by Anita Waller
They collected the obligatory leaflets, dropped their donations into the collection box and came out in awe of the splendour of the church. The wonderful lighting had shown up the paintings hanging on the walls to perfection, and Doris was surprised to hear Wendy say, as they left the church, ‘You could certainly feel the presence of God in there.’
Doris simply nodded in agreement and they headed back to the car, both lost in thought.
Masson Mill, Arkwright’s most favoured mill, kept them fully entertained for a couple of hours, and they came away loaded with souvenirs, a book on Arkwright’s life, and both feeling slightly sick after the coffee and cake they had enjoyed, despite already-full stomachs following the excellent breakfast.
The sun had returned by the time they left the building and walked around to the car park. Doris took off her yellow raincoat and placed it in the boot, slipping on a navy jacket to match her navy and white skirt.
‘That’s better,’ Wendy said. ‘You’ll not frighten this woman to death now. She could easily have thought there was a giant wasp standing at her front door.’
‘And you don’t resemble a giant strawberry?’
‘I’ll put on a jacket when we get to the hotel. Don’t worry, she’ll think we’re perfectly normal people.’
Doris laughed as she slipped behind the steering wheel. ‘That’ll be a first for the two of us.’
Following the advice on the website, Doris keyed in the address of the Cockcliffe Country House Hotel, knowing that to put the postcode in was likely to send her adrift.
The hotel, impressive in appearance, was welcoming and warm, and they were shown to their rooms without delay. They unpacked what they needed for the night, met up downstairs and had a coffee, then took collective deep breaths before heading back outside and to the car.
Tuesday afternoon would start with a visit to Byron’s grave, and end with a visit into the unknown; Doris felt nervous, something she wasn’t used to feeling, and Wendy was aware of her friend’s disquiet. She had slipped a small hip flask of whiskey into her bag in case either of them required a little Dutch courage.
‘You have everything you need? Wendy asked as she sank back into the comfort of the passenger seat.
‘I do, but what could I possibly need? I’m there to tell her the father she never met is dead, and all I can give her is his grave location. What else can she ask of me?’
4
But there is that within me which shall live. Torture and time, and breathe when I expire.
Doris and Wendy stood by the stone dedicated to Lord Byron and drank in the words etched into it.
‘This is overwhelming,’ Wendy mumbled. ‘Absolutely overwhelming. I thought the others we have seen tugged at the heart strings, but this is… Byron. My God, Doris, thank you so much for this. Without you and this crazy adventure, I would never have stood and felt like this. It’s…’
‘Overwhelming?’ Doris took hold of Wendy’s hand. ‘I know exactly what you mean. A few years ago I stood at Elvis’s grave in Memphis and felt like this. Maybe it’s because they were young. Byron was only thirty-six when he died.’
They stood in silence for a few minutes, only moving when someone else came towards them, carrying a small bunch of flowers.
‘Let’s go find somewhere to have a coffee. We’ll be busy tonight, I reckon, with these pictures and leaflets to get in the journals.’ Doris stepped away and Wendy leaned down and gently touched the inscribed words. She said nothing, simply followed her friend out of the church grounds.
The coffee shop was small and they ordered two lattes, feeling somewhat mortified when the owner asked if they wanted skinny or ordinary.
‘Do we look as if we should be having skinny lattes?’ Wendy hissed as the pair sat at a nearby table.
‘I didn’t when we set off yesterday morning, but we’ve had plenty of cakes and stuff since then.’ Doris laughed. ‘We’ll wait until September or so before we get back on any scales. In the meantime, we’re on holiday and can have full-fat lattes if we want. Skinny lattes, indeed.’
The drinks were duly delivered, and Doris took out Rosie Steer’s letter, smoothing it until it was flat.
She reread it, and passed it to Wendy. ‘Hang on to this then read the postcode out to me when we’re in the car. We’ll let Susie Satnav take us to it.’
‘Think she’ll find it?’
‘Has she ever let us down?’
‘Yes. That show we went to in Leeds, she made us late.’
Doris laughed. ‘Oh stop being so picky. She’s getting on a bit, and she is rather overworked. She gets there in the end.’
Wendy slipped the letter into her bag and picked up her glass cup. ‘This is nice. Glad we didn’t go for skinny.’
Long Lane wasn’t a long lane at all, and Susie Satnav found it with no difficulty.
You have reached your destination, the disembodied female voice told her two passengers.
‘See, oh ye of little faith,’ Doris said, smirking at Wendy as she pulled on the handbrake. ‘Delivered right to the door.’
Number twenty-seven was a semi-detached stone-built cottage, with a long path leading up to the shiny black front door, complete with gleaming brass door furniture.
‘Looks nice,’ Wendy murmured, trying to peer around her friend, still sitting in the driver’s seat. ‘Her brass is shinier than yours.’
‘Oy! Nothing wrong with my brass.’
‘So,’ Wendy continued, making no further reference to Doris’s door furniture, ‘how do you want to do this? You want me to go with you, or wait in the car?’
Doris turned a panicked face towards Wendy. ‘Go with me of course. This is scary enough, and if I turn stroppy I need you to bring me down to earth. Harry’s philandering ways aren’t the fault of this poor woman.’
‘Hmm, another p word we can attribute to your errant husband,’ Wendy observed with a smile. ‘Come on then, screw your courage to the sticking place, Doris Lester, and make Shakespeare proud of you for following his advice.’
She handed the letter back to Doris, and they opened the car doors simultaneously. ‘Let’s get this over with and enjoy the rest of our holiday,’ Doris said, and pressed her key fob to lock the car.
The path seemed endless, and when they reached the door it was opened before they had the chance to lift the brass fox to knock.
‘Yes?’ The dark-haired woman with deep brown eyes standing in front of them looked to be around forty, a little harassed, and must have thought they were Jehovah’s Witnesses; her attitude was slightly abrasive.
‘Mrs Steer?’
‘Yes. What do you want?’
‘My name is Doris Lester.’ Doris held out her business card, and the woman took it, then read it.
It seemed that the lightbulb suddenly switched on and she looked up. ‘Doris Lester? As in Harry Lester?’
Doris nodded. ‘This is my friend, Wendy Lucas. Can we come in for a moment?’
Rosie opened the door, and Wendy and Doris edged past her, then stood waiting while she made the door secure. ‘Please… come into the kitchen. Can I make you a drink?’
Doris gave a half-smile. ‘We’re fine for drinks, but thanks. We’ve recently had coffees.’
They reached the kitchen, and as they did so another woman, smaller than Rosie and with shoulder-length dark-blonde hair, stood. She looked at the two newcomers, then turned to Rosie.
‘Shirley, this is Doris Lester, and this lady is her friend, Wendy…?’
‘Lucas,’ Wendy said.
Rosie gave a brief nod as if she remembered, then turned to Doris. ‘And this is my sister, Shirley Ledger.’ The sisters shared the same dark brown eyes, and they turned them towards each other as if reaching for comfort.
Doris and Wendy extended their hands and she shook them.
‘Please, sit down,’ Shirley said.
All four of them did so, and Doris produced the letter from her bag. ‘I received this,’ she said.
Ro
sie inclined her head, and Shirley reached for her hand. ‘I sent it to my father.’
‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that Harry Lester died almost fifteen years ago.’
There was a prolonged pause, and then Shirley said, ‘No…’
The two younger women turned to each other. ‘We’re too late,’ Rosie said.
Wendy felt uncomfortable. The figure of speech was wrong. We’re too late? Surely it should be I’m too late. She could tell that Doris had picked up on it also, by the stiffening of her spine.
‘You said you were sisters.’ Doris tried to keep her tone casual.
‘We are,’ Rosie said. ‘Mum was pregnant with Shirley when she and Harry split up. She never saw him again, and it changed her. It was her decision to make him go, because he wouldn’t leave you, but she never bothered with anyone else. I can’t remember him, he’s like a shadow to me, and of course Shirley never knew him.’
‘You didn’t mention Shirley in the letter.’
‘No, I intended telling him to his face. According to my mother’s diaries she told Harry that she lost the baby. As far as he was concerned he had one daughter with Lily, and that was me.’
Doris felt sick. Who was the man she had lived with for all those years? And had their employers been aware of his clandestine activities with this other family? She thought not, he would have lost his job as they would have considered it a massive security risk. A national security risk, given her own career.
And how could he have walked away from a three-year-old little girl who had presumably been a large part of his world until Lily had told him to go? He deserved an Oscar for his acting abilities, Doris would give him that. After he had said he would finish with the other woman when Doris had told him she wanted a divorce, he hadn’t given her any reason to doubt his fidelity from that day until a week ago.
And now it appeared he had two daughters from that relationship, Rosie Steer and Shirley Ledger. They were presumably both married as neither was known by their birth name of Chambers, but Doris wasn’t convinced that she wanted to know anything further about them. That direction could spell unease and catastrophic complications.
She stood and Wendy repeated her actions. ‘I’m sorry it was bad news for you, but I didn’t want to tell you in a letter. We’ll be on our way now. My email address is on my card if you ever need to know anything, but really, with Harry being dead, I can’t imagine I can be of much assistance.’ Doris attempted a small smile but recognised it couldn’t have looked more false if she had tried. She placed another business card on the table, pushing it towards Shirley. ‘I’ve already given your sister one.’
They had almost reached the kitchen door when Rosie spoke. ‘I have a twelve-year-old daughter.’
Doris halted, and Wendy bumped into her.
‘And have you told her about her grandfather?’
‘I have. Not that he’s dead, of course, but I have explained he was with Mum for around three years before she made him leave her.’
Doris turned around slowly. ‘Please don’t make Harry Lester out to be something he wasn’t. Let’s not forget he cheated on me for every one of those three years, and I had a baby too. When he left your mother, my Claire was nearly five years old. He never said a word to me about the baby born to his bit on the side, because that’s what she was. I was the mug married to him.’
Wendy could sense that things were getting out of control and she touched Doris’s arm to indicate they should leave.
The front door banged and a child’s voice called out, ‘I’m home, Mum. Whose is that car outside?’
‘We’re in the kitchen, Megan,’ Rosie answered, and Doris moved to one side, expecting the door to open with some force.
Megan Steer had Harry’s eyes. Beautiful dark brown liquid pools. Her equally dark brown hair was pulled up into a ponytail and secured with a red gingham hair bobble. She stopped as she came through the door and put her hand to her mouth. ‘Oops, sorry,’ she said, and laughed infectiously. ‘I didn’t know Mum had visitors.’
Doris couldn’t hold back the smile. ‘We’re leaving, Megan. It was nice to meet you. Have you had a good day at school?’
‘So-so. Loads of maths homework, but it won’t take me long. I’m good at maths.’
So like Harry, Doris thought.
‘I’ll walk you to the door,’ Rosie said, and followed Doris and Wendy down the hallway. ‘I’m going to be telling Megan tonight that her grandfather has died. I’ll also explain who you are, we don’t have secrets. I guess that’s because my whole life felt like a secret, growing up with Mum. And please,’ Rosie held out a scrap of paper, ‘this is my phone number. Just in case…’
‘Thank you. Does your sister have any children?’ The words were out of Doris’s mouth before she knew what was happening. She really didn’t want to know anything about Harry’s offspring, and here she was asking questions.
‘Yes, but her husband insists they go to boarding school. She has twin boys, Adam and Seth, eleven now. She misses them so much, so comes round here a lot to kill the time. It’s a good job we get on.’
Doris shook her hand and turned to walk down the path.
‘Thank you,’ Rosie called. ‘For letting me know, I mean. There may be questions…’
‘If I can answer, I will.’ Doris didn’t turn around to say the words. She carried on walking, climbed into the car, and waited for Wendy to fasten her seat belt.
‘You settled?’
‘I am. That was a strange carry-on. Bit emotionless, not sure what happened there, are you?’
Doris shook her head. ‘I was ready to leave before they started asking questions. So he had two daughters…’
‘Didn’t do things by halves your late beloved, did he?’
‘He certainly didn’t. Let’s go back to the hotel and get drunk,’ Doris said.
‘You hardly drink.’
‘I can practise.’
She put the car into drive, and they left the cottage, with Rosie Steer still standing in the doorway, watching as the car disappeared, heading back towards Hucknall town centre.
5
Megan listened carefully to what her mother was saying, sipping slowly at her glass of milk. It had seemed strange that Aunty Shirley had left for home almost as soon as the two ladies had driven away, but now her mother had finished explaining the grandfather she had never met was actually dead, and had been for some time, she understood why Aunty Shirley had disappeared.
‘Why did he die?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Was it cancer? Heart attack? Accident? Didn’t she say?’
‘That’s a pretty gruesome question, young lady. And no, she didn’t say.’
‘Can we get his death certificate?’
Rosie looked startled. She had accepted the words telling her of his death at face value, and hadn’t thought to question Doris about it. ‘The honest answer is, I don’t know. I don’t suppose it’s anything to do with us, really.’
‘Of course it is. Suppose he died from something like Huntington’s disease. That’s hereditary, isn’t it? We’d need to know about that. Mum, I can’t believe you didn’t ask the lady!’
‘Megan, my love, we’re not all trainee doctors, or conversant with every disease known to man. Or twelve-year-old girls. Mrs Lester had just told me I would never get to meet my father. That was enough to take in at that time. I have her card, so when I have questions I’ll email her, or ring her.’
Megan pulled her iPad towards her and typed in ‘death certificate in UK’. Within seconds she had her answer. ‘That’s good,’ she mused. ‘We can get his death certificate. Will you order one for me, Mum?’
‘Certainly not.’ Rosie laughed. Sometimes she felt swept along by her daughter’s sheer love of life and exuberance; she couldn’t wait for anything, it had to be an immediate happening.
‘Then will you ring her? Ask her to come for a cup of tea. Then I can ask her questions.’
�
�No, Megan, I can’t. It’s over. We have no familial link to Doris Lester, so she probably doesn’t want to know us at all. Don’t forget we’re the results of her cheating husband. How would you feel if your dad did the same sort of thing?’
‘I’d make sure it looked like manslaughter and not murder.’ Once more Megan’s mind went into overdrive. ‘That’s a funny word, manslaughter, isn’t it? If you split it, it becomes man’s laughter. Think that’s significant, Mum?’
Rosie sighed. ‘Probably, my love. Let’s see this homework started, and I’ll consider feeding you. Dad’s not home tonight, so it’s only the two of us. Pasta bake?’
‘Ooh, that will be good. Will you ring Mrs Lester tonight?’
‘For goodness sake, child, no I won’t! I’ll maybe have a chat with Aunty Shirley though, once you’re in bed.’
Megan grinned and picked up her school bag. ‘But you’ll tell me all about it, won’t you? It might be your dad, but he’s my granddad. And I need to know everything for the family tree.’
‘Family tree? We’ve never done a family tree.’
‘We’re about to now.’ Megan gave a brief wave of her hand and shortly afterwards Rosie heard her climbing the stairs to her room.
Rosie remembered back to a time when she had been full of enthusiasm for things, anything, but it had been physically knocked out of her by a mother who had withdrawn from everything once Harry Lester had left her world. When Megan was born, Rosie had vowed to be the type of mother she would have wanted, instead of the mother she had been given as a role model.
Megan would be given the freedom to be herself.
And because she had such an inquisitive, genuinely loving daughter, Rosie knew she would be speaking to Doris Lester shortly. Tonight’s chat with Dan would be interesting; she often felt he was somewhat astounded by the daughter they had produced, and telling him Megan’s thoughts on the situation would, she knew, lead to gales of laughter. He always said she completely rolled over them both. No matter what decisions they reached, if she didn’t agree she would argue her side and they would end up giving in.