It took a week before we had returned to something like normality after the storm. It was two days after we had returned to the house before the men with JCBs and chainsaws reached us. It wasn’t possible to leave in a car for another day and we still hadn’t got the electricity back before Ted said we must get back to Maureen’s cottage.
We’ll just go for the day, we won’t stay. We’ll go over and make a start.” He said at breakfast on the Tuesday after the storm. “The longer we leave it the more difficult it will be.”
“And there’ll be a lot of clearing up to do.”
Ted and I walked down the lane, rucksacks on our backs, to retrieve the car which was still parked at the White Hart. We had no opportunity to talk as all our efforts were spent avoiding slipping on the debris of a thousand trees but we had no need to talk; simple glances were enough to communicate and once in the car we were concentrating on our worries about the task ahead.
The cottage looked forlorn as we pulled up. The village had been cleared of much of the detritus of the storm, but the gardens looked as if bombs had hit the area.
While Ted sorted everything that could be burned from the garden and lit a bonfire, I started looking through Maureen’s things. In the first black sack I put the contents of her dressing table and drawers, her wardrobe was neat and tidy and I looked at the clothes on the hangers and decided they were all suitable for the charity shop and carried them down to the car. They all looked perfectly clean and there were still dry cleaning labels on some, attached with small safety pins. I stripped her bed and put the sheets and blankets in a second black sack for burning. There were still creases in the sheets, it was almost as if they had only been slept in the once. I was surprised that there was nothing in her laundry basket, there were no dirty clothes anywhere.
I went down to the kitchen and checked the larder. There were very few tins and bottles but what there were I packed into a box to give to the church. The fridge was empty apart from the remains of the milk Ted and I had brought the previous week. I hadn’t noticed then that there was so little food in the house, no half used packs of cheese or butter, no unopened packs of food ready for eating.
It was almost as if the house had been cleared already.
I took the black sacks out to Ted who was tending the bonfire, handing him a cup of tea.
“That’s all?” he asked.
“Everything’s so neat and tidy. Unnaturally so.”
“You’re thinking it’s almost as if she knew aren’t you?”
“Or…”
“Don’t say it Annie. Don’t even think it.”
Despite what Ted said, I couldn’t help but think ‘it’.
I stayed with Ted, helping him pile branches of ever increasing size on the bonfire. I didn’t like to say that I was worried about going back inside the over-organised and uncomfortably tidy house. We watched the black sacks melt, and the clothes inside disintegrate in the heat.
I stood back and watched Ted working on the bonfire, prodding at bits of wood and plastic, intent on the flames.
How long had I known this man but how many times had I really looked at him? Had I ever really looked at him, had I ever really seen him at all? I watched his movements, his arms and his back, the slight shake of his head as he successfully moved a large log into position. His hands, why had I never noticed how long and tapered his fingers were, tucking some of his hair behind an ear. Some would say his hair was too long for a man of his age but it suited him. There was something very, I tried to find the word to describe him, strong, physical, about his back and his arms, with his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, as he turned to pick up some more fuel for the fire.
“Is there much else?” Ted turned towards me and I hoped he hadn’t noticed that I had been staring at him for some time.
“I haven’t touched the dining room and her desk.”
“I’ll be with you when this has died down a bit. If there’s anything you don’t want to look at leave it to one side.”
“I think she knew. Either she knew or….”
“Annie. I told you. No.”
But we both thought it. I know I did, and from the look in Ted’s eyes, he thought it too. I didn’t just think it, I knew it. Maureen had tried to kill us both when she had driven me along the M25.I don’t know why. I would never be able to prove it, but I was as sure as I could be, and it made me wary of what I was going to find in the papers that she would have left.
I opened one of the twenty or thirty identical brown notebooks, randomly picking a page about half way through. I had no idea when it had been written.
Heard from Ted. It is so very hard not to say anything but to say anything would be a waste of valuable breath.
I flicked through a few pages and read more.
David is dangerous because he is so charming. He knows what he’s doing but he never lets other people in on his plans, you have to guess and usually you will guess wrong.”
Maureen had known so much all along and I had never had the chance to ask her. Perhaps that was one of the many things I had done to upset her.
There were pages in the diaries she had kept during the war devoted to details of bombing raids, travel difficulties, and worries about her husband, though these were surprisingly few and far between. I noted the mentions of her sister, Kathleen, and trips to the Wirral.
I couldn‘t resist reading the entry for 1st September 1946, the day I was born.
Poor Alicia. We were watching the cricket when she started. A was going to let her go to the nursing home alone. Ted took her. No one should ever have to carry a child conceived by rape to full term, it is not right, it can never be right but A will never know and will bring up the brat as his own. At least she has a friend in me – at least until she learns Kathleen is my sister. Sometimes it is good that I was married, what relationship has Maureen Shelton to Kathleen McNamara?
So she had known from the very beginning that Carl and I weren’t related by blood. Somehow it didn’t matter any more. Flicking back through one of the diaries I caught another entry in January 1946.
V at the flat. I don’t know what I would do without him and his support.
I didn’t note which book it was in as I wanted to read more about my mother and was flicking through book after book looking for a reference to ‘Alicia’.
Alicia wrote today, she wants to find a house, live here in Surrey, She will be broke but I will do my best.
A few pages later Maureen’s patience was obviously being sorely tried.
Kathleen says Arnold has money troubles, but surely he’s got enough to support Alicia. Maybe not. He’s giving her £100 a month, I’ve told her that’s nothing. If only V were here, he’d help. She wants money, far more money than I have any idea she might get. God I hope Max knows what he’s doing.
The implications of what I was reading did not sink in. If I had been reading more carefully I would have known exactly what they were but I had noticed the word ‘Carl’ and concentrated on that.
This young man Carl. What a shame he has no idea of our history, mine and his. Really he is very naïve and weak. If Susannah falls for his story I feel it won’t last long and she will be the lesser for it. He is a self centred, self important person. I hope that she manages to extract herself from her obsession with him. He is not worth the trouble.
There were so many books of handwritten notes. I opened another at random.
They’re going to stop him at Aden, take everything he has. But I’ve arranged…
I didn’t have a chance to turn over the page and read more as Ted asked “How are you doing?”
I would have to take all these books with me. I pushed them hurriedly into one of the black sacks and hoped Ted didn’t see anything furtive in my movement.
“Just diaries. I haven’t found a will or anything like that.” I tried to divert Ted from the contents of the bag, perhaps he would think they weren’t important.
“Her will? Of course.” He answered as if I had given him an idea he had never had. “Annie. Never mind.” His voice had changed and I looked up to see him staring at me in a way I found impossible to interpret.
“Here. I think I’ve found her will.” I handed him the envelope.
He read it quickly without telling me what the contents were. “This seems in order. Oh dear.”
“What is it?”
“She’s left everything to me. The house, everything. Oh dear. I can’t possibly…”
I took the single sheet from him and read.
And finally, Ted, you have my memories, my hopes, my dreams, my wasted opportunities, my sincere and complete wishes that you find happiness.”
“She really loved you didn’t she?”
“I rather think she did.”
“And to Josie, my diaries. May she make sense of them, understand them, learn about her family from them.”
“She never expected me to survive did she? She hasn’t left anything to me. When was the will signed?”
Ted didn’t answer, he simply held up a piece of notepaper that had been tucked into the envelope with the will.
“Oh Annie.” He said, distraught, as I grabbed the paper from his hands.
“Goodbye Ted, I am not in the least sorry that at last it is all over. I could not have deserved you, if I had I would have won something more than just your affection years ago. I hope I have succeeded in taking her with me because if I didn’t deserve you she surely doesn’t either. If she still exists, perhaps standing by you as you read this, you must both know that you can never be together. I know you want her Ted, and I have watched her growing to want you. But you will never find happiness with your daughter, the daughter you forced into Alicia.”
I looked at him, no words would come. Maureen was saying that Ted was the man who had raped my mother. Ted was my father.
“It is not true.” He spoke quietly as if disappointed that I could possibly believe what I had read. “It is not true. Annie. She is lying. It is not true.”
I really couldn’t think.
Maureen had killed herself. She had tried to kill me. And the reason she gave was that Ted, the man she had loved for years, was my father and loved me in a way he should not.
She had tried to tell me. I remembered parts of that last conversation we had had in the car. I tried to remember the details. Why had she always welcomed me to her house? Was that just to keep an eye on me? If I was with her I couldn’t be with Ted. I tried to think back years to when I had first met Jonathan. Had she encouraged me? Had she said anything to push me in his direction? She had been like a mother to me, I had always thought she was far more like a mother to me than my own.
“Annie, look at me. It… is… not… true.”
“Why would she lie? What reason on earth did she have to lie?”
“To separate us. Annie Can’t you see? It was her insurance. In case you survived. In case there was ever a chance we would be together.”
“But…” I couldn’t think what to say. Ted had always been my friend, I had always loved him as a friend. He had always been part of my life, my ‘parent substitute’ Maureen had said.
He stood more stiffly, more uncomfortably than I had ever seen him.
“Believe me, Annie, please. You must believe me. This is a lie. I’ll have any test you like. It is absolutely not true.”
He sounded so convincing but I couldn’t speak.
“Talk to me Annie. Please.” He sounded desperate. “Are you all right Annie? Please, say something.”
“I think I’d better go.”
“Don’t. Annie, please you must believe me. This is absolutely nottrue.”
But I wasn’t listening.
I picked up the black sack, turned and ran away.