Folly's Child (49 page)

‘If Mum was alive and not injured why didn't she tell them who she was? Why didn't
she
get in touch herself?'

Sally was silent for a moment. A shadow flickered across her face and she twisted her hands together in her lap. Then she looked up directly at Harriet.

‘She wasn't injured, and she wasn't ill in the accepted sense. I'm afraid the truth of the matter is that your mother was quite insane.'

Harriet froze, numbed with shock.

‘What did you say?'

Sally swallowed. Her eyes were full of compassion now as well as shame and torment.

‘I'm sorry, but it's true. She had been showing signs of it for some time only none of us realised how serious it was. She'd been withdrawn, paranoid, often slipping into a world of her own – I'd seen a little of it when I'd come to visit a couple of years earlier – and Hugo had been worried about her for some time. But you know how it is – you keep hoping you're wrong. Looking back now I can see it – I believe she was suffering from the early stages of schizophrenia. If she had been helped then – who knows? Things might have turned out differently. But when she left your father and went off to Italy with Greg something happened to push her over the edge. By the time the nuns wrote she was desperately ill, beyond help, though what treatment was available had been tried on her. She had gone totally into a world of her own – she didn't even know who she was.'

‘I don't understand.' The first almost cataleptic trance of shock had passed and Harriet was shaking now. ‘ If she didn't know who she was how did they come to contact Dad? And what was she doing on this island anyway? She sailed with Greg Martin – there were plenty of witnesses to that.'

‘Perhaps no one will ever know the whole truth,' Sally said. ‘Only Greg could tell us that – if
he
knows it. All I can tell you is what Sister Maria Theresa told me. Some fishermen had found Paula drifting in a dinghy, half-drowned and out of her mind with terror. They didn't know who she was – as I said, the island was very isolated, and even if they had seen the newspapers I doubt if they could read. They did the only thing they could think of – they took her to the hospital. And the nuns took care of her.'

‘I can't believe no one reported it or tried to find out who she was! It's crazy! Surely someone would have made enquiries?'

‘People who live in communities like that are a law unto themselves. Perhaps they thought it was in her best interests to keep her there for a time at least rather than return her to the world that had induced her madness. I don't know. I can only tell you, Harriet, what happened.'

‘You still haven't explained how they came to write to Dad in the end. If she didn't know who she was and no one had bothered to find out.'

‘Apparently one day she was more lucid than usual and she gave them your father's name and address and they decided it was their duty to write to him. Only I opened the letter instead.'

‘Dear God!' Harriet whispered. She picked up the bottle, refilled her glass, and drank deeply. ‘So – what did you do?' she asked after a moment.

‘I went to Italy, of course,' Sally said. ‘I went to see her.'

‘Without telling Dad.'

Sally's face worked, her eyes closed, then opened again.

‘Yes. It was wrong of me, I know, but at the time I rationalised it to myself by saying I needed to know exactly what the situation was before worrying him. I knew he would be distraught and I wanted to spare him. But if I'm honest I knew it was more than that. I didn't want him to know she was alive, Harriet. God forgive me, I wanted to keep
him
to myself as long as I could. Oh, if there had been a chance of her getting well I'd have told him, of course. I couldn't have lived with myself if that had been the case. But when I saw her I knew there was no chance of that. She wasn't the Paula we knew and loved any more. That girl had gone forever and in her place was a mute wild beast who whimpered and stared. Nothing else. Just whimpered and stared. So what good would it have done for me to tell him? It would have been torment for him to see her as she was.'

‘But surely he had the right to know,' Harriet said in a low voice. ‘How could you keep it from him, Sally? She was his wife for God's sake – and my mother!'

For a moment Sally did not reply and when she did the words were torn from the very heart of her.

‘Do you think I don't know that, Harriet? Do you think I haven't lived with it every minute of every day since? I've no excuse to offer really. It would be easy for me to try to say I did it all for him, although God knows, that's true too. Think what it would have been like for him – tied to a woman who had completely lost her reason. He would never have left her – Hugo just isn't like that. He would have devoted himself to caring for her for the rest of her life – and for what? She wouldn't have appreciated it or known any different. She was as happy there as she could be anywhere. And then there was you to think of. You'd suffered enough, Harriet – I wanted to spare you the nightmare of knowing your mother was in an institution, and later worrying that you, or your children, might inherit her madness.'

Harriet shook her head helplessly. The implication of Sally's last statement was lost on her. All she could think of was her mother confused, frightened, sick, and surrounded by strangers on some remote island.

‘How could you do it, Sally?' she demanded. ‘I just can't believe you could leave her there like that!'

‘Harriet don't, please!' Sally had begun to cry. ‘She was well cared for and it was a beautiful place. At least she could feel the sun on her face. You know she always loved the sun – when she wasn't worrying it would give her wrinkles! Oh, don't be like this, Harriet, please – I can't bear it. It's bad enough blaming myself, but if you blame me as well … We've been so close, Harriet. I've always looked on you as my own child …'

She stretched out a hand to Harriet, desperately seeking reassurance, but Harriet shrank away, unable, for the moment, to give it. The Sally before her now was not the woman she had known and loved but a stranger, secretive and ruthless. If her story was true – and Harriet was certain it was – she had cold-bloodedly condemned her sister to a living death amongst strangers whilst allowing those nearest and dearest to her to believe her dead. It was awful – unbelievable. Harriet felt as if the earth had collapsed beneath her feet.

‘What the hell is this going to do to Dad?' she asked harshly.

‘Oh I don't want him to know, Harriet,' Sally wept. ‘ He's a sick man as it is. Something like that would kill him!'

Harriet bowed her head into her hands for a moment as the enormity of what Sally had told her overwhelmed her. It was true – her father couldn't take a shock like this in his condition. She herself was cold and shaking – and she was in perfect health. No wonder Sally had been so upset that the whole business was being raked up again, no wonder she had begged Harriet to leave well alone. Yet in the end it had been her own guilty conscience that had brought an end to the years of secrecy and deceit.

‘I honestly don't understand how you could do it,' she said again. ‘Keeping quiet about something like that – how could you live with yourself?'

‘I didn't abandon her, Harriet.' Sally's words were tumbling out now, a desperate plea for forgiveness. ‘ I sent money as long as she was alive to help support the hospital.'

‘And when did she die?'

‘She lived for about five years after it happened.'

Five years. Harriet closed her eyes again.
When I was eight years old my mother was still alive and I didn't know. When I started at nursery school, when I had my first pony, when I fell out of the tree in the garden and broke my arm – what were you doing, Mum? Not much, if Sally is to be believed. But you were alive and I thought you were dead
.

‘Christ, Sally!' She brought her head up with a jerk. ‘How did you hope to get away with it? Didn't you know it was bound to come out one day?'

Sally nodded, hugging herself with her arms. ‘I guess I did. But when you start something like that there's no right time to finish it. Yes, you're right, I've been afraid, but the lies trap you, there's no way out. I couldn't bring myself to tell Hugo I'd deceived him; I couldn't bear to see the way he'd look at me. After she died I thought at least I could begin to put it all behind me but I never could. Not quite. She's been there, all the time, a shadow. I've never really been able to lay her ghost.'

For a few minutes they sat in silence, then Harriet asked: ‘ What was it called – the island where she was?'

‘Savarelli. It's one of the Aeolie Islands.'

The Aeolie Islands. Of course. That was what Tom's side-kick had said on the telephone – that Sally had gone there a couple of months after the accident. Harriet tried to picture them, those windswept rocks where her mother had lived out her last years, and failed. But Tom's assistant had said something else – that Sally had also been to London on a brief visit. Going home? Maybe. But she had not taken Mark with her. Oh, there was probably no connection, and yet …

‘Sally, you have told me everything, haven't you?' Harriet asked, unsure why she had asked the question, except some sixth sense that was prodding her to do so and to her dismay she saw a strangely furtive expression cross her aunt's face briefly.

‘Of course I have! Why shouldn't I? I've told you more than I've ever told anyone.' Her voice had a slightly aggressive tone and Harriet thought, No, there is something else, Sally, something you are not telling me and I want to know what it is. Well, there is one way to find out the whole truth and that is what I am going to do.

‘I'm going to go to Savarelli,' Harriet said.

‘No! What good will that do? It's all so long ago …'

But Harriet had seen the quick gleam of fear in Sally's eyes and it confirmed her decision.

‘The least I can do is pay a homage visit to the place where my mother spent the last years of her life. I'll go tomorrow.'

‘But Harriet, you can't! Not while your father is so ill …'

‘I'll check with the hospital in the morning that his condition is still stable and I shall only be a few days. Better that I should go now whilst he is still in hospital and can't ask awkward questions. Don't you agree?'

‘No – oh, Harriet, I don't want you to go there at all!'

For the first time since the revelations Harriet reached out and squeezed her aunt's thin cold hand.

‘I'm sorry, Sally. I don't want to upset you any more. But I think you know what I have to do.'

Harriet heard the telephone begin to ring as she came down the sweeping staircase carrying her suitcase in one hand and her grip in the other. For a second she froze. Could it be the hospital? She had telephoned earlier and they had assured her Hugo had had a comfortable night and his condition was stable, but there was always the possibility of a relapse, she knew, and she had tortured herself with wondering whether perhaps she should postpone this self-imposed odyssey. Suppose Hugo suffered another attack whilst she was away? She would never forgive herself. But it was too late to turn back now. Her flight was booked and her mind made up.

By the time she reached the foot of the stairs Jane was waiting for her. ‘Telephone for you.'

‘For me?'

‘Yes.'

Harriet snatched up the receiver to hear Tom O'Neill's voice. ‘Harriet – hi. How are things with you? How is your father?'

‘Poorly, but stable. He had another attack yesterday but he seems to have pulled through it again.'

‘Right.' He hesitated. ‘I'm really ringing because I thought you'd like to be kept up to date with developments. Something has happened that you should know about.'

I already know a great deal more than is comfortable, she thought.

‘What?'

‘I think I have run Greg Martin to ground. I've seen Vanessa and she was less than helpful. But there were airline tickets for the States in her living room – two tickets. I think she and Greg plan to make a run for it and I've alerted the police. With any luck they'll be picked up at the airport when they try to leave Darwin.'

‘Oh.'

‘You don't sound very pleased,' he said. ‘I thought you would be glad.'

She bit her lip. Yesterday she would have been. Today she was less sure. If Greg Martin was caught the whole story would come out. Heaven only knew what it would do to her father.

‘Yes, thanks for letting me know,' she said, and suddenly he was grasping at straws; he didn't want her to hang up. It was too good to hear her voice.

‘What are you doing? You'll be staying in New York, I suppose, until you know your father is on the mend?'

‘Yes, I expect so,' she lied, looking at her suitcase and grip, packed and ready to go, and wishing she could share the truth with him. But why should she? All very well for him to telephone her today, pretending to be up front; in Australia he had persuaded her to trust him too and all the time he had been keeping things from her – and using her. Perhaps that was why he was dribbling information to her now – for no better reason than to keep tabs on her.

‘Take care then, Harriet,' he said. ‘I'll be in touch.'

When she put the telephone down she felt bereft for a moment. All very well to tell herself she hated him, useless to pretend she did not care about the way he had treated her. Tom had stirred her in a way no man had ever done before. More than that, she had felt somehow she could rely on him. It had been an illusion, of course, she knew that now, but the loss was just as real.

With an abrupt movement Harriet picked up her bags once more. The hell with all of it! She was going to Italy – and when she'd learned the truth maybe she could find some peace.