The bottle was almost empty now and as he tipped the last of it into the two glasses, a few particles of white powder floated to the surface. He found he didn’t have the energy to lift the glass to his lips, however. Nora’s head was resting on her arms on the table now, and as she mumbled something about taking a little nap, he closed his own eyes. Who would have thought all those years ago when he first sported with her that it would come to this? he mused groggily. She had been beautiful then. A witch under the skin, but a beautiful one.
And so at the end his final conscious thought was not of the wife he had loved and adored, or even the children he imagined he was protecting, but of Nora.
Chapter Thirty
I
t was late on Monday evening when Jed arrived at the house in Yorkshire. Because she’d been expecting his visit Abby had made sure John and Henry were in bed and asleep early. When the knock came at the door, only she and Clara were still up, but within the first few moments Abby was disabused of the idea that Jed had come to say he and Clara couldn’t wed. Instead the young man broke down, blurting out in the hall that his father and their mother were dead.
They helped Jed into the sitting room where, sobbing, he told them Ivor and Nora had taken their own lives with an overdose of barbiturates and whisky. They had left a note to the effect that life wasn’t worth living for either of them. This was now in the hands of the police but there was no doubt about what they had chosen to do. His da had never really got over his mam going, that was the thing, and Wilbert and Lucy were now blaming themselves, believing that because they had withheld the drink from Nora she had decided to end it along with her brother-in-law.
Through the whirling maelstrom of Abby’s thoughts, one dominated. Her mother would never,
never
have killed herself. She knew this as sure as night follows day. While she helped Jed off with his coat and then fetched him a brandy she couldn’t think beyond this, but after a minute or two her mind accepted what Ivor had done. Even as she asked the right questions - who had found them? What exactly had the note said? Had the rest of the family been informed? - her mind was working on a different level entirely. Ivor was telling her as distinctly as though he was standing in front of her now that he believed he’d removed the threat to Clara and Jed getting married. He had doctored the whisky and somehow, probably through her mother’s enslavement to the alcohol, had persuaded her to drink with him. Rather than face telling his son the truth, Ivor had killed himself and taken her mother with him.
‘Both of them, Clara.’ Jed had managed to pull himself together but his voice was choked. ‘I can’t believe Mam and Da have gone within months of each other. I should have known how Da was feeling, I should have done something. ’
‘There was nothing you could do.’ Clara had her arms round him and her own face was wet. ‘He was a grown man, darling, and if he’d made up his mind he wanted to be with your mam, you couldn’t have stopped him. Sooner or later he would have found a way.’
Dear God, dear God, help me. Abby was silently praying and she hadn’t done that in years. They still don’t know the truth. What do I do now? Do I have to tell them? She was the only one left who knew the truth besides James, and he’d never tell if she told him not to. The Bible said it was a sin but that was only if the people concerned knew, wasn’t it? The sin would be on her shoulders, not theirs, and she could live with that if it meant Clara being happy and Jed not losing the third person in his life who meant the world to him.
But what about their bairns?
Her stomach turned over. What if she kept quiet and a child was born who was handicapped in some way? It happened in these cases sometimes.
But not always, the argument in her mind went on. Often the children of such unions were perfectly whole and healthy.
But was it fair to let Jed go on thinking there was something he should have noticed which would have prevented his father’s death, or to let Wilbert and Lucy blame themselves for her mother’s demise?
When Jed broke down once more and Clara turned to her for help with an anguished look on her face, Abby moved to kneel in front of the pair who were sitting closely together on the sofa. She didn’t know if she believed in Father Finlay’s Catholic God of her childhood and youth, but somehow she felt her prayers had been answered. Their union could affect both their own children and possibly those of their grandchildren, and she didn’t have the right to keep such knowledge from them, however much it might wound. She had to speak.
‘I have something to tell you both,’ she said quietly, her voice trembling a little. ‘And, Clara,’ she reached out and touched her sister’s hand for a moment, ‘try not to hate me because I kept it from you. I thought I was doing the right thing and never in a hundred years did I imagine you would fall in love with Jed, and he with you.’
Both young faces were staring at her now and for a second she experienced the pain their separation was going to mean to each of them. She couldn’t do it, she couldn’t tell them. And then she heard herself saying, ‘It’s to do with your father, Jed, and our mother.’
‘You know something about why they did this?’ Jed asked shakily.
She didn’t answer this directly, saying instead to Clara, ‘Some years ago Mam told me she’d had an affair with Ivor when Donald, Leonard and Bruce were little.’ And at Jed’s exclamation of disbelief, she added gently, ‘I asked him about it and he confirmed it was true. Our mother instigated it and she kept it going. I think he never really wanted her. He did love your mam, Jed, always.’
‘No, no, it’s not true.’ Jed had shot to his feet, his eyes blazing. ‘My da wouldn’t do that to my mam.’
‘I’m sorry. Truly I am, but it’s true.’
‘Why are you saying this now?’ Clara rose to her feet, holding on to Jed’s arm. ‘Even if it is true, how can you be so cruel when Uncle Ivor’s just died?’
‘Our da couldn’t father his own bairns, Clara.’
‘What?’ Clara stared at her and it was clear she didn’t understand. ‘What on earth are you on about? We’re here, you, me and Wilbert, aren’t we?’
‘Aye, we are, but not through Da.’
Clara still couldn’t fathom what she meant but Jed’s strangled, ‘No,’ told Abby he understood only too well.
Clara glanced from one to the other. She looked as perplexed as she sounded when she said to Jed, ‘What’s the ma—’ And then she clutched her throat, looking dazedly at Abby. ‘You don’t - you can’t mean . . .’
‘Ivor knew Mam would never keep quiet if she thought you and Jed had fallen in love, and I agree with him. She wouldn’t have. I think he decided to take her out of the equation for good.’
‘No, it’s not true. You’ve never liked Uncle Ivor and now to say this! It’s wicked.
You’re
wicked, as bad as Mam. Jed,’ Clara clutched hold of him again, ‘you don’t believe her, tell me you don’t believe her.’
Abby looked levelly at her sister, pity and understanding in her gaze, before she said softly, ‘If I could have made it different I would have but I couldn’t keep it from you, not now.’
Jed sat down, closing his eyes and easing himself further back into the sofa as he murmured, ‘I’m going mad. That’s the only answer to all of this. Things like this don’t happen to ordinary people like us.’ And then, his head falling into his hands, he said bitterly, ‘If they weren’t already dead I’d kill the pair of them, I swear it.’
Clara flung herself onto him, crying uncontrollably. ‘You can’t believe it, Jed. You can’t. We’re cousins, just cousins.’ And when he didn’t answer her, merely continuing to sit as though he’d been turned to stone, she gasped, ‘I don’t care if it is true anyway. We think of ourselves as cousins and that’s all that matters. We can’t let anything part us.’
Abby took herself out of the room at this point, her head bowed. She went straight to her bedroom where she sat on the edge of the bed, her knees and feet together and her hands clasped in her lap as though she was listening to a sermon in church. She hoped she’d done the right thing. She shut her eyes very tightly. Clara and Jed were suffering for something that had happened years and years ago, something that wasn’t their fault. But they
were
brother and sister. Something outside herself hammered the point home. And in the end it all boiled down to the fact that she simply didn’t have the right to keep it from them. Or from Wilbert, come to that. He’d have to be told now too.
She rose to her feet and began to pace the room. What a mess, what a terrible muddle of a mess. She felt like Jed. If her mother and Ivor hadn’t already been dead she would have wanted to kill them. Even from the grave her mother’s power went on; she was still casting a shadow over their lives, perhaps more in death than she ever had done in life. Nevertheless Abby was glad she was dead. At this moment she did so hope there was a hell and that her mother was in it.
She kept her thoughts in this vein for some time because what she couldn’t admit, even to herself, was the pain of thirty-four years of knowing that the one person who was supposed to love you best in all the world had always disliked her.
Two hours later there was a knock on her bedroom door. Abby was in bed but far from asleep. Her heart was racing when she walked across the room, wondering if Clara was going to go for her again. But when she opened the door Clara lifted her head and said, ‘I’m sorry, Abby. I’m so, so sorry for what I said to you.’ Abby opened her arms and her sister fell against her chest, beginning to cry.
‘It’s all right, it’s all right.’ But it wasn’t all right. It never could be because Clara and Jed would always be brother and sister.
Clara moved her head to speak. ‘I should never have said those things to you. And to say you’re like Mam! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.’
‘I know you didn’t, and I’ve been stupid, Clara. I should have told you about Ivor and Mam years ago and then that would have prevented all this.’
‘It wouldn’t.’ There was a break in Clara’s voice. ‘We’ve agreed we’ve always loved each other when we look back, right from bairns. I can’t do without him, Abby, and he can’t do without me. And I’m not going to let our mam take him away from me. We don’t care about anything else but being together. We’re going away, far away. Abroad. We’ll make a new life there. Legally we’re cousins and that’s all anyone will ever know.’
‘Clara, you haven’t thought this through.’ She tried to stop the shock from sounding in her voice.
‘We have.’ Clara looked at her, her eyes seeming to spread and encompass her delicate features. ‘And nothing is going to stop us, Abby. None of this is our fault.’
‘I know that, darling.’
‘I don’t regret falling in love with him, not even now.’
Abby swallowed hard. How did she put this without it seeming harsh? ‘You . . . you understand about the repercussions? With starting a family?’
‘Jed is enough for me and I’m enough for him.’
‘Now maybe,’ Abby said. ‘But loving each other as you do, it’s the most natural thing in the world to want bairns.’
‘Natural?’ Clara gave a croak of a laugh. ‘There’s not much natural in our family.’
‘Don’t, darling.’ Abby held her tighter. ‘Don’t torment yourself.’
‘But it’s true.’ Clara drew away slightly, looking at her with eyes bright with tears. ‘I hate Mam, and him - Ivor. Did Da know? And Aunty Audrey?’
‘I don’t think Da knew about any of it. Aunty Audrey knew about the affair but not about . . . us.’
‘And she killed him, Abby.’ It was the first time they had spoken of it. ‘Mam did all that and then she killed him. It should have been the other way round.’
‘Clara, you must take time to think about this.’
As though she had said something shocking, Clara jerked away. ‘I can’t do without him,’ she said tonelessly. ‘I mean it, Abby. If I can’t be with him I’d rather be dead.’
There was a trembling sensation now in Abby’s stomach. Her mother had been besotted with Ivor and the result had been devastation. Pray God history wouldn’t repeat itself with Clara. But then look at her with James. Much as she had loved Ike - and she had loved him - the feeling she’d had for him couldn’t compare with the overwhelming intensity of what she felt for James. Had something been passed on through the genes? Did the women of their family love obsessionally, without rhyme or reason?
No, she wouldn’t accept that for herself or for Clara. Clara believed she’d fallen in love with her cousin, and her own love for James was a healthy thing. Her mother’s relationship with Ivor had been quite different. She tried one last time to convince her sister to wait. ‘Don’t make any immediate decisions now, not when no one knows anything.’