by Pat Herbert
“Probably just wants to be there to show off. I saw her looking at a Freeman’s catalogue the other day. At the dresses,” he said. “And the hats,” he added.
“Every woman wants to do herself proud at a wedding,” said Faith. “Give her a break, love.”
Albert shrugged. “And the shoes,” was all he said.
Faith laughed again. “You’re not prepared to give her an inch, are you?”
“No, I don’t think I am. But if Dad wants her at our wedding, I won’t stop her. But…” He paused and looked sad.
“What is it, love?”
He looked at her and marvelled yet again at her innocent beauty. He could never see Faith leaving her baby, never in a million years.
“Dad might not even make it to the wedding,” he said finally.
“Oh, love, why d’you say that? He didn’t seem too bad when I last saw him. Bad cough, but that’s all.”
“It’s more serious than that,” said Albert. “Sonia says she doesn’t think he’ll last much longer.”
“She’s not a doctor,” Faith pointed out. “What does she know?”
“No, but the doctor agrees with her. He saw Dad this morning and said he’d look in tonight. I think I’d better get home.”
They were embracing as he said this, and he kissed her gently on the lips. “If it wasn’t for you, I’d be in a right state,” he said. “You’re everything to me.”
“And you’re everything to me, darling,” she replied, returning his kiss.
“Poor Dad,” he said, a faraway look in his eyes, as he still clung to her. “He’s not been lucky with his women. First, his mother deserts him, then his wife. And then there’s his adoptive mother…”
“Your other grandmother, you mean?”
“Yes,” he said. “But she died before I was born, so I never knew her. Dad didn’t seem to like her much, either. She’d obviously done something to get in his bad books.”
“Didn’t you ever ask him?”
“I tried a few times, but he always cut me dead.”
“So, there’s still a secret between you, then?”
He thought for a moment. “Yes, I suppose there is. He’s always been good at keeping secrets, has Dad.” He grinned ruefully.
When Albert got home, he found Sonia waiting anxiously for him.
“The doctor’s just been,” she told him. “It’s not good news. He says he probably won’t last the night.”
Albert felt his stomach sink to his bowels. He knew his father was dying, but he wasn’t expecting him to go quite yet.
“Is he – is he conscious?”
“Yes, he’s asking for you. He seems anxious to tell you something. I suggested he tell me, and I’d pass it on to you when you returned from your jaunt.”
Her sarcastic tone grated on him. How dare she accuse him of having fun and not caring that his father was dying? She of all people! He glared at her.
“I only went to the pictures,” he said through gritted teeth. “He seemed perky enough before I left.”
She looked down at her feet. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “It’s just that I was worried you wouldn’t be back in time.”
Oh no, you weren’t, you bitch, he thought but didn’t say. The more he knew of Sonia Williams, the more he disliked her. He’d even begun to think he’d had a lucky escape not to be brought up by her. If she had been there, he might have grown to be as hard-nosed and selfish as she was.
He turned and walked out of the room and up the stairs. The door to his father’s bedroom was standing ajar and he pushed it open silently. Ernest was propped up on several pillows, staring into space. As Albert approached the bed, his father’s glassy eyes seemed to refocus, and then he smiled.
“Hello, Albert,” he said. “Did you have a nice time at the flicks?”
“Yes, thanks, Dad. Faith sends her love. She’ll come for a visit tomorrow.”
The old man still smiled, but it was tinged with sadness now. “I don’t think I’ll be here tomorrow, lad,” he said.
“Oh, Dad, don’t say that! You’ve got to be at my wedding.”
“You – you’ll let your mother be there, won’t you?”
“If that’s what you want, Dad; of course, I will.”
Albert sat down beside the bed and took hold of his father’s quivering hand. It felt cold and clammy.
“Sonia said you wanted to see me,” he said, choking back the urge to sob at the sight of this dear old man who had loved him so well all his life. He had never repaid him for all the privation he had suffered on his account to keep him fed and clothed. And now he never would.
“I – I need to tell you something,” the old man began. “I swore I’d tell you before I died. The reason – ” He swallowed. “The reason I called myself Williams and not Downing when my adoptive mother died.”
“Yes? Why? I always wanted to know.”
“She – she told me something on her deathbed, something that I’ve had to deal with all my life since.”
Albert didn’t speak but waited patiently for him to continue.
“She – she gave me a letter – it was a confession,” said Ernest.
“A confession?”
“A confession to the murder of my real mother.”
Albert suddenly thought of Hal Latimer. If this was true, then his grandfather didn’t kill Olivia. All this time his father had known this.
“Where – where is the letter, Dad?”
“I – don’t know. I’ve looked for it and looked for it over the years. I just don’t know where it is. I – I only know I didn’t throw it away…”
“Do you remember where you last saw it?”
“I don’t – but not for many years. Not since you were small.”
So, the proof was lost. Without proof of what his father was saying, Hal couldn’t go to the police. The word of a dying man wouldn’t be enough. He could be lying for all they knew.
The next hour was spent listening to his father piece together the story his adoptive mother had told him. It took a long time, as Ernest had to keep breaking off to cough and drink water. But, eventually, it was told.
It seemed that Hannah Downing adopted Ernest when he was a few months old. She had no children of her own, but her husband Humphrey had sired an illegitimate child and, when the mother left it at the orphanage, she and her husband, being the child’s natural father, rescued it and brought it up as their own. It had been an idyllic childhood, Ernest said, and he had been well loved by both Hannah and Humphrey.
The death of Ernest’s mother at the fair hadn’t impinged on his early life, having been kept in ignorance of what had happened. He hadn’t been aware that Hannah wasn’t his real mother until he was much older when he was told the whole story. He had been even more grateful to Hannah then and glad that at least his father was his real one. He was lucky, he said. He had felt special, and he’d had no complaints.
It was at the same time as he was told of his adoption that Hannah had told him about how her brother had been hanged for pushing his real mother off the Big Wheel. That had been a shock, but he had felt too removed to be really affected by it. He was more upset by his father’s death, which also occurred around the same time. He must have been in his mid-teens then, he had told Albert.
Life had gone on quite nicely after that and, in that time, he had grown ever closer to his adoptive mother, thrown together in their grief at losing their husband and father respectively. It was all the more tragic, therefore, when he discovered the truth about his mother’s death. The truth that he couldn’t tell anyone, not while he lived. The woman he had loved all his life had been responsible for the death of his real mother. The letter she had given him told him everything.
“You can take it to the police,” Hannah had told him with her dying breath. “Let them know it was me, not my brother, who’d pushed your mother from the Wheel. I had to wipe the smirk off her face somehow.”
She had wanted to ac
cept responsibility, face the consequences of what she’d done, Hannah had assured Ernest. But her brother, Richard Latimer, who had been with her on the Wheel, told her she mustn’t. She had to live in order to care for the child, Olivia’s child. He had confessed to her the day before he was hanged that he had been obsessed by Olivia. That was why he was prepared to die even though it meant leaving his own wife and son. It had all been an unholy mess.
Albert emerged from his father’s room some while later ashen-faced and visibly shaking. Sonia was waiting outside the door and immediately started to ask him what was wrong.
“My father’s dead, that’s what’s wrong,” he snapped.
She gave a cry and ran into the room, closing the door.
What has she got to grieve about, he wondered. She hadn’t cared two straws for his father when he was alive.
It was some time later, after the doctor had been and signed the death certificate, that Albert could even bear to speak to her. His words were cruel, but he didn’t care. She meant nothing to him; less than nothing.
“I want you to leave my house,” he said, his eyes dry and icy. He wanted to cry for his father, but he couldn’t do that until this woman was out of his house and his life. He wasn’t going to give way in front of her, risk having her arms around him.
“You – you don’t mean it,” Sonia protested. “You’ll need me to help with all the arrangements… Please.”
“I can manage, and my fiancée will help me. I don’t need you – not now – not ever!”
She sighed. “I know you don’t, and I don’t blame you. Is it all right if I go in the morning?”
Albert, a little taken back by her easy acquiescence, felt obliged to backtrack. “Of course. I mean there’s no immediate hurry. Do you have somewhere else to go?”
Sonia Williams had kept on her rooms in Balham, but she decided not to tell him that. “No, but I’ll find somewhere, don’t worry.”
Oh God, he thought. Was he being too hard on her? He could hear Faith saying just that.
“Look, stay until you find somewhere,” he said, every fibre of his being railing against the idea. “I don’t want you walking the streets.”
Sonia was well aware she had the upper hand now. “It’s all right. I’ll pack and go tomorrow. You won’t have to ever see me again.” Then she put on a pout which had, in the past, caused many a man to melt. “But may I still come to your wedding? I’ll just sit right at the back you won’t even know I’m there.”
“It was Dad’s last wish,” he said. “I told him you could be there.”
“Thank you, Albert,” she said meekly.
Don’t thank me, he thought, thank poor Dad, you rotten cow.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
July 1959
True to her word, Sonia began to pack up her belongings the next morning. Albert, on his way to a burst pipe, heard her moving about in her room. She was up early and would probably be gone before he got home that evening. He supposed he’d better say goodbye to her and, he thought spitefully, make sure she wasn’t making off with the ‘family silver’.
He knocked on her bedroom door, and she answered straight away. “Come in, Albert.”
She had various items laid out on the bed and was packing them methodically into her suitcase.
“I didn’t expect you to be going as early as this,” he said. “At least stay and have some breakfast.”
“I had a cup of coffee earlier,” she replied. “I don’t usually eat breakfast.”
“What’s that letter?” he asked suddenly, seeing an envelope addressed ‘Ernest’ on the bed amongst several other documents.
“Oh, n-nothing,” she said hastily. “I’d written to your father why I didn’t come home that time. It was years ago. I never posted it.”
“And you kept it all this time?”
Albert was puzzled. He wanted to read it more than anything, just to see if there was a glimmer of humanity in the words the woman had written to his beloved late father.
She shrugged. “I didn’t know I still had it,” she said. “I’ve always been a bit of a hoarder.”
“And what’s that?” Albert spied another envelope, also addressed ‘Ernest’ as she removed some papers from the pile.
“Goodness me,” she said. “I’ve no idea what that is. That’s not my writing.”
Albert picked it up. It crackled at his touch. The envelope was tinged with brown. “It must be very old,” he observed.
“Must be a love letter,” she said snidely. “I bet your father had a woman somewhere. I wasn’t the only one to stray, it seems.”
“Dad would never have looked at another woman,” cried Albert. “He loved you and only you – God knows why.”
“Why don’t you open it and see for yourself?”
Albert was reluctant. “It’s addressed to Dad.”
“But he isn’t going to read it now, is he?” She finished packing and snapped shut the lid of her case. “Oh, wait a minute,” she said suddenly. “I’m beginning to remember now.”
“Remember?”
“Yes. Ernest was always leaving things lying about. It drove me mad. I couldn’t stand the way he always put correspondence, bills and that, behind the mantelpiece clock. They looked so untidy. I was always clearing them away and putting them in drawers.”
“So?”
“Well, I was probably dusting one day and cleared away this letter. I must have put it in my apron pocket for the time being.”
“Do you mean it’s been in there all this time?”
“No, of course not. Yes, I do remember now. I put it with my own things to read later. You see, I thought it was from a woman.”
“Dad would never have left it where you could find it if that were the case,” Albert pointed out.
“Oh, wouldn’t he? He probably left it out on purpose for me to read. To make me jealous.”
Albert wanted to hit her for denigrating his father in that way. “You – you – ”
“Go on, say it – you bitch! That’s what you’ve wanted to say to me, isn’t it? But I tell you this; until you’ve been in love – really in love – you won’t know how I really feel. I couldn’t help myself, Albert. I loved Jimbo so much. I put up with so much from him. I didn’t want to hurt your father – or you – but the emotion I felt for that man was too strong. Still, I don’t expect you to understand.”
Albert didn’t speak. No, he didn’t understand, but this was the first time he’d seen Sonia show some genuine feelings.
“Anyway, I’ll be going now.” She paused. “I’ll be at the funeral, of course,” she stated. “And at the wedding – if you can bear to.”
He simply nodded, unable to think of a way to refuse.
She picked up her case and prepared to move past him.
“Can I at least give you a lift?”
“Thank you. Can you take me to the tube station?”
It wasn’t until lunchtime that Albert remembered the letter. He had put it in the pocket of his dungarees. Taking it out, as he sat in Fred’s café with his egg and chips, he studied the writing on the envelope. So, this was his father’s fancy woman, was it? He still couldn’t believe his father would have been unfaithful. He’d known him through and through; he had always been as straight as a dye. He’d often received lectures from him on how to treat women with respect and honesty. He couldn’t bear to discover that his father was a hypocrite.
But, when he opened the letter, what he did discover was better than he could ever have hoped for. It was from his grandmother by adoption, Hannah Downing. The missing letter; the missing piece of the jigsaw.
Dear darling Ernest,
I am writing this in anticipation of my approaching death. Please try to understand I am not writing this to make you sad, but to let you know the truth, the truth I have had to hide all these years. The truth you have a right to know. It was I, not your Uncle Richard, who killed your real mother, Olivi
a.
We were on the Big Wheel and we were sitting in the passenger car behind the one in which Olivia sat. We’d followed her that day, the day she had left you at the orphanage. We were both so angry that she could think of enjoying herself when she had just abandoned her baby. Your uncle was even angrier than me. When she turned her head and looked at us, I saw the triumph on her face, as if she knew she had got the better of us. It drove me wild.
You may say I should have been grateful to her for giving us you, but I couldn’t think of that then. Besides, I had already offered to take you off her hands before you were born, and she had refused point blank. It seemed she would rather have abandoned you to some stranger, or to live a miserable existence in an orphanage than let you come and live in comfort with me and your real father. That’s what made me do it.
I didn’t mean to kill her, you must believe that. I just wanted to scratch her eyes out. She had the most incredible green eyes, Ernest, but they looked almost mad that afternoon. She was gloating, basking in the admiring glances of the men all around her. It was too much for me. I stood up and reached over to her. She stood up, and we started to struggle. Your uncle tried to intervene, but I was too angry to stop. Then, I don’t know how it happened, but suddenly she was gone.
I must have accidentally pushed her over the edge of the car, or maybe she had lost her footing and fallen. I don’t know. Eyewitnesses saw only that she had been pushed. They couldn’t agree, however, who had done the pushing, but in the end the police settled on Richard. I couldn’t bear that he should take the blame, but he refused to let me confess. He said his love for Olivia had been too strong and he didn’t really care what happened to him now that she was dead. He insisted that I live on and look after you, my darling son, and so I did.
I’ve written all this for you to do with as you will when I am gone. I would like your uncle to be exonerated, but I leave that up to you. All this doesn’t alter my love for you, Ernest, and I fervently hope and pray it doesn’t alter your love for me.
I also hope that someday you will forgive me even if you can’t yet, for you have meant everything to me, my darling son. I sign myself below, in order that, if you take this to the police, they will be sure it is genuine.
