by Angela Arney
‘I told you, he seemed all right then. Medicals were not carried out in great depth in those days. None of us thought of his bad moods; after all, moodiness isn’t a mental illness. Lots of people are bad-tempered and moody. And to be honest, I have to admit that none of us wanted to think of that. Even when he’d gone through a particularly bad bout of depression we couldn’t bring ourselves to recognize it for what it might be.’
‘But what about Doctor Ramsay?’ asked Peter. ‘Did he not feel he ought to do something?’
Nicholas paused. ‘Donald Ramsay has always doubted the earlier diagnosis given to the family, although as he pointed out one can never be sure. Originally he was of the opinion that William suffered from a form of melancholia, and that my father, who drank very heavily, suffered from alcoholic psychosis. He was always urging us to take more advice from a specialist in the field of mental illness. But naturally we refused.’
‘Naturally! Why on earth did you refuse?’ Peter’s voice was quiet.
‘I should have thought that was perfectly obvious. No-one wants to broadcast the fact that there is insanity in the family. We’re no different from anyone else. We didn’t want the stigma of madness attached to our name.’
‘That’s a ridiculous attitude in this day and age. It’s not called madness any more; it’s an illness. And an illness is nothing to be ashamed of.’
Nicholas ignored Peter’s exclamation and carried on. ‘Anyway events proved Donald wrong; they both had the disease. My father, in a violent outburst of aggression, tried to murder my mother by strangulation. Luckily I was there and fought to protect my mother. He was not a well man; he suffered from high blood pressure brought on by his heavy drinking, and the struggle with me proved too much for him. He suffered a massive cerebral haemorrhage from which he died three days later, thank God! Perhaps you think I should be sorry that my own father died after fighting with me, but I was not, and I’m still not. It was a blessing that he died of natural causes, because it meant there was no scandal. Donald Ramsay remained silent about the attack on my mother; he thought she’d suffered quite enough without any additional unpleasant publicity.’
‘And William? What proved Donald wrong about him?’ Peter quietly persisted. They had to know it all, no matter how bad it might be.
‘William heard voices, apparently a common delusion in the illness. His voices told him to kill me, and he very nearly succeeded. I wouldn’t be here now had it not been for Bruno who knocked William unconscious. After that we knew there was no alternative but to commit William into the care of psychiatrists in a mental hospital. He was sent far away to an isolated hospital on the edge of Dartmoor in Devon, far away from prying eyes, and he remained there until they deemed him well enough to return to us.’
‘And he returned for Christmas nineteen sixty-two.’ Liana spoke for the first time, her voice so low it was barely audible.
Neither Peter nor Eleanora heard her. But Nicholas did, and a horrible, numbing coldness settled like a lead weight in his chest. Christmas 1962, the Christmas James and William were drowned.
William and the grandfather she had never met were not pertinent to Eleanora: all that was in the past. ‘But you’re not ill, Aunt Anne isn’t ill, and Peter and I are both perfectly healthy. So what is the problem?’ She was becoming more and more impatient.
‘Oh, Eleanora, can’t you see? It’s because we’re first cousins.’ Peter turned to her, grasping her hands. ‘I don’t know much about this illness, but I do know that the closer an individual’s relationship to a person with a possible hereditary illness, then the greater is the risk of that illness being passed on to their children. As first cousins, our children would bear an abnormally high risk.’
Eleanora snatched her hands away. ‘I don’t want to hear such rubbish; using horrible words like abnormally high risk! We’re perfectly all right, both of us.’ She turned on Nicholas. ‘And if all this is true, why did you have me? Why did Peter’s parents have him? Why was it all right for you to have children? Weren’t you worried that I’d be mad?’
Nicholas swallowed hard. God, this was awful. How could he justify his own actions? Seen through Eleanora’s eyes it must seem irresponsible. ‘I did worry, of course I did. But when you were conceived I didn’t know then, not for certain, that William had the illness, too. And later Donald Ramsay reassured me. Your mother and I are not related in any way and he was sure you’d be all right. And he was right, thank God, you are. But believe me, if your mother had been my cousin I don’t think I would have dared to have children. The risk would have been too great.’
‘There you are then.’ Eleanora pounced on his words. ‘You’re not related to Mummy, Peter’s parents are not related, and Peter and I are the sanest two people here. So there is no problem, no problem at all. I can’t think why you are getting into such a terrible state.’
‘But, Eleanora,’ Nicholas desperately tried to hammer the facts home to her. ‘That is the whole point. I’m afraid Peter is right: it is because you are first cousins. Your great, great grandparents were first cousins, also your great grandparents. It was done to keep the estate and monies intact. The more recent Hamilton-Howards have paid a heavy price for their greed, because the illness has occurred with greater frequency.’
Eleanora still refused to listen. ‘A load of rubbish,’ was her obstinate comment.
Peter tried to explain. ‘Listen, darling, if this illness really is hereditary, then your father and my mother still carry the genes, or whatever it is that transmits it from one member of the family to another, and therefore so must we. I don’t agree with your father that marriage is out of the question, but I do think we must take advice before deciding to have children.’ Although terribly shocked, he doggedly remained reasonable, desperately trying to assess the matter carefully, logically. ‘We must go together and talk to a psychiatrist, someone who is an expert in these matters.’
But Eleanora, not possessing the power of reason and logic, always jumping into everything feet first and thinking afterwards, typically flew into a rage, and the word psychiatrist was the last straw. ‘Psychiatrist! Go and see a psychiatrist? You must be mad to even suggest such a thing! Make up your mind, Peter, it’s marriage and children, or nothing. Take me as I am, without going to some damned quack and asking for his stupid advice, or forget all about me.’
‘Eleanora, please.’
‘I mean it, Peter. You’re so damned careful, always weighing up this and that. I really wonder sometimes how you ever dare breathe!’
‘Eleanora!’
‘How many times do I have to tell you? I’ll never agree to see anyone, not anyone. Marriage and kids without a bloody inquisition from some so-called expert!’
‘And what if I don’t agree?’
‘Then you can forget it.’ Leaping up from the settee she raced across to the door and flung it open. ‘I’m going back down to the party to get bloody drunk. What a pity you haven’t yet given me a ring. I’d have loved throwing it back in your face.’
The door banged behind her and the room was silent.
‘It seems you have achieved your objective.’ Peter’s voice was bitter as he turned to Nicholas.
‘It’s for the best. Believe me. I know your own mother and father think the same. You can’t know how thankful we’ve all been that neither you nor Eleanora have suffered from the illness.’ Nicholas tried to sound positive. ‘It’s not the end of the world. You will find someone else. You both will.’
‘There will never be anyone else for me. I love Eleanora, even though sometimes I long to shake some sense into her. I know what she’s just said, but I’m not leaving it there. I am going to seek expert advice, because I’m certainly not prepared to take the opinion of some nineteenth-century physician even if you apparently are.’ He sighed. ‘I’d better go back down to the party, too, although I can’t say I feel much like it now.’
He closed the door softly behind him, in complete contrast to Eleanora’s no
isy exit.
The room was silent, and yet it seemed to Liana that it was filled with little whispered cries, grief, bewilderment, shame, sorrow and then anger.
‘The sins of the fathers,’ said Liana harshly. She felt as if she was suffocating with anger. Always thinking that she had paid with her guilt, now she knew it was not so. It was Nicholas’s guilt, his silence about William which had forfeited the life of James.
An anger built up inside her with such intensity it was frightening. She could feel it flooding over her in bitter recrimination. Three deaths she had suffered and mourned, and now all the pain came back tenfold. But worse, worst of all, was the fact that now she knew the death of James could have been avoided. If only she had known William was mad. Everything she had ever suspected, every word William had ever uttered, every question Nicholas had avoided answering now assumed a blinding significance. James need not have died. She turned on Nicholas. The burning accusation in her voice made him feel sick.
‘You let William come home that Christmas, and yet you knew he was mad. You knew he was dangerous.’
Suddenly, ghastly comprehension split Nicholas’s mind asunder. The death of James had not been an accident. William was involved. Had he drowned James and then drowned himself? Nicholas closed his eyes to shut out the hideous images. Oh, God, what the hell did it matter? James was dead and it was his fault. Now he knew he had lost whatever right he had had to Liana’s love for ever. How she must have suffered. But why, in God’s name, had she kept silent? Was it for his sake? Because William was his brother? Jesus Christ, what a mess. He sank down in the nearest chair, his head between his hands.
‘The doctors said William was better. That it was all right for him to come home,’ he said. ‘And I believed them.’
‘He was mad,’ Liana whispered fiercely. ‘He was mad, mad!’ She stood up and pacing over to the window, stared out with unseeing eyes over the panorama of lights that was London.
A timid knock on the door heralded the entrance of Margaret, Richard and Anne. ‘You’ve told them?’ It was Anne who asked.
‘Yes.’ Nicholas did not raise his head. He was still trying to come to terms with the torment in his mind. What was the connection between the deaths of James and William?
Liana turned towards them briefly, her eyes glittering. ‘I know now what you all knew, what you should have told me that terrible Christmas. William was mad, quite mad.’ She turned back to the window again, her breath coming in ragged gasps.
‘Liana, what are you trying to say?’ Anne spoke, her voice hesitant, fearful.
Wheeling round so violently that she almost fell, Liana stared at them. Stunned and outraged she was also possessed with a terrible, searing anger. She would never, never forgive them. They had all connived to keep the secret. That meant they were all guilty of murdering James.
Well, let them suffer now. Oh, they would never suffer the way she had suffered, but she would make sure they carried the guilt to their graves. Let them know William murdered her son, her only son. She began to cry, then laugh, hysterical now. She was glad, glad, GLAD that she had murdered William, only regretting that it was not possible to commit the same murder over and over again, making it worse each time, making him suffer more each time. William did not deserve a scrap of sympathy, and he would get none, because she had no intention of telling them the manner of his death. Let them think his death was an accident.
‘Yes,’ she said, her voice harsh and brutal. ‘I’ve kept a dreadful secret, too. But I’ll tell you now, now that at last it makes some kind of obscene sense. William murdered my son. He murdered him! Do you understand that? Murdered! He snatched James from me and walked out on to the thin ice, where he deliberately smashed a hole with the boat hook. Then he dropped James in the hole.’ A gasp of horror rippled through the silence of the room. ‘I tried to get James out, and William tried to stop me. We both ended up in the water. You know the rest of the story, or perhaps you’d like a graphic description of the scene, minute by ghastly minute.’
A chilling silence swirled around the assembled company and Liana stood quite still watching the mental carnage taking place before her. Like a spreading pool of blood it seeped into every corner of the room until they choked as the full impact of her words sank in.
‘Oh, my God. Poor little James. Darling, darling James.’ Margaret broke down, sobbing bitterly.
‘Yes, darling, darling James. Who is now six feet under, thanks to your mad murderer of a son.’
Richard Chapman got to his feet, moving awkwardly in his unaccustomed evening dress. ‘Don’t blame Margaret,’ he said firmly, turning to Liana. ‘She thought William was well enough to be home. We all did. No-one could have foreseen such a terrible tragedy, and harsh words can’t change what has happened. Our duty now is to think of those who are living and how best we can help them, your daughter and our son. They are innocent victims of this madness, too.’
Liana did not answer. She felt angry and confused, and could only think of James. But thinking was so hard, thoughts hurt, how they hurt. No, no, I can’t bear it: I don’t want to think! But powerless to stop them the thoughts crowded in just the same. I could have saved James’s life. If only I had acted on my intuition. If only I had trusted myself and not others. Why wasn’t I more careful? It was my fault. I should never have let go of his hand. I should have picked him up and gone back to the house the moment William appeared. Absorbed in her own tormented thoughts, she did not hear the door open quietly and see Peter help Eleanora into the room. From her unsteady gait it was clear she was very much the worse for drink.
‘All the party guests have gone now, thank God,’ said Peter.
Margaret rushed towards her beloved granddaughter, and, taking her hands, sat with her on the settee. Anne and Peter sat the other side, Anne hastily whispering, relaying the cruel truth of the drowning of James and William.
Tears slid down Eleanora’s cheeks. It was all more than she could bear, one hateful thing after another.
‘Liana?’ Richard’s hand was on her shoulder. ‘Please help Eleanora, she needs you.’
But Liana remained silent, incapable of thinking of anything other than the death of James.
‘Don’t you see, she can’t.’ Eleanora began to cry, noisy hiccupping, gut-tearing sobs. ‘She can’t think of anyone except James.’ Pushing aside Margaret’s and Anne’s restraining hands, she went across to her mother. ‘You always loved James more than me, always. Didn’t you?’ Taking her mother’s shoulders in her hands, she shook her. ‘Didn’t you?’ She screamed the last words.
‘Yes I did, I did,’ Liana heard herself screaming back. ‘I always loved him more. In a different way from you.’
Sobbing wildly Eleanora rushed from the room. ‘Go after her,’ said Richard sharply to Nicholas. ‘Calm her down and take her back to her own flat. We’ll talk it through with her in the morning.’ He turned to Liana. ‘Did you have to say that?’ he asked wearily. ‘Have you no thought for the shattering blow life has just dealt her? She cannot marry the man she loves.’
Liana did not answer. She went and sat in the spindly-legged chair by the window and looked out into the darkness of the night. It began to rain. She sat watching the drops slide down the window pane, her eyes dry. Surely there were enough tears already in the world without the sky joining in.
Vaguely aware of the urgent conversations taking place in the room, she sat still and silent, trying to cope with the turmoil in her head. Her heart was dead and cold, yet her mind burned with a fever. James’s death had been preventable, but no-one, not even me, she agonized, did anything to stop its happening.
But you can help your other child. You can save Eleanora, cried her teeming brain. What need is there for her to suffer? You know there is no reason why she should not marry Peter, because she carries not a drop of Hamilton-Howard blood in her veins. This is within your power. Tell the truth and help your daughter.
Liana drew in a sharp breath as the thoug
ht hammered inside her head. The reality of the dilemma facing her momentarily banished thoughts of James. Help Eleanora – but to help meant telling the truth. The stark reality of the choice stared remorsely at her. Tell the truth and wreck her own world as she now knew it, or remain silent and wreck Eleanora’s world.
How important was the love between Peter and Eleanora? Was it that important? Everyone she had ever loved was dead, only Broadacres and her businesses meant anything to her now. Was it important enough to tell the truth and in doing so throw away the only things left for her to care about, Broadacres and wealth. Was it really that important?
Since the death of James the emptiness of her spirit had given Broadacres and the accruing of wealth an even greater meaning than before. Those things were real. They had succeeded in sustaining her when nothing else had. I need Broadacres as much as a drowning man needs a lifebelt. What other reason do I have for living?
Reasoned out like that it seemed simple and clear cut, a black and white decision. So why, then, was her mind frantically scurrying round in circles? Should she give it all up, give up her very existence for Eleanora’s love affair? Yes, yes, of course you must, cried her conscience. Don’t be a fool, don’t act in haste, wait and see, urged the cold logic in her head. Why should you? Why throw away everything for a love affair?
Liana thought of Broadacres, the house standing square and proud amidst the wide green lawns; of spring, when a thousand daffodils rose from the dark earth year after year without fail to lift their yellow trumpets to the pale watery sun; of summer, heavy with the fragrance of roses; of the colours of autumn and the acrid smell of woodsmoke. Broadacres could endure anything, and while she stayed there so could she.
So where was the dilemma? There was not one. Slowly Liana began to make up her mind. She could not risk losing all she had left by telling the truth of Eleanora’s birth.
Inexorably the mental process of tightening the screws of self-justification began. There was no conflict between truth and deceit, because the original deception was now the reality: a fact of life accepted by everyone. It was the way fate had intended it should be. The thought was comforting in a vague, opaque way.
