Chapter Forty-Four
Ruan hadn’t even got out of the car when the front door of Kathleen’s small bungalow opened and she started to walk down the path, with the aid of a stick, to meet him. The garden was tiny but neat – like its owner, who was a couple of inches shorter than Tammy, her ash-blond hair cut into a bob.
‘You must be Ruan,’ she said, greeting him with a wary smile next to a tub of geraniums.
‘I am. You must be Kathleen.’
‘I hope so or you’ve got the wrong place.’
Ruan smiled back. ‘It’s good of you to see me.’
‘Deidre vouched for you, or rather Polly did. Polly never suffered fools, so I thought you must be OK, despite the fact that Deidre was acting all cloak-and-dagger and refusing to tell me why you wanted to come all this way.’
‘I’m sorry for all the mystery.’
Kathleen gave a wry smile, her eyes bright.
‘In a way, it’s been exciting. Anyway, come inside.
I’m making coffee. I assumed you’d prefer it to tea.
Most young folk do these days. Mind you, don’t be expecting one of those fancy machines.
They just clutter up the worktops and I don’t have the space. ’
Even if he hadn’t preferred coffee, Ruan wouldn’t have said so.
Kathleen was both what he was expecting and not at all.
She was well over eighty, so the stick wasn’t a surprise.
However, she was more direct than he’d expected, her blue eyes holding his gaze without any awkwardness.
He also had a sense that she’d been preparing for his visit for quite some time.
He wondered how much Deidre, via Polly, had hinted about the purpose of his visit.
As he waited in her sitting room, with its family photographs and mementos of a long life, he had a sudden attack of nerves.
He was about to broach some very personal topics – would he also be trampling on cherished memories?
He distracted himself by trying to make out the photos from the sofa.
They were fading but most were in colour, depicting happy family memories.
None were from the era of her relationship with Walter.
There was one black and white photo of a couple on their wedding day, which he assumed were her parents.
Through the front window, he could see the purple hills rising up in the distance, hear a lawn mower running and the sound of children playing at a nearby school. It seemed pleasant and peaceful and happy, yet it was a long way from her Cornish roots.
‘Here we are, then,’ she said, bringing in a cafetière, two mugs, and a jug of milk on a wheeled tray thing that Ruan had only ever seen in old television programmes.
‘It’s a hostess trolley,’ she said, clearly amused by his expression as she wheeled it into the room. ‘It’s all a bit Abigail’s Party but it’s better than me dropping your coffee all over the carpet.’
‘Abigail’s party?’ Ruan said.
‘It was a TV play in the seventies about folk with pretensions. Alison Steadman, Mike Leigh … you won’t have seen it, I expect?’
‘No …’ Ruan admitted, embarrassed that he’d heard neither of these names.
‘You should. It’s a classic about class. It still rings true today.’
‘I’ll look out for it,’ Ruan replied politely.
Kathleen gave a knowing smile. ‘I’m sure you have better things to do with your time.
Now, while this coffee brews, would you like to ask me about Walter Cavendish?
’ She sniffed. ‘His mother, Clara, was such a snob, always going on about Walter’s father being distantly related to the Dukes of Devonshire.
She thought she was above everyone, but then, apparently, she was also pregnant when she married him. ’
‘Pregnant?’ Ruan paused, mid-biscuit . What times, he thought, when social pressure loaded such unnecessary misery on couples.
Kathleen folded her hands in her lap. ‘Anyway, you must have something to say to me that’s important if you tracked me all the way to Scotland. Deidre says you’re a busy man. But what you need to know is that I was also expecting when I arrived here.’
‘Expecting?’
‘Yes, and I don’t mean a parcel. Don’t look so surprised. Young people had sex in those days too, you know.’
‘I – er – I’m only surprised because I didn’t know.’
‘No one knew. Or very few did. My parents – well, they had to know because I had no one else to turn to. And before you ask, the baby was Walter’s, and I didn’t tell him. Walter wasn’t the fatherly type.’
Taken aback at her frankness, Ruan didn’t know what to say. A baby …
‘You and Walter had a baby?’
She poured the coffee and added milk before continuing.
‘ I did. He never had a clue I’d given birth.
Walter was a difficult and troubled boy, though when he wanted to, he could turn on the charm.
He was confident, arrogant even, but he could be gentle and kind with me.
I always felt a loving man was struggling to break out of the shell he’d had to build around himself.
His own parents were awful people, you see.
His father brutalised him and his mother sat back and let it happen.
It still didn’t stop me falling for him.
He was a very handsome young man. A little bit like you … ’
Having just popped a biscuit in his mouth, Ruan couldn’t reply, which was probably as well.
‘You’re even better-looking,’ Kathleen said without embarrassment. ‘And at my age, I can tell a young man he’s handsome the same way I’d admire a painting or a flower.’
‘Thank you,’ Ruan said, feeling it was the only response possible.
‘I speak as I find. Now, Walter: we had a fling but as you know, it ended badly. Walter never told me he loved me. He seemed to blow hot and cold, always wanting to see me and be with me, but never quite letting me be sure of his feelings. He never mentioned marriage, although I kept hoping he would. I thought I could change him, you see … as you do. I thought my open-heartedness, my love for him, would crack that shell and he’d open his heart to me … ’
There was such a long pause, Ruan thought she might cry or refuse to carry on, but she sighed heavily.
‘Then I fell pregnant, but by that time, I’d already decided that I wouldn’t spend my life with a man who could never show his feelings.
The baby made my mind up for certain. There was no way I was having my child be part of that family’s legacy.
You know, I think Walter Senior and Clara were so unhappy because they were forced to marry.
Clara knew it wasn’t a love match and Walter Senior was a bully because he resented Walter for even existing in the first place. ’
Ruan felt he’d been given a glimpse into a horror that might have existed in thousands of families all those generations ago. It filled him with despair.
‘What about your baby?’ he asked gently. ‘It must have been very difficult for you back then too.’
She stiffened as if she’d justified her decision many times – not that she needed to justify it to Ruan.
‘My own parents were shocked, but they were kind and loving people and they came up with the idea of us moving up to the islands where my auntie lived.’ She put her cup down.
‘We told everyone I was a young widow who’d recently lost her husband in a mining accident in Cornwall.
Up here – well, it was like moving to another planet back then.
No one had any way of verifying the truth, even if they were suspicious.
People accepted us. My aunt had a good reputation in the community, and we made a new life. ’
Ruan’s gaze followed hers to the photos on the window ledge.
Kathleen got up and picked out two of the frames. ‘I married a lovely man; his name was Frank. I lost him a few years ago.’
‘I’m sorry.’
She waved a hand in acknowledgement. ‘Thank you, but I had a very happy life with him. Far happier than I could have had with Walter. Though I’ll admit it was hard to put him out of mind at first.’
She gave the photos to Ruan.
‘Is this your family?’ he asked.
‘Yes. This is Gail and Hayley, they’re Frank’s. Robert – he’s Walter’s.’
His pulse beating a little faster, Ruan stared at the photo, searching for a resemblance between his uncle and Robert. They were both tall, both imposing – and Robert, he had to admit, did look a little like Ruan’s own father. He could even see the likeness to himself.
‘Robert looks even more like you than Walter,’ Kathleen said, echoing his thoughts.
‘And he’s turned out a principled, thoughtful son and man.
I made sure he had all the love and kindness his real father was denied growing up.
Robert and his wife have two girls of their own: my grandchildren. That’s them in the other photo.’
The family were laughing together, standing by a river with Kathleen.
‘You all look very happy,’ Ruan said. ‘Does Robert know the truth?’
‘Yes, he does now. I told him about Walter after Frank died.’
‘That must have come as a shock …’ Ruan said, feeling he was making the understatement of the year.
‘In a way, though I think he’d always suspected I wasn’t a widow. He took it far better than I’d expected. He said he was glad I’d married Frank – his real dad, he called him. Although for all I know, Robert is only being kind to me. He doesn’t seem to want to talk about it.’
Ruan thought of Tammy and her desperate need to know if Davey or Neil was her father. She was tormented by the uncertainty, yet Kathleen’s son seemed to have accepted that his mother had kept his existence a secret from Walter.
‘So why are you here?’ Kathleen broke into his thoughts. ‘Something about inheriting Walter’s house?’ she asked, her tone sounding a little unsure for the first time.
Ruan found it hard to reply. By rights, the house should be Kathleen’s. It should be Robert’s. It should be Tammy’s. It should be anything but his.