The Snake That Bites Its Tail, page 25
‘May I ask what you’re doing in my mother’s house?’ The tone is far from friendly.
Jane’s brain moves as quick-fire. ‘You must be Jennifer, Jo’s youngest.’
‘Yes, I am, but that still doesn’t—’
‘I’ve been your mother’s live-in carer this past year, perhaps she mentioned me. This is my stuff, which I thought I should move now that she’s… oh, you do know, don’t you?’
‘Yes, yes, I was called earlier by the home. They didn’t tell me about you, though.’
‘No, no, they wouldn’t. I’ve been with your mother for most of her time at the home and was with her when she died. You can ask the staff there if you don’t believe me. They told me you lived too far away to get here in time to be with her at the—’
‘Yeah, well, that’s my business, not yours. Now she’s dead, I’ll have her front-door key back, assuming you’ve collected all your things and not helped yourself to anything of Mum’s.’
‘No, I haven’t.’ Jane hopes her wide-eyed expression conceals her shock at the young woman’s insensitivity.
‘I’m not sure I trust you. The papers are full of stories of carers ripping off old people, stealing their money and stuff. How do I know you’ve not been inside taking whatever you fancy? I’ve a good mind to call the police.’
‘Call the police if you want but you’ll wait forever for them to turn up. I’ve stolen nothing and you’re welcome to search these suitcases if you don’t believe me.’
‘Yeah, well, if me or my brothers find anything’s missing, we’ll be on to you.’
‘There’s nothing missing, I promise you. Your mother told me there is a letter for each of you in the bureau in the sitting room and if you have nothing more to say to me, I’ll be off. My name is Jane Foster, and my telephone number is on the board in your mum’s kitchen. I’d be grateful if you’d call to let me know when and where the funeral will be.’
As she drives away, Jane is in no mood for any sort of conversation, not even with Monica. Driving for an hour and with little idea in which direction she is heading, she finally arrives by accident, or maybe subconscious design, at Hughenden Manor, a few miles north of High Wycombe. She had driven her mother to the National Trust former country-pile of Benjamin Disraeli a week before she made her final journey to the care home. It had been their last day out together.
She parks at the far end of a large bare earth and grass car park and ambles slowly through the manicured gardens in the direction of a less formal area where, hidden among trees and high hedges, she finds the bench she and her mother shared that day.
The place has taken on a different air, tranquil in the absence of human voices, serenity tinged with regret. That afternoon, Jane had ached for her mother to finally offer a measure of closure on her reasons for keeping her apart from her half-siblings and why they, in turn, were so insensitive towards their dying mother. No such enlightenment was given and now, it seems it never will. All Jane has is a letter.
Trembling fingers ease open the flap on the envelope. Inside, are two sheets of unlined pale-blue writing paper filled with her mother’s handwriting. It takes some deciphering, but Jane’s eyes widen with each sentence. Three time she reads each of the four sides. Three times, it leaves her quietly sobbing.
My darling Jane,
I must firstly thank you for being the child I never had but always wanted. You have shown me more love in a painfully short time than my other three children have since the day their father and I separated.
I’m aware you sacrificed so much to look after me this last fifteen months, including living apart from the lady you clearly love and are happy living with. Yes, my love, I guessed some time ago about your relationship and wanted nothing more than to meet dear Monica but I’m afraid I carried too much guilt.
Each time I think of the pain your adoption caused during your first sixteen years, it rips my heart in two. You must believe me when I tell you my heart had already been torn apart at the age of eighteen when my father ordered me to end my relationship with the only man I ever loved. As you know, I also grew up with a violent father, and knew only too well what he was capable of doing to me, if I disobeyed him.
To my shame, I have not been as honest with you as you had a right to expect, which I think you probably suspected. At the age of sixteen, I fell hopelessly in love with a young man called Robin Farnham who attended the local grammar school. For two years, we were inseparable. I loved him and he loved me, and we were both convinced we would spend the rest of our lives together. My father had different ideas, and in September of 1964, he forbade me ever to see him again.
You see, my dear, he decided Robin was not good enough for me. He saw him as the ne’er-do-well son of an idle alcoholic from the local council estate. I knew differently. We loved each other in a way that now, some thirty years later, still leaves me breathless.
It broke my heart having to finish with him and, at my father’s insistence, take up with John Warner, his best man’s son. He too was a gentle man, but I could never love him. Then, unfortunately, John died in that car accident the year you were born.
That, my dear, is only part of a story I failed to share with you. I met William while at college and when, three years later, we were married, it was more in hope of finding comfort and security than with any certainty I loved him. Sadly, the relationship was fractured from the start.
We can never fake love; it will always reveal itself as a sham. I yearned for Robin, but so long as my father was alive, even as an adult I could never bring myself to disobey his orders. Stupid, I know, and you, my darling, might call me weak, particularly in the light of your astounding bravery in dealing with your abusive father.
After my father died in 1981, some nine months before you and I finally met, I traced Robin to his home in Essex, only to discover he was married with two children. It would have been wrong of me to intrude on his life.
William found Robin’s details in my diary and an awful row ensued, during which he admitted he was having an affair with the woman he later married. When a relationship crumbles, vindictiveness so often replaces love and, cruelly, he lied to our children. He told them he was divorcing me because he’d discovered I was in a relationship with an old boyfriend. Sadly, they believed him, despite my attempts to explain the truth, but to this day, they blame me for the break-up of our family.
I know I should be angry with them, but somehow, I’m incapable of seeing them as anything other than the children I nurtured from birth. In hindsight, I failed them badly. My years of teaching other people’s children at school taught me everything I needed to know, apart from how to love my own.
And that, my darling, is such a weak excuse for the way I have favoured them above you. I wasn’t allowed to nurture you from birth, to forge the unbreakable bond between a mother and her child. Unfortunately, from my children’s point of view, that bond is a fragile one and not one they reciprocated.
I feel so guilty over my refusal to allow you to meet them or for them to even know of your existence. As such, even in death, I cannot allow them to know of my shame in giving birth to you as an unmarried teenager and offering you for adoption to a family who treated you so badly.
I hope and pray your generation is the last to suffer the shackles of Victorian morality. You, my darling, seem wonderfully untainted by the outdated moral code my husband and I cursed upon our children. You must be free of any association with them, free to live your life as you wish. Were my three children ever to find out about your sexuality, they would treat you as unspeakably as they have me. You are a far better person than any of them ever will be.
All of which means I am unable to include you in my will and acknowledge the love and care you have shown me. That doesn’t make me a good mother, or a nice human being, and I will take my shame to the grave. However, I am aware you borrowed heavily to pay for my end-of-life care and am so grateful for the kindness you have shown me. In order for you to clear the debt you must have incurred, and hopefully have something left as compensation for my weak character, you must contact my solicitors, Messrs. Lambert and Drew of North Street, High Wycombe, who are holding something for you.
My darling Jane, there is one last confession I must make although I’m certain this will bring joy to your heart. John Warner, the young man who died in the car accident, was not your father. I found I was expecting you two months after my father forced me to break with Robin. John could not have been your father as I refused to make love with him. I was still in love with Robin.
The police questioned me after John’s accident and asked if I knew of anyone who might have held a grudge against him. They suspected it might not have been an accident and that a brick or stone may have been deliberately thrown at his windscreen. I lied, even though I knew Robin was deeply upset over the way I finished with him.
I have no idea if he had anything to do with John’s death, although I doubt it. He often spoke of his strong pacifist principles, and I struggle to believe there was a violent bone in his body.
You are a level-headed, wonderfully natured young lady of whom I am fiercely proud, and confident you will use this new-found knowledge wisely. If you decide to seek out your father, which, of course, you are at liberty to do, please be careful you don’t risk upsetting the balance of his family.
Once all the dust has settled, I hope you will find it in your heart to forgive me for the hurt and the lies. I implore you to hold on to the love you have with Monica but, if possible, hold a little in your heart for your mother as well.
With all my love.
Jane’s heart is pounding; she can barely breathe. Her father is alive.
She reaches into the bottom of her large bag for the tin and disposable cigarette lighter there for emergencies. With fingers shaking, she fills the white paper with the mix of tobacco and weed and rolls a thin spliff.
Drawing deeply, she inhales the blue-grey, aromatic smoke and for five minutes stares with unseeing eyes at her mother’s letter. Finally, she carefully re-folds it before placing it back inside the envelope.
It is ten minutes before closing time when she finally makes it back to the pub where she and Monica are staying. The landlord snarls a blank refusal to make her a sandwich at that time of the evening, but it matters little; Jane has no appetite.
‘Your girlfriend’s already gone up,’ he growls, his ugly, unshaven face leering at Jane, raising hairs on the back of her neck. What is it about men’s attitude towards gay women? It’s 1999, for fuck’s sake.
Monica is sitting up in bed reading and assumes from Jane’s expression that the inevitable has happened.
‘I’m so sorry, love. Did she wake at all?’
‘Only for a moment.’ She pauses, as a bizarre thought flashes through her mind. ‘Do you know, I almost believe she woke at that particular moment quite deliberately. She was hardly able to speak but managed to tell me she’d written me a letter and left it in the writing bureau at her home. It’s as if she timed it to make certain there was no way I could read the letter while she was still alive.
‘She was only conscious for a few seconds before drifting back into a deep sleep and she stopped breathing shortly afterwards. The doctors must have pumped her full of morphine or something. Not a bad way to go, I guess.’
Monica notices Jane’s dark-blue eyeliner has smudged a trail down both cheeks and beckons her to sit on the bed.
‘You collected the letter from her house?’
‘Yeah, and all my belongings. I also met my half-sister.’
‘Really?’
‘She arrived at the house as I was leaving.’
‘What, that soon after her mother had died but she never went to see her… at the end?’
Jane nods slowly.
‘Cow. Did she know who you were? What she say?’
‘I told her I was her mother’s carer. Better that way than… well, you know.’
‘And the letter, what did that say?’
‘It explained why she kept me apart from her other children and a whole load of other things to do with… please, Monica, I don’t want to talk about it now. It’s too raw and… well, painful.’
‘You poor love, you’ve been through so much. I hope that bloody woman told you how much she appreciated what you did for her.’ Monica is still hurting a little from Jane’s decision to live with her mother a matter of days after she had returned to their flat following the break-up of her marriage.
‘She loved me, Monica, she really did, in spite of all the shit with her other children.’ She dabs her cheeks with the tiny, embroidered handkerchief her mother had given her last Christmas.
Monica rests an arm on her partner’s shoulders and kisses her cheek. ‘I’m just so happy to have you back. I love you too, you know.’
‘I know you do but I’m afraid I have an admission to make and know you’re going to be angry with me.’ Monica looks at Jane, her face rigid as she waits for her to continue.
‘I borrowed money to pay for Mum’s stay in the home.’
‘Why, she owned a bloody house, she could have raised money against that.’
‘She wouldn’t. She wanted to leave the money to… to her children.’
‘Scheming bitch. She made you give up your job to look after her, took you away from me, pressured you into paying for her care and the house goes to three kids who didn’t have the decency to show up before she died.’
Jane closes her eyes and shakes her head. She has no words.
‘What an absolute cow.’
‘I couldn’t leave her, Monica, not like that. It wasn’t her fault they didn’t come to see her at the end.’
‘No, it was theirs and they don’t deserve to inherit a penny until you’ve been repaid. How much have you borrowed?’
Jane barely manages a whisper. ‘Almost ten grand.’
‘Jesus Christ, Jane, ten thousand quid? How the hell are we ever going pay that back? How much interest are you paying?’
‘Please, Monica, please don’t be cross, not now. I know it was stupid, but I had no choice. I want you to read Mum’s letter. It tells so much about her and me… and… and my real father.’
She takes the envelope from her bag and passes it to Monica, who snatches it, lays it flat on the bed and reads for the time it takes Jane to walk to the dark wooden wardrobe in the corner of the tiny room and undress for bed.
‘My God, Jane, this is incredible… almost… it’s unbelievable.’
Monica looks up from the letter and blinks as she speaks.
‘Wow! I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have lost my rag with you like that.’
‘Don’t worry.’ Jane’s face breaks into a smile for the first time that day. ‘I think I might have a real daddy.’
‘That’s so good and your mum left you something she says will repay the loan and with money to spare.’
‘We’ll go to the solicitors in the morning, collect whatever is there for me and go home. That’ll be good too, won’t it?’
Thirty
From: Krait
To: Dr Lakmaker
Ref. No: 16
Okay, Doc, you deserve to hear the full story, particularly as you were smart enough to figure out that I exist.
Back in ’64, Robin was a little happier after meeting his cousin in London, although he was still pining for Jo and struggled to build relationships with other women. As he told you, he took to gambling and was reasonably good at it until those cheating bastards ripped him off. The Brigadier had to pay.
I took over for a couple of days and found an old iron bar on a patch of waste ground south of Hammersmith Bridge. I bought a pair of Marigold gloves, a cheap black raincoat a size too large and a black trilby and avoided touching any of them without wearing gloves.
It was so much easier in those days. Closed-circuit TV surveillance was in its infancy and a lot fewer people were wandering the streets of London in the early hours.
The only real risk was the journey up to the West End on the Underground. The bar was tucked up inside a sleeve of my coat and was virtually imperceptible to anyone who might look at me. Stop and search was still a thing of the future; these days I’d need to take more care.
It was important to keep an eye out for coppers patrolling the streets. There were many more back then and like buses, they tended to arrive in pairs. A convenient shop doorway almost opposite the gambling club shielded me from the street lighting and rain. It was a good hour before that pompous stuck-up bugger finally emerged onto the pavement and marched off briskly in search of a cab to take him home.
I followed at a distance until he was halfway along a deserted street and closed in to about twenty yards or so before sprinting up behind him. I hit him with all my strength and luckily, blood spurting from his skull sprayed away from me as he stumbled forward. I then hit him a second time on the back of his head to make sure he didn’t retaliate.
His skull cracked noisily as he hit the pavement like a sack of coal and rolled into the gutter. Blood streamed from the wound, its blackness dissolving in the torrent of rainwater flowing into a nearby drain. Blank, unseeing eyes confirmed he was dead, which was a shame. I wanted Robin’s face to be the last thing he ever saw. God, it felt good. He would never cheat again.
The tight bugger wasn’t carrying as much money as he took from Robin, but it was enough. Natural justice, I thought.
I dropped the iron bar in the Thames off the North Bank at Temple and walked a mile along the Embankment before managing to hail a cab home to Hammersmith. I kept my hat pulled forward over my face and left the cab on the north side of the river before walking south over the bridge and back to Robin’s flat.
