by Menon, David
But at least Raymond was helping her get over Justin. That really had been traumatic for her. She’d had to break up with him just days before their wedding when she’d woken up one morning and realised that she just didn’t love him anymore. It was the morning after he’d told her his business was about to collapse and that he’d have to declare himself bankrupt, meaning that he’d probably lose his six-bedroom detached with electric gates in Altrincham where Louise had made herself very comfortable. But of course that was just a coincidence and nothing to do with her feelings having changed at all. The girls in the office had seen through it all though. One of them now went out with Justin. She was helping him re-build his life and didn’t care whether or not he owned his own business. She just loved him and wanted to make him happy.
Louise liked to sit at the front desk just inside the window and often came in early to reserve her place. But this morning when she looked up and locked eyes with the man standing on the street looking in, she wished she hadn’t. In a split second she saw him produce his gun and fire it through the window, killing her instantly with a volley of bullets.
EIGHTEEN
The closer Paul got to Gatley Hall, the more nauseous he felt. He’d driven down the A34 out of Manchester city centre many times to go and see his friends Alan and Richard in Cheadle but this time his destination was rather different. He’d finally given in to all the calls and he was on his way to validate his own history, his own bloodline. He was going to see a grandmother he never knew he had, a woman who was nothing more than an evil criminal. He was still fielding calls from the press who’d tried to interview him at work and who’d turned up outside his house at all hours. It was starting to become a nightmare, especially once they had broken the story about how his grandmother and her Nazi boyfriend weren’t going to answer for their crimes.
When he got to the Hall he looked up at an edifice to everything he hated about the class system. There was even a fucking Union Jack flying above the front door. He wasn’t against that per se but he detested the way the flag had been hijacked by the far right and it was such hypocrisy for his grandmother to fly it considering everything she’d done against the country. He took a deep breath. He could hear his bowels. They were angry. But then he told himself off. He had nothing to be ashamed of. Those who should be ashamed were already inside this glorified prison.
He was greeted at the door by a member of his grandmother’s staff and led through to where she was waiting for him.
‘Well now,’ said Eleanor as she looked him up and down, ‘here you are then. You finally responded to my calls.’
Paul took a deep breath. It made his skin crawl to think that he was related to this woman who wouldn’t know shame if her life depended on it.
‘I didn’t want to but my father brought me up to show due respect.’
‘Then he brought you up well.’
‘You should be grateful to him.’
‘Yes, well, we have important matters to discuss but firstly, I had my staff prepare us some drinks,’ said Eleanor, waving her hand across the tray of drinks on the table in front of her. ‘I understand you’re partial to a gin and tonic?’
This was weird, thought Paul. She was his grandmother but she was also an unreconstructed fascist who harbours Nazi war criminals. She was a woman who’d screwed up the lives of his mother, his father, and himself. He hadn’t known quite what to expect but apart from her frailty, what struck Paul was the menace in her eyes. They were the coldest and most disturbing pair of eyes he’d ever seen.
‘Do you think I’ve come here to talk about good times over a drink?’
‘Oh God, you’re going to be tiresome,’ said Eleanor, ‘your mother was the same.’
‘I buried my mother yesterday.’
‘Well you had good weather for it.’
‘You didn’t bother to turn up to your own daughter’s funeral!’
‘I had other things to do.’
‘That was more important? I don’t think so’
‘Look, having a conscience has never been one of my failings, Paul,’ said Eleanor.
‘Never a truer word spoken,’ Paul spat back.
‘Alright,’ said Eleanor. ‘If that’s how you want it. Look Paul, when it came to your mother, I neglected her when she was a child. I was selfish and I saw her as an irritating distraction from whatever I wanted to do. She and Ronald took to each other even though of course he wasn’t her father. But I let them get on with it. There was nothing in it for me in playing happy families.’
‘My God, it’s true what they say. You really are heartless.’
‘Then when she was grown up and we might’ve had things to talk about, it was too late. We didn’t know each other and we didn’t like each other. When she met your father I could see how happy and in love she was but I didn’t believe in love across the social classes and I still don’t.’
‘So you were happy to use someone of the lower classes to further your cause of fascism but your daughter mustn’t marry him?’
‘Your way of putting it.’
‘You destroyed my parents’ happiness and my chances of growing up with my own family!’
‘Oh for heaven’s sake, stop being so dramatic.’
‘You let an innocent man hang for a murder you’d committed,’ said Paul.
Eleanor paused. ‘Wilfred Jenkins… if there’d been a scandal then it would’ve destroyed any chance I had of facilitating a deal with Hitler to bring an end to the war.’
‘But you’d have done that without any regard at all for the Poles, the Belgians, the Dutch, the French, the Norwegians. I’ve read all about how the British aristocracy wanted Chamberlain to sell out the continent to protect the empire.’
‘Paul, there was a war on and people did what they thought they had to do.’
‘To protect your own wealth!’ Paul charged. ‘You were prepared to sacrifice everyone on the continent for that. Then there’s the murder of six million Jews, gypsies and homosexuals in the camps. Did you not consider their suffering at all?’
Eleanor raised her eyes to the Heavens as if she was so irritated by the triviality of these stupid questions. ‘Oh the Jews, the Jews, the Jews, when will they ever shut up. Look, when they knew what was happening, and they knew in the early thirties what would surely come, they should’ve just left Germany and gone to America or some other such place.’
‘So it’s all their fault for not having up rooted themselves?’ asked an astonished Paul. ‘The Reich wanted to eliminate a whole ethnicity. How could you not be disgusted by that measure of evil?’
‘The Jews were responsible for the murder of our Lord Jesus! They finally got what had been coming to them for centuries.’
‘So you really think that Jesus himself would’ve approved of that? The Nazi’s systematically murdered nearly six million of them’
‘Look, Germany worked under the Reich,’ Eleanor asserted. ‘Hitler may have got a little too expansionist towards the end which was ultimately his downfall but I cannot say that I didn’t admire the way he led his country. The Queen herself supported us all in our endeavours to protect our trade routes with the empire’
‘The Royal family sent their own cousins to their Bolshevik executioners when they refused to give sanctuary to Tsar Nicolas and his family,’ said Paul ‘It doesn’t surprise me to have it confirmed how selfish they’ve always been. The British people should’ve had more guts. We should’ve had our own revolution.’
‘That’s your point of view I suppose,’ said Eleanor, flatly.
‘You and I may as well be at opposite ends of the universe.’
‘Don’t you think you can ever make peace with who you are?’ asked Eleanor in a quieter voice that nevertheless made Paul take notice.
‘Oh I’ve made peace with it,’ said Paul, looking straight at her. ‘In memory of my mother whose life you destroyed. But are you going to make peace whilst you’ve still got time?’
She looked at
him sharply. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The location of where all those poor girls are being held?’
Eleanor looked up at the heavens and laughed. ‘So you’re just a stooge for all those idiots who call themselves police officers.’
‘There are teenage girls who’re missing and you must know where they are!’
Eleanor stared into him like a drill going into metal. ‘I tell you I don’t know!’
‘Nonsense! What has happened to those girls? Who are these pervert friends of yours who’ve been abusing them?’
‘You don’t demand things from me!’
Paul was exasperated. ‘Do the right thing for once in your life!’
‘Aren’t you going to even try to understand me, Paul?’
‘Understand? You bought children and gave them over to the Lebensraum programme. You did it for four years and God knows what happened to all those children. Don’t you feel any shame?’
‘No,’ said Eleanor, flatly. ‘I don’t because I did it for the Reich.’
‘And you know where these missing girls are today, don’t you? This could be your last chance to do the decent thing and let the police know. So if you want to do something that will go some way towards some kind of redemption, and God knows you damn well need it, then tell the police where these girls are.’
‘Paul, I really don’t know,’ said Eleanor. ‘I like making money and I like the criminal mind. I put the two together as one last throw of the dice.’
‘That’s all you’ve got to say for yourself?’
‘Don’t you dare stand there and judge me!’ Eleanor thundered.
‘Judge you? I don’t need to judge you. The evidence is all there and it’s conclusive.’
‘That’s enough!’ Dieter demanded as he came into the room. ‘I will not let you speak to your grandmother in this fashion!’
‘Well here he is,’ said Paul. ‘The other side of this farce. So what are you going to do if I don’t stop? Because if I could get away with it I’d kill you right now and I’d have the souls of all those in that Polish village cheering me on. But that would be too easy. You need to know what it means to suffer.’
Dieter laughed sardonically before sitting down next to Eleanor who still wanted Paul to try and understand her actions.
‘Paul, Dieter and I are children of the Reich,’ said Eleanor.
‘You’re making a point of some kind?’
‘All those years ago we were sorting out the Jewish problem and if we’d been victorious then there would never have been a 9/11 because we’d have sorted out the Muslims before they could’ve done us any harm too,’ said Dieter. ‘Germany and the Reich would’ve built a Europe based on our Aryan values, free from all forms of human imperfection.’
‘I can almost feel hell freezing over as you say that.’
‘White, Christian, Heterosexual, and ruled from Berlin,’ said Eleanor, firmly.
‘You’re absolutely insane.’
‘Paul, I said that’s enough!’ Dieter demanded.
‘What about the watch?’ asked Paul. ‘It was stolen, wasn’t it?’
‘It was taken from the undeserving,’ said Eleanor.
‘It was taken from a Jewish family before they were murdered,’ said Paul. ‘Well I know a member of that family who survived and I’m going to make sure he gets it back.’
Eleanor smirked. ‘If you want to play the boy scout.’
‘Why not? Are you scared I might implicate your royal friends in the theft? After all, it was one of theirs who gave it to you, wasn’t it?’
‘I don’t answer questions I don’t care for.’
‘Paul, can’t we just sit down and talk?’ said Dieter. ‘Wouldn’t you prefer that?’
‘What shall we talk about? The weather? Murdering people?’
‘That’s enough, Paul,’ said Dieter. ‘I’ve warned you already.’
‘Oh no, I haven’t even started yet!’ Paul shot back. ‘You both make my skin crawl.’
‘I told you before that’s enough, Paul,’ said Dieter, sternly.
‘This is pointless,’ said Paul. ‘I don’t like you and you don’t like me. There’s no use in us continuing this fascinating exchange. I’m going home.’
‘You already are home,’ said Eleanor.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Well I told you we had important matters to discuss. I’ve signed everything over to you, Paul. The money, this Hall, the title. It’s all yours.’
Paul didn’t quite know how to react. He’d suspected that she’d pull some kind of stunt. He’d had a few days to get his head around what his destiny had in store for him but he hadn’t expected it to be this death of the witch’s death.
‘Why now?’
Eleanor took hold of Dieter’s hand. ‘Our time is done,’ said Eleanor. ‘Dieter and I will not be around to see you fill this place with whatever it is you want. We still have our love after all these years and now that’s all that matters.’
‘You mean that I can do what I want?’
‘You are now the Earl of Gatley and a very wealthy young man,’ said Eleanor. ‘I know you don’t value such historical traditions but it’s your time. Dieter and I have been let down and betrayed…’
‘…you’ve done some terrible things. For people like you to feel the pain of betrayal is beyond all reason.’
‘That’s your view,’ said Eleanor, ‘but we wish to wash our hands of everything and just be together.’
‘You don’t deserve it’
‘That’s also your view.’
‘And what’s your view, Mr. War Criminal? Or do you always let the woman do the talking?’
‘At least I know what it is to be a man with a woman.’
Paul threw his head back and laughed. ‘Is that the best you can do?’
‘Don’t be too smug,’ said Dieter.
‘Well now,’ said Paul as the most wonderful idea dropped into his head. ‘I can be as smug as I like in my own house.’ He turned to his grandmother. ‘Now will you tell me where those missing teenage girls are or not?’
‘You’ve already asked me that and my answer is still the same.’
‘Very well,’ said Paul. ‘I want you both to pack your bags and leave here tomorrow.’
‘You can’t mean that,’ said Eleanor.
‘Oh I do mean it.’
‘But this has been my home all my life,’ Eleanor protested.
‘Which you’ve now signed over to me,’ said Paul. ‘And I owe you nothing. I would never give any of my heart and soul to a fascist.’
‘Mind your tongue,’ said Eleanor, her words spitting out of her mouth like the venom of a snake. ‘Your own father was a fascist.’
‘Yes but he gave it all up for the woman he loved,’ said Paul. ‘Just like your friend the traitor King who gave up the British throne for a woman he loved.’
‘Edward was a true patriot!’
‘He barely disguised his admiration for fascism! He’d have delivered the British people to Hitler if he’d had the chance. He was a traitor and so were you.’
‘I’m all you have!’ said Eleanor.
‘By blood,’ said Paul, ‘but not by character and my friends mean more to me than you ever will.’ He then turned to Dieter. ‘You’ve still got your house in Glossop. I suggest you go there first thing.’
‘You can’t throw us out, Paul,’ Eleanor pleaded, ‘we’re family.’
‘Oh don’t play the family card with me! You destroyed my family. I’ll be back first thing and if you’re not gone I’ll throw you both out myself.’
‘But Paul, how can you be so cold?’
Paul fixed her firmly in the eye.
‘It must be in the blood.’
*
The next morning Paul was woken by a call from John Carpenter, his grandmother’s lawyer. He said he had some sad news. He was sorry to have to inform him that his grandmother and Dieter Naumann were both dead. They’d committed suicide.
‘Well, well, well,’ said Paul to himself after he’d ended the call, ‘so they’ve had the last fucking laugh.’
Kelly and Lydia went down to Gatley Hall with Paul. He’d made his peace with his two best friends and he was so glad of that now.
‘It must be hard to take it all in,’ said Lydia as they wandered through the Hall.
‘In a way,’ said Paul.
‘You seem to be taking it in your stride,’ said Kelly. ‘I don’t think I would be.’
‘Well my Dad sort of prepared me for something like this in his letter,’ said Paul, holding back the tears as he thought of his father. ‘I don’t think I quite expected it to be done in the way it was, but then I was dealing with a wicked old witch. However she’s gone now and I’ve got a responsibility to this estate and to all the people who work here. I’ve just got to get on with it.’
‘So how did they do it?’ Kelly asked.
‘They each took a cyanide pill,’ said Paul who was beginning to feel exhausted with everything that had happened. ‘I might’ve known. That was the classic Nazi method of doing away with yourself. They even made their own children do it in Hitler’s bunker in Berlin during those final hours of the Reich when the Russians were closing in.’
