Murder in the Family

by Jeff Blackstock

  “Jeff, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. You may sympathize with your grandparents—but just remember they’re being very destructive. That whole business with your first mother’s picture created a lot of bad feeling. Mum wanted to give you the picture herself, and her plan was ruined by your grandparents’ interference. In spite of that, I look at you all and I see love, real love. Whatever you do, don’t let your grandparents spoil that.”

  He was so persuasive, I could almost believe him—even though the image he was presenting was far from the reality I knew. He must have been talking about some other family, not ours. We hadn’t felt any love from, or for, Ingrid, let alone “real love,” since she’d become our stepmother. Maybe my grandparents were interfering. But they were doing it out of love for us. We felt they were the only people in our lives who truly cared about us and were ready to defend us against Ingrid’s physical and emotional abuse. But it was a lot more complicated than that—far more complicated than I knew.

  Even so, I certainly didn’t want to get into an argument with my father. What would have been the point? I wasn’t going to win, and he wasn’t going to change his mind.

  * * *

  —

  I WAS AT my grandparents’ apartment when Dad arrived for the meeting. He came up the stairs and met them in the living room.

  “Hello, George.”

  “Hello, Howard. Hello, Gladys.”

  After Mom died, Grandma and Grandpa had asked Dad to call them by their first names, instead of “Mom” and “Dad.”

  It was arranged that I would go out for a while so I wouldn’t witness the confrontation. Over the next few days, however, I heard bits and pieces from both sides, affording glimpses into what had clearly been a bitterly contentious meeting.

  “Your father is a ruthless man, Jeff,” my grandmother told me.

  My grandfather was even more specific: “You probably know this, Jeff, but I think your father is a bastard. We are not prepared to have Julie be mistreated.”

  I also got Dad’s version.

  “Your grandparents have it in their heads that Julie is a prisoner of her evil stepmother,” he told me. “They actually want me to sign over custody of Julie to them. Well, no parent is going to do that. From now on, I think Mum and I are going to have to limit our contact with your grandparents to a bare minimum. We tried to accommodate them, but they returned our goodwill with nothing but problems.

  “You know,” he continued, “your grandfather and I have had an understanding, a sort of unwritten gentlemen’s agreement, if you like, about you kids. I realized that since your mother died, you’re pretty much all the family they have left. I also wanted you to have a place to stay in Toronto, where the family is based. But that was on the understanding that they’d behave as normal grandparents would.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Oh, you know, grandparents are there to spoil their grandchildren, but they leave the role of raising the children to the parents.”

  And then Dad said something completely out of the blue.

  “You know how you’ve asked about your mother’s death? I’ve always told you they never found out what she died of. Well, they never did find out.”

  This seemed very strange to me. I simply didn’t know what to make of it.

  Dad didn’t tell me what he was going to do about my grandparents, except to limit his and Ingrid’s relationship with them. As it happened, he never did anything about my grandparents’ contact with Doug and me, which continued the same as before.

  But that wasn’t all there was to it. Grandpa still hadn’t told me the whole story. I suspect he knew that, as a young adult, I was aware of this.

  He must have been horribly conflicted about what to do. I think he didn’t want to impose on me a terrible revelation about my mother’s death because he feared it would burden me for life. But neither did he want to deprive me of what I was entitled to know: the truth. In the end, he told me just enough so that I could decide for myself how much I wanted to know.

  When I finished my shift at the parking lot, Grandpa fetched me, and we got into his car.

  Before starting the engine, he turned, looked me in the eye, and said, “Jeff, we found out how your mother died. It wasn’t a tropical disease, like your dad once said. And when I tried to talk to him about what we know, he told us, if we didn’t keep quiet, we were never going to see our grandchildren again.”

  So this was my grandfather’s take on the “gentlemen’s agreement,” as my father had termed it: talk about Carol’s death to anyone and you won’t see your grandchildren again.

  “Nevertheless, if you ever want to know what your mother died of, I’ll tell you.”

  Grandpa was prepared to tell me the truth, even at the risk of being cut off from his grandchildren.

  I struggled desperately to take this all in, to understand fully what it meant. This was my mother, and my grandfather was hinting to me—no, telling me—that she’d died of something ugly and terrible. Yet deep down, I didn’t want to know. It sounded very much like it implicated Dad.

  I loved my dad. He was a godlike figure who still towered over my life.

  I loved my grandfather too.

  I didn’t want my world to come crashing down. I remained silent, unable to accept my grandfather’s invitation.

  13

  MY ENGLISH SUMMER

  THE AIR CANADA DC-8 began its descent over the lush green fields of Southern England. It was the summer of 1971, and I was twenty. The trip from Toronto had been uneventful. I’d managed a couple of hours’ sleep before North American night fast-forwarded into North Atlantic dawn. Groggy and dishevelled, I felt nonetheless content, as always, to be embarking on an international trip promising escape and adventure.

  I breezed through Customs, collected my suitcase, and stepped outside the Gatwick Airport terminal. Although it was the end of June, the early morning air was chilly. I spotted my father behind the wheel of the family station wagon in a lineup of vehicles waiting to meet arrivals.

  I was happy to see Julie in the back seat as I climbed in beside Dad.

  “I just got this new jumpah. D’yuh like it?” she asked me.

  “A new jumpah. D’yuh like it?” I replied, echoing her recently acquired English accent.

  “Stop it!” she said, laughing.

  Julie was now fifteen and attending boarding school in Guildford, near London. From her letters, it sounded like a typical English school for girls: masculine uniforms, straw boater hats, field hockey, lukewarm tea, and schoolmistresses bossing around students and parents alike. But Julie was happier living there than at home with Ingrid.

  Of us three siblings, she was the one who missed our mother the most, yet ironically she had known her for the shortest time. Since Doug and I were several years older, we at least had substantial memories of her, whereas Julie had only snippets of memories from when she was a toddler. It was nice to see that she now had the independence to buy herself a new sweater and hadn’t been cowed into suppressing the accent she’d picked up at school.

  “I really like your new sweater…uh, jumpah,” I told her.

  Turning to Dad, I asked how Doug was doing. Dad had sent him to a boarding school in Scotland, an ascetic institution where Dad had hoped the cold showers and hikes in the snow would improve my brother’s academic performance. Wearing kilts and eating haggis may have built character, but the report cards were no better than they’d been at Ridley. Doug was now eighteen and wouldn’t be returning to school in the fall.

  “He’s fine. He’ll be home in a couple of days,” Dad replied nonchalantly. Putting the car in gear, he pulled out of the lineup and headed for West Byfleet, the town in Surrey where the family home was now located, half an hour southwest of London by train.

  Two years earlier, Dad had been posted from Bern to t
he Canadian High Commission, as the embassy in London is known, then on Grosvenor Square. He and Ingrid had bought a large, handsome English country house with oak beams, leaded windows, and an expansive garden with a tennis court and swimming pool.

  After completing my second year in arts at the University of Toronto, I was escaping from the drudgery of a two-month summer job as a dishwasher. I had no more profound motive for visiting England than to have a good time. I was on holiday, and I was going to enjoy myself playing tennis, swimming, hanging out in the pub, chasing girls, and seeing a bit of Europe. I had no interest in learning more about our family life, from which I felt happily disengaged.

  Since twelfth grade at Ridley College, much had happened.

  I’d finished high school in Switzerland at the Canadian “junior college” in Neuchâtel. It was coeducational, a big change from a boys-only boarding school. I learned to speak French living en pension with a local family, and for a while I had a Spanish girlfriend. She and I were both outsiders in the closed society of la Suisse romande, though I had a Swiss girlfriend for a while too.

  I enjoyed my year in Switzerland. I think I inherited a love of being abroad from Dad, who always showed his appreciation of local culture and history, no matter where we were. There were school trips to Spain, Morocco, and Italy. During the summers, I had fun working at an international camp in Davos, first as kitchen help, later as a counsellor to a group of ten-year-old European kids.

  At the University of Toronto, I was back in the city where I was born, but had never lived for any great length of time. I had no established network there, except for my grandparents, whom I saw regularly, and some aunts and uncles on Dad’s side, whom I’d see only occasionally. I was busy with my English and philosophy courses, getting together with some Neuchâtel friends, and the occasional romantic interest.

  On the outskirts of West Byfleet, Dad pulled into the semicircular gravel driveway in front of “Longmoor,” as their house was called. Flowers bloomed in the beds alongside the beam-and-stucco walls. The family’s aging blue Volkswagen Beetle from Switzerland was parked near the front door. The tennis court and kidney-shaped swimming pool were in the back, complete with pool house and changing room, and a ninety-foot-wide lawn bordered by shrubs and oak trees. A rear gate gave access to the local golf course. Close by were a park and a pub. Beyond that lay the cafés, bookstores, and shops of West Byfleet. London was within easy reach, the Continent just across the Channel. I’d brought a few good books to read. What more did I need?

  Over the following weeks, Doug and I enjoyed the use of the Beetle for making excursions around the area. We’d run over to the pub in Pyrford or into West Byfleet for shopping. I was a keen tennis player and would practise my serve with a bucket of balls on the court. I’d swim in the pool when the weather was warm, read in the alcove off the living room overlooking the garden, play croquet, and go to parties. While Doug enjoyed a dalliance or two, I had a couple of short-term girlfriends.

  Ingrid still had designs on controlling my behaviour. But I disabused her of that idea early in my stay, easily rebuffing her by saying, “You have no reason to speak to me like that.” I wore my hair shoulder-length, in the style of the times; this wasn’t popular with either Dad or Ingrid, but they had to live with it.

  * * *

  —

  FROM TIME TO time, we went into London as a family, usually to a play or concert in the evening. The first production Dad took us to see was The Mousetrap, by Agatha Christie.

  I drove Julie, Doug, and Ingrid in the station wagon to meet Dad at a West End pub. He took the train to work in the mornings, so by bringing the car we could all drive home together after the play. For Ingrid, in her evening clothes, the car was more comfortable than the train. There wasn’t as much of a role for her in London as there had been in New Orleans or Switzerland, and nothing like the social whirl of Buenos Aires. As a result, she stayed home a lot. An evening at the theatre gave her an opportunity to dress up and wear some of her jewellery. Dad would be in a business suit, so we all dressed up. Our two younger half-sisters were at home with their German au pair.

  We were in the West End to see a play, but for Dad the pub itself was a stage. It was one of his favourites, and with his family on display he was in his element.

  One of the barmen came over to escort us to our table.

  “Hello, Mr. Blackstock. How are you this evening?”

  “Very well indeed, Jerry. You have a table for us?”

  “Your usual, sir. Right over here.”

  The pub was fitted out with leather banquettes and lots of old-world oak and brass. The lighting was more subdued than in the raucous, smoke-filled East End pubs, where the drinkers would fall off their stools if a barman greeted a guest at the door. But this wasn’t the East End, and Jerry knew he could count on a duty-free bottle of Canadian Club at Christmas if he treated Dad right.

  Ingrid ordered a gin and tonic, Julie a shandy, and Doug and I both emulated Dad by having a pint of best bitter. After giving us newcomers a discreet once-over, the regulars settled back into their Scotch-and-waters, Financial Times, and quiet conversations.

  The bill arrived face down on a small black tray, and Dad enacted his customary ritual, studiously examining the bill like a poker player with a newly dealt hand, replacing it face down on the tray, withdrawing his billfold from his breast pocket, and removing some pound notes while shielding them from view with a conjuror’s sleight of hand. Folding the vulgar pound notes, he carefully tucked them under the bill so they were invisible. Julie, Doug, and I looked at each other with expressions that said, “Not again!”

  I didn’t know which was more entertaining: Dad’s performance at the pub or the play afterwards.

  As we settled into our seats at the Ambassadors Theatre, in Covent Garden, Dad expressed his long-standing admiration for Agatha Christie. “She’s tremendously clever,” he exclaimed, marvelling at the incredible nineteen-year run The Mousetrap had already enjoyed in the West End. He loved the way Christie was able to fool audiences, misdirecting them so they didn’t realize who the killer was until the trick ending. He also admired her dedication to her work. “Writing books for a living like that requires not only discipline,” he said, “but self-discipline.” Mrs. Christie had probably killed off more characters than any mystery writer ever, Dad enthused. We all enjoyed the play, but not half as much as he did.

  During the hour-long drive home, Dad at the wheel this time, we had a lively talk about theatre. If he hadn’t been obliged to earn a living so early in life, I’m sure Dad would have preferred the theatre as a profession. He told us he’d have liked to be a director. “It would be wonderful to stage a play exactly as you see it,” he said wistfully, recalling his days in college drama.

  I’d directed a play myself in my second year at university: The Bald Soprano, by Eugène Ionesco. That summer, I also took a theatre studio course in London and wound up dating a fellow student. I was still trying to emulate Dad—though he’d never have chosen to direct an absurdist play by someone like Ionesco. For her part, Julie was reading English literature at school, and it didn’t take long for the conversation to turn to Shakespeare.

  Dad, Julie, and I had all read Shakespeare, and Dad was fond of quoting him at the drop of a hat. Somehow, we got on to King Lear. Dad expanded on the timeless simplicity of the story: A king gets duped by two of his daughters, Regan and Goneril, who are scheming and deceitful and claim to love him, but just want his power and money. In his folly, he fails to see the value of his third daughter, Cordelia, who turns out to be the truly loyal and honest one. His initial failure to recognize Cordelia’s love becomes his undoing and leads to his downfall.

  “But why couldn’t Lear recognize the duplicity of Regan and Goneril?” Julie asked. “After all, he was the king—supposedly a great man.”

  Pausing thoughtfully for a moment, Dad replied with one
of the most self-revealing things I ever heard him say: “Well, do you ever really know anyone?”

  Uncertain whether he was talking about himself or someone else, I put in, “Cordelia certainly got the short end of the stick.”

  To which Dad said, “Shakespeare knew that it’s not a rational universe.”

  * * *

  —

  WE HAD A string of visitors all summer. A pal from my Ridley days flew over from his home in Bermuda to stay for a month. We played tennis and competitive croquet, swam in the pool, went to the pubs, drove around Britain in the Beetle, and had a good time. We visited my Scottish relatives, second or third cousins on my father’s side, on their sheep farm near Perth, met girls, visited friends of his in Devon. Dad behaved as he usually did with my friends, treating him like the help. When he asked Dad for some advice about booking his return ticket, Dad responded helpfully, “Have you tried the phone?” It became a standing joke between my friend and me.

  Guests of Dad’s and Ingrid’s, on the other hand, such as a Canadian cousin and family in Oxford on sabbatical, were accorded the full George Blackstock treatment: a candlelit dinner in the oak-panelled dining room, with roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, and a fine Burgundy, followed by a dessert such as bananas Foster, his favourite, and liqueurs. Julie was sent to fetch things from the kitchen. Doug helped mix and serve the aperitifs. We three older children all had the job of clearing the table.

  Ingrid’s younger cousin and his wife—let’s call them Dieter and Traudl—visited from Germany. Keenly aware of his privileged status, Dieter helped himself to jumbo snifters of Rémy Martin from the sideboard. He and I played tennis, followed by a swim. Chatting by the pool, he was quite frank with me, in his European way, asserting that just because he’d found the right wife didn’t mean they wouldn’t take separate vacations from time to time.