The Last Dance

by Carolyn McCrae

  INIQUITIES TRILOGY

  Book 1

  The Last Dance

  Carolyn McCrae

  Copyright © 2006 Carolyn McCrae

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

  Matador

  9 De Montfort Mews

  Leicester LE1 7FW, UK

  Tel: (+44) 116 255 9311 / 9312

  Email: books@troubador.co.uk

  Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador

  ISBN

  Paperback: 1 905237 73 1

  Hardback: 1 905237 93 6

  Typeset in 11pt Stempel Garamond by Troubador Publishing Ltd, Leicester, UK

  Printed in the UK by The Cromwell Press Ltd, Trowbridge, Wilts, UK

  Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

  I would like to acknowledge all the help and encouragement in all things that I have received over the years from my husband Colin.

  Thanks are also due to Mrs Jane Martin of Ticehurst and Mrs Dulcie Stevens of Leigh for reading the early drafts of The Last Dance and for their comments, criticisms and enthusiasm.

  Iniquity

  The word has two meanings according to the Shorter Oxford Dictionary:

  1. Immoral, unrighteous or harmful action or conduct; gross injustice, wickedness, sin.

  2. Inequality, inequity, unfairness. (obsolete).

  Contents

  Something by Way of Explanation

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Finale

  Something by Way of Explanation

  In October 1941 Max Fischer made his first English will.

  As a junior clerk at Messrs Roberts and Jones Solicitors I was present only to take notes and fetch paperwork, but I did know the contents.

  In that first will Major Maximilian Fischer of Millcourt, Hoylake, Cheshire, left all his property to his wife Elizabeth and daughter Veronica, living at the same address; apart from a substantial bequest to his niece, Rebecca Rebmann, current address unknown.

  The names meant nothing to me.

  It was a very simple will, but I remember thinking how odd it was that he had so much to leave when he had only been in the country such a short time.

  It seemed a strange time to have a man like Major Fischer purchase Roberts and Jones from the elderly gentlemen who had founded it before the Great War. Old Mr Jones told us all in his final staff meeting that Major Fischer had come recently from Austria and we were to make him feel welcome and help him in every way. The new owner seemed respectable enough, his completely white hair lending him a look of age and experience although he could only have been in his mid 30s. It was his hands that I noticed particularly when I first saw him, they were very large, more like a farmer’s than a lawyer’s.

  We all knew that change was inevitable with the War and the old boys retiring, but we did not understand how they could sell to such a man. I can’t say there weren’t bad feelings about him because there were. We knew he had come from Europe but there was talk that he was Jewish, and Jews were not popular at that time. People didn’t speak their prejudices – it wasn’t done – but they felt them all the same.

  We had all seen the newsreels of penniless refugees coming into the country from ‘the East’ and there was a lot of bad feeling. But this man was not one of those. How he obtained his English legal qualifications or had so much property and money available to him no one in the office ever knew. All through the war, even in the dark days after the Dutch fell, he was never interned nor his movements restricted in any way.

  It would have had something to do with the times he was away from the office. He was often absent for weeks at a time – never saying where he was going or when he would be back. We young clerks had a great time imagining all sorts of ‘Boys Own’ adventures and had decided that he was an agent, spying for us in Germany.

  At the time Major Fischer bought the firm I had worked there for five years. I had been a sickly boy and my options of a career were limited so I considered myself lucky to have obtained a position in such a respectable local firm. It was my duty to look after my mother, my father had been gassed in the Great War and eventually succumbed to influenza just after I was born. When the war came I had been pronounced unfit for service so I was able to take advantage and develop my career in the absence of many men senior to me, including Arnold Donaldson, who were called up to the Forces.

  On the day 35 years later, when that will of 1941 was finally replaced, I was the Senior Partner of the firm that still retained the name ‘Roberts and Jones’.

  The value of Max’s estate had, unsurprisingly, increased substantially in the intervening years. But there were other differences. In this last will I knew every one of the people he named yet I did no more than raise an eyebrow as I noted the details, had the will drawn up and watched him as he signed the document that reflected the changes in so many lives.

  In that second will Sir Max Fischer left no money or property to any family. His wife and daughter were both dead and, as far as I knew, Rebecca Rebmann had never been heard of, no doubt lost in the mists of the war.

  Unsurprisingly he left all his books and papers to Carl Witherby. I hoped I would be around to discover what those hand-written journals had to say about Max’s life. There were so many secrets and I knew he would never willingly allow them to be read in his lifetime. Carl was an historian who would make best use of them.

  Most of his capital was divided between Charles and Monika – enough to keep them both in considerable comfort for the rest of their lives. He did not leave them Sandhey, their home for many years, that went to Charles’ sister, Susannah.

  The row of terraced houses, where many of the Parry family still lived, he left to Susannah’s children. I felt this rather mischievous.

  Early in my career I had been told by one of the older clerks ‘If you want to know anyone’s secrets just look at their will’. It seemed amazing to me then, and it still does now, that documents, matters of public record, can divulge so much about people – all you have to do is know what they own and who they want to have the benefit of it when they are dead. ‘Each will has a story to tell.’ I was told. But they can also beg many quest
ions and leave many unanswered ‘ifs’, ‘whys’ and ‘maybes’, simplifying to the point of inaccuracy.

  And perhaps some of the stories should remain untold, some of the questions raised should be left unanswered. Knowledge may be power but the other cliché ‘truth will hurt’ is equally valid.

  In those years between the writing of his wills Max had become closely involved in the lives of Arnold Donaldson, his wives Alicia and Kathleen and their children who he had always helped in whatever ways possible; even though he was unable to prevent all the great damage caused by their parents.

  Charles, Carl and Susannah have had some of the answers to their many questions but they deserve to know the whole story. Their children also need to know why they had to live out their childhood in such an unconventional way. I hope in reading these pages they will understand more of what lies behind those brief and unsatisfactory answers that have been given to them through the years. They all need to understand why such mistakes came about and not judge too harshly the people who made them.

  So here is the story of the Donaldson family. The family I know so well, the family I was so close to at times but the family of which, despite everything, I could never be a part.

  I accept that my role has not been just the innocent chronicler. Inexcusably, many times, I have crossed the boundary between family solicitor and friend. As their solicitor it should have been my role to show them the unobtrusive deference to requests and the unassuming pleasantness in the face of difficulties I trust I have shown to my firm’s other clients and senior staff.

  Instead it has been my role to be involved more closely, to listen to their confidences, to know details of their lives as no other did.

  But I haven’t just listened and observed. I have frequently betrayed their confidence. I have changed the courses of their lives by errors of omission and commission. As I look back over the years there are so many times I should have done or said things I didn’t, and other times when I acted or spoke unwisely.

  My wish is that these pages will enable them to understand the actions of their parents, but, selfishly, I also need them to understand why I did what I did.

  Do not judge us too harshly for things we could not know.

  Ted Mottram

  Hoylake

  1998

  Chapter One

  Arnold Donaldson was being entirely practical, selfish yes, but entirely practical when he made his decision to marry Alicia at their first meeting in 1941.

  He immediately recognised a vulnerable, beautiful woman to whom the electorate would relate and who would win him votes. She was attractive, had a good face, was slight and youthful and would be far more pliable than Kathleen, indeed more than any other woman he had met.

  Alicia was young and didn’t seem to be exceptionally intelligent. She was frightened, vulnerable and, most importantly, she would be in his debt. He saw also that she was vain and susceptible to flattery. In many ways, therefore, she was perfect.

  If she had any spirit left after the effort of regaining the ability to walk he was sure he could soon bend it to his will. She would be happy to receive his view of the world; she would respect him and do as she was told.

  He had also seen her ambition to have the things that they both knew his money could buy. For her he was going to be the ‘knight in shining armour’ who would take her away from her family, give her the things she wanted, and needed, such as good clothes, social standing. Money.

  He knew she would put up with a lot for that because he knew where she had come from.

  The Tyler family had undoubtedly come down in the world.

  Before the Great War Bert, Alicia’s father, had had his own engineering company. “I did drains” he said, “I did the best bloody drains in the Empire.” He had spent some years in Canada ‘doing drains’ whose covers bore his name many decades after he had left. They had had a lovely house in Edmonton, Alberta. The three boys were born there, and they had only returned to the home country in 1915 when the war had not been ‘over by Christmas’. They exchanged Edmonton, Alberta for Edmonton, North London where Edie and the children lived with Bert’s mother, a humourless woman who took every opportunity to make the family aware of how their lives should have been.

  Bert had joined up and, with his engineering skills, spent much of the war relatively safely behind the lines in northern France. He never spoke about the war, possibly because of his deep resentment at never being commissioned an officer. He knew he should have been, with his knowledge and experience, but nevertheless he ended the war a Corporal. It rankled with him all his life and he took it out on his family when he returned.

  It must have been difficult but Edie just got on with looking after the children as best she could. When she found herself pregnant early in the Spring of 1920 she prayed for a girl. Not that any baby could ever replace Margaret who had been just six weeks old when she was found dead in her cot. Granny Tyler had been no help and the doctor had just come and taken her baby away. There was no funeral, no grieving and within hours it was as if Margaret had never existed.

  They all knew Bert couldn’t have been the father. He hadn’t got back from France until three months before the birth.

  Alberta Tyler was born in November 1920, “The war got in the way dear” was as far as her mother ever went to explain the gap between Alberta and her elder brothers.

  They had her christened “Alberta” but she hated her name, almost as much as she hated her family and she always thought of herself as “Alicia”.

  There are photographs taken when she must have been about 12 years old. Four children lined up in order of age. Alberta was as tall as her eldest brother. She was bright, alert, slender and delicate with fine, high cheekbones – so different from her shorter thickset brothers.

  She thought her brothers to be thick in body, thick in mind and she often wondered why she was so different.

  “Where did I come from?” “Why can I do all those things that they don’t even understand?” she asked God in frustration as she said her prayers every night.

  As many children do, she believed she had been collected in error from the hospital nursery. They must have put the wrong label on her toe.

  She imagined her real parents as being artistic and refined, famous actors or singers. Her real parents would have encouraged her with her dancing; they would have given her books to read and have played music and sung in the evenings around their grand piano.

  She imagined how they would feel about the lump who had passed herself off as their daughter, how that lump would feel. She would have been as unhappy in that family as Alicia was in hers.

  But Bert knew why Alberta wasn’t like the rest of the family and he took it out on Alberta from her earliest years.

  He was the wrong father, they were the wrong brothers.

  She left school at 15 and went to work, as girls of her class did, in the local factory. Every day she would do what was required of her but her mind was always on planning her escape. She had no intention of working there any longer than she had to.

  When she saw a notice on the wall in Boots’ Lending Library and recognised the name of the person to contact, Joyce Price had been her English teacher, she had set about persuading her father to let her go out in the evenings, to join the local amateur dramatic society.

  “Alright” he grudgingly gave his permission “the men’ll be looking after each other won’t they? Not interested in ladies” he used the word with heavy sarcasm “are they?”

  So for two years Alberta lived for the evenings when Alicia could go to the ‘Society’.

  Although it was an amateur society the Edmonton Dramatical Society had a semi-professional director who claimed to have worked in the West End several times and ‘proper’ actors who participated when they were otherwise ‘resting’. Every production was professionally presented.

  In her third season Alicia was cast as Sarah, the lead role in their ambitious production of Noel Cowar
d’s Bitter Sweet.

  The reviews, though commenting on some problems with the orchestra and noisy scene changes, had gushed about the performance of undoubtedly a future star of the musical theatre. Alicia Tyler’s outbursts of passion shone. Her ability to meet the challenge of spanning 50 years from charmingly innocent to respectability with a past was matched only by her considerable vocal talent. They were complimentary, too, about the young actor who played Sarah’s lover, Carl Linden.

  In the group’s post-production get-together Joyce sat down with a cup of tea and without preamble changed Alicia’s life.

  “You can act, you can sing and you’ve got a real way about you. You could go far with proper training, so we’ve arranged an audition for a scholarship at RADA.” She carried on, ignoring Alicia’s attempts to interrupt. “You were born to be on the stage.”

  So early on the second Monday morning in April 1938 they had taken the train to London and the imposing buildings in Gower Street. She didn’t remember much about the day; she was too nervous and excited. She hoped she had done herself justice.

  Did her parents notice her excitement that evening, or her increasing tension as she waited to hear the results? If they did they never asked for an explanation and she did not tell them of her audition.

  They had all been to see her performances and Edie had been so proud of her daughter, but Bert and the boys had thought it a waste of drinking time. After they had been to watch Bitter Sweet they told Alberta that they hadn’t seen anything after the first interval. They said they didn’t want to stay with Edie to watch a bunch of nancy-boys and tarts prancing about in front of people who’d paid their hard earned money to sit on bloody uncomfortable seats. So they’d gone to the pub.

  Alberta was not surprised.

  Neither was she surprised at her father’s reaction when she told them she would be leaving her job and commuting to London that Autumn. “Don’t worry Dad, it’ll cost you nothing, I got a scholarship.”