I felt uncomfortable under her gaze and I wondered, on initial impressions, whether she was necessarily the right sort of girl for Isabelle to have as a best friend. I had no grounds for thinking such a thing, it was only a feeling.
The subject was changed, and soon afterwards, we arrived at Blue-Ridge.
I felt sorry for David.
From the moment we entered the house Isabelle assumed the dominant role. She and Jane were in charge for twenty-four hours. I fully appreciated that I could have said something but I had enough on my mind without adding to it. David tried to be sociable but gave up after a while and looked forlornly at me. I suggested he went to his computer in his room, assuring him that somebody would give him a shout when there was either food on the table or something else worth coming down for.
We went shopping on the way home because I had done nothing about getting anything in for the evening meal. Isabelle playfully rebuked me but I let her get away with it because of Jane’s presence. We settled on a pasta dish that the girls prepared between them. David made a comment about Bella Pasta but only I heard him … we exchanged smiles. I had to admit the food was very good and all three children looked grown up sitting at the table with glasses of white wine in their hands – a small token from me in recognition of their advancing years.
We talked generally.
I gleaned a thing or two about Jane. Her full name was Jane Michaeline Mdeke, she was fourteen and a half years old and she was from Zimbabwe. Her skin was a dark shade of brown, as were her eyes. She had a pretty, expressive face with full lips and gleaming white, even teeth.
Both girls had changed into jeans and baggy tops, whereas David had settled for joggers and a sweatshirt. Jane’s parents were black Zimbabweans, her father holding a reasonably senior post in the Home Affairs Office in Mugabe’s Government. It was a topic I didn’t dwell on because of what I had seen in her country when I was working there about five years ago, but at least I was able to talk generally about Harare and the bush with some authority. Jane spoke about both with some enthusiasm too, enjoying being able to relive her experiences of home. I wanted to ask her who was paying for her schooling in England, but decided not to..
I changed the subject when I sensed Isabelle was beginning to feel a little left out and David was looking bored. I explained that we were going over to Market Harborough the following day for lunch and Isabelle began to whine, but she reacted to my glare, which warned her not to push her luck too far. I wondered how the twins’ grandfather would react when he met Jane.
He was in Salisbury in the Embassy at the time when Mugabe seized power. I thought it might be an interesting luncheon and I made a mental note to help a little by ringing them and forewarning them about who Jane was and where she was from.
David drifted back to his computer and the girls insisted I put my feet up while they washed the dishes. Afterwards they went up to Isabelle’s room and the peacefulness in the house was suddenly shattered with the regular, boring beat of some modern pop group I’d probably never heard of.
I smiled and could see Belinda sitting opposite telling me that I was young once.
At about ten-thirty Isabelle came into the living room looking a little worried. “Daddy?” she began, sitting on the side of my chair and putting her arm round my shoulders. “Has somebody been going through the things in my room?”
I had been asleep but her question brought me immediately to my senses. “By somebody I presume you’re asking if I’ve been through your things?”
She shook her head. “No, that’s not what I’m saying. It could just as easily have been Grandma.”
“What makes you think anybody has, Bella?” I turned my head which allowed me to see her eyes.
She screwed up her face. “Nothing really, but some of my things aren’t as I left them.”
“Such as?”
“Well for a start, the clothes in my wardrobe aren’t in the same order.” Fortunately, or in this case unfortunately, Isabelle had inherited her mother’s need for tidiness and mine for orderliness. “My shoes have been moved and things in my drawers aren’t where I left them.”
“Maybe it was your grandmother. Maybe on one of the occasions she came in when I was away she tidied all the rooms. Some of them did need it, didn’t they?”
“David’s did you mean. He says his room hasn’t been touched. I asked him. Not that he’d know even if a tornado had taken up residence!” She pursed her lips in thought. “If it was Grandma, why didn’t she do David’s room as well?”
I decided to laugh it off. “Perhaps it was too untidy even for Grandma and she thought she’d need to spend a full day on it later.”
Isabelle didn’t smile. She looked at me, a serious expression on her face. “Daddy, you won’t get annoyed, will you?”
“That depends on what you’re going to tell me?”
Her question suggested I might be more concerned than annoyed. Something told me that either I wasn’t going to be able to provide an explanation or I wasn’t going to like what I was being told.
Isabelle looked away, her embarrassment obvious. “When my periods started last year, they were quite heavy, so Mummy took me to the doctor and she thought the best thing I could do was go on the pill. I was on them for about a year but then I stopped, but I kept the ones I hadn’t taken in my bedside table. Surely even Grandma wouldn’t go in there, would she?”
“No, I wouldn’t think she would but why did you think I would get annoyed? I knew about you going on the pill. Mummy told me.”
She looked surprised that Belinda had broken what might have been a confidence. She thought for a few seconds. “I left them in the back of the drawer. When I opened it this evening they were in the front.”
I shrugged. “Maybe you were mistaken.”
Her expression told me that this was not a possibility. “My diary was in there too and that has been opened.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s not that I didn’t trust anybody but I kept a rubber band round it that was always lined up with a couple of marks on the cover. That’s the way I left it, but the band has been moved and therefore I know somebody has opened it.”
“I see.” I wanted to say that I could promise her that it wasn’t me, but that would have been trite under the circumstances. “Even if I had known your diary was in that drawer you know how I feel about you and David having your privacy.”
“I know, Daddy, but somebody has opened it. I’m not lying.” She looked close to tears.
“I still can’t see why you thought I would be annoyed.”
Isabelle sniffed and looked up at the ceiling and this time there were definitely tears in her eyes. “I thought you might have seen what I had written.”
“Come on Bella, love, what is it?” I pulled her towards me and she buried her face in my chest. I put my hand on her hair and smoothed it. “Anyway, as I haven’t been in your diary there’s no way I can know what you’ve written and there’s no reason to tell me, is there?”
She sniffed again. “I would have told mummy.”
“You and your mother had lots of girly conversations and secrets that I was never privy to. Why should this be any different?”
She slipped off the arm of the chair and wedged herself next to me. “Because if I had told mummy about it, she would definitely have told you.”
“Bella, I’m sorry but I’m getting confused. What exactly are we talking about now?”
Picking up one of my hands in hers, she looked at me and the tears started rolling down her face. Between sobs she said, “A week before Mummy died I was exceedingly low. I knew she didn’t have long to live and I couldn’t bear the thought of being without her. Do you remember the weekend before was quite hot?” I nodded. “A group of us from the village went for a walk in Mulberry woods and one of the boys and I went off on our own.” She lowered her eyes and looked at her hands holding mine. “I nearly did it, Daddy, and I wrote about it in my diary,” she
said in a rush, her head stayed bowed.
I assumed my thirteen-year-old daughter had told me that she had nearly had sex with a boy in Mulberry woods a week before her mother died.
I didn’t know how to react.
How should a father react? I didn’t know whether to be grateful because she was now being honest with me and she had used the word nearly, but then again was she only being honest with me because she thought I had read her diary?
How would her mother have reacted? And how would I have reacted when Belinda told me? Because Isabelle was right – her mother would have told me. I didn’t know how intimate their discussions had become.
I hadn’t even thought about discussing the facts of life with David.
Should I have done? He was only thirteen.
Embarrassed by my own indecisiveness and lack of understanding, I still couldn’t say anything. The thought of my little girl being touched in that way, whether she had consented or not, was more than I could take on board.
She was still a child.
Isabelle was watching me closely, I had to say something. She was still crying quietly and I fully appreciated the next thing I said could affect our relationship for quite a while.
“Bella, what do you mean when you say you nearly did it?’ I asked.
“I mean … I mean,” she said, “he touched me and I touched him but we didn’t … you know what I’m trying to say, Daddy.’
I smiled and nodded. “I know exactly what you’re trying to say, Bella, and –”
“Daddy, I’m sorry. I was out of my mind with worry and I thought, rather stupidly, that maybe, just maybe it would help the way I felt. I thought it would take my mind off what was happening back at home.”
“And did it?” I asked quietly.
She shook her head slowly, bowing her head again. “It wasn’t too bad at the time but afterwards I felt awful. It made me feel even worse. I felt, and still do feel so guilty, with mummy as she was ...”
I took my hand from hers and cupped her face, brushing my thumbs against the tears. “Don’t ask me to try and understand why you thought being with this boy would help, Bella, but at least you discovered it wasn’t the answer. If it helps, the first time I touched a girl like that I was a little over a year older than you are now. And she –”
“How old was she, Daddy?”
“I was going to say … she was fourteen as well.”
“Then … you are not annoyed?”
“Annoyed? No. But you are my daughter and, well, any father would feel as I do now. You are growing up, of course you are, but there are certain things that ought to wait. Thank you for telling me.”
She looked at me for a few seconds, trying to weigh up what I had said to her. “I didn’t tell you because I thought you had read my diary,” she said, sniffing again and wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “I told you because I would have told mummy.”
“I know.”
“And because the pills were in the same drawer, I thought you would think that I was ... “
I put a finger to her lips. “Stop it, Bella,” I said gently. “There’s no need.”
She looked down at her hands again. “Do you want to know who he was?”
Without hesitation I said, “No, I don’t, but I would like to know how old he was.”
“Fifteen,” she said.
For some reason hearing that the boy had also been under-age, helped. They had been two young people experimenting who had the sense to stop before things went too far. I doubted whether the boy felt the way Isabelle obviously did, but that was one of the facts of life. If it had been David confessing he had done the same thing, he too would have got the same reaction, but maybe I would have understood a little more readily.
“I won’t do it again, Daddy, I promise.”
Her promise and the innocence that went with it brought a genuine smile to my face. “You will, Bella, many times, but make sure you’re a good deal older and it’s with the right man.”
Her face lit up. “Thank you, Daddy. I do love you. I’m sorry I let you and mummy down.”
“You didn’t let us down, Bella. You stopped before you did something you really would have regretted. Now you need to look to the future not the past. You had better go back to Jane. She’ll be wondering where you’ve got to.”
She leant forward and kissed me on the cheek before running out of the room without another word.
I hadn’t given Isabelle an explanation of who and why somebody had been rifling through her things. I did hope, though, that in the last ten minutes we had reached the start of a better and fuller relationship: a father and daughter who missed the one person who would have been able to deal with her confession properly.
I could do little about what Isabelle had told me, but knowing that somebody had searched her room, and therefore David’s, regardless of the fact that he thought nobody had been anywhere near it, was different. Violating my children’s privacy was maybe less important when compared with Isabelle’s experience, but at least I could try to find out who had done it and why it had been done.
Sunday lunch didn’t turn out to be the difficult occasion I thought it might be. My concern proved unfounded the moment we walked into the house, when Charles and Elizabeth took an immediate shine to Jane, and Jane lapped up the attention she got.
For Charles and Elizabeth it was an opportunity for a trip down memory lane and Jane was more than willing to join them. She was thoroughly charming and attentive, listening when spoken to and making some comments and observations that were way beyond her years.
I had occasion to be in the kitchen with Elizabeth directly after the meal as she was preparing the coffee.
“You both seem to like Jane,” I said.
“What a lovely girl,” Elizabeth replied without turning round. “She’s an example of what modern day Rhodesia can do for their children.” The choice of the word Rhodesia didn’t surprise me. I don’t think I had ever heard either of them refer to Zimbabwe as Zimbabwe, but I had thought Jane would object, but she didn’t. She said she was from Zimbabwe and when Charles had called it Rhodesia in reply, Jane didn’t bat an eyelid.
I had decided not to phone ahead in case it caused more concern than was actually needed. In retrospect, I was pleased I hadn’t.
“I thought Charles might not approve,” I suggested.
This time Elizabeth did turn round. “Why on earth would you think that? She’s such a charming girl and it’s not her fault they have got a thug, a murderer, a thief and a philanderer as a President.”
“But her father works for the President.”
“She didn’t chose her father and he probably didn’t expect things to turn out the way they did. It’s a bit like Hitler’s enemies during the war. Many of them worked quite close to him. Maybe Jane’s father is biding his time, waiting to pounce.” She switched on the percolator.
“Is that wishful thinking, Elizabeth?”
“Even if it is, that doesn’t stop Jane being a lovely girl and obviously a good friend to Isabelle.” She busied herself getting cups and saucers from the cupboard.
Elizabeth mentioning Isabelle reminded me I wanted to ask her again about their visits to the house while I was away. “Changing the subject, Elizabeth, thanks for looking in on Blue-Ridge while I was away. I’m sorry it was bit of a mess.”
Elizabeth turned away from me and rested her hands against the sink. I saw her head bow slightly. “That’s all right, Richard. I must admit I didn’t go upstairs and I only vacuumed and dusted downstairs.” Elizabeth paused and I shook my head. Now there was no doubt about the intrusion. “I miss her so much, Richard, I can’t go into Blue-Ridge without seeing her in every room. I can hear her laughing, scolding the children when they were younger. I can see her in the kitchen, I see her everywhere.”
“That’s what she would have wanted, Elizabeth.”
She turned but not before I saw there were tears in her eyes. “Is it, Richard? I
s it really? She wasn’t even forty and here I am nearly in my seventies with, as far as I know, not a thing wrong with me. Why did God have to take her first? Why did He deprive the children of a fine mother, and Charles and me of our only child? Why, Richard, why?”
“There is no reason, Elizabeth. No-one would be able to answer your question.”
Turning round she looked at me, her elegant face swamped with pain. I wanted to reach out to her and share her grief but we had never been close enough for me to think she would want me to.
Maybe now was the time to try to get a little closer.
I stepped towards her but she immediately turned and picked up the tray. “I’ll take this through. It’ll soon be time for you to take the children back to school,” she observed in a bit of a dither.
In the dining room, Charles had the children in fits of laughter.
Children?
I now knew at least one of them who had tried to be an adult before she was grown up. Isabelle and David had been very good at the meal table. There had been no loud sighing as Charles prattled on and on about Rhodesia to Jane. Every now and again, I caught Isabelle giving me a furtive glance, and when I caught her eye she let a rueful smile cross her lips. On one occasion she mouthed 'I’m sorry, Daddy' but unfortunately David was watching her and raised his eyebrows wanting to know what was going on between us.
We had about an hour after we got home before we needed to set off for St Edward’s. David dashed upstairs to finish off a computer game he had started that morning, and Isabelle and Jane went to have showers and change back into their uniforms. St Edward’s was strict during term-time. For exeats, students left and returned to the school in uniform, but for half term and at the end of term the rules were relaxed.
I was in the conservatory sipping a mug of coffee and watching a couple of grey squirrels darting back and forth at the bottom of the garden when I heard a slight cough behind me. Jane was standing at the door with a towel wrapped round her, speckles of water still on her dark skin.
Pooh Bridge: conscience stricken Page 12
