Picasso's Envy, page 26
Seventy-eight
Pete saw me as soon as I stepped in the door. He bounded around the bar, came over and hugged me.
“Sis, I thought you’d be home.”
“I couldn’t go, Pete. I left daddy in San Francisco.”
“Come, let’s see if I can get the rest of the day off.”
We walked back to Pete’s place and dropped off my suitcase. A little park was close by, and the sun was shining. A cheerful place to talk.
“Tell me, Bellie … what happened?”
“The whole time in the States we’d not talked about Neills, or the story. In San Francisco, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I confronted him … asked him straight out if it was true. Hoping like hell it wasn’t. He admitted to the whole thing. You probably know that already.”
Pete would of course know. All those secret conversations they’d had that I wasn’t allowed to be party to.
“He said that, before I judged him, I should understand war is a totally different world. He said the mind warps. He said his friend could not have lived. He was mutilated. Dad said I should have anger towards the Germans, not him.
“I reminded dad what Neills had threatened. He said he was sorting that out with you but wouldn’t say what. Finally, I couldn’t face the farce of going home. I said he needed to tell our mother. That he needed to find his inner power, the power that had carried him through the war. After a couple of days, he’d picked up.
“What were we going to do when we got home, Pete, play happy families as though nothing had happened?”
I paused a moment to let my mind rest, let the sunshine warm me. Pete waited for me to continue.
“I desperately wanted to talk to you privately, before we left and on the phone, but daddy, dad, was always next to me.”
“I figured as much,” Pete said. “That’s why I couldn’t tell you everything. Sis …,” Pete paused. “He wanted me to take out a contract on Neills. Worse still, on Neills’s mother too. Do you know what I mean by that?”
“Of course I do. He wanted you to organise for them to be killed?”
“George was terrified the story would hit the papers.”
George – Pete had called him. No longer dad. Pete had distanced himself from our father already.
“Neills’s mother as well?”
Our father was more gruesome than I could have imagined. I went to my thoughts I’d had in San Francisco. The war was over but not for him. Not just in his mind, he was still there. I must have blanched.
“Are you okay?”
“Not really, no. Is this our father showing his true colours, Pete? It’s hard to believe he would ask his own son to carry that out. How come we never saw any of this at home?”
“I dunno, sis. We were children. He was highly regarded by our community. I guess he lived as if he’d eradicated the past. He must have been successful at it. We all believed he was such a great guy. He was desperate to appear to be that community-minded man, keep up all the hard work he’d put into it. He’d turned over a new leaf. But it seems he hasn’t.”
We sat, not talking for a while.
“So, what did you do?”
“He gave me money to pay for the contract. A lot of money. I couldn’t do it, of course, but I feel sick that I initially thought about it. He must have done those kinds of things before. He seemed to know how it all worked. I figured, finally, the money was his admission of guilt.”
Pete paused. “I’m not my father. I don’t live in those desperate times. George laid all kinds of guilt on me about loyalty to a father, and how I don’t understand what those years were like. I said nothing. I did nothing. When my head was clear and I was out of our father’s power, there was no way I would even contemplate what he’d asked me to do. I’ve been having trouble living with myself, that I didn’t protest to his face. What sort of coward am I?”
“He holds a lot of influence over us both, even though we’re adults. And you are not a coward. You’re brave. Brave, do you hear me? Brave to defy our father and to realise you’re a different man. It’s been days now … where is Neills?”
“I don’t know. He seems to have disappeared. I suspect he has gone to the papers. Maybe it takes a while to get a story checked out and written up. I’ve been waiting. It’s been an awful time. I wake every morning thinking this is the day the shit will hit the fan. Then what would I do?”
“Presumably dad knows now … that you’re not going ahead with … what he asked you to do?”
“I’ve been waiting for his daily call, but as you’re here, maybe he’s just gone straight home.”
Seventy-nine
Two days after I arrived back in London, a police car drew up outside Pete’s flat. I happened to be by the window. Pete and two burly policemen stepped out of the police car. My heart sank. My thoughts went to Neills. He’s done something.
“Sis … these policemen want to talk to both of us.” Pete turned to the police. “Come in.”
Full to overflowing, with three men and me, the flat was so cramped its space shrank to claustrophobia. They asked us to find a seat.
“We’ve received word from the San Francisco police,” the policeman said. “I’m so very sorry, but your father has committed suicide. He hanged himself. A cleaner found him. We are so terribly sorry.”
In that claustrophobic space, the walls closed in. Pete and I were speechless. I felt I couldn’t breathe and hung my head out of the window. Of all the things I imagined my father would do, that was not one of them.
“In San Francisco?” Pete said.
“Yes, sir.”
When I could speak, I said, “How long had he … I mean, when did he do it?”
“We think two days ago.”
“That’s about when I left. Oh my God, Pete … he wouldn’t have done that if I’d stayed. He was so much brighter, said he felt ready to face what he had to do. I thought he was talking about going home. Oh God. He wasn’t. That’s what he meant all along.”
“No … stop that right there, sis. It’s not your doing. If the story had come out, who’s to say, he might have done it then.” Pete hugged me. “It was his decision. Everything was his decision.”
One of the policemen said “Can you go there … to San Francisco? Ring the police there first. They need you to identify him. You can ring from the station if you like. They also need to know what to do with your father’s body.”
“Christ,” Pete said. “I can’t believe this. You’re sure it’s our father?”
“Hotel staff have identified him from his passport. But they need a family member to confirm that he’s … George Theodore Lagoudakis?”
Pete and I looked at each other.
Eighty
Pete and I flew home escorting our father’s body. Our mother met us at the airport. After the required checks, the body was transported to the funeral parlour. Within a few days the funeral took place. Hundreds attended. The funeral notice in the paper advised he’d died of a heart attack. We no longer feared a scandal reaching our shores, or anywhere else.
Before we left London, Pete rang Neills’s mother in Denmark. Pete had not seen nor heard from Neills, even though, as we learnt from Kirsten, he was still in London. She thought he must be giving George’s story to the newspapers, as George had not shown up at that appointed time. She was dismayed to hear that George had committed suicide.
Pete contacted Neills and asked him to meet with us.
We briefly talked in the little park near Pete’s place. As chance would have it, the sun was shining again. Then my brother gave Neills the contract money. Neills was a subdued man, not the angry one we’d met before. Although not expecting it, he was not surprised to see the money.
“He rang me,” Neills said.
“What?”
My words to my father had penetrated. He had listened. And still he could no longer live with himself.
“He simply said, ‘you are my son’. Nothing more, then hung up. I was … well words in English fail me, but I stopped breathing. And then to hear from my mother he had ended his life. I wept. I never meant for him to die,” Neills said.
But you were going to hurt me, I thought.
As if reading my mind, he then looked to me.
“I’m so very sorry Annabelle. It was an abominable thing I did. And could I go through with it? No, I’m sure I couldn’t. No … no I couldn’t have.” Neills buried his head in his hands. Lifting it, he said, “It’s no excuse, but I was desperate, for my mother as much as for myself.
“I’m not sure about taking this money,” Neills said, looking to both of us with questioning eyes.
“Look upon it as your inheritance,” Pete said. “For your mother’s retirement, as you intended. You’re our half-brother, Neills. We want to let bygones be bygones, if that’s okay with you.”
Pete wasn’t there and I wasn’t sure I agreed with him. Neills had said his piece, but I wasn’t sure I could just dismiss what he’d threatened me with. But I was happy for Neills to get the money. He was my half-brother and nothing could change that.
Neills had started the ball rolling with the newspaper story, but immediately put a stop to it. Fortunately, he hadn’t given them the full story. Neills said he would return to Greece. He hoped the families who had been so hurt by our father’s actions, could find peace and let bygones be bygones too. As they were poor, he would donate some of the money to them.
On the plane home, Pete and I talked about what we’d tell our mother. We felt there had been enough lies in the family and the truth needed to come out. At least, where our mother was concerned. We’d be there to collect the pieces.
I was surprised to find our mother had changed since I’d been away. She was distraught, of course, but had more resilience than I ever imagined. The discovery of her independence while our father had been away had given her a sense of her own uniqueness. Qualities she never knew she had or could enjoy.
As it turned out, way back, she suspected my father had a shady past, but she chose to ignore it. Surely, he’d made amends, she’d thought. He’d proven to be such an upstanding member of society.
Outside our immediate family, we let the heart attack story and public view of our father, prevail.
Our mother listened as Pete and I told her everything. Rather than interrupt and feign a headache, she took it on the chin. It might have been just for our benefit, but she appeared stoic. There was an intelligent understanding in her eyes.
Who was this woman?
I’d found a mother who gave me a whole new reason to love and cherish her.
My mother surprised me again. No longer rampaging about marrying the right man and living up to her expectations, she simply said I should see Clive. She realised, before we even discussed the subject, that the engagement would not go ahead. She’d noticed how I’d grown into a fine young woman. Someone she could be proud to call her daughter. Bless her.
I had not had time to see Clive before the funeral, so we arranged to meet the next day. We sat in a park and talked and talked. While I was away, he’d hung on to the hope we would get engaged and then married, but in his heart of hearts, felt we would not last. He’d realised it the moment I’d said I was going away, though he didn’t want to admit it to himself. I was the same young woman who left Australia, he said, but also changed. I’d grown. This was music to my ears. Sitting in the park with the sun shining, everything looking so fresh after the recent rainfall, it became so clear Clive and I had no connection. I doubt we ever had. We amicably parted ways.
Although my year away had been cut short, discovery of myself had been fast tracked. I did feel changed and, by then, very hopeful. With our mother secure in her circle of close friends, Pete and I flew back to London. Both our futures looked bright. Even the ‘frozen moments’ I no longer feared. They’d done their job. My misgiving was I had not taken notice or understood their meaning.
Now, sitting in the plane, I realised I’d learnt an important lesson. The superficial things that surround us shouting, me, me, me, are not what counts. It’s our soul we must listen to. Not always easy, with all the noise everything else makes.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my editor, Victoria Steele. Clear, concise, with excellent suggestions in progressing the story. Always helpful, always delivers.
A big thank you to Stuart Clark, who shared his sailing anecdotes, listened and good-naturedly gave me answers to my nautical questions.
A note here to an experience I had in the Aegean Sea. Many years ago, trusting those who knew, but didn’t, we sailed from Piraeus to Kea. We were becalmed, ran out of fuel and very nearly ended up on rocks.
Thank you to David Robinson, who has supported me and even given me the title for a future book.
And thank you to Ann-Louise Crotty, who read my very first draft. What amazing patience. Along with Alan Betts, equally patient. I appreciate both your time and support.
Born in England, Pamiela moved with her parents to New Zealand, aged seven. After school years, including an unorthodox remote boarding school, Pamiela started her own travels, aged nineteen. Four years passed before returning to New Zealand and a few months later she moved to Sydney, where she now lives. A chance glamping holiday on a small, remote island in the Great Barrier Reef started the writing of her first novel. Now living near the beach, she loves to swim and snorkel. The sea inspires her writing.
Pamiela Berenson, Picasso's Envy
