“Are you ready for this?” Ted asked Linda as he helped her into the car and she took one last look at the house that had been her home in one of the better roads of Sevenoaks.
Linda nodded. She couldn’t bring herself to speak without showing how upset she really was; her marriage, her work, the life as she knew it, were all ending. “Somehow I feel like someone in a Victorian novel, you know the poor family member heading off for life as a governess.”
“Anyone less like a governess would be difficult to imagine.” Ted joked, but added more seriously when he realised she meant it “You are helping Charles far more than he is helping you. You could go anywhere, do anything. With your skills and experience you could move to London, get a job, enjoy yourself.”
“Still, I’ll be looking after Susannah’s children, the ‘surrogate mother’.”
“Charles is desperate, Linda. He’s had them for over six months and he’s at his wits end. He is so grateful to you. Don’t think it is an unequal relationship at all. He won’t be your boss, he won’t be employing you.”
“But he’ll pay for all my living expenses, he’ll probably give me pocket money, I’ll be living in his house. I’ve got nothing.”
“You’ll be saving his life! He really is at the end of his tether. He changed when Holly left him, he was happy with her, he loved her very much.”
“You’re talking in the past tense.”
“She hurt him. Badly. Its changed him. They had been through a lot together and he believed they had enough love to see them through but it seemed he did and she didn’t.”
“What had they been through? I thought they were fine, money, each other, a lovely house?”
“They couldn’t have children.”
Linda didn’t have any understanding of what that could mean.
“Why would that be a problem?”
“Holly had a real need. You must realise that. She was desperate. Perhaps it was because she had lost her parents. You’ve always had loving parents, loving brothers. Have you ever felt alone, really alone? Have you ever felt that there seems no reason to live if you can’t pass something of yourself on to another generation?”
Linda had no answer. She had always had her parents. She hadn’t been as close to them since she had gone to live in the south, but she had known they would always be there to help her. If she had ever asked. Crispin and Oliver would have killed Ram if they had known what he had done to their little sister. They would love her and look after her. If she asked them. She realised that what Ted said was true. She had never felt alone. She had never felt, even now, that she had to dig herself out of a problem because she was the only person who could. She had never had a problem that was her fault, her problem to solve.
”Whose fault was it? Their not having a baby I mean.”
It was a question Ted had wondered himself and to which he had never achieved a satisfactory answer.
“I don’t know.”
“You must have some idea?”
“Probably hers. After what Graham did to her. That’s my guess. So she felt very guilty that she couldn’t give Charles the son he probably never let her forget he wanted.”
“Still lots of couples never have children, they seem to manage.”
“But Holly couldn’t manage. She wanted a baby so much she stole one.”
“What!”
“She stole a baby, she wanted one so much she imagined it was hers.”
“How long for?”
“A few hours.”
“What happened?” Linda was amazed. It seemed such a helpless thing to do. No one could steal a baby and get away with it for long.
“She was outside a shop, she just wheeled it away in a pram.”
“But they caught her?”
“A few hours later. Charles found her on the promenade, acting in every way as if the child were hers. I think she almost believed she could keep it.”
“I never heard anything, there wasn’t anything in the papers was there? There usually is.”
“It was all kept quiet, the mother was compensated…”
“Max. Max sorted it didn’t he?”
“Yes. How did you guess?”
“Max could sort anything. He sorted Graham. He’s probably sorted a lot of things I’ve never heard about. He’s such a secretive man, I bet he could sort absolutely anything.”
Ted didn’t have anything to say to Linda on the topic and drove in silence for a few miles until Linda’s curiosity got the better of her and she continued to ask questions about Charles and Holly.
“They seemed happy at their wedding.”
“So they should do! If you can’t be happy on your wedding day when can you? They were happy for a while, but sometimes it seemed they were living on a knife-edge. The simplest of things would send Holly into fits of depression and sometimes her behaviour was very odd. She gave up working because she thought it would improve her chances of becoming pregnant and she resented Charles for continuing to work. She … she saw other men, probably from quite early in her marriage. I think she was very unhappy. The deaths of her parents and her disaster with Graham must have affected her far more deeply than any of us ever imagined. Ramesh spent a lot of time with her…”
“Ram?”
“Yes, he came up north very regularly. There was gossip in the town of seeing him and Holly together.”
“I should have known shouldn’t I?”
“I only know his visits unsettled Holly and she and Charles would always argue when he left.”
“So Holly and Ramesh had an affair? Though it wouldn’t have been an affair would it? Since we weren’t married.” Linda couldn’t help sounding bitter. “Perhaps she wanted a baby so much it wouldn’t have mattered to her who the father was. Perhaps she wanted the baby for herself, not for Charles at all.”
“That’s very harsh.”
“But it would explain why she left him. She knew as soon as they had a brood of a family Charles wouldn’t try so hard, wouldn’t mind so much and it would never happen for her. She never wanted Charles’s child, she just wanted her own baby.”
After a period, when Ted seemed to be concentrating hard on his driving but was really wondering how Linda could be so perceptive, he admitted. “You know Linda, on all counts you are probably absolutely right.”
Linda thought about those early days when they had bought Charles out of the business and she had worked so hard to keep it going. She couldn’t remember if Ramesh had ever said anything about Holly or Charles, or visiting them. She realised she probably wouldn’t have noticed if he was having an affair because she was working so many hours and thinking of nothing but the business. How much else hadn’t she seen when she had been concentrating on her work? What life would she have lived if she had never had her own business, never spent so much of her energy, practically all of her energy, worrying about work, clients, cash flow, staff, VAT, paying tax, getting everything perfect all the time? What things had happened to her family and the people who had been her friends while she had been worrying about making the tiniest mistake? It had only been a few years but she had done nothing but work all that time. She and Ramesh had never had a holiday together, he had always spent several weeks in Mumbai with his family each summer but she had stayed looking after the office. She hadn’t made any friends in the town; the only people she knew were her employees or her clients. She had lost touch with all the good friends she had had, including Holly,
And she hadn’t even made a success of the business.
She caught her breath, stifling a sob of self pity.
“Are you OK?” Ted asked, looking sideways at his passenger as she turned away from him and stared out of the window.
Ted thought it best to give Linda some silence so he turned back to concentrate on the road, remembering other times he had made this journey through the Midlands. He always avoided the motorways if he had the time so that he could remember past journeys, when there hadn’t been so much traffic, when he hadn’t known what he wanted to do with his life.
It was only 13 years since he had driven Alicia back home to the Wirral that last time. He had driven this route, avoiding main roads and large towns, to show Alicia the English countryside for the last time. They had both known she would never do a journey like this again. He had been 50 years old, the best and most useful years of his life behind him.
It had been Alicia’s dying so young that had made him realise that if he didn’t do something there would be no footprint of his on the planet when he died. He understood Holly’s need more than she, or anyone, could possibly imagine. He knew he was too old to marry and have children. Even if he found someone to marry they would be too old for motherhood. So he knew he had to live through others, help them, make them remember him with fondness. He didn’t believe in life after death, he wasn’t religious in any traditional way. He believed that the only life after death there could possibly be would be in people’s thoughts. If he could do something good for people, something they would remember him by, then that would be the best he could expect.
This rather passive view of life came to an end four years after Alicia had died.
He had fallen in love. Again.
He had loved Alicia since the earliest days when she had appeared in his office in Liverpool, heavily pregnant, in the manipulative control of her husband. He had felt sorry for her and then he had loved her. He had tried to do his best by her the few times they met after she had finally left her family, but he hadn’t always done well. It was only when she was dying and had nowhere else to go and no-one else to help her that she had fallen back on him and had called him ‘friend’.
When she died he had been bereft. But not as bereft as he had thought he should have been. The funeral had been a trial, but perhaps for the wrong reasons. If,’ he had told himself ‘I really loved Alicia, shouldn’t I be feeling more?’ He had expected physical pain, but had felt none. Instead he had been fascinated by the manoeuvrings of Max, Maureen and David as they acted out the myth that they did not know each other. When life returned to normal he had expected time to fall heavily around him without Alicia, but it didn’t. He began to understand what he had actually felt for Alicia was not love in any physical sense, he didn’t imagine making love with her, lying with her in his arms, synchronising his breathing with hers through the night.
He reserved those thoughts for someone else.
It had been a surprise when he realised he was lying in bed before sleep came imagining someone else in his bed, imagining what they would be doing together. He had pushed the thoughts away as being totally inappropriate. But however hard he tried, the thoughts had not gone away.
And he had stood back from them while Alicia’s children grew up, fell in love, made mistakes and were hurt. To have become involved would have been too painful.
“Are they divorced?” Linda’s voice jolted him back to the present. It took him a few moments to realise that he must have driven for some miles without being aware of anything other than the thoughts in his head.
“In process though it’s very complicated I think.”
“You think? Aren’t you dealing with it?”
“No. Charles wanted someone else. He said I was too good a friend to know all the murky details but I think it was because there was more to it than he ever wanted me to know.”
“Is she in Canada?”
“No. She came back when her grandparents died and left her millions. She left Toronto as soon as she could. I don’t think she ever came to terms with who her father was and what he had done.”
“Who was he?”
Ted realised he had said too much. “Just not who she thought he was.”
But Linda’s interest wasn’t Matthew Ecclestone, it was Holly. “Where is she now?”
“Oxford.” then he quickly corrected himself “At least I think so. She travels a lot.”
“Crispin never said.”
“He wouldn’t. He still loves her just as he did years ago.”
“That’s sad.”
“It is always sad when people love each other and haven’t quite realised it.”
“You sound like that comes from the heart.”
“I have loved.”
“I’m sure you have Ted, you’re a very nice man, didn’t she love you as well?”
“They. I don’t think either of them loved me, love me. Not in that way.”
“That’s sad.”
“Yes. Now let’s change the subject.”
“How are the children?” It seemed the sensible thing to ask though Ted wasn’t entirely sure what she meant. He didn’t think she was asking after their health, he realised she was asking how they were as people, and he did his best to give her a sensible answer.
“Josie’s great. She tries to look after the others, keep them under control. I think she’s always been the only discipline in their lives, the only continuity.”
“How old is she now?”
“17, a very grown up 17. Sometimes she seems like she’s about 30.”
“What about Al and Jack?”
“They need to be part of a family. They need a strong and loving adult hand. Josie does her best but she is, after all, only their sister.”
“They must be 15 or 16?”
“Not quite. Jack’s 14, 15 in August, and it’s Al’s 14th birthday on Tuesday.”
“They’re pretty close to each other.”
“Yes. Al was premature but still there were the two within a year.”
“Why?”
“That’s a long story. Susannah didn’t choose that. She didn’t want any of them, that’s the shame of it. She got sucked into it and Joe was what today I would happily call a complete shit, but it was a different world then.”
“How about Bill?”
“Bill’s still in the hospital.”
“But it’s been months since the accident.”
“Will he ever come out?”
“Oh yes. He could have been at home last month but they thought it best to keep him in when things were, how should I put it, a little unsettled. He can’t walk and probably never will, but he’s mobile in his chair. He’s very good in it actually, he wants to play sport in it. I can’t see that somehow, but if anyone can it will be Bill. He’s a bright boy, quick, clever, and surprisingly completely without any self pity.”
“You like him.”
“He’s a lovely boy, you’ll like him too.”
“Do you want to bring him home now I’m there?”
“Yes. There’s no point in denying it, I hope you will be able to bring the children back together. I think you will be the making of them all. You will take responsibility from Josie and let her have her childhood back, if only for a couple of years. You’ll have to work with the boys, they are not far from being delinquents but I suppose they are not beyond redemption and they’ll love to have Bill back. You see, Linda, you have a lot to do.”
“And I’m the one to do it?”
“Yes. And…”
“Charles?”
“Yes, Charles has had a dreadful time, you might be able to help him, make him enjoy life again.”
“Alicia was one of the people you loved wasn’t she? That’s why you want her children to be happy.”
Ted didn’t answer.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’ then, but who’s the other one, the other one you have loved?”
He didn’t answer that question either and much of the rest of the journey was spent in an almost comfortable silence
“Here we are.”
Ted drew up outside the house that was to be her home. Somehow she had expected it to be like Sandhey, prominent and grand. It was a perfectly normal large detached, fairly modern, house in a row of other large detached, perfectly normal houses. It wasn’t what she had expected, though if anyone had asked her what she had been expecting she probably couldn’t have told them.
Charles answered the door and opened his arms to give her a hug.
“Hello saviour!”
She hugged him back, unable to say anything but grateful for the obvious warmth and genuineness of his welcome.
“Here, leave your cases,” he had glanced at the overloaded rear of Ted’s car, “let me show you the house. I think there’s a room that you’ll like but we’re all rather crowded so there’s not much choice. If we have to move we’ll have to move, we’ll have to talk about it when you’ve had a chance to settle. I thought there’d be so much space but I hadn’t realised how much room four youngsters take up.”
As Charles talked Linda looked around her.
“The children have pretty much taken over haven’t they?”
“Josie and I do what we can but it’s a losing battle I’m afraid.”
“When will they be in?”
“God knows! I don’t seem to see much of them. They come home to sleep but…”
“Charles! They’re 14 and you don’t know where they are?”
“They’re down on the promenade in West Kirby most of the time. People who see them let me know. They’re not getting into much trouble, well not serious trouble. They hang around with a crowd of other kids and I know one or two of the fathers. They’re perfectly respectable families for the most part.”
“For the most part?” Linda quoted back at him.
“Well the ones I know of anyway. The world has changed, people mix more than they did when we were young.”
“I’m not saying they shouldn’t mix Charles, just you ought to keep a good eye on who it is they’re mixing with. I’m sure it’ll be the same here as in Sevenoaks, there are bad sorts around, alcohol, drugs, that sort of thing.”
“I’m sure all they get up to is kicking a ball around on the beach.”
“I’m sure they get up to a hell of a lot more than that!”
“Oh.” Charles was so obviously out of his depth in looking after Susannah’s children and Linda began to realise the scale of what he, and now she, had taken on.
“Where’s Josie?”
“She’s gone to the cinema.”
“On her own?”
“No. She has made one or two friends, I don’t think there’s a special boyfriend but she goes out quite a bit at the weekends.”
“Have you met any of them?”
Charles was beginning to realise that he hadn’t known anything about how to look after children. It had never occurred to him to encourage her to bring any of her friends home. “I didn’t think to suggest it.”
For the past six months, since he had driven into the empty drive of the empty house with his fractious passengers, he had realised how badly prepared he was for what he had taken on.
His childhood had given him no clue to what parenting should be. His mother had left when he was young but he and his sister had been brought up by a succession of nannies even when she had lived at home. His father had had nothing to do with their upbringing. The children themselves had never had a father figure until those few years living with Carl and Charles couldn’t believe he had known much about being a father either.
“Where do I put these?”
Ted appeared with several bags and cases.
“In here, if the room’s OK with you Linda?”
Linda walked into a smallish bedroom, sparsely if adequately furnished, and went straight to the window. She looked out at the view across the back garden to the distant Welsh hills.
Although she replied ‘Fine. Thanks’ she wondered where she was going to stash the contents of the bags and cases she had hurriedly packed. Charles must have read her thoughts, or he must have noticed the slight hint of panic in the way she glanced around the room, because he was smiling as he walked to the door in the wall near the window and opened it “Here’s your bathroom and…” he walked into the room so Linda followed, “and through this door is another room, you could use it as a sitting room or move the bed in if you prefer it.”
“This house is like Dr Who’s tardis.” Linda smiled, “It doesn’t look much from the outside but it’s gigantic inside!”
Charles smiled back at her, an open almost childlike smile, that Ted realised was the first he had seen from Charles for some time.
“Look you two must be tired after the drive, let me fix you something. Spag bog be OK? I’ve got some serviceable wine and then you can tackle unpacking in the morning.
“I’ll leave you two to it.” Ted thought it best to let them get to know each other again. “I’ll pop over in the morning. I was going down to see Bill tomorrow anyway, shall we all go? We could take two cars.” When he saw the agreement in Charles and Linda’s faces he continued “I’ll get here at 10, make sure the tribe is ready.”
“I will.” Linda had already taken charge.