A Stranger in the Family

by Robert Barnard

  ‘Yes, well … I don’t know. I normally make a fool of myself when I have to speak in public. Remember when I was your best man, Ivor?’

  ‘You did very well,’ his brother-in-law said. ‘You are the only one who doesn’t think so.’

  ‘Try and talk as if we were speaking to each other alone after dinner,’ said Kit.

  ‘I don’t think that that would make any difference. You’re an educated man – I’m just a man with a roller and a tin of paint. Oh well, here goes.’

  He swallowed, looking at Kit, then started.

  ‘You all know I’ve seen Dad on and off since the divorce. For a time – not long – he saw us kids: not often, but still, regularly, maybe every three or four months. I didn’t notice much difference in him then, and not for long afterwards. I knew in my heart that these were duty occasions and no pleasure to him at all, but still … When they ceased Maria and Dan were pleased, but I wanted them to go on.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Kit.

  ‘Because I thought they ought to go on, I suppose. It’s what happens when parents divorce. I always like to do the done thing, the ordinary thing. So I rang him and said could I come and see him. He must have thought word would get around if he said “no”. So generally we met up, though it was never a pleasure for either of us. Then things started to change.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘In the past he’d always been the correct, buttoned-up solicitor, running to type, I suppose. We generally went to sporting events, though I’d have liked a bit more variety. And he started saying things that seemed … well, wrong for him, as I’d always known him. One day at a rugby league match, he introduced me to one of his clients, and he said: “This is my boy, Micky. He’s a good lad. Never wanted to go to university. Saved me a mint of money that has.” Do you see why I was surprised?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Kit. ‘It was thoughtless, cynical, slightly “off”. It showed he didn’t care how he hurt you, didn’t care about your feelings at all.’

  ‘That’s it. And I’d always wanted to be important to him. I was hurt, very hurt.’

  ‘Were the remarks always aimed at you?’

  ‘Oh, not at all. Sometimes the family perhaps, sometimes just general remarks. They were always things that a solicitor, a good one, wouldn’t say. And he said them, and enjoyed saying them.’

  ‘And this has gone on, has it?’

  ‘Oh yes. I went to see him the other day, and he asked me if I’d seen Isla’s by-blow recently. It’s as if he’s losing all his inhibitions and natural cautions and now flaunts what he once would have shrunk from saying.’

  ‘What precipitated his going into a nursing home?’

  ‘A broken leg. And he found he preferred being looked after, and decided to stay there.’

  ‘Ah. No reason there for a change of mood and character. I wondered because what happens to a lot of people with Alzheimer’s and other diseases of the elderly is that they seem to change their whole nature, whereas in fact it is long-hidden things emerging and making them seem transformed. I’m sure you know the sort of thing: elderly spinsters with a command of four-letter words that family and friends find astonishing.’

  ‘Ah yes, I‘ve heard of that sort of case,’ said Micky. ‘There was another odd occasion recently – not like that, but interesting. Often he’s quite quiet when we get together – whether it’s in his bedroom at the nursing home or at a home game at Elland Road – and he sometimes makes odd remarks that come from what he has been thinking in the long periods of silence. Ten days ago we were at the football game, and a goal had just been scored by Leeds, and suddenly he said: “They said it could be slow, but I never thought it would be as slow as this.”’

  They all looked at each other. Dan’s eyes revealed a mind that was struggling with new information.

  ‘That sounds like a death sentence,’ he said finally. ‘And we’re the only family he’s got …’ he looked around the room, ‘we three.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s how Micky reads the remark,’ said Kit, in a low voice. ‘And he’s the one who was there.’

  Micky nodded.

  ‘That’s right. I read it that he’d been told a while ago that he was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, or maybe senility. I believe those are pretty unpredictable illnesses to get, so far as the rate of their progress and so on are concerned. I read it that he was expressing surprise that he – and his brain – had been so long in developing the illness.’

  ‘I think that’s how I read it,’ said Kit.

  Suddenly Maria changed the tack of the meeting.

  ‘To go back to what Micky quoted earlier,’ she said, ‘that about Isla’s by-blow. Wouldn’t it make more sense, if Isla did produce a child that wasn’t her husband’s, that that child would be Dan rather than Peter – sorry – Kit?’

  ‘How do you work that out?’ asked Pat, though it was through gargled outrage and ‘what the hells?’ from Dan.

  ‘I’m just thinking of the usual pattern of a disintegrating marriage: it makes sense if Kit was unwanted by his father at least, and if Isla responded with a protest – the opposite of her earlier worship of him. If Frank went elsewhere – and he clearly had a line-up of girlfriends after the divorce, which suggests a straying eye all through the marriage – then maybe Isla felt: if he can, why shouldn’t I?’

  ‘Yes, I see that,’ said Ivor Battersby. ‘The alternative is that this marriage disintegrated earlier than most people realised; ignoring Auntie Flora – though in my experience she is usually right – and Kit was the result of an affair, what does that imply about Dan? You might ask: why did he come into the world at all?’

  ‘A lot of us have often wondered,’ said Maria.

  ‘Here, I’m not sitting through garbage like that,’ yelled Dan as if he was being accused of a blatant foul. ‘If I was conceived when the marriage was on the rocks it was because Dad was careless like we all are at times. I’m going.’

  And he threw his chair back against the wall and marched out of the function room, followed reluctantly, with wistful glances at Kit, by Wendy.

  ‘Not so much careless as brainless,’ she muttered to whoever was in earshot.

  ‘Well, that’s given us plenty to think about,’ said Kit, realising that, whether he wanted it to or not, the meeting was drawing to a close.

  Kit was conscious of a chill in the air from the moment he awoke next morning.

  ‘Tea,’ said his mother, putting it down with a clang beside his bed and going straight out.

  She had already gone to bed by the time he had arrived back in Seldon Road the night before. Kit went straight up to bed himself, with more than enough to think about. But ‘tea’, without a comment on the weather or cheery chaffing on his sleeping late, did give him a clue to her mood. He washed and showered in a hurry and went downstairs. Mail was lying in a bundle on the hall table, secured by the inevitable red elastic band. He quickly sorted through it and left his in a separate pile. Then he went into the dining room.

  ‘Lovely day,’ he said to Isla.

  ‘Is it? I haven’t had time to notice. I presume you want cereal?’ she said in a sour tone. She didn’t say anything about the eggs and bacon and sausages which he did not want but which she slapped down in front of him before going out. He felt obliged to eat as much as he could, and then a bit more.

  ‘Toast and marmalade,’ Isla said, coming in the moment he put his knife and fork together on the plate.

  ‘Best part of the meal,’ said Kit. ‘Now, are you going to tell me what this is all about?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said, going out. Kit buttered and marmaladed a slice of toast, then went in a casual fashion, plate in hand, and stood in the doorway to the kitchen.

  ‘What “this is about”,’ he said, ‘is the ice in your manner. You’re about as welcoming as a winter congregation of Wee Frees. I’ve done something that has annoyed or offended you – right?’

  She turned round,
her hands on her hips.

  ‘There’s no “or” – I’m both … Ada Micklejohn drove me home last night after the opera. We went along Bennett Street, just as practically my whole family came rolling out of La Cena Italiana. If you’d asked me, I could have told you of a much better restaurant than that. But of course, you didn’t ask me, did you?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘So I was humiliated in front of Ada, who’d asked where you were eating and I’d said you were having a pub meal with your brother Micky.’

  ‘I don’t see anything very humiliating in a change of plan.’

  ‘It was not a change of plan. I know all of Ada’s little Mills & Boon affectations. You persuaded her to ask me out to give you a clear field with the rest of the family.’

  Kit sighed.

  ‘OK. But it wasn’t so much a clear field I wanted. I didn’t want to bully or manipulate them in any way. I just wanted to test them, to see if there were any memories they’d suppressed, or hadn’t spoken of because they thought they might offend or upset you, so that they would have kept quiet about anything that reflected badly on the family.’

  ‘You wanted to drag up anything that reflected badly on the family,’ said Isla, her voice overflowing with bitterness. ‘I’ve always tried to show the best possible face to the world, and I tried to make Micky and Maria do the same.’

  ‘Not Dan, I notice,’ said Kit, going into the hall. ‘You love him, but you recognise he’s a lost cause.’ He riffled through his mail and then looked at Isla. ‘There was a letter from Vienna when I sorted through my mail. What have you done with it?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  Kit shook his head.

  ‘Oh dear, Mother. You’ve ruled the roost too long. You haven’t got together a little collection of denials and excuses or counter-accusations. Of course you’ve taken it. Who else could have done it? We’re alone in the house. In fact, I think I can see the outline of an envelope in the pocket of your apron. Let me have it.’

  As he walked towards her she took it from the pocket and threw it on the floor.

  ‘There it is. Take it. You know I’ve always hated you going into these matters from the past.’

  ‘That doesn’t excuse theft.’ He slit open the envelope and took out a single sheet. He cast his eye over the content. ‘I have been informed by the Austrian embassy in London … my old friend Mrs Madison … I am an old man with an old man’s fallible memory … if you would care to pay me a visit I will tell you what I know and what I suspect … I regard it as your right to be told … Helmut Erheim.’

  Kit looked at Isla, who suddenly seemed to cast a threatening shadow. She was staring at the letter, her face drained of blood.

  ‘This is a letter about things connected with my adoptive grandfather. I don’t see how it in any way concerns you or why you should object to my following it up.’

  ‘You would take no notice of my objections in any case.’

  ‘That’s true. I think since I’m doing something that upsets you it would be as well if I moved out of the house.’

  ‘Please yourself,’ said Isla Novello.

  Ten minutes later Kit had packed the two changes of clothes he had with him, the Marks & Sparks underwear and the big Victorian novel that he had been reading since the day he had first walked up Seldon Road in search of number 35. It was not a very lavish collection of possessions. Perhaps he had suspected from the start that the answer to his fundamental question was not here, or was only partly to be found in the Novello family. He was surprised to discover that he could leave the Novellos without much thought of coming back.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Errand Boy

  Kit walked around the wide, open spaces of Vienna, wishing he had Genevieve and her artistic sensitivity with him to point out half-hidden beauties and assertions of a power now long since crumbled. His appointment with Helmut Erheim was for half past twelve, and from time to time he stopped for a coffee or a fruit juice, often opening the man’s letter to see if he had missed any points of interest. The handwriting was difficult, but the hand that had written it was firm and confident.

  Dear Mr Philipson,

  I have been informed by the Austrian embassy in London that you are interested in finding out about the life and career of the late Walter Greenspan. It was my old friend Mrs Madison who contacted me, and it is certainly a fascinating subject – his career was as interesting and varied as the number of pseudonyms he went under. I would be delighted to talk to you.

  Please remember I am an old man with an old man’s fallible memory, and the time when I knew this man was a tumultuous one in which much may have got jumbled together in the memory of a player in that national tragedy. If you would care to pay me a visit I will tell you what I know and what I suspect, but you must not give absolute trust to all the details of what I tell you. The broad thrust, however, will be true and clear. I regard it as your right to be told, and I will tell it without sensationalism or self-righteousness. Remember I was for a time involved with the things Greenspan did, and I was therefore, though in small ways, contaminated by them.

  I look forward to meeting you.

  Helmut Erheim.

  Kit folded up the letter and put it back in his pocket. Then he downed the dregs of his coffee and stood up. The April sunshine was weak, but pleasantly so, and he walked in the direction of the synagogue and the old Jewish Museum, now amalgamated and closed, with all its memories, mostly bad, distributed elsewhere. Finally, he made his way to the house in which Herr Erheim lived.

  When he found it, he stood for a moment on the little step outside and tried to prepare himself. But how can you prepare yourself for something you have no knowledge of or presentiment about? Of the man he was going to meet he knew nothing, or next to nothing. So he had to be ready for uncertainty, and for an uncertainty that would remain after the interview if, as the letter had warned, he could not put total credence in the testimony. He put his finger on the bell and rang it.

  The response was very quick. He had been waited for, maybe even looked for. Did he appear so English that he could be picked out from the native Viennese throng? Bolts were pulled on the other side of the door and it opened confidently. Waiting to welcome him, smiling and making a little bob, was a square-shouldered woman in her early thirties, in a white blouse and lavish black skirt with large embroidered flowers. A warm, optimistic, friendly person.

  ‘Welcome to Vienna, Herr Philipson! Herr Erheim is expecting you and is looking forward to your talk.’

  She stood aside and he came into a tiny square hallway at the bottom of a wooden staircase.

  ‘Thank you,’ murmured Kit. ‘Is it up?’ The woman laughed.

  ‘The only way is up.’

  ‘Difficult for an old man to negotiate,’ commented Kit.

  ‘Negotiate?’

  ‘To cope with. To climb up.’

  ‘Oh, Grandad rarely leaves his flat these days. If he ever does there are attendants who help him down in a wheelchair. He does not enjoy that. To tell you the truth he loves his apartment and would rather not leave it.’

  ‘I can understand that. He is your grandfather, you say?’

  ‘Great-grandfather in fact, but that is a mouthful to say over and over again. I am his nurse, pupil, companion. Everything possible. I love him very much and always have. I am studying World Literature at Vienna University, so it is very convenient. I live with Grandad and do all I can for him, and study as well.’ They paused at the first floor, swallowed, then mounted the next flight of wooden stairway.

  ‘Last one. He has the whole of what you English would call the second floor. We call it the third floor. It used to be the museum curator’s. He is very comfortable here. All his friends make sure of that.’ She opened the door. ‘Grandpapa – here is your English visitor!’

  The room was a substantial one, obviously the flat’s living room, which had gained a large bed to accommodate the old m
an; it was facing the door, and the old man sat up in the bed, royally genial and welcoming, wearing a dressing gown and a woollen hat that made him look like a Dickens illustration. There was apparently pleasure and welcome in his smiles and gestures, but behind these, Kit suspected, also a certain cunning and a pleasure in combat. Perhaps he saw Kit’s visit as a challenge.

  ‘So you have come to Vienna especially to see me. I am flattered, but I’m unsure precisely what you want of me. Heidi – a tray for Mr … er … Philipson, and one for me. A simple lunch, my dear boy, but you must have a glass of wine with it. I am forbidden wine by my doctor, so I will have one too. Austrian wine is ridiculously underrated.’

  Heidi fetched a bottle already opened from the little kitchen area and poured for them both large and well-filled glasses. Though he was not hungry, Kit tucked into the cold meats and salad on the little tray that Heidi had put on his knee. She came back from the kitchen with a light coat on. Her grandfather looked at her with pride.

  ‘That’s right, Heidi. Go to your lectures. If I could have gone to lectures when I was a youngster then perhaps I would have been a better man … Or there again, perhaps not.’ When Heidi had closed the door behind her Erheim, grinning conspiratorially, added: ‘Now, while you are eating you must tell me about yourself, and when we have finished the repast and the bottle I will tell you what I know about Walter Greenspan, and what my connection with him was. Is that agreed?’

  Kit nodded, but this was something he had not expected. He cleared his throat nervously.

  ‘I was brought up in Glasgow by my adoptive parents. My mother was a university lecturer in the Faculty of Fine Arts, and my father was a deputy editor on one of the Glasgow daily papers. We were a close, happy family.’

  ‘A very literate, professional family, is that right?’

  ‘Very much so. But not too solemn.’

  ‘But these, you say, were not your real parents?’

  ‘That’s not how I would put it … but no. As I told you in my letter in response to yours, I had a few very shadowy memories of the first three years of my life. I suspected that perhaps my real mother had died. But, as I say, I was happy with my adoptive parents – what I call in my mind my real parents – so I didn’t enquire in case it was a painful matter for them. In fact, over the years, I’m afraid I forgot my memories of anything else.’