The Other Child (46 page)

It was not the romantic atmosphere of the previous evening, which had been full of happiness and light as we reunited, loving each other. That first evening I had seen our future lit up brightly ahead of us. On the second meeting we started to argue. I told you about my trip, and you resented my visit there. You started shouting so aggressively that I burst into tears. I could not understand what had made you so angry. Of course I can see now that it was your fear. Fear that I might take further steps which could put you in the difficulties you were so afraid of. You reacted with dismissive scorn when I tried to explain how palpable the horror and evil had been in that place, I even dared to tell you about Brian's screams which I had heard in my head
.

You did not want to accept that. I saw
something close to hatred in your eyes. At that moment I was like an enemy to you. And a threat
.

You let me know that we would not exchange another friendly word if I did not forget the
Somerville affair.
You said that the Beckett farm would be closed to me. In short, that there would be no more contact between us, ever. It would be the end not only of our love and friendship, but you would act as if you had never known me
.

I am not reminding you of that evening to put the blame for Brian Somerville's fate on you. Even admitting that at the time I was only seventeen, in love, inexperienced and helpless, too deeply involved to ignore the threatened consequences and do the right thing, I still had many opportunities to be brave in later years. I could have
looked into it again, done something. I was not seventeen for ever. I did not always have the excuse of being young and helpless
.

At some point my conscience should have been stronger than … well, than what? I have thought long and hard about what always stopped me from acting. Was it the fear of losing your friendship? As important as you were to me, and still are, I do not think that fear was enough on its own to silence for ever the little voice which often reminded me of Brian. I do not think that the only explanation, or even justification, for my silence is that I was once in love with you. Not even that I, perhaps, have loved you all my life
.

No, the explanation is much more banal. It is almost like a law of nature. The further we go down a path, the harder it is to go back, and the more consequences the U-turn would involve. There is always a point when we can shout
No!
and refuse to go on. If we miss it, each later moment is more complicated and brings with it the need to explain why we did not say no earlier. And then there comes a time when we no longer dare to. We have gone so far that it is impossible to turn back. At least, it is impossible to turn back without losing face completely. So we grit our teeth and march on, whistling and humming as we go, so as not to hear the voice of our conscience. That is what I did
.

Maybe you did too. I don't know. Sometimes I fear that your conscience did not prick you nearly as much about Brian's tragedy as mine did me. I could never work that one out. The few times I tried to talk to you about Brian and our role in the drama, you torpedoed my attempts. You just did not want to talk about it. Full stop
.

That summer I went back to London just a few days after I had arrived in Yorkshire. Everything had changed. I could not bear your aloofness. You were so cold. And the fact that you always avoided me, that you made it obvious you wanted to avoid contact with me. There were no more evenings in the bay, no more conversations, certainly no more tender displays of affection. Brian Somerville and the threat he represented to you stood between us. You could no longer approach me. I think you were extremely relieved when I finally packed my rucksack and left the farm
.

I no longer remember what I told my surprised mother and gobsmacked Harold. Something or other. I expect they figured the rest out for themselves. I never spoke about my feelings for you, but at least Mum would have suspected something, and now assumed it had not worked out, that I had left Scarborough in such a hurry because I was disappointed in love. That was not completely wrong, although she could not guess any of the complications and events which had led to the situation
.

I went to the borough office and asked about the Somerville family, I gave their previous address and said they were acquaintances whose current address I was looking for. Such queries were absolutely normal back then, just one and a half years after the war ended. Men had not returned from the front. Families had been evacuated from the major cities and then disappeared. There were still children who were looking for parents, parents searching for children, wives for husbands and fiancés, husbands for wives, and so on. The Red Cross hung up long lists of missing persons, and people who had given up hope were still finding each other in this way
.

The shadow of war still hung over the country
.

As for the Somervilles, I was told, as I had expected, that the whole family had been killed in November 1940 in an air raid
.

‘All of them?' I asked the young woman behind the counter who had looked at the files for me
.

You could see her heart go out to me
.

‘All of them, I'm afraid. Mr and Mrs Somerville and their six children. The house collapsed and they were trapped in the cellar.'

‘They were all found in the rubble later?' I had to ask
.

‘Yes. I'm sorry that I haven't got any better news for you.'

‘Thank you,' I mumbled
.

Back then half London had burnt down. The injured and dead had been dragged out of the rubble. No wonder that in this case it had no longer been possible to ascertain whether all six children had died in the cellar of a collapsed house with their parents. I can still remember the words of poor Miss Taylor on that November morning: ‘They dug them out … at least, what was still left of them.'

Perhaps there had been a leg here, an arm there … Who would have had time, in the midst of the inferno that had raged night after night in the city, to carry out extensive post-mortem tests?

Now I knew for certain. Officially Brian Somerville had been dead for almost six years. Nobody really had become a nobody. He no longer existed. There had been a note about him on a Red Cross nurse's notebook once, but that had obviously been lost somewhere on its way through the organisation. So no one had asked about Brian, and nor would anyone. Something had happened which
seems impossible today in our networked, computer-driven world: someone had just slipped through the cracks. He was there in body, but not officially. He would never have to go to school, nor pay taxes. He had no national insurance, and no right to vote
.

And he was not in the least protected in the way a civilised society protects the people in it
.

I crept home and wrote a letter to you, telling you what I had found out. I don't know if you remember that letter. In any case, it was one of the few times you replied to me – and without delay. I expect you were rather relieved to hear about Brian's official ‘death'. Now you could be sure that the authorities were not going to ask questions. As long as I kept quiet, you had nothing to fear
.

You thanked me for my letter and told me not to worry. After all, I did not know that Brian was as badly off as I had believed
in the heat of the moment
(I remember your expression word-for-word!). And I should consider what the alternative was:
a
care home – that was the only other option – was probably no picnic for a boy like Nobody. The patients there were strapped to their beds and left to vegetate. Lying helplessly in their faeces, they were washed down with cold water. Often there was abuse and unexplained deaths
…

You painted such a gruesome picture of it that Charles Dickens could not have done better. Even today, looking back on it, I have to admit that you were probably not far wrong. In the forties care homes for mentally disabled people were not comparable with what we have today. And even today we are regularly shocked by scandals where a reporter uncovers sick and old people being got rid of
.

However … now I am almost eighty years old, Chad. As my own death approaches (it won't be all that long now), I no longer want to lie to myself and other people
.

The path we chose was not right. And since Semira Newton uncovered the scandal at the start of the seventies, not even you can actually believe that it was, in any of its twists and turns
.

It was a horrific, irresponsible, unconscionable path to take. Selfish and cowardly. Yes, perhaps that is our defining characteristic: cowardice
.

Simply cowardice
.

16

What came next? I did what I had rejected before. I went to secretarial college and learnt typing and shorthand, and then worked in a number of offices in London. By the way, as I remember now, my mother once asked about Brian in that time. It came out of the blue one Sunday morning over breakfast
.

‘What happened to that other child?' she asked. I choked on my tea in fright. ‘You know … the little … what was the name of that family? Somerville, if I remember rightly. The boy you took up to Yorkshire with you …'

‘He was put in a care home long ago, Mum. Years ago,' I replied, dabbing at the tea I had spilt on my jumper. ‘You know, he was rather …' I tapped at my forehead
.

‘Oh yes,' said Mum, and that was that. She never mentioned him again. That settled it for her. After all, it had just been a question that had shot through her head briefly. She had never really been interested in the answer
.

In August 1949 I married the first boy friend I had after you. Oliver Barnes was a nice history student in his last term. I met him during a temporary job at the university library. I think I was besotted with him, but it was not real love. Perhaps at twenty you are not old enough to know what is. I married him because he was nice and because he adored me. He still lived with his parents, but he had his own basement flat in their large house, so I could move in with him. That was how I finally escaped the confined conditions with Harold and Mum. I was certainly taking a big step up the social ladder, something which impressed Mum immensely. She liked Oliver and until the end of her life she was convinced that he was the love of my life. I let her believe it, why should I have got her worried?

I was barely twenty-one when my daughter Alicia was born. And I was twenty-eight when my husband, who by now was an assistant lecturer, was offered a post at the University of Hull
.

Was it chance or fate? I was heading back to Yorkshire
.

I have no wish to bore you with all the subsequent years
.

The catastrophe had occurred in our lives. At the all-important crossroads we had chosen to go in different directions, and we could never undo that. For me that was, and still is, tragic. I don't
know if you feel the same. I can't talk to you about such things. Over the years you became more and more of a loner. You retreated more and more into your shell. It was left to me to keep our contact going, to visit you, and to try to draw you out of your shell. That was still true after you married, at forty-five, a woman who was twenty years younger than you and who wilted visibly with your inability to talk. It makes perfect sense to me that she, although she was so much younger, died before you. She reminds me of a flower which, denied water, dries up and then disappears
.

Gwen has also suffered from your character, but she is your daughter. Since the day she was born she has only known a father who hardly speaks and who withdraws completely torn his family. Someone who is there and at the same time not there. She was able to develop mechanisms that allowed her to survive in the desert. Although your wife was young, she was too old to do that. You wore her down. In the end she died of worry and frustration. The tumour in her breast was simply the physical expression of this unhappiness
.

Why am I so merciless in telling you this? Because I have been merciless in putting myself in the dock too. I have asked myself if I too carry the blame for your having been so distant from your family, for your taking so little part in it and, although officially husband and father, for your not taking on those roles in reality?

I insisted we live in Scarborough, although Hull would of course have been much easier for Oliver. As usual, he let me have my way. Back then we did not live in Prince of Wales Terrace, but in a charming little house further up, in Sea Cliff Road. The road looks like it ends in the sea. It is lined with trees and its houses are spacious with pretty gardens. We could have been a proper happy family, and I could have thrown myself into that life. Instead I was always going back to the Beckett farm. For a long time I was not aware of how much time I was spending there, but then there was an ugly scene with my daughter Alicia. She was twenty or twenty-one, and already a mother to little Leslie. She was living a dissolute, messy life, and I tried to tell her how much more she could make of herself and her life
.

‘You had everything!' I exclaimed. ‘You aren't deprived, like some other young people can claim. Did you ever lack anything?'

Her skin was already an unhealthy yellow colour by then; she had continual problems with her liver and gall bladder because of her drug-taking and her completely deficient eating habits. I remember
how the sick colour deepened as she replied violently, ‘Anything I lacked? My mother! I always had to do without my mother!'

I was frankly astonished. ‘Me?'

‘Unfortunately I don't have another one.'

‘But I—'

‘You were never there,' she interrupted me. ‘You were always hanging around on that farm, tagging along after Chad Beckett. Practically every day when I came home from school, all I found was a meal you had made earlier and a note that said you were at the Beckett farm and would be back later. I wish I had kept those notes. I could have filled a shipping container with them!'