“Sometimes, my boy, you are so very like your Mother.”
He stood up and opened his wine cupboard. A ritual he had always performed when something momentous was occurring.
After placing two glasses on the table he sat back.
“I am merely re-paying my debt to you.”
I must have looked as though I did not understand.
“I have been indebted to you, yes, indeed, indebted.”
He seemed to be thinking as he spoke, worrying about whether he should entrust me with more of his secrets, and what that might lead to. “You have held my secrets, you have had knowledge that has caused people you love much pain. For that I apologise. I hope by removing the sources of that pain I make your life easier.”
“Matt.” I prompted. “Not you?”
“We couldn’t allow him to carry on.”
“You had to protect the O’Dwyers, I understand that.”
“He was getting too close to truths that must remain buried …” he hesitated. I felt sure he was going to say ‘until I’m dead’ but the just said “…for a while.”
“Believe me, he was a very real threat not only to me but to you and to your Holly. He was greedy and arrogant. As he killed his wife, so would he have killed his daughter if it meant getting hold of her grandparent’s fortune. As you know he was blackmailing me, what about you need not know. And if you pay off blackmailers they keep returning for more. I had hoped that by paying him it would divert his attention from others. It did not. I hope he suffered. He deserved to suffer.”
“Do you do a lot of this?” It was the only thing I could think to say.
“I used to, during the war. My old contacts have remained useful. I have been useful to them, sometimes they help me in return.”
“David?” I had been curious, and I had to ask though I fully expected Max not to answer. I knew it was a common name but I remembered when the man who is my grandfather had walked into the drawing room on the evening before my Mother’s funeral Max had looked at him as if he knew him. There had been a controlled but definite look of recognition passing between them.
“That David?” I repeated the question.
Very rarely had I ever seen Max not know how to control a situation. Everything we had ever said to each other had been on his terms. He would begin and end conversations as he wanted. But this time he didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing, he leant down to unlock a drawer of his desk and took out an envelope which he handed to me.
“Read.”
Charles,
It is the evening of your mother’s funeral and perhaps I am feeling a little maudlin but there are some things I think you should know. Maybe not now but when the time comes.
“I knew there was something, at the funeral, at the wedding. I thought you must have known him. And then at Holly’s wedding they didn’t come to stay with us. That was odd. You needed to keep your distance didn’t you?”
Max dipped his head in agreement.
“You met him in the war?”
Max nodded briefly again.
“Can you talk about it?”
“No. There are some things that will not be known. There is no need. Nothing would be gained.”
“Can you tell me how you can just call him up and a man is dead?”
“No.”
“You can’t explain how I happen to be living in your house all these years and you have never told me that you have known the man who is my grandfather for the best part of 40 years? And don’t tell me it is ‘coincidence’ because I won’t believe you.”
“I have told you before you are correct to distrust coincidence. I don’t believe it exists.”
“Then how?”
“David knows some things of my past I don’t want anyone to know.” He began but I couldn’t help interrupting.
“About the money? The pictures?” He nodded briefly, almost distractedly, then continued.
“He arranged for me to buy the firm, he arranged for me to buy Millcourt. It is because of David that I am here.”
“Why here?”
“Because Alicia was here.”
“I don’t understand.” How could I have done?
“David wanted me to take care of his daughter, to look after Alicia. It’s quite simple really. David saw his daughter, the daughter he could never acknowledge, embarking on a marriage that he could only think was going to bring her unhappiness. There was nothing he could do to stop your mother marrying your father but he could make sure there was someone close by who could help her whenever she needed help. Provide for her and her family.” He paused and looked deliberately at me. “I believe I kept my promise.”
“And when you took me and Monika into your home it was the two strands coming together?”
“Indeed. I know you have come to believe that it was Monika I felt responsibility for and that I had no choice to take you on as well but in truth, yes, it was both of you.”
“Why did you never tell me?”
“That, my dear boy, I cannot answer because I do not know. Perhaps I have been so used to secrecy.”
“Is there anything else I should know?”
He smiled, but gave me no answer.
“I’m going to ask her to marry me.” I eventually spoke the words.
Max had relaxed. “Of course she will say yes.”
“If she does, we’ll be family.”
“Convoluted, but yes we will be family.”
“Monika will be my aunt.”
“I think she would be very happy with that.”
“But of course I will never be able to tell her.”
“Of course you won’t.”
And I didn’t.
Finale
22 years later, on November 29th 1998, three months after Ted had phoned me, the family was gathered in the study of Sandhey for the reading of Max’s will.
Holly looked across the room at me, now 56 years old, as I stood behind Monika. Carl stood close by with his arm loosely resting on Susannah’s shoulders.
With little preamble Ted began to read from the papers on the desk in front of him that had seen so much drama over the years. I was not the only person in the room with memories of talking to Max as he sat behind it.
“I, Max Fischer, being of as much sound mind as I have been at any time in my life wish to make the following clear, to you all, you who have been a part of my life for so long.”
Any light murmur of conversation was silenced; all the young ones fell quiet at the tone of voice and the seriousness of the occasion.
“I begin with a quotation Exodus Chapter 34 Verse 7
“Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin - and that will by no means clear the guilty - visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.”
I can see you all now, pondering that quotation.
Well Charles, Carl, Susannah you are the second generation. Arnold and Alicia, Maureen and Kathleen, they were the first to suffer from the actions of their parents.”
The names meant little to most of the people in the room.
I looked across the room at Holly, whose eyebrows were furrowed in a way that I had loved. She wouldn’t remember Maureen and she wouldn’t know who Kathleen was any more than Josie and the boys did.
“Susannah, your children are the third generation. I know you and Carl have given them all the love they could possibly need to end the sequence. If God wills it the pain will end now.”
I could see Linda thinking ‘that’s all he knew’.
I wondered when he had written those words. It was obvious much had been kept from him in his declining years, or perhaps he just had chosen not to see what was in front of him.
“For you all I would say ‘Do not judge them too harshly for things they could not know’. Much of this is not your responsibility. Do not blame yourselves.”
Most of the gathered
company would have their own ideas of what Max had been referring to. For my part I thought ‘but I did know. I can blame myself.’
Ted paused briefly before continuing.
“The first and most important bequest for you all is this book of Ted’s. Read it carefully, learn from it.”
The people in the room all turned towards the table in the corner, for the first time perhaps realising that the parcels were all the same size. Children and adults alike had rather assumed they were small gifts outside the remit of the will.
Only Ted, myself and one other had known what they really contained.
Their glances turned away from the table towards Ted as he began speaking again.
“Learn to forgive your elders their mistakes for they make them either unwittingly or through weakness.
My second bequest is an explanation…”
I looked around the room, every person was listening rapt as Ted read the words Max had written about his family. With a dawning realisation of what was to follow Holly couldn’t help but turn her gaze towards me as I looked straight at her. ‘At last’ she mouthed and I half shook my head in answer.
She looked at Monika who was listening unblinking as Ted spoke of things she thought were long forgotten.
Ted read that Max had given his niece a map, how after the war that map had meant she found her way to Britanny, how he had found her there.
“Your real name is Rebecca Rebmann. You are my dear niece – but I could never tell you for all the memories I knew it would bring up to mention it. As we grew older together I knew your knowing our relationship could not make us any fonder of each other. So I let it be.”
It was still only half the truth.
And as Holly looked at Monika she could see no surprise, no shock or despair on her face.
After the reading of the will was concluded people were talking in urgent but hushed tones about the disposition of Max’s assets. I watched Holly walk across the room towards us.
She interrupted Monika unapologetically, talking directly to her. “You knew didn’t you? How long have you known?” She could not keep the hostility from her voice.
When Monika replied he spoke firmly and with as much bitterness as Holly had expressed.
“I have known since the very earliest days. I was not very clever in many ways but there are things I will always remember and I knew when I saw his hands, resting on the sea wall as we watched the tide covering and uncovering the unterseeboot. They were my father’s hands. There were memories but they were unclear and I knew I did not want to live with them. So I didn’t try. For years I was content with my life and that people should know me as Monika. Then I saw a photograph in the paper. A girl I recognised even though the name, Holly Eccleston, meant nothing to me. I met that girl called Holly and the man called Matt. Then I saw those same hands again. How could I not know?”
“You knew but you said nothing? Ever?”
“I said nothing because nothing was said to me.”
“When you saw the pain around you?”
“I saw no pain.”
“And me? You were happy never to tell me you were my aunt?”
Her anger and resentment subsided. Holly raised her shoulders and let them drop in a gesture of helplessness. Keeping those truths secret had cost so much and it had all been a complete waste.
Monika had known all along.
“You see an old woman when you look at me. You see my roundness and my grey hair. Well I saw much when I looked at you that day on my bed, asleep. I saw my hair. Although I had always worn it plaited but I had loved to brush it at night and in the morning. I saw my young self in you. I did not know why you had come, what you wanted from me, but I knew who you were. I waited and I watched.”
“But you said nothing. Why say nothing?” I felt something of Holly’s pain.
“I said nothing because nothing was said to me.” She repeated as if it were a mantra.
“All that pain. For nothing. You let us go through all that for nothing.” Holly spoke with a quiet anger.
“Whose pain? You think only of your own pain. What of the pain of others? That doesn’t matter to you does it? You were all so sure I could not know. You must have thought I was stupid. You did think I was stupid. All of you look at me and what do you see? No one has tried to know me, not even you Charles. So I waited for someone to ask me what I knew and tell me what I had forgotten. I wanted someone to tell me who I really was. But you didn’t tell me. It was you who said nothing. Not me.”
“Why is it impossible for anyone in this bloody family to tell the truth?” Holly turned on me, knowing she had no answer for Monika.
“Because sometimes it is easier to lie?” I gave an unsatisfactory reply.
“Whatever the cost?” Holly looked directly at me as she hadn’t looked at me for years.
“Whatever the cost.” I confirmed with finality.
I watched with such sadness as she turned, walked away from us and after hesitating slightly as if wondering whether it was the right thing to do, collected her parcel from the table and walked out of the door alone.
Walking Alone Page 35
