The Last Dance

by Carolyn McCrae

  “I won’t be any trouble at all.”

  As we had entered the Mersey Tunnel no more conversation was possible. A few minutes later, out onto the streets of Birkenhead, the subject had changed.

  “It seems a very long time ago that you drove me in the opposite direction Ted, five years and we have a new young queen on the throne. I missed all that excitement.”

  “It seems that you have managed quite a lot of excitement of your own.” I tried not to sound disapproving.

  “Of course!” she laughed “and I’ve told you all I’m going to tell you about it! But what about you? How have the last five years been? You haven’t changed a bit!”

  Before I replied it occurred to me that the old Alicia would never have thought to ask.

  “Everyone’s getting back to normal after the war. Houses are springing up all over the place, they’re building over the bomb sites. Rationing is all but over now.”

  “No, Ted. What’s happened to you?”

  “Well I am getting older.” I wasn’t used to talking about myself, I wasn’t sure how I could describe my life without giving away how much my caring for her and her children had dominated those five years. “I still work at Roberts and Jones, obviously, and still live with my mother, not much has happened really. Five years isn’t long in the overall scheme of things you know. My mother needs help, people need my help.”

  “No girlfriends?”

  “No. I’m always busy I suppose.”

  As I spoke I realised how dull my life sounded.

  We were driving down Bidston Hill into the fields of the Wirral when I broached the subject of Arnold.

  “Arnold will not be happy that you had returned. He has his life now.”

  “Kathleen you mean.”

  I couldn’t make a direct reply so I turned the subject. Perhaps I said too much.

  “The business, it isn’t doing very well at all. I have been sending you your allowance and have paid any bills you send, as was agreed, but the business isn’t as profitable as Arnold thought it would be. He inherited a thriving business, of course the war was a very good time, but now he’s lost all the military contracts and it’s getting harder. He knew he was never a businessman so he should have got a good team around him, but all he did was employ old friends from the army”

  “Henry”

  “As you say, including Henry”

  “No one could ever call him a businessman.”

  “That’s true, but the problem is that none of them are.”

  “But what about the pots and pots of cash stashed in the bank? He wasn’t dependent on the business was he?”

  “He has been eating into that capital. He loves his cars, he has, well, he has expenses, keeping up his standing in the community.”

  “Keeping Kathleen you mean.”

  “That as well.”

  “How bad is it?”

  I realised I had gone too far. It was my job and my responsibility to be discreet – it had been unforgivable of me to breach Arnold’s confidences. I had forgotten the lesson I try to teach everyone who joins the firm Discretion in all things. I had let my concern for Alicia take me too far.

  I tried to backtrack “Oh I have painted a gloomy picture haven’t I? It’s not ‘bad’ at all. The Donaldsons are still very comfortable.”

  “But we were ‘rich’, Ted, not ‘comfortable’. I don’t think I would want to be ‘comfortable’ it sounds very boring.”

  I remembered that for a very long time and reminded her of it when just to have been ‘comfortable’ would have been wonderful.

  We reached Sandhey and I pulled into the drive. Alicia jumped out of the car almost before I had pulled on the hand brake and ran round the side of the house. I followed her.

  The sea formed the backdrop to the scene, the great expanse of blue with wisps of white horses stretched northwards until it merged with the blue sky. It was an idyllic spot, in such a fine position right on the corner of the peninsula. The house had been built on top of the run of low cliffs that overlooked the dunes and the sandstone rocks of the Point. The spectacular views completely compensated for the battering the house took during any gales.

  Despite its exposed position the garden itself was sheltered. The large lawn was surrounded by banks of mature shrubs, massed banks of hydrangeas and fuchsias which filled the garden with colour for most of the year, protecting it from the wind that always came from off the water.

  Standing on the stone patio at the side of the house Alicia looked across the river to the hills of Wales, they seemed so close on this sunny morning – even nearer were the small outcrops of sandstone that made up the islands of Hilbre. They were only a few hundred yards from the shore and were a magnet for trippers and birdwatchers. She watched a number of small groups of people heading for the shore, just finishing their walk back from the islands, well before the tide came in. She was quite deliberately holding a pose – aware of how beautiful she looked, the wind moulding her thin dress to her figure, her hand raised to prevent her trademark hat from blowing away.

  She was well aware that two men were watching her, captivated.

  Max emerged from the French windows onto the patio and nodding brief acknowledgement to me addressed Alicia, “Good morning my dear, how lovely to see you so well.” Holding her shoulders and kissing her on each cheek in turn in the continental fashion.

  “Oh Max how lovely of you to have me to stay in your beautiful house. It is so good to see you again, if only for a few days.”

  There was something between them, I don’t know what, but the understanding between them was almost tangible. From that first moment I saw them together I felt excluded.

  I should have seen it coming, really. I knew Max made regular trips to his home country and perhaps the sanatorium hadn’t been that far out of his way.

  Watching them with their easy familiarity I have to admit jealousy. She was only as nice to me as she would be to any other person from whom she needed favours.

  I wondered how easy it would be for the love I felt for her to change to something entirely different. Why she had come back? She knew she would not be allowed back into the marital home. She had no real interest in the children. She had only come back because she had run out of options. I would love to have been part of the solution to her problems but I was a realist.

  Now a very reasonable option had presented itself for her in a rich, lonely man. Although Alicia never actually said when they became lovers, she freely admitted to the relationship years later, when it no longer mattered.

  I knew at that moment that I would only be a part of her life when she had nowhere else to turn.

  I do not know the details of that evening’s interview between Alicia and Arnold. It was one of the very few things she would not go into when, years later, we had long nights to fill with conversation.

  I know it was not a long interview and I was soon made aware of the consequences.

  They came to the office the following day. The papers she had signed in my car on the way to Lime Street were destroyed, wills were changed and the terms of the divorce were drawn up. Perhaps they were unduly harsh.

  “You deserted your family.”

  “You were committing adultery, openly.”

  “Are you saying both Susannah and Charles are mine?”

  “I will not answer that. You are beneath contempt!”

  That was a surprise to me. If not Arnold, who could Susannah’s father be? I had never suspected her of having an affair. Surely not Max even then?

  “You cannot, you absolutely cannot put the blame for that on me. I will not have it.”

  “Ted, could you leave us please. I need to tell my wife some of the facts of life.”

  I left.

  Some 15 minutes later my secretary knocked on the door and took in a tray of tea and biscuits.

  “It seems to have quietened down.” After she had shut the door behind her. I knocked on the door of my own office and went in.
Arnold got up from the chair behind my desk and walked to the window. I made no comment about the presumption – I supposed it was an automatic thing for him to do. I wish he hadn’t sat there, I had left the room in such a hurry that I had not closed the file on my desk, the file with all the correspondence from Alicia to the firm over the past five years. I wondered how much he had seen.

  “I think we need to try to agree the terms.” Bringing everything back to a business footing I hoped no more skeletons would be let out of cupboards. There were certain things I did not think I should know.

  Arnold took a piece of paper from his pocket and read:

  “The divorce will be on the grounds of my wife’s desertion. She will not counter sue on any grounds whatsoever. She is to see Charles and Susannah for a maximum of two weeks every year. She will see them in an hotel. They will never visit her at her home. She will never be welcome here.

  “She is to sign an agreement that she will never,” he hesitated for emphasis and repeated “never, communicate with the press or with any other person or in any way use any information she may have, or think she has, to interfere with my social, business or political affairs.

  “In return I will undertake to buy a house, for the maximum sum of £2,000 and pay an allowance of £100 per month.

  “No! That wasn’t what we agreed!” Alicia interrupted, words streaming out “You said you would be fair. You said that you would make sure I was ‘generously provided for’. Those were your words. ‘Generously provided for’. You cannot, you will not, expect me to live on £100 a month. Arnold, this is ridiculous.”

  Ignoring her Arnold continued “This allowance will cease when she re-marries as re-marry I have no doubt she will.”

  He chose to be even more insulting. “Should she choose to live with a man as his wife but not go through any form of marriage ceremony that will also terminate the allowance.”

  Alicia opened her mouth as if to say something but before she could frame any words that could make sense Arnold had continued.

  “The allowance is not a generous one as I have no intention of paying to maintain a lifestyle from which I get no return. I have, as we are all aware, maintained payments throughout the past five years. I did not abandon my wife, where many men would have. I have bought tickets for journeys I would never make, I have bought clothes I would never see, I have bought lingerie for the benefit of other men. I have not questioned this. But it ends here.”

  “You were rich Arnold, you could afford it. Just because you’re going broke you think you can spend what’s left on your brat instead of me.”

  Did she realise what she had said?

  Arnold looked at me. I looked away, unable to hold his eyes.

  “Why do you say ‘were’ Alicia? Why do you say I’m going broke? Do you know something more than you should of my affairs?”

  I looked up and saw that, although he was addressing Alicia, he was looking at me. There was nothing I could say. He knew that I was the only person who would have told Alicia anything about his business and Alicia had, in that one statement, given evidence of the betrayal of the trust that was essential between a man of business and his solicitor.

  We had never been friends, Arnold and I, but I had been able to keep an eye on Charles and Susannah while I had his trust. In that look I realised now I would no longer be able to do that.

  Arnold kept his eyes on me as he rose and walked to the door, opening it he said to my secretary “Tell Max I wish to see him.”

  Alicia looked at me, shrugged her shoulders and followed her husband out of the door.

  I sat down.

  I put my head in my hands and swore quietly at and to myself.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Where do you want to go this summer Charles? Would you like to go to France? Spain? Gibraltar? It’s up to you. You know I don’t mind where we go.”

  “Do we have to go anywhere?”

  “You know I can’t come up to see you, be sensible. Where would you like to go?” She did not mention Susannah.

  “What I mean is we don’t want to go anywhere with you.”

  A few moments passed while she collected her thoughts.

  “I was wondering when you would say that. Every year I have been waiting for the day when you would finally say you didn’t want to see me.”

  “It’s just that there is so much going on. We don’t want to do it any more. We don’t see the point.”

  “You don’t want to do it anymore? You don’t see the point! I’m your Mother for Pete’s sake.” She was losing control of her temper.

  “You don’t really care do you? You don’t care what our lives are like do you? You just keep on with these weeks away with us, year after year after year, just to spite Dad. He couldn’t care less whether we saw you or not. He probably couldn’t care less whether he saw us again. The only person who has ever cared about Susannah and me is Monika. She’s stuck it out year after year, putting up with all our problems, even now! If I had to spend a week with anyone I’d want to spend it with her. She’s always been our real mother.”

  It took her a few moments to answer.

  “Those are not very nice things to say, Charles.”

  “I don’t bloody care if it sounds ‘nice’. Why should I be ‘nice’ to you? We’re not bloody coming.”

  “Don’t swear at me Charles. I won’t have it.”

  The phone went dead.

  She stood by the window, the telephone receiver in her hand, looking around her living room.

  He had put the receiver down on her.

  “Where has all that hatred come from?” she asked herself.

  She remembered the last week they had all had together, in a lovely hotel in Devon. It had been snowing and the children had enjoyed sledging and snowballing together with her watching from the terrace like a ‘normal’ Mother. Except they hadn’t really got on had they? Alicia asked herself to face the fact that Susannah and Charles had spent most of the week together, barely being polite to her. She had learnt nothing of their lives, what was important to them, what they thought and believed. They had asked nothing of her life, but then she hadn’t asked about their’s either.

  Charles had always been quiet on their visits, Susannah even quieter, but she had hoped that now they were getting older the children might be a little more interested in her, and a little more interesting. She knew nothing about them really. When did Charles begin to call his father ‘Dad’ not ‘Father’ or ‘Daddy’? When did he start to swear? Was he right when he said that she had only kept up the trips with them to spite Arnold? Had she ever enjoyed her time with her children? Had she ever enjoyed her children? Had she ever loved them at all?

  She sat looking out at the familiar view from her window and made herself think about things she had always avoided.

  She was now nearly 38 years old. She would never have another child. Even if she found a man to love her, and to love, she could never have his children. She would only ever have a son, whose conception had led to her marriage to Arnold, and a daughter who was the unwanted result of rape.

  Finally putting the receiver down Alicia folded her head in her arms and wept.

  Her loneliness was not her only problem.

  Arnold had been true to his word, in the beginning anyway. After that meeting in Liverpool he had bought her the little house Maureen Shelton had found for her in Surrey and arranged for an allowance to be paid monthly into her account. It was not a generous allowance but it was something.

  Maureen, who had moved down south two years earlier, had been surprised when Alicia had written out of the blue asking her to find her a house quickly as she was moving back to England. She happily renewed their friendship finding a house just a few miles from her own so she could help Alicia put her life together.

  It was not an old house but it had some character and although there were neighbours quite close on both sides, the front of the house looked out over open fields and woodland.

/>   She always called it ‘the little house’ because it was really very small with only a drawing room, dining room and kitchen on the ground floor and three small bedrooms and a tiny bathroom above. She missed the spaciousness she had learned to take for granted. Millcourt was a large house and since she had left she had enjoyed spacious suites in hotels and staterooms on ships. She was not used to being cramped.

  Maureen had been practical, making Alicia think about earning her own living.

  “£100 a month isn’t much you know. £20 odd a week will cover food and essentials but won’t buy much in the way of clothes or luxuries.”

  “I’ll get my luxuries.”

  “Yes I know. But they won’t go on forever.”

  Maureen had soon worked out how these luxuries were obtained.

  Once a month Alicia would pack a suitcase and walk to the end of the lane. There she caught the bus to London. She would get off in Northumberland Avenue and walk the short distance up the Strand to The Savoy.

  The doormen knew her and always welcomed her as if she were the only guest in the hotel.

  She was always shown up to the same suite with a river view. She never tired of looking up the river towards the Houses of Parliament. “At least Arnold will never get in there if I can help it.”

  Max would have the adjoining suite and they would have dinner in the room together, usually eggs benedict or something light, always with two bottles of champagne. They would talk briefly of politics and world affairs, never would the conversation turn to anything personal. Max did not talk of her children or anything about her ex-husband’s life or business.

  Afterwards she would soak in the deep bath and envelop herself in the soft, warm towels before slipping between the cool linen sheets and looking out over the Thames, watching the lights reflected in the water. She would sleep well, conscience clear, until tea was brought in the morning.

  She would spend the next day shopping, frequently buying books at Hatchard’s on Max’s account, or, if it was raining, walking around an art gallery or museum.