Mothers and Daughters (28 page)

Alice thought of Cecily’s advice as they trailed alone the busy road, held up again by roadworks. It was a great relief when they at last turned down the lane to the cottage and arrived.

Evie and Bunny came out to greet them, Evie asking why it had taken them so long, seeming pleased to see them.

Bunny had grown and become more alert and seemed a cheerful little boy, though he called out often for attention, which Alice was happy to give him, bouncing him on her knee or cuddling him while she fed him or he slept. She noticed that Evie appeared to be glowing with some inner joy. Motherhood obviously suited her. She’d finished her illustrations they were much admired by the publishers and she had a few weeks respite before having to start on the next book.

‘I’ve decided to call him Raphael, Raffi for short, and Julian after Dad, for his middle name, so he can choose which one he likes best when he’s older,’ she announced proudly when they were all sitting together with tea and a rather battered chocolate cake Evie had baked for them.

‘A good choice. Unusual,’ Alice said, wondering how she’d come to settle on the name.

‘Raphael, who do we know called Raphael?’ Laura stared expectantly at her sister as if waiting for some fascinating revelation.

Evie blushed, a soft rosy glow covering her face. She turned away from them, fiddling with some late flowering roses she’d picked from the garden and put in a vase in the living room. Alice waited. ‘Someone I know suggested it,’ Evie said vaguely. ‘Bunny’s a bit… well we don’t want it to stick, do we?’

‘No, Raphael… Raffi is perfect,’ Alice said hurriedly. ‘Now we’d better get over to Edith and Amy and we’ll all have supper together this evening. I’ll get something nice on the way back.’ She didn’t feel like eating, perhaps none of them would when they’d heard what she had to say.

When they left the fitting, the car was full of pretty baskets, making Evie exclaim and beg to have a set for herself.

‘I’ve already ordered one for you,’ Alice said, ‘but we need these to try and sell in London.

Later they ate supper together, though she could hardly swallow, and then, just as Evie said she was going to have a shower before settling down to a television programme she liked, she said, ‘Just stay a second, darling, sit down I’ve something to tell you, something difficult, but it has to be said.’

Both girls exchanged anxious looks with each other. Evie sunk down on the sofa close to Laura, who put down the magazine she was flicking through.

‘You’ve got some terrible illness,’ Evie blurted, her eyes round with fear.

Laura leant over and touched her, her voice raw, her eyes wild, ‘You haven’t, have you, Mum?’

‘No… nothing like that. No. It’s something to do with your father…’

‘Don’t say he’s not really our father,’ Evie said, the relief that her mother was not ill struggling with her new fear.

‘No, he
is
your father, please listen, it is difficult for me to tell you but I must, you have a right to know. Frank told me. Your father never even hinted about it, so it came as a great shock to me.’ The tears, tears of fury as well as betrayal, surged up in her. She thought of Cecily; she would be strong, face it squarely, and tell it as it was. ‘You know Frank is one of your father’s dearest friends, well Dad’s real friend was his older brother, Henry, and Henry had a terrible riding accident and died.’ She was never going to tell anyone about Julian’s part in this that would be kept private. ‘Naturally they were all very upset and then Dad fell in love with their sister, Sarah and…’ she paused and Laura said quietly, ‘I suppose they had a baby, did they marry? Were you and Dad married, properly married I mean?’

‘Not bigamy,’ Evie burst out. ‘Don’t tell me Dad had two wives and two lots of children at the same time.’

‘No.’ This was turning into a farce. ‘They never married. Sarah left Britain to study in America and found later that she was having Dad’s baby. She fell in love with someone out there and married him.’

‘So what you’re saying is we have a half… what, brother or sister?’ Laura demanded.

‘A half-brother, Ned, only Dad never told us about him.’

‘Perhaps he didn’t know,’ Evie said. ‘You said the girl only found out she was pregnant when she’d left here.’

‘He did know, he often saw him. Even though Ned lives in America, he studied and worked in London not far from us, in Queens Gate, and he never told us.’

Alice couldn’t sleep and tossed and turned in one of the single beds in the spare room. Evie had taken over the master bed since she’d been alone with Raffi, putting his cot into the en-suite bathroom so she could hear him easily in the night, and for that Alice was glad. She didn’t want to feel Julian’s presence in the dark beside her, remember how often they made love here, more often than they did in London, as being in the cottage always had a relaxed, holiday feel about it.

She had told them the truth, it was over and she should be relieved. They hadn’t been as shocked as she had, they’d even found it exciting. ‘A brother, great, I’ve always wanted a brother,’ Evie exclaimed, and even Laura seemed pleased. ‘Babies do get born to people who aren’t married,’ she said pointedly. ‘Do you think she did it to trap him, wanted to marry him herself?’

‘I’ve no idea.’ Alice didn’t want to think about it, let her imagination take wing and throw up all sorts of lurid scenarios.

She’d cried when she told them, saying how hurt she was that Julian hadn’t told her about it. They’d been together all those years and he’d never even hinted at it, and though the girls hugged her, begged her not to cry, they saw it differently.

‘He didn’t want you to be upset and you would have been, you’d have interrogated him, Mum, wouldn’t you? Making it worse than it was,’ Laura said kindly. ‘It happened before he knew you, it would be much worse if he’d sloped off and had an affair behind your back.’ She threw Evie a sharp look, though Evie didn’t see.

‘I think it makes Dad rather exciting,’ Evie said. ‘He made us think he was a very cautious, careful man and all the time he’d led this secret life.’ Her eyes shone as if she’d suddenly found out that her father was really James Bond.

‘It’s not the sort of excitement I want, and at the very least he could have told us… me.’ She’d dreaded the girls being upset by their father’s betrayal but in fact they seemed to admire him more because of it.

The next morning after they’d all had time to absorb the news, Laura and Evie bombarded her with questions about Ned. Could he come to the wedding, if only she’d known about him, Laura said,
he
could have given her away.

‘But you’ve asked Frank and he’s accepted and is paying for most of the wedding, you can’t put him off now. I don’t know how much Ned knows about us, if anything. He’s got to get to know us, and there’s no time with the wedding only weeks away. I think it best to take it slowly. I can’t get my head round it just now, there’s been too many things to think about,’ Alice said. She’d have to accept Ned in their lives if the girls wanted to get to know him; after all he was their half-brother. But would
she
want him in her life, a clone of his father, a reminder of a life she’d never known about? ‘Also imagine the drama if people found out he was your father’s son, it will spoil the day for you, Laura, it’s
your
day after all.’ Alice knew what it would be like if Ned came to the wedding, all the attention would be on him and she couldn’t bear it: the gossip, the whispers, and the incredulity.

‘I’ve told Douglas and he’s amazed,’ Laura said. ‘He wonders why Dad didn’t tell us ages ago.’ She regarded Alice warily.

‘It is odd he didn’t tell, I mean I’d tell my husband or whatever about Raffi,’ Evie said, lurching the baby over her shoulder to wind him.

‘Perhaps men feel differently, and as you say, Mum, the girl didn’t know she was pregnant for ages. There wasn’t much sex education when Dad was young or reliable birth control, was there?’ Laura said. ‘But I do wish he’d told us. I’d have liked to get to know Ned.’

‘You’re sure he is Dad’s?’ Evie frowned. ‘I mean, you all seemed so unclued up about sex and all then, what if Ned is the other man’s, the one she married?’

‘No, I’m sure Ned is his,’ Alice said. ‘I saw him.’

‘What! Why didn’t you tell us?’ Both girls chorused together.

‘We didn’t speak, he didn’t even see me, and if he had he wouldn’t have known who I was. I saw him coming out of Frank’s block of flats and crossing the road and I thought he was Dad.’ She went on to explain the scene to them, the shock of seeing him, mistaking him for Julian and realizing that it couldn’t be him. She didn’t tell them about the sorrow she’d felt and now the anger that he had died and left behind an image of himself to taunt her.

As the girls, especially Evie, discussed it, they made excuses for their father’s behaviour. ‘I think he feels more human knowing this about him,’ Evie said.

‘Being like you, you mean,’ Laura retorted.

‘No squabbling, girls,’ Alice said weakly.

While Laura and Evie were finding excuses for their father’s actions, Alice felt they skated round Nick, who was hardly a good example of a loving, caring father and she wondered if they would compare their own father to him. Had Julian just left Ned to be bought up by Sarah’s family, opted out, as Nick seemed to be doing with Raffi?

Her daughters, or anyway Evie, might pretend they didn’t know what was said about Nick’s inability to keep his trousers done up and father children with women other than his wife. Would some people – Elspeth, Laura’s dire future mother-in-law, came to mind – say the same things about Julian when they heard the story give her something else to disapprove of?

She should be above caring what people like Elspeth thought, but it was Laura who’d bear the brunt of it. Julian had changed in Alice’s mind; she could no longer feel the presence of the man she’d loved for so long. He’d gone, leaving behind a stranger, setting her adrift from the person she’d thought herself to be.

Alice and Laura got back to London late on the Sunday night, and Laura stayed over, leaving early the next morning for work. Soon she’d move back home, having given up her flat, and in a few weeks she’d be married.

Laura had never lived with Douglas, perhaps because of his children being there. Alice knew there were times when the children stayed with their mother or grandparents and the two of them would spend some time together alone, but perhaps not enough time. Having to go to school and all, the children spent the majority of their time with their father, so there couldn’t be much privacy and time for getting to know each other.

It was difficult to know what was right. Some of her friends’ daughters had moved in with boyfriends and then the relationships had turned sour and they’d been cast out with nothing. On the other hand, if two adults had never lived together they might find it hard to settle into each other’s rhythms. Alice had been so young, able to adapt easily to Julian, and he came alone unencumbered with children – well, so she had thought at the time.

Now she’d become too set in her ways to dovetail into another man’s life, especially as she was just beginning to enjoy her independence, and, though she’d welcome Julian back, the man he used to be, the man she’d believed he was, she didn’t know that she wanted to live with someone else now.

She was contemplating this over her third cup of coffee when the doorbell went. It must be the postman or some delivery; things for the wedding were coming in most weeks now. She opened the door with a smile on her face: it was Frank.

The two of them stood there regarding each other a moment, then Frank said, ‘May I come in? I know it’s early but I want to see you and Laura told me you came back from Suffolk last night.’ He didn’t wait for her answer, walking in and standing in the narrow hall, watching her.

She couldn’t think what to say, her heart was doing a sort of jig; perhaps she’d have a seizure and collapse on the floor, though there wouldn’t be room for both of them in this narrow passage. She was relieved that she was dressed and made up. She always liked to start the day ready for it, lounging about her in nightclothes made her feel sloppy and lethargic.

‘I suppose you want to talk about Julian and Ned and all of them.’ She turned her back on him and walked through the house into the large kitchen. The sun shone through the window, touching the room with syrupy light. She faced him. ‘I told the girls about Ned this weekend.’

‘I know, and did it cause fainting fits, hysteria, outrage and hatred of their father?’

There was an edge of laughter in his voice and she hated him, hated him for keeping such news from her, for ruining the picture she had of Julian and now seemingly taking it so lightly.

‘You don’t understand,’ she said, ‘it might be old news to you, even a joke but it’s not for me, finding out that my husband was leading a double life, a life that it seems you colluded in. Is there any more to it than you told me?’ Her mouth set firm, her eyes glittered with angry tears.

He was standing close to her and for a second she felt he’d touch her, take her hand perhaps, or put his arm round her, but he stepped away, walked over to the glass door to the garden and stood there looking out at the last roses, their petals dropping onto the paving stones.

‘Don’t let this ruin your love for him, the happy marriage you shared,’ he said still staring out into the garden. ‘You’re making more of it than you should, Alice. I think he knew you would, that’s why he never told you.’

‘So put the blame on me,’ she snapped, not wanting to admit there was some truth in what he said. ‘What a typical male thing to do.’

‘Don’t blame anyone,’ he turned round to her, his face grave. ‘I thought better of you, Alice; it happened before you met him, years before, and was over quickly. Ned was not planned it surprised them both. By the time Sarah found out it was too late for a termination and anyway she didn’t want one, and Greg married her before Ned was born, and most people assumed Ned was his.’

Her legs felt like cotton wool. She sat down at the table in front of her cooling coffee, ashamed of her anger, and yet it was so hard to accept Julian was not the person she thought he was, the man she’d built him up to be. Today people felt differently about such things, and it was ironic when birth control was so easily available today that people were so lax about it and babies were born to the most unlikely couples, who didn’t stay together, never would have done, like Evie and Nick.