Old Sins (140 page)

‘I’m amazed none of you have worked it out before.’

‘Well, we did. I told you. But then – well yes, you’re right. Babies don’t always come at the proper time. Look at Julia.
Maybe he was early, like her. But then you see, on the surface he is so very different. He couldn’t act or look less like him. Could you –’ she took a long drink of brandy – ‘could you tell me about it now? Have you always known?’

‘Yes, for a long time. He first came to me when Lee had just died. He felt utterly miserable. It was a bad time altogether for him, something had gone wrong for him here, something personal, some affair this end as well. But I think he really loved Lee. Really loved her. She was obviously an extraordinary person. Very brave and lovely. And you see, he was unable to grieve openly. At all. So it became almost unbearable for him. That was what drove him to me. It was the only release. Otherwise it would have been an unthinkable thing for a man like him to do.’

‘I suppose so. Poor Julian.’

‘Yes. And then he was wracked with guilt over Miles’ father’s suicide.’

‘Which was – because – ?’

‘Well, yes. He found out. About Miles. Some fool doctor told him he would never have been able to father a child. He put two and two together. That was tragic. Wicked.’

‘Poor Miles. We must keep that from him.’

‘If we can.’

‘And then after Lee’s death, he would have given anything to have brought Miles out into the open, to have told everyone, to have given him a home, his name. But he had promised Lee, and besides it would have meant telling Miles. Very painful for a child. On top of his mother’s death. So – more silence.’

‘Yes.’

‘The whole thing started as a bet with himself. He decided to pretend to be someone else and see if he could sustain the fiction for a bit. But he fell in love with Lee, made her pregnant, and the whole thing got out of hand.’

‘That’s exactly what Letitia said must have happened.’

‘His mother?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you think she knew too? I mean really knew. Despite the dates.’

‘Perhaps. She was very worried about Roz and Miles.’

‘How do you think she’ll cope with it all?’

‘Oh, wonderfully,’ said Phaedria, ‘we don’t have to worry about Letitia. She could fight World War Three single handed.’

‘Good. It sounds, from what you say of Roz, she may need to.’

‘So did he go on seeing you?’ asked Phaedria. ‘Julian, I mean. All those years?’

‘On and off. Yes. I think he became addicted to me.’

‘I can see why,’ said Phaedria with a half smile.

‘He loved you very much,’ said Doctor Friedman suddenly. ‘Very much indeed. He said he had never felt anything quite like what he felt for you. He saw you truly as a new beginning.’

‘Oh, God,’ said Phaedria, and the tears started to flow again. ‘Oh, God, don’t.’

‘Why not? It’s important. It’s good you should know that, surely?’

‘Yes, but I wasn’t a new beginning. If I was, I soon ended again. I behaved badly. I was selfish, difficult. Fooled around with someone. Oh, not properly. But enough to make him angry and jealous.’

‘Phaedria, you mustn’t be so hard on yourself. You were very young and thrown into an impossible situation. You tried. He did far worse things. Manipulating you and Roz. Sleeping with Camilla North.’

‘God, he told you all that?’

‘Oh, yes, by the end of his life he was very seriously mixed up. I was worried about him. I saw him very frequently.’

‘So what about the will? For God’s sake, why did he do that to us all?’

‘He was very angry with you. With you and Roz. I don’t think he had any idea how difficult she made things for you. He felt you were both just behaving very badly. At one point he really did think you were having an affair. And he made that will to punish you. Both of you. In a fit of dreadful rage. After he’d come to LA to find you. Remember?’

Phaedria nodded.

‘And he’d seen Miles by then. Or heard from him anyway. He was quite determined to go and see him, tell him everything, urge him to come and join the family. He felt he’d be able to cope by then. Oh, of course he always meant to make
another, more reasonable will, but he said doing that one had been therapy. He said he’d modify it when he’d told Miles and introduced him to the family. He thought he had plenty of time. Then I think when you found him in bed with Camilla North, and left him, he just forgot it. He was so appalled at what he’d done. He just kept postponing remaking it, until something was resolved. It’s a big thing, of course, making a will if you’re as rich as he was. And the earlier one he’d made was before he’d met and married you, so he knew he couldn’t revert to that.’

Phaedria looked at her. ‘Why didn’t you tell us all before? When you first heard he’d died, when I came to see you? It would have saved so much unhappiness.’

‘If I’d known about Miles and Roz, believe me I would have done. But apart from that, I couldn’t, Phaedria. I see my position as very like that of your friend Father Kennedy. I have to safeguard confidences.’

‘But Julian was dead. You weren’t betraying him.’

‘I would have been betraying you if you hadn’t been able to deal with it. I had to learn about you. There was no rush. I couldn’t keep you from the real pain. Of Julian’s death and the will. And I knew you would work towards the discovery by yourself in time. I thought that was much better. I knew you had come to rely on me, would call on me if you really needed me.’

‘How did you know?’ said Phaedria, angry, hostile. ‘I might have done something desperate.’

‘No,’ said Doctor Friedman, and she was smiling into Phaedria’s rage. ‘I could see you were very strong. I wasn’t worried about you at all. Not seriously.’

‘Well anyway,’ said Phaedria, still half angry, ‘what do I do now? Who do I tell? Who tells Roz? And Miles? Oh, it’s awful. Please tell me what to do.’

‘Well, it certainly shouldn’t be you to tell Roz. Who is she really closest to?’

‘Letitia.’ Phaedria spoke without hesitation.

‘And you think she could stand it?’

‘Yes, I do. But maybe you should talk to her. I don’t think I could bear it.’

‘All right. Bring her to see me. Let me see – this evening, about six.’

‘Thank you. And how about Miles and Roz? We should get them home. The longer it goes on, the worse it will be.’

‘Yes. Can you contact them?’

‘Only through Father Kennedy. He will have a phone number or at least could go out to the house.’

‘Then ask him to do that. To get them to call Letitia.’

‘All right. What a nightmare.’

‘In a way,’ said Doctor Friedman. ‘But then, waking up from a nightmare is such a relief, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose,’ said Letitia, sitting very upright in Doctor Friedman’s office, ‘that you are going to tell me that Miles is my grandson.’

‘Yes,’ said Doctor Friedman. ‘Yes, I am.’

Letitia was silent for a while. Phaedria reached out and took her hand.

‘Are you all right, Mrs Morel!?’

‘Oh, perfectly,’ said Letitia, brushing away a tear, smiling brightly, a trifle tremulously at Doctor Friedman. ‘I suppose I knew all along. I suppose we all did. It was such a relief when we managed to persuade ourselves it was impossible. There was something, just something about him that was Julian.’

‘Yes,’ said Phaedria, ‘I felt it too.’

‘Oh, darling,’ said Letitia, turning to her. ‘I was so hoping you would fall in love with Miles. That would have been so absolutely perfect. But I suppose life isn’t like that?’

‘No,’ said Doctor Friedman. ‘Not often.’

Letitia was silent for a while. ‘Poor Julian,’ she said. ‘Poor man. How dreadful to think he was so unhappy. So confused.’

‘Yes,’ said Phaedria, ‘that’s what I feel. And so dreadful that I failed to de-confuse him. Make him able to tell me, to talk.’

‘You can’t blame yourself for that,’ said Letitia, ‘you came into this very late. But I have to. It was those old sins again, you see.’

‘Old sins?’ said Doctor Friedman.

‘Yes. It’s an old Irish saying: Old sins cast long shadows. I was talking to Phaedria about it the other day. An old sin of mine has cast a very long and dreadful shadow, I’m afraid.’

And she dropped her head into her hands and began to weep.

‘Letitia, darling, don’t, please don’t cry,’ said Phaedria, going over to her, putting her arms round her. ‘You are the lifeblood of this family, the person we turn to, the person we all of us love. How can you talk about sin? You have done so much good to us all, we couldn’t survive without you.’

‘Yes, and so much harm too,’ said Letitia, reaching out and taking the tissue Doctor Friedman was offering. ‘Thank you, my dear. I note you are not offering me any palliatives for my guilt.’

‘I don’t ever blame or condone,’ said Margaret Friedman, smiling at her. ‘I have seen too much. I can only tell you that a person is many many things, Mrs Morell, and that genes and upbringing are only a part. We may take our children, warmly clothed and well fed, loved and cared for, to the crossroads, but then they become themselves, make their own way, take their own turnings. Your son did many good, brilliant things; he brought happiness and pleasure to countless people. Not just commercially, he made huge donations to charity, set up trust funds, founded research projects – well, you know as well as I. You do not sit complacently and take any credit for that; neither should you take the blame for the rest.’

‘Well,’ said Letitia, with a sigh, ‘I’m afraid I do. But thank you anyway. Now then,’ she said, visibly pulling herself together, ‘I suppose you want me to tell Roz?’

‘Yes,’ said Phaedria. ‘Yes, I’m afraid we do.’

Roz and Miles were lying on the lawn when they saw Father Kennedy’s elderly Ford lurching its way up the hill. They had just come back from the beach; Miles had been trying to teach Roz to surf, without success.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘that I can marry a woman who can’t catch a wave.’

‘I’ll learn,’ said Roz. She looked at him more seriously. ‘You won’t mind about the company, will you, Miles?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You won’t mind me carrying on with it? Running it? Fighting for it?’

‘Of course not. I don’t care what you do, as long as you love me and make love to me and have a baby every year.’

‘Hmmm. That might be hard to fit in. Could it be every two years?’

‘No. Sorry. No way.’

‘All right.’

‘Seriously,’ he said, ‘for all our sakes, but particularly yours and working with Phaedria, I think I should sell my share to a third party. A genuine one,’ he added with a grin. ‘If I let you have it now, it will amount to treachery. And we have to live with Phaedria. And I think in the long run you’ll have a more interesting, challenging, satisfactory time with someone else.’

She looked at him. ‘Do you really think so?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘I hate the idea. I really do. You wouldn’t consider staying on, working with us?’

‘Oh, no,’ he said, ‘not now. Probably I never would. It was quite a pretty idea, playing shops, drawing nice pictures, but it’s not me, not really. Not what I want from life.’

‘What do you want from life?’

‘You,’ he said, pulling her to him. ‘You. And this place. Nothing else. Nothing else at all.’

Roz looked at him, and felt a huge, sweet wave of love engulf her, and at the same time a sense of such happiness, such peace, she could hardly bear it. ‘Oh God,’ she said, ‘I love you so much.’

At that moment, Father Kennedy arrived.

Roz sat facing Letitia on the sofa at First Street, her eyes stormy, her face set.

‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘you’re going to tell me I’m not to marry Miles. Well, it’s nothing to do with you, and I shall marry who I like.’

Letitia took a deep breath. ‘Roz, my darling, you cannot, simply cannot marry Miles.’

‘Why not?’ said Roz, standing up, almost shouting. ‘Why the hell not?’

‘Because he’s your brother.’

‘Oh, God,’ said Roz, and sat down again abruptly. ‘Oh, God.’

She looked at Letitia, desperate, appealing; she was very white, very still. Then she laughed, a harsh, nervous laugh.

‘But he’s not. He can’t be. You said so yourself. You’re wrong. You have to be. How could he be? With those dates and everything.’

‘He is. Obviously we were wrong about the dates. Phaedria phoned Father Kennedy and talked to him before – before we talked to you. He remembered, he knew Lee and Miles from when he was tiny, baptized him, visited Lee in hospital when he was born. He was over three weeks late. It was quite a joke in the hospital. Their first ten-month pregnancy. Your father was obviously in California, just before – well, before he became involved with Camilla. He is Miles’ father.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Roz, my darling, I am more sorry than I can ever say, but you have to believe me. It’s true.’

‘Who told you? How did you find out?’

‘Your father had been – seeing someone. A psychiatrist. For many years. She knew.’

‘No.’ It was a piteous cry, almost a wail. ‘Please, please no.’ She put out her hands as if warding off some physical blow; her eyes were closed. ‘Please, Letitia, please please tell me it’s not true. That it might not be true. You were so sure before. I don’t see why you can’t be again. Please help me, Letitia, please.’

‘Darling, I can’t.’

‘Who told you? How did you find out?’

‘Phaedria. Phaedria told me.’

‘Phaedria! Oh, well it’s not true!’ There was a frantic look in her eyes as she scrabbled for rescue. ‘Phaedria would have made it up. She was so jealous of me, she hated me so much, she probably wants Miles for herself, oh, Letitia, how could you be such a fool as to believe her?’ She was smiling now, triumphant. ‘It’s all just a fantasy of Phaedria’s. It isn’t true at all. Oh, thank God, thank God, how could you have ever believed her, Letitia? How?’

‘Roz, I’m sorry. But you’re wrong. Phaedria did not make it up. I have seen this psychiatrist, this Doctor Friedman, myself. It is undoubtedly true. Phaedria is desperate for you, quite desperate. And of course she doesn’t want Miles.’

‘No,’ said Roz, ‘no, of course she doesn’t. I forgot for a moment, she has my other lover, doesn’t she? She’s stolen him from me as she’s stolen everything else, my father, the company, and now she’s trying to stop me having Miles. Well, she won’t. I won’t let her. She won’t.’