I go to bed and cry. I don’t sleep and the next morning, I feel drained of all emotion and this makes me calmer. I make myself a pot of tea and sit in my armchair. As I drink the tea I start to analyse it all.
Mrs Mallow had lived with that secret all those years. Lived with the risk of being found out and hanged, or at the very least, put in jail for the rest of her life. That must have been torture for her. I start to look at it more positively because even though I didn’t know he was dead, she saved me from a life lived with that bastard always hovering, and God knows what else he might have done. No, she did me a favour. And if I’m honest, I cannot say if the roles were reversed and I had killed him that I would want her to know about it. That I would trust her not to hold it over my head like a threat, imagined or otherwise, with always the risk that she may tell.
And Tom?
What do I feel about him?
How would I feel if he had done the same for me as he had for his mother? Truth is, I would be immensely grateful. Tom wasn’t a coward, he’s been too hard on himself. He was just a man caught up in circumstances he couldn’t control and he didn’t know what to do about it. He was weak, yes, but a coward, no. No man who can go underground year after year hewing out that damned coal is a coward. He was just a man unable to express his feelings, who bottled them up, and I could sympathise with that. I started to wonder whether it was living half your life underground and in our narrow valleys made men more insular: unable to respond to emotions. You have to control your emotions underground and it becomes a habit.
I could sympathise with that.
Hours pass and my thoughts take me down every rabbit hole in my mind. This, that, the other, what ifs, fear, anger, downright rage, and then I come to a settling of the waves. There is nothing I can do, nothing can change what happened.
Mrs Mallow was a great believer in God and Heaven and Hell. She must have lived in dread of dying and facing her Maker. But what I do know is that if only we could have talked to each other, explained our feelings instead of letting them fester and poison us we might have had a better life. When you live so closely together, even a slight couldn’t be forgotten. Out of sight out of mind, is true, but so is, never out of sight never out of mind.
And then I realise I am going to have to make a decision about all this, and soon. My family will know about Tom’s letter, Sarah will tell them. Why should she not? They have no idea of what that letter contains. It’s just a fun thing for a grandfather to do. A mystery they assume they will be party to.
Do I tell them the truth or not?
Do I put my shame on show? The shame of the rape, of my sham of a marriage, of their grandmother being a murderer, of their father’s weaknesses. My weaknesses.
If there was ever a time I needed to go to the rocking stone and sit and think and decide what to do it is now. But, if the truth is told, I am too old to climb up to it. What shall I do? How can I decide?
I imagine myself sitting there, on its hard, smooth seat of granite and I feel its presence seeping into me. I remember all the times I’ve sat there, alone, or with Tom. It’s with me as I sit and think for hour after hour. Then I realise there is one other thing that can help me make a decision.
I get up from my comfy armchair, stiff muscles complaining, and pour myself a glass of sherry. I take it into my bedroom and put it down on my cherry wood bedside table, remembering my mother’s apple box that served for hers and the hooks in the wall she had for her sparse clothing. I look around at my beautifully decorated and carpeted bedroom, my cherry wood wardrobe full of my clothes. An outfit for every day and two for Sundays! I’ve come such a long way from my beginnings.
I look at my mother’s two pictures of Italy which are on the wall opposite my bed, just as my mother had them in her own bedroom. They have supported me throughout the years, the only memento I have of her. I love them. I trust them to help me in this.
I promise myself that by the time I’ve drunk the sherry, I’ll have made my decision. I settle myself down on top of the eiderdown, propped up by my pillows and look at the pictures.
I take a sip of my sherry, just a small one as I don’t want to rush this. I close my eyes and let my mind drift. I want instinct to take over.
I think of all the lives that have been lived in the world and are now lost and forgotten. Of how many loves, hatreds, good deeds and bad, have covered this earth. Countless – and after every generation they’re forgotten.
I’m the only one left to remember our family’s past. Would it be better for the present generation to know or not? Should I let the past die, like all the lives lived before, or do my family have a right to know the struggle and sacrifices their ancestors went through to enable them to be born? Could knowing all this help them to live fuller and better lives? Is that my destiny – to pass all this on?
I drink the last of my sherry and finally, finally, I know what to do.
I get up and go into my living room and pick up the phone. I ring Megan first . . .
* * *
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The Rocking Stone Page 25