“Charles saw them at the cinema yesterday.”
“They said they were going.”
“Yes, Kathleen, they were in the back row. Kissing and cuddling, and probably a lot more.”
Kathleen had to accept that and all its implications but all she could say was “Oh dear. We’re going to have to do something aren’t we? We can’t hide our heads in the sand any longer.”
So they had suspected something was going on but had chosen not to do anything. I believe they would still have backed out of saying anything if they could possibly have got away with it.
“Kathleen you have got to tell them.”
“He won’t. I’ve tried to persuade Arnold to tell Carl he’s his father but he won’t hear of it.” She began to explain what I think I already knew. Arnold was too ashamed to tell his son of his behaviour, to tell Carl that he and his mother had had a longstanding affair, that they had arranged for her to marry Henry only because she was pregnant.
His weakness was that he could not bear to lose face with Carl. He needed the respect and admiration of the only son that mattered to him. He had lost so much with the business going down he couldn’t bear to lose any respect and love Carl might still feel for him.
“He’d rather they had an illegal relationship.”
Kathleen had no answer. She just sat there and shrugged her shoulders helplessly.
When I had first known Kathleen she had been such a strong woman, independent, intelligent and extremely likeable. Then, as Carl had grown older, she had appeared grasping and opportunistic. Now she just appeared broken.
“Do you want me here when you tell them – for tell them you must if Arnold won’t?”
“No Ted, I must do it. I will do it.”
I hoped that the old Kathleen, the woman she had once been, would come to the fore and that she would not let the family down.
Kathleen showed me to the door and I drove away, leaving her to it.
Chapter Twenty-One
Kathleen dreaded the children’s return. She had to find some form of words to get through the next few minutes. How does a mother tell her son that the man he had always thought was his father had been the unwitting dupe of his stronger, dominant cousin? How does she tell her son that the girl he was so obviously falling in love with, and who just as obviously loved him, was actually his sister?
How do you destroy so much in so few words?
Kathleen had to do just that.
She sat silently dreading the moment when their lives would all change.
It was an hour or more before the door opened. “Mum! We’re back”
“Carl, Susannah, darlings, a word please.”
They responded to the tone of voice, neither angry nor bitter. Resigned, sad, old. They went into the lounge, just managing to let go of each other’s hands, each realising that Kathleen was serious and wondering what it was that they had done.
The worst telling off they had had was a few months before when they had used Arnold’s tape recorder and over-written the only copy of a piano piece he had been working on.
Neither of them could think of anything they had done that would explain Kathleen’s voice, or the look on her face. Carl thought maybe Arnold was dead, finally giving up on his ruined life, or maybe it was Susannah’s mother.
Susannah walked into the sitting room goose pimples spreading from her chest to her arms, her legs and her face. She was shivering. Something was seriously wrong. She knew it.
“Carl, Susannah. Listen to me. Don’t say a word. But what I am about to say is true. I wish to God it could be easier to say.”
They realised the seriousness – Kathleen had crossed herself.
“Were you at the cinema last night?” she thought, firstly, she owed it to them to check some facts.
“You know we were, Cliff’s latest”
“Did you see anyone there?”
Carl answered, beginning to get suspicious. He had seen Charles and Monika in the seats in front of them. “Why?”
She had decided that the only way to get through these minutes was to be honest.
“You were seen together and I have to warn you. Oh this is so, so difficult, I have to tell you both. Oh I wish to God this were not true or there was an easier way, but Carl, Susannah, you must both be told. Sooner or later, before too much harm is done.”
She couldn’t get the words out, and as she was so obviously distressed by what she was saying Carl and Susannah looked at each other, she frightened, he concerned – protective.
Whatever it was couldn’t be that bad, could it?
It was.
Kathleen eventually managed to say the words “Carl, Arnold is your natural father.”
Susannah let out a half scream half whimper
“No! No! That’s not fair.”
“I’m so sorry Susannah, Carl is your brother.”
Susannah looked despairingly from one face to the other, from Kathleen who she had never grown to love, but who was now pitiful, crying and looking desperately old, back to Carl. Her Carl. His face registering shock his eyes wide as he, in turn, looked from his Mother to the girl he loved more than anyone in the world.
Susannah dragged her eyes from Carl, turned and ran out of the house.
She had to get away.
Carl sat down. His head in his hands.
“I knew it. I really hoped it was not true, but I knew it.” He was talking to himself but Kathleen heard and it broke her heart.
Carl had always loved Susannah, since they both had been small children. Now they had grown up she had offered herself to him and he could not say no to the kissing and the cuddling. They had been accepted as a couple by their friends, always ‘Susannah and Carl’, or ‘Carl and Susannah’, never one without the other.
As she had grown up Susannah had become more and more beautiful. She had long curly hair that always fell in front of her eyes – she didn’t have a fringe cut like every other girl had done as soon as the Beatles had appeared on the scene, she just defiantly tucked her long hair behind her ears. She wanted to be loved and liked but she wasn’t going to be the same as everyone else.
She was quite short – she barely reached his shoulders – which was one of the things that made him feel strong and want always to look out for her.
They had grown so close over the years, and he had never doubted they would always be together.
But, there had always been those things Charles had hinted to him years back, he had refused to listen to him, pushed them to the back of his mind, but the fear had always been there, niggling away.
It had held him back from doing all the things Susannah had wanted, when time after time over the last few months he could have. His gentle voice saying “No, Susie, not yet” didn’t satisfy her, but he couldn’t tell her why not.
He sat on the sofa looking across at his mother, who was gently weeping in her chair by the fire.
He found he couldn’t cry, he half expected himself to be crying but this pain was too great. Susie was part of him. She had been part of his life for as long as he could remember. He couldn’t bear it if they couldn’t be together. He sat there, trying to feel nothing but the physical pain in his chest.
After several minutes of silence he found his voice “Can I ask you something?” and without waiting for an answer he continued “Why have you waited so long to tell me? Why didn’t you have the guts to tell me sooner, just after Dad, Henry, died? That would have been the time. I could have dealt with it then. Did you think I would never find out?”
He stood up, filling the small room with his presence.
“It’s all so blindingly obvious now. I never felt anything like him. I knew we weren’t like father and son. You took me over to Millcourt so often, always when there was a problem we went there. You always ran to Arnold. It’s so bloody obvious. Why didn’t you tell me before? Why did you let us all come to live here when you knew....”
She tried to speak, to answer even one
of the questions he asked, but she couldn’t. He was right. She and Arnold had never really thought about the children as people who had their own lives to live. They had never been sufficiently important to them to make them change the way they wanted to live their lives. Why should they do that, ‘just for the children’?
“I’m leaving. Now.” Carl continued, his voice now cold and distant. “I’ll find somewhere to stay but I won’t stay here any longer and I won’t be coming back.”
His pain had changed to anger, the hurt fuelling a resentment so deep that he knew he would never forgive them.
Not waiting for an answer he went upstairs, chucked some books and clothes into a duffle bag and left the house.
He never saw his mother, or his father, again.
And it was too many years before he again held Susie’s hand.
Susannah bumped into her father as she ran out of the house.
Ignoring, or not noticing, the look on Kathleen’s face and the tears on her face, Arnold sat down and asked “What’s up with Susannah? She didn’t seem very happy.”
Kathleen had had enough. Couldn’t Arnold, just for one minute, notice something of the atmosphere in the house? Couldn’t he feel the tension? Had he been playing golf or had he got another girlfriend? When he had been married to Alicia he had visited her on a Sunday afternoon having explained his absence from home as ‘golf’. Now, perhaps he was doing the same to her. History does repeat itself.
She knew she had lost Carl, she didn’t care what Arnold thought now.
“She’s not happy. Carl isn’t happy. I’m not happy and perhaps, just perhaps, you won’t be in a minute.”
“What earth shattering event has occurred then, some group not reached Number One in that Hit Parade or he’s broken one of her records?” He spoke with the sarcasm of the father of teenage children.
“Carl and Susannah have been ‘going out’ together.”
“So? They’re practically the same age, they go around in the same group of friends, of course they go out together.”
“No, Arnold ‘going out’ together I mean really going out together. Certainly kissing and cuddling, probably far more. They think they’re in love with each other.”
Arnold was still acting as though he felt there was no problem at all.
“Women and teenagers! I’m the only sensible person in this house and that’s only because I get out of it often enough. You should get out more.”
The injustice stung.
Kathleen knew he had been seen around with someone called Judith, who was a lot younger than he was and who undoubtedly flattered him suitably. No doubt Judith listened to his problems and understood completely how awful the last few years had been for him. No doubt she helped him remember, if only for a couple of hours each week, what he could be, what he had been, what he thought he should be. He had probably been with her this afternoon. He obviously didn’t feel like sorting out the problems of hysterical women and children.
“Arnold that is unfair! You must listen to this it is important – Carl and Susannah may be lovers!”
“You have obviously got the wrong end of the stick. They have always been inseparable, ever since they were babies they’ve spent as much time as they can together. They’ve always played together.”
“Ted came round.”
“Oh Christ not him! Have you noticed how he’s always causing trouble in my family. What did he want?”
“Charles had phoned him, he and Monika had been at the cinema, and had seen Carl and Susannah in the back seats – doing – well – doing what people do in the back seats of cinemas these days.”
She began to have his attention.
He looked around the room remembering the scene when she had told him she was expecting. It hadn’t changed a great deal.
Then he thought back to the following Christmas when Susannah had been conceived. He knew they had all been drunk on New Year’s Night and Alicia had gone to bed early, as usual. He seemed to remember them talking about sex. Had he complained that he didn’t have enough sex with Alicia, that they no longer shared a bed? His memories of the conversation were very hazy.
He had gone upstairs determined on having his rights. She was his wife. He could take her when and how he wanted to and the next morning it was obvious that he had had sex though he knew she would never have given in willingly and that he would have had to force her. Alicia’s behaviour the next day indicated that he had probably done just that.
He just wished he hadn’t had so much to drink so he could remember.
He would have liked to remember.
Could Kathleen have lied, have been seeing someone else and just pinned the blame on him? That was unlikely as the boy was very like him. Could Susannah not be his? Who else could be the father? He had kept Alicia on a tight reign and his many spies around the town would have soon told him if she was straying.
“Arnold?” After all these years Kathleen voiced the thought that had occurred to her many times in the intervening years. “Are you thinking about that New Year? Are you thinking that you might not be Susannah’s father? We did have a go at Henry. Perhaps he and Alicia…”
She couldn’t finish the sentence, but she tried to continue. “Are you thinking that it could be alright for …. after all…? I mean if you weren’t…”
“Of course I’m her blasted father” he interrupted, “of course I bloody am. Do you think I’d have kept her all these years if there’d been the slightest question? Do you think I would keep another man’s child for 17 years?”
“Henry did.” Kathleen started crying again, hopeless tears for things and people lost.
They sat for some time with just the sound of Kathleen’s weeping between them.
Could he be sure he was Susannah’s father? The girl was so like Alicia it was difficult to spot anything of himself in her.
He tried to dredge up details of that New Year in 1945. Was it possible Alicia and Henry had been up to something? He didn’t think so. Henry was too besotted with Kathleen. No he wouldn’t have done anything. Or had he been goaded too much? They really had all been very drunk.
Kathleen, wiping her eyes, finally found her voice, “I think we’ve all managed to make rather a mess of it really.”
Arnold was beginning to agree but he was damned if he was going to admit to any wrongdoing. Look what his father had got up to all those years ago and he had never been brought to book.
“What do you want me to do then?” His voice was rising, his anger taking hold. “Do you want me to tell the children that it might be legal after all? That I might not be father to both of them – or even father to either! That their parents were so immoral that they don’t actually know who their children were? No. We will not do that.”
Kathleen was stung by the old accusation that Carl was not Arnold’s responsibility. She realised how little this man who was her husband really cared for her. She was completely aware, in those few minutes, of how much she had wasted her life on him. Her voice changed, now cold and hard – so like Carl’s had been to her a short while earlier.
“So it’s OK for my son to know he’s a bastard but not for your daughter to know the truth about you? Is that what you’re saying?”
Despite all the years they had had together, one way or another, the argument that followed was the worst they had ever had. There were no euphemisms, and no holds barred.
It was bitter and its impact lasted a lifetime.
As is usual in such fundamental arguments words were said that could not be unsaid and Kathleen knew that their relationship would never recover.
Perhaps it was the first time they had really faced the facts of their relationship. How sordid, underhand and downright selfish they had both been all along.
It became clear, as each allegation was met with reproach, each accusation with blame that neither knew who Susannah’s father really was and there was only one way to find out.
They would have to contact Alici
a. But would she know? What if she had had sex with both Henry and Arnold? If she did know would she tell them? If she gave them an answer would she tell them the truth?
Whatever the risks they would have to ask her.
After tearing the fabric of their lives apart Arnold agreed to call Alicia and explain something of the situation, making it clear that it was for the children’s sake – perhaps hinting that things had gone further than they actually appeared to have done.
Kathleen left the room as Arnold made the call.
Only then did she realise how late it was getting. It was dark and neither Susannah nor Carl had come home.
Alicia never adequately explained why she lied in that telephone conversation with Arnold. Perhaps she didn’t want to make things easy for Arnold and Kathleen, perhaps she didn’t want to help the child she had never wanted in the first place and felt no love or sense of responsibility for. Perhaps she was lonely, ill and self-pitying when she took the call and didn’t see why anyone should be happy. Perhaps she remembered how she had felt seeing Susannah and Carl together on the lawn at Millcourt.
When, years later and it was too late, she was asked to explain her actions she said that she had not really lied, she had simply reversed the truth.
When Arnold asked her if anything had happened on all the days she had been alone with Henry she was so surprised she burst out laughing. “My God Arnold – if you think I had the slightest interest in the weak little runt you’re even more stupid than I gave you credit for.” And then she became angry. How dare he accuse her of infidelity when he had been with Kathleen all those years, and when she lost her temper she didn’t really think of the consequences of what she said.
She told Arnold, graphically, that she had only ‘handled’ Henry. He had come into her room when she was half asleep and she had at first thought it was Arnold. She had pushed him away but he had got rather excited. He was very drunk and was incoherently telling her how much he loved her. She had grabbed hold of him, more in a move to keep him from forcing himself inside her, and he had come very quickly. He was nowhere near being inside her. She said Arnold had raped her a few minutes later. “You’re Susannah’s father how dare you think otherwise!”
The Last Dance Page 17
