Chapter 47
FORTY-SEVEN
ANNA
‘And your son is a musician?’ I asked Seren Chamberlain politely. ‘I heard him play a few days ago. I was curious – and I was impressed.’
I took a sip of my cappuccino to settle my nerves.
‘First violinist with the National Orchestra of Wales,’ she told me proudly. ‘He’s overcome so many challenges to achieve what he has. I travel to see him perform whenever I can, and today seemed like the perfect opportunity to meet you too.’
‘I do appreciate it.’ I meant it – but still my tone was polite and stilted.
‘And I’m very sorry for your loss, Anna.’ Her formality matched mine, but I wondered whether she was remembering the boy she had known – Nigel.
‘Thank you.’
We fell into an awkward silence, filled by the roar of the coffee machine behind us.
Seren leaned towards me and cleared her throat. ‘Bryn – the former head teacher at St Gwbert’s – told me you were interested in finding out more about your late husband’s schooldays.’
‘That’s right. It feels as if – well, it’s always felt like that’s something he never shared much with me. Now that he’s gone, I find myself wanting to know more. Particularly for our children, because they’ll never be able to ask him about that part of his life now.’
I thought of the bequest Gray had asked to make to the charity he seemed to have no connection with, his affair with Laurel, the dire place our marriage had been in before his diagnosis.
But that was too much information – there was no need to share any of it with this prim-looking woman, with her neat, tailored dress, her pot of tea and the beige hearing aids clearly visible behind her ears.
‘He was a very gifted pianist, your Nigel,’ she observed. ‘But you must know that.’
‘I didn’t,’ I said, more bitterly than I intended. ‘Until recently, I had no idea… It was something he never talked about.’
She shook her head, pouring more tea into her cup. ‘Such a shame. But understandable, I suppose. His home life was… well, it was troubled.’
‘Can you tell me more about that? I know his father wasn’t really around. That must have been hard for him.’
‘Hard, perhaps, yes. Certainly it might have been easier if Nigel had had a father who was more present. Because it was his mother who… I don’t like to say she was the problem.’
‘But she was the problem?’
Seren finished her tea. ‘I rather think, Anna, that I would like a glass of wine. Would you?’
‘Yes.’ Probably too eagerly, I stood up. ‘I’ll get them.’
I grabbed some tiny bottles of white from the café fridge, paid for them and returned to our table.
‘Maybe you could start at the beginning,’ I suggested, taking a sip and feeling it hit my bloodstream almost immediately.
I realised I hadn’t eaten all day, but that didn’t matter.
She sighed. ‘I only knew Nigel when he was a boy. Joel had been accepted into St Gwbert’s, and we were delighted – it wasn’t just that it’s a good school, although it is, it was because of the advantages it would give him when it came to his music.
And we knew – he’d had some health problems. He wasn’t a well child. ’
Which is why he ended up needing a kidney transplant, I thought. But I didn’t want to talk about Joel now – not least because I got the sense that, given half a chance, Seren Chamberlain would talk about nothing else for hours on end.
‘Gray – Nigel’s mum must have been proud too.’
‘That was the funny thing,’ she said. ‘I never got the impression she was. Bryn mentioned once that his primary school headmistress had helped Nigel with the application and all Louisa Graham did was sign the forms.’
Louisa Graham – it was the first time she had mentioned Gray’s mother’s name. I leaned across the table, opening the second of my miniature bottles of wine. I felt as if I was getting closer, now, to what I’d come there to discover.
‘She must have known he had a gift for music, though,’ I said.
‘I believe so.’ Seren’s eyes were distant, as if she was struggling to recall details of a time far in the past. ‘I think Gray may have sung in the church choir as a child, long before I knew him. Louisa herself used to play an instrument – it may have been the flute. But that was before… Before I knew him.’
‘Tell me about that?’ I urged. ‘About how you got to know him.’
‘I remember the first time I met Nigel,’ she went on.
‘He came home after school with Joel. They would both have been thirteen at the time, and I offered them sandwiches. You know what boys are like at that age – bottomless pits for food. Nigel ate his sandwich, and then he looked at me, all hopeful, like Oliver Twist. But he didn’t say anything.
It was Joel who said, “Is there any more, Mum? Nigel only gets bananas in his packed lunch.”’
No wonder he hated them, I thought, my heart twisting with sadness for the timid boy who was to become the confident man I fell in love with.
‘You must have thought that was strange.’
‘I certainly did. Joel explained afterwards that he’d been sharing his lunch with Nigel – it wasn’t just that he was a bottomless pit.
And then I noticed other things – his school uniform didn’t fit properly.
It was way too small, and it was none too clean, either.
And he – well, there’s no other way to put it. The boy was grubby.’
I thought of Barney, who was grubby too sometimes and had to be nagged to shower. No one had nagged Gray.
Now that Seren had started talking, she seemed to be finding it easier to carry on – the memories flowing almost too fast for her words to keep up. Perhaps the wine was helping.
‘I started looking out for him after that, and Joel did too. I’d send in extra food.
I passed Joel’s old uniform on to Nigel – Joel was taller and growing faster.
I told Joel Nigel was welcome to come over to ours after school whenever he wanted.
But that wasn’t always possible, because he said his mother needed him. ’
Feeling as if a piece of a puzzle was falling into place, I asked, ‘So his mother was ill?’
‘That’s what I assumed at first. I tried asking Nigel about it, but you’ve got to be careful, you know, with boys that age.
They don’t always understand, or parents try to shield them from things, or they get embarrassed.
He wouldn’t open up to me about what was going on at home.
They didn’t live very close to us – their house was in Merthyr Adwen, a village about twelve miles from the school.
Nigel was meant to get the bus in, but sometimes he missed it and then he’d be late because he walked to school.
And sometimes he didn’t make it in at all.
If I asked what happened, he’d just say, “I had to be with Mam.” So I decided to make some enquiries.
It’s a small community, you know – people talk. ’
‘And what did people say?’
‘I felt grubby myself, listening to gossip.’ She took a sip of wine and gave a little shudder.
‘I tried to find out whether she was receiving treatment at the hospital for something. But she wasn’t.
People would say, “Ah, Louisa Graham.” And they’d look at you funny, or they’d laugh. There was a stigma, even then.’
‘So it was…’ I guessed. ‘It was mental illness, rather than something physical?’
She sighed, a sound full of regret and self-reproach.
‘I can see that now. But at the time, people just thought she was a bit of an odd one. She’d have arguments with strangers in shops.
She’d be in the pub until closing time on her own.
Someone said they saw her in the GP surgery with Nigel the once, with cuts all over her face.
Sometimes she wouldn’t leave the house for weeks at a time. And other times…’
I waited, my hands clenched tightly between my thighs.
‘Other times she would go out. And some of those times’ – she lowered her voice – ‘she’d bring men home, after she’d been to the pub. Not always nice men, but never the same one twice. Like I said, people talked.’
I tried to imagine how Barney would feel if people talked about me like that, but I couldn’t.
‘And with Nigel…’ she went on. ‘You have to remember, this went on for six years. It was a long time I had to observe what was going on, to see how things changed. I found out details gradually, a few words here, a bit of information there. From Nigel, from Joel, from other people. She was erratic. She’d neglect him and then she’d smother him with love.
She’d keep him off school because she said she wasn’t well and needed him, and then she’d leave him alone while she went off with some fellow.
I suppose he never knew what to expect from one day to the next. ’
‘Thank goodness he had you,’ I said.
‘And Joel,’ she reminded me, that note of pride in her voice again.
‘We did what we could. I even suggested Nigel speak to someone – a counsellor or his head of year at school. But he wouldn’t.
He was fiercely protective of her. I even found a charity – Merthyr Adwen Young Carers – and I put him in touch with them. ’
‘Merthyr Adwen Young Carers?’ I repeated. ‘MAYC?’
‘That’s right. I believe they tried to help, but Louisa Graham didn’t want a respite carer – she wanted Nigel.’
Not YMCA. MAYC. The charity Gray had wanted to make a donation to.
‘And he was growing up,’ I said.
‘He was. And that was when matters came to a head, I suppose. They were doing A-levels, him and Joel. They were applying for colleges and all that. And one night Nigel came round to our house, late. He asked if he could stay, and I said of course he could. He wouldn’t tell me what was happening, but he told Joel. She’d thrown him out.’
‘What? Why?’
‘Because he wanted to go away to university, off to London. Same as Joel was. She’d said, “If you do that, don’t ever bother coming back.”’
‘So he went,’ I said slowly. ‘And then she died.’
‘Oh, no.’ Seren looked at me in surprise. ‘She didn’t die. She’s still alive. I see her every Sunday at chapel. She’s quite well now.’