“That surprised me and I stopped, wondered why, when she took her chance, showed me an image on her mobile phone and it was that which … “
My hands tighten on hers in understanding. I had seen her transfixed, a look of sheer terror on her face as I had viewed the scene on the fuzzy CCTV system at the Merian jeweller’s shop.
A voice devoid of any emotion, “And then, well, I ran off, past poor Sam, home and then to here. Blind panic, never happened to me before.”
The knitting ceases, Martha’s aged voice encourages, “Tell him what was in the picture dear.”
My mother’s voice carries the grief of decades from her very essence as she pushes the words out one by one, “The first time I met him. Your father, another girl I was close to.”
Her words stumble, slur for a moment and then come in a loud rush, “Me, Valentine’s father Rupert, his friend Robert Greene and his girlfriend Isabella.”
“Nothing really,” fades to nothingness.
40
Prolonged silence often works wonders in interrogations, or as modern police jargon has it, ‘sympathetic questioning.’ Not here despite fifteen minutes of quiet save for nature battering the cottage from without.
My mother finally loosens her hands from mine, takes up her cup, sips it, grimaces, murmurs, “Cold,” and hurries off to make a fresh pot when none of us wants another or has touched the first.
I am lost even as the knitting clacks once more to give rhythm to thought.
Why should just seeing an old photograph of days long gone upset my mother so much that she panics and runs. My father was the love of her life. She never wanted another and hence has been alone these past thirty-four years. She would not tolerate a procession of potential new fathers in my life, in our home. Only in recent years have I realised how desperately hard and perhaps misguided that decision may have been. For her. A beautiful woman in her mid-twenties staying single for almost four decades, half a lifetime, is impossible to comprehend. And I was there, an unwitting witness and the cause. All in spite of, and I can only surmise, many offers, including from eminent doctors and consultants at the hospitals within her realm until she retired last summer.
Hot tea and fresh crockery mark my mother’s return. Her words catch in my mind then, the order she said them, breaking them into couples it seemed, ‘Your father, another girl I was close to.’
Then, ‘Me, Valentine’s father Rupert, Robert Greene and his girlfriend.’ Is it a natural thing to do: to describe how they were all actually stood in the photograph? If so, was my mother with Val’s father and my Dad was there with another girl?
I ask.
She wants to lie, to say it was just how they were stood for the photo. She has the look of a hunted hind, wracked with foreknowledge of the bloody mess she is about to become, already contemplating a fate beyond fear.
“Tell him it all dear, be for the best,” Miss Loam reassures, laying her needles down to sip her tea.
My mother laughs bitterly, “Blind date Caleb, I was a nurse in Cambridge then, was set up with Rupert Fitzroy D’Eynscourte, destined to be the 23rd Earl I found out after. Another girl was with your father; lovely Robert Greene was with his fiancée from the hunting and fishing county set where he came from in Surrey.”
I say nothing, unsure what this has to do with the dead woman or me as she goes on, “Sat in that pub in Cambridge then, I had Rupert one side and your father the other. I just liked Frank immediately, we hit it off, he was so quiet, serious, almost embarrassed to be there, sensitive even at being dragged along. Was not even friends with the other two. And he was so natural, even had a normal name and family and did not show off.”
Her voice is wistful, “The boy who should have come, Rupert and Robert’s other friend, some Lord I think, was ill and those two had met Dad in the street by chance and Rupert knew him vaguely from his estate and had dragooned him into ‘helping out’ with me and my friend instead of the missing Lord.”
Her anger is suddenly loud, “In so many ways. The worst decision of my life, to go at all.”
I do not understand. She met my father that day yet wishes she had not?
Her eyes glaze as she stares at her clasped hands and tells the story, voice sadly resonant back in its soft Norfolk burr, “Rupert fancied me, rotten, hung around the hospital sometimes, bombarded me with flowers, chocolates for a year after I tended him in Accident and Emergency one night, he was drunk and dived in the River Cam for some prank from one of the old bridges, not realising it was so shallow.
“Stalked me after I suppose we would call it now. In a way I thought charming at the time, flowers, chocolates, cards, all the other nurses thought I should grab him. But he was aristocracy, I did not want to even try to fit in.”
The interruption is sharp then, “A malignant toad. Not used to what he could not have.”
The words echo. The first time I have heard Miss Loam be critical of anyone save for their intellectual ideas. The first time I can remember any disagreement between these two women. The first-time Martha has ever voiced criticism of any child she taught.
My mother shakes her head, words catching in her throat as she continues softly, “He meant well ……. he had engineered the blind date with my young friend to trap me after I refused all those offers to go out with him, to go away for a fancy weekend, tea at the Savoy, skiing, go abroad, anything, everything.”
Her voice goes from dark to light, “That night, I just clicked with your Dad, Rupert went off with my friend to a nightclub, Richard and his girl stayed and the four of us had a nice drink and bite to eat in the Eagle.”
Her eyes turn from our clasped hands up to my face again, a taut smile, “Where I used to meet you and Bess sometimes years later when you were undergrads there. Made me cry being there, you probably noticed. Your Dad saw me onto the train to Ely that night, I asked to see him again, he was so shy …”
The pause is long, the words somehow bitter for some reason when they come, “And the rest is history.”
***
Minutes go by in utter silence again, the air to carry sound seemingly sucked out of the room. I knew nothing of this beyond the fact that my parents met in The Eagle, the wood panelled seventeenth century pub famous for being the place where Crick and Watson dared voice to themselves at least their Nobel prize winning discovery of the helix structure of DNA.
Still, there must be far more. Why would such a picture wreak such upset? As my mother turns resolutely towards me, I sense Ancaster’s renowned black swans that signify disaster hover closer above me, their wings thrashing around my head.
Miss Loam speaks above the ticking clock and gusting winter beyond in clubbing dismissal, “Rupert D'Eynscourte was the last of a long line of men who were not fit for anything, let alone having wealth and power and control over so many lives.”
A cough of disgust, “You mother saw the best in him then, we threw him out of the school when he was six, good riddance. Tells you a lot. Oh, yes, he was handsome, charming and clever, but within, deep down, no, I am sorry, he was evil.”
My mother looks quickly at Martha, violently shaking her head in what has clearly been a well-worn, emotional and upsetting argument long discarded for the sake of friendship.
“He could not have your mother and made her pay. End of story.”
My mother explains softly that while she was now with my father, the future Lord D'Eynscourte had wooed my mother’s friend for a year.
“He entranced her, she was barely seventeen.”
Miss Loam’s contempt is brutal, totally out of character again, “Along with many others - bamboozled her with his flash cars, his big estate in Ancaster County, wining and dining, nights and weekends in London and abroad, all on credit, all behind her family’s back. A simple country girl, when it all began, he was twenty going on twenty-one, a rich experienced man of the world in comparison.”
My mother is patient, “I think he truly loved her.”
The ol
d lady’s voice scathes, the voice she used in school when you were so wrong she almost despaired of putting you on the right track.
“Until it all came out that Rupert had debunked to China, leaving Penny pregnant, penniless, prone to drink and drugs, broken, ashamed, hiding herself even from her family. To die miserably - from complications after the birth or a broken heart -utterly alone. Perhaps he did not intend the death but the whole thing was revenge from a deranged scrote.”
Martha’s hatred is venomous, my voice is hoarse, “And that baby is …?”
Martha’s face is still white with disgust as they avoid each other’s eyes but somehow a decision is made.
My mother’s sigh is a deep chasm as she weeps, turns and takes me in her arms then for a moment before holding me away to stare at my face as though seeing me for the last time.
My mother’s tears are a whisper, “Valentine.”
“Val’s mother was Penny. My adored young sister.”
***
I drive away in primeval darkness, through a countryside that austerity has donated the demise of streetlights. Grateful for my headlights, I negotiate twisting roads with deep ravenous dykes on each side that regularly welcome boy racers to gorge on. And bodies for the disposing therein too by popular repute. The black swans that haunt the Fens are the ghostly souls of many unhappy souls lost there over centuries, or so says local folklore.
Martha and I had laid my mother to bed fully clothed. Exhausted she slept instantly, curled up foetal for protection. Martha insisted no Doctor was needed, and she would tend my mother through the night, not I, that she would keep me informed and I had other tasks to do.
“Sort this out lad,” she says when I tell her the woman with the photograph is now dead. We both know there is some connection, there has to be. I can formally rule my mother out though. She joined Martha on Saturday lunchtime and has not left her house since, with the old lady actually napping by her bedside all of Saturday and Sunday nights she was so worried.
We do not discuss my mother’s bombshells, save for Martha to say, “Your poor Ma, all these years. Got so upset Saturday as she knew that single photograph and journalist would bring the secret all crashing down on you and Val.”
My first thought is to go to him, tell him, talk the meaning through. Martha tells me I cannot. My mother had pledged to the D’Eynscourte family: access for secrecy.
“A cruel inhumane agreement by the old Lord, Rupert’s father, Val’s grandfather. Bring shame on the boy, mother a drunk, possibly on drugs they said. Not being upper class did not help of course.”
Besides would Val really want to be told, she asks, “Such a fine man he has become. Not knowing.”
I drive slowly with these thoughts. Val is my cousin. Little wonder we felt a kinship, bonded against all others. His mother was my aunt, one who I never knew existed. In all these years, not a hint from my mother or grandparents, Sam, the then estate manager, Bull Senior or our neighbours in almost four decades. Country folk keep things close, but even then? And I call myself a detective?
It explains much. Why my mother would never let me call Sam’s wife, Auntie Janet.
“You only had one Auntie, my lovely little sister Penny, and you will never know her,” my mother had sobbed as she told the rest of her tale. It reveals why I often thought my Mum loved Valentine as much as me; she did, she was his Aunt, the nearest he had to a mother and real family.
And the woman in the market said she had other ‘pictures’ to show my mother, how many more, what are they?
And who took that first picture?
My mother was wistfully bitter, “A local press photographer, freelance, he was looking for students having a good time, just came across us that summer night. It was printed in the Cambridge Evening News and a University magazine. ‘The future Lord D'Eynscourte and the heir of the eminent Greene banking family - with friends at play’ was the headline, I can see it now. Printed in the Merian Standard too somehow, your Dad got ragged about it, mixing with the aristocracy.”
She and my father married and I was born before they heard the news of Val’s birth and in rapid succession, his mother’s death. Rupert had married Penny, it turned out, and so he took custody of the baby, established it at D'Eynscourte House with Captain Bull Senior and his wife in charge, along with the old Lord before his death and then Robert Greene as Val’s guardian from afar when Rupert died.
“Rightly or wrongly, the rest is history,” Martha had said quickly at the end, her five-foot frame coming upright as she moved rapidly over to my mother.
Marion’s eyes were dilated in pure black grief at the end as she gripped my hands with a look that seared and her conclusions would not be silenced despite my longing for her to stop.
“But the worst Caleb, your and my lives ruined and it is all my fault.”
I had stared aghast at the tragedy ravaging her face as thoughts that had haunted her for her adult lifetime were finally spoken.
“They agreed I could see Val if I lived locally and meeting him somehow happened naturally, if I never told Val his story or about his mother, my sister, otherwise I would never see or hear of him again.”
My mother’s anguish earlier this night was spinning, whirling to condemn herself, “Your father was so clever, had a glittering career as an academic and a University leader, as a novelist, writing poetry he hoped, so much promise everyone agreed, but he loved me.”
I never want to hear a beloved voice clawed by such pain ever again but she had gone on, relentless, releasing the ravages of years.
“After his M Phil, we came back to Ancaster County, a job way beneath his talents at a local school, settled down and I looked after Val one afternoon a week as a baby, he even came and played with you before you went to school a few times. At least my dream that you would be close came true.”
The car slides on a sharp bend but I correct, thinking how I had held her close. Ms Loam hovered, whispering that my father would have changed nothing, he had the love of his life, that was the be all and end for him.
My mother reared, almost violently from us both, eyes wide, self-loathing in her voice, “No, do you not see, if we had not come back here, here, because of me ….”
Even the pause stabs before softly, “Frankie would not have died, you would have had a father Caleb, I would have had a husband, we would all have had a life, you would never have lost Bess and Grace ….”
Sadness laces every word and breath, “It would have been better for him, for my beloved Frank if he had never been dragged along to that pub that night, never met me ….”
Cracked voice faded to nothing, no needles clacked, the clock had ceased ticking, the dog slept mournfully, the fire was out and I had crept away.
Thursday
41
Dream, nightmare, the death of loved ones mean I am half-awake as the DVD, that carries the recording of the church bells, toll three a.m. Deep in my twisting labyrinth, my family’s scree of falling cries assail me as the putrid slime of walls, floor and ceiling threaten to engulf. A wasteland of barren evil that never sleeps in the fire riddled air. Choking as if drowning in a sudden rising flood. Hell, without end is this void. My father is drowning, my mother anguished, watching, and I am prone, zombie like.
An angel offers redemption. The softest touch of a numinous silhouette, a celestial murmur of ’Caleb.’
My eyes open but will not see. I am spinning circles and somersaults all at the same time. Hurtling faster and faster, uprooted, unhinged in time and space from anyone, anywhere I ever knew.
Amidst the mayhem, I stumble, thrash, flail as the figure shimmering under soft light strokes my bruised face, whispers, ‘Hush, Caleb, hush.’
Mind and body riddled, ragged with the pains of years I long for peace I cannot remember even as this hallowed being stills the spinning earth.
“Caleb, wake up now,” an angel’s voice of sweet concern, promising all will be well.
This creature from a
better world embraces me and I sink into the welcoming surrounds of the sweetest light scent and colour of pinkish magenta.
My voice is strangled, my throat seemingly congealed with blood as I falter, “Amy?”
Her dissolved features form. It is she.
“I thought you would never wake,” she says with relief, releasing the hug only after sitting me firmly back on the chair at the desk in my Incident Room. She sits quietly then on a nearby stool. Clearly unnerved, she is ready to leap forward once more if I should topple, or froth at the mouth as her face betrays she half expects.
“I die each night,” my voice a cackle, trying to explain, “in dream and nightmare.”
Her face is a despairing mask of bleakness as my eyes are drawn to the third button on her blouse, struggling to stay connected and contain the play of shimmering skin beyond.
She cannot speak, but moves her stool beside me, takes my hands in hers, face close to mine.
“Breathe, calm,” her mellifluous voice gathers me up once more, her breath soft. “A sad soul can kill you quicker than a germ.”
John Steinbeck. Is she going to say more? Still I cannot see clearly, Amy is visible but the room beyond is hazy and formless.
“I, I,” my words falter as questions come and then suddenly, without warning, emotion takes hold that should not.
As she crosses her shapely legs the sheen of nylon sings and her short dress reveals more than normal of such desirable thighs as to make me dream of love and sex with her for hours. To forget all. Enjoy happiness this once. I shake my head, moan, almost swoon as she says my name and holds me close once more and I return her hug, my face turning naturally ever closer to her lips.
I have been celibate these seven years while searching for my lost wife and daughter, devotedly married for eight years before that. And now, suddenly, suddenly I long to kiss Amy, desire Amy, a beautiful valued friend; an almost solitary trusted, what, friend, colleague, object of affection, would-be lover, possible roles I have never recognised?
Bitter Pastoral_A DCI Caleb Cade Crime Thriller of rural Ancaster County. Page 25
