I told Susannah Donaldson on July 24th 1976 that I had been writing a book about her family.
I’m not sure why I did, I think perhaps I needed to change the subject as we had been talking of serious things, of misunderstandings, of lies deliberate and accidental, of love permissible and forbidden and of the damage caused by lies and deceit. ‘I always wanted to be a part of your family,’ I had explained, ‘I’ve loved you all, one way or another, and I wanted to write everything down so it wouldn’t be forgotten. One day you will read it and it will help you understand’.
“Aren’t you going to let me read it now?” she had asked, expecting to be able to get me to do what she wanted. As she always had done.
I had known Susannah since she was born. I had been 26 years old when I had driven her mother, Alicia, to the nursing home on a Bank Holiday Sunday when the man who should have taken her was more engaged with his cricket match than his wife’s impending confinement. As Susannah had grown up through a very disturbed childhood I had worried about her more than her parents had ever done. I had wanted to stop her marriage in April 1964 even though she was pregnant; 17 was far too young to get married whatever the reason. I watched, helping her where I could, as she had child after child in that most unhappy of marriages. I was able to give more practical assistance when her husband drowned and she had a breakdown. I was looking after Alicia at the time so it seemed sensible to have them both live with me. I had hoped to get them to know each other before it was too late. After Alicia’s death Susannah had resumed her education, reclaimed something of her life and it was four years before we met again.
Susannah had always managed to twist me around her little finger.
But not this time.
“No. Not yet.”
“When?”
“It’ll be some years yet.”
She tried another approach. “You couldn’t explain all about the family, it’s all too much of a mess, not even you could make any sense of it.”
“We all have secrets,” I admitted, “even I have kept things to myself that should have been shared. I’m not innocent in all this, my secrets have been just as damaging to your family as your mother’s.” I’m not sure she believed me.
“And what about Max?” She asked disingenuously. I knew she had spent much of the previous four years learning more about Max than I would ever know. “Max has been behind so much of what has happened in our family.”
“I’ve written more about the family. Max is involved, of course he is, but he ….”
She interrupted me as she frequently did.
“Tell me now! I don’t want to have to wait to read it all.”
“You will have to wait, along with everyone else in the family, until Max is dead.” I didn’t relent when she argued that that could be years. “Your family’s secrets are so tied up with his and we must respect him. We all owe him that much.”
“But you said everything was his fault.”
“Did I? I don’t think I used the word fault if I did it would be the wrong one. The complications of your family and all your lives cannot be one single person’s fault but Max was undoubtedly behind much of it.”
“And David?”
There were some things I hoped never to have to explain in detail to Susannah and one was my long standing relationship with her grandfather.
“Yes, David.”
An atmosphere descended as it was obvious I was not telling her the whole truth.
We had both looked out through the window of my flat across the golf course towards the sandbanks, Max’s house Sandhey, the river estuary and the islands. It was a view Susannah had known since she was a baby as she had lived in this house before it was broken into flats. I didn’t think there was anything sinister in the fact that I had bought the one that occupied the nursery floor but I’m sure there were people who would read something unsavoury into it.
Although I would be the last to tell her, Susannah was right.
Maximilian Fischer had been involved in the lives of every generation of the extended Donaldson family over a period of more than seventy years yet so little had been known about him until Susannah had begun her investigations. She had probably already discovered that Max and her grandfather, David McKennah, had known each other before they had ‘met’ at her mother’s funeral.
“Is there much in your book about me?” She made the pleading face she had used when, as a child, she had asked her Uncle Ted for favour or for flattery. It was a tone of voice that usually made me smile and it didn’t fail this time.
“Absolutely, and most of it not particularly complimentary. But you still can’t read it until Max has gone.”
And now, 22 years later, he was finally going.
Although I am nearing 80 and should have retired years before I still spend most mornings in a room above a shop that I call ‘my office’. When asked why I drive into town every day I say it allows me to believe I am still the young man I feel myself to be. ‘Few people look behind the speckled skin, the thin grey hair and the wrinkled hands. If they think of me at all it is as an old man, but as long as I work I am still the person I was 40 years ago’.
There is, of course, another reason. I love my wife dearly but there are things I need to do without her fussing around me.
This morning I had a phone call from the past.
“He told me to telephone you when the end approached.” Max’s housekeeper spoke without introduction, her accent accentuated by her distress.
“Thank you Monika. Everything will be as he has requested.” There was no need for a longer conversation, any words of comfort or reassurance would have been insincere. We had not left on good terms.
At last Max was dying. 92 was a good age, especially for one who had led such a life as his.
I spent most of the morning locating all the documents I had known would one day be required. Many I had not looked at since January 1984 when Max had sold the business I had run for him and I had moved from Merseyside to Kent. The last of the phone calls I made was to Susannah. Without preamble I told her Max was dying.
“Oh.” It seemed somehow an inadequate response.
“I’ve just spoken with Charles.”
“Charles?” she seemed surprised. She had no idea that I knew how to get in touch with her half-brother. Although they lived fewer than fifteen miles apart they had not spoken for over ten years, not since they had argued so vehemently when she had told him who it was she intended to spend the rest of her life with.
I tried to be patient. “Before you ask, yes, you will soon be able to read my book. But it is incomplete. I was pretty clear on what happened until your mother died, but then I lost touch. There were so many things I could not know. I have asked Charles to write about the time when you and he were growing up and… Well he’s going to write about all that.” I finished rather lamely.
I had always regretted losing contact with her family after Alicia had died. Somehow ‘I was too busy with work’ seemed a feeble excuse.
“Why?” It seemed that Susannah couldn’t believe that Charles meeting and marrying Holly, a pretty blonde American, would be of any interest to anybody.
“You don’t think he was free to do as he liked do you? Holly’s father was not who his family believed him to be, both he and his wife died in mysterious circumstances, your cousin Graham was involved, as was Max. He was involved in everything your brother did at that time. And…” I continued quickly ignoring her attempts at interruption, “you know more than any of us how Max came to be in such a position of influence over the family.”
Susannah had learned a great deal about Max’s life over the years. Although it was an endeavour in which I sometimes assisted we had avoided talking about the details.
We all have to have secrets.
“Will you?”
“Will I what?”
“Oh come on Susannah!” I didn’t often call her Susannah, when I did it was to let her know I was being serious. “Will you write down the truth about Max? Tell the whole story? You are the only one who can possibly do it. You are the one who had those long conversations with your grandfather, access to Max’s papers, the only one who has read Maureen’s diaries. You are the only one who can possibly help us understand everything.”
She answered unenthusiastically “I suppose so.”
“I know so. And,” I continued quickly trying to be firm, “I think it would be fair to tell your ungrateful family how much they owe you. I think they should be told. It’s only fair.”
“Nobody ever said life should be fair.”
It was a mantra in the Donaldson family. Alicia had repeated it as if trying to convince herself that nothing that went wrong in her life was her responsibility. I thought it depressingly negative.
“No but we can make it as fair as possible. When the family is gathered for Max’s funeral and for the reading of his will I want them all to get copies of three books; mine, Charles’s and yours.”
“But…”
I knew I was asking a great deal of her. In the telling of what she knew of Max and David she would have to give away much about herself. During the years she spent learning about Max there had been times when she had not behaved well, when she had been self-centred, thoughtless and gullible. In telling the story she would have to acknowledge much she didn’t like about herself.
“Be honest, my dear, in writing it all down you might remember why you did the things you did, and perhaps even forgive yourself.”
“Face up to my ghosts?”
“As you say, ‘face up to your ghosts’.”
“All of them?”
“All of them, even the ones you have never shared with me.” I wasn’t entirely successful in hiding the hurt in my voice.
“What are the rules?” She seemed to have accepted the task.
“There is only one. Tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing
“I have always tried not to tell lies so telling the truth as I saw it won’t be too hard, it’ll be the ‘whole truth’ bit that’s the problem.” I could imagine her grimacing ruefully.
“It always is, my dear, it always is.”