57. Finally learning
FINALLY LEARNING
She woke with a start, her eyes instantly wide open.
It was morning but you wouldn’t know it, such was the darkness inside and outside the house.
She’d slept on the bare mattress without undressing, exhausted after an orgy of destruction that had started with Anton’s model and had progressed onto his collection of Bauhaus books and anything else that could be torn or broken.
Ursula rolled over, sat on the edge of the bed, and checked the time on her phone.
Not even five o’clock. Two tiny pieces of paper fell from her hair.
There were more of them on the floor arranged into a thin, straggly trail of red-inked particles leading out to the landing.
Anton’s last list. She followed it all the way back to the office.
Yesterday’s carnage was waiting for her, piled up in the middle of the room like a bonfire ready to be set alight.
She tried to recall if that’s what the intention had been but last night, she’d been consumed by a madness that she’d never seen in herself before.
Thankfully, sense had prevailed and she hadn’t sent the place up in flames.
The house was worth too much to her for that.
Financially anyway. No other reason. Besides, she might endanger her own life and she didn’t want that.
She was intending to live for many years to come, and she was intending to make them good years too.
There was a diagonal crack in the window that ran all the way from one corner to the other.
She didn’t remember doing that, just as she didn’t remember leaving the paper trail, although something had caused her to wake so suddenly this morning.
There’d been a sound, like ice breaking, that she thought had been a dream.
Then again, she had been throwing those bloody awards around like frisbees.
With little success, because they seemed to be completely indestructible.
Unlike the window which she’d have to get fixed.
Her stomach rumbled loudly and it occurred to her that she hadn’t eaten since yesterday’s breakfast. She remembered the scone Megan had given her was still in the car.
That would have to do since there was no food or drink in the house.
She turned back towards the doorway and caught sight of a flash of red under the desk.
Anton’s scarf had been cut to shreds. And then, to her horror, she saw fragments of ivory silk.
The christening gown. Had she done that? Had she really been that crazed?
The coffee that Megan had also given her was heated up in the microwave.
She drank it and ate the scone while sitting on the sofa with a scrap of silk on her knee.
She should be angry with herself for doing something so destructive and brutal but all she felt was relief.
It was just an old dress that before yesterday she’d thought long gone.
A relic from another life. It wasn’t her child she’d damaged.
He never came into this world. That was okay.
Things like that happened and it was sad, but she’d been holding onto him for too long now.
It was time to let go. And it was time to face the truth about Anton.
Cass opened the door. Ursula had called ahead so she’d been expecting her. ‘Solly’s taking a nap. I thought a walk would be good. There’s a nice café on the beach.’
‘How is Solly?’
‘Soldiering on. He gets tired very easily. I catch him talking to himself sometimes. I haven’t said anything to him about it but I think he’s talking to Gill.’
Ursula smiled. ‘Maybe he can see her. I’ve been seeing Anton for the last six years.’ He’d been there again this morning when she left the house, or at least his outline had. The rest of him had faded a little. She was taking it as a good sign.
‘I think I’d rather see Gill than Anton,’ said Cass. ‘You said you’d found something you wanted to show me?’
‘Some photos and a note. I’ll show you when we get to the café.’
They went straight there. Ursula put the envelope on the table. ‘You might want to look at them on your own. I’ll order some drinks.’
Cass peered inside the envelope and her face drained of all colour. ‘Where did you find them?’
‘Locked away in Anton’s office. I’ll give you a few minutes.’
She took her time at the counter. When she got back to the table she sat opposite Cass. The photos were set out in a line between them. ‘You both look so in love.’
‘We were. I’m sorry, my darling, I know that’s not what you wanted to hear.
’ Cass picked up one of the beach bar photos.
‘This was in Corfu. 1977, I think it was. It’s all so long ago now.
We met through Bernard. He’d taken him on to design his new house.
He was younger than me but that didn’t seem to matter to him. We had a lot of fun.’
‘Fun? With Anton?’
She smiled. ‘He was different then. They were happy times. But then things got serious and everything changed. He asked me to marry him. I made the mistake of telling Bernard and my brother, being the kind of person he was, laughed in my face. He told me it was a well-known fact Anton was a social climber who was only interested in me for the money and connections. I always struggled with self-confidence, so it didn’t take much to convince me.
I broke it off a month before you came to work at Talulah, but Anton wouldn’t accept it.
He kept calling me and watching out for me from his office window.
When I came into work in the mornings he’d be waiting on the corner, begging me to take him back. ’
‘I thought he was doing those things for me.’
‘I’m sure he was, later. I think sometimes Anton saw you in me and me in you. He was forever caught between us, never knowing which one to choose.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me? You could have stopped me before things went too far.’
‘I hardly knew you at the time. You weren’t the little girl I remembered, and Gill had made it clear I was to stay out of your life.
I thought he was doing it to make me jealous and he’d tire of you, or you’d get bored with him.
You were such a bright, lively young thing, I couldn’t imagine you sticking with him for long.
By the time I’d realised how wrong I’d been to let him go, it was too late.
I went to see him and told him I still loved him but he said he was with you now and he was going to marry you.
I was heartbroken and so angry with you both.
And I suppose I thought you’d be divorced within a couple of years and I could wait it out. ’
‘But the photos in New York, they were after we were married.’
‘I’m sorry, that was unforgivable of me.
He came to me not long after your wedding saying he’d made a dreadful mistake.
I still loved him and to my shame, we picked up where we’d left off.
I went with him to New York that Christmas and he promised me he was going to tell you.
I honestly thought you’d be better off for it.
But he didn’t tell you, he just carried on flip-flopping between the two of us.
After about three months, I said I wasn’t prepared to put up with it any longer. ’
‘Is that when you sent the note?’
‘No, the note was later. Just like the first-time round, he’d refused to accept it.
I did my best to avoid him but it was hard.
When you were pregnant, before you told me, he came over to my house and threw it in my face.
He knew how much I wanted children. That’s when I wrote the note.
I sent it to his office so there’d be no chance of you coming across it.
But I don’t think that was what stopped him.
I think it was losing the baby. It hit him hard.
I saw him in the hospital car park on the day of your miscarriage.
I had to tell him what had happened. His reaction. I’d never seen him so raw and exposed.’
‘It was the shock I expect. He soon recovered from it,’ said Ursula. She was bitter. Even now. But if anyone had a right to be, it was her.
Cass shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think he did. I think it did something to him. Days before we closed the door on Talulah, he came in to gloat. He’d changed so much from the person I loved, he actually frightened me. I knew then that I needed to get away.’
‘So that’s why you left Birmingham. That’s why you didn’t want Anton to know you were back.’
‘Yes. Although it was also a chance to get away from Bernard. Gillian did the right thing in leaving him.’
Ursula frowned. ‘But I thought he left us.’
‘Sort of. You know he had two families on the go? When Gill found out, he would have been perfectly happy to carry on the arrangement but she had too much self-respect for that. She told him she didn’t want him.
It cost her. She lost everything. Except for the thing most dear to her.
You. She was a strong woman. I’ve often wished I could be more like her. ’
‘Me too.’ So yet again, Ursula was being presented with another new fact about the courageous and remarkable woman she’d been privileged to call her mother. She really wanted to be that kind of woman too. Hopefully, it wasn’t too late.
Cass smiled. ‘You’re not entirely unlike her.
I’m glad you know at last. It’s been heavy on my mind for such a long time.
Not just the fear that you or Gill would find out and it would be the end of us again, but the guilt.
It feels like I’ve been drowning in guilt nearly all my adult life.
I know I have no right to ask for your forgiveness, but it would mean so much to me. ’
Ursula looked at the photos and then at Cass.
They looked alike, the two of them, especially now that Cass’s hair was white.
She could see how Anton might have seen an opportunity to have the next best thing when he couldn’t be with the woman he really wanted.
And Cass had loved Anton much more than she’d been able to.
It was no different to her being in love with Samuel.
She and Cass had more than looks in common.
Hadn’t she been living most of her adult life drowning in fear and guilt too?
Perhaps this was her chance to let it all go and do something good that would atone for wanting to steal Priscilla’s husband, and for sending her own husband to hell. ‘I forgive you.’
Cass clutched Ursula’s hands. She was crying. ‘Thank you, my darling. Thank you.’
Ursula was crying too. She didn’t seem to be able to stop herself lately.
People were looking at them. She should have been embarrassed but the only emotion she felt was immense relief.
And perhaps a little bit of happiness. Yes, there was every possibility she was feeling a little bit happy at last. She bundled the photos back into the envelope. ‘Let’s go and see Solly, Auntie Cass.’
‘I’m glad Anton found love with you, Cass. Even if it was only for a short while, because I couldn’t give it to him,’ she said as they walked along the front, arm in arm.
‘He came to see me after Gill died to apologise for the way he’d behaved.’
‘Then he must have really loved you. He never once said sorry to me in all the years we were together.’
‘He said something else too. He told me he’d been right to stay with you because you needed him most.’
Ursula snorted. ‘Typical. Anton the silent martyr.’
Cass laughed. ‘I told him he’d got it the wrong way round. I told him he’d chosen the person he needed most.’
Solly was sitting on the garden bench. They waved at him through the window but Ursula wasn’t sure he’d seen them. ‘His eyesight’s not the best these days,’ said Cass. ‘Why don’t you go out to see him?’
His eyesight may have been on the wane, but he recognised her as soon as he saw her walking towards him. ‘Come and sit with me, lovely. It’s been too long.’
She nudged up against him. ‘How’s mum?’
He turned to her in surprise then smiled. ‘Cass giving away all my secrets, is she?’
‘I see Anton too.’
Solly pretended to shudder. ‘You want to stop that, lovely.’
She laughed a light, happy, tinkling laugh that she hadn’t heard in a long, long time. ‘I think I will be very soon. When you talk to Mum again, say hello from me. And tell her, I’m finally learning to love myself.’