A Very Persistent Illusion

by L. C. Tyler

  On the plus side, of course, if Lucy kills me then I shall not have to take responsibility for the Digby Spain fiasco nor shall I have to experience Jon’s silent smugness on any of the above. On the minus side, I shall be dead. I weigh the options up without coming to any definite conclusions.

  So, I lie awake a little longer wondering if there is some third way that I have not thought of. I could, of course, just not show up at the office on Monday, but I’d need a good excuse.

  Little do I know it, but just such an excuse is winging its way towards me through the mild Sussex night.

  12

  Horsham, Saturday

  I awake to the sound of birdsong and the trees gently rustling outside the window. The sun is shining through a gap in the curtains. There is a warm and apparently naked body beside mine under the white bedspread. I am not quite sure where I am, but it seems that I am being rewarded for being good in this or (more likely) a previous life. Then one by one the lead balls fall into place with a clunk.

  1. I am in Horsham.

  2. I am here because Hugh is dead.

  3. I have not dumped Virginia.

  4. Lucy is going to kill me in the near future.

  5. If she doesn’t, Humph will.

  I am hoping that there are no more lead balls left, then I remember:

  6. Hugh is not, and never has been, Virginia’s father.

  I don’t yet fully understand in what way the last of these is my problem, but I expect that I shall understand very shortly. Also I really think I did once know somebody called Malcolm Biggenhalgh, but that is one complication too many. I go back to the top of the list and work my way down again. The only good thing is that, however bad number six may prove to be, it is not as bad as numbers two to five.

  It’s already half past eight. I get up and dress sufficiently not to alarm Daphne, then I go down to the kitchen and make tea for her. I imagine that Hugh has been contractually obliged to do this since he got married and, somehow, having tea brought to her this morning may make things a little easier. Or not. But I need activity or I may start screaming, which would not be good in a house of sorrow and mourning.

  In the kitchen I make tea and send Lucy a text message that reads: ‘Sorry last night. Unexpected problem, Horsham. Will phone soonest. C.’ I decide the safe thing would be not to phone until I see Lucy’s response. I wonder whether I was wise to admit to being in Horsham, but I figure it’s quite a large town and there will be plenty of policemen around on a Saturday morning.

  I knock cautiously on Daphne’s door. If she’s still asleep, then it’s probably because she needs as much sleep as she can get, and I plan just to leave the tea and silently tiptoe away. But she’s sitting up in bed as though she was expecting this all along. She shows no signs of having the hangover that she richly deserves. So I end up sitting on the edge of the bed, on a rose-embroidered bedspread that must be forty years old, while she sips her tea.

  ‘I probably said a few things that I shouldn’t have last night,’ she says. She’s good at understatements, is Daphne.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘It’s not for me to judge.’

  ‘You see,’ she continues, ‘Hugh liked you a lot. He’d always hoped that you and Virginia would get married, though I understand how things are now.’

  I wonder for a moment if she can read my mind and she knows that I am planning to dump her daughter. If so, she seems quite laid back about it really – cool. Or maybe she just means that people tend to live with each other rather than get married these days. Or maybe . . .

  ‘What do you mean: how things are?’ I say, not really wanting an answer.

  ‘Well . . .’ she says, not really giving me one. ‘That’s what we’d both hoped really. Hugh saw you as the son he never had, just as Virginia was the daughter he never had.’ She gives a little sigh and goes on: ‘I had to tell her. I couldn’t let her go all the way through the funeral thinking that Hugh was her father. You should only have to bury a father once.’

  I nod. Not burying your father more than once seems a good plan.

  ‘Because Malcolm is her father. When she was younger, we couldn’t say anything, of course, but I made up my mind: if anything happened to either of us, the first thing I would have to do was tell Virginia about Malcolm. Then again, Malcolm might have died years ago and none of us will be able to go to his funeral anyway, which would be a pity.’ She gives a much longer sigh than before and takes a thoughtful sip of tea. I am beginning to realize that this is not just about Virginia and her real father. A great deal of it is about Daphne and Malcolm.

  ‘He was a bit younger than me,’ she says. ‘You don’t call people “dashing” any more, do you? But that’s what he was. Dashing. He had an MG. I don’t think he knew I was pregnant when he dumped me, but I’m not sure it would have made much difference if he had. Then suddenly there was Hugh, telling me that he’d always loved me . . . There was only one thing I could do really. Being a single mother on benefits wasn’t the glamorous thing then that it is today. I never told Malcolm that Virginia was his, but he must have worked it all out. Even men can count. He came to the wedding, obviously.’

  ‘Obviously,’ I say.

  ‘He went his way and we went to Horsham,’ Daphne continues. ‘It seemed like a good place to bring up Virginia. There were schools.’

  ‘Farlington,’ I say.

  ‘She got a scholarship. She was school captain. Three grade As. She loved Farlington. She was really happy there.’

  There is a long pause. She looks towards the window. The birdsong in the garden outside is almost deafening.

  ‘So, I’ve often wondered where he was,’ says Daphne.

  I go back down to the kitchen and this time make coffee for Virginia. She too is awake and ready to take delivery of a reviving hot drink.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I ask solicitously.

  ‘Where have you been?’ she demands in return.

  ‘Talking to your mother.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Malcolm dumped her, but she still loves him.’

  ‘She told you that?’

  ‘She didn’t have to,’ I say. I tell her what I know.

  ‘Did she say where Malcolm was?’

  ‘He went his way.’

  ‘Could be anywhere then, other than here.’

  ‘Pretty much,’ I say.

  ‘I have to find him,’ she says. She’s been thinking about it. Thinking is not always a good idea. ‘He’s been out there all that time and I’ve known nothing about him.’

  There we are: another plot ticking away in the background, waiting to spring itself on me. You think you’ve got all of the parents you need, then another one jumps up out of nowhere.

  ‘He sort of deserted you,’ I say.

  ‘He deserted my mother,’ she says. So that’s all right then.

  ‘We can hardly go looking for him now,’ I say. ‘We’ve got a funeral to arrange.’

  ‘True,’ she says.

  The conversation is fairly slow over the cornflakes. Virginia says: ‘Pass the milk,’ and Daphne passes the sugar. Virginia says: ‘No, the milk,’ and Daphne, apologizing, picks up the milk and pours some into her own coffee. Then she pauses and says: ‘Sorry, was it toast that you wanted?’ You might say that we’re all a bit preoccupied with our own thoughts.

  It’s Daphne who finally says something almost rational. ‘We need to find him – your father, I mean. He ought to be at your dad’s funeral.’

  ‘I was thinking the same thing,’ says Virginia.

  ‘They were always such good friends – until one of them got me pregnant and the other one had to marry me. Your father, that is.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Virginia. At least they understand each other, but I am having difficulty keeping up and, frankly, if you have unwittingly dipped into the story at this point, I’d suggest you backtrack a bit to preserve your sanity.

  ‘They worked together for years. Then your dad sacked your father,’ Daphne
continues, ‘and that was that.’

  No, sorry, lost it completely. ‘Who sacked who?’ I say.

  ‘Dad,’ says Virginia.

  ‘. . . sacked her father,’ says Daphne.

  ‘You couldn’t just call them Hugh and Malcolm, I suppose?’

  They both look at me and I say: ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Hugh sacked Malcolm,’ says Daphne, as if she were having to explain the two times table. ‘It had nothing to do with me. Or maybe it did, who knows? Hugh just came home one day and said he had had to let him go. Wives didn’t get to question things like that in those days. We just got on with it.’

  I can’t see Daphne as Patient Griselda myself – never a convincing story at the best of times and doubly so if set in Horsham – so I just nod.

  ‘I always hoped that they would be reconciled,’ says Daphne. ‘It would have been nice if they could have gone to each other’s funerals.’ This is technically impossible, but a good thought.

  ‘He left no forwarding address?’ I ask.

  ‘He went north,’ says Daphne.

  We’re in Sussex, I think. From here everywhere is north. But I nod again.

  ‘We can find him,’ I say suddenly. Why am I saying this? Can we? Do we want to? I look from one to the other. ‘We’ll find him in time for the funeral.’

  Daphne smiles. Virginia touches my arm, tacitly offering me as much sex as I can handle for ever. ‘Thank you,’ she says with feeling.

  But we don’t set out on a madcap road trip that morning. We make lists of people who need to be told and Virginia does a lot of phoning of distant cousins. I obtain from the Internet printouts of ‘things to do when a loved one dies’. Grieving is, it seems, not one of them. There is the hospital to visit and a death certificate to obtain. We drop in on an undertaker’s – Daphne had spotted it some time ago and noted it ‘just in case’. Everyone is very kind. They are especially kind to me because, while Virginia and Daphne are being extremely brave, I am not. When Virginia asks me why I keep sniffing I say that I must be getting hay fever. She says: ‘In April?’ and I say: ‘Why not?’ Daphne sees a really pretty black hat and buys it. ‘I’m getting to an age when I go to lots of funerals,’ she says. ‘I’ll get good wear out of it.’

  We break at lunchtime for three salads. We shall return to the fray on Monday. But the vicar can still be visited in the afternoon. He offers sympathy in a large, untidy office and agrees to officiate. We in return are ungratefully vague about whether he will see us in church on Sunday. He nods, like one who has suffered much disappointment in his life.

  We come home tired. I reflect on the fact that death is now arranged in such a way that intense activity can act as an antidote for grief. Daphne says in an inconsequential way that she needs to take a nap. I am about to say something equally inconsequential in return, when I notice that there is a tear running down her cheek. I wonder whether this is the point at which I go up to her and hug her and say that it’s OK to feel grief and it’s OK not to feel grief and consistency is not, in this respect, a virtue of any sort.

  But I don’t. I watch her leave the room, the hatbox suspended from one finger by its pale green ribbon. Then I make more coffee. It’s the sort of thing I’m good at.

  ‘I’m not trying to duck out of it,’ I say, handing Virginia her mug. I am aware of the deal that we have done and the vast amount of implied sexual activity tied up in it, ‘but why is it so vital to find Malcolm before the funeral?’

  ‘Mum wants us to. She had a word with me when you were filling in forms at the council offices. She’d really like him there.’

  ‘I still don’t see why.’

  ‘I’m not sure I do entirely either. I can understand why she might want to see Malcolm again, but I can’t understand why it’s important that he is at Hugh’s funeral. On the other hand, if it’s possible . . .’

  ‘So, you want me to do this for Daphne?’

  ‘No, I want you to do this for Hugh. They seem to have been best friends once upon a time. I don’t know why he sacked Malcolm, but Mum says he always felt bad about it. Malcolm at the funeral is a way of drawing a line under it. Maybe in the end, that’s why Mum wants him there.’

  ‘I’ll do it for Hugh,’ I say.

  * * *

  Just before we go to bed I get a text from Lucy, in reply to mine sent that morning. It is quite short.

  It reads: ‘Chris, exactly what is your problem?’

  She’s got a point.

  13

  Sunday

  When Mr Bennet wishes to track down Lydia and the dastardly George Wickham, he has to set off in a post-chaise (or whatever) for London and tramp the streets. Not so the modern searcher for lost persons. The search for Malcolm Biggenhalgh begins comfortably seated at a desk in Hugh’s study. You might have assumed that the twenty-first century would not have had much impact on Hugh and Daphne, but Hugh was quick to spot the advantages of the Internet to the freelance military historian and was wired up even before I was. We therefore have a powerful laptop at our command and a whole world out there.

  I try Google first, searching for ‘Malcolm Biggenhalgh’ and ‘M Biggenhalgh’. It is the latter that turns up the wackiest coincidence. There is an M. Biggenhalgh right here in Horsham. We check him out with trepidation – this is scarily easy. He is treasurer of a local parent-teacher association and features two or three times on the school website. On further investigation he (or somebody with the same name) is also a member of a local football team and, according to a newspaper report, was last season’s leading goal scorer.

  ‘How old would Malcolm be?’ I ask Virginia.

  ‘A couple of years younger than Mum,’ she says. ‘So, I suppose that means mid-fifties.’

  ‘Not likely, therefore,’ I say, reading from the page in front to me, ‘to sprint the full length of the pitch and unleash a power-driver of a shot past the flailing arms of the West Chiltington goalkeeper?’

  ‘Did he immediately have a heart attack?’

  ‘It doesn’t say. He’s also got some very young children, apparently.’

  ‘Probably not then,’ she says. ‘Who else do you have?’

  There are three actual, genuine Malcolm Biggenhalghs featuring on various websites. One died in 1887 and one in 1936, so that rules them out. The third won second prize in a Lake District dog show (or rather his terrier, Scruff, did) but there is tantalizingly little to go on for our only living Malcolm Biggenhalgh.

  ‘We can’t go hunting aimlessly round the whole of Cumbria,’ says Virginia sensibly, rejecting what was going to be my first suggestion. She stares intently at the screen and tucks a stray wisp of dark hair behind her ear. Why have I never noticed before that she is beautiful? Has she changed over the past twenty-four hours or have I? For an instant I stare at her staring at Hugh’s laptop, then I return to the job in hand, because that’s what we’re doing.

  ‘All we know is that he was there for a dog show,’ I say. ‘People travel miles for them. Still, all is not lost.’

  I check the electoral rolls online, which you can do at a small price. We come up with a Malcolm Biggenhalgh in Grasmere. We have an address and we know that another quick search will give us his telephone number. And it’s only nine forty-five. We could ring Malcolm, tell him he has a beautiful grown-up daughter and still have time to surprise the vicar by showing up for communion. I suggest this to Virginia.

  ‘But . . .’ she says.

  ‘Yes . . .’ I reply.

  I do immediately see her point. Making contact with your parents for the first time is a special occasion and best done shortly after birth. This call is going to be just a bit of a shock for Malcolm (and Scruff). Serve him right, some might say, but all the same . . .

  ‘He might turn out to be terrible,’ she says. ‘He could be an alcoholic or a druggie or anything. He could show up stoned and disrupt the funeral. People change . . .’

  ‘So what do you want to do?’ I ask. ‘Write?’

  ‘I ne
ed to think about it,’ she says.

  ‘Fine,’ I say.

  ‘Can we drive to Grasmere tomorrow?’ she says.

  ‘I thought you needed time to think?’

  ‘I’ve thought,’ she says. ‘I have to see what he’s like, and then decide whether we tell him.’

  ‘How do we do that?’ I ask.

  ‘Don’t worry, darling. You’ll come up with something,’ she says.

  And she gives me a kiss on my cheek, which is nice.

  * * *

  Monday opens with a further visit to the funeral parlour and another round of form filling in various offices around town.

  Back at the house I send an email to Humph to say that I need leave at short notice to sort out a few things. I wonder whether to email Lucy, but we seem to have said it all by text anyway. If she wants to give me further feedback on my status as a human being, I am sure she will do so in her own good time. So, I email Jon and tell him he’s in charge and to let Narinder, Fatima and Lucy know I probably won’t be in this week. Virginia phones her office on her mobile, then disappears into the bedroom and talks to somebody for some time.

  By late morning we are in a position to hand over control of any forthcoming funerals to Daphne for a couple of days so that we can set off on what is beginning to strike me as a rather strange mission.

  But the sun is shining and the blossom on the trees dances as we swish past on our way to London. In a strange way it is good to be here rather than at work. This is what I should be doing: running away from my problems as fast as I possibly can, with no clear plan as to what I shall do when I stop running.