The Twisted Way (12 page)

After writing her a pleading letter, Felicity paid a brief visit to Janet a few days before she went to Canada and noted with interest that Aunt Janet’s new husband John was quite a spunk. Rich, too, she discovered and hoped that some of the wealth he had inherited would one day be passed down to her. Money was her greatest interest; she longed to possess it but so far it had eluded her. They have no kids, after all, she thought. I’ll keep an eye on this situation just in case I don’t meet my millionaire. She did not correspond often with Aunt Janet but needed a contact in the area to report to her from time to time what was going on at Primrose House. She had met a girl when walking along the river bank and they became friendly in quite a short time, which was unusual for Felicity.

‘I’m staying with my rich aunt in Primrose House,’ she said. ‘I’m off to Canada soon to work but would like to know how things are here, would you write to me? It could be in your interest too one day. I would love to have some news about Enderly.’

She had chosen her contact well. The girl, Pattie, who was about the same age as Felicity, was interested to hear about the residents of Primrose House and liked the idea of having a penfriend in Canada. Pattie was not very well educated and her family had worked on the land around Enderly for several generations. It suited both girls to correspond and they wrote to each other regularly over the coming years.

Pattie worked for a while as a hairdresser in Brinton, a small town about five miles away, before marrying a local boy who worked in the fields for a wealthy landowner, as his parents had done before him. They had one daughter Helen who when she grew up worked in the Everton office of Janet’s financial adviser. The fact that Felicity had said that Janet was rich was interesting to both mother and daughter. Helen, who should have been bound by the ethics surrounding client confidentiality, was in a position to observe Janet’s investments and was so impressed by their size she passed this information to her mother who was delighted to pass the latest figures on to Felicity.

Richard wrote to his friend shortly after Felicity had started work in Bob’s office in Canada and asked how she was settling in. He was pleased to receive a satisfactory reply. ‘A nice, girl, helpful and willing,’ Bob wrote. He did not comment on her lack of prowess as a secretary or her inability to make friends with the other members of his staff. Richard smiled with satisfaction. She is probably sleeping with him, hot little tart, he thought wryly, but what could he expect with a mother like Anne? His doubts about Anne and the parentage of their first-born had grown and festered like a rotting apple. The wretched woman died and left me with a demon in skirts. Felicity resembles Anne but not my family in any way, he thought. She could be a throwback as Anne had once suggested but he thought it was unlikely. Ronald was his but he would not mind if he wasn’t. The boy still lacked spirit and showed no sign of improvement the last time he set eyes upon him. ‘Useless, huh ...’ he would mutter when he thought about his son, which was not often.

Felicity married a lumberjack but that marriage didn’t last long. Very few worthwhile things lasted long in her chaotic life. She had considered her husband to be handsome and virile at first but soon decided that he was a silly and uncouth man who always dressed in checked shirts and thick twill trousers. All he thinks about is drinking with his mates and chopping wood. I will never be rich if I stay with him, she thought.

She was tired of the outdoor type and ghastly cold weather in the north of Canada. ‘All bears, wolves, snow, frostbite and ugly thick clothes,’ she remembered shouting at him. ‘I’m off!’ At least the marriage had given her a chance to get away from the lecherous Bob and she was thankful for that. Bob was fun at first but too demanding and rough for her taste.

She obtained a divorce as quickly as she could, claiming untruthfully that he had slept with several bimbos in the lumber camp, and moved to Vancouver where she found a job as a cook in a restaurant. She once again took her maiden name of Brown which she preferred to her married name, Griffiths. Felicity became an efficient cook, she loved the work; it was, like the typing at school, one of the few things that interested her. It was fun for a while and not too mentally demanding. She moved from one job to another, never staying more than a few years, and lived with several doubtful men until she moved in with an Italian immigrant Roberto who was six years older than she was. Roberto was a steady and reliable man who had a calming influence on the nervous and anxious Felicity. He had a poorly paid job in a department store but did earn a steady income and that was better than nothing. They rented a small flat and had little money to spare but Felicity was as happy as she could be without the cash she longed to have. She dreamt about buying jewels and smart clothes but her wardrobe remained sparse.

He’s a lovely Latin type, she would tell herself in an attempt to convince herself that she should stay with him and that things could be worse. He’s a good lover but it’s a pity he hasn’t got a better job.

She wrote to Ronald when she felt like it, which was not often, and she would, if she was lucky, receive a reply from him in the form of one or two paragraphs on cheap white paper, which she considered were as dull as ditchwater.

‘He was always a boring quiet child. What a miserable tyke of a brother to have,’ she would grumble to herself. He did not send her any photographs of his daughter as a baby which she would have liked and had asked him for several times, after all she was her niece, or of his wife whom she had been curious about, but just one small snap when his daughter was about eighteen years old sitting on a bench with her mother under a strange exotic tree in his garden. His wife and daughter appeared to be as uninteresting as he was. ‘Ugly bossy-looking bitches, like a couple of hippos!’ she exclaimed as her temper flared and she tore it up. ‘He’s welcome to them. No wonder he has not sent any photographs before.’ She did wonder, however, if he had any money and if it would be worthwhile sending him a hard-luck letter. She understood he had a successful dental practice and should be ripe for a penny or two, but doubted if he would oblige. He had always been mean and careful with money.

‘OK, here. We are doing well, real Aussies now ...’ was repeated with monotonous regularity on postcards depicting kangaroos, koala bears or some obscure surfing beach. Even his Christmas cards had an Australian theme and bored her stiff. If they had been accompanied by a few dollars they would have been much more interesting.

She had considered visiting him for a cheap holiday but never had enough spare money to pay the air fare and he didn’t offer to help her. She realised that he probably would not welcome her with open arms and it would be a complete waste of time.

When Felicity reached her early sixties Roberto died suddenly from a heart attack. She had few friends, those she had made found her too difficult for any length of time, and her thoughts returned to dear Auntie Janet. She decided to write to her. She had made sure that she kept in contact with her at Christmas and it was now time for that long-delayed visit. She was getting too old to start another more lucrative career and had lost interest in men. Also money was tight.

She sat down at a rickety old cheap pine desk, rough and fit for not much more than firewood, that she had bought with Roberto in a sale a few years before, and found an old and slightly crumpled piece of cream paper tucked away in one of the drawers.

‘Dear Aunt Janet,’ she began. ‘I suppose I still call her that,’ she muttered to herself. I wonder what the old hag is like now. She was not very welcoming last time I saw her, she thought. Hmmm, she must be about eighty-six or -seven now. ‘I find myself alone,’ she continued to write, ‘my dear partner Roberto having died recently and I would love to return to England and visit some of my old friends.’ She could not for the life of her think of the names of any old acquaintances, except Pattie Moore, who had proved useful as a spy over the years. ‘I have booked a flight next month and wonder if you would let me stay with you for a while? I would really love to talk about old times and catch up with all your news dear Auntie. I should be arriving in London on the 18th October and could be with you on the 19th. I am so looking forward to seeing you once again. Your loving niece Felicity.’

Hopefully, she tried to convince herself, the old girl will want to see me after all this time, though she doubted it. Primrose House and luxury for a while seemed a good proposition and she sighed with pleasurable anticipation. If nothing else it could prove to be a free holiday and a holiday she needed.

She sold the meagre furniture that she had purchased with Roberto over the past few years, together with her mother’s diamond ring. Her father had given the ring to her just before she left for Canada when he waved her off at the airport. ‘It’s a fine stone and should be worth a bit,’ he said. It had been a last-minute gesture from a man with a conscience that had started to trouble him.

‘Thanks Dad,’ she had muttered and gave him an unexpected kiss. Richard cringed but she did not notice. He had given her something valuable and for that she was grateful. The fact that it had belonged to her mother was unimportant. She was not sentimental.

Felicity wore it for a while, showed it off to her colleagues at work, then thought better of that and placed it in a safe and secret place for a rainy day. She had not told Roberto, her husband or any of her other men friends about it. It was her nest egg for emergencies and it had now come into its own. She hoped fervently that it would lead her to a better life. A sprat to catch a mackerel, she thought and smiled. I’m over sixty now and have nothing much to show for my years of hard work in hot kitchens and typing pools or the useless men I’ve had the misfortune to shack up with. Now I’m going to collect my inheritance. Uncle James would approve of that if he was still alive, God rest his soul!

She purchased a few new clothes – she didn’t want to look like the poor relation she was – had her hair trimmed and dyed, and packed her few belongings into an old battered suitcase that had belonged to Roberto. It’s quite good quality, she thought, after giving it a much needed lick of cheap furniture polish. It doesn’t look too bad, she convinced herself in a desperate effort to boost her self-confidence. There are a few scratches and dents but I will look well travelled and will soon be in England. Her spirits lifted.

Rejection by Janet and James Anderson was a bitter pill for the young Tom Hands to swallow but he was fortunate. He was fostered out with a solicitor and his wife, a charming and kind couple, who lived in a large rambling old house on the outskirts of Everton not many miles from Enderly. He attended Everton Grammar School for a short while then, after he had been formally adopted, a private school of his new parents’ choice in Russhampton so that he lost touch with any previous acquaintances from Enderly. His adoptive parents were a middle-class couple with inherited capital and were in a position to give Tom a comfortable and happy existence quite different from any he had known before. Tom took their surname of Barker and was known by his first name of Robert, or Robbie, to his new family and friends. Fulfilling his earlier promise, he won a scholarship to Oxford University.

‘He is a clever lad,’ his parents said, ‘we will be proud of him.’ And they were.

‘We were lucky when you came to live with us,’ they never tired of telling him. He thought he was the lucky one, although a corner of his heart would always remain with Alicia Merryweather.

Robbie matured into an attractive man and it would have been difficult for Janet to recognise him if she had passed him in the streets of Everton or Brinton. He did not look for her; he had no desire to meet the obnoxious James who had rejected him, something he found difficult to accept as well as what he considered was betrayal by Janet, try as he might to understand her point of view. As he was growing up he did wonder if Janet ever looked for him. He hoped she did but doubted if he would ever find out. He owed some loyalty to his adoptive parents. They were kind and gave him affection when he needed it and he swore that he would not set foot in Enderly whilst they were alive.

His adoptive parents died within a short time of each other when he was only forty years old but left him their large old house on the outskirts of Everton and a reasonable amount of capital. He was the son they had always wanted and he had brought joy and pleasure into their lives, something that they had not thought possible after they had lost their only son as a baby and discovered that they could not have any more children of their own.

Robbie married a girl he met at college but they divorced after a few unhappy years, after which he decided to remain single. When he retired at the age of sixty he considered visiting Enderly once again to see Alicia’s daughter Janet, if she was still alive, though he had no desire to see James. He knew Alicia and Will were dead, he had read about their funerals in a local paper shortly after he had been adopted. He had not forgotten his childish vow to repay their kindness one day but how he might do that he had no idea. He had no family and only a handful of friends in Oxford so that there was no reason for him to stay there. In any case he was now interested in going back to see Enderly and the surrounding area again. It had been a haven when he was only five years old and perhaps it would be again in retirement. He did not think any old school acquaintances, if there were still any about, would recognize him after so long –at least he hoped not.

Robbie looked forward to visiting a few old haunts near Enderly and Everton, the area he had loved when he was young, and thought longingly of the vista provided by the vast orchards filled with plum, apple and pear trees whose gorgeous blossom attracted many visitors in the spring. The Vale of Everton boasted a mild climate, indeed it was sheltered compared to many areas in the country. He remembered too the vast fields of cabbages and spring onions that were grown just outside Enderly. The smell of rotting cabbages had filled his nostrils in an unpleasant way when he was a child but the industry had provided employment for many of the local boys and a number of gypsies who visited the area in the growing season to look for temporary work.