by Anne Bennett
‘Are you bloody crazy, man? It’s the middle of the night.’
‘I have a right.’
‘So does he, I should think. A right to a decent night’s sleep.’
‘I insist you phone him.’
‘You ain’t in a position to insist on much, mate,’ the copper said. But he knew he’d have to phone. The man would be up before the magistrate in the morning and if he said he’d been refused legal advice, then the policeman knew he’d be in big trouble. The others arrested with him had all had their solicitors brought in straight away, but this one hadn’t spoken. They’d brought in a police solicitor, but the prisoner hadn’t looked at him, let alone spoken. The entire time the solicitor was there, Arthur had lay and stared at the ceiling.
Now it appeared the man had his own solicitor all the time. ‘All right,’ the policeman snapped. ‘Give me his name and number and I’ll ring him. But if he won’t come, he won’t come and I can’t make him. D’you understand?’
But Mr Morriatty had come. He hadn’t been pleased because he’d been about to go to bed. But it wouldn’t be the first time he’d been summoned this way, though he’d never thought such a call would come from Arthur Bradley. He’d worked for the man for years, usually for his business interests and certainly not for anything of this nature.
However, solicitors are trained to hide their feelings of shock and even revulsion that they might feel in a client’s dealings, and Mr Morriatty was no exception. He’d known over the years he’d dealt with Arthur’s affairs about his feelings for his daughter – in fact, he often thought you’d have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to realise how Arthur doted on the child. He’d been staggered then to find that Arthur had chosen not to inform Angela of his whereabouts. ‘I told you I wasn’t thinking straight,’ Arthur snapped angrily. ‘Anyway, how could I tell her about all this?’
Mr Morriatty was incensed on the girl’s behalf, incensed enough to let his veneer drop slightly. ‘Good God, man, you don’t have to give it to her chapter and verse. Couldn’t you just say the police had asked you to come in for questioning? You can’t just say nothing at all. The girl must be worried sick.’
Arthur couldn’t begin to explain why he didn’t want to talk to Angela. He didn’t want her involved at all for, despite her behaviour over the past months, he cherished the idea in his head that she was his one triumph. She was no longer as pure and innocent as he’d have liked, but still he’d have never wanted her to know of this side of his life.
But the solicitor was right. She had to be told, but he didn’t want to see her or speak to her, he couldn’t cope with seeing her scorn, her disgust. ‘You tell her,’ he told the solicitor. ‘But not by phone. Go up to the house.’
‘It’s the early hours of the morning.’
‘Well, if she’s as worried as you say she is, she’ll hardly be deep in sleep, will she?’
Mr Morriatty dreaded the visit, dreaded what he had to tell Angela and he was both relieved and worried when no one answered the door. The house was shut up and in darkness and it stayed that way, but as he turned away, he couldn’t help wondering where the girl had spent the night.
Next morning, he only had a few minutes with Arthur before the hearing, but he did tell him that Angela hadn’t been at the house. He’d seen a tic begin to beat at the side of Arthur’s head and his hands curl into fists and uncurl again. ‘Calm yourself, Mr Bradley.’
‘Calm myself! Calm myself, you say!’ Arthur snarled. ‘So where has the little trollop been? Tell me that if you like.’
‘Mr Bradley, I hardly think … Has the girl any friends or family?’
‘None,’ Arthur snapped. ‘She has no one.’
Mr Morriatty knew of course of the mother who had abandoned her daughter, but maybe in the circumstances of her father’s disappearance – well, blood was thicker than water, people said.
But there was no point discussing this with Arthur, and anyway there were things they had to go over and they had little enough time before the case was to be called. But the worry about the whereabouts of Arthur’s daughter remained in the solicitor’s mind.
When he went into court therefore, he was relieved to see that Angela Bradley was not only alive and well, but had someone with her to support her. And although he’d never met Hannah, he could make a calculated guess that one of the women with Angela was her long-lost mother, for she was too like her to be anyone else. He saw the malevolent look Arthur cast their way and thought that he’d never understand the man.
In fact when he saw him after the adjournment, Arthur seemed more concerned about Hannah getting her claws into Angela after all he’d done to prevent it than he was about what would happen to him now. He seemed not to be aware of the severity of the charges levelled against him, nor come to terms with the fact that even with all the skill and efforts of Mr Morriatty and a clever barrister, he was still facing a hefty prison sentence. Surely it was better that the girl had someone to turn to?
Apparently not in Arthur’s mind. Mr Morriatty was very glad that Arthur’s trial had been adjourned for psychiatric reports for in his opinion his reactions were anything but normal!
As the three women emerged on the court steps, they were joined by Vic who’d come after morning surgery.
All were in a state of shock. It was hard to see someone you know up in the dock and particularly for such unspeakable crimes. Previously, all three women had only seen inside a courtroom on the television and the experience had unnerved them all. Angela wasn’t really functioning properly, for her mind was going over the list of crimes read out. She held on to her tears with difficulty, for she had the feeling if she began to cry she’d never stop. But Hannah was amazed and had great respect for her daughter’s self-control, for she knew the whole experience must have hit her like a hammer blow.
Angela forced her mind back to her present predicament. She had to decide what she must do now. Where was she to stay? She must at least collect some clothes, she’d brought little with her the previous night. But when she asked Vic if they could stop at the house, he shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t, Angela,’ he said. ‘I drove down your road on the way here and the press are already converging on the house.’
Angela was shaken. She’d not realised they’d be newsworthy – or at least not so quickly.
‘Oh. Aren’t they horrid?’
‘They’re out to sell papers, that’s all,’ Vic said. ‘They don’t care who gets hurt in the process.’
‘Thank God, she’s well out of it with us then,’ Hannah said.
‘They’ll soon find out where she is,’ Vic warned. ‘The neighbours will talk and they’ll know where she’ll make for.’
‘Maybe I’d be harder to trace,’ Josie put in. ‘Angela could stay with us for a while if she wants to. I know Phil won’t mind in the least. How do you feel about it, Angela?’
‘After this morning, I don’t feel anything about anything,’ Angela said forlornly. ‘I’m sort of numb inside.’
Hannah longed to hold tight to her child who was hurting so very much. She also wanted her under her own roof where she could look after her, but she knew Josie’s suggestion was a sensible one. ‘What about my things?’ Angela said as they drove towards Moseley. ‘I’ve left nearly everything I own behind.’
‘Well, we can manage clothes for a few days,’ Josie said. ‘You can borrow some of mine.’
‘How long d’you think I’ll have to hide out like this?’
‘Oh, not so long, I shouldn’t think,’ Vic said confidently. ‘Something else will happen before too long and this will all be old news.’
‘But until then I’m like a prisoner,’ Angela thought and then another thought overtook her. She had very little money. She tended to spend her monthly allowance as soon as she got it, knowing she could always tap her father for more, but now … Well, that part of her life was all over. Josie was right, she thought, as Vic drew up outside Josie’s little house. If I’d tried harder at school,
I could be working now. Who would employ a seventeen-year-old no hoper?
Hannah had only been in a few minutes when there was a knock on the door. Mindful of Vic’s warnings about the press, Hannah opened it cautiously to find Elizabeth Banks on the doorstep. ‘Oh Hannah, my dear, I’m sorry to trouble you, but have you had word from Arthur? He hasn’t turned in for work this morning and in view of your phone call yesterday, we were rather concerned.’
There was little point in not telling her. So far, she’d told only Amy and Tom, but now the press had wind of it, the whole can of worms would be open to the world soon enough. ‘Come in, Elizabeth,’ she said. ‘I’ll make us coffee, although for what I am about to tell you, something stronger might be in order.’
To say Elizabeth was shocked at Hannah’s news was putting it mildly. ‘I can’t believe it, I just can’t believe it,’ she said and then she leaned across the table and patted Hannah’s hand. ‘I can quite see, my dear, why you felt driven to leave him.’
‘I didn’t leave him for this,’ Hannah said. ‘I didn’t know. He used to go out many evenings in the week, but I didn’t know where. I didn’t much care either, I was happier when he was out of the way. No, Elizabeth, I left Arthur because of cruelty. Not physical cruelty, though he has used his fists on me occasionally, but he put me through mental agonies. He went to extreme lengths to separate me from Angela. That was the hardest thing to bear.’
‘Dear, dear,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Arthur told us you never bothered with the child.’
‘I was never allowed to bother,’ Hannah said bitterly and went on to explain why Angela had been sent away to school and how she was never allowed to go with Arthur when he went to see her at weekends and about the Christmas when Arthur took Angela away and she began the affair with Vic Humphries.
‘I took the job with Vic, not just because I wasn’t needed at home with Angela being at school all day and Pauline still in the house, but also because I was short of money,’ Hannah told Elizabeth. ‘Arthur never gave me any unless we were coming to see you. I had to be decently dressed then and he would play the part of the devoted husband and that’s all it was – an act.’
‘Vic and I had fought the attraction we had begun to feel between us initially, but that Christmas Day, I was just so incredibly lonely. Of course, the inevitable happened. I became pregnant and Arthur threatened to report Vic to the Medical Council if I had any contact at all with Angela. The ban extended to Josie as well.’
‘That isn’t how I heard it.’
‘I bet,’ Hannah said bitterly. ‘And now Elizabeth, you may as well hear it all,’ and she went on to tell her about Mike Murphy and the son she had who was now called Matthew Olaffson.
‘By pure chance, the family who adopted my son moved here from Leeds as I did and Angela and he met – neither of them knowing of the association between them. They were engaged to marry before I met Matthew, again by chance in Erdington, and I guessed straight away that he was my son. I checked of course, I didn’t go on likeness alone.’
‘Does Arthur know?’
‘He does now,’ Hannah said. ‘He had to know, because the association between Angela and Matthew could not be allowed to continue.’
‘Never have I felt so stupid,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Reg and I thought you such a lovely couple.’
‘It was the image Arthur wanted to promote,’ Hannah said. ‘He said if I told the truth and he was to lose face, I’d never see Angela again.’
‘Surely he couldn’t …’
‘Oh, he could,’ Hannah said. ‘Angela wasn’t too keen on me when she was younger anyway – helped along by Daddy, of course. Then there was the lucrative job Arthur had, enabling Angela to go to private school, and the house that was his alone. I would have nothing to offer, besides which, he threatened to bring it up about my mental history, you know, the depression I had after Angela’s birth, making it difficult for me to even have contact with her. After losing my first child, I couldn’t have borne it.’
‘I really don’t know what to say,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I feel I’ve been really stupid. Reg will feel that too. We have both been taken in quite dreadfully.’
‘Don’t feel too bad about it,’ Hannah said. ‘Arthur could be charming when he wanted to be. To tell you the truth, the one I am most worried about in all this is Angela.’
‘She’s never staying in the house by herself?’
‘No. She’d never get in the place,’ Hannah said. ‘It’s besieged by the press. Angela’s hiding out in Moseley with Josie. Vic says they’ll come here. Some of the neighbours are bound to say where I am.’
And they obviously did. The day hadn’t finished before Hannah was contacted. The phone calls were bad enough, but worse were those belonging to the knot of press hanging about the gate who actually knocked on the door.
‘I have a life to live,’ Hannah complained. ‘I have to get Adam to and from school and Frances to her playgroup. I also have to go shopping and every time I leave the house, they’re hustling around me, firing questions, shouting after me.’
‘It will calm down eventually,’ Vic said. ‘You’ll see. It will be a nine day wonder.’
‘Well, if this keeps up, they will be the longest nine days of my life,’ Hannah said, and so it proved and she was grateful for the letters of support she got from Tilly and Pauline when she wrote and told them both of the latest developments.
If you want me to come down for the trial, Hannah, you’ve only got to say the word,
Tilly wrote and Pauline also offered to come down for a few days if it would help.
If things had been right between Angela and her, Hannah would have been happy to have seen both women and knew she would feel more able to cope with a couple of good friends at her back. But for now, her energies had to be directed towards Angela and building the relationship with her. She couldn’t allow anything to come before that.
Marian understood how she felt and Hannah valued her friendship. She knew when Marian died Matthew wouldn’t be the only one devastated, for she’d miss her greatly.
The papers were very concerned with the lurid details of the arrests and crimes the people were accused of and not just names, but photographs too, were in some of the Sunday papers, much to Angela’s dismay. But eventually the interest in the cases died down as something more sensationalist came into their line of vision.
One Sunday afternoon, two weeks after the whole nightmare had begun, there was a knock at Hannah’s door and she opened it to Father Fitzgerald. ‘My dear Mrs Humphries, Hannah, I’ve come to see how you are coping.’
‘With the latest outrage you mean, Father?’ Hannah asked. ‘Come through to the kitchen and I’ll make us a drink.’
Father Fitzgerald had come to see Hannah because he felt he must, for he’d been shocked to the core, but he was as embarrassed as hell to be there. He’d wondered before he came how much Hannah had been aware of, but when she told him about it as he drank the tea she made him and nibbled the proffered biscuits, he realised she’d known very little. ‘It’s Angela I feel sorry for really,’ Hannah said at the end of her tale.
‘Ah, yes,’ the priest said. ‘Is she here?’
‘No,’ Hannah said. ‘Because of the media interest, you know. We thought it would be better if she stayed with Josie.’
Father Fitzgerald had always had a soft spot for Josie and had popped in to see her quite a few times in the house since she’d married. ‘I’m sure both Josie and Angela would love to see you,’ Hannah said.
‘Yes, indeed I’ll go, the first chance I get,’ Father Fitzgerald said, draining his cup and getting to his feet. ‘I do understand more now, Hannah, why you felt you could no longer live with Arthur. It is regrettable. Maybe in cases like this, there could be special dispensation …’
‘No, Father. Leave it as it is,’ Hannah said. ‘I’m divorced now and married to Vic and happy with it.’
‘But …’
‘I know what you’re going to say
, Father, but don’t. I know the Church’s views on divorce, but it isn’t mine or Vic’s. Please leave us to sort our lives out and deal with Angela.’
‘If that’s how you really feel?’
‘It is, Father.’
‘Well, then, we’ll leave it so, Hannah,’ the priest said and he took hold of Hannah’s hand at the door and shook it as he said, ‘I’ll pray for all of you.’
Hannah watched the priest walk down the path and thought that a few prayers for them wouldn’t go amiss at the present time.
‘The waiting is the worst part,’ Angela said to Josie about a month later. ‘I feel as if I can’t get on with anything until it’s settled.’
Josie understood, but she said, ‘Angela, whatever happens, you have a life to live.’
‘I know that,’ Angela said with a sigh. ‘But for a long time Daddy was the centre of my world. It was like looking at a stranger, hearing things about a stranger – it was weird. I feel as if I’m cast adrift. As if my father is dead. And for ages I thought I’d never be able to raise my head again, I felt so ashamed. I still do at times, but it’s slowly getting better.’
‘But you have no reason to be ashamed, surely you know that?’ Josie said. ‘You’re not responsible for your father. And now that the press has lost interest, you could go and live with Hannah if you want. I know she’d like it.’
‘I’d prefer not to, unless you want rid of me,’ Angela said.
‘No, not particularly,’ Josie answered. ‘It’s quite nice having you, really. You’re another pair of hands, but I think Hannah feels it.’
‘I see her every week.’
‘I think she wants more than that.’
‘Yeah, well …’
‘What is it, Angela?’
‘She’s always going on about Matthew. Have you noticed how much she mentions him?’
‘You can’t be jealous of Matthew?’
‘Well, I can and Adam and Frances, too,’ Angela replied. And she was, insanely jealous. She’d never really learnt to share. She’d never had much practice at it and at home amongst her family, she’d been used to taking centre stage. It had changed when Hannah had left, but she’d still come first with her father. ‘My mother doesn’t need me,’ she said.