Hilary Bonner

by Braven

  Mac had never liked Richard Marshall. And when he’d found out that he had been a bigamist and a fraudster he had liked him even less. Clara, however, would never hear a word against the man she had married.

  “You don’t understand, Dad,” she told him. “Richard’s first wife was a monster. And he never really committed fraud. He always intended to sort out those Spanish time-share deals. He was just juggling money to keep his business afloat. Then he got desperate, that’s all.”

  Clara had always had an answer for everything as far as her husband was concerned. The result had been a terrible row, the worst there had ever been between this father and daughter. Indeed, possibly the only proper row they’d ever had—which had made it worse, much worse, and probably accounted for the consequences being so serious and long-term.

  Clara had travelled to Scotland specifically in order to acquire money from her father, Mac had felt back then, adding to his distress and his determination not to comply. Not that time. Not again. Rather pettily, he now thought, he had resented the fact that he never seemed to see his only daughter unless she wanted something.

  “I’ll not give another penny to that waster you’ve wed, to that smooth-talking conman you can’t see through. Though it grieves me more than you’ll ever know, Clara, there’ll never be another penny from me for you or my grandchildren unless you leave that man. Then, I promise you, you’ll never want for anything.”

  Mac had known as he spoke that he had made a mistake, that he had handled it badly. He had known, too, that if his wife, Clara’s mother, had still been alive, she would have steered him clear of out-and-out confrontation. Sally MacDonald had been a calm, sensible woman with an inner strength you just never quarrelled with. She had been a natural mediator, a peace-keeper.

  Mac was different. He was a man of unswerving loyalty and devotion to those close to him, a man who loved fiercely, who cared deeply, and who had little leaning towards compromise in such matters. His words had come from the heart, his intention had been to help, not to hurt. The result had, however, been inevitable.

  Clara had been her father’s daughter. She didn’t take kindly to being threatened.

  Her response had been swift and every bit as uncompromising as her father’s.

  “If you turn your back on my husband, then you turn your back on me, Dad,” she had told him. “I’m going home to Torquay now, and I promise you one thing. You will never see me or your granddaughters ever again.”

  Mac had just let her go. Watched her defiantly flick her long light-brown hair over one shoulder as she walked out of the big old granite house on the outskirts of Inverness where she had been brought up, a house that he and Sally had hoped to fill with children—but that had not been destined to happen. Clara, a slight, pretty girl with big round hazel eyes like her mother’s, had been the only one. Sally MacDonald’s mental strength had not been matched by her physical state. She suffered ill health throughout her all-too-short life. Before and after Clara there had been a series of miscarriages brought to a halt only by Mac’s decision that they would never try again for another child. Enough was enough. Sally had died aged only forty-seven, eight long years before his fateful confrontation with his only daughter. Now it looked as if he were going to lose all that remained of the woman he had adored, his only daughter, and his grandchildren.

  Mac had felt as if a stake had been thrust into his heart. But he didn’t show his feelings, of course. Mac was a dour Scot. Strong. Unbending. To give in, to tell her he’d accept any bloody man in her life as long as he didn’t lose her, to tell her he’d gladly give her everything that he had, that would have been a terrible display of weakness. That would never have done.

  And so Mac had stood holding open the front door as Clara had walked briskly down the garden path. It had been mid-October, and the borders which framed the two small lawns on either side of the path were still planted with the straggly remains of summer bedding plants. Sally MacDonald had always looked after the garden, and she had loved the colourful blaze of busy lizzies, petunias and geraniums. Sean tried to carry on in every way just as his wife had liked it. Things didn’t work out quite like that, though. The garden never looked the way it had in her time. That year, at least, Mac had managed to get the bedding plants in, but by October they had degenerated into the kind of mess Sally would never have allowed. And so, it seemed, had his relationship with his only daughter.

  Clara did not look back. She did not say goodbye. She just stepped into the waiting cab, called to take her to the railway station, without even a backward glance.

  Mac had wanted to cry out: “Don’t go. Please don’t go. Not like this. Never like this.”

  The words wouldn’t come. He had watched Clara’s departure in grim silence. Mac was a stubborn man. He heard nothing from his daughter after her return to Torquay, and neither had he expected to. Clara had also inherited his stubbornness.

  At Christmas he had almost relented. He had written a conciliatory message on a Christmas card to Clara and enclosed a healthy check, not the sort of money she had been asking for but a nice present all the same, with instructions for her to buy something nice for herself and the girls. Then he had ripped the envelope up and thrown the whole lot into the fire.

  Nonetheless, he had looked every day at his post and hoped for a card at least from Clara. There had been nothing. Mac had spent Christmas alone. He had friends. There had, even then, been women friends. Mac had been a red-blooded man in those days, solvent and not unattractive. There had always been women in his life. But he had almost masochistically enjoyed spending Christmas in solitary misery, bemoaning his estrangement from the daughter he adored.

  It was Clara’s birthday in early May. Mac had gone through the same routine. He’d written a letter and a check and put them in an envelope. Then he’d ripped up the lot. The little girls’ birthdays were in July. They had been born just a week apart, Lorraine in 1968 and Janine in 1969. Mac sent them a card each and a postal order for ten pounds and this time he posted both. But he neither expected nor received acknowledgement.

  Several times between July and the following Christmas Mac considered telephoning Clara. He wanted a reconciliation more than anything else in the world. Under any terms. He was prepared to give his daughter anything she wanted. Indeed, anything her dreadful husband wanted too. But making the first move was very difficult for him. Twice he actually forced himself to make the call. On the first occasion he got the Parkview Hotel answering machine. On the second Richard Marshall answered. Both times Mac hung up. By then, however, he was reassured by at least hearing Marshall’s voice and learning that the family were still at Parkview. It had occurred to him that they could all have moved on and he might really have lost touch with the daughter he loved. Presumably they had coped with their money problems. Marshall had probably conned some poor old ladies again, thought Sean uncharitably.

  All the while he hoped that his daughter would make the first move, that she would contact him. But there was no word. Finally, the second Christmas, Mac could stand it no longer. Again he bought Christmas cards and wrote Clara a check, agonizing for days over the amount. He was not prepared to send anything like the five thousand Clara had originally asked for to bail her and Richard out of trouble. In Scotland in 1975 you could very nearly buy a castle for that. But he did want it to be a substantial amount. Eventually he settled on one thousand pounds. Still a great deal of money back then. And twenty percent of what he had been asked for. Mac was a percentage man.

  This time he actually posted the cards and the check and he also sent Clara a letter, regretting their quarrel but not apologizing, of course, in which he enquired after her welfare and that of the children and expressed a wish to see them all again so that they could talk.

  Again there was no word. But in his January bank statement Mac noticed that his check had been cleared, which somehow made him uneasy. It wasn’t Clara’s style. He had half-expected the check to be returned. Clara, ev
en Clara in need, could very easily be that stubborn. But it was out of character for his daughter to accept such a large sum of money without acknowledgement, particularly under the strained circumstances, Mac thought. She must really be very desperate indeed, he reflected. And he didn’t like to think of that, whoever she was married to.

  Eventually, a couple of weeks later, he phoned again. Once more Richard had answered the phone. The conversation had been brief and to the point.

  “I’d like to speak to my daughter, please.”

  “Sorry, Mac, she doesn’t want to speak to you.” Richard’s voice had been level enough.

  “Then I’d like to hear her tell me that.” Mac had forced himself to respond equally levelly.

  “No chance. I’ve just told you. She never wants anything to do with you again.”

  Mac, of course, had snapped. Instantly. He had been much less controlled in those days. Clara’s disappearance had changed him, more than the passage of time, he thought. After that it was as if nothing mattered that much except a pursuit of some sort of justice, and he had been forced to accept that there was no point in being anything other than calm about it or he would just go mad.

  Back then, unaware that he was probably already dealing with a major tragedy, he had lost his temper and shouted down the phone.

  “In that case I won’t send her any more checks. I’m sure you’re well able to take care of your family, a big man like you—”

  Marshall had slammed the phone down on him. Mac didn’t try again. Instead he cursed himself. He really had done a good job of trying to mend bridges. A really good job.

  He had not attempted to contact his daughter’s family again until her birthday in May. Once again he sent a card and a check for a thousand pounds. Once again he waited hopefully to hear anything from her. Once again he heard nothing yet once again the check was cleared.

  By then becoming increasingly uneasy, Mac phoned several times more. Mostly he got the answerphone. Twice he got Richard who told him the first time that Sally didn’t want to speak to him and the second time that she was not there. She and the girls had gone to stay with some friend in Kent that Mac had never heard of, although he had to admit that wasn’t so surprising given the lack of communication between him and his daughter.

  “I’ve no idea when they’ll be back,” Marshall had told him.

  A thought had suddenly struck Mac. It was term-time.

  “What about school?” he asked.

  He was quite sure that Clara would not willingly have taken her daughters anywhere during the school term. Her choice in men had never risen to Mac’s high standards for her, but she was a good and responsible mother.

  “I’ve no idea, she’s in charge of all that,” Marshall had grunted back.

  Mac had asked him to tell Clara that he’d called.

  “No point,” replied the other man. “She doesn’t want to know.”

  Two weeks later, midway through June, Mac could stand it no longer. He packed a bag and set off for Torquay, flying from Edinburgh to Bristol where he hired a car.

  And he remembered all too well the look of horror on Richard Marshall’s face when he’d opened the front door of Parkview to his father-in-law.

  “She’s not here, I told you. She’s away.”

  “Still?” Mac had been grim-faced. Determined.

  For a moment he’d thought that Marshall was about to slam the door in his face. Richard Marshall was a big powerful man, younger too. But Mac, although of only average height and slight of build, was a tough sinewy character who during the war had been a sergeant in one of Scotland’s most elite regiments and had seen action in some of Europe’s cruelest battlegrounds. He had survived against the odds on more than one occasion and had virtually no physical fear. He simply stuck his foot in the door of the Parkview Hotel and took a pace forward.

  Marshall faced up to him for just a few seconds, then stepped back. His shoulders dropped. His features crumpled.

  “You’d better come in,” he said.

  Mac had done so, thinking that Marshall was behaving like a typical bully, retreating at once when forcefully challenged.

  Marshall led the way into the small dining room where Mac knew, from a much earlier previous visit, breakfast was served to guests. He had looked around him. It was impossible to tell how many guests, if any, were presently booked into the little hotel. But the lace-curtained room somehow did not have the well-cared-for look about it which Clara, like her mother before her, specialized in. There were flowers in the small vases on the table, but they were all wilting. It was mid-afternoon. The breakfast tables had still not been properly cleared or wiped down and the windows looked as if they could do with a good clean. Mac began to wonder just how long his daughter had been away.

  Marshall had beckoned to him to sit down. Mac did so. Keeping his cool. Using his head for once. He wanted to learn from Marshall, find out what was going on. There was no point in antagonizing the man.

  “Look, you may as well know,” began Marshall. “She’s left me. Taken the girls and gone off with this Aussie. I don’t even know where they are.”

  Mac had been amazed. This was the last thing he had expected to hear. Clara had given no indication of any intention of leaving her wayward husband, just the opposite really, and neither had she given any indication that she had anyone else in her life. But then, he had to admit, she wouldn’t have done, would she, not to him? Nonetheless, even allowing for his daughter’s inherited stubborn streak, he couldn’t believe she could have put on such a convincing devoted-wife act to her own father had she really been involved with another man.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this? Why the charade? When did she leave?”

  The questions poured out of him without his being able to control them. Marshall just shrugged, made no attempt to reply.

  “I’m fucking talking to you,” Mac stormed. His distress displaying itself in temper as usual. He never learned. He always regretted it later, but the more he hurt inside, the more upset he was, the more he shouted. “Why didn’t Clara tell me she was leaving you? That’s what I want to know.”

  Marshall had half-smirked. “What, and give you the satisfaction?”

  His words hit Mac hard. There was so much truth in them, and truth, Mac always felt, was a rare commodity with Richard Marshall. This time the other man was spot-on. Mac had told Clara he would support her, give her anything she wanted, if she left her husband. It would be just like her to leave the bloody man and not let him know. Marshall was right. She really wouldn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

  Mac had stood up then and left. The worst scenario had happened. His daughter had moved on without leaving a forwarding address, and she had taken his grandchildren with her. If Richard Marshall was to be believed, he too had no idea where she had gone.

  If Richard Marshall was to be believed. Mac had reflected on that as he had climbed into his hire car and started the engine. He had never believed a word Marshall had said before, and had almost invariably been proven right not to, so why was he believing the man now? And just the fact that his checks had been cleared did not necessarily establish his daughter had ever received them. She and her husband had always had a joint account, as Mac knew well. He had paid enough money into it over the years, after all.

  On an impulse Mac switched the engine off and got out of the car again. For a few moments he leaned against the vehicle while he looked up and down the street, hoping that there might be some neighbours about. The street was deserted. Equally impulsively he headed for the big Victorian villa next to Parkview and rang the bell.

  A tall, very thin girl in her early teens had answered.

  “Hello,” he said, making his voice as gentle as possible. “I’m looking for your neighbour, Mrs. Marshall, Clara Marshall. I just wondered if you’d seen her lately.”

  The girl had looked frightened and said nothing.

  “It’s OK,” Mac had reassured her quickly, and followed u
p with a lie. “It’s just that there’s nobody in next door and I wondered if you knew when Clara might be back, or if she was away or anything?”

  Still no reply.

  “I’m her father. I’ve come all the way from Scotland to surprise her.”

  Still no response.

  Mac sighed. “It’s all right, lassie, honestly. Look, is your mother in?”

  As if on cue a voice, very slightly slurred, called out from somewhere within the house.

  “Who is it, Karen?”

  “It’s no one, Mum. Just a man who’s come to the wrong house.”

  The girl’s voice, when he eventually heard it, had surprised Mac. She looked so frightened and unsure of herself. But when she finally spoke and addressed her mother she had sounded almost as if she were the parent reassuring her child. Certainly as if she were the one in charge.

  He had looked properly into her eyes then, and noticed for the first time how intelligent they were. Something was bothering the girl, though. And he suspected it was not unconnected with those slurred tones he had heard. Mac backed off at once.

  “I’m sorry, lassie, I’m intruding,” he said.

  “My mother isn’t well. She suffers with her nerves, you see. The doctor’s given her some very strong pills.”

  The girl had sprung to her mother’s defence instinctively and at once even though she really had no need to do so. Mac liked that and thought how brave she was. Her swift response had told its own tale. He reflected briefly on what this child might have to put up with within the walls of that big old house. But he had no time for other people’s troubles. He had enough of his own. He tried again to get at least a simple question answered.

  “Look, I just wondered if you had any idea where my daughter, where Clara Marshall, might be.”

  The girl shook her head.

  “She’s not there,” she said suddenly. “She doesn’t live there anymore. Why don’t you know that if you’re her father?”

  Mac had been badly taken aback. If it were true that his daughter had moved out of the marital home and started a new life, why indeed didn’t he know that? There was no easy answer. He didn’t have a clue where Clara might be and it was all his own stupid stubborn fault.