Max was behind many of the changes that now occurred in the lives of the Donaldson’s extended family.
He welcomed Charles and Monika into his home and they thrived. He treated Charles as the son he had always wanted, encouraging him in his love of bird-watching by providing him with books and most spectacularly, for his 17th birthday, a pair of German military night binoculars. At the small gathering to celebrate that day no one dared to ask where they came from. Max and Charles would spend hours in each other’s company talking or reading quietly together. Max grew to understand and care for the quiet, determined, introspective young man.
After some discussion Charles had agreed to stay on at school for his A levels, but since there was no money for fees from Arnold they were paid by Max. He did well enough in those exams but left school immediately afterwards to begin work in the office at Roberts and Jones. He had a good mind, a clear way of thinking and a clear way of seeing things that would make him very useful in the office, but his heart wasn’t in it. He spent most of his leisure time writing pamphlets and magazine articles about the birds of the area.
The secretaries and typists at the office, girls on the train he travelled in on every morning all tried to catch his attention, he was a very good looking and pleasant mannered young man. But he was not interested in them.
He found most enjoyment at the weekends sitting in the garden with Monika, who would be darning or knitting, sitting companionably next to him. Binoculars in hand he would point out birds as they flew passed and write their names along with dates and other details in his notebook. Monika was a willing guinea pig for the talks and guided walks he began to give.
Monika got on well with Max’s housekeeper, and they began to share responsibilities. At Millcourt she had always looked after the nursery but she had never known anything of how the household was run, how menus were planned, where and how the food was ordered, which tradesmen had accounts and which required cash. Her job had been to ensure the children ate, slept, did their homework, read widely, didn’t spend too much time in front of the television and didn’t disturb their father. Now she began to learn how to run a house.
Monika was taught how to keep the house clean, when to clean which rooms, how to clean them without disturbing The Major’s bits and pieces. Monika learned to change the curtains in the spring – the week the clocks went forward – and again in the autumn – when they went back. They breathed life into the house, keeping it clean and airy, making it into the home it had rarely been since Elizabeth Fischer had had her breakdown, even redecorating some of the rooms themselves. Monika would take over the role of housekeeper when Mrs Tennyson retired.
Monika had rarely left Millcourt except when she took the children for a walk down to the sands and then she avoided talking to anybody, even if they pleasantly wished her a ‘good afternoon’. She had lived in the area for the best part of ten years and had not had any life of her own other than looking after the children. She had never thought about it and certainly never resented it. But now, with Mrs Tennyson as a mother figure and friend, Monika began to meet people, becoming quite well known and liked by shopkeepers and the respectable ladies of the town.
‘Mrs Heller’ became a regular at the frequent coffee mornings and jumble sales in the town and she blossomed into a relaxed and confident young woman – for she still was a young woman – despite everything that had happened in her life she was not yet 30.
In the New Year 1961, Mrs Tennyson decided Monika was ready to take over the reins and she announced she would retire to join her widowed sister in her cottage in the Cotswolds in the Spring.
Max had a hand in developments between Arnold and Kathleen. Arnold didn’t want me to have anything to do with his affairs but, behind the scenes, I was Max’s right hand as he helped Arnold through the sale of Millcourt and his formal descent into bankruptcy.
And it was Max who persuaded Arnold that he had to marry Kathleen.
Arnold didn’t want to. He hadn’t found it necessary in all the years since his divorce and when Kathleen and Carl had moved into Millcourt, he was simply being practical in giving his cousin’s widow and son a home. He hadn’t cared about the gossip, but he wanted to clear up his vaguely held concerns about the exact nature of their relationship. He had Max check through all his father’s papers to see if there were any links between the families that had previously not come to light. Nothing was found, though he had had to confide in Max why he was concerned.
Kathleen enlisted Max’s help to ensure that, before they left Millcourt, she would be Mrs Donaldson. She could not bear the humiliation of moving back to her house in Dunedin Avenue otherwise.
Although they had been through so much together, over the years neither Arnold nor Kathleen fooled the other that there was any real love between them any more. They felt loyalty, affection and familiarity but not love, so again it was a marriage of convenience for Kathleen.
After so short a time in the luxury of living in Millcourt she found herself back in her old house, now the mother to two children. She also had to be mother to Arnold as she nursed him through his depressions. She looked back with some longing to the days when she had only seen Arnold twice a week.
She had had a life of her own then.
Max was very aware that there would not be any money in the Donaldson household and he was concerned about how Carl and Susannah would fare.
He knew he could do nothing directly to help them but he was a resourceful man.
In all the papers I had to go through that related to Arnold and his father Max managed to ensure I found one which referred to an investment that Arnold had not managed to get his hands on and that was in the name of Kathleen’s mother. He found the deeds to a shop, which, conveniently, had just become empty – the people who had been running it having recently retired. Mrs McNamara had died some years before so the shop was now available to her daughters, Maureen and Kathleen. I didn’t make too much of the fact that I had never come across this shop before in all my dealings with old Mr Donaldson’s estate and there was no reference to his purchasing it.
But then records may well have been mislaid during the disruption of wartime.
So Max managed to ensure an income for the Donaldsons and a happier Kathleen, both circumstances would ensure a more comfortable life for Susannah and Carl.
In order that we could keep an eye on them Max arranged for me to join the board of Governors of the school they both attended. In that way I was able to follow their progress from a distance.
They both seemed happy growing up together. They spent every moment they could together, loved living in the same house, becoming closer and closer. They met each other after school every afternoon, and went to the local coffee bar along with a group of others.
At home they would always be in and out of each other’s rooms, Susannah frequently wearing Carl’s jeans and sweaters. They would do their homework together, read together, play records together. They liked the same groups and played pop music hour after hour in their bedrooms.
Arnold and Kathleen were happy that they got along so well and were such trouble free teenagers. So much was heard of the messes that young people got themselves into at that time. But Susannah and Carl didn’t get into any trouble, they did well at school and were normally polite to their parents.
At that time it was only their friends who knew the real nature of their relationship. They knew that Carl and Susannah were cousins and stepbrother and sister. Stepbrothers and sisters could go out together, cousins could even marry each other, so it must be OK mustn’t it?
With all the changes in his life Max stopped visiting the office in London, sending me in his place. It was only some years later that I knew what this meant to Alicia.
No longer did she have her fortnightly escape to the luxury of the Savoy or her regular deliveries from Harrods and Fortnum and Mason. She found herself in the position of having to earn her living.
Her portrait painting bought in something and Maureen found her a part time job teaching drama in a local school, but she became something of a recluse, not eating well enough and worrying too much.
It was Harry, her next door neighbour, who called the ambulance and went with her to the hospital when she collapsed just before Christmas, six months after her last trip to the north. It was Harry, more or less a complete stranger, who shared the visiting with Maureen as Alicia recovered in hospital from those operations; who looked after the empty house every time she was in hospital and who supported her day after day as she recuperated.
It was Harry who put a vase of marigolds in the dining room window to welcome her home when she came back from hospital, and who went with her every time she had to return.
She never gave him any reason to do all these things other than a smile. She was not well enough to give anything else.
Harry’s wife never understood the power she had over him.
I did.
It was the power that only a beautiful, vulnerable woman can have over a lonely man.