A Fatal Attachment

by Robert Barnard

Maurice shook his head pityingly, feeling the knots inside him being tied more tightly.

  “I’m sure it’s not. But I rather think it’s a mistake to hope for things from children.”

  “Nonsense. It’s perfectly natural. And it gives them something to aim for.”

  “Well, I hope I accept Matthew for what he is, and don’t build up high expectations for him.”

  “Then he’ll never come to anything. One builds up expectations based on what a boy can be. We all have it in us to be something, just as we all have it in us to fall back and be nothing. Sugar?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Lydia was by now on a track she was unable to get off.

  “If Gavin had lived he would have spurred you on to being something different.”

  Maurice looked down at his cup and saucer.

  “Do you think so?”

  “Of course he would. Gavin never gave in to weakness. Do you remember how afraid Gavin was of snakes?”

  “I do.”

  “And yet we worked at it and freed him from fear, didn’t we? Do you remember how we went over to the zoo at Manchester time and time again, getting him closer and closer, until eventually he was able to touch one of the snakes?”

  “Yes, I do. I’m afraid that now I feel that was almost obscene.”

  Lydia grew pink with outrage.

  “What nonsense! He conquered his fear!”

  “He wasn’t afraid because they were venomous.”

  “No—he just hated the texture of their skins. Quite irrational.”

  “I rather think that to the end of his life Gavin was afraid of snakes.”

  “You just want to think that because of your own failures of nerve.”

  Maurice sighed.

  “I didn’t come up here to quarrel, Lydia. I have many happy memories of being up here with Gavin.”

  “Of course.” Lydia shook herself. “We’ve got off on the wrong foot somehow, Have another cup of tea. Cake?”

  “Ah—the old seed cake. I’m impressed that you’re still making it.”

  “Just started again. This is the first attempt, so I don’t suppose my hand is in yet. I’ve got—there are some boys—boys I’m helping to look after. Their mother is in hospital—something rather serious with an abbreviation I’ve forgotten.”

  “M.E. Its full name is myalgic encephalomyelitis. Midlands did a programme about it.”

  Lydia looked at him sharply.

  “You know the boys?”

  “No, their father came up to us while we were eating at the Maple Tree last night,” said Maurice, feeling obscurely that he bad scored a point. “He seemed rather dim.”

  Lydia nodded, contentedly.

  “That’s the impression I’ve got from the boys. And the mother is a nonentity. Still, that can be . . . made up for. They’re very bright boys.”

  As if on cue the front door was opened and the boys burst in. They pulled themselves up short when they saw that Lydia had a visitor and stood in the doorway shyly.

  “Sorry,” said Ted. “Didn’t realize—”

  “You must to be the nephew in television,” said Colin. “Married to Sharon the barmaid.”

  “That’s right,” said Lydia, getting up and doing the hostessly thing. “This is my nephew Maurice. Colin, Ted.”

  “How do you get into television?” asked Ted.

  “All sorts of ways,” Maurice said, having been asked the question all too often before. “Local journalism, local radio. There are quite a few courses run by colleges and polytechnics.”

  “I expect it would suit Colin better than me,” said Ted regretfully. “You’d have to be really bright, wouldn’t you? Outgoing and super-intelligent?”

  “I would have thought super-intelligent people were just the sort television companies would be unable to find a use for,” said Lydia tartly. Maurice shot her a look. She really knew how to twist the knife. But then he sat back in his chair and laughed.

  “Actually there are all sorts in television, including rather dull ones like me. Sometimes you look at your colleagues and say ‘How on earth did he get a job in the industry?’ But you look at others and say ‘Why on earth is he wasting his time here?’ The truth is, I think, that you’d find the same in any other job. Life is one big accident.”

  “Nonsense, one makes one’s life,” said Lydia.

  The elder boy seemed to sense a tension.

  “We’re off to the gravel pit,” he said. “We’ll be an hour or two. Is that all right?”

  “Of course,” said Lydia, smiling at them fondly. “I’ll have your dinner ready around six thirty.”

  The boys gave a wave of the hand and charged out. Already they were treating Lydia’s cottage as home, Maurice noted. It had happened more slowly with Gavin and him. But then the parental situation had been very different with them, and Lydia had had to move more delicately. Here it seemed as though she was moving in to fill a vacuum. And of course now she had had practice.

  I am not going to let Lydia work me up again, Maurice told himself.

  “They seem nice lads,” he said neutrally, concentrating on finishing his cake.

  “They are, and very bright. Colin especially.”

  “The younger in this case.”

  “Yes. The younger this time.”

  “You must be careful with Ted, then.”

  Lydia smiled a regal but steely smile.

  “Oh Maurice, of course I will.”

  “He seems to have the notion already that he’s more ordinary than his brother.”

  “Ted has sterling qualities—good, sturdy, old-fashioned ones. I’m sure they’ll make his way for him. As you say, their home background is pretty impoverished, intellectually speaking. Coming here is an education for them both.”

  “E-ducare, to draw out,” said Maurice, smiling as he quoted her.

  “Precisely. You remember.”

  “Have you any plans for them?” he asked cunningly.

  “I’ll get to know them a lot better before I have plans. Colin will be much easier than Ted.” She did not notice an infinitesimal and sad shake of the head from Maurice. “I think I shall leave them both a little bit of money. Not a lot—I don’t believe in people having it easy. But enough to provide an initial fillip, should I not be around. The bulk, as you know, goes to Robert.”

  “Of course. You know you don’t have to explain. Kelly and I have more than enough for our needs. . . . You’ve always liked adventurous people, haven’t you, Lydia?”

  “Yes, I have. I make no apology for that. ‘Safety First’ has always seemed a contemptible rule to live one’s life by. Robert will use the money, not just have it. Some expedition somewhere—several, probably. I’ve never remotely lived up to my income. But I think the boys should have a few thousand each, to get their lives off to a good start.”

  Maurice shifted in his chair, conscious that his resolution not to get worked up was going by the board.

  “Don’t cut the parents out, will you, Lydia?”

  “Of course not. But the mother seems to have cut herself out for the time being.”

  “She hasn’t cut herself out—she’s ill. M.E. is a very nasty illness. She’ll need all the love and affection and attention she can get from her family.”

  “Of course. I’ve told them they should go to the hospital tomorrow. This will be an anxious time for her—with all the tests and uncertainty. Ted in particular is very affectionate, very protective. Colin seems to be more open—more inclined to welcome new experiences.”

  “Don’t make distinctions between them, Lydia.”

  She pursed her lips in irritation.

  “You are in a lecturing mood today, Maurice. One has to make distinctions between people because people are different. So naturally one plans different things for them.”

  “E-ducare—to draw out,” said Maurice.

  “I don’t impose my plans on people!” said Lydia sharply. “God knows, you yourself are proof of that. You
and Gavin were always perfectly free to do what you wanted.”

  “Perhaps. But we all knew that Gavin was doing what pleased you, and I was doing what didn’t please you.”

  “That was your prerogative, your freedom.”

  “Perhaps I would have done the sort of thing you planned for me if I hadn’t always had this sense that you regarded me as so clearly the inferior of the two.”

  “Nonsense!”

  “Not nonsense at all. The feeling was always present.”

  Lydia’s mouth curled.

  “Are you sure it was me that gave you that feeling?”

  “Yes. Because it was with you that I always felt it. If Gavin and I were alone I never did.”

  “Gavin was so good.”

  Maurice was engulfed by a cold rage.

  “You mean it was good of Gavin not to make me feel my inferiority every minute of the day, don’t you? Perhaps you’re right. Gavin was good. He was a lot of other things besides: ruthless, muddled, idealistic, cold. . . .”

  “I know. Do you think I didn’t know Gavin through and through?”

  Maurice got up and looked down at her.

  “No. No, I don’t think you did. There were a lot of sides to him, lots of things he thought and felt, that you never knew about.”

  Lydia’s rage was open, and showed in her face.

  “I knew Gavin through and through. I knew Gavin as no one else could because only I could really understand him, only I could appreciate his qualities.”

  “You couldn’t know him as a brother could.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “And you couldn’t understand him either, not deep down, because you always saw him in an idealistic glow, surrounded by a haze of heroism.”

  “Gavin had greatness in him.”

  “And because he knew you thought that he hid so much from you.”

  “He did not!”

  “You knew he was terrified of snakes. You never knew the other thing that terrified him.”

  “What do you mean? What other thing?”

  They were standing by the door, tense, angry. Maurice looked her straight in the eye.

  “Gavin was terrified of fire.”

  Lydia’s face crumpled with pain as she remembered his end. She let out a sob as Maurice turned and marched down the hallway and through the front door to the light.

  • • •

  It was impossible to settle to anything after Maurice had gone. Lydia dried her eyes quickly, put determinedly from her mind that terrible picture of the ball of fire on the Sir Galahad. But all she could think of to do was start some preparations for dinner. She peeled and sliced potatoes, arranged them in a casserole with milk, and put them in the oven. Then she put pork chops under the grill, to be turned on when the boys came in. All the time her mind was working furiously, organising the details of the scene she had just gone through.

  He had been jealous of Gavin all his life—that much was obvious: jealous of his greater promise, jealous of the greater interest she took in him. It must have festered, as the meaner sorts of feeling generally did. There were moments in their argument when it had seemed as if he hated her.

  Perhaps it wasn’t just jealousy festering: perhaps Thea had got at him—Thea and Andy. Well, they were welcome to have back the one who was not worth getting. Maurice would never amount to anything: if he were ever to conceive any ambition worth having, that foul-mouthed slut he had married would kill it stone dead.

  It would be different with Colin and Ted.

  The thought of them cleared her mind miraculously. She was a woman who hated stewing over problems, hated the eternal tramping through emotional marshlands which she saw as the disease of the twentieth century. One thing she had decided on was to do something for the boys financially. That at least she could do now. She went into the study, took down the phone book, and found the home number of her solicitor in Halifax.

  “Oliver? It’s Lydia Perceval . . . Fine—no, no problems. It’s just that when I make a decision I like to act on it at once. Now, I want a codicil to be added to my will—I think it can be done in a codicil. Have you got a pen handy? I want the sum of three thousand pounds each—no, make that five—to go to Colin and Edward Bellingham—spelt as you would expect . . . Yes, of course there’s plenty of money to cover it. You know that, Oliver. It will hardly affect Robert’s inheritance at all. I’ll call in late on Monday to sign it on my way back from Boston Spa. Right?”

  She had turned her back to the open window, so she had not seen the figures of the boys on their way round to the back door.

  CHAPTER 8

  ON Monday morning Lydia had a quick breakfast of tea and toast, then piled books and notepads into the back of her Saab. The garage was at the back of her cottage, tidily tucked away, and after locking up the cottage Lydia drove down the bumpy lane that skirted her back garden and on to the road. She felt light of heart. Quite apart from the change in her personal life, she enjoyed doing the sort of research that lay ahead of her that day. She was thorough yet efficient, knowing exactly the sort of thing that she wanted, and where to go for it. Her man was now king and (however unwisely he would use his power) she enjoyed dealing with people who controlled their own destiny, and a nation’s.

  Lydia used her car very infrequently, but she was a perfectly confident driver, subject only to occasional lapses in concentration when her own affairs or those of her subject of the moment took over and dominated her mind. She negotiated the early morning traffic and got to Boston Spa without mishap. Once in the library she collected from the desk the books and documents which Dorothy Eccles had ordered for her, and settled down at a desk in the small readers’ area. She worked solidly for an hour, pausing only to give a wave of recognition to Dorothy when she passed. Dorothy was in her fifties, grey-haired and mousey in dress and demeanour. Her musty brown skirt and jumper and her heavy, low-heeled shoes affected Lydia adversely, as did her way of looking at her, devotedly. “If I were that kind of person,” she had once said to herself, “I could enjoy being cruel to Dorothy.” That was when she had decided to be conspicuously kind. Today Dorothy kept tactfully in the background, and it was only when Lydia got up to consult Larousse about an unfamiliar word that Dorothy came over to her apologetically.

  “You did say around twelve, didn’t you, Lydia?”

  “Around twelve?”

  “For lunch. Of course if it’s not convenient—”

  Lydia wiped a blank look from her face immediately.

  “Oh—forgive me, Dorothy. I’m back in 1825. Yes, of course. We said we’d go to La Tavola Calda, didn’t we? Do you think you could ring them? Order a table for twelve fifteen, and say I’ll have veal milanese, and then whatever you would like. It will save a lot of hanging around. Will you come along at twelve and haul me back to the nineteen-nineties?”

  She smiled her warmest smile. Lydia was not a warm person, but she had a warm smile for people like Dorothy Eccles, and it seldom failed to charm them. Dorothy smiled, devotedly, and Lydia bent back over her Larousse.

  Promptly at twelve Dorothy padded along on her sensible shoes and dragged Lydia from the reactionary excesses of Charles X and Villèle. They drove in Lydia’s car and talked all the way about the French Restoration. Dorothy knew enough—had recently taught herself enough—to be an excellent sounding-board. At La Tavola Calda they ordered a glass of wine each, and were soon tucking into veal milanese and Venetian liver, fussed over by a pair of waiters who knew Lydia was a “name,” and so refrained from treating them with the sort of contempt they usually kept for middle-aged ladies on their own.

  “So it’s going well is it, the book?” Dorothy asked.

  “Very well. No problems on the horizon that I can see. I could well have it finished by Christmas.”

  “Did you see what the Huddersfield Choral Society are doing next week?”

  “No. You know I never notice such things, Dorothy.”

  “Cherubini’s ‘Mass for the Coronatio
n of Charles X’.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes—isn’t it a coincidence? I wondered if you’d like to come along. I have two tickets.”

  Lydia stopped eating and considered.

  “It would be interesting, though you know I have no ear for music. I could add a paragraph to my chapter on the coronation, which isn’t in final form yet. . . . But no—I think you’ll have to report on it for me, Dorothy. You see—I have . . . well, I have responsibilities in the evenings now.”

  “Responsibilities?”

  Dorothy’s face was curious, but rather as if she expected to hear that Lydia had been adopted by a stray cat or dog.

  “Yes, it’s fallen out most . . . oddly.” She had nearly said “luckily,” but her quarrel with Maurice on Saturday had made her more careful about words. “There are these two boys—awfully promising lads—and we’ve been getting to know each other: you know, chatting when they go past on their bikes, that sort of thing. And they’ve been up to tea.”

  “They’re sort of . . . protégés?”

  “Well, in a way, but they’re friends mainly. I’ve always had a bit of a gift for getting on with young people.”

  “I’m sure you have, Lydia.”

  Dorothy was gazing at her in her most cow-like fashion, and Lydia had to repress a spasm of irritation.

  “Anyway, they’ve mentioned their mother, who sounded a bit of a cipher, frankly, but now it turns out that she’s ill—got something called M.E. Likely to be out of the w—out of commission for months, as far as I can make out.”

  “Yes, it’s a very slow condition to cure. There’s quite a literature about it, you know, published in the last few years.”

  “What’s its full name again?”

  “Myalgic encephalomyelitis.”

  “That’s it. Could you rustle up one or two of the books, do you think? Or take some photocopies? I could do with something really informative about it—I could calm the boys’ fears. Anyway, the mother is in hospital, for tests first, then treatment, and that’s left the father in charge. He sounds—I hope I’m not doing him an injustice—a bit of an oaf. Not at all the sort of man to do anything positive for the boys.”

  “So you’ve taken over, have you, Lydia?”