by Janet Tanner
That was the line she was taking now.
‘Juliet, can’t we just drop the subject? I don’t want you to go to Jersey and that is all there is to it.’
Juliet sighed in exasperation, pushing a hand through her mane of light brown hair, shot with golden highlights by exposure to the hot sunshine of a Sydney summer. The summer had gone now but the highlights remained, warm and pleasing to the eye.
‘I don’t see what all the fuss is about. I was born there, I lived there until I was four years old, my grandma still lives there and so do most of my relatives. I am between jobs. It’s an ideal opportunity to go and meet them all. So what objection could there possibly be?’
‘It’s halfway round the world. You can’t go dashing off just like that.’
‘Why not, for heaven’s sake?’
‘You just can’t. Besides, Sean wouldn’t like it.’
‘Sean doesn’t own me. He’s my boyfriend, not my keeper.’
‘I thought the two of you were getting engaged.’
‘Don’t say it like that, as if it were some sort of life sentence. You know very well we are going to get engaged and probably married next year. But as far as I’m concerned that’s all the more reason for me to do this now, before I tie myself down to a home and family. Look, I’m sorry to be so obtuse but I simply don’t see what the problem is. If it comes to that, I don’t know why neither of you have been back in almost twenty years.’
The silence was sudden and complete. Molly’s hazel eyes, just a shade lighter than Juliet’s own, took on a dazed expression and it seemed to Juliet that her father, behind his newspaper, had stopped breathing. She laughed a trifle nervously.
‘Hey – what have I said?’
‘What do you mean? This is all getting extremely silly …’ Molly fluttered.
‘It is, isn’t it?’ Juliet agreed. ‘If you think I can’t see that you are hiding something you must think I’m an idiot. For goodness’ sake, Mum, tell me what it’s all about! What dark secret is there hidden in Jersey that you don’t want me to find out about? I’m twenty-three years old and you can’t continue to treat me like a child!’
‘Some other time, Juliet. I’m due at a meeting of the Museum Society.’
‘Oh no, Mum, you can’t get out of it so easily.’
‘Juliet, please.’
‘She’s right, Molly.’ Robin folded his newspaper and took off his spectacles, rubbing his eyes with his fingers. ‘You can’t keep it from her for ever.’
‘But we agreed …’
‘When she was a little girl. You thought it would be best.’
‘And so did you! You didn’t want her to know either!’
‘What?’ Juliet demanded. ‘ What didn’t you want me to know?’
Robin looked at her nervously. Sometimes he found it difficult to believe that this lovely young woman was really his daughter, the baby he had taken for long walks in her push-chair around the mellow-gold-and-green island of Jersey, Channel Islands, the little girl he had taught to swim in their private pool here in Sydney. He remembered her at six, astride her first pony, her legs barely long enough to come even halfway down the pony’s plump sides, he remembered her in pink leotard and tights, going to her ballet class at the age of eight. Perhaps that had been the first time he had realised just how pretty she promised to be. But it was impossible, all the same, to reconcile that child – his child – with the young woman she had become. Juliet was not tall by today’s standards – five feet six in her rubber-soled flipflops – but she was perfectly proportioned with curves that matched the round prettiness of her face and long shapely legs, tanned to a warm golden brown. If photographs were anything to go by she was very like her grandmother – his mother – had been at her age, except for her eyes. Sophia, his mother, had had eyes of startling amethyst, the most unusual colour he had ever seen in his life.
Robin stood up. There was a weight of sorrow inside him suddenly. That was why he’d never told her … because he was a coward and some things did not bear thinking about.
‘Dad, you can’t just leave it there – you have to explain,’ Juliet said, planting herself in front of him. He sidestepped her, elegant in his lizard-skin sneakers.
‘Your mother will tell you.’
‘Oh yes, leave it all to me!’ Molly called after him, exasperated, as he went out. ‘That’s typical of you, isn’t it?’ There was no reply and she turned to Juliet, a small round woman, fussed and furious now. ‘ He’s always been the same. He just won’t …’
‘I know what he’s like. Well, Mum, are you going to tell me what this is all about?’
‘You really want to know?’
‘For goodness sake, of course I do! If I hadn’t wanted to before I would now. All this secrecy!’
Molly sighed, defeated. All these years they’d kept it from her – for her own good, they’d told themselves, though she had often wondered if that was the real reason and whether they were making a grave mistake. Sometimes over the years she had felt very tired of the lies and half truths and excuses. Robin would not talk about what had happened; Robin never would. It was not his way. But that did not mean they had forgotten, either of them, and sometimes she had wished she had the courage to break the self-imposed silence and remove once and for all the burden of wondering how long it would be before Juliet asked one question too many and refused to be satisfied until she had an answer. Now, it seemed, that moment had come. She looked at her daughter, planted there in front of her as if her flipflops had taken root, looked at the determined expression she had learned to know so well, and knew that this was the time for the truth – or at least, part of it.
‘Very well,’ she said, fighting the catch in her voice, ‘I’ll tell you. Your father had a brother …’
‘Uncle David. Yes.’
‘No, not David. David is a lot younger. He was just a boy when it happened. The brother I’m talking about was Louis.’
‘Louis?’
‘Louis was a year or so older than your father. He was …’ This time there was no hiding the catch. Her voice faltered and she pressed her hand to her mouth for a moment, dangerously close to tears.
‘Go on,’ Juliet pressed her.
Molly swallowed at the lump in her throat. ‘This isn’t easy for me, you know.’
‘I know. But you’ve got to try.’
Molly nodded. Sometimes she felt she reacted to Juliet as if the relationship had been turned on its head and Juliet was the parent, stern and kind, and she was the child.
‘I am trying, Juliet. You must let me tell you in my own way.’ She hesitated. ‘There was trouble in the family. Bernard, your grandfather, had died not long before. He was the one who really got the hotel chain going.’
‘I thought my great-grandparents, Charles and Lola, did that.’
‘They had the first guesthouse, it’s true, but it was in a very small way. The vision was all Bernard’s and he was quite an autocrat where the business was concerned. During his lifetime neither of the boys were allowed much say in how it was run and in fact he and Louis had quarrelled because he wouldn’t give Louis the chance to try out some of his own ideas. Anyway, when he died he left his shares equally between his sons. Louis came back to Jersey and tried to do all the things his father had prevented him from doing and more. The others were trying to stop him and the quarrels began all over again, only this time they got very bad. And then he was shot.’
‘Shot?’
‘Shot dead at his home, La Grange. And your grandmother confessed to having done it.’
There. It was out. She had said it now. After all the years of silence the words – and the emotions that went with them – should have turned a little rusty but somehow they had not. They seared and shocked just as they always had. Only this time the reaction was reflected in her daughter’s face. Beneath her golden tan Juliet turned pale. Whatever she had expected it was not this.
‘You mean she murdered him?’
‘They didn’t call it murder. She claimed it was an accident and they believed her – at least the court did.’ Molly’s eyes were, feverishly bright now, but there was a slight furtiveness about her expression. At any other time Juliet might have wondered about it. Not now.
‘So that was why you and Daddy left Jersey?’ she asked.
‘The main reason, yes. You know what your father is like – you can imagine how he hated it all. And we didn’t want you growing up with the stigma.’
‘But if it was an accident then surely …’
Molly snorted, her lips tightening to a cupid’s bow of disapproval. All reticence had gone now. The floodgates of the years had opened and the torrent stored up behind them for so long came pouring out.
‘A pretty strange accident if you ask me. What was she doing waving a loaded gun about? No, if your grandmother hadn’t been such a well-respected lady on first name terms with everybody who was anybody she’d never have got away with it.’
‘You mean you think she did murder him?’
‘I’m saying I don’t believe Louis’s death happened the way she said it did, that’s all. It was too convenient for too many people. And if I thought that there must have been others who thought the same ‘Besides …’ She broke off, her eyes going very far away. For a moment a whole world of emotion played behind them, unnoticed by Juliet, then with an effort, she shut off from it. Once, long ago, in another life it sometimes seemed to her, she had been quite unable to control her feelings or to hide them at all. She knew to her shame that she had often behaved badly and that she had caused a great deal of trouble and heartache to others because of her inability to discipline her emotions. Now, thank God, life had reached a much more even keel and she had trained herself to push the things she did not want to think of to the back of her mind. Even when she was brought face to face with them, as she had been now, at least she could handle herself with a certain amount of self-possession, and recognise the relief that came from knowing that part of the story at any rate was no longer a secret from Juliet. She had even been able to conceal just how much it still hurt to think about Louis – at least she thought she had – and just how frightened she was that the full facts behind his death might still emerge to haunt them all.
But for a moment in spite of all the careful self-control Molly had been unable to stop herself from being carried back in time to that November night, nearly twenty years ago, when Louis had died. For a moment it was as if she were once again standing at the window of her bedroom as she had stood that night, unable to sleep for fear and self-loathing, looking out across the fields and woods, silver in the moonlight, and wondering anxiously where Robin was and why he did not come home. When she could bear it no longer she had telephoned La Grange, hoping to speak to Louis and unburden herself of all the terrors that were driving her mad. But Louis had not been there. Instead Sophia had answered the telephone, a strangely cold Sophia who had cut her off with unusual and inexplicable abruptness. Molly had poured herself a large gin and gone back to the window to wait, praying that the next set of headlights to illuminate the valley would herald Robin’s return. But still he did not come. In the end she had taken a sleeping pill and gone to bed. But when the insistent shrilling of the telephone had woken her hours later, he had still not been there. She had stretched out her hand and, finding nothing but cold empty sheet, stumbled out of bed and down the stairs with a head that had seemed to be full of cotton wool and legs that refused to work properly. ‘Robin?’ she had said stupidly, ‘Robin, is that you?’ But it was not. It was Viv, Robin’s aunt-by-marriage, breaking the news that Louis had been shot and Sophia, Robin’s mother, had been arrested …
The remembered horror of it choked her now and she felt a moment’s blind anger directed at Juliet for bringing it all back.
‘So now you see why I don’t want you to go to Jersey, Juliet,’ she snapped.
‘No, not really.’ Juliet crossed the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and drew herself a glass of ice-cold water from the reservoir beneath its filter. ‘Well – yes, I can see why you don’t want me to go, but no, I can’t see any reason why I shouldn’t.’
‘It’s the same thing, surely.’
‘No. It’s not. You don’t want me to go because it brings back a lot of bad memories for you and because … Well, I suppose you’re ashamed. But it’s different for me. I don’t have any bad memories. I can’t really remember anything about Jersey at all, except just sometimes, maybe, when a scent or something will kind of stir me. But even then I can’t catch it – I don’t know what it is I’m remembering. And as for being ashamed … well, it happened so long ago I don’t suppose anyone cares any more.’
‘You don’t know Channel Islanders!’
‘I am one! So are you. So is Dad. And I want to go and find my roots.’
‘Don’t, Juliet, please!’
‘I’m sorry, Mum, but I think you are being silly.’
‘I’m advising you because I am older and wiser than you and I know the sort of trouble you’ll stir up.’
‘I’m sure you’re exaggerating. But in any case you should know that being so mysterious only makes me want to go more.’
Molly turned away abruptly. Suddenly she felt very frightened indeed.
‘Very well, Juliet. I suppose I can’t stop you. But on your own head be it.’
Robin Langlois walked unseeingly around his garden, hands thrust into the pockets of his casual, knee-length shorts, chin almost resting on his white cotton polo shirt.
It was a large garden – space was not at a premium here in the suburbs of Sydney – and Robin often buried himself in it when he wanted to escape from some show down or even from unwanted visitors. What he did not often do was allow himself to think about the past. They’d left all that behind, he and Molly, when they had come to Australia. It had been a fresh start in every way. No more demanding business meetings – Robin had always hated being on the board of a Hotel and Leisure Group, prestigious as the Langlois Group had been in Jersey – no more pretending to be something he wasn’t, and, most important of all, no more Louis.
Not that Louis would have been there if they had stayed in Jersey, of course. Louis was dead. But his ghost would have haunted them, Robin knew. If they had stayed they would never have been rid of him.
God, how I hated him! Robin thought now, amazed, as he always was, at the strength of feeling his brother could arouse in him when he was, where, most things were concerned, the most placid of men. But then Louis had always managed to hit him where it hurt. First, as children, there had been the awful soul-destroying suspicion that for some reason his mother preferred Louis. His father hadn’t – he could never remember his father being anything but scrupulously fair. But that didn’t make up for knowing that Louis was Sophia’s favourite. Robin adored his mother and the evidence of her favour for his brother festered in his heart.
Then there was the business. Louis had a quicksilver mind where business was concerned. He also had maverick ideas that had caused dreadful friction, but he had still managed to make Robin feel like a clumsy lumbering idiot. When he and Bernard had fallen out and Louis had gone away Robin had tried very hard to fit into his shoes but clearly he had not succeeded. Bernard’s will had returned Louis to his former position of power and it had seemed to Robin that his father must have decided Louis’s wild schemes were preferable to what Robin had come to see as his own incompetence.
Lastly, but most importantly, there was Molly. Robin thought he could probably have forgiven Louis everything if it hadn’t been for Molly. Even as children when they had all played together he had known that Molly liked Louis best and it had hurt just as much as knowing he was Sophia’s favourite. But when they had grown older and Robin had fallen in love with Molly it had hurt a great deal more.
Not that Louis ever did anything but flirt with her in the early days. But Robin had seen the way Molly looked at Louis and came alive when he was there and he had known that he was
really only the consolation prize. When they had been married he had wished he could lock her away in a glass case he loved her so much. But at least Louis had been off the scene, travelling the world somewhere after falling out with his father.
Robin had just begun to gain confidence when Louis had returned and to his horror he had discovered that the fact that Molly was now his wife seemed to have given her an added attraction in Louis’s eyes. He had watched helplessly, unsure just how far Louis was prepared to go, knowing that to act rashly would be to play into Louis’s hands. It was, after all, nothing but a game to Louis, a game of power and one-upmanship. His pleasure came from tormenting his brother with the knowledge that he could take his wife from him any time he chose to do so. He didn’t really want her – if he had been in love with her Robin thought maybe he could have found some excuse for him – but no, he wasn’t in love with her. Robin thought Louis had never been in love with anyone but himself. All he had wanted was the satisfaction of knowing he had only to whistle and she would come running.
Robin shook his head sadly. Once, long ago, he had thought he knew exactly how Cain had felt when he had killed Abel. Now the hatred and the anger was no more than an ache of sadness and poignant regret.
He wished Juliet hadn’t raked it all up but he could see how she felt. Her family were still there in Jersey, her grandmother Sophia, Aunt Catherine, Sophia’s sister, Paul and Viv, her brother and sister-in-law and his own younger brother David and David’s wife Deborah. David and Deborah had come to Australia to visit once when Juliet was about ten but there had been a certain amount of strain in the air and they had never repeated the visit. And Robin, Molly and Juliet had never returned to Jersey.