surface he was but he never showed Alistair any of that charm or consideration. Alistair became convinced when he was growing up that James would have been different. He was after all his own flesh and blood.
‘He would have loved you,’ his mother had lied many times. How could she tell her beloved child anything else? She did not possess any photographs of James but described him as a good man to Alistair, who was thirsty for knowledge about the father he would never meet. ‘He was once a handsome officer in the British Navy and loved adventure,’ she repeated with conviction. ‘He loved to travel. That’s the reason we met on our journey across Africa.’ Thus the character of the self-centred selfish James became changed in order to placate the young child who would secretly dream about going to England one day to trace his roots.
John Peters tried to warn Alistair that his dreams about James Anderson could crumble. A more honest side of the story had been relayed to him by Judith.
‘I tried to be a good husband to your mother. I could not bring the excitement into her life that she experienced during the short time she was with your father. She did not get to know him really well. I hope that if you pursue your search for your father’s family roots you will not be disappointed.’
Alistair looked at John Peters with some empathy for the first time. The thought that he had misjudged him occurred to him. The man seemed cold and introverted, but, Alistair had to acknowledge, had supported and encouraged him during his student years. He owed him something but although he did feel a stab of pity for the frail and bent old man with white hair who was still anxious to do the right thing for Judith and her son, he doubted if he would visit him again though his conscience told him that he should if only to clarify a few misunderstandings between them.
Alistair noted Janet’s address – Primrose House, Enderly. He wondered if she was still alive. After making some enquiries he discovered that she was, and still living in Enderly. He packed the letter and ring in a case as he anticipated making a trip to England and he hoped Janet would want them and would receive him courteously. That was the most he could expect.
Alistair had married when he was thirty and had two daughters, Jenny and Alice. By the time he was in his early fifties, his wife had a responsible job as a journalist and his daughters were attending a good private school. He was comfortable and successful. He turned his attention once again to discovering his parental roots and perhaps visiting Janet if she was still alive.
‘Daddy, find out all you can,’ his daughters chorused when he booked a visit to England a few months later. Their faces were framed with thick blonde hair just like Alistair and Judith which was a legacy from their Boer ancestry. They were eager to find out more about their English ancestors, just as he was, but had exams to sit so it had been agreed that Doctor Alistair James Anderson would set out on his travels around the Russetshire countryside on his own.
A few weeks before he left South Africa for England he attended a party held by one of his wife’s friends in a large house on the outskirts of Cape Town. He chatted for some time with a man called George Berry who apparently knew Russetshire well. George suggested that he should stay in the Red Rooster public house in Little Brinton before visiting Enderly.
‘It will give you time to look round the area before looking up your father’s wife. Little Brinton is an interesting pl
ace,’ he had uttered smiling mysteriously. ‘I lived there for a while. There is a thriving bridge club in the village,’ he smirked and continued to outline some of the delights of the place. ‘There is a good village shop worth a visit. The old girl Mrs Blunt that ran it was an interesting character – a bit of a battleaxe.’ He laughed as he remembered the woman and her forceful behaviour, not that she ever got the better of him. ‘I’m going to travel across the Kalahari Desert to Botswana next week but I’m not sure where I will go after that. I like Botswana and worked there for a short while years ago. There are some good game reserves and I’m handy with a gun. My new young wife is African you know, who likes to travel.’
He looked at Alistair with cold blue eyes and Alistair struggled to repress a shudder. There was something untenable and odd about this man. He unnerved Alistair but he could not, despite all his medical training, think why.