‘No. I intend to be a proper mother to Grace, no nurseries or boarding schools.’
Since I was sure that was part of the reason she was so screwed up, I understood her attitude. What I doubted was her ability to carry it through…
‘D’you want to see the DNA test?’ she asked.
‘How did you get a sample from me?’
‘One of your jumpers found its way into my stuff and I took a hair from it.’
‘But is it my hair?’ Spiteful again.
‘It was short, blonde, and I hadn’t slept with anyone other than Charles and you. Unless, of course, you had…’
I shook my head. It didn’t occur to me to doubt her.
‘Have you tried Pops?’ I asked.
‘Yes. You don’t think I’ve enjoyed coming here, do you? He says it’s your child, so you should pay for it. He’s funny like that.’
No doubt… ‘How much d’you want?’
‘I suggest our solicitors work it out between them, based on what the Child Support Agency recommend.’
‘I’ll talk to her first,’ I said, meaning my solicitor. ‘Subject to what she says, I broadly agree.’
‘Good,’ she said.
There was a silence, then she surprised me by saying, ‘D’you want to hold her? Grace. Your daughter.’
I surprised myself by saying, ‘Yes.’
She unstrapped her from the pram, lifted her out and gently placed her in my lap.
Holding the baby…
I looked down at her. She looked like any other baby. When you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them… then her face screwed up, she yawned and opened her eyes. They were blue. They fixed onto mine.
Did I feel a sudden rush of fatherly devotion, of love? That this was my daughter, my flesh and blood, the fruit of my loins?
No. She still looked like any other baby. But…
At that moment, when she stared up at me, it did come to me that she was a person, another human being. And, like it or not, I was at least partly responsible. Silently, I told her that I accepted that responsibility. She can’t have been hugely impressed by this noblesse, because she let out a howl. Sarah reached out and I handed her back.
‘D’you mind if I feed her?’ she said. ‘Or would you rather I took her out to the car?’
‘Feed her here. Can I get you a tea or coffee?’
For the first time, she smiled. ‘Tea would be nice.’
I went out and made it, taking my time. When I came back in with it, there was another surprise – Sarah was breastfeeding her. I really hadn’t thought her the type. I commented on it.
‘When I said I was going to be a proper mother, I meant it.’
I nodded slowly. Perhaps I had underestimated her…
No, gentle reader, do not assume that everyone’s going to end up happy ever after. The gulf between us was too wide, the hurt too recent and deep. There’s a saying that the people you hate most aren’t those who have hurt you, but those whom you have hurt. I think I understand that, and maybe we were both feeling both kinds of hate…
Anyway, Grace went to it with a will – there was nothing wrong with her appetite – and soon she dropped off again. Sarah put her back in the pram and said,
‘Let me know when you’ve spoken to your solicitor, and we’ll arrange for them to get together. I’d better have the details of yours…’
We swapped solicitors, then I said, ‘What’s your address?’
‘I’m staying with Mum and Dad at the moment. You’ve still got the number?’
I nodded.
I opened the door while she manoeuvred the pram out and watched until she drove away. Went back inside and slumped on the sofa.
I sat and let it all wash over me for half an hour or so, wondering what to do. If anything.
Talk to solicitor first thing, but that wouldn’t be till Monday…
I supposed I ought to let Fenella know, but I didn’t feel like talking to anyone. I’d said I’d phone Rebecca, but didn’t feel up to that, either.
As though to admonish me for my lack of moral fibre, my mobile went. It was Rebecca.
‘We hadn’t quite finished, had we?’ she said.
‘Hadn’t we?’
‘Do you think the problem with the Safety Cabinet necessarily means they won’t have a hidden lab? If they had somewhere like the cellar we found, for instance…’
‘No, I don’t think that. I thought I’d already said that they could well have one.’
‘I think so too,’ she said, ‘so I’ll go on looking.’
There didn’t seem to be much to say after that, so I said, ‘OK. Let me know how you get on.’
She said, ‘I didn’t know you had a child.’
‘Neither did I,’ I said without thinking.
She said, ‘Does that mean you do or you don’t?’
So of course I told her.
‘Blimey,’ she said. ‘No wonder you’re a bit off-key.’ Pause, then, ‘D’you think you’d better tell Prof Mason, in case she thinks it might affect your…?’
‘My capability? Yes, I was about to call her.’
‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ she said.
Fenella asked me exactly the same question – whether it affected my capability, and I said no.
‘I’ll take your word for that,’ she said. ‘But I can tell you that if Roland finds out, he’ll make trouble. Can we keep it from him?’
‘Well, I’m not telling anyone.’
‘Then you’d better ask Inspector Hale to do the same. Do it now, Herry.’
I tried to ring Rebecca, but she was ‘Unable to take your call’. I left a message and she rang me back fifteen minutes later.
‘I’ve already told the boss,’ she said. ‘He agrees with me that to replace you now would only make things worse.’
‘Then you’d better get back to him and tell him to keep it to himself,’ I said, and explained why.
‘Has this Dr Wade-Stokes really got that much clout?’ she asked.
‘He’s got His Nibs’ ear,’ I said. ‘Sir Colin’s.’
‘I’ll do it now,’ she said.
She came back a few minutes later to say it would remain between the four of us. It didn’t, of course.
Chapter 11
The next morning, Sunday, the phone went while I was in the shower. Thinking it might be Rebecca, I wrapped myself in a towel and answered it.
‘Hereward? It’s John here.’ Pops, my esteemed father in law. ‘I understand you met your daughter yesterday.’
‘Er – yes, that’s right, John.’
‘And Sarah brought you up to date.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Well, as you probably know, they’re staying with us at the moment. However, they’re going out with Pat this morning,’ Pat was Sarah’s mother, ‘and I was hoping you could come round here for a chat.’
No. ‘What about, John?’
‘Sarah and Grace, of course. They are your wife and daughter.’
‘I did agree with Sarah yesterday that I’d help her financially with Grace. We’re contacting our solicitors on Monday – tomorrow.’
‘You’ll end up paying more to them than to Sarah – which I’m sure you’d rather avoid if you could.’
‘I don’t really see any alternative.’
‘There may be one. That’s what I’d like to talk to you about.’
‘I’m listening, John.’
‘It would be better if you could come here and we discuss it man to man.’
Man to man, one of his favourite phrases… and yet when we were together, he addressed me as my boy… ‘I don’t think so, John.’
‘I want to talk to you about your wife and daughter. My daughter and granddaughter. I think you owe it to them at least to hear me out, Hereward.’
I didn’t reply.
Then he said, ‘Please…’
And I heard myself say, ‘All right.’
‘Good man. An hour, shall we say?’
&nbs
p; I went back to the shower in an attempt to warm up, then dressed, had a quick coffee and left.
Yes, you heard right, gentle reader, he called me Hereward. After the Wake, which means ‘the watchful,’ apparently. It’s what my parents named me.
My father was born near Ely and his family claimed descent from the Wake. I think this is probably nonsense, because I’ve since discovered that Hereward actually came from Lincolnshire – although that’s not to say he didn’t sire a few whelps during his stay in Ely.
However… Dad was a sergeant in the Cambridgeshire Regiment and named me, his firstborn, after the Wake. He was killed in Iraq when I was fifteen. My mother never really got over his death and died herself about a year after I’d graduated from Med School. I think she just wanted to see me and Redd through university and into gainful employment, and then went and joined Dad.
What made me choose medicine? The school doctor, who was so decent to me after Dad was killed. Simple as that. And I knew from the moment I first saw a grainy picture of the perfect geometric form of a virus under the electron microscope that that was what I wanted to do.
Then onwards and upwards… until I met Sarah, and not long after we were married, I got the Directorship in Exeter. And the rest is history.
Sarah’s family lived in a large – some might say pretentious – house beside the River Exe. Jealous people said it mainly. Me as well, but I’m not jealous. As I said earlier, he had money of his own, but there was no doubting he’d worked very hard to get where he was, just as there was also no doubt that he was a brilliant surgeon and had saved a lot of lives. Didn’t necessarily make him a nice man, though.
He must have seen me coming up the drive, because the door opened before I could pull the bell handle and he ushered me in.
‘Good of you to come, Hereward,’ he said, shaking my hand.
He was the only person I knew who called me that. Everyone else used the diminutive. Even Dad did. You might think it was a mark of gravitas, respect even, but I think he just had to be contrary.
Anyway, he took me into the drawing room and pressed a glass of sherry into my hand. I accepted it because I thought I might need it.
‘First,’ he said, ‘my belated congratulations.’
‘Thanks,’ I said after a pause, ‘although I’m not sure I deserve them.’
‘Nonsense, my boy. Fatherhood always calls for congratulations.’
My boy… I was losing control already… I said, ‘The fact remains that my daughter was conceived after our marriage had irretrievably broken down.’
‘But it can’t have, can it? Not completely.’
I closed my eyes a moment. ‘But it had, John. She was already involved with Charles.’
‘Marriages have recovered from worse.’
I shook my head, whether in denial or hopelessness, I’m not sure. He offered me a top up. I accepted. He stared at me…
He was a tall man, spare, upright in both carriage and demeanour, with a long, quite good-looking face and a widow’s peak. I always thought he ought to be wearing a frock coat.
He said, ‘I’ve spoken to Sarah, and I’m convinced that if you both tried again, you could make it work. The fact is –’
‘Did she say that?’
‘In so many words. The fact –’
‘The last thing she said to me on the subject was that she wouldn’t come back to me if I was the last man on Earth.’
‘But what had you said to her just before that, I wonder?’
It was a perceptive question and I tried to answer it honestly. ‘I’d asked her what she wanted. She told me that she’d left Charles and then added: Don’t look so alarmed, husband dear, I wouldn’t come back to you etcetera etcetera.’
‘That was her pride talking, you know that. I was trying to say that the… the event of Grace makes a difference – no, hear me out –’
I was shaking my head again, but then he said,
‘Please…’ he said again, and I could see the effort this cost him and listened.
‘…before that, I think your marriage was finished. But now, it has a… a focal point to re-group around… daughters need their fathers…’ He looked at me – ‘I know that …’
That cost him as well – he hadn’t been a good father, and this was the closest he’d ever get to admitting it. He went on –
‘You both made mistakes. Her behaviour was disgraceful, but the fact is you had been neglecting her. Even I could see that. And the devil does find alternative occupations for the neglected.’
I felt obliged to defend myself. ‘I only neglected her inasmuch as I wanted to do justice to my new job. You can’t do that and party all night.’
‘I think she just wanted a bit of a social life.’
‘And I think we’ll have to agree to differ on that.’
He said tightly, ‘If you say so.’
I didn’t reply.
He said, trying to be emollient, ‘You did both make mistakes and I think that if you could find it in yourselves to acknowledge that and say you were sorry, you could start again.’
‘That I should apologise, you mean?’
‘That you should apologise to each other.’
‘Who goes first?’
It was his turn to close his eyes for a moment, then – ‘If you could somehow find it in yourself to do that, Hereward, I think it would bring results. By which I mean genuine contrition on her part. She is aware of how badly she’s behaved.’
I’ve wondered since what would have happened if, at that point, I’d genuinely tried to engage with him. But Sarah wasn’t the only one with pride and instead I said,
‘And in spite of her behaviour, you think that I should apologise to her?’
‘As a gambit,’ he said, still trying.
‘No,’ I said. ‘If she sincerely apologises to me, then I shall accept it, and concede that I shouldn’t have neglected her. And that may be a basis for an understanding. That’s the best I can do.’
‘It’s not enough,’ he said, ‘and you know it.’ I could tell from his tone that he’d given up. And I was glad. He went on, ‘You knew what she was like when you married her, and you should have taken it into account.’
‘I thought I did.’
‘Not enough, evidently. When you marry into a family, you have to accept some of their ways.’
‘Did you?’
He hadn’t, and he knew I knew it.
‘It’s not the same thing, as you perfectly well know.’
‘Why not? What exactly is the difference between you and me that I have to accept some of another family’s ways, while you don’t?’
That did it – he went white, the usual signal that he was about to ignite, which he duly did –
‘One of the differences is that you would never have got that job if it wasn’t for me. And the quid pro quo was that you look after my daughter. This, you signally failed to do – as you are now signally failing to look after your own…’
‘Not true. I’ve said I’ll play my part, now that I know she is my own.’
‘Just go, will you? Go on, get out of my sight. Now.’
I carefully put my glass down on the occasional table and went. He said to my back,
‘This won’t be forgotten.’
I drove away, too full of adrenaline to think properly, but by the time I got back to my house, I was shaking. I brewed some strong coffee, but it only made it worse.
Was it my fault? Well, some of it, obviously, but how much? How guilty should I feel?
I suppose it was a case of three proud, bigoted and resentful people who simply couldn’t mix. Any two of them might, so long as they made an effort, but add in the third and you got chaos.
Would it have made any difference if I’d insisted that Sarah and I had lived somewhere a long way from her parents? I don’t know. It might.
*
Monday morning was busy. First, there was a call from Brigg, asking me how I felt about the lab in Bristol
Cabot.
‘Is it serious enough for us to have a proper look at?’ he said.
‘Yes – although that depends to an extent what you mean by a proper look.’
‘I’m thinking of sending a Health and Safety Inspector in there, accompanied by you.’
‘Can you really do that?’
‘Certainly…’ He sounded surprised I should even ask. ‘We’ll say that your man had reported the lax security to you, and you’d reported it to the Health and Safety Committee, who’d decided to look for themselves. We’ve got a tame inspector.’
‘When were you thinking of?’
‘Tomorrow.’
I thought for a moment. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘You realise that if we found nothing, it wouldn’t necessarily put them in the clear?’
‘Yes, I am aware of that. Can you meet her at Temple Meads – say at ten?’
I agreed and he said he’d fix it up now. ‘If you don’t hear from me in, say, an hour, assume it’s on.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Donna Williams.’
He didn’t ring me back, but two hours later, Fenella did, to inform me that His Nibs had just phoned her, saying he’d been apprised of my domestic problems and was pressing for my replacement as Team Leader by Dr Wade-Stokes. She thought that Roland must have been on to him earlier.
‘I can’t imagine how he found out,’ she said.
‘I can,’ I said heavily, ‘I think my father-in-law’s probably the prime suspect.’ I told her what had happened. ‘He would have either told Roland, or maybe gone direct to His Nibs.’
‘Would he know him?’
‘Probably, he knows an awful lot of people.’ I sighed. ‘I thought he might make trouble, but I wasn’t expecting this.’ Another pause, then I asked her, ‘Is it inevitable?’
‘No. After what you told me about Commander Brigg, I decided to contact him. He’s pleading your case as we speak.’
After she rang off, I reflected on the irony that although I hadn’t wanted the job, now that someone was trying to take it away from me, I was clinging to it like a child with a toy. And there was another irony: that the existence of a child could spark off such political manoeuvrings…
In the event, Brigg prevailed. He phoned me himself to let me know.
*
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