Duggie smiled. “Does that mean I’ve got the job?” he asked.
“You’re on probation,” I said. “Until Monday.”
He looked at me uncertainly.
“Not that sort of probation,” I said with a laugh.
We discussed our plans as I drove back around the M42 in the rush-hour traffic, and then on to my house in Kenilworth.
“Warwick tomorrow evening, then?” said Luca.
“Definitely,” I said. “Do you want to come here first or go straight there?”
“We’ll come here first,” Luca replied. “First race is at six-thirty. Here at five?”
“Five will be fine,” I said.
“I hope your wife will be all right, Mr. Talbot,” Duggie said as he climbed into Luca’s car.
“Thank you, Duggie,” I said.
He would do well, I thought.
You could have cut the air in the house with a knife, such was the tension between the sisters. The truce, it seemed, was over.
Sophie met me in the hallway tight-lipped, with angry-looking eyes. She nodded her head in the direction of the stairs at the same time as looking up. I understood immediately that she wanted me to go up. So I did. And she followed.
Safely in the privacy of our bedroom, she explained the problem, not that I couldn’t have guessed.
“My bloody father,” she said explosively. “Why can’t he be more reasonable?”
It was a rhetorical question. I’d been asking myself the same thing since the day I’d first met him.
“What’s he done now, my darling?” I said in my most calming of voices.
“Oh, nothing,” she said in frustration.
Whatever he’d said was obviously about me, and she’d suddenly decided against telling me, probably to avoid hurting my feelings.
“Come and sit down, my love,” I said, sitting on the side of the bed and patting the space next to me. She came over and sat down. I put my arm around her shoulders. “Tell me,” I said.
“My father can be such a fool,” she said. She started to cry.
“Hey, come on,” I said, stroking her hair. “Whatever he said can’t be that bad.” She said nothing. So I went on. “He probably told you that it was me who was the cause of all your problems and you’d be much better off leaving me to come home to live with him and your mother.”
She sat up straight and looked at me. “How did you know?” she asked.
“Because it’s what he always says. Ignore him. He’s wrong.”
“I know he’s wrong,” she said. “I told him so. In fact, I told him that it was him who was the cause of my problems, not you.”
“I bet he didn’t like that,” I said with a laugh.
“No,” she said, also laughing, “he didn’t.” She wiped her eyes with a tissue from the bedside table. “He said that he’d cut me out of his will if I didn’t ‘see sense,’ as he put it.”
“I suppose seeing sense meant divorcing a bookmaker,” I said.
“Yes,” she replied, half laughing and half crying. “I told him he could stuff his will up his arse, for all I cared.”
“Good girl,” I said, giving her a hug.
“Then bloody Alice puts her twopenny’s worth in.” Sophie became angry. “Starts bloody agreeing with the old fool. I gave her what for, I can tell you.”
“I thought Alice liked me?” I said.
“I think she does,” Sophie said. “But she’s so frightened of the old tyrant, she won’t say anything against him.”
So much for Alice having steel-toe-capped boots to kick him with, I thought. More like fluffy pink slippers.
“So now you’re having a row with Alice as well?” I asked.
“It seems like it,” she said.
“I presume she’s still here?”
“Down in the kitchen,” she replied. “But she said she’s going home just as soon as you got back.”
“Do you want her to?” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “No.” She paused. “I don’t know what I want.”
“Let’s go down, and Alice and I can have a glass of wine,” I said. “Everything always looks better after a glass of wine.”
“I’ll have a small one too,” Sophie said.
“Great.”
We went downstairs and found Alice in the kitchen, as expected. And she was fuming.
She opened her mouth as if to say something.
“Don’t,” I said quickly. “Don’t say anything you might later regret.”
She snapped her mouth shut.
“Good,” I said. “Now, let’s all have a drink.”
I went over to the fridge and took out a bottle of white wine and poured three glasses. I then sat down at the kitchen table and, in turn, the two girls joined me.
“Good,” I said again. “Now, we all know your father is an idiot.” Alice again opened her mouth to say something, but I held up my hand to stop her. “But he’s not such an idiot that he can’t set us all against one another.”
“But…” she started.
“Look,” I said, interrupting. “You’ve probably both said some things today you shouldn’t have. You both feel hurt. But it can stop here, right now, if you want it to. So have some wine and think for a minute.”
I lifted my glass in the manner of a toast, holding it aloft. Sophie picked up hers and did likewise. Slowly, Alice did the same.
“Cheers,” I said. Alice and I drank sizable mouthfuls, while Sophie had a little sip. “Now,” I said, “that’s better. Are we friends again?”
Neither of the girls replied but both of them had another drink.
Finally, the tension was broken by Alice, who laughed.
“Have you ever thought about taking up diplomacy?” she said to me. “I reckon you could make peace in the Middle East.”
“No chance,” I said. “The Arabs don’t drink.”
The three of us sat at the table, giggling uncontrollably at my tasteless joke.
Peace, it seemed, had been reestablished for the moment in Station Road, even if not quite in the Gaza Strip. I was glad. I really didn’t want Alice going home before Monday.
20
At three o’clock on Friday afternoon I sat alone in the chapel of Slough Crematorium as my father’s bare coffin was carried past me by four men from the funeral home and placed on the curtain-skirted catafalque at the front.
A clergyman in a white surplice over a black cassock came in and stood behind the lectern.
“Are you the son?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Are we waiting for anyone else?”
“No,” I said.
“Do you wish to say anything at any point?” he asked me.
“No,” I said again.
“Right, then. We’ll get started.”
The door at the back of the chapel opened with a squeak. I turned around. Detective Sergeant Murray came in and sat down two pews behind me. I nodded to him, and he responded in the same manner. I turned back to the minister, who then began.
“I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”
The clergyman droned on, rushing through the funeral rite as laid down in the Book of Common Prayer.
I didn’t really listen to the words.
Instead, I sat and stared at the simple wooden coffin and tried hard to remember what the man inside it looked like. I had seen him alive only briefly, for hardly more than an hour, yet his reappearance had dominated my life for the past two and a half weeks in a way it hadn’t done for the previous thirty-seven years.
It was difficult to describe my full feelings, but anger was uppermost amongst them. Anger that he had now gone forever and anger that he had been here at all.
Undeniably, he was my father. The DNA had proved that. But it didn’t feel like he had anything to do with me. But he, and his actions, had certainly been integral to the direction of my life, who I was and what I would become.
I wished I’d had longer to talk with him on the day he’d died, and the chance to talk to him again, even if it was to rant and rave at his conduct or to gather answers to so many unanswered questions: why did he kill my mother? why did he run away? why didn’t he take me with him? how could he have deserted me for so long? and, in particular, why did he come back?