In Search of Love, Money & Revenge

by Hilary Bailey

  ‘Get a packet of sweets, Melanie,’ Tom said, seeing Melanie standing vaguely at the back of the café. He sat down and unzipped the bag Arlette had left. ‘Look,’ he said, and pulled out a fluffy yellow duck which was lying on the pile of clothes inside. Vanessa, holding the boy twin, sat down opposite Tom. Melanie gave each child a Smartie, and found a toy car in the bag. Suddenly there was silence. Annie turned the notice on the door to ‘Closed’ and Melanie began to cry.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Tom.

  Melanie unburdened herself, stopped crying and started thinking. ‘I’ve got a funny feeling about it. As if there’s something going on.’

  ‘He works for Geoff, you know,’ said Vanessa. ‘He may be doing it to be spiteful. For one thing, Melanie, you’re a vital part of the operation.’

  Annie said, ‘Can’t we just get some time? Why don’t you ring your mother and tell her you’ll come next week—’

  ‘He’s coming for me tomorrow.’

  ‘Well, if your mother says next week that’s what it’ll be. I’ll talk to him.’

  ‘I’ll talk to him,’ said Tom unexpectedly. ‘I’d like to try and find out what he’s up to.’

  Melanie went back to the phone.

  In the meanwhile the quietened twins were playing on the table-top with the duck, toy car, two spoons and a sugar shaker. Mercifully, they seemed content.

  ‘If they’re really Sim’s children,’ Tom said, ‘Lady Mary’s the best person to look after them. Anyway, she must be told. They all must. They’re the best indication that Sim’s still about.’

  Melanie came back. ‘Mum’s given me a week,’ she announced.

  ‘That gives us a chance to work something out,’ Vanessa said, relieved.

  ‘I caught that woman who brought them,’ continued Melanie. ‘She said her sister married their dad in Barbados.’

  ‘What?’ Annie cried. ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘She didn’t know. She was angry about it. She said she’d had two postcards but I don’t know where from. I thought she was going to hit me.’

  ‘Where’s she gone now?’

  ‘She dashed off when my dad caught hold of me.’

  ‘How can we find out where she is?’ Annie said.

  ‘Sounds as if she’s on her way to Portugal,’ Vanessa said. ‘There is one person who might help us, and that’s Ben. I’ll ring him.’ Still holding the little boy she phoned the Kenton Post. Upset, the little boy began to cry and his sister joined in. ‘Ask him to contact me urgently,’ Vanessa said above the noise.

  ‘I do think we should ring Lady Mary,’ said Tom.

  ‘Not now,’ Annie said emphatically. ‘We don’t want to raise her hopes. Second,’ and she pointed at the crying boy, ‘This situation is more complicated than we think. If Sim’s dead, this is the missing heir. We need to think carefully.’

  ‘Good God, he is, isn’t he?’ Tom said, startled.

  ‘If this is true, you’ve got nothing to cry about,’ said Vanessa sternly to the boy.

  ‘All he wants at the moment is his parents or his auntie and gran,’ Melanie said.

  Annie wondered, ‘Perhaps I should just tell Jasmine about them.’

  ‘I can’t think at all, with all this noise,’ Tom said. Vanessa gave him a shrewd glare. Somehow, she guessed, under cover of the confusion, he would creep back into Annie’s affections.

  ‘And we’re all tired,’ Annie added. ‘And there’s Melanie. We must think about it calmly.’

  They agreed that this was so.

  ‘It’s got to be against the law. Poor little things. What was that girl thinking of, leaving them here?’ Vanessa said.

  ‘She felt like a holiday. You can understand it,’ Annie said, against the noise.

  ‘They’re black,’ said Vanessa hesitantly. ‘Will the Fellowses mind, if it’s true?’

  ‘They’re not that black,’ Melanie said.

  ‘If it’s true they’ll find a specialist to turn them white – privately,’ Tom said. ‘And if it’s true, I’ll kill Sim,’ he went on, clutching Miranda, who was now sobbing quietly. ‘Why did he leave them? And what was their mother playing at? Where the fuck is she?’

  They sat while the twins cried despondently and fell miserably asleep in their bewildered hosts’ arms in the snack bar. No one quite knew what to do.

  22

  The Savernake Vote

  Ben had not gone to the Kenton Post that morning, for that was the day he’d told his wife it was over. Frances had been on holiday since her school broke up at the end of July. ‘Do you expect to be making arrangements for any kind of a holiday?’ she enquired over their late breakfast. ‘If we don’t go soon my break will be over. The term’ll start and I’ll have had no holiday at all.’

  ‘It’s this Savernake story,’ he told her. ‘I’ve got to keep following it. I’ve got as good as a commission from the Observer to do a two-page feature, anatomy of a property deal, involving council property going into private hands, that sort of thing. I can’t go anywhere now.’

  Frances, up, dressed, lightly made up, and after three weeks at home spent attempting to mend the marriage, spoke out loud the thought she’d had so often while cleaning, putting flowers in vases, cooking the careful meals Ben so often didn’t turn up to eat. She said, ‘You’ve had your holiday, of course. You got to Portugal, didn’t you?’ And in Portugal Ben had met Vanessa. Ben looked at his plate. A silence fell during which his son, Martin, stopped eating and stared at his parents from his highchair.

  Frances waited. Ben said, ‘I know you’re angry, Frances. I can feel it all the time.’

  ‘I don’t know what else you’d expect me to be in the circumstances,’ she replied, regretting having spoken. She added quickly, ‘All right. Forget the holiday. I can see you’re busy. Anyway, Martin is going to Gerrards Cross to stay with my parents for a fortnight. I thought it would be a chance for us to get away together. But if you can’t, you can’t.’

  ‘You could go down …’

  But this was not what Frances wanted, not what she and her mother had planned. ‘A second honeymoon,’ her mother had prescribed, ‘free of the child.’ She now thought a second honeymoon at home was the best she could do. Rapidly deciding to get theatre tickets, book at least a weekend at a country hotel for herself and Ben, she said, ‘No. Martin can go. I’ll stay.’ But this was not what Ben wanted. He wanted to spend no time alone with Frances. Only the presence of Martin cut the tension he felt at home and made staying seem worthwhile. ‘Perhaps we can get a weekend away,’ Frances continued, as it seemed to him, remorselessly. ‘And at least you’ll get some peace when you get home, while you’re so busy.’

  ‘Peace is the last thing I’ll get.’ Ben spoke as people do when they must, his eyes on the table. Frances stared at him across the checked cloth, flowered plates and cups, wedding presents. Another woman might have said, ‘Oh, so you get no peace here? You’re still thinking of her, aren’t you?’ might have called him a bastard, sobbed or dashed out of the room. But Frances knew if she said or did anything at all he would respond with words she didn’t want to hear. She sat perfectly still. He looked up and met her eyes. ‘It’s not working, is it Frances?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Look at me. I was drunk last night – and the night before. You must realise I go to the pub instead of coming home. You know how often you replace the vodka at Sainsbury’s. I’m fucked up, Frances, and you don’t say anything. We don’t talk about it, do we?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it, Ben,’ she said. ‘It’s always words with you, isn’t it? I’m not a talker, I’m a doer.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I had a lot to put up with from you, Ben, one way or another – your job, irregular hours, too many phone calls, low pay, you’re at home in the day, you get wound up about things that have nothing to do with us, stories you’re on. I asked you to get another job …’

  ‘I know all that,’ he said. ‘What you�
��re not saying is that you got thoroughly fed up with me. I wasn’t meeting your expectations, your family hoped you’d do better for yourself than marrying a local reporter and you began to see it like that too. You had to go back to work after Martin was born – so you kicked me out. That’s right, isn’t it, Frances?’

  ‘I just wanted time to think.’

  ‘You asked me to go,’ he persisted.

  ‘Oh, do we have to go on like this in front of the child?’ she exclaimed.

  ‘He’s not listening,’ said Ben.

  ‘How can you tell what a child’s listening to? They hear more than you think.’

  Ben fell silent. He didn’t want to hurt his child. He didn’t want to hurt Frances. ‘It’s not working,’ he repeated.

  ‘You won’t let it. Why can’t you just relax—’

  ‘I’ve tried. I just feel like a zombie.’

  ‘Feel, feel, that’s all you do. What you feel. What do you think I feel? Do you ever stop to think about that?’

  ‘I’ve tried. But you don’t tell me.’

  ‘You’re sentimental, Ben. Marriage isn’t meant to be a bed of roses. All couples have their sticky patches—’

  ‘You think this is just a sticky patch?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I do think. I love you. I’m trying to make this marriage work. It’s one-sided.’

  ‘You say you love me?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’m putting him in the living room,’ Ben said, pulling Martin from his highchair. ‘I’ll leave the door open.’

  ‘Why are you going on like this now?’ Frances said in a high voice.

  ‘I won’t then. I’ll go to work. I’m late, anyway. But I don’t want Martin to go to Gerrards Cross.’

  ‘He needs some fresh air,’ she said. ‘Why shouldn’t he go to my parents?’

  ‘Because I don’t want him to,’ he said roughly.

  She bit her lip, knowing all this was about his not wanting to be alone with her, and said, ‘All right. I’ll ring up and say it’s off.’ She added, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to explain the change of plan.’

  Ben opened the front door. ‘I’ll be late tonight. It’s the Savernake vote.’

  She said despairingly, ‘You won’t be in. You stop Martin going to my parents, and you won’t be here to see him.’

  ‘Frances,’ he said. ‘You won’t talk. You learned not to as a child. Don’t talk, don’t above all ask any questions. That way you won’t have to hear any answers.’

  ‘Please don’t stand on the doorstep saying these things,’ she pleaded.

  ‘I’ll come in then,’ Ben said, coming back into the hall, putting down his briefcase. ‘It isn’t working—’

  ‘Please shut the front door,’ she said quickly.

  ‘There are too many people in this,’ he said, shutting the door, then leaning against it. ‘There’s us. There’s your mother and father, and then there are the neighbours. For years I’ve felt as if I was on trial in front of a vast jury. You, your family, the neighbours, the editor of the Kenton Post, the whole bloody lot of you. Then the jury went out, they brought in a guilty verdict: Ben Gathercole, unsatisfactory husband and poor wage-earner; sentence: kick him out. Suddenly there’s an appeal, and for some reason the old verdict’s overturned. Why? Because I met somebody else. Don’t deny it, that was what happened. Suddenly it’s “Come back, Gathercole”. So I come back, but now I don’t have to feel so guilty about being a wash-out. I’m allowed to feel guilty about Vanessa, instead. I just don’t get it. I just don’t.’ He sat down on the hall floor beside his briefcase with his head in his hands. Martin ran up the hall and put his arms round him. ‘Fell down,’ he said. ‘Never mind, Daddy.’ Ben sobbed.

  Frances walked into the kitchen and stared out at the garden, thinking it needed a good hosing, but there was a ban on hosepipes. She stood by the window, heard her husband go upstairs. She knew he was packing a case. She stared down the garden. She hoped he was taking what he wanted because the minute he was out of the house she’d get the locks changed. Then she’d go to her parents with Martin. She’d never speak to him again. She’d make sure he never saw Martin again, either.

  By the time Ben got to the office at lunchtime he was drained. There were messages from Les Dowell, South East Television and Vanessa. He ignored the first two and went straight to the snack bar. He felt guilty. He’d ended his marriage. Vanessa was the superficial, if not the root, cause. He felt guilty about his son – he could try to get custody, but what judge would agree that, just because a mother was going to bring up her child in the same emotional desert she herself had been reared in, the boy should be handed over to the father, worse than that, a father who was a journalist while the mother was a primary school teacher? He didn’t stand a chance.

  The confusion at George’s at least gave him something else to think about, though his brain was muddy.

  Vanessa went straight up to him and asked, ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Everything,’ he muttered. ‘Will you take me back, Van?’

  ‘All right,’ she said in a low voice, ‘but don’t you never do that, leave me, again.’

  ‘Think I would?’ he answered. Then, looking round carefully, he asked, ‘So what’s the trouble?’

  Tom was changing Miranda’s nappy. Joseph was asleep in the buggy. Annie was wiping smears from the table. Yet another customer came to the door, looked at the ‘Closed’ notice and mouthed an enquiry. Melanie had gone next door to the Arcadia to wash the lettuces and make chocolate mousse and spaghetti sauce. At that moment Joanne arrived, holding Alec’s hand.

  ‘What are you two doing?’ gasped Vanessa.

  ‘The minder hit Alec,’ reported Joanne looking guilty. ‘So when she went to the toilet we came here by ourselves.

  ‘Oh, my God! I’ll murder that woman! You’ve crossed three roads to get here.’

  ‘A copper held up the traffic,’ Joanne said. ‘Why are you closed? You’ve got babies in here. You’re always saying you can’t have children in here.’

  ‘It’s getting like a crèche,’ Tom said. ‘Look, Ben, can you help?’

  Tom outlined the situation concerning the twins and said, ‘I don’t think anyone wants to decide what to do about them until we’ve contacted the Joneses to see what’s going on.’

  Ben rang a friendly policeman who owed him a favour. The policeman searched the computer for the Joneses. Ben relayed the facts aloud as he was given them – ‘Miss Arlette, Miss Josephine and Mrs Elaine Jones, no Mr Jones on the premises, no Simon Fellows. It’s twenty-one Rodwell House, on the Savernake Estate. Arlette works at the post office. Mrs Jones works at a bakery. Nothing on Josephine. Any kids there? You wouldn’t know, unless they’ve done anything, even on that estate one-year-olds are usually innocent. One more thing,’ he asked, ‘how do you find out if anyone got married in Barbados? Thanks, mate. I owe you one.’

  He put the phone down and said, ‘We’ve got to ring Barbados if we want to check the marriage story.’

  ‘Let’s do it,’ Annie said.

  ‘What’s the time there?’

  Annie put her head outside the door. ‘What’s the time in Barbados?’ she asked Roland on the cassette stall. He looked at his watch. ‘Middle of the morning,’ he called back.

  Annie came in. ‘I’ll start phoning,’ she said. ‘I’ll phone the vicar of that church. Ben, can you get down to the Savernake Estate and check around?’

  ‘I’m going there to get a story about how people voted anyway, what they think. I’ll give you a ring when I find out. Don’t give this story to anyone else,’ he added.

  ‘All right, Ben,’ Annie said.

  ‘Coming, Van?’ he asked.

  ‘We’ve got to get on with the suppers,’ Vanessa said. ‘We’ve got bookings galore. We’re right behind. We’re going to have to run from now to when we open. Someone’s going to have to look after the kids—’

  ‘I’ll take them back to Rutherford Street,�
�� Tom volunteered. Ben and Tom left together with all four children.

  ‘He’s good with kids,’ Vanessa said doubtfully as the door closed behind them. ‘Really fond of them. Seems a pity he won’t have any of his own. Or …’ she looked even more doubtfully at Annie.

  Annie ignored the implied question, saying briskly, ‘All we can do is sneak out of here, lock up, have a quiet cup of tea at the Arcadia, and then start rushing. Melanie can do the menus now her writing’s improved. I’ll ring Barbados between bouts of cooking.’

  ‘Right,’ Vanessa said, getting to her feet.

  Although they managed, the diners were pleased, the bills were big and the till rang gaily, Annie and Vanessa did not enjoy the evening and Melanie was so depressed by the thought of her father’s arrival next day that Vanessa said she should stay in the kitchen because her face was upsetting the customers. There was no time to talk, only to provide money for Melanie to go to the cinema with a friend. ‘Not a disco,’ Annie warned.

  ‘No,’ declared Melanie untruthfully.

  Annie went to get a bottle of Bollinger from the larder and shook her head in disbelief at the patent lie. Then she heard voices at the entrance and felt Vanessa stiffen like a dog. She was standing with a big metal spoon over a saucepan, plate in one hand, sauce dripping from the holes in the spoon, ‘That’s Geoff,’ she hissed.

  Annie took the champagne to the party in the corner and saw, standing near the door, Geoff Doyle, Sam Abbott and a short blonde girl in a tight dress with pearl combs in an elaborately tousled blonde hair-do. ‘What do you want?’ she asked them.

  ‘One of those,’ Geoff Doyle said, pointing to the champagne. ‘We’re celebrating.’

  ‘Couldn’t you go somewhere else?’ Annie asked.

  ‘No, no way,’ Geoff said expansively. ‘We want to be here. With all of you. Enjoying ourselves.’ The blonde girl looked at him possessively. Abbott looked uncomfortable. Edward, always knowing, put his head in, and gave an enquiring look. Geoff Doyle retaliated by looking angry.