However, by the next day she had changed her mind, and had a job for him.
‘I’ve got this cake I made and iced for the Leeds Ladies’ Guild. It’s our fiftieth anniversary. Formed when dear old Harold Macmillan was prime minister by Leeds ladies who thought the Women’s Institutes weren’t good enough for them. We’re all baking something and Ada Micklejohn said she’d take it for me because I can’t go. Well, won’t, more like. I don’t go along much these days. It was my excrement of a husband who persuaded me to join, but I never felt at home with the Leeds Ladies – not my style at all. Ada lives in The Calls. I’ll give you a map. And you must let her show you her books.’
‘Her books? Is she a collector? Or an academic?’
‘The first if anything,’ said Isla, hardly bothering to hide an overtone of contempt. ‘Be respectful. And don’t say rude things about Barbara Cartland.’
‘Why on earth would I say rude things about Barbara Cartland? I barely know who she was.’
‘And don’t say that either.’
Kit, with the aid of Isla’s map and rather more aid from his A to Z street directory, found The Calls without difficulty, and a parking space through divine intervention. He spoke his identity (‘I’m Isla’s son’) into the list of tenants on the door and was rewarded by a ‘Oh, do come up. The door’s open. It’s the cake isn’t it?’ He pushed open the street door and by following directions found his way to flat 237, Ada’s home. When he rang the bell the door was opened immediately and Ada Micklejohn appeared, apparently already in full flood. Kit had a vision of shiny silk drapes and caked make-up while the melting-chocolate voice flowed into one ear and out the other.
‘I got in right at the beginning here in The Calls, and this flat is one of the biggest, and I didn’t pay a fortune for it, far from it, but I’ve always had an eye for a bargain, that’s what you need these days, lovely that Isla has you back, how were things wherever it was you’ve been? No don’t tell me, my travelling days are over, did Isla tell you I’ve got two flats here? I snapped up the one next door the moment it came on the market, here – just have a look because you’re sure to sneer, now don’t say you won’t because I know you will, know by experience, particularly young men, but here we are, three rooms with nothing but my collection …’ She threw open the door and Kit was greeted by a room totally devoted to books, climbing to the ceiling, supplemented by free-standing bookcases and boxes containing as yet unclassified items to be shelved later.
‘Ah,’ he said, remembering Isla’s words, ‘a library of romantic fiction.’
‘Not of romantic fiction generally, that’s beyond my scope, no, this, young fellow, is the world’s largest collection of Mills & Boon, with only a hundred and fifty-seven titles yet to be found. I’ve got people scouring the world, devoted lovers of really good writing, and what a collection of happiness after misery along the way the whole collection will represent, and so much learning, remember dear Barbara Cartland saying, “I was trained as a historian”, and what knowledge she put into her historicals! I worship her, and always so tastefully presented’ – she threw a hand in the direction of the collection, with many volumes facing outwards to display the execrable artwork that would certainly have had Genevieve Philipson either shuddering or laughing.
‘I’m not sure I could take all those happy endings,’ said Kit. ‘My mother once said there was nothing so depressing as a happy ending. You think of all the disillusionment in store for the couple.’
‘Don’t you believe your crabby mother,’ said Ada, and Kit carefully restrained himself from correcting her on which mother he had been talking about. ‘She’s a particular case, and I’ve nothing to say to excuse your father, that’s for sure, but your mother had her revenge, and she had a lot of happiness over the years from you children that’s for sure, and I know how happy you’ve made her, how she’s revelled in your success, are you going to marry that girl of yours, do you think she’s worthy of you? Your mother doesn’t, I’m sure you know that, but what mother ever does? Eh? I think she’ll be over the moon to have you back, put the cake down there, will you?’ They had come into the main flat, which was decorated in Regency style with – again, and most unfortunately – the originals of Mills & Boon covers ruining the atmosphere on the walls. ‘You won’t have a cup of tea, will you, or something stronger? No, I can see it in your face, you won’t go and see your father, will you? I know Micky does – Micky’s the only one of you I’ve met – I don’t know why he should, or you either, or the other one whose name I forget, you owe him nothing, that’s for sure, and when they separated your mother had all the burden and he barely acknowledged his family’s existence, not just the one but all of you, I know that because Isla told me herself, now you will come again, won’t you, there’s so much I can show you.’
‘I will, I will,’ said Kit, not altogether untruthfully, disappearing down the corridors. In fact, he had been disappearing out the door when the full significance of what Ada was saying – of everything Ada had said – was brought home to him. Kit slowed down, let himself thoughtfully out of the maze of flats, and went and sat in his car, wondering what to do next.
He had passed by the police headquarters in the city on his search to find a parking space. He felt pretty sure it was not far away. After weighing up the pros and cons he left the car where it was, locating the station by its closeness to the bus terminal. When he went up to the desk to ask for Sergeant Hargreaves the desk man was on the blower to him in a trice. The looming, going-to-seed figure of the sergeant appeared promptly, and led Kit off to find one of the interview rooms.
‘I can see something has happened,’ said Hargreaves. ‘I can see it in your face.’
‘Not exactly happened,’ said Kit. ‘But I think I may have made a discovery. Whether it’s important or not I don’t think I’m the best one to judge.’
‘Spill the beans.’
Kit told him the gist of the meeting, cutting down on Ada’s devotion to romantic fiction. (‘My wife reads Mills & Boon,’ said the sergeant. ‘Women’s rubbish. She says they show her what she’s been missing all these years.’) When he finished Hargreaves stretched his legs in the chair.
‘Well!’ he said.
‘Yes. When we talked about Isla having me back I thought she’d been told about my reappearance by Isla. But then she talked about my “success” and my girlfriend (I haven’t got one at the moment that Isla knows about). I was just going out the door when I realised she was confusing me with Dan. It could be useful in the future if that’s what she thinks. She might talk about “Peter”, as they call me, more openly, without inhibitions. Whether that would actually be useful is another matter. The confusion of the two sons is symptomatic of a general confusion in Ada’s mind, which probably Isla doesn’t understand or at least take any notice of. One tends to switch off in the general flood of talk, going from subject to subject. For example, what do you make of what she said about my father?’
Hargreaves stretched again, and thought hard before he replied.
‘First of all, he’s done something that Isla condemns. We must be careful, Isla is far from being an unbiassed witness.’
‘Agreed.’
‘Still, I compared it in my mind with your encounter with your father, which you wrote me a nice full account of. Do you see what I’m getting at?’
‘I think so.’
‘He refused to acknowledge you. That could mean at least two things. One is that he doesn’t think you are the three-year-old son that was abducted.’
‘Yes. Though if so he never spelt it out.’
‘Secondly, it could mean that he never acknowledged that that member of the family was his child. You’re “not any kind of son” was how he put it. That’s pretty comprehensive, isn’t it? What he may have been saying is that you were Isla’s son, but not by him. Maybe that he tried to make the situation work back in your early childhood, but found he never could accept you.’
‘Yes. I haven’
t had much time to think that over, but that was one of the possibilities that occurred to me. It makes one feel a bit more sympathetic to the man.’
‘It makes you feel that way. But you’re a nice lad and you try to make the best of people, no doubt as you were taught to do by your also nice parents. But would you say that the rest of the interview you had with your father suggested he was the sort of man who would try to make the best of a situation like that for the sake of his wife, and to keep the family together?’
Kit thought hard.
‘No … But of course, this is twenty years after the event. He could have changed.’
‘Have you heard anything about how he treated his acknowledged family after the separation or divorce?’
‘Divorce. He paid very little attention to them.’
‘That seems to chime in with the impression he made on you.’
‘Yes.’
‘Did he virtually cast them off right from the time of the split-up?’
‘Not quite, but not long afterwards.’
‘And they are his real children – no question about that. Since you’ve come back I suppose that’s what you’ve naturally assumed yourself to be too. Legally it’s what you are. But if Novello wiped his own children out of his life, how much more is he likely to want to wipe you out of the historical record if he believes, rightly or wrongly, that you’re not his? And there’s another thing—’
‘If I’m not his, whose am I?’ said Kit.
‘Spot on. And is the identity of your father an added grievance that made it even more impossible for Frank Novello to form any bond with you?’
Kit held up his hand, palm outward.
‘Wait. Let’s not go further.’
‘You’ve got to face facts, lad.’
‘Facts yes. But we’re not at the moment in the realm of facts, but in the realm of conjecture. If we’re going to stay in the realm of conjecture we ought to sit down and examine some of the other possible conjectures.’
‘Like?’
‘That I was his favourite son, and the marriage collapsed after he lost me.’
Hargreaves considered this.
‘Possible. I’d have expected a lawyer to make a tremendous fuss if he lost his own child in a kidnap.’
‘Fuss with whom? Police? Press?’
‘Either. Both probably, and politicians as well, but principally police. I don’t get any sense from the records that he did anything much other than keep in touch through the British police with what was going on in Sicily.’
‘Where the police were doing bugger all.’
‘Exactly.’
‘The question is, what do I do next?’
‘Yes … I’d say you’ve got to face up to your father’s part in all this. Not by talking to him again, because you’d most likely get exactly the same result: stonewalling and sadistic games.’
‘Sadistic games,’ mused Kit. ‘I sometimes wonder whether the whole abduction wasn’t part of a sadistic game.’
‘Good point. At the expense of your birth mother, perhaps. Perhaps one should say that the whole business has Frank Novello’s thumbprint on it.’
‘I could talk to Micky,’ said Kit. ‘He needs to think a bit more about his father, to think what in general makes Frank tick. Did the family ever notice – the younger ones – any aversion to me as a child? I ought to try to get him to be honest, to really examine his memories.’
‘And there’s one more person you have to talk to,’ said Hargreaves.
‘Who’s that?’
‘Isla Novello. She knows most of all. Perhaps she knows everything. You have to get her to be honest too. She lost a child. Why didn’t she react more strongly at the time?’
Kit groaned. It was something he had known since his return, and had tried not to face up to.
‘We’ve tried,’ he said, then amended it to: ‘We’ve skirted the surface.’
‘But even if you learn all she knows,’ said Hargreaves, ever the practical man in the street, ‘you’ll still be only through the first stage, and have hardly dipped a toe into the second.’
‘Which is?’
‘How you came to land up in Glasgow, Scotland, as the child of Jürgen and Genevieve Philipson.’
CHAPTER NINE
Another Sort of Family Reunion
The voice came down the telephone: ‘Mother?’
Kit was standing beside Isla at the phone, where they had been discussing what he would like for dinner. He recognised the voice as that of Micky’s wife, Pat, but he recalled her at the party as always referring to Isla as ‘Mum’. The tone of voice and the more formal word made him wonder if a new ice age was in preparation.
‘Yes, Pat. Who else?’
‘Mother, what is this about Kit being—?’
‘Kit is standing beside me, Pat.’ Isla said this in her most schoolmistressy voice. She did not mention the fact that he had immediately moved away. There was a nonplussed silence at the other end.
‘Well, I’ve nothing against Kit. Nothing at all. It’s just that—’
‘That what?’
Another silence.
‘We’re coming round.’ The tone of determination suggested that Pat was proposing a family excursion to the South Pole. ‘The children will have to come, but they can play in the garden,’ she went on.
‘That’s as you please, Pat. Kit and I will make sure that we’re here.’
‘I have some phone calls to make. We’ll be there in twenty minutes.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Isla, putting the phone down. ‘She’s a troublemaker, that one, and trouble is what we’ll have.’
When the twenty-minute deadline loomed Kit retreated to the dining room and watched the street outside. Micky Novello drove a three-year-old Honda Civic and when it stopped outside the front gate five people scrambled out of it, Micky looking very troubled. They were received at the front door by Isla and were still bundling the children out into the back garden and keeping them quiet with sweets and pop when another car drew up – a car verging on limousine status, though Kit didn’t recognise the make or model, out of which got his sister Maria and her husband Ivan Battersby. Ivan spotted Kit in the window and raised his hand, and Kit was about to reciprocate friendship in kind (he might need all the friendship he could get) by going out into the melee when yet another car drew up. It said Stanningley Cars on the roof and side, and out of it got the determined but slightly comic figure of Wendy Maclean, and following her – yes, it had to be – his younger brother Dan: smart, besuited, his hair glued up in rough spikes that resembled a rampant bramble growing on moorland. He looked the epitome of a promising footballer up on a charge of rape, affray or dangerous driving.
Kit, without wanting to, felt he had to go out and join the party. The introduction to Dan was as brief and formalised as it could be, and the whole party then gathered in the Seldon Road dining room.
‘What we want to know,’ said Pat, gazing round at what she obviously regarded with satisfaction as a full house, ‘is how come we’ve never been told? How come Isla hasn’t made it clear that the kid who was abducted in Sicily had a different father to the rest of her children, and was in fact illegitimate? Why were we left in the dark?’
There was a single voice that shouted ‘Hear! Hear!’ – at first loudly, but fading away.
A long silence followed.
‘I never told anyone because it’s not true,’ Isla finally said, quietly. Kit thought with amused approval that Isla was likely to play her hand much more effectively than Pat. He thought, also, that he knew exactly where Pat had obtained her information.
‘You introduced Kit to the family as one of us, and the next stage would have been that he came in for his quarter of the family estate,’ Pat said.
‘He can still do that,’ said Isla, her chin going up a degree or two. ‘There is no “family” estate. My house and my money are mine to do what I like with – mine absolutely. Unfortunately, Kit rejects the whole idea of inheriti
ng his share from me.’
‘I came in for a house and sufficient money from my adoptive parents,’ said Kit, keeping his voice low. ‘That is more than enough for me.’
‘Pull the other one,’ said Pat, her tone becoming broader Yorkshire and harsher as she felt more floundering than victorious. ‘When is money ever enough? And I never heard that you were adopted by billionaires.’
‘I don’t suppose you know anything about my parents,’ said Kit, voice still soft and impersonal.
‘This is really very distasteful,’ said Ivan Battersby suddenly. ‘And futile. Isla leaves her estate as she likes, and if Kit gives his share to Christian Aid or the Dogs Trust, that’s a matter entirely for him. Bringing it up like this is not only distasteful, it’s shabby.’
‘Who the hell are you to criticise?’ said Dan, an unlovely sneer on his face. ‘You’re not family. It’s we who’ve had someone foisted on us who turns out to have been born on the wrong side of the blanket.’
‘I doubt whether you would know which was the wrong and which was the right side,’ said Ivan contemptuously. ‘I can’t take a footballer’s moral outrage seriously.’
‘Dan,’ said Isla. ‘I have no idea when you came back from Australia, or why you didn’t tell me when you were coming or had come, but you’d be well advised to hold your peace and not mess with things that are well beyond your comprehension and have nothing to do with you.’
‘It’s an outrage – having a cuckoo foisted on us who immediately lines up for his share of the family loot,’ said Dan.
‘I seem to have been misunderstood,’ said Kit, trying hard not to treat Dan with disdain but not succeeding. ‘I wanted to make it clear that I was not lining up to receive Novello family money or possessions.’
‘I’ve been trying to think,’ said Isla, in a meditative voice, ‘where all this innuendo could have come from. There is only one source I could think of.’ She shut her mouth determinedly and looked straight at Micky. He held her gaze for a few seconds, and then looked down.
A Stranger in the Family Page 10
