Islands: A page turning story of love, secrets and regrets

by Gwyn GB

  By the time they reach home Katherine’s shock is transforming into anger. They get out of the car in silence but before Margaret even has the key in the front door lock, Katherine has exploded.

  ‘I can’t believe you never told me he was abusing Anne.’

  Her sister says nothing as she pushes open the door.

  ‘Margaret, why the hell didn’t you tell me all this before? You know I felt responsible that she’d killed herself.’ Katherine follows her into the kitchen.

  ‘I know you felt responsible Katherine, but I never knew why.’ Margaret turns to face her. She feels tired, really deep down tired. Years of holding in her own secret, the emotional exhaustion that it invokes. ‘I’ve barely seen you over the last twenty years Katherine, how was I supposed to know you still felt guilty?’

  That question silences them both. Katherine is about to retort she’s sick of hearing that old chestnut, but then realises Margaret is right. She hasn’t talked to her much over the years, not really talked, just recounted events and happenings.

  Margaret switches into auto-pilot comfort mode and reaches for the kettle, filling it and turning it on as Katherine drags back one of the kitchen chairs and drops heavily into it. She rests both elbows on the wooden table and holds her head in her hands. Margaret busies herself getting mugs out of the cupboard, finding tea bags and milk. She doesn’t even bother asking Katherine if she wants one. Making tea is a requirement in such situations, one of her coping mechanisms.

  ‘So when exactly were you going to tell me then? Or weren’t you? At which point were you going to put me out of my misery?’ Katherine lifts her head back up now, the anger bubbling to the surface again. ‘I mean, Jesus Margaret, didn’t you think about it with all that’s been going on at Haut de la Garenne. Didn’t it cross your mind?’

  ‘No, not really. I’d heard it years ago...’ Margaret says meekly, ‘and it’s not connected.’

  ‘Years ago! Great this just gets better.’ Katherine is on a roll now.

  ‘I was going to talk to you about it today…this evening maybe…’ Margaret counters.

  ‘Maybe!’ Katherine shakes her head.

  Margaret bites her lip as she pours the boiling water into the mugs, reaching into a small drawer just to her right to find a teaspoon with which to extract the bags. ‘It’s not as simple as you think Kath.’

  ‘Not as simple! Well I’m sorry for having expected you to tell me that my best friend, my friend who killed herself, did so because she’d been abused by her father. Which everyone in the island appears to know about - except for me! You knew I’d got the letter from her mother, that she’d asked me to visit.’ Katherine’s voice is raised now, her muscles tense throughout her body. She’s rigid with indignation. Her younger sister remains quiet and meek. Katherine takes this to mean she feels guilty, perhaps embarrassed, and this only angers her more. ‘When, exactly, did you find out?’ She continues, her voice rising as she fires questions at her sister. ‘Who told you and who else knows? Why did he get away with it? Why didn’t anybody try to prosecute him?’

  ‘He was arrested years after Anne’s death. A fourteen-year-old girl accused him of abuse. They sent him to prison for three years. At the time there was talk, talk she hadn’t been his only victim and Anne had been one. But there wasn’t enough evidence, no witnesses, it was too long ago.’

  ‘Did mum tell you? Did she know all along?’ Katherine’s anger is a runaway train. All the questions in her head needing immediate answers. ‘Did mum know that Anne was being abused, is that why she didn’t like me seeing her? Was that her grotesque idea of protecting me?’

  Margaret doesn’t answer at first, but the mention of their mother creates a flicker of tension in her cheeks. Katherine’s voice is rising in pitch as Margaret’s falls. She places the mug of tea in front of her sister, not failing to notice the irony of the brightly coloured image and verse on it which reads “Always look on the bright side of life.” Finally, she whispers, ‘I don’t think so. I hope not.’

  ‘Well you know she once said to me that Anne would be better off dead’

  ‘Really?’ Margaret is surprised by this, ‘I hope she didn’t know…’ she trails off.

  ‘Well why wouldn’t she have, apparently you’ve known for years, along with...’

  ‘Stop. Just stop.’ Margaret’s emotional damn bursts and she stands firmly in front of her sister. ‘Why don’t you just stop and give me a chance to talk.’

  ‘OK, please fire away.’ Katherine is surprised by Margaret’s change of tack but is keen to hear what she has to say.

  ‘Kath…’ Margaret begins quietly, pulling back a chair next to her sister and placing her own mug on the table. Katherine waits. ‘I’m sorry you found out like you did.’ Katherine rolls her eyes to the ceiling, Margaret ignores her and continues, ‘But you know what, I really meant it when I said it isn’t as simple as you think…’

  ‘What! That nobody thought to bother telling me, her best friend what had been going on?’ Katherine retorts, unable to control herself.

  Margaret sighs again and frowns looking straight at her, boring into her eyes. ‘You know what Katherine; it isn’t always just about you.’

  ‘She was my best friend Margaret, my best friend.’

  ‘Yes...’ Margaret nods and looks down into her lap, ‘but she was also my half-sister.’ Margaret’s eyes fill with tears which within seconds are spilling out and pouring down her face, the volcano she’s been holding within erupting.

  Kathy is dumbstruck. She sits looking at her sister’s trembling face in shock. A hundred emotions and images crashing into her mind: her mother’s face, Anne, Margaret as a child, that last day on the beach, their own father, Anne’s father...all of them whirling round her head like a hurricane.

  ‘What? What do you mean? What are you talking about?’

  Margaret crumbles before her eyes into the little girl Katherine remembers from all those years ago. She makes small sobbing noises like a child. ‘Jesus Margaret. Tell me. What are you talking about? Are you saying mum had an affair?’

  Margaret looks up and shakes her head violently, as yet, unable to speak.

  Katherine’s eyes dart around the kitchen, the photographs of their parents on the wall, their grandparents. She’s looking for clues but for what she doesn’t yet know. Then she leans forward, putting her hand on her sister’s arm, ‘Margaret, please. What is it, tell me?’ she speaks softer this time, her face quizzical, not angry and it helps.

  ‘Sorry... it’s just...it’s just I’ve not told anybody about this and I’ve known for years.’ Margaret looks up quickly and then back down again. ‘Since just after mum died,’ she adds rubbing at her eyes with her hands. She takes a few deep breaths which seem to tremble out of her, gets up and takes a tissue from the box on the shelf near the Rayburn. Katherine knows she must let her tell the story in her own time. Margaret blows her nose, composes herself and turns round to face her sister.

  ‘It was Vi who told me,’ she starts. ‘You remember old Vi from across the road?’ Katherine nods vigorously, eager for her sister to continue. ‘I don’t know if she’d gone over to have a gossip with mum, or perhaps she’d noticed the car arrive and not leave. I don’t know. She might even have disturbed him, not so early as to have prevented what happened, but perhaps he wasn’t finished. We’ll never know. She knocked and when she got no answer, she came into the house. You know mum never used to lock the front door and if she did she’d leave the key under a stone.

  ‘Vi called out to mum expecting her to be in the kitchen, but she wasn’t. Then she heard heavy footsteps run down the hallway and out, followed by a car driving off in a hurry. Vi thought perhaps she’d walked in on something she shouldn’t have. She was about to leave when she heard her. She heard mum crying, sobbing.

  ‘She found her, found our mother huddled and hysterical in a corner of the sitting room.’ Margaret looks up at her sister. ‘He’d raped her. Anne’s father, John West had r
aped her. The sitting room was a mess. She’d fought back.’

  Katherine’s hand goes to her mouth, she doesn’t say a word, just watches and listens to her sister intently.

  ‘Vi said she wanted to call Dad straight away, and the police, but Mum begged her not to. She was ashamed, frightened of the consequences, afraid he’d say it was her fault, that it would destroy Dad. He’d threatened her, told her nobody would believe her, that he was well respected in the community. Vi tried to reason with mum but she wouldn’t change her mind. Instead, Vi helped her upstairs to the bathroom, made her some strong tea with a splash of whisky. She stayed with mum, fetching you from nursery, tidying up the sitting room. Stayed comforting her until Dad was due to arrive home.’

  Margaret’s voice is filled with the emotions of the story, she clears her throat, taking a sip of tea before continuing. Katherine doesn’t interrupt. ‘Vi may have been a gossip, Kath, but she was also a woman of her word and Mum made her swear she wouldn’t tell anyone. She didn’t: until me that is. Like mum, she knew the truth. She saw in me what I was, and, more importantly what I wasn’t. I wasn’t our father’s daughter Kath. Nine months after the rape I was born.’ Her voice cracks and her eyes drop to the floor. Katherine can see the shame shrouding her and is about to speak but Margaret begins again.

  ‘The one thing I don’t know is if Dad ever found out, ever guessed. I don’t think she ever told him. Vi says mum kept quiet for fear of the public humiliation, and once she’d found out she was pregnant, for fear of what might have become of me. She carried that with her all the rest of her life Katherine. So yes, Mum did know what kind of a man John West was, what he was capable of, why she didn’t want you near him. I’d like to think she didn’t know Anne was being abused, but once it came out she can’t have been surprised. Did she feel guilty? Probably. But do you know what? I think the reason why she never did or said anything was because of me. If she’d spoken out about him then, told anyone what he’d done, or how she knew what he could do, then the secret of my birth would have been out and I don’t think Mum wanted that kind of public shame for me. For any of us. So you see it isn’t as simple as you think. If anyone is to blame then it’s me, isn’t it? I’m the reason mum didn’t speak out and stop him sooner.’ Margaret takes a deep breath and looks up. ‘So now you know. I’m not really the sister you thought I was.’

  Katherine shakes her head, not in answer to the question, but in complete shock and disbelief at what she’s just heard.

  ‘No.’ Katherine replies, at first from a distance, then she pulls herself together, her thoughts turning to her sister. ‘No. That’s a ridiculous thing to say, of course it’s not your fault. You are completely innocent in this. This doesn’t change anything.’

  ‘It changed a lot for me, ‘Margaret replies.

  ‘No, I mean us, our family. You are one hundred percent my sister and you always will be. It’s ridiculous to even think you’re in any way to blame for anything!’ Katherine takes her sister in her arms, holding on to the sobbing Margaret just like she had when she’d been a little girl who’d fallen over in the yard and her big sister had come running to pick her up.

  More jigsaw pieces falling into place. She understands now her sister and Anne’s dark hair and olive complexion compared to her own fairness. Their mother’s attitude to Anne and her family. Most importantly, the final missing piece of jigsaw in the relationship with her sister is replaced. No more secrets. Once more they stand connected in their family kitchen, hugging each other until their arms ache.

  Margaret is back momentarily in that bedroom of Vi’s with the faded rose pink curtains and the smell of decaying body, damp house and roast dinner; listening to the story Vi has just recounted. When she died a couple of days later Margaret felt guilty because she was almost grateful - it meant nobody else would ever know the secret. She and Robert went to Vi’s funeral and she’d wept, body wracking sobs groaning from deep inside; her body involuntarily forced to squeeze out all the emotion to seek a release. She wasn’t so much crying for Vi as for herself. It was the first and only time she’d showed emotion after being told the story. She never shared it, or allowed it to come out in any way. She simply carried on life as though nothing had happened. Just like her mother must have done. Only everything wasn’t normal, everything had changed, all that she believed she was had suddenly been taken from her.

  Robert was bemused by her grief at the funeral.

  ‘I never realised you were quite so attached to the old dear,’ he said later, putting his arm around her and squeezing her for support. Margaret said nothing. She wasn’t ready to tell him, and she wasn’t even sure if she ever could, but neither would she lie to him. What she didn’t realise then is just how badly secrets can fester inside. Perhaps that’s why old Vi shared it on her deathbed, unable to carry the burden with her any longer.

  44

  March to May 2008, Jersey

  As if the weather is in tune with Katherine and Margaret’s emotional turmoil, on March 10th, Jersey is hit by a storm. The force of the storm and the high tide causes flooding and damage to many parts of the sea wall. Victoria Avenue is particularly badly hit, the sea encroaching up into the town of St Helier and damaging buildings including the Opera House.

  Katherine listens to the wind and rain thrashing the sash windows, making them rattle and bang. She hasn’t witnessed a storm like this for many years and in the spirit of her new found rebelliousness she ventures out and down the road on the Monday evening to view the power of the sea for herself - despite Margaret and Robert telling her she is crazy. She knows John will be on duty with the Honorary Police as many of the coast roads are closed, too dangerous to drive along with the ferocious sea flinging huge boulders of granite at the land. She finds the anger of the storm magnificent, from a safe distance. Wild, unyielding and oblivious to mankind. Katherine has missed the sea, blue and calm or black and wild, it doesn’t matter, she’s missed it.

  In the JEP the next day are photographs of the storm damage alongside the latest on the abuse investigation. The Chief investigating officer, Lenny Harper, says police received an eye-witness account of an alleged ‘indirect act of violence’ on a little girl at Haut de la Garenne in the 1970s. An account which is causing them concern. Mr Harper said if the account was accurate there was no doubt that serious injury could have been caused to the child at that time. Could that little girl be the one whose remains have been found? Katherine finds herself wondering what she would have looked like, who her parents could have been, why nobody missed her? Each time the face of Anne joins the questions in her mind.

  The enquiry team continue to find teeth and bone fragments at the former children’s home, every new revelation paraded to the media, each news story creating more fear and questions in the island community - but by April 27th the focus of the world’s media has transferred to Amstetten in Austria. There, another community is shaking its head in disbelief. Questions are being asked how could people not have known about Elisabeth Fritzl, kept captive by her father Josef in the basement of their home for twenty-four years? How could his wife Rosemarie not have realised what was going on, not have wondered where three of the seven children he fathered with daughter, Elisabeth, suddenly appeared from to be cared for by her and Josef. Amstetten leads the headlines now, helping the papers to fly off the newsstands. While its community holds a candlelit vigil in solidarity and outrage, the readers of the newspaper headlines tut and gossip about the story in the pubs and on the bus.

  In Jersey the abuse investigation doesn’t go away, even though the world’s media attention has. The police still dig at Haut de la Garenne. So far two men have been arrested and charged.

  Katherine and Margaret are consumed by each other in the weeks that follow the sharing of their secrets, working hard to rebuild their relationship and support one another. Margaret’s revelation makes up Katherine’s mind for her. It is time she does what a big sister should. She returns to London briefly to re
sign from her job and arrange for the sale of her house. Her sister needs her, and she is not going to let her down this time.

  As the dust begins to settle, Katherine knows she must sit down and talk to John. It’s like some burning abscess inside of her needing to be lanced. She’s seen him around the place, but they’ve successfully managed to avoid each other. For Katherine it isn’t too hard, it’s a skill she’s been practicing for the last twenty-one years.

  She isn’t foolish enough to think there can be some magic reconciliation, she just feels it’s time he has a full explanation, perhaps an apology...she’s not sure yet. Not sure what she feels, or what she wants. It’s another reason why she hasn’t rushed to speak to him, but she can’t put it off forever.

  Standing at the kitchen window, she sees John walk into the barn. The afternoon is beginning to merge into evening and the sun is starting its slow descent into the sea. When she walks out into the yard a gaggle of sparrows argue noisily on the roof. Coming home and talking to Margaret has brought back many early memories, happy times she’d somehow blocked in an effort to erase the bad ones. Sorting out the ‘bad stuff’ she now realises has helped her to appreciate all the good things too. John is her last big blockage, the plug that is stopping the lava from flowing and her life from moving on.

  ‘John?...John?’ she calls into the darkness of the barn, her eyes struggling to adjust. As her pupils expand she sees him, right in front of her, watching.

  ‘Hello Kathy. What can I do for you?’ It does it again. Her heart starts to beat faster, betraying the emotion of her thoughts to the rest of her body.

  ‘I didn’t see you, sorry. Hello. I was just catching up with you...thought we could set a date and time for that chat we talked about?’ She stammers slightly, the rehearsed lines forgotten.

  He gives nothing away. ‘Yes. Of course. Well I’m pretty flexible, any evening this week is fine by me.’ John replies.