The Twisted Way (7 page)

Before he went away to boarding school he would often slip into the large garden, his father’s pride and joy and second only to his business deals, where the gardener, a burly rough fellow with thick red curly hair, was pressed into keeping an eye on ‘the child’, but actually had no time for small boys.

‘Clear off kid,’ he would shout. ‘Amuse yerself and leave me be – I got work to do. Kids, ugh.’ He delighted in giving John a menacing smile exposing large white teeth that reminded the boy of a crocodile he had seen once in the local zoo. His eye teeth were large, sharp and unpleasant. There was a gold filling down the side of one which glinted in the sun. He could be a vampire, John thought, he had read about those. He didn’t really believe in such things but the idea sent a shiver down his spine.

John was glad to do leave the man to his work and the further away he could get from those frightful teeth the better. He would make a den in some of the large bushes and act out his childhood fantasies. He could be an Indian, cowboy or whatever he liked. He had an imaginary friend called Roger, who joined him in his games.

‘Come on Roger, you can be the Chief Indian, I’ll be your best warrior,’ he would whisper so that his father or current nanny didn’t hear, or ‘Come and see my stamp collection,’ or ‘What would you like for tea? Nanny has promised sticky buns today.’ When he went to boarding school Roger was no longer needed and conveniently disappeared.

One of his classmates, Oliver, spent a few weeks during one school holiday with him. Oliver did not really like John but was persuaded by his mother, after a rare invitation from John’s father, whose conscience had started to trouble him about the solitary life his son was enduring, to join John in his home, the renowned and luxurious Huxley House. John’s father hoped too that a companion would keep him occupied and he would not bother him so much, not that he ever saw very much of him. Oliver’s mother had a difficult baby, who seemed to be screaming most of the day and night, as well as a tiresome self-willed toddler so she was delighted at the prospect of a respite from at least one of her children and agreed with undisguised eagerness.

‘Do I really have to go?’ Oliver had moaned. ‘John Lacey is not much fun. He is a really dull fellow,’ but on his arrival at John’s home his initial reluctance quickly disappeared.

‘Lucky chap,’ Oliver told John. ‘Smashing garden and big house, cook and gardener too. Lovely grub that cook serves up. I live in suburbia in a semi-detached house and would change places with you any day. I could get rid of that pest of a brother who’s always breaking my toys. No squawking baby sister either. It’s so peaceful here. I love the lake. Have you got a boat? Elizabethan house, isn’t it?’

He was going to enjoy himself after all. He looked with envy at the moat filled with murky brown water that surrounded the house. It conjured up pictures in his boyish mind about the films he had seen depicting Robin Hood – fighting, drawbridges and moats in which the actors fell and died dreadful deaths, arrows often protruding from their backs. A narrow stone bridge now linked the house with the rest of the large garden, drawbridges being a thing of the medieval past, but Oliver thought it was wonderful. He fancied himself as a modern day Robin Hood. His thick fair hair surrounded his head like a halo and he was convinced his vivid blue eyes were a legacy from some prestigious Saxon ancestor. The old ice house intrigued him. He had visions of illicit carcasses of deer being stashed there. The antiques and pictures of men and women in Edwardian clothes that adorned the wall above the large oak staircase in the hall interested him. He had never seen anything like them before. He loved history and was surrounded by objects in a house and grounds that stirred his vivid imagination.

John could not reply. He nodded mutely and turned away. He couldn’t answer his questions or tell him what a barren and miserable place he thought he lived in. Oliver would not understand. Nobody had told him who the stuffy looking men and women in Edwardian clothes were and he did not care about them or the history of his home. John longed to change places with Oliver. He had a mother and father as well as a small brother and baby sister, although he did not seem to love them, especially the brother. He, on the other hand, would appreciate them. It was not fair. His own house and his opulent surroundings oozed money but what good was that without love? He could not understand why pieces of paper and filthy coins should be allowed to determine people’s lives. Having money and a large opulent house did not make a person feel good inside.

There were no other relatives to spoil John, doting aunts or uncles, and he turned to his studies for solace and mental sustenance. He learned to play a number of card games and complicated chess moves; he quite liked solitaire, too. It was not, he discovered, necessary to depend on others for his hobbies and he soon learned how to be independent and rely on himself for amusement. Many indulgent hours were spent arranging his collection of foreign stamps in books. Any attempt to interest his father in his efforts fell upon stony ground. ‘Look at these Dad,’ he would say to his father, ‘aren’t they interesting?’ or ‘Are those worth much? Are they a bargain? Have I spent my pocket money wisely?’ He thought the latter at least would impress his father. After all making money was his father’s chief interest.

‘Will you play chess with me Dad? Please.’ ‘That’s a silly game,’ his father would reply. He really had no idea how to play chess and he did not have the time to learn such a tedious hobby. Stamp collecting, what rot. Business games, in his opinion, would do more to improve John’s mind. The boy would be better employed reading about the business world, stocks and shares, as soon as he was able to appreciate such things.

Jack Lacey rarely held any lengthy conversation with his son. He considered him to be too young to be a decent companion. In his opinion a grunt or two was all the boy merited. Jack had a habit of wiping his face with his hands as though brushing away cobwebs and John felt he was being brushed away, too. Jack’s once pretty and promising young wife was dead and with her his hopes of a happy life. In his view children should be seen occasionally but never heard. He wanted control, total control, over the situation.

‘Mrs Osman,’ or the name of the latest nanny, John’s father would shout out in the days before John was banished to boarding school, when he was tired of the boy in the evening, which was more often than not. ‘Time this lad went to bed,’ and John would often find himself sent to the nursery or to his bedroom on the floor below, out of the way, at six o’clock so that his father could work on his business papers in peace. Jack Lacey was relieved to get rid of both the nanny and the child when John went to school. He convinced himself the boy was well cared for physically but apart from that he had no interest in him. What more could the little brat want? He had done his duty.

When Jack died suddenly of heart failure in his fifties John could not grieve. He tried to cry but could not and felt guilty. John had never really known him. He was his father, his features and genes declared that, but his cold and undemonstrative attitude had left John with no deep affection or feelings akin to love for the man; it was as though he was in some ways already dead and never a significant part of his life.

‘What is the matter with me that I cannot grieve for my own father?’ he asked himself many times when a feeling of guilt threatened to overcome him.

He trailed behind his coffin when he was buried but the funeral service was meaningless.

‘My father,’ he had said when urged to do so during the service, ‘Jack Lacey, a good man ... he always took care of me. An astute businessman ...’ What was he saying? He stumbled on in an attempt to deliver the eulogy that was expected of him. Numb and detached, he endured the burial in the local churchyard and the funeral lunch afterwards where he was joined by his father’s business colleagues and associates, large strong tough men with sly fox-like faces who were anxious to keep on the right side of him, just in case he stepped into his father’s shoes and became their boss or business associate. They need not have worried. John had no interest in his father’s business ventures and sold them as soon as he could. He was an academic, that was his world, he was not a businessman and in no sense considered himself to be a wheeler or a dealer. Lacking confidence, he feared that he would be crushed like an ant underfoot in the business world so it was fortunate that he wanted to teach after completing a university course and obtaining a first class honours degree. He was thrifty which was a trait he had inherited from his father, and invested his father’s fortune with care in what he considered were safe options. Unlike his father and many of his associates he was not a risk taker. He had studied and learned more about investing on the stock market and safe savings accounts than he ever admitted to his father and was more sensible than many when investing in the 1930s. Jack had, however been smart enough to avoid huge losses during the Wall Street crash and, unlike some who were not so astute, survived with most of his fortune intact. Several of his business associates became bankrupt after making a number of bad decisions but the majority had followed Jack’s lead. They did not have the same faith in his son and would have been surprised to discover what a shrewd young man he had developed into.

John did not crave flashy cars or fast women, a small economical Ford car suited him. He was content. He had a theory that if one looked affluent, greedy and unscrupulous people would attempt to take advantage and he would have difficulty in coping, being soft and gentle at heart. Whether they would succeed was a different matter. With greater confidence in his own abilities he would have dealt with them with ease. His father had been fond of pontificating in a scathing tone when he spoke about his son, ‘That boy will be eaten alive by the sharks if he enters the business world,’ but John’s gentle appearance disguised a firm resolve his father failed to recognize. ‘He was born that way,’ his father said many times, ‘just a wimp, how on earth could I have spawned a child like that! He is far too shy and introverted to ever be a successful businessman.’

The fact that he did not help the boy to socialise or understand how to interact with other people did not occur to him. He thought it was not his fault that his son was so shy. He had done his best. ‘I have provided the little brat with good nannies and plenty of pocket money,’ he never tired of telling his friends. ‘Useless though. He will never amount to much.’

The real problem, John was intelligent enough to understand, was that he, John, was alive and well and his mother had died and left his father with a child he did not want to complicate his life. Jack was an entrepreneur and a child was something his wife should have been able to look after. A man with his brilliant business aptitude should not have been burdened with a small boy.

After boarding school John went to Oxford University where he met Pamela, a quiet studious girl who wore her thick horn-rimmed glasses with flair. The lenses made her fine blue eyes look larger than they actually were and her eyes were her main asset. She loved to look like a bookworm. Her unruly thick mousy hair was cut short in a fashionable bob with an uneven fringe she had a habit of flipping back carelessly in the middle of a conversation. It hung down her forehead like a curtain, stopping just short of the top of her eyes and her short straight nose.

Pamela was too plump for her short stature, and lack of exercise and a head more often than not hovering over a book during her early years had not done her any favours. She was described by a friend as ‘cuddly’ and her cheap poorly cut tweedy clothes and uninteresting flat laced shoes emphasised her dumpy shape. She didn’t at that time see any reason to waste money on expensive clothes she didn’t need.

Pamela made the first advances. ‘John Lacey,’ she said, sidling up to him one day after a lecture, ‘can you help me with my assignment? I really am stuck and would appreciate it.’ She moved towards him and placed a small chubby hand over one of his. He jumped away as though stung by a bee. The warmth of her touch lingered for a few moments, strange and unfamiliar. It was an unusual experience for him to be touched in such an intimate way by any other human being. She moved her hand slowly up his arm.

‘Come and have a coffee with me in my digs,’ she wheedled and he found himself agreeing. The warmth of her soft and neatly manicured hand crept through his thin shirt. Feelings for the opposite sex that he did not fully understand and had until that moment denied, flooded through his body.

She was akin to a magnet he could not resist and she pursued him with determination in an effort to win his affection. She stirred feelings within him that he had never been fully aware that he possessed, except perhaps in the odd dream. She longed to get married but had not attracted many boyfriends; her dumpy and studious looks disguised the passionate and loving woman that lurked behind the shapeless clothes and hid her curvaceous body. John, though pitifully inexperienced with the opposite sex, knew he was lucky. He worshipped her; indeed he had never got to know any other girl very well so comparison was not relevant. Pamela gave him the affection he had craved all his young life. She had obtained a scholarship to allow her to attend Oxford and her background was very different from John’s, money always being in short supply, but in his eyes that made her more desirable. She did not appear to be interested in the demon money which was God to his unfeeling father and that for him was a big plus. John was convinced that she had what he considered to be good principles and appreciated the affection and good companionship she offered him. All that glitters is not gold, he told himself, and he soon appreciated that Pam, under the dull exterior, was pure gold, and he eventually plucked up enough courage to ask her to marry him after they had completed their teaching training courses together in Bristol. They got engaged following a reluctant blessing from her parents, who thought John was a skinflint or perhaps really did not have enough money to keep their beloved daughter in reasonable comfort, though they would have been agreeably surprised, indeed amazed, if they had discovered the extent of his fortune. They never did.