Marie and I passed through the lychgate, and crossed the road to the George and Dragon.
‘I’ll go and get the drinks, you take a seat,’ Marie said, pointing to one of the wooden benches in front of the pub.
I sat down and looked across at my grandfather’s house. I thought of how much the old man had meant to me, and how the chain of command he’d set up to hold Conroy Enterprises together had caused so much damage.
Marie returned with the drinks – a pint for me, an Irish whiskey for herself. She placed them on the table between us.
‘You said you’d come up here to give me an explanation,’ I reminded her.
She lit a cigarette and puffed nervously on it. ‘This isn’t going to be easy,’ she said. ‘I’ve told so many lies in the past—’
‘I know you have.’
‘… but you have to believe that everything I’m going to tell you now is the truth.’
‘Go on,’ I said noncommittally, still not sure whether or not she had stopped playing games – still not sure if she hadn’t worked out one final way in which she could use me.
‘I wasn’t lying when I said I was brought up in Ireland, but I wasn’t giving the full picture either, which is that I was actually born in England. I told you I was adopted, didn’t I?’
‘Yes. The first time we met. Was that true?’
‘Completely. It was true about my having a happy childhood, too. I knew I was adopted but it never bothered me. Why should it have when I had the kindest, most loving parents anyone could have wished for?’
‘You were lucky,’ I said, thinking of how my cousin Philip had talked about his own childhood, and even of my own parents, who had been kind but distant.
‘Yes, I was lucky,’ Marie agreed. ‘But though it didn’t bother me, I did start to get curious when I was in my teens. I’d catch myself wondering who my real parents were, and why they’d given me up.’
‘That’s only natural.’
‘So when I was 18, just before I went to Trinity College, I decided to find out.’
‘And what did you discover?’
‘My real mother had been dead for a number of years by that time.’
‘An illness?’
Marie shook her head, and her hair swirled around her shoulders. ‘She committed suicide. An overdose.’
‘And your father?’
‘He was still alive. My first thought was to go and see him, but I somehow couldn’t bring myself to do it.’
‘Why was that?’
‘I think it had something to do with the fact that he probably didn’t even know I existed.’
‘How’s that possible?’ I asked.
‘I’d done all the background research by then,’ Marie told me. ‘I knew my real mother had left my real father early in her pregnancy. There’s no evidence that he made any effort to find her after she’d run out on him, and I think that if he’d known she was bearing his child, there would have been. Anyway, she carried me to full term, but because I’d have interfered with her career, she gave me up for adoption.’
‘What was her career?’
Marie looked me straight in the eyes. ‘She was an actress,’ she said. ‘Not a very good one, by all accounts, but a very eager one. Most people seem to think that it was her failure to make a name for herself that led to her suicide.’
She reached into her handbag, and placed an old photograph on the table in front of me. It was of a tall, almost stately woman, standing in front of the village church. She had auburn hair which spilled in curls over her shoulders, and was smoking a cigarette. I had seen the photograph before – in family albums. And so had Lydia – but unlike me she had made the connection! And that was why Marie’s interest in the family had been no mystery to her!
‘Are you saying—?’ I gasped.
‘That I’m Tony Conroy’s daughter, and Philip Conroy’s sister? Yes, that’s what I’m saying.’
‘So when we met at St John’s College—’
‘It was no accident. I knew exactly who you were. I’d been following you for a couple of days before I made my move.’
‘But why?’
Marie shrugged awkwardly. ‘Again, I’m not entirely sure. I imagine that I thought that if I got to know the family through what you told me, it might eventually make it easier for me to approach my father.’
‘And did it seem like it was getting easier?’
‘Oh yes. It took longer than I’d expected, but eventually it did happen. By the time you all went down to Bristol I knew I was ready. I was planning to come and see him when you got back from the trip. But I’d left it too late, hadn’t I?’
‘You mustn’t blame yourself,’ I said. ‘You couldn’t have known.’
Marie reached up and angrily brushed a tear away from her eye.
‘I felt as if, through my own cowardice, I’d cheated him out of something he was entitled to,’ Marie told me. ‘Maybe he wouldn’t have cared about having a daughter one way or the other – but now I’ll never know.’
‘That’s when you decided to find his killer?’
‘Yes. It was the least I could do for him. The only thing I could do by then. And when Lydia offered to retain me, it seemed like it was meant to be.’
‘But you didn’t trust her?’
Marie shook her head again. ‘I didn’t know that she only wanted Paul Taylor found so that she could kill him before he had a chance to speak to the police – but I sensed that something was wrong.’
I thought back to our impersonal meeting on Temple Meads’ station. I’d been devastated that Marie had been more concerned about the money than she’d been about me – but that only seemed natural now that I understood she been hunting down the man she thought was her father’s killer.
And it was natural, too, that her cool, professional shell should crack after she’d heard from Paul Taylor how easy it would have been for him to prevent the murders.
‘Why wouldn’t you go to bed with me?’ I asked, though I thought I already knew the answer. ‘I know you wanted to.’
‘I did – I can’t tell you just how much I wanted to – but I’m a devout Catholic, and we’re cousins, which can make things very biologically complicated,’ Marie said. ‘I didn’t dare risk getting pregnant without us both taking the medical tests to make sure the baby would be all right – and I couldn’t ask you to take the test without revealing who I was.’
That still left one question unanswered. ‘That night you phoned me from Bristol—’
‘I should never have said I loved you.’
‘Why – because it wasn’t true?’
‘No – because it wasn’t fair to you. What if we took the tests and they said I should never get pregnant by you? What would happen then? We’d be in love with each other, but we could never make love to each other. Even if I could bring myself to throw the teachings of my church out of the window and use contraception, it would still mean we could never have children. And I want children, Rob. I want them desperately.’
I reached across the wooden table and took Marie’s hand in mine.
‘Let’s risk it,’ I pleaded. ‘Let’s take the tests and just pray they turn out right.’
Marie pulled her hand away, and shook her head.
‘I’m not brave enough for that,’ she told me. ‘It would be like committing ourselves to living happily ever after – when there’s a very good chance that we wouldn’t be able to.’ A single tear ran down her cheek. ‘I’ll always love you – I want you to know that – but this just has to be goodbye.’
A voice from my past drifted – unsummoned and unexpectedly – into my mind.
Jill – my darling Jill – standing on Warrington station and talking about the Conroys.
‘The family’s too closed in,’ she said. ‘It feeds on itself, and that can’t be healthy.’
I had tried to break away, but Jill’s death and Grandfather’s offer had dragged me back in. And now the curse of the Conroys was being
visited on me again – because the woman I had fallen in love with had turned out to be one of them.
If only Aunt Jane had not run away, I thought self-pityingly. She and Uncle Tony might have had a miserable life together, but at least I’d have known who was who – at least fate wouldn’t have been in any position to spring this huge booby-trap on me.
****
I thought back to the night long ago, when Uncle Tony had discovered that Aunt Jane had left him. Uncle Tony, my father and my mother were all standing in the hall. John, like the obedient son he had always been, had gone to his room as instructed, but I had stayed at the top of the stairs listening to every word which was being said below.
‘When did this happen?’ my mother had asked, after Uncle Tony had told her that Aunt Jane had left him.
‘This morning,’ my uncle had replied. ‘At least it was probably this morning.’
‘Aren’t you sure? Surely if she hadn’t been there, you’d have known.’
‘She doesn’t usually get up until noon.’
‘But even so …’
‘And ever since we stopped sleeping together – which is nearly a year ago – we’ve had separate bedrooms.’
****
‘I don’t think her acting career was the only reason your mother ran away from home,’ I told Marie, with new hope. ‘Maybe it wasn’t the reason at all.’
‘Then why did she leave?’
‘She left because whoever your natural father was it certainly wasn’t Uncle Tony.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I’m positive.’
I reached across the wooden table and took Marie’s hand again, and this time she did not pull away from me.
‘Taking the tests isn’t going to be a problem,’ I said. ‘We’ll pass with flying colours – because there’s not a drop of Conroy blood in you.’
Epilogue
Shortly before his death, my gentle, sensitive brother John told me what when you have someone to love, business suddenly doesn’t seem as important any more. Back then, I could never even have begun to imagine how right he was – but I understand it well enough now.
These days, my business activity is restricted to an occasional trip in Manchester. There I sign papers relating to several companies I own – and thanks to Grandfather’s legalistic machinations, am never allowed to sell. I do not run these companies – even my grandfather’s complex and devious mind couldn’t come up with a way to make me do that! – and though they earn me considerable dividends, most of this money goes straight into the Conroy Foundation for Good Works. This is not, I should point out, because I have suddenly become saintly, but simply because my needs are few.
When I’m in England, I take the opportunity to visit my cousin Philip. He has already served a fair chunk of his sentence, and, with good behaviour, should be out of gaol in two or three years. When he’s released, I will probably offer him an executive post in Conroy Enterprises, but I don’t think he will accept it – he seems to have lost his taste for power.
I have tried to see Lydia on a few occasions, too, but the nurses who watch over her have told me she is far too busy writing letters of advice to committees she once chaired – letters which always go unanswered.
None of that matters. It is part of my old life. The village of my childhood is like another planet, and even Oxford has started to seem unreal. These days, I spend most of my time on the small Greek island which my brother first discovered.
It’s a good life – a peaceful life. When we want fish, I walk down to the market and buy it fresh from the sea. When I feel like cheese, I milk one of the goats which wander around in the olive grove which came as a part of the ramshackle villa I bought and am slowly – painstakingly – renovating myself.
We are not quite cut off from our old life here. Occasionally, a thin-faced, sweet-guzzling chief inspector from South Wales will spend part of his annual leave with us. And once in a while – and always unexpectedly – we will be visited by an eminent Scottish author who is currently both dazzling his students at Harvard with his brilliance, and totally confusing them with his thick Glaswegian accent.
My son and daughter both attend the local school, though I make time to give them the lessons which will enable them to return to England one day, should they chose to.
I myself will never return. Though life on the island is in many ways simple, it is also whole and complete. I can stand on the harbour wall looking out at the vast blue sea – which, in reality, isn’t vast at all – and feel the centuries of history and civilisation vibrating beneath my feet. I can climb to the highest point on the island and make myself at one with the gods who ruled long before the holy mystic of Palestine entered Jerusalem on an ass.
I have a small sailing boat now, and once every few months, my wife and I will leave the children in the care of my frail grandmother and her sturdy nurse Jo Trollop – now happily married to a barrel-chested Greek fisherman – and sail away to other magic islands. Marie says that I’m a natural sailor, but my once hard-boiled private eye has so lost her judgement that she seems to think, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that I’m good at everything I do.
I love my life here, and am living it for myself and my family, but there is a sense, too, in which I try to live out my brother John’s dreams for him.
I feel I owe him that much.
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