The Last Dance

by Carolyn McCrae

  “I don’t think your father is particularly pleased with you, young man. He was very worried you know, and once the worry was over, when he heard you had had turned up safe and well, well he was very, very angry.”

  “I’m sorry I caused you all worry. I didn’t want to do that but I really couldn’t go back. They all hate me and I’ve got no friends – I’m the only one with no friends at all. No one wants to pair with me at games, I’m always the last one to be picked as a partner, no one wants me in their team. They all think I’m horrid. I hate the dorm – they are all horrid snobs and bullies. They call me names and I just hate it.”

  It all came out in such a rush. Then he slowed up and asked, tentatively, “Did they tell Mummy?”

  I couldn’t tell him that no one had had any contact with his mother for some time and that his father did not know how to contact her even if he had wanted to. I knew her contact address was only the other side of the golf course from Charles’ home, he could see Sandhey from his bedroom, but I had never asked Max Fischer what the connection was.

  “No, they didn’t think they should worry her, not with the way things are it was not as if she could come home or anything. She couldn’t have done anything, just worry, and that would not have helped her health at all would it?”

  “I didn’t think.”

  “No, Charles, you didn’t.”

  “Was Nanny worried too?”

  “Of course she was, we all were. But you’re safe now and that is all that matters to us all.”

  We drove without saying anything for a few minutes, but it was not an awkward silence. After a while Charles asked “Is he very angry with me?”

  “Yes. Very.”

  “What do you think he will do?”

  “I don’t think you are going to have an easy time.”

  “Would it help if I said I was sorry?”

  “Of course, it always helps to say you’re sorry but you really do have to mean it you know. My mother always used to say “Don’t just say ‘sorry’ say why you are sorry. Then you’ve got a better chance of forgiveness and understanding.”

  “I didn’t want to cause anyone worry. I just couldn’t go back.”

  At the time I couldn’t understand why he was so unhappy.

  “Why couldn’t you go back Charles, are they bullying you? Is that it? If you’re being bullied you either put up with it or fight back or, if you really can’t do either and it really is that bad, you tell someone.”

  He was hesitant, he wanted to say something but wouldn’t, maybe he couldn’t. I hadn’t gone to public school, but I knew something of what happened there. He was probably being bullied, possibly even being interfered with, by the older boys. It had to be something very serious to make Charles run away. He wouldn’t have done that lightly and it would explain why he wouldn’t talk about it.

  I decided I would have to have a word with Arnold before I left the two together.

  “When we get back you go into the garden. Stay out of our way for a few minutes. I am going to have a word with your father before he sees you. Now. Tell me. What did you get up to on your adventure?”

  He relaxed and told me of his week’s escape as if he had no cares in the world. He told of walking through the waves on long wide beaches, buying bread and cheese in small grocers shops – he had never had to buy food before – “The smells, Uncle Ted, wonderful smells and everyone was so nice.” He had first gone to Beaumaris where he had walked around the castle and watched the ducks and swans on the moat; he’d sat on the sea wall and looked across at the clouds forming and reforming over the mountains of Snowdonia with the sea birds wheeling and turning on the winds above him. He had climbed headlands and cliff paths, he’d seen Puffin Island, he’d run through the surf on wide rounded beaches, he’d lain on the sand drying out in the hot sun, he’d wandered through woods and over heath lands but the thing he seemed most excited about was sitting “for a whole day Uncle Ted, a whole day” at the top of the cliffs on Holy Island looking out at the lighthouse surrounded by so many birds “you couldn’t count the different types there were millions and millions of them.”

  He spent the rest of the journey telling me about that one afternoon. That week’s escape undoubtedly changed his life, but I always believed it was that afternoon on Holy Island that was the key-point.

  For the first time I felt he knew I was his friend. I think he knew, from then on, that if he needed someone he could count on me. I would not let him or Alicia down again.

  “We’re nearly there now. Remember go straight out to the garden, stay in the summer house out of sight and don’t come near the house.”

  “Yes, Uncle Ted.” The energetic, enthusiastic budding ornithologist had disappeared, replaced by the dutiful, seemingly contrite, young boy about to be severely punished.

  I know which Charles I liked best.

  “Good evening Arnold”

  He ignored my greeting, immediately barking “Where’s Charles?”

  “Can I have a word?”

  “Now?”

  “Yes. I would like to see you before you see Charles. I think it important.”

  “If you insist you’d better come on in.”

  I followed Arnold into his study.

  Ours was not an easy relationship. I had worked for him as his clerk assistant when I first joined the firm in 1936. Then, during the war I had grown in stature in the firm, taken qualifications, now I was a partner, whilst Arnold really didn’t progress anywhere and then, since his father died, he had little to do with the firm other than as a client. But I had been in his house so many times, I had visited, carried messages for Max, picked up and dropped off his son, played on his cricket team many Sundays for years but for me, as for several of the others, it was never as if I was playing with him – he was always the employer giving instructions which he assumed would be carried out. We would never be called ‘friends’.

  But I was now more important in the firm than he had ever been, so he should have had to consider me more of an equal. I had stopped thinking of him as ‘Mr Donaldson’, I thought of him as ‘Arnold’ but called him either depending on the circumstances. He still, I am sure, considered me to be his junior and frequently called me ‘Mottram’.

  Yes, it was an odd relationship and on this occasion was a tricky one.

  I had decided to address him as “Arnold”.

  “Sit down Ted.” He had accepted the balance of the moment.

  I spent the next ten minutes explaining to Arnold that his son had run away because he was scared, worried, but basically because he was lonely. I intimated that he may have problems ‘of which he could not speak’. He stood with his back to me looking downwards into the empty fireplace.

  I gave Arnold little chance to speak as I told him what an interesting, intelligent son he had and I suggested he needed help not punishment.

  “Where is he?”

  “In the garden. He is extremely sorry for causing worry but I honestly believe he felt he couldn’t do anything else.” I changed tack, asking with a confidence I did not feel “Were you ever bullied at school?”

  “I really don’t know what that has to do with anything.”

  “You didn’t go away to school did you, Arnold?”

  “No. I went to school in Birkenhead.”

  “So you went home every night to be comforted by your parents after any problems of the day?”

  Perhaps I had gone too far, but I pressed on. “Arnold, imagine in the darkest days of your school career you could not go home. You had to stay with the people who were tormenting you. Life was never going to get any better. What would you have done? Eh? Would you have had the courage your son had to get away? Could you have planned your escapade over days, weeks perhaps, knowing that you would be completely alone for several days – knowing the trouble you would be in when you got back, as get back you knew you must sometime?”

  “You don’t think I should punish him then?” He was not giving in,
simply observing the other point of view in a dispassionate manner, as a barrister would.

  “Don’t misunderstand me Arnold, I believe he should be punished. But I also believe the punishment he has already given himself should be taken into account.”

  “What punishment would that be?”

  “He has been imagining the beating he will get. What is it Shakespeare wrote in one of his plays? Something like “A coward dies a thousand times a brave man only once”. He has gone through the next few minutes with you many times in his head. He knows it is going to be difficult and he has undoubtedly imagined far worse than it will actually be. He also knows he has to go back to school, where the punishment he will get will not be pretty.”

  I had probably gone too far already but still I pressed him “Would you consider taking Charles away from school, putting him into a local school, allowing him to live at home?”

  He was quiet for quite a while. Arnold was a selfish man whose own interests generally overruled those of any of the members of the household or his business. He was an ambitious man whose political and legal careers had foundered, whose business, a business he had no interest in and was not good at running, was not thriving. He was a father who disliked, and did not know how to deal with, children. He was a husband whose marriage had been an utter failure. But on this occasion he was, I believe, honestly trying to work out how to do the right thing by his son.

  “Go and fetch him. I will deal with it now.”

  Perhaps, as I walked out to the garden, he remembered the loneliness he had suffered at school; how much of a relief it had been for him to get home every evening, to be praised and comforted by his mother, to be able to do the things he wanted, read, walk the dogs along the sea front, be alone in his room. And perhaps he realised how he himself would have dealt with being sent to boarding school.

  I left Charles at the door of the library. Before I had been able to close the door and retreat I had heard the opening exchanges.

  “Charles”

  “Father”

  “Uncle Ted had told me many things that I should have known. Are you really unhappy away at school?”

  Charles, who had been expecting an entirely different opening to the interview burst into tears.

  Arnold was obviously uncomfortable “Charles. Here. Have this handkerchief. Sit down and we will work out what are we going to do with you.”

  I left them to it and went down to the kitchen and had tea with Monika and Susannah. Such was my position in the house I was both upstairs and downstairs. They had so many questions to ask as, of all the people involved, they were the ones who had most worried about Charles while he was missing.

  It was only then that Monika explained the reason why Charles would have been so unhappy.

  Later that evening I received a phone call from Arnold.

  Could I drive to the school and pick up Charles’s trunk. Matron was packing it and it would be ready at lunchtime. Would I be so kind? He was so busy.... So much to sort out.... Telephone calls to make.... Meetings... One last time....

  Charles was to start at his father’s old school in two weeks time.

  He was coming home.

  And very soon after so did his Mother.

  Chapter Fourteen

  She had phoned me from the ship to say she was coming home but had she told Arnold? I doubted it and so I called him. We had been telephoning each other quite a lot regarding Charles and his school problems and so he was expecting me to talk of that.

  “Arnold”

  “Ted. No problem I hope?”

  “No, but it’s a little difficult. Could I come round to see you? I could be with you in half an hour and it wouldn’t take long.”

  “Not really convenient. I have to go out.”

  “It won’t take long but, perhaps, I have a little explaining to do so it’s a little difficult over the phone. It is important.”

  “Very well.” And he rang off, no doubt giving little thought to my request.

  I had been wondering how I was going to explain not only Alicia’s imminent return but also how she came to be telling me about it and not her husband and family and in the event I didn’t do it very successfully.

  “No. Ted. It won’t do. She cannot come back as if she’s not been away for 5 years. As far as I am concerned as soon as she left the sanatorium she left my protection and I no longer consider her my wife. She has the allowance. You know the agreement, as long as I pay the allowance she stays away. She cannot come back here. Not now. It would be all too much.”

  “What do you suggest she does? She is arriving on Saturday.”

  He soon collected himself.

  “I neither know nor care. She cannot come here and that is the end of it. You sort it out.”

  I had no difficulty in recognising her, but she was different. Five years before she had been a child in many ways, now she was sophisticated and confident as she walked through the arrivals hall towards me. I was conscious that I probably had changed not one jot as she walked unhesitatingly towards me, her gloved hand outstretched. “Ted, it is good to see you! Where are you taking me? I can’t imagine Arnold would be too happy to see me. I didn’t really mean to come to Liverpool but that’s where the ship was headed. So I thought of you. Ted will sort everything out I thought and here you are, sorting everything out for me.”

  It occurred to me, as I closed the car door after she had folded her long legs without any difficulty into the foot well, that she wouldn’t remember the last time I had put her in my car. I had been taking her to the Nursing Home when she was having Susannah. I remembered so clearly, and wondered whether I had adequately kept that promise I had made to her. Did she know how unwelcome her return would be to her husband but how pleased I was to see her again. As I slid into the driver’s seat I told her I would explain all over lunch at The Adelphi.

  The dining room was crowded, there was a special lunch for Americans who were staying there before crossing the Atlantic. I had forgotten it was their Independence Day.

  She started to tell me about her life since she had left.

  “I have been around Africa in a wonderful small boat with just five other passengers. Well you know that – I sent you a postcard from Cape Town. Did you get it?” She didn’t wait for any reply “I went to America, to New York and across the country on a wonderful train to San Francisco. I have been all around the world.” She paused, a trifle dramatically, but I did not interrupt. He voice was lower, calmer as she continued.

  “But now I am coming home. I will tell you and you mustn’t tell anyone. But I have not been alone!”

  I think I was supposed to be surprised by that.

  “At the sanatorium I met this wonderful man, Louis. He was French and he was very rich. He was also dying. He said to me that he wanted to spend the last months of his life travelling the world with a beautiful woman! Well what could I say? I went with him. He had a nurse so I didn’t have to do any horribly ‘personal’ things for him. I just had to accompany him in public and sing for him. You see he loved my voice and he just wanted me to sing and I could! After all those years of thinking I would never sing again I could!. I know what you’re thinking. Well it wasn’t like that. We had separate staterooms and he never expected anything, though I did get to be quite fond of the old chap. But sadly he has just died and I am alone again. You know how much I hate being alone. So I’ve come home. “

  It was obvious to me that she had nowhere to live, nowhere to go and had no idea what to do next. She was not just ‘passing through’, she needed to establish the groundwork for next stage of her life.

  After we had eaten she went across to their table to talk to a loud group of Americans. I watched her as she charmed them, laughing and flirting as she drank more and more champagne. I was embarrassed, but hardly surprised, when I saw her being handed up onto the table where she shook her hair loose from its pins, closed her eyes and sang their national anthem.

  I had never hear
d her sing before.

  Her voice was stunning, as good as any professional I had ever heard, possibly with the exception of Kathleen Ferrier whose records my mother was particularly partial to.

  I couldn’t watch, I hated exhibitionism even when done with such style. I left her to it and went to reception where I booked a suite in the name of the firm, saying a valued client would be unexpectedly staying overnight. This was not unusual other than the fact that the ‘valued client’ was at that moment standing on a restaurant table. I reassured them that she was thoroughly respectable.

  I would have made my excuses but I was sure she had more or less forgotten she was having lunch with me, so I told the manager to send her luggage to her room and explain to her that I had had to return to the office and would call at 10 the next morning.

  Back in the familiar surrounding of my office, which years before had been Arnold’s, I rang Max.

  I needed his help.

  “Bring her to me. I will look after her.”

  “Should I tell Arnold where she is?”

  “No need, unless he specifically asks.”

  “You want me to bring her to you?” I had to be sure that was what he really wanted me to do.

  “Yes, Ted. Do it.”

  The next morning I collected Alicia promptly at 10, surprisingly she was waiting for me in the foyer. For a second time in two days I settled her into the front seat of my Humber.

  As we drove through the quiet Sunday morning streets I told her of the arrangements that had been made.

  “Max has asked that you be his guest tonight, while things get sorted out.”

  “I suppose I have been away a long time. Yes, I think that is a very good idea.”

  I did not know the nature of their relationship – they were obviously good friends though I had assumed it was for business reasons she had given his home as her contact address of ‘last resort’.

  “How is Elizabeth?” she asked gently, “Has she recovered from Veronica?”

  “I don’t think she ever will recover, she was almost a recluse before their loss, she was never seen in public, rarely went out of the house at all. Now I understand she rarely leaves her rooms. I think Max will love having you around, you will be company for him.”