So, a further meeting – assignation I liked to consider it – was arranged, about a fortnight later, in the park, the excuse I provided for my parents being a long-delayed reunion with Andrew. Matters did not go quite as I had expected, though. Her interest in local history remained undiminished, and she seemed as enthralled as ever with the folk tales I’d heard since childhood. The mistake I made was in associating Jimmy with such stories, whereupon the focus of her attention switched immediately to him. No matter what I said, no matter how I embellished the events, elaborated on the characterisation, the initiative had passed out of my hands. Nor did my efforts at disparagement – the inaccuracy of the man’s material, his facility for making enemies, the obscurity of his verse – have any effect. All it did was to enhance his appeal – Jimmy the romantic, a dark, enigmatic figure, origins unknown, future uncertain, had captured her imagination. Dejected at this hijacking of our conversation, I suggested she meet the man himself, realising it would bring the interrogation to a close, but wanting, above all to please her. Nor did her dismissal of the idea seem strange. It was the obvious solution; except that by now I was convinced there was a bond between us and that she was using him as a means of furthering it.
That was it, of course. It had all come round to Jimmy in the end. So surprised to hear about him, yet fascinated once his name had been mentioned – when she’d led me to it, rather. Then, suddenly, all attention switching to him. Eager to learn everything she could; pulling the very soul from me. Finally, vanishing without a word as suddenly as she had come. Jimmy had been her target all along. The reason was soon to become obvious, the consequences still loitering in the background of my subconscious some thirty years later. And Veronica Flack’s explanation – if she had one – long overdue.
Chapter Thirteen
Carnations and Roses
‘Come now, Peter, surely you’re not still holding it against me? A little mild flirtation? Not all one-sided either. So, what was the harm in it?’
Back in 1985 now, with all three of them staring at me, and Veronica – Geraldine Leapman rather – still acting the innocent. What harm? She had the gall to ask me that. Just what kind of fool did she take me for? Helen laid a restraining hand on my arm.
But there was more to come: ‘You’re blowing this out of all proportion, Peter, really you are. All I wanted was your help. No one else seemed willing to give it and there was no guidebook, so why all the song and dance?’
I didn’t believe a word of it. Why the make-believe if she’d been nothing more than a tourist? Such an elaborate façade, as well, for someone interested merely in beauty spots or local history.
‘You’ve a far sharper memory than mine, that’s for certain.’ She seemed amused rather than offended. ‘Except for a point of detail that seems to have eluded you. Your diffidence back in those days; the unwillingness to unbend. Only to be expected in a teenager, I suppose. And a Beredonian at that. No fraternisation with outsiders, anyone not born within a musket-shot of the village, in fact. Prided ourselves in being different, as well, didn’t we? So adult and sophisticated. I can see you now, sitting there, prim and proper, in your grammar school blazer.’ She brought herself upright in the chair, stick clasped before her, smiling beatifically; a parody as infuriating as it was accurate. Just the tiniest bit of encouragement on my part, that’s all that it took.’
She was right. I had been susceptible, prone to flattery, but she wasn’t escaping that easily. Not after the damage she’d caused. One minute pumping me for all the information she could obtain, off to the four winds the next. Veronica/Geraldine had known exactly what she was after.
But now a change of tack: ‘You’re serious aren’t you, Peter? Storing it up all this time. You must have been genuinely struck on me. Well, I’m sorry, but it was just a ruse to get you talking, something I’d quite forgotten till you arrived at our doorstep. What can I say? Sorry for my pretence? For all the upset I seem to have caused, leading you on in that way? I suppose I just didn’t think.’
She’d thought alright. The whole plot, through from beginning to end. There’d been no chance meeting. Her insistence that I alone, who’d been so close to Jimmy, should be the one to help her was nothing but a ruse. Then, having discovered all that I knew, off into the unknown. She must have thought she’d got away with it as well. Would have done – but for Mildred’s five minutes of fame. It had taken half a lifetime but the play-acting was at an end. As was her sham interest in the village. We were through with the make-believe and excuses.
I don’t remember just how much of this I said, but: ‘That’s quite enough, Peter! We’re visitors here, and can’t you see they’re only trying to help.’ It might have been worse, but for Helen’s intervention.
Mildred, silent throughout my accusations, stepped forward and opened the door. ‘I think you’d better leave, now!’
‘She’s right, we should go home. And I think Mrs Leapman is due an apology. It’s all past history, as she says, so where’s the harm in it?’
‘Owe her an apology? When you’ve only heard one side of the story?’ Helen’s suggestion goaded me still further. ‘What’s the harm? Go on, Veronica, tell us what happened after you hightailed it into the blue yonder. If you dreamt up the worst of his nightmares, multiplied it a hundred times over, you couldn’t have done worse.’
‘Honestly, Peter, I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’ Geraldine seemed genuinely perplexed. ‘Jimmy, as you call him, was my sole interest. No point in denying it after all these years. Whatever happened later was no concern of mine.’
‘Coincidence, then, the ones that came after you? Press, reporters, photographers hotfoot down from London. Strange, how no one on God’s earth’s heard of Jimmy till she appears on the scene. Then exit Veronica and hey presto her friends arrive mob-handed!’
‘Peter!’ Again, Helen’s remonstrance.
I shook her off. ‘Tell us what more there was to it then. You must have known from all I told you how much Jimmy detested publicity of any kind, let alone flash-lights and cameras. He just couldn’t work that one out. His pictures – the press might have got hold of them, the Shakespheres possibly. But they knew about the stories, so it must have been one of us children that had blabbed.’
‘And that’s what all this fuss is about?’ Mildred snorted her disdain. ‘Hardly the crime of the century.’
‘The only people in the village he really trusted.’ Once started I was in no mind to listen. ‘Stupid of him, wasn’t it? With half of Bereden cursing him for bringing such a visitation down upon our heads, the rest accusing one another of the responsibility, and only I knowing who was to blame. Realising what I’d done yet not daring to own up. Terrified that Jimmy would learn how much I’d betrayed him, that the others might get to know who’d let them down. I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite as lonely in my life. Part of me never has.’
‘So that’s it! You thought that I was a reporter! Or some stringer from the tabloids. I don’t know whether to be upset or flattered.’ Geraldine was taking my accusations in good part. ‘But you’ve got it wrong, Peter.’ She shook her head. ‘So far off the mark that I hardly know where to begin.’
‘His own guilty conscience working overtime.’ Mildred had no such doubts.
‘That’s quite enough.’ A single glance from Geraldine silenced her. ‘Seems to me there’s a far simpler explanation. One based on fact rather than whimsy.’ She sounded far more confident now. ‘Jimmy wasn’t completely unknown; you’ve said that yourself. Those Shakespheres were just coming onto the market and he’d made a hero of himself, saving your brother that way. Yes, Peter, another piece of information you were quite eager to let slip. So, isn’t it just possible – no, likely – that an editor out there somewhere, or an eager journalist, picked up the story? Not me, I promise. Just look around you if you doubt my word. Those are Jimmy’s pictures on the wa
lls, aren’t they? Brilliant, some of them, but hardly commercial. As Mildred discovered, not worth a fortune. So, why else do you think I’ve kept them? You should be grateful rather. They’re all we have left of him.’
‘All we have left of him.’ It was Helen who’d spoken, whispered rather. Sitting beside her, I hardly caught the words.
* * *
…All we have left of him.’ There was something in Geraldine’s tone that caught my attention. As she spoke her face had softened, taking on a gentleness wholly out of keeping with the harshness of Peter’s attack. Regret. The kind of thing captured a hundred times over by the old masters. Or Shakespearean actors at their best. Yet there was more to it than this. Grief certainly, but tenderness also. An indefinable yearning, impossible to counterfeit. The precise duplicate of the one I’d witnessed first-hand some time back…
…the anniversary of Daddy’s death, that was it. The third it must have been. Since when I’d stayed clear; away from the turmoil and recriminations, the never-ending check-list of his inadequacies, Mother’s interminable rage. Aimed chiefly at the hours we’d spent together. The way I’d listened to his fantasies, encouraging them even; developing the wayward side of his character, so she claimed. When I’d been every bit as devastated as she had been. And just as unforgiving.
Nevertheless, finding myself in the area, a few minutes’ drive from home, it was Daddy I decided to visit. There’d be problems tracing the grave. Overgrown and neglected last time I’d seen it. Down from the lichen-covered cross, I remembered, a single granite slab among the toys and plastic dolls, the jam-jars stuffed with artificial flowers; his name, dates of birth and death inlaid in black. All we had left. With Mother begrudging him this much even. Given her way, like as not he’d have been unceremoniously dumped into an unmarked grave. I’d come prepared: kneeler, trowel, clippers purchased from an ironmonger en route, roses from the car-park stall. No need. The grass, I observed from a distance, was mown. The pathway had been raked. His headstone scrubbed free of moss. And there was a figure crouched down beside it, placing flowers in a glass container, coaxing the blooms lovingly into position. Young, female, tastefully dressed, hair tucked under the brim of a hat conforming to the latest of fashions. Unaware of my approach till she glanced up. There was a fleeting moment of recognition. And she was gone.
Alison, of course. Who’d been uninvited to the funeral, ostracised by the family, lampooned by the press. Neither as young as Mother maintained, nor as ‘tarty’ as she implied. Keeping her lonely vigil at the grave she’d tended these last few years. I made no attempt to follow; simply placed my roses alongside the bouquet she’d brought. Carnations. Expensive, out of season, and – how could I have forgotten? – his favourites. And there was a note, four words only: As you like it. Of all the expressions she might have chosen, why that one? The picture, of course. I remembered telling Peter how much Mother hated it; how Daddy had smuggled it up to the study. A coincidence? I’d thrust all other thoughts aside, determined not to dwell on them…
But the image I’ve carried down the years. Her expression especially. The moment before she looked up and caught my eye; the moment before the moment rather. Hard to describe. Regret. Emptiness. Loss. Every last nuance played out in fine detail. Re-captured now by Geraldine, at Willow Drive, five years down the line.
‘You must have been very fond of him,’ I said.
‘Jimmy?’ It was there in her tone also. ‘You might say that, my dear. Considering I married him.’
Chapter Fourteen
Birds of Pray
We spent a sleepless night in The Spurs and Stirrup, a drab hotel of Mildred’s choosing. Geraldine had been tired. She’d put up a spirited defence, but the cross-examination had taken a lot out of her so we must wait till morning. Then and then only would we get the rest of her tale. Peter was still in shock, as much from the old lady’s revelations as his own reactions. They’d surprised me, too. His embarrassment I could understand. All of us, at some time or other, have had crushes of this kind. And true, it had been thoughtless, blurting it out in that way. But his turning on her, the viciousness of his response – inexcusable, considering her age and condition. Till, thinking it over, I realised it was his betrayal of Jimmy that was really troubling him, a guilt he must have been nursing down the years. Something the two of us shared; the betrayal of, or by, someone who’d been close. How long, I sometimes wonder, would it have taken for such disclosures to emerge had we missed that television programme; if our search had ended at this point?
But it didn’t. Next day the old lady was in a forgiving mood. As was Mildred. Still smarting, though, from the dressing down she’d been given. Hurt that Geraldine had not confided in her. Just how much, we wondered, did she know about Jimmy? When precisely had they met? Geraldine in pursuit of an artistic husband; Jimmy – I quipped – nursing a passion for assertive women. Veronica Flack, Enid Quintock and Alice Amberstone – a formidable triumvirate. Yet never once did either of us picture him in an ecclesiastical setting. Back in the mid-1920s that would have been. No more than eleven or twelve as Geraldine took up the story; marching in crocodile along with the orphanage children, to church each Sunday.
Derek he’d been then. With Geraldine – Veronica rather – some three years younger, watching as they sat in rows, girls at the front, boys at the back, just as they’d done for as long as she could remember. Jimmy an orphan? The first Peter had heard of it. Veronica had been curious as well. Later, after they were married, she’d tried to trace the records, but the paperwork had been destroyed during the war.
‘And a miserable time he had of it. You can check that out for yourselves.’ She jabbed with her stick at a small picture high up on the opposite wall. ‘“Twenty or more sisters and not a mother between them,” that’s all I could get out of him. Nor did I realise just how bitter he was, not till I found that painting.’
Mildred moved her armchair to one side and the three of us gathered round the picture. Birds of Pray was much in the Home Thoughts style, the title, subject matter and artwork merging to form a visual pun. Here the ‘B’ of Birds took the form of the enormously busted, big-bellied abbess, a switch grasped in one hand whilst with the other she points to a text above her head: God is Love. The second letter – ‘i’ – had become an opened bottle labelled brimstone; the third – ‘r’– the figure of a small child cowering before her; ‘d’ through to the ‘y’ in Pray a line of nuns, heads respectably wimpled, wearing ebony black – the habit of the order – their bodies contorted into prayerful subjugation. Or so it appeared. On closer inspection what had been vestments became pairs of enormous wings. The folds in their garments were individual feathers. Silver chains hobbled each of their delicate white feet to the branch on which they were sitting.
‘My God, how he hated us!’
An unguarded exclamation, but Geraldine picked up on it immediately. ‘A Catholic? How tactless of me. And convent-educated as well?’ Surely I’d not crossed myself. ‘I’m so sorry, my dear, that’s the last of his pictures I’d have shown you had I known.’ She beckoned us over, indicating that I should resume my seat beside her. ‘He was just as offensive to the Anglicans, you know. Would have let fly at the Methodists, too, given half a chance. Atheists even.’ The arthritic fingers that rested on my wrist were ice-cold yet comforting. ‘Nothing like your own teachers, I’m sure. It was a love/hate relationship between them really, Derek and those nuns. Grateful after his fashion for what they’d done for him, taking him in after he’d been abandoned, feeding and educating him, but resenting it all the same. All his life long, the threats and the beatings, the hellfire and the strap. Surprise was that, one way or another, either because or in spite of it – and don’t ask me which – he emerged such a brilliant teacher. Good enough to be put in charge of the orphanage Sunday School, then asked to help out down at the church. Only too glad of the opportunity as well, no matter how much he was to
look back at it as exploitation. The “birds of pray” exacting their pound of flesh.’
‘Wonder is he didn’t add The Merchant of Venice to the Shakesphere series.’ Peter seemed to have recovered his humour but, I could tell, remained suspicious.
It had been later at the Sunday School that Derek had taken her eye. After all those years of paying no heed to the orphans – the “Awful-ens” as she’d called them – fidgeting away at the back of the church. Not that she had time for boys in any shape or form till, called upon to help him out, she’d become entranced with his story-telling prowess. Those found in the Old Testament especially. Talking donkeys, plagues of locusts, boils or serpents, staffs miraculously transformed into snakes or blossoming into leaf, ghostly writings on the wall – the more outlandish the plot, the better he seemed pleased.
‘Not so the rest of teachers.’ Geraldine smiled impishly. ‘“Inculcating the wrong sort of values entirely”’ – an impersonation presumably –‘ took the matter straight to the rector. Poor man. With Derek in the fold he might well lose one or other of his voluntary helpers; without him – and the parents only too eager to be shot of their offspring on a Sunday afternoon – he’d have none of the congregation left.’
‘Couldn’t get enough of him myself.’ Her sense of fun was infectious. Carry on this way, I thought, and she’d have Peter won over completely. ‘Began taking an adult interest in my appearance, all fourteen years of me. Went out of my way to please him in every way – and I mean “every way” – possible. Not that Derek noticed.’ Geraldine sighed. ‘All fire and energy inside the classroom, yet withdrawn and passive once the books were closed, the church door locked behind us.’
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