by Alex Reeve
Looking up, I realised why it had stopped. The kite was stuck in the branches of a beech tree, thirty feet or more above my head. The lowest branches were too high for me to reach, so I had only one option: I tugged on the string. It wouldn’t free itself, so I tugged harder.
There was a sound; some of it was tearing and some of it was snapping. By the time the kite tumbled down, it wasn’t a kite any more. The cross-frame was broken, and the red paper of its sail was in shreds. The silk tail fluttered down on its own and expired in a puddle.
I carried the remains back home and showed them to Mummy, who sent me to my room to change and await my father’s punishment.
I wasn’t too old to get a beating. Worse, he took away my chess set and all my books, and gave them to impecunious parishioners who, he said, were more deserving of them than me.
The next day, he bought a new kite, exactly like the broken one. Oliver loved it, but our father wouldn’t join him again. He said I’d spoiled his gift, and he wouldn’t be able to enjoy it any more.
Weeks later, Mummy said she knew I was sorry because I looked so sad all the time. But that was because of my chess set and books. I didn’t feel at all guilty about the kite. If our father had taken me with them in the first place, and had shown me how to fly it like he did Oliver, it would never have been broken, would it?
Hampstead was a pleasant village north of London. When I was living in Camden Town I used to walk there sometimes to take the air on the heath. From that grassy hill you could look down on the entire city, its buildings flooded by a lake of sulphurous smoke, and imagine yourself an eagle.
Church Row was quiet, aside from a thrush giving full voice in one of the gardens. My father’s house was on the south side of the street, and might have been described, by an optimistic letting agent, as a three-storey townhouse, omitting that it was among the narrowest I had ever seen; barely room for a door and a window side by side.
I couldn’t imagine why Jane wanted me to visit our father now, so late in his life. As John Thackery had said, he must have thought his daughter had run away, fallen and shamed. How he must have hated me for bringing that disgrace upon him, and how much more he would hate me when he found out the truth.
Needing a few minutes to calm myself, I wandered up the road to the church, a rather grand building for the size of the village. I had a vision of myself at age fourteen, kneeling at the altar rail, my palms pressed tightly together as if I was the most ardent congregant, except I had already given up asking God for the only thing I wanted and was mouthing the words to ‘Goosey Goosey Gander’.
I had gained a skill through my adolescence; I could divide myself into two parts. The outer part was my physical self, standing in front of my father as he berated me for some small thing, misplacing my hymn book or forgetting to bring him his pot of tea. He would turn the colour of rhubarb, the veins on his forehead bulging, his mouth ejecting words with perfect, pounding articulation. The other part was inside, buried deep, watching all of this happening with detached curiosity. What a funny man he was, to be so angry over such a tiny slight. How unable he was to control himself, shaking with fury like a four-year-old whose biscuit has been taken away. The poor, strange fellow, he will make himself ill.
He regularly exercised his rage on the outer part of me, but he could never touch that inner one. That was forever beyond his reach, hidden among the stories and daydreams I kept in my head.
I sat on the bench by the gate, feeling the moisture soaking into the seat of my trousers. My father was long retired from the clergy, but I imagined him coming here every Sunday to share his wisdom with the local vicar, a Reverend S. B. Burnaby according to the sign.
‘You poor bastard,’ I said out loud.
The sun dipped and the temperature dropped. I was starting to shiver.
It was time.
As I knocked on his door, I wondered whether Jane might have brought Aiden and Ciara with her, and my heart was lifted at the thought of seeing them.
A housekeeper answered.
‘Yes?’
‘My name’s Stanhope. I’ve come to see Reverend Pritchard.’
She opened the door wider, and I entered the house. I was dragged instantly back to my childhood. It smelled of my father: dog hair, old manuscripts, cigar smoke, the starch in his shirts and his vestments drying in front of the fire.
I could hear children’s voices at the back of the house, shouting and giggling, and a dog yapping. They sounded happy.
Jane was in the parlour with a book in her hand. She put it face down on the table as I came in, though not before I noticed it was our mother’s first edition of Agnes Grey, which amused and irritated me in equal measure.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t sure if you’d come. Remember, you said you wouldn’t raise the topic of your … appearance. You promised.’
‘I know. But I won’t hide it either.’
She seemed to feel that the pleasantries were over, and the moment had come for me to do my duty. But I still had questions.
‘I met someone we used to know back in Enfield,’ I said. ‘Reginald Thackery. Sir Reginald now. Don’t worry, he didn’t recognise me.’
Jane pulled a face. ‘Yes, I remember him. I found him to be a disagreeable man.’ She shifted in her seat. ‘You were young, and less, well …’ she trailed off, clasping her interlaced fingers more tightly together. ‘I was engaged to be married to Howard, but still living at home, and Father kept inviting the man round. I don’t know why.’
It was unusual of Jane to imply criticism of our father, at least in adulthood, and I wondered what had prompted the change.
‘He was rich.’
‘Yes, he was. He had that cotton mill—’
‘Jute.’
‘Jute, then. What difference does it make?’ She started plucking at her cuffs, a sure sign of annoyance. ‘He thought his money would buy him anything he wanted.’
I knew what she meant. I had been considered to be a plain, awkward and sullen girl, yet even I suffered. In fact, some men seemed to believe my limitations were to their advantage and I should be grateful for their attentions. Jane had it worse. She was well-mannered and pretty, a clergyman’s daughter. A man like Sir Reginald might consider her to be a fine young fruit, ripe to be plucked.
‘Did he try to …?’
‘No.’ She clenched her fists. ‘Well, once, in the garden at home. He said some things and made a grab for me. I ran away and avoided him after that.’
She appeared quite sanguine about it, but I had the urge to snatch up that poker, run to Sir Reginald’s house and ram it down his throat. He had frightened my sister. How dare he?
‘You’d already gone by that point,’ she continued. ‘Ollie was in the army and Mummy had taken to her bed. Father and I had to keep things going.’
I could hear the resentment in her voice. She thought we had abandoned her. I supposed we had.
‘But you left as well,’ I said. ‘Eventually.’
She glared at me. ‘I got married. That’s how things are done. You grow up and have a family of your own. I put off the wedding for months waiting for you to come home and be my bridesmaid.’
I was drawing breath to reply when the housekeeper returned.
‘I’m sorry to interrupt, Mrs Hemmings,’ she said, addressing my sister. ‘You asked to know when he’s awake. Well, he is.’
Jane closed her eyes, composing herself. ‘Come along,’ she said to me. ‘I’ll take you to him. Remember your promise.’
My father’s bedroom was small, with a single bed under the window, a mahogany wardrobe and matching chest of drawers, which I recognised. There was no fire, but it was still oppressively warm, heated by the storey below and the houses on either side, and infused with the stink of the bedpan.
He was lying on top of the covers, propped up on pillows, wrapped in a dressing gown. I remembered him as tall, with a substantial belly, bushy beard and thick hair that went in all directions. Bu
t the man in the bed was thin-boned, hunched and almost bald, wheezing as he breathed. I would hardly have thought him the same person, until he spoke.
‘Who’s that?’ he rasped. ‘Give me my water.’
There was a jug and a glass on the table by his bed. Jane filled the glass and placed it in his outstretched hand.
‘It’s Jane,’ she said. ‘And Lottie’s here too. You asked for her. Isn’t that remarkable? After all this time.’
He turned his face towards us, confirming what I had already guessed. He was completely blind.
‘Hello, Father,’ I said.
‘Charlotte.’ He waved his hand at me impatiently. ‘Say something more. I want to hear you.’
‘I’m sorry you’re ill.’
I was conscious of my voice. Was I modulating it higher for his benefit, softening its edges? I couldn’t tell.
‘Well, yes,’ he said. ‘Not long now, I daresay.’ He was speaking in short bursts, as if his lungs lacked the capacity for long sentences. ‘Where have you been? We didn’t know what had happened to you.’
‘I had to leave. I’m sorry.’
Of course, I wasn’t sorry, but what else could I say? I’d been so certain this meeting would be brief and bitter that I hadn’t prepared for a civilised conversation.
‘Where did you go?’ he asked.
‘Not far from here, actually. Camden Town. I live in Soho now.’
‘Soho isn’t a good area.’
‘I’ve seen worse.’
He nodded thoughtfully, stroking his straggly beard, which was dark grey and white, like soot scattered on snow.
‘Tell me about your life.’
I searched my mind, but there was almost nothing I could say that wouldn’t give away the truth; I had a position at the hospital no woman would be offered and a room in a house with a widower, which my father would consider the height of indecency. Even my chess club didn’t allow women.
I looked at Jane, and she shook her head.
‘I have a pleasant life,’ I said.
He opened his eyes again, and they were clear, though unseeing. ‘That’s not very … specific. You and I never quite got on, did we?’
‘No, we didn’t.’
‘Your mother. She coddled you. You were her baby.’
I felt a catch in my throat. ‘I loved her too.’
He licked his lips, which were cracked and sore. ‘I was afraid for you. The world isn’t kind to unmarried ladies, Charlotte.’
‘You taught me about its unkindness.’ Behind me, Jane shifted uneasily. ‘Did you think it would make me stronger?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘You were already strong. I wanted you to learn. You were so angry all the time. So difficult. I didn’t want you to end up a spinster. A woman needs a husband.’
‘You wanted me to be more compliant, so I was marriageable.’
Jane prodded my back, but I ignored her, wondering what she could possibly have expected. She knew me better than any living soul, but I still seemed to be a complete mystery to her. And yet I hadn’t changed a jot. I was the same person I had always been, the person she grew up with. Why couldn’t she see me?
My father was sipping from his glass, his hand shaking, slopping water over his dressing gown. When he had finished, he held it out, expecting one of us to collect it and put it down for him. Jane leapt forward to do so, and he closed his fingers over hers.
‘You can go now, Jane,’ he said. ‘We’ll be all right.’
She gave me a long look and mouthed the words: ‘Five minutes.’
My father licked his lips. ‘She’s good to me. A fine daughter.’ I stayed silent, refusing to rise to his taunt. ‘And four grandchildren for me. Are you married now? Do you have any children?’
I was tempted to tell him I had six, all by different fathers, but it wasn’t worth it. I wouldn’t invent progeny for his sake.
‘No.’
He blinked, facing in my direction but not seeing me. ‘Children are a blessing. A curse too, of course.’
‘Some of them, I would imagine.’
‘All of them, in their own way.’ He lay back on his pillows and closed his eyes, exhausted by this short conversation. I could hear the clock ticking downstairs, and the wheeze in his throat.
I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to ask him about his life now, nor anything I could tell him about my own. If this strange reunion was to have any value, it would lie in his memories.
‘Do you remember Reginald Thackery?’ I asked.
I wasn’t sure if he was still awake, and I might have thought he had died were it not for his chest rising and falling.
‘Yes, I remember him well,’ he murmured eventually. ‘A wealthy fellow. He had a factory at Ponder’s End. I went there once.’
‘What kind of man was he, back then?’
He reached out, groping for my hand, and I let him take it, feeling at once repulsion at the intimacy and pity for this dry old man, counting down his final breaths. I could feel his withered skin and matchstick-thin finger-bones.
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I met him again recently. I’m curious.’
Again, there was a long pause before he spoke, as if he was gathering what little energy he had left. ‘He was an unhappy man. He had everything and nothing. Plenty of money, but no faith. He cared only for things he could see and touch.’
He wiped his mouth and I realised he had some food caught in his beard, a cube of carrot such as one might have in soup. It had probably been fed to him on a spoon. I watched it glistening there, thinking how horrified he would be if he knew. He wore his propriety like armour.
‘Do you remember his son too?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, of course. John was his name. He came to see me here actually, not a month ago. Maybe less.’ He plucked at the blankets irritably. ‘I lose track of time, lying in this bed. I can’t see the calendar. One day goes into the next.’
‘I saw John as well. He’s much changed.’
‘Yes, he’s become interested in politics. He was like a … one of those toys that jump up. You had one, I remember.’
‘A jack-in-the-box?’
He smiled, the first time I’d seen him do so in eleven years – and longer still since he’d done so because of something I said.
‘Yes, exactly. He was like one of those, but it just keeps jumping and never winds down.’ In the hallway, the clock started striking the hour, and my father held up his hand for silence, counting the chimes. When they had finished, he sighed deeply. ‘I asked him if he knew where you were, but he didn’t. He thought all this time that I had known. Odd the way the world works, isn’t it?’
‘He expressed great respect for you,’ I said, feeling strange giving him the compliment. Yet it was the simple truth.
‘I took him under my wing back in Enfield. Tried to help him. He wasn’t a bad lad, as far as I could tell, though his father didn’t agree. He hated the boy.’
I remembered John telling me that Sir Reginald had been cruel and had never forgiven him. When I asked for what, he said: for existing. An answer steeped in anguish, I thought, though I had no idea what it meant. How can anyone blame another person simply for existing?
‘Do you know why?’
‘No. I never understood it.’
‘You couldn’t understand his dislike of his child?’
He moved his thumb across my palm, kneading my coarse skin, his thin lips pressing together as he realised, I assumed, that I worked for a living. He must think me no lady, these days.
‘I know what you thought, Charlotte,’ he said. ‘But I never disliked you. I cared about you deeply; all three of you. I’m sorry you thought otherwise.’
‘And Mother?’
‘She was … we weren’t alike. She was a lot younger than me. But I was fond of her.’
‘You weren’t with her when she died.’
‘Neither were you.’
His face was composed, but he knew how to
wound me.
‘No one told me. I had left home.’ I could hear the shake in my own voice, just as I had a thousand times as a child. ‘You were her husband.’
He nodded, barely perceptibly. ‘You’re right, of course. I should have been there. I couldn’t bear to watch her suffer.’
There were tears in his useless eyes.
At least I knew now why he had me to visit him. He hoped to be forgiven his last debts in this world. But it was too late. Brief remorse on his deathbed didn’t make up for abandoning his wife when she needed him most.
Jane’s footsteps sounded on the landing. My time was up.
‘The Lord will come for me soon,’ he said, sounding congested and slow. Sleep was returning. ‘He has taken my eyes and soon He will stop my lungs. I just wanted to hear my little girl’s voice again.’
At the bottom of the stairs, I turned right instead of left, heading towards the sound of children playing in the garden. The back room was filled with our old furniture from the vicarage, the dining table cut down to half its previous glory, its legs incongruously large for the space.
A small, black and white dog jumped up at me, its tail wagging. I was reminded of the one we’d had at the vicarage; a friendly, energetic animal prone to digging up the lawn. I used to love throwing sticks for him.
Beyond the back room, a kitchen had been added to the house. The housekeeper was sitting at the table with a man’s jacket over her lap and a needle and thread in her hand.
‘Do you need something, sir?’
‘No, thank you.’
I carried on through the back door, where three children were lying on the grass, pink and panting from running around. None of them was Aiden or Ciara.
I recognised the elder boy. I’d last met him a year or so before.
‘Hello,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘I’m Walter.’ He pointed at the dog, which had followed me out. ‘That’s Huffam.’
I wondered how Charles Huffam Dickens would have felt about his namesake.
‘Where are Aiden and Ciara?’
The boy looked blank. ‘Who?’
Jane had come out behind me, and she took my arm, pulling me back towards the house.
