Decider. Part 38

'Marjorie telephoned,' he said. 'She says she wants you on the Board. She says I'm to persuade you.'

'It's your own wishes that matter.'

'I don't know...'

'No. Well, I didn't come to talk about that. I came to return what I stole from you yesterday.'

'Only yesterday! So much has happened.'

I put on his desk the outer brown envelope marked 'Conrad'. He picked it up, looking at the sticky-tape closure.

'Like I told you,' I said, 'I did look inside. Keith knew I would look. I don't think he could bear the thought of my using what I learned. I confess that I'm glad I don't have to, as he's dead, but I would have done, and you'd better know that. But I'll not tell Marjorie what's in there it's evident she doesn't know and I'll never tell anyone else.'

'I don't want to open it,' Conrad said, putting the envelope down.

'I can't say that you should.'

'But you think so.'

'Keith would have burned it,' I said.

'Burned.' He shuddered. 'What a death!'

'Anyway,' I said, 'the knowledge belongs here, whatever you do with it. Your father meant you to have it. So,' I sighed, 'read it or burn it, but don't leave it lying about.' I paused. 'I apologise again for breaking in here. I'll be leaving Stratton Park in the morning. I'm sorry,' I made a vague gesture, 'for everything.'

I turned regretfully and made for the door.

'Wait,' Conrad said.

I paused, half in, half out.

'I have to know what you know.' He looked wretched. 'He was my twin. I know he envied me... I know it wasn't fair that I had so much just for being twenty-five minutes older, I know he was violent and cruel and often dangerous, I know he beat your mother and all his wives. I know he nearly killed Hannah's gypsy. I saw him kick you abominably... I know all that and more, but he was my brother, my twin twin.'

'Yes.'

The Strattons, whatever their faults, had their own tight indestructible loyalty; a family, whatever their internal fights, that closed ranks against the ordinary world.

Conrad picked up the envelope and ripped off the tape.

He re-read the first letter, then drew out the second letter and the white inner envelope.

'Remember,' he murmured, reading, 'that Keith always tells lies...'

He removed the five folded sheets of paper from the white envelope and read the top one, yet another short note from his father.

It said: This lie of Keith's cost me a great deal of money, which I gave to Keith himself, too trustingly. It took me many years to suspect that he'd robbed me. A small matter, compared with the truth.

Conrad put the note down and looked at the next sheet, another letter, but in typescript.

'Arne Verity Laboratories?' Conrad said. 'Who are they?'

He read the letter, which was addressed to his father, and dated two years earlier.

'In essence, it said that the laboratory had conducted the requested a.n.a.lyses. The detailed results of each separate a.n.a.lysis were appended but, summarising, the results were as follows: You sent us three hairs, labelled 'A', 'B', and 'C'.The results of DNA a.n.a.lysis are:'A' is almost certainly the parent of 'B'and'A' and 'B' are the parents of 'C'.

Conrad looked up. 'What does it mean?'

'It means there was no gypsy. Keith invented him.'

'But...'

'It means that Keith was the father of Jack.'

Conrad sat down and looked faint.

'I don't believe it,' he breathed. 'I can't. It's not true.'

'Jack doesn't look like a gypsy,' I said. 'He looks like Keith.'

'Oh dear G.o.d...'

'Hannah doesn't like the gypsy story. She tells Jack his father was a foreign aristocrat who would have been ruined by the scandal. Apart from the foreign bit, that's more or less true.'

'Hannah!' He looked even more distressed. 'What are you going to do about her her?'

'Nothing,' I said, surprised he should ask. 'With Keith dead, I don't need to use what I know. Hannah is safe from it ever leaking out through me.'

'But she attacked you!'

I sighed. 'She never had a chance, did she? She was conceived in rape, abandoned by her mother and impregnated by her father. She was rejected by young men and not loved by her grandfather but, whatever he may be, she has Jack, her son. I'll not spoil that for her. In the same way that Keith was your twin, Hannah, whether I like it or not, is my half-sister. Let her alone.'

Conrad sat without moving for a long minute, then he shovelled his father's letters and the laboratory reports into the outer brown envelope and held out the whole package in my direction.

'Take it,' he said succinctly, 'and burn it.'

'Yes, OK.'

I went back to the desk and, taking the envelope, set out again for the door.

'Come on the Board,' Conrad said. 'As usual, Marjorie has it right. We're going to need you.'

The boys and Mrs Gardner said farewells as lengthily as Romeo and Juliet, with many promises of meeting again. Roger and I, less effusively, were nonetheless pleased at the prospect of working together in the future. 'Such a lot to see to,' Roger said.

Dart produced a diary. He would come to stay, he said, after after he had been to America. He had, he said, made bookings. he had been to America. He had, he said, made bookings.

The boys piled into the bus and waved like maniacs through the windows, and I drove us all away, back home to the peaceful SurreySuss.e.x border.

'Did you have a good time, my darlings?' Amanda asked, embracing the children. 'What did you find to do while your father was busy getting himself into the newspapers?'

They gazed at her. Bit by bit they would no doubt tell her, but at that moment the question struck them dumb.

Neil finally said, earnestly, 'We made brilliant fruit cakes.'

Amanda told me reproachfully, 'The phone here has been ringing non-stop.' She looked me over without much concern, 'I suppose you're all right?'

'Yes,' I said. 'Fine.'

'Good.'

She took the children indoors. I stood by the bus, its engine cooling, and after a while I went and climbed into the oak.

Other trees might be flus.h.i.+ng into leaf, but the oak as always hung back, vying with the ash to be the last turning green. I sat in the cradle of the fuzzy boughs, feeling the residual aches and sorenesses in my body, stretching for quiet in my mind.

After a while Amanda came out of the house and crossed to the tree.

'What are you doing up there?' she asked.

'Considering things.'

'Come down. I want to talk to you.'

I climbed down, not wanting to hear.

I said, 'I was afraid I would return to an empty house. Afraid you and Jamie might have gone.'

Her eyes widened. 'You always know too d.a.m.ned much.'

'I was afraid you'd met someone else.'

'Yes, I have.'

She wasn't exactly defiant, but she had already thought out what she wanted to say. She still looked lovely. I wished things were different.

'I've decided,' she said, 'that a formal separation from you wouldn't be good for the children. Also...' she slightly hesitated and then screwed up the courage, '... he is married, and feels the same about his own family. So we will see each other often. Take it or leave it, Lee.'

She waited.

Christopher, Toby, Edward, Alan, Neil and Jamie. Six reasons.

'I'll take it,' I said.

She nodded, making a pact of it, and returned to the house.

At bedtime she went up to our room an hour earlier than me, as always, but when I went up she was for once wide awake.

'Did you find a ruin?' she asked, as I undressed.

'No. I'll go looking once the boys are back at school. I'll go off for a while.'

'Good.'

It wasn't good. It was terrible.

Instead of lying the customary five feet away from her I went round to her side of the huge bed and climbed in beside her: and I made love to Penelope in Amanda, in a turmoil of l.u.s.t, deprivation, hunger, pa.s.sion and penetration. A wild, rough s.e.xual action unlike anything before in our marriage.

She responded, after the briefest of protestations and withdrawal, with some of her original ardour, and lay afterwards apart from me, separate again, not full of recriminations but with her mouth curving in a secretive, cat-with-cream smile.

Two months later she said, 'I'm pregnant. Did you know?'

'I wondered,' I said. I screwed myself to the question. 'Is it mine... or his his?'

'Oh, yours,' she said positively. 'He can't give me a child. He had a vasectomy too long ago.'

'Oh.'

'It might be a girl,' Amanda said coolly. 'You always wanted a daughter.'

In the fullness of time she gave rapturous birth to her seventh child.

A boy.

Fine by me.

Books by d.i.c.k Francis

THE SPORT OF QUEENS (autobiography)

DEAD CERT.

NERVE.

FOR KICKS.

ODDS AGAINST.

FLYING FINISH.