Death be Not Proud (13 page)

My father went straight to the potting shed when we arrived home. My mother watched his broad back from the dining room window as he retreated down the narrow courtyard. I explained what had happened between us, abbreviating some of it, leaving out the bits about which I felt ashamed – but basically keeping to the gist of the truth. Mum didn't seem very surprised, her careworn face neither critical nor judging – just accepting this crisis as inevitable.

“Your father gets very low; he always has done. It's why he's been so concerned for your… well, your mental health; he thinks you might have inherited the same problem.”

We sat on the side of the rosewood dining table closest to the electric fire, a large mug of tea and a pile of toast with last year's wineberry jam in front of me.

“I didn't know.”

“No, of course not. Why should you, darling? He's always tried to hide it from you. He's ashamed and he doesn't want you or your sister to be burdened by it.”

“So Beth doesn't know?”

“Of course she does. She's seen much more of him than you have recently, and she remembers Grandad's black-dog days – which I expect you don't?”

“No – not really.”

Tiberius emerged from the cupboard by the fire and jumped onto my knee, wobbled, then settled into an ungainly heap as heavy and immovable as a doorstop. I tickled his paw until he retracted his claws.

“You know that both of your grandfathers served in the Royal Engineers, and that Grandad rose to the rank of general, don't you? He was always very ambitious, and he expected your father to equal his rank. And he could have done, you know; he had a very promising career ahead of him. It came as a terrible disappointment when he wasn't promoted. I didn't care, of course; he did well enough for me, but then, I was part of the problem…”

“Why?”

“I didn't fulfil the role of the dutiful Army wife, did I? By the time we'd managed to nearly ruin Beth's education, I'd had enough of coffee mornings and jamborees and the endless,
endless
parties – oh, you have no idea of the tedium! Well, I decided I wasn't going to put you through all that, and came back to England when you were a tot. It was the best thing for your education, but perhaps not for you.” She considered me sadly. “Do you know, it broke your father's heart not having you with him, but he let me have my way – even if he didn't agree with it.”

The cat's tail flicked towards my uneaten toast; I pushed the plate further away.

“He said it was because of his career… that it was his choice.”

Mum laughed quietly. “Ever the gentleman.” I looked surprised. “Oh no, that's more like him than you think, darling. The decision to return to England was entirely mine, and it ruined his chances of promotion; he was passed over
from then on. It mattered then, you see – the wife not being there to support her husband's career. But do you know, not once in all these years has he brought it up, and he's never held it against me…” her face softened, “… and definitely not against you. But he didn't want you to make the same mistakes; he wanted you to achieve everything he hadn't.”

I ruminated, chewing the toast without tasting it.

“I said some pretty horrible things. He didn't deserve everything I said – some of it – but not all. I think I might have really hurt him.”

Mum looked down at her hands folded in her lap and started to twist her wedding ring around and around before replying. When she did, she spoke with understated wisdom.

“I think it needed to be said – whatever it was – for both your sakes. You have been at each other's throats for so long, you've both lost sight of where it all started and now… well, now perhaps it is time. You are as stubborn as each other and more alike than either of you would wish to admit. Let's just hope that it will help you both in the long run.” She stood up stiffly and eased her shoulders. “I've finished Archie's sweater at last; I just have to sew up the seams. I do hope he behaves himself and doesn't grow too much before Christmas; I've almost run out of wool.” She looked down at me. “I'm going to take your father a cup of tea and a slice of Dundee cake, and see if that'll do the trick.”

I leapt up, startling the cat, who slid onto the floor with a
thud
and a loss of dignity.

“Let me do that, Mum.”

She smiled tiredly. “That's very sweet of you, darling; he'll appreciate it.”

I didn't try to initiate a conversation when I took him his tea and my father didn't say anything to me. It felt earthily
warm in the potting shed, and I found him perched forlornly on the upturned milk crate he used sometimes as a makeshift seat. I put the small tray down carefully in a free space on the potting bench, next to some sturdy cuttings, and kissed him on his weathered cheek with more affection than I had shown him for a very long time.

 

The old house resounded with the great bells of St Mary's as they called worshippers to the evening service. I climbed the broad stairs with a Thermos of tea in one hand, a plate of Dundee cake and pork pie in the other, and the strap of my document case over my shoulder. I didn't intend leaving my room until I had accomplished the one task I had put off for far too long.

I had avoided thinking about what I had seen and heard in Martinsthorpe because a part of me didn't want to believe it. It complicated matters and could make no sense in a rational world, and the fact that I even contemplated it placed me beyond wisdom. The little phone sat sleekly in the palm of my hand, silent as ever but now containing the photographs – the evidence – that had turned my life inside out. If I felt this way, how would Matthew react when I told him what I knew? For that matter, what did I know?

I knew his identity now. I knew where he came from, who his family were – no, who his family
had
been – where he was born and where he should have died. I knew
how
he should have died and I knew the name of the man who tried to kill him. But what I didn't know and couldn't understand was why he wasn't dead and why,
why
this knowledge didn't frighten me. I flipped the mobile in my hand and summoned it to life. I could call him – I ached to hear his voice – and tell him… what? Would he deny it? Laugh at me? Become
angry? Where would that leave me? Did I risk more in telling him what I knew than in keeping silent and playing dumb? It wouldn't work; his was a secret that broke the bounds of everything I thought I understood, putting him in the sphere of the unknown. Yes, I knew who he was – but I still hadn't a clue as to
what
he was.

I allowed the mobile to slumber once again, nestling dormant in my hand. I would summon the pictures from the phone as ghosts from his past, when – and if – I had the evidence to confront him.

I undid my tight knot of hair and let it fall in a relaxed wave to one side. Light from my bedside lamp emphasized the pink hues that made it so distinctive – as distinctive as Matthew's own. I recalled the image in the window; there could be no doubting what I had seen. The figures hadn't been representations, but portraits – clearly identifiable as individuals – his parents, his grandparents, even his infant brother. So who were the people he claimed were his
current
family? Henry couldn't be his father and, come to think of it, I never remembered Matthew saying that he was. Could he be Matthew's father-in-law? Daniel wasn't his brother – perhaps his brother-in-law? I vaguely remembered, in an almost forgotten conversation, Matias saying something about Matthew's dead wife's family – Ellen's family. But Ellie and Harry looked so like Matthew that they must be related by blood to him – so similar… oh, so
obvious
! Of course, they weren't his niece and nephew – they were his children! That explained the physical similarities, the close bond between them; and Matthew couldn't have told me before, because he would have had to explain the discrepancy in ages that would have made a nonsense of his lie, there being only ten years or so between them. Which meant that
he must have fathered them about twenty years ago, which presupposed their mother – Ellen – had been older than I always imagined, perhaps in her early forties when she died in the car crash that made him a widower. Well, why not? I wondered whether she knew who Matthew was, if he had told her; but then, something like that could hardly have been concealed from his wife.

“Why is this so
difficult
?” I said out loud. But I already knew the answer. When I went to America, it had been with the express purpose of locating and studying the Richardson journal. I meant it to be not only the culmination of my own research, but also the fulfilment of my grandfather's dream. It would mark not the end of my career, but the turning point around which I could begin the rest of my life. I had known this, understood it, and accepted it as inevitable. But the intervening months brought with them changes that I had not predicted and were beyond my control. I didn't like being out of control.

The journal had become a means to an end rather than an end in itself. It now lay beneath the newspaper I had placed on top of it – not so much to conceal it from my parents, but to hide its accusing face from me. I shifted the insubstantial paper and picked up the book, feeling its corners through the soft leather pouch that protected it, and removed it. Its black, scuffed cover represented not only my past but also my future, and that of another whose life lay bound within its pages. I sat in the middle of my bed, and started to read.

It was not like reading somebody's diary today; writing material had been scarce and every millimetre had been covered in the tight, compact script that Nathaniel Richardson used to record the everyday happenings of his family. The journal was not only physically difficult to read, but Richardson had also
adopted abbreviations which he used throughout to represent words familiar to him. Without the benefit of a key, these were a mystery to me. Added to which, the variations in spellings plus his use of colloquialisms made deciphering the journal a maze of language which had to be negotiated before it could be understood. But I'd had a decade of practice and a lifetime of patience. I started by making a list of every abbreviation he used, one by one decoding them as they occurred until I worked out their meaning through association within the text. Gradually, I became accustomed to his handwriting and to the style of language he used. Names became familiar – people, places – as those aspects that concerned him most cropped up again and again.

I already knew he had become steward to the Lynes family on the premature death of his father, having served as his apprentice since he completed his education at Oakham. But I didn't know that he and Matthew had grown up together, nor that they were friends.

Richardson started his journal in the 1630s, when he seemed particularly concerned to record a series of crop failures and murrain in cattle following a number of poor summers. Most of his early entries recorded items to do with the estate, his family's affairs and very occasionally, the increasingly unstable national political situation, as it affected the prices that the crops fetched at the local market, or the ability to export fleeces to the continental weavers. He grumbled about the increase in taxes and excise duties and the burden it placed on the family. Once or twice he mentioned religion as it touched his conscience or that of his master. But on the whole his comments were mundane and sparse, sometimes months passing between entries.

Normally, I would have disregarded information that did
not have a direct bearing on what I researched at the time. Now, however, I absorbed every detail, as they filled in the background to Matthew's life – like a painting-by-numbers – and gradually the outlines provided by history were enriched by a man who knew him well.

As the years passed in pages, Richardson recorded his increasing concerns with the governance of the realm as it intruded on the daily lives of the family. On the rare occasion he referred directly to Henry Lynes or his son, it was to do with the gradual polarization, both politically and religiously, of the family, as the rift grew between Henry and William. In between his own marriage and the birth of his first child, Nathaniel mentioned Matthew training to bear arms to protect their lands, his betrothal to an heiress of a family of worth, and Henry's increased dependency on his son to help him run the estate as his years and the weight of the discord between the brothers bore heavily upon him.

My eyes strained dryly to read the congested script. The room had grown cold again when the central heating switched off around midnight, and the clock in the church tower no longer struck the quarters as the town slept. A strengthening wind rattled the window, and I uncurled my stiff legs and stretched my arms until they felt loose again. Tea from the vacuum flask warmed me, and the thin stream of air from the fan heater riffled the pages of the journal. Outside, the wind whined like an old dog, and I began to read once more.

In 1643, between a local minor outbreak of plague and a particularly good return on a shipment of wool, tension rose within the family as the nation descended into full-blown civil war. Richardson's entries became punctuated by snippets of news reflecting his preoccupation with the safeguarding of the estate and the welfare of his growing family. He also worried
for his friend. In July, Richardson recorded just one entry, the hastily scratched words setting my stomach jangling:

The impact of the words was not lessened, although I had heard the story from Mrs Seaton. The entry contained nothing more than what she had already told me, and I scanned the next couple of pages looking for further references that would tell me more, conscious of my straining pulse. On the third day after the attack, Richardson wrote: