Bobby's Girl

by Catrin Collier

  The last offer was a joke. The only videos Jack owned were the cartoons he bought for his godchildren.

  She left her chair. ‘I’ll set the table.’

  She fetched plates, knives, forks and place mats from the dresser. Jack went into the pantry and brought out salt and pepper. When everything was ready he lifted the cottage pie from the oven and placed it on the table.

  ‘You’ve never been back to America?’ He served her a portion of pie.

  ‘You know I haven’t.’

  ‘Would you like to?’

  She thought before answering. ‘I don’t honestly know,’ she said truthfully.

  ‘Not even to see the museums and galleries?’

  ‘That I didn’t get around to visiting in 1968?’ She sat at the table.

  ‘A lot of things will have changed in the last nineteen years.’

  ‘Not much on the Brosna Estate, knowing Charlotte Brosna. We had some good times and made good memories. But they’ve been overshadowed by the way the summer ended.’

  ‘And Bobby Brosna? Do you want to see him again?’

  She knew the reply she was about to give Jack would hurt him, but she couldn’t lie.

  ‘Yes, I want to see him. Especially as Charlotte saw fit to disinherit him and leave everything to Andy.’

  ‘So tell me about this latest book jacket of yours.’

  She was grateful to him for changing the subject and they talked about trivia, Pontypridd gossip, the touring productions that were coming to the New Theatre in Cardiff, the last film they’d seen in the cinema. He refrained from reminding her that it had been her who’d made the decision to see the Australian comedy, Crocodile Dundee, instead of the Vietnam War film Platoon.

  After they’d eaten she helped him clear the table and wash the dishes. He opened a second bottle of wine and they played three games of chess, all of which he won because she couldn’t concentrate.

  They went to bed early and he made love to her slowly, surely. They were practised lovers and he knew her body and her reactions. Afterwards, she lay on her side and he curled around her back. But despite his comforting presence she found it difficult to sleep.

  She listened to the patter of raindrops on the windows, and thought about Andy. She couldn’t even begin to guess what his reaction would be when she told him he’d inherited a fortune. And then there was the question of travelling to America.

  Should she write to Bobby and demand he come to them? Or should she take Andrew to Cape Cod and show him the places where she’d lived with his father almost twenty years before?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  20th May 1987

  Dear Bobby,

  I received your letter – that’s a stupid thing to write when I’m answering it. Did Charlotte Brosna leave the Brosna Estate to Andy instead of you out of spite? You were never close, but then I don’t believe she could have been close to a human being in her life, not even her husband. After meeting her twice, I’m convinced the only person she loved was herself. To me she will always be the epitome of the selfish, self-centred, wealthy American matriarch, accustomed to getting her own way in all things.

  People say you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. Although after what Charlotte Brosna did to you and her attempts to ‘buy’ me and, after he was born, Andy, I cannot be magnanimous.

  I have discussed Andy’s inheritance with my parents and we’ve agreed Andy shouldn’t be told about it until after he’s sat his A levels – the examinations he needs to pass to go to medical college. Given Charlotte’s propensity for hiring ‘snoops’ I’m certain she knew what Andy’s plans for his future were. If you’ve found the file she kept on him I don’t need to explain the UK educational system to you.

  Andy’s ambition is, and has been for a few years, to follow in his grandfather’s and uncle’s footsteps and become a doctor. I have no idea how he’ll react when he receives the news of the Brosna inheritance, whether or not he will accept it, or allow it to change the plans he has made.

  I don’t want anything to distract him before he takes his examinations. I trust you will respect this, the final decision I hope I have to make on Andy’s behalf without discussing it with him beforehand.

  After his examinations I will show him your letter and tell him about his great-grandmother and the Brosnas. I will leave it to Andy to decide whether or not we accept your invitation to arrange flights for us, but should he want to see you, I want to meet you – alone – before you speak to Andy.

  I don’t think I could bear to return to the Brosna Estate or Cape Cod. If Andy wants to see the place where we spent a happy summer before the night that ended it, perhaps he could go with you. I am, however, certain that he will want to see New York and I would like to revisit the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park and see if the passage of time has been kind to it.

  As soon as I have spoken to Andy, and know his reaction to your letter, I will write to you again.

  With warm wishes and remembrance of that summer,

  Penny

  Pontypridd, July 1987

  Penny kept reminding herself that it was ridiculous to feel nervous but to no avail. Andy was sitting his last examination but that wasn’t the reason. Like her father and Andy’s teachers she was quietly confident he would gain the coveted place at medical school.

  It was the letter she’d received from America. Was she right in insisting she should show it to Andy when they were alone? Would it have been better to have had the support of her parents?

  Restless, unable to paint, she’d cleaned the entire house from the front door to the attic and when she finished she took her dusters, vacuum cleaner and mop into the studio. The windows sparkled, the furniture had been beeswaxed, the bathrooms and kitchen shone, the tiled walls and floor freshly bleached.

  At four o’clock she laid the tea table, although she knew Andy’s examination wouldn’t finish until four sharp and he’d want to spend at least half an hour discussing the questions with his friends before driving home.

  She set it out in the breakfast nook in the kitchen that overlooked the fields. It was where she and Andy ate most of their meals because they preferred the view there to the dining room which overlooked the courtyard between her barn conversion and her parents’ house.

  Because Andy enjoyed what he called ‘children’s tea parties teas’ she laid out ham and cheese salad sandwiches, cheese and fruit scones, gingerbread and fruit trifle, all of which she’d made that morning. She watched the clock and boiled the kettle at four-thirty in case he’d want tea instead of his customary coffee. At a quarter to five she checked her reflection in the hall mirror. She was wearing one of her favourite dresses, the exact same shade of green as the long-discarded Mary Quant suit. She brushed her hair and checked the clock again.

  Had Andy flunked the examination? It was chemistry. He’d been dreading it because it was his weakest subject. She walked to the front door, opened it and looked out in the yard. When she saw her father and mother sitting in the conservatory watching her, she self-consciously waved back and closed the door.

  She left the house by the back door and went to her studio. The painting of the girl in harem dress she’d been working on when the letter had arrived had been despatched. She’d even been paid for it which was a miracle, considering how long it usually took her agency to pay for work she’d completed.

  There was a very different painting on her easel. One she was doing for love, not money.

  Four young people were standing on the deck of the Day Dream.

  It would have been easy to have copied the photograph, but she had deliberately set it aside and not looked at it again after the day she’d received it. Instead she’d sketched out and painted the figures from memory.

  Bobby and Sandy, so alike in many ways, so different in others: both the same height and build; muscles rippling beneath the exposed skin on their bare arms, legs and chests. Bobby’s fair skin burnt blush red by the sun, Sandy’s darker skin
tanned the colour of milk chocolate. Bobby’s hair a rich brown-black, Sandy’s a Hispanic blue-black. Bobby’s deep-blue Irish eyes commanding, assured, secure with the confidence that he could make the world dance to whatever tune he chose. Sandy’s blue eyes paler, diffident because she suspected Charlotte Brosna had taken care that her housekeeper’s son knew his place in the social order that governed the Brosna world and that of their minions.

  Kate, blonde, beautiful, and a little sad because she’d imagined her that way. She’d caught the exact shade of grey in Kate’s eyes and she’d painted them misty with dreams that would never come to fruition. And her? Her tawny eyes gleamed with love as she looked uncritically, adoringly at Bobby. Should she have forced him to talk to her about his feelings for his grandmother?

  Could she have exercised more control over him? Prevented him from getting drunk and causing tragedy?

  It was a canvas she’d intended to take to America as a gift. But looking at it she wondered if anyone involved in the events of that summer’s night could accept something so poignant, and to her at least, heart-rending.

  The clock chimed six before she heard the crunch of car tyres on gravel that she’d been waiting for. She left the studio and went out to meet Andy.

  ‘I know I promised to be home early for tea, Mam. I’m sorry—’

  ‘The exam,’ she interrupted Andy.

  ‘Oh that,’ he said airily.

  ‘Yes, that?’ she snapped, nerves tensed to breaking point.

  ‘It was a doddle,’ he grinned. ‘I went to see Jack. You know I said I’d work for him this summer, helping him expand the riding school at the farm?’

  ‘Yes.’ She spoke to fill the silence while he moulded his features into an ‘I want something my mother might not agree with’ expression. ‘Well, I talked to a few of the boys after the exam and they’re thinking of going to Majorca. I thought I might raid my bank account and go with them.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Next week. There’s a special offer on in one of the travel agents in town. It’s really cheap because we’ll be returning before the school holidays even start.’

  ‘What did Jack say?’

  ‘Something odd. He said I’d have to talk it over with you but he hadn’t been counting on me to work for him this summer and he could cope without me.’ He frowned. ‘There’s nothing wrong is there? You and Jack haven’t quarrelled …?’

  ‘No, we haven’t quarrelled,’ she assured him.

  He followed her into the kitchen and watched her remove the foil wrapping she had used to cover the sandwiches and cakes to prevent them from drying out. ‘I feel guilty. While I’ve been driving around you’ve made this wonderful old-fashioned tea. We’re not going to eat all this ourselves, are we? You have invited Granny and Granddad to help us out?’

  ‘No,’ she steeled herself. ‘I need to talk to you alone.’

  ‘That sounds ominous.’

  ‘Do you want tea or coffee?’

  ‘Coffee, please.’

  She busied herself making coffee, waiting for the percolator to finish before carrying it across to the table where Andy was already sitting, eating sandwiches while looking out over the fields. Her desk was in the living room. She left the kitchen and fetched the letter she’d received in May. She opened it and placed the photograph Bobby had enclosed on top. Then she handed both letter and photograph to Andy.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Wipe your fingers and look at the picture.’

  He rubbed his hands in a paper napkin. ‘Nice bikinis. Nice girls; not the sort of picture I thought a mother would want to show her son.’

  ‘Look again.’

  ‘That’s not you, is it?’ His eyes widened as he stared at her.

  ‘Me in 1968 with my friend Kate, taken when we went on the student exchange to America. The boys with us are Alexander Buttons …’ she pointed to Sandy ‘… he was besotted with my friend Kate. The other boy is Robert Grayson Brosna the Fourth, your father. But you’ve probably guessed that. You look just like him.’

  ‘You said you didn’t have any photographs of him,’ he said accusingly.

  ‘I didn’t have this one until he sent it to me. But I did have others. I lied about them.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I would have found it painful to have shown them to you.’

  ‘Because my father’s disfigured now?’ Andy asked.

  ‘Because the photographs would have made me cry. And, I didn’t want you to associate your father with my tears.’

  ‘This is the first time you’ve brought up the subject of my father without me asking about him first. Why now?’ Andy’s blue eyes were dark, mysterious. For the first time in his life she couldn’t determine his thoughts.

  ‘Because I have to.’ She handed him the letter from America. Read this. There are some newspaper clippings in the envelope as well, American ones. Your father, Kate, Sandy and I shared a wonderful summer until the accident. It’s all in the clippings and the letter. After you’ve read them come into the studio and we’ll talk.

  She left the room quickly, closing the door behind her. She rubbed her arms with her hands, although it wasn’t cold, then she went into the studio, sat on a stool and stared at the picture.

  She was still looking at it when Andy walked in an hour later.

  ‘Why didn’t you show me my father’s letters before now?’ he demanded.

  ‘Several reasons, principally because Robert – Bobby’s – grandmother, your great-grandmother Charlotte, who’s just died, wanted me to hand you over when you were born so she could bring you up. When she found out she had no legal recourse she offered me money …’ She almost said ‘as if any mother would sell her child’, before remembering that’s exactly what Bobby’s mother had done. ‘But most of all because of the Brosna billions. Your father hated the way his grandmother had brought him up, with a succession of nannies and boarding schools. He had everything a child could possibly want except love. Another reason was your father was very ill for years.’

  ‘I looked up the Brosna businesses and foundation.’

  ‘You never told me.’

  ‘I suppose I always sensed you didn’t like talking about my father.’

  ‘The inheritance will be vast. Sandy – your father’s friend Alexander once told me the Brosna annual income was larger than half a dozen of the poorer African countries combined.’

  ‘I had a right to know my father,’ Andy reproached.

  For the second time that day she failed to decipher the expression on her son’s face. ‘Yes, you did. But he never asked to see you and I never offered. He – and I may have made the wrong decision, Andy, but I did what I thought best at the time. I wanted you to grow up secure, rooted in a family, and the only way I thought I could do that was to bring you up alongside my own parents. Charlotte Brosna would never have allowed that to happen if I’d given your father any rights over you, simply because he was too ill when you were a child to fight her.’

  ‘Did you love my father?’

  ‘Very much.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘When I knew him, good-looking, confident, charming, sure of himself, used to getting his own way. Like many overconfident people, he could be arrogant, selfish, opinionated and high-handed, but he had a way of making you forget his faults. You must also remember the Bobby Brosna I knew was nineteen years younger than he is now, and before he suffered his terrible injuries in the accident. Would you like me to get plane tickets to New York?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ He hesitated for a moment. ‘You will come with me?’

  She smiled; she’d told her son the truth and she hadn’t lost him. She felt like dancing. ‘Of course, darling.’

  11th July 1987

  Dear Bobby,

  I’ve booked flights to New York. We’ll be landing at JFK airport on Wednesday, 17th July at three in the afternoon. Will you please ask your office to arrange transport and rooms for Andy and mys
elf? I insist on paying mine and Andy’s bills.

  Warmest wishes,

  Penny

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  New York, July 1987

  ‘Mr Andrew John, Ms Penelope John, this way please.’ The uniformed official met them at the steps of the plane. He took them into a small comfortably furnished lounge just inside the building.

  A man dressed in a chauffeur’s uniform and cap rose to his feet when they entered. His face was heavily scarred, and Penny noticed he had a pronounced limp when he stepped forward to meet them.

  ‘Ms John, Mr John, I’m Tim Garber, Mr Brosna’s chauffeur. He sent me to fetch you.’

  ‘Our luggage?’ Penny asked.

  ‘They’re getting it for you now, ma’am.’

  Irritated by the man’s subservience, which reminded her of the way Charlotte Brosna’s staff had behaved when she’d visited the main house on Cape Cod, she held out her hand. ‘I’m Penny, not ma’am. You said your name is Tim?’

  ‘Yes, Penny.’ He shook Penny’s hand, then Andy’s.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Tim, I’m Andy.’

  ‘We didn’t expect five-star treatment on landing and we certainly didn’t expect to be upgraded to first class on the plane,’ Penny commented suspiciously.

  ‘Airlines are always looking for people to upgrade because they oversell the cheap tickets and inflate the price of first-class tickets beyond most people’s pockets.’

  ‘You think so?’ Penny looked sceptically at Tim.

  There was a discreet knock at the door. Tim opened it. An airport official and a porter were outside.

  ‘We’re here to check Ms and Mr John’s visas, sir. We’ve retrieved their luggage. A porter is waiting to wheel it out for you.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Brosna will be most grateful.’ Tim discreetly slipped the official and porter tips.