by Terry Tyler
I’d grown up in a different time from my father. I wasn’t the wife of someone who owned a huge company, I owned it myself. I would be the matriarch of the continued line of the family, not the little wifey of the patriarch.
I would explain all this to Robert, but not now. Now, I just wanted to be quiet and enjoy the wonder of what was in front of me.
It wasn’t autumn, it was the first day of spring.
So I kept quiet about it at work, and just walked around with a secret smile on my face all the time, as did Robert. My first scan showed little Harry breathing away (a marvellous moment!) which was when Robert wanted to tell the Robsarts and his own family, but I still said no, not until I was given the nod from the professionals that indeed he was Harry and not Mabel, which was the name Robert wanted for a daughter. Mabel was what Jim had wanted to call him if he’d been a girl, after his own mother. I just humoured him, because I knew that although Mabel might exist at some point in the future, now was not her time. On the tenth of December, my second scan gave me the confirmation I needed.
Harry Lanchester lived and breathed.
I was not the last child. There would be hundreds and hundreds of us, going on and on for centuries.
“Hello, Henry Jasper James Dudley!” Robert said, as we looked at the monitor, and I squeezed his hand and kept my mouth shut.
I told Isabella first. I felt it was the right thing to do, after all she had suffered. I hoped she would feel some joy at the thought of having a nephew, too.
I wanted to drive to Framlingham on my own, but Robert wouldn’t hear of it and neither would Hannah, so she and I went; I didn’t think it would be very tactful of me to take Robert. Isabella was still very rocky, and I thought that parading my pregnant self in front of her, together with my loving and supportive man, might be a bit much.
“Especially as your loving and supportive man is a Dudley,” Hannah said, and that actually made us both laugh, dreadful though it sounds.
“I know, I know, I could hardly have chosen anyone worse, could I?”
We got there late in the morning on the Sunday after the scan; Hannah didn’t want to drive back when the light was fading because she feared her eyesight was, too. She was in charge, you see. Robert had developed an irritating habit of treating me as if I was made of finest porcelain, which extended to not allowing me behind a steering wheel if he could help it. On that day I decided not to argue with him.
Cathy’s cottage was warm, welcoming and homely, but I felt depressed as soon as I walked into it. I would see my sister in the situation she’d dreaded, and one she might be in for some time. She went back and forth to the doctor and was on strong medication, with a self-sufficient future still uncertain.
Everywhere there was evidence of Cathy’s religious faith. The silver crucifix on the mantelpiece, the reproduction of The Last Supper on the wall, Psalm 23 on the back of the kitchen door. Cathy left to deliver some church pamphlets as soon as she’d greeted us and provided a pot of tea and a plate of ham sandwiches. Isabella spoke little until she’d left.
“I don’t need to ask you what it is you want to tell me.” She gestured at my stomach and shifted position in her chair. I blushed; I’d worn a loose top, not wanting to draw attention to my condition until I’d sussed out which way the land lay.
“I didn’t think it was that obvious yet.”
“Well, it is. That voluminous shirt is an immediate giveaway. Who’s the father?”
She looked thin, and more like forty-eight than thirty-eight; I suppose that’s what extreme distress and mental illness does to you. Her hair was scraped back into a knot, without ornamentation, and she wore a tight black polo-necked jumper, black ski pants and no make-up. It was actually quite a cool look, kind of sixties and Warhol arty beatnik, but I am sure that wasn’t intentional.
“Robert Dudley.”
She bit at her fingernails, which were short and chewed enough already. “Figures. So, is he marrying you?”
I went to speak, but Hannah took over. “They’re thinking about all that sort of thing later,” she said, “Erin’s been busy deciding how she’s going deal with more pressing matters, like the running of the company.”
“I bet Jim’s chuffed,” Izzy said. “At last, the Dudleys and the Lanchesters join hands. Or has he run off with one of his tarts?”
So she didn’t know about Jim. There had never been a reason to tell her while she was going through her mental collapse. I knew Will Brandon still saw her from time to time, but I daresay he’d considered such information irrelevant, as indeed it was, to her.
“Jim’s not well,” I said, and decided to leave it at that.
“Drop off, did it?” she said, with a hint of a wry smile, and sipped at her tea.
“He’s got Alzheimer’s,” Hannah said.
“Ha!” She actually laughed. I couldn’t believe it.
“Well, you know the big news now,” said Hannah, breezily, “and I have absolutely none, as usual, so how are you?”
Izzy shrugged her shoulders. Actually, she shrugged her face, too, if you can imagine what I mean. “I take my medication, I talk to doctors and psychiatrists, I go to a day centre where I’m monitored for God knows what. Sometimes they think I’m okay, sometimes they give me and each other worried looks. I go to church with Mum, and I sleep a lot. I take walks. That’s the best bit of my life. Being in the countryside without having anyone keeping an eye on me.”
“You look well,” I said.
“No I don’t, I look bloody awful,” she said. “I’m not surprised Phil left me.”
I saw her properly for the first time, then. She might have got over her meltdown, but she’d gone back to being the unhappy person she was before she met Phil, except that now it was worse, because her heart’s desire had betrayed her.
I thought of how happy she was when she thought he loved her. All that bitterness was gone.
“Yes, well, he’s in the past now, thank goodness,” Hannah said.
“Best place for him,” I muttered.
Izzy laughed. “People always say that, don’t they? You’re better off without him, they spout. How the hell do they know? What’s better about sleeping alone every night and never having anyone to love you, and knowing you’ll be alone forever?” She banged her cup and saucer down on the table. “What’s better about aching with loss and missing the person you love, every minute of every day? Just because you’re living an uneventful, quiet life, why do they always presume it’s better? At least when I had Phil I was happy some of the time. At least I was alive!”
Her hands were shaking as she covered her face with them. Poor, poor thing. I went over to her and put my arms around her. “I’m so sorry, Izzy,” I said. “I’m sorry you’re so unhappy. I wish I could make it better for you.”
She patted me on the back, as if she was consoling me rather than the other way round.
“I’m okay,” she said, and I pulled back from her. “I just live with it.”
“I understand,” said Hannah. “It’s surprising what you can live with, isn’t it, if you have to.” I was surprised; I turned to look at her. “You’re still young, though,” she said. “There may be someone else for you, one day, if you’re open to it.”
“There’s no one else for me,” Izzy said. “He was the person I was waiting for all my life, and now he’s gone.”
“Mm-mm,” Hannah said. “Okay, you may not find a man you love as much as Phil, but it’s possible that you could find another sort of happiness with someone else; something that’s just good, in a quiet sort of way, rather than all consuming.”
“If you say so.” She looked at me. “Have you heard from him?”
I hated having to tell her the truth. “Since he left the cottage and the company, no one has. He’s just disappeared. Maybe he’s gone back to Rotterdam.” I remembered Robert’s jokes about Maartje Van der Clogs of Land Reclamation Cottages. “Or back to Spain. Has Jane not seen him?”
“
No. I thought he’d be in touch about a divorce, if only to get his hands on some of my money,” she said, and I knew by the disappointed tone of her voice that she would have welcomed even that, simply for the contact with him.
Bloody hell, I’m so glad my psychological make-up hasn’t made me reliant on a man for my happiness. However much I love Robert, if he left me I’d pick myself up, get on with everything I have to do and get over it. I’d never allow myself to be destroyed by someone.
I tried to talk to her about the company but she didn’t even pretend to be interested. Then Hannah told some anecdotes about epic nanny fails at Heaven Sent, and they at least amused her; sad to say, she’d always enjoyed others’ misfortune. Just as I was beginning to wonder whether or not to talk about my condition, Cathy came back and the atmosphere became even more stilted. I felt such sympathy for them both, but I couldn’t wait to get out of there. I wished I could take Izzy somewhere fun and sunny and make her better.
Last time someone did that for her, she came back with Philip Castillo.
Cathy wished me well with my pregnancy and the company, and said she would pray for me, my baby, my father and my brother. She gave me another motherly hug at the door, and still smelt of musty churches. I tried to hug Izzy but she stepped back and folded her arms.
“Good luck,” she said. “You’ll need it—especially now that everyone will know you were sleeping with Robert all the time he was married to that girl, instead of just suspecting it. So, did he have her bumped off, or just drive her to suicide?”
Open-mouthed, I started to say something in my defence, but she walked back into the living room and shut the door behind her. Hard.
“I’m sorry,” said Cathy. “Everything is very hard for Isabella at the moment.”
“Please tell her I wasn’t having an affair with Robert.” I could feel the pleading look on my face. “I wasn’t.” I so badly wanted my sister to believe that. “And Amy’s death was an accident, everyone knows that now.”
“I don’t have much influence on her opinions, I’m afraid, Erin,” Cathy said, and her shutters came down, too.
Of course. Like mother, like daughter. Whatever she said, I was being punished for my mother’s actions, still, after nearly thirty years.
I brooded over this on the way home.
“You’ll just have to accept it,” Hannah said. “They’ll never think of you any differently, not after all this time.” She handed me a tin of travel sweets, and laughed. “Still, it’s more fun to be thought of as a scarlet woman than as a sad old spinster who eats too many cakes, like me. I have absolutely no sympathy!”
Robert went to see the Robsarts that weekend, too. He said it was a difficult meeting; they were full of quiet disapproval, as I’d predicted.
“Phyllis said what a shame it was that Amy never gave them a grandchild, in a voice loaded with accusation,” he told me, over a stiff drink that night. “They knew she’d been trying to get pregnant since our second wedding anniversary, i.e. for ten months. Looks a bit fishy that you got pregnant without trying, within a few months of Amy’s death.”
“I know it’s hell for them, but it’s not your fault if she wasn’t very fertile,” I said.
“I’ll never know if she was or not,” he said. “I avoided having sex with her because I was afraid of her getting pregnant. Oh, shit, Erin, I don’t know if I’m ever going wake up without feeling as though I ruined their lives, along with hers. Because I did, didn’t I?”
That night, we were back to square one. Whatever happiness we’re granted in the future, Robert’s mistake in marrying Amy will always be with us. The next day I felt lethargic and sick, and decided to go into work late. I phoned Hannah at her office to discuss Robert’s frame of mind, and was pleased she didn’t reassure me with platitudes.
“Yes, he handled the situation very badly right from the word ‘go’,” she said. “You two have far, far more than most young people have, though; you’re just going to have to find a way to deal with it. Nobody ever gets off scot-free.”
How right she was.
I was happy that we’d left the nicest visit until last. That night, we drove over to Buntingford to tell Robert’s parents.
We hadn’t forewarned them of our visit, and were to discover that we should have. Jean Dudley wasn’t in.
“She’s over at Granddad’s to make the final decision. Dad and care homes, I mean,” Kirsty said, as she led us into the kitchen and poured out wine for her and Robert, sparkling water for me.
“Don’t I get to be involved?” Robert asked. “Shouldn’t they be talking to me, too?”
“You can talk to them tomorrow. But we need to decide now, and it is Granddad’s money, and quite a lot of it, too. It’s started, you see. One of the things we read about.”
“Eh?”
“Dad escaped yesterday afternoon.”
“Escaped? Is he on lockdown?”
“You know what I mean. He nipped out when no one was looking, and went on walkabout. Giles and I spent two hours looking for him.”
Robert threw his hands up in despair. “What the—why the hell didn’t you call me?”
I touched his hand. “Robert. You were in Norfolk.”
“Ah. Yes. So what happened?”
“Oh, we found him wandering along the Eltham Road in the freezing cold with no coat on, in his slippers, singing to himself,” Kirsty said. “He insisted he was going home, and took a swing at Giles when he tried to get him into the car. Granddad had to get his doctor over to make sure he hadn’t got hypothermia, and Mum was having kittens and saying, ‘what if you and Giles hadn’t been here’, to which I said, ‘but I always am here, Mum’, and then she said, ‘it’s not fair on you, you’re a young girl, you should be having a life of your own’, which we know means that she wants to have a life of her own without Dad embarrassing her in front of her snobby fundraising and lunching crowd. So it looks as though the time has come. Hotel Alzheimer’s. I think it’s going to be that ritzy one at Weldon, the one you liked.”
“It’s too soon.”
“Yes, well, you know I feel the same, but I would like to go out to work one day, Rob, and if Mum reckons she can’t cope—”
“Where is he?”
“In the living room. He’s been quiet today; maybe a bit knackered after his ten mile walk yesterday.”
Jim was sitting by the fire just staring into the flames. He looked up and gave us a vague sort of smile as we came in; he looked so much older than the last time I’d seen him.
“Rob,” he said, and Robert bent down to hug him.
“Is this your young lady?” he asked, and I felt so sad, remembering him running rings round Ned Seymour and Izzy in the boardroom only a few years before.
“This is Erin, Dad,” Robert said. “You remember.”
He smiled at me, all dark twinkling eyes, and I felt a rush of affection for him. “You’re Harry’s girl,” he said.
“That’s right,” I said.
He nodded, looking pleased with himself. “How’s your da’?”
Oh dear. “He’s fine.”
“Dad,” Robert said, leaning forward. “We’ve got something to tell you. Something wonderful.” He took my hand. “Erin and I, we’re going to have a baby. You’re going to be a granddad.”
Jim smiled broadly, and for a moment looked just as sharp, just as handsome as he used to. “That’s grand, lass,” he said. “Come here and let me give you a kiss.”
I moved over to his chair and bent over so that he could kiss me on the cheek.
“I’ll let you into a secret,” he whispered into my ear, “but don’t tell our Rob yet.”
I smiled at him. “What’s that?” I whispered back.
“We’re having a baby, too. Rob’s going to have a little brother or sister.”
On the way home Robert laughed about that. I was glad he could do so.
“It’s just a way of dealing with it,” he said. “And some of it is funny, sometim
es.”
“If you want,” I said, carefully, “he could come and live with us. We could get a live-in nurse, and—”
I hated to think of someone I was fond of being shoved out to live away from those he cared about. Jim was a sort of father figure to me, I suppose.
Robert put his hand on my leg. “Thank you. But I think that would only work in the short term. Not when it gets worse, and it will. He could live on for years and years, incapable of doing anything for himself at all, eventually. It will actually be better for him to be around lots of people.”
“Oh. Yes, I see.”
“The place I chose is great. It’s an old manor house in lovely grounds, small, very plush. Kind of like an exclusive hotel for people who’ve lost their marbles.” He looked a bit grim when he said that.
“Will you tell Raine when he goes?”
“Yes. I still e-mail her once a month, I’ve kept up with that.”
“Will she want to visit him?”
“Before he got too ill he made me promise I wouldn’t let her,” he said, “he hated the thought of her seeing him go gaga.”
“She might want to now, though.”
“I think it would be too upsetting for her, and horrendously so if he doesn’t know her, which is unlikely, given how he feels about her, but possible. I can’t see that it would be of advantage to anyone; they’ve already said goodbye.”
I squeezed his arm, and put my head on his shoulder. “You may be a bit of a twat sometimes, but you’re a decent sort of bloke really,” I said.
He laughed. “Good enough to marry?”
I reached my face up and kissed his cheek. “Don’t push it.”
Christmas came round again, and I was glad that the annual boardroom drinks party coincided with the day Jim was to be moved into residential care. I was going to have to make an announcement about my condition (wearing loose tops wasn’t going to cut it for much longer), and I didn’t want Robert to be there when I did so. Although he agreed it was best we didn’t broadcast our relationship, he was dying for everyone to know, and I knew his face would give it away. People would be looking from me to him anyway, once I’d said what I had to say, and to not acknowledge the father when he was standing only feet away would seem weird in the extreme.
