The Last Dance

by Carolyn McCrae

  Now was the time. I could put it off no longer – nor did I need to.

  “Susannah, when do you think things all started to go wrong with your life?” I had changed the subject hesitantly but she answered immediately and with force. “That Sunday, when they told me Carl was my brother. That was the day I met Joe, that was the day my life headed off at a tangent from the route it should have taken.”

  “Did you mean to kill yourself that afternoon?”

  “No. I don’t think so. I wanted to hurt Daddy. I wanted him to feel pain like I was feeling – the loss of someone I loved. I wanted him to feel that. I hated what he had done to our lives. He had moved Carl and I about like we were pawns in a chess game....”

  “Rather like you’ve done with your children.....”

  “Shit. Yes. Probably. But no, I didn’t want to die.”

  “What went wrong next?”

  “Getting pregnant I suppose. It was pretty much downhill from then on.”

  “So the children were always the problem? Without them you would still be free? The children tied you into a life you didn’t want? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Probably. Maybe that’s why I didn’t want to be part of their lives.”

  “Now if I were to say that is exactly how your mother felt what would you think?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If I were to say that your mother felt as trapped by you and Charles as you do with Josie, Bill, Al and Jack would that make you think about her – and them – differently?”

  “But how could it – how could she feel as trapped by us? She had all the money, the husband and everything.”

  “Susannah do look at the facts. Your mother was several months pregnant when she married Arnold.” I didn’t say “your father”.

  “Charles was born when they had only been married for 6 months. They married on her 21st birthday because her father refused to give consent. You can say this for Arnold – he accepted your choice of Joe without demur – despite all the problems that he foresaw.”

  “So they had to get married – so what? That was happening all the time during the war. I was born well after that wasn’t I? You’re not saying that Daddy forced himself on Mummy as Joe forced himself on me are you?” That was the first time I believe she had spoken objectively of the difficulties in her marriage.

  “When Joe forced himself on you why didn’t you ask for help? Charles, Max, me – we would all have helped you. You know that we would have done. If you’d asked.”

  “It isn’t rape when you’re married – you’ve got to do it haven’t you? The man has the right doesn’t he?”

  “Legally perhaps, but I don’t believe morally. But we digress. Your mother married Arnold because she wanted to escape her parents – that is a story for another day but believe me it is true – she married Arnold to escape her father and because Charles was on the way, probably Charles was on the way because she wanted to escape her father.”

  “I can understand that.”

  I nodded in recognition of her interruption.

  “She learned very soon after her marriage that it had been a dreadful mistake. Arnold was not right for her. They had some dreadful times together. His mother was clinging in the extreme and, of course, he had been having a long standing affair and was probably in love with someone else.”

  “Kathleen?”

  “Exactly. Kathleen. He continued his affair with her, right under your mother’s nose – placing her in more and more embarrassing and humiliating positions – the whole town knew what he was up to. Your Mother was very brave. Then Kathleen got pregnant.”

  “Carl.”

  “Yes, Carl. He was the child of Kathleen and Arnold.” Still I would not say “your father”.

  “What they didn’t know at the time, and no one knew for certain until after he’d died was that Kathleen and Arnold were brother and sister.”

  “Shit.”

  “Arnold’s father, George, had kept a number of local women – many said his wife was frigid and refused to let him touch her after the conception of Arnold. Anyway – one of these kept women was Kathleen’s mother. She could easily have been having other affairs – she was an attractive woman and I don’t think George was particularly strict with his women – but she believed George was Kathleen’s father but didn’t tell her until it was too late.”

  I waited for the family tree to form in her mind.

  “So ….Carl’s parent’s were brother and sister. Oh poor Carl! How long has he known? He must hurt so much!”

  “He’s known for about five years.”

  She looked so concerned, so hurt for him.

  “Who’s helped him through it? I mean it must have been such a shock. It must make him feel so… oh I can’t think. He must seem so worthless. No I don’t mean worthless but.. Oh poor Carl.” she finished, unable to find the right words.

  “I think it has made him feel very lonely. Indeed. He says he will remain unmarried as he feels he must never have children.”

  “So what happened?” She wanted to know everything now.

  “Arnold arranged for Kathleen to marry his cousin Henry, a pleasant but weak man who had lost his fiancée and parents at the end of the war. Henry, I truly believe, never doubted that Carl was his son.”

  I continued, thinking there was no way out now – it had all to come out.

  “Can you imagine what your mother felt? Her husband’s mistress was having a child? He spent no less time with her, continuing his affair after she was married and the four of them went away, at Arnold’s instigation, for Christmas 1945.

  “Henry and a pregnant Kathleen, Arnold and your mother.”

  “Christmas 1945 – that must have been about the time I was conceived.”

  “It was New Year’s Night. Your mother went to bed early leaving the others drinking downstairs. She was raped by Henry.” I ignored Susannah’s face and continued “Henry and Arnold had been so drunk they couldn’t remember what had happened. But Alicia knew. Henry is your father, Susannah – not Arnold.”

  The room was quiet for a few minutes as we both sipped our drinks.

  “So I’m the child of rape, just like my little ones.”

  “Your mother never wanted you, I’m afraid to say, but she wouldn’t have an abortion. She left the house as soon after you were born as she could.”

  “History does repeat itself.”

  “I’m very afraid it does.”

  “It wasn’t their fault, was it? Just as it wasn’t mine?”

  “No Susannah, it is not your fault and it was not theirs.”

  “Can I have another drink?”

  I got two more large brandies and sat down beside her on that window seat looking out over the golf links.

  “I know what you’re going to ask now.” I said

  “Why did she say we were brother and sister?”

  “She was trapped by the lie, once told she could not rescind it. The longer it went on, the less she felt able to tell the truth. I came close several times but never had the courage.”

  “Once a lie starts it isn’t easy to kill is it?” After a few moments pause she continued, “You loved her very much didn’t you?”

  There was no answer to that. In any case it hadn’t really been a question.

  “I don’t think she ever wanted to tell you because that would mean you would be with Carl. Remember she hated Kathleen, she was humiliated by her and by your father – how could she bear your being happy with the child of that union?”

  Another rhetorical question neither of us tried to answer.

  We drank our brandies – the lights shining across the golf course reminded me of other nights we had talked like this.

  “I have always loved him, you know.”

  “Have you loved him or the idea of him?”

  She left the question in the air but I persevered.

  “Do you even know him?”

  “I see him on the television,
I read all his books and his articles. I know what he was like.”

  “13 years ago”

  “Why did no one tell me?” There was no anger in her voice, no self-pity or recrimination – simply curiosity.

  “At first, of course, we didn’t know. But when we did we didn’t say anything as we believed you to be happy. You had a lovely house, lovely children. Charles and I, because it was really only the two of us who could tell you, truly thought you were happy. We couldn’t upset your marriage in that way. And then, when we discovered how desperately unhappy you were we couldn’t see that Carl would be right for you. You were so ...”

  “unstable.” She found the word I couldn’t.

  “Unfortunately so, my dear, you were very unhappy for a long time. Carl would not, could not, have helped you. How could we risk your being rejected by him, we didn’t know how supportive he would be, we could not know whether or not he loved you...”

  “enough to take me on in the state I was in.”

  “Indeed. It wasn’t until your mother died that we realised how strong he is and how much he still loves you but by then we knew why he felt he could never be a real husband to anyone.”

  “That still leaves five years!”

  “Five years isn’t so long a time really, Susannah, when you love someone. You will wait. You will wait forever if that is what is required. You just wait until the moment comes and is right. Carl knew how much you wanted to prove yourself. He knew you needed to get this degree, he knew you had to do it, if he had come into your life you wouldn’t and you would have resented him. He was not going to interfere with your studies, he wanted you to find your own self. I don’t think he knows how to cope with loving you and the problems he faces because of his parents. He doesn’t want to hurt you. He never has, he has tried to protect you from more hurt.”

  I wondered if she remembered the times we had come close to talking like this in the past, and whether she understood why I had always backed away.

  “You’re going to have to make the first move, Susannah. I think you really are strong enough now to give him the help he needs. He needs you to want to get to know him the way he is now. He’s been the strong one for years – he needs to know you want him as he is now not as he was years ago when you were both very different people.”

  As I said it I realised the truth in what I was saying.

  I had always assumed Carl was the strong one and he would save Susannah, but it was the other way around. Carl needed Susannah’s strength.

  “Do you really want to meet him again or are you happy just having known him in the past? Do you want to risk being disillusioned or do you want to move on?”

  “I want to meet him and move on.”

  It seemed like the right answer.

  “If you’re sure I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I am.”

  I called Carl the next morning. He was surprised to hear from me so soon after our last conversation so I explained that, after all these years and after all the procrastination and weakness, I had finally told Susannah everything she needed to know.

  “Everything?”

  “Everything.”

  “Even about my parents?”

  “Absolutely everything.”

  “She’s OK?” He seemed so tentative and so vulnerable.

  “She seemed to take it all in her stride. I believe your Susannah may finally have got rid of her demons and may actually be able to help you get rid of some of yours.

  “Should I..?”

  “Yes”

  “I’ll be there in four hours.”

  And he was.

  Finale

  It was over 22 years since Carl had driven from Cambridge to get together, at last, with his Susie.

  22 years isn’t so long as you grow older. You look at a pair of shoes, a shirt, a tie and think “I bought that 22 years ago” or you meet someone in the street and explain to your companion “I first met them over 22 years ago.”

  22 years is not that long at all.

  November 29th 1998 we were all gathered again in the study of Sandhey.

  It would have been Alicia’s 78th birthday, her 57th wedding anniversary.

  It was the day we all gathered to hear the reading of Max’s will.

  The house hadn’t changed much in the intervening years. There was no building around, none of the new roads came anywhere near the old house. The sand dunes and rocks were protected, the golf course inviolable – nothing could ever happen to Sandhey or to Hilbre.

  But we had all changed.

  All the members of the old family were present. Charles, now 56 years old, stood with his hand resting on the back of Monika’s chair, still protective of her. Monika, nearly 70 years old now, looked the archetypical hausfrau, grey hair tied tightly in a bun behind her round head, apron wrapped around her now ample frame.

  Carl, 6 years younger than his half brother, was just as tall and distinguished, his grey hair was longer, thicker and tied in a pony-tail at the nape of his tanned neck, his eyes were darker but there was a definite resemblance between them. Carl stood with his arm resting around the shoulders of Susannah, his collaborator and life long love – practically the same age, she still had her own dark wavy hair but her figure was filling out; ‘matronly’ was how I could best describe it.

  They were very comfortable with each other and I believed that bringing them together was perhaps the best thing I had ever had a hand in. Their colleagues at the university and at the filming companies had given up asking them why they never married – they were obviously so happy with each other it didn’t matter. All the gossip columnists assumed they were.

  Susannah’s children were there also. Josie, nearly 35; Jack, 31; Al, 30 and Bill, the youngest, 29.

  There were also the men and women who had joined this family over the intervening years.

  I began reading the codicil, explaining that the main reading would follow immediately after. It was dated just two months earlier.

  I, Max Fischer, being of as much sound mind as I have been at any time in my life wish to make the following clear, to you all, you who have been a part of my life for so long.

  I begin with a quotation Exodus chapter 34 Verse 7

  Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin – and that will by no means clear the guilty – visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.”

  I can see you all now, pondering that quotation.

  Well Charles, Carl, Susannah you are the second generation. Arnold and Alicia, Maureen and Kathleen, they were the first to suffer from the actions of their parents.

  Susannah, your children are the third generation. I know you and Carl have given them all the love they could possibly need to end the sequence. If God wills it the pain will end now.

  For you all I would say ‘Do not judge them too harshly for things they could not know’. Much of this is not your responsibility. Do not blame yourselves.

  I paused, looking around at all the serious faces. How many of them remembered Arnold, or Alicia. How many knew where Kathleen and Maureen fitted into their family’s history? Some of them would have had no idea what Max was talking about. I continued.

  “The first and most important bequest for you all is this book of Ted’s. Read it carefully, learn from it. Learn to forgive your elders their mistakes for they make them either unwittingly or through weakness.

  My second bequest is an explanation.

  When Monika came into our lives if was not by accident, luck, chance, fate, whatever you want to call it but it was not an accident. I had spent a long time trying to find her.

  When I was a student in Vienna, before the war, I occasionally visited my sister and brother-in-law on their farm. I loved my sister dearly but had little affection for the man she had married and felt sorry for their children. They had two sons and a daughter. The sons were considerabl
y older than Rebecca and she had a lonely childhood.

  On one occasion we were all having lunch around the big table by a roaring log fire. My brother-in-law and the boys were complaining about the land and how stony and steep it was and how dark it was throughout the winter when the sun never rose above the mountain on the other side of the valley.

  So I had told them about a land that had no steep mountains or lakes, a land where they spoke a soft and gentle language, where people were free, where they got their food from the sea and the animals grazed the lush grass rather than being used to plough the land. This place was always sunny and the people were always happy. Rebecca had wanted me to draw a picture so I had drawn an outline of Brittany on the only piece of paper I could find in the kitchen of that farmhouse, an envelope, and had written some place names on it – “Brittany”, “Audierne”.

  That envelope was used by my sister to hold Rebecca’s papers when they had escaped to France. She had kept it by her as they moved from place to place as the war took its course. On the day she died she called her daughter to her and gave it to her, telling her daughter never, ever, to lose it. As her mother lay dead beside her Monika spent hours sewing the envelope into the hem of her dress.

  In the years she was alone, as the war drew to a close, she had survived; her movements unrecorded, her actions unnoticed by anyone in the world. She was as near to invisible as she could be – a homeless, stateless individual in a chaotic world.

  When she was particularly lonely and frightened she would remember her mother’s envelope and take comfort that it was still sewn inside her dress. It was a ritual for her that whenever she obtained new clothes she would cut the crumpled and dirty envelope out of the old and sew it into the new. Every time she would look at the familiar lines and squiggles, they always made her feel safe even though she had no idea what they represented.

  In the spring of 1947 she had fallen in with an English soldier. He gave her a new dress. As she was transferring her envelope to the new hem he tried to take it from her but she wouldn’t let him see it. When he eventually persuaded her to show it to him he stared at the faded and barely visible shapes, holding the envelope one way then another. He was a kind man, with daughters her age of his own back in Newcastle. He told her he was not going to steal her envelope, and asked if she wanted to know what the markings meant.