Fandango in the Apse! Page 9

  ‘Bowman, Henry Bowman of Bowman and Wallis, Solicitors.’ He stood again to extend his hand and dropped the case from his lap, spilling the entire contents on the carpet. As I helped him with a couple of files, an assortment of pens and a tube of Polygrip, I struggled to keep my face straight. Mr Bowman looked like anyone’s idea of a batty professor. Once he settled back on the sofa, I tried again.

  ‘Tea?’

  ‘That’s very kind, but no.’

  ‘OK, in that case, how can I help you?’ I asked politely.

  ‘Err… yes of course.’ He harrumphed again and shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

  ‘I’m afraid I have some sad news for you, Mrs Roberts. It falls upon me to inform you that your mother passed away a fortnight ago. I’m very sorry.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Yes, it was very sad. Margaret was a friend of my wife as well as a client of mine,’ he said. ‘She will be greatly missed.’

  I was shocked to the core. In the fifteen years since I’d last seen my mother, I’d never contemplated her death.

  ‘I’m sure she will, Mr Bowman. Erm… you must be aware my mother and I didn’t have contact with each other, so I’m very grateful you took the time to come to see me. Can I ask how she died?’

  ‘Of course, m’dear, I should have told you… it was cancer. She fought hard, but it got her in the end. She was a brave woman to go through that alone. Oh, I do apologise, Mrs Roberts, I didn’t mean…’

  ‘It’s all right, Mr Bowman, it was my mother’s choice we were estranged.’

  ‘I see, Mrs Roberts, I must inform you I’m also here in a professional capacity.’

  ‘Of course, there must be so much to do, the funeral arrangements, informing people…’ Thinking about everything I had to do added life to the numbness I was feeling.

  ‘But, Mrs Roberts, your mother has already been buried.’ The consternation in his expression spoke volumes – Mr Bowman would have given anything to be elsewhere at that particular moment.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes, well you see, when she knew she was dying, your mother made all the arrangements herself. Her express wish was that you shouldn’t be informed until it was over.’

  ‘I see. Did she give any reason for that?’ I asked. An icy feeling gripped my heart.

  ‘No, not to me, Mrs Roberts.’

  Sensing a change in my attitude, Mr Bowman obviously felt on safer territory and continued in a more business-like manner. The purpose of his visit, apart from telling me about my mother’s death, was to ask me to meet him the following day at her house. There were matters to sort out and the will to be read. I agreed to meet him at noon.

  The following day Mr Bowman’s ancient, but pristine Rover was parked by the curb outside my mother’s house when I arrived. The shine on his equally ancient suit seemed more pronounced in the weak autumn sun. Offering the hand not holding the now familiar briefcase, he greeted me.

  ‘Shall we go in?’ he asked.

  The stomach-churning nausea I’d been experiencing all morning cranked up a notch. Looking at the house, I couldn’t help noticing the differences. The front door, which had always been blue, was now green. The lawn was overgrown and the bedding plants had gone to seed. Tubs planted at the beginning of the summer had dried up, their contents unrecognisable.

  ‘How long had she been ill, Mr Bowman?’

  ‘Let me see, it was quite quick, four months from start to finish I think.’

  He had paused in the action of opening the door to answer me and had turned back to push it open, ushering me in front of him. I stepped over the threshold and the first thing that struck me was how small it was; in my memory it had seemed much bigger.

  The patterned red and blue carpet was still in place, unmarked except for a flattened pathway down the middle. Still as hideous as ever, the wrought-iron telephone table held the same objects as I’d remembered. The phone was new, but the small Ainsley dish my mother used for keys was there, alongside a gilt notepad holder with a pen laid precisely parallel to it. The last thing my mother had jotted down was still there and the sight of her neat handwriting had me swallowing past a lump in my throat.

  In case you hadn’t realised, my mother’s house wasn’t where I wanted to be. As you can imagine, I’d felt uncomfortable. At any moment, I was expecting her to appear, her acid tones asking me what I was doing in her house. I felt I was intruding.

  Even though I had never laid eyes on her in fifteen years, I could feel her presence everywhere as I took in the few changes to the living room. The carpet was new, as was the three-piece suite, but everything else was unchanged. As I’d watched, a flurry of disturbed dust motes floated in the dull light from the dirty window. I couldn’t help smiling. She would have been mortified at the layer of dirt covering every surface.

  ‘Would you like to take a seat, Mrs Roberts?’

  Dragging my attention back to Mr Bowman, I’d chosen a seat furthest away from the one I knew would have been my mothers. Sitting opposite, Mr Bowman opened a folder he had successfully extracted from his case. Clearing his throat, he began.

  ‘Mrs Roberts, this is your mother’s Last Will and Testament. Would you like me to read it in full or would you like me to summarise?’

  ‘If you just summarise it, please.’ I didn’t want to hear it at all, never mind listen to a pile of legal jargon.

  He cleared his throat again.

  ‘Well, briefly then, your mother has bequeathed her estate in its entirety, between St Bartholomew’s Church and two favourite charities,’ he said, while casting a sympathetic glance in my direction.

  I had no idea how I was feeling just then, definitely not surprised or upset – my mother had nothing I wanted.

  ‘Right, well if that’s it, Mr Bowman…’

  ‘Err… no, there is one final thing. Your mother asked that you be given a grey box from the sideboard.’

  My eyes immediately slid to that piece of furniture. Mr Bowman, his joints creaking, got to his feet and opened the left side door. A moment later, he handed me a shoebox.

  ‘That concludes our business, Mrs Roberts, but perhaps you’d like a few moments alone. Would you like me to wait outside?’

  I nodded and gave him a smile intended to show my gratitude for his thoughtfulness.

  By now, you know just as well as me that my mother was a nasty piece of work. Therefore, it’s fair for me to assume you will understand when I tell you how terrified I was of opening that box. The odds on it containing something I’d be better off not having were stacked high, don’t you think? I don’t mind admitting, I’d had a cowardly urge to shove it back in the sideboard unopened. Unfortunately, I conquered the urge and took the lid off the damned box. It was a mistake and one that would cost me dearly.

  I looked at the contents in disbelief. Since I’d left home, I’d made a point of writing to my mother at least once a year. I also sent her birthday and Christmas cards. Eddie often commented on what a waste of time it was, but even though I neither expected, nor received a reply, I continued. Don’t ask me why, because I couldn’t answer you. It was just something I felt the need to do. Now, staring me in the face was every one of those letters and cards. She had only opened the most recent one – to get my address, I assumed.

  Fifteen years of unopened news about my life, pictures of my wedding, and later of the boys at various stages of their lives. Their baptism, first steps and birthday parties. Images of their first day at nursery, and later school – small snippets of my life, that although I knew she would never comment on, I hoped she might be interested in.

  The hurt I felt in that moment settled like a dark cloak over me. Then I noticed another opened letter at the bottom of the pile. The envelope, addressed to my mother, was larger and had an Australian postmark dated three years previously. It contained one sheet of paper and a newspaper cutting.

  Dear Margaret,

  It is with regret that I write to inform you of Jack’s death. It happened l
ast month and I have enclosed a cutting giving you the details.

  Please be kind enough to pass on the news of her father’s death to Katie. It was always a great sadness to Jack that she refused contact with him. I know my brother always hoped she would one day take up his offer to visit him, unfortunately, that wasn’t to be. However, I thought it was fitting that she should know of his passing.

  Jethro Hessey

  My eyes were stinging with unshed tears as I read and re-read the letter. My brother always hoped she would take up his offer to visit him, leapt off the page.

  Oh Jesus! What had she done? With shaking hands, I unfolded the newspaper cutting. A man I didn’t recognise smiled out at me. He was standing on a beach with his arms resting on the shoulders of a woman and a teenage boy. An older girl was sitting cross-legged in front of them; they all looked carefree and happy. I read the caption beneath.

  Experienced diver, Jack Hessey, has drowned just off Tangalooma on Morton Island. The freak accident happened when Mr Hessey went to the aid of a less experienced diver who was disorientated due to the unseasonable storm, which swept the Island yesterday. The treacherous current, combined with high waves swept Mr Hessey out to sea. The coastguard later recovered his body. His wife Pamela and children, Jonathan and Sophie, were too upset to comment on the tragedy. The other diver survived.

  As the awful truth embedded itself in my brain, I started to shake. An all-consuming white-hot rage seared my soul. I held in my hand proof of the extent of my mother’s evil machinations. Looking now at the years of unopened mail, I couldn’t help but let out a laugh at my own stupidity. The hollow sound startled me in the otherwise deathly silence of the room.

  What had I been thinking? How could I have imagined for one minute that she would have had any interest in my life? I rose from the chair unsure of what to do, but knowing I had to do something.

  Then it came to me – I walked to the fireplace and dumped the contents of the box into the grate, all except Jethro’s letter, which I slipped into my bag. Reaching for matches still in their customary place on the mantle, I struck one and set light to the letters.

  As I watched the blue-grey smoke of the charred paper and curling photographs furl up the chimney, my anger increased. How could she have done it? This woman, who had given me life. She had begrudged it of course – the life she had given me, it rankled with her and she had set about to systematically take back as much of it as she could. But how could she have kept it up to the bitter end? Not even in the face of her own death could she right the wrongs. She had denied me all those years when I could have had a relationship with my father, and then denied me the knowledge of his death. I felt sick.

  I stood and looked around the room; the atmosphere felt noxious, permeated with the miasmic residue of my mother’s bitter life. I could hear her sneering voice, see her pinched features everywhere, I needed to get out of there – I couldn’t breathe.

  As I’d crossed the room to the door, I passed the lamps still sitting on the sideboard. It sounds petty now, but the urge of all those years ago proved too much to resist. Grabbing first one, then the other, I ripped off the goddamn yellowed cellophane, not caring that I was destroying the shades in the process. It was a small but satisfying victory.

  At the living room door, I turned for one last look, and I promise you this is not my imagination – I could feel the chill of my mother’s presence.

  ‘FUCK YOU, MARGARET HESSEY,’ I roared at the top of my lungs as I’d slammed out the door.

  Mr Bowman gave no impression of having heard my outburst, when I passed him with a brief nod on the garden path a moment later. As I got into my car and drove off without a backward glance, I imagined the conversation between him and his wife later that evening.

  ‘Mrs Roberts seemed a trifle upset to hear her inheritance was nothing more than a cardboard box.’

  ‘Well, she should have been a better daughter then, shouldn’t she? Margaret was a saint.’ I could lay odds on it.

  ‘Well fuck you too, Mr Bowman,’ I said savagely, as I missed third gear.

  Chapter Ten

  I didn’t whinge, sob or shed a tear over my findings in my mother’s sitting room. However, you need to bear with me a little longer while I explain the immediate aftermath, then I’ll shut up about it, I promise.

  For the first couple of weeks my rage was so intense, tears were impossible. I left Eddie – the poor sod – trying to make sense of my irrational behaviour on the barest of information. Unwilling or unable (I’m not sure which) to share my discoveries, I told him the details of my conversation with Mr Bowman and of the letter from my father’s brother – nothing else. If he was wondering why the deaths of my parents with whom I’d had little or no contact for years was having such an impact, he wisely kept his mouth shut.

  I could tell each time I snapped at him or the children he wanted to shout back, to tell me to pull myself together and not be such a drama queen – if I’m honest, I couldn’t blame him. The children began shooting me fearful glances whenever I entered a room, unsure if I was going to start ranting again.

  I know what you’re thinking, but honestly, I couldn’t help it. I felt I was suffocating in the vacuum of a wildly spinning vortex of emotion, I couldn’t free myself, and each day seemed to suck me in deeper. However, by the third week everything suddenly changed.

  I opened my eyes one morning and waited for the familiar churning knot of anger to take hold, but it wasn’t there. It had completely gone and in its place was a void, a grey nothingness. My relief was immediate, until a flutter of panic at the thought of the anger returning, and the feeling of not being able to control it, terrified me. Willingly, out of the need for protection I sank into the nothingness.

  As the weeks wore on, the protective vacuum became the most important thing in my life. If I didn’t think, I didn’t hurt. In some vague part of my brain I knew what I was doing, I was hiding – not from the anger, no, anger was good, healthy – I wasn’t hiding from that, I was hiding from guilt.

  My father had wanted to see me and never once in my life had I thought to try to contact him. Why not? Why had I never gone on my birthday and demanded my parcel from my mother? I knew why – I was a coward, I was afraid of her, and now the only way to make the guilt tolerable was to ignore it, pretend it wasn’t there – hide from it.

  A few days later, persistent buzzing had disturbed my sleep; I turned over, rammed a pillow over my head and tried to ignore it, but it wouldn’t stop. The beat of a finger on the doorbell increased in its urgency. Flinging the covers aside, I looked at the clock on the bedside table and was surprised to see it was twelve-thirty. Eddie must have got the kids ready for school.

  I made for the stairs shouting that I was coming, to stop the damned bell. At the door, I could see John from next door through the glass. He looked surprised when I appeared, and feeling vaguely embarrassed by my less than clean pyjamas and unkempt hair, I attempted to smooth the latter.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Katie, are you ill?’

  ‘No, I’m not… what do you want, John?’

  He bristled at my rudeness. ‘Katie, I’m sorry, but something’s happened to Jester. I think he’s choked on a chicken bone.’ Shock cleared my befuddled brain.

  ‘Oh God! Where is he, is he OK?’ Stupid question.

  ‘No, I’ve just found him, I’m sorry, Katie, he’s dead.’

  ‘Where is he?’ I followed John round to his back garden where Jester was lying dead amongst the bones of a chicken carcass. I dropped to my knees and looked at the beautiful animal. His mouth was open and his eyes had rolled in the back of his head. I couldn’t understand it, although famed for eating just about anything, Jester had never raided dustbins. Then a horrendous thought hit me. When had I last fed him? I couldn’t remember. I knew Eddie wouldn’t have done it; it would never have entered his head.

  I couldn’t take any more, I heard myself scream, and then huge sobs racked my throat. I wrapped
my arms round myself and tried to rock the hurt away. I couldn’t stop crying, I couldn’t stop the pain, the emotion was frightening. John’s voice vaguely penetrated, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. I know he tried to lift me but I couldn’t move. I entered a dark place in my head and willed my mind to go blank. Then I heard Eddie’s voice. I wondered why he wasn’t at work. He and John were talking as if I wasn’t there.

  ‘She’s been like this since her parents died. I don’t understand it, you’d have thought six months down the line she’d be getting over it.’

  ‘It takes time, mate.’

  ‘But she wasn’t even close to them.’ Eddie’s confusion was evident. I felt sorry for him – how could he understand? It was impossible.

  ‘I should get her home and phone the doctor, if I were you; she’s been kneeling there for over an hour, I hadn’t a clue what to do – Susan’s not in.’

  ‘I’ll get her home… then see to Jester as soon as I’ve sorted her out, OK?’

  The doctor prescribed anti-depressants and left instructions to attend the surgery. After listening to Eddie, he decided I had issues that would benefit from counselling, apparently. I thought differently, the last thing I needed was to prattle on to a shrink.

  I must say though, the pills were a revelation. As they kicked in, I was delighted to notice a feeling of renewed energy. I felt more alive than I had in months whilst also gaining the ability to think only the shallowest of thoughts – wonderful! OK, OK, I know I was living in a state of chemically induced euphoria, but so what? I didn’t give a damn so long as I could face each day without wanting to commit hara-kiri.

  By now, my fuzzy, wrapped-in-cotton-wool brain made me feel invincible. Propped up by the chemical scaffolding, it decided I was ready to visit my mother’s grave. Yep! You heard right; three months of living in pretend utopia, and I was doing what fifteen years of sanity couldn’t. I had this idea that if I went there, I could prove to myself that I was the better person. I read somewhere that, “to forgive was to set one free”, and I wanted some of that.