Who Was Angela Zendalic (29 page)

‘Oh, I don't mind what happens,' Stan said wearily. ‘As long as he's off our backs and leaves Angela alone. I just want everything to get back to normal, and she must go home to see her mum. She's missed her something rotten and we want to be a happy family again.'

Angela smiled her affirmation. ‘'Course I'll come.'

Piers nodded firmly. ‘And I'll go straight to the police station and come to No. 55 when I'm done.' He shook Stan's hand. ‘Mr Zendalic. Please assure your wife that I'll look after Angela. I know it must be a shock, and you probably think I'm too old for her, but we're very much in love.'

‘And it's really all finished with your wife, then. For good, like.'

‘Yes. Most emphatically. Sadly she's suffering from a nervous condition, we both see no future for our marriage, and divorce has been agreed by mutual agreement. My children are with her, in Wales, in the care of my in-laws.'

‘Okay. I'm reassured.'

They all rose to go. ‘Daddy, I must go round to Aston Street first,' said Angela. ‘Best we get a taxi.'

‘Bad news there as well, love. He's ruined all your stuff, and chucked it out the window.'

‘We must go, though. There's something I need urgently.'

None of Angela's possessions had survived impact, and she stared, stone-faced, at the sight of the scattered wreckage. However, her shock began to turn into a wave of gratitude. With his mad actions Garvie had said his piece. There would be no emotive or venomous scenes. No pleading, no shouting, no nasty accusations, or name-calling. It was over. Her building society book was already safe in her handbag, but there were some
very
important items she needed urgently from the room and she ran up the stairs.

She looked everywhere, but they were gone, and by the emptiness of the place it looked as if Garvie had cleared out too.

Edie's joy was an exhausting hour of non-stop talking, bubbling with tears and laughter, assuming, with motherly innocence, that her daughter had ‘come to her senses' and returned home. With her excitement unrelenting there'd been no opportunity to talk of future plans, until the doorbell rang. ‘That'll be Piers, Mummy'.

When she brought him in, Edie looked up with a vexed face, puzzled to see them holding hands. ‘What on earth are you doing here, Dr Penney?'

‘Edie, Piers and Angela are ...together,' Stan tried to explain. ‘You know ...A couple ...He was the man she left the pub with.'

Edie's puzzlement faded and was replaced with a thunderous look of horror. ‘You! You and her. A married man! A married man with a family. Old enough to be her father. I don't think so. Is that what you do? Take up with young girls like a dirty old man.'

‘Mummy, it's not like that,' Angela pleaded, but Edie wasn't listening.

‘Well, you're not having our Angela,' she yelled. ‘She's gone through enough carry-on with that dreadful boy, and she needs some time to recover. And so do we. So, on your bike, as they say. Go away. Back to your wife and little girls.'

‘Mummy,' Angela tried to explain, as gently as she could. ‘Piers and I are in love. You've never known this, but I've been in love with him for years. Garvie was just something stupid.'

‘What!' Edie thundered. ‘When you were nothing but a kiddy. So I take it he's been interfering with you ‘for years' and you've let him.' Without waiting for any protestations she rounded on Piers. ‘We put our trust in you. Gave her into your hands without a second thought. And all the time ... It's disgusting. You're filthy, that's what you are, Dr Penney. Filthy! Get him out of here, Stan.'

‘Mrs Zendalic. That's not true at all. I love Angela ...'

‘Get out of my house,' she yelled. ‘Now. Go. Leave her alone you ...you ...' The word paedophile wasn't a word Edie had ever heard of, so child molester was her parting shot as she pushed him hard on the shoulder.

Angela grabbed her bag. ‘Mummy, if you throw Piers out, you throw me out as well.'

‘Well go then! Go. I wish I'd never laid eyes on you! Worthless you are. A slut. A worthless slut!'

Stan was torn between his own resigned acceptance, and the near collapse of his wife, but even if he'd wanted to mediate there'd been no time. Angela, wild-eyed and shaking, pulled Piers out on the street. To walk away with hard thumping strides, dragging him with her. To walk away from the petty-minded, ignorant fool of a woman, whom she now hated with venom and never wanted to see again.

Thus, in those few angry minutes, the long years of love and devotion, between mother and child, were finally ripped up and cast down into the deep slough of despondent grief. There would be no post-mortem, or plans for reconciliation ‘in the fullness of time'. What was done, was done. Two consenting adults, now free to make future plans. A new life together with no shadows of the past.

‘I'm sorry,' said the haughty receptionist, ‘but Dr Harwood's on holiday this week.'

‘Then can I see someone else,' Angela said. ‘Today please. It's urgent and I
am
a private patient.'

The receptionist shook her head. ‘Earliest I can give you is Thursday morning at 10.00am, with Dr Barlow.'

‘Sorry. I can't wait four days. It's really very urgent.'

‘If you mean it's an acute medical emergency I suggest you attend the casualty department at the Radcliffe Infirmary.'

Angela pursed her lips with anger. ‘What I mean is that I need an urgent appointment today.'

‘I'm so sorry. Thursday is the first one available.'

Angela tossed her head with frustration. ‘You wouldn't say that if I was the Queen, would you.'

The receptionist looked up with a sneer. ‘But you're not the Queen, are you.'

Monks Bottom; a picture-postcard hamlet, fifteen miles from Oxford and set within the Chiltern Hills. It was described as ‘idyllic', but with having only minor road access, and no bus service, it was idyllically isolated. But Piers explained to Angela that it was the perfect place to escape the bubbling cauldron of academia, to settle down in domestic bliss, and allow him to compose to the sound of birdsong.

Old Priory Hall had been empty for five years due to a long wrangle over death duties. Standing on high ground, a mile outside of the main village, the details listed it as ‘
needing extensive refurbishment'
, but its assets were listed as having twenty acres of gently sloping meadow and scrubland that overlooked the panoramic beauty of the Watlington valley. With the house being empty the estate agent had suggested that they went round on their own, so Piers agreed, delighted to have the freedom to roam without the nuisance of a pushy salesman at heel. He was handed a large rusty key to the back door.

And so, in teeming rain, Piers and Angela drove in his vintage Bristol 400 up the deep mud-puddled ruts of the long drive, awestruck by the looming sight of a magnificent old cedar, but shocked to discover the truly dilapidated wreck hiding behind it. A heavy elm front door, was flanked on either side by four twelve-paned rotting windows, evenly placed between crumbling wattle and daub. A row of matching windows formed the first storey, and on the third, three dormers, like Napoleonic hats, sat open to the elements. The roof, of slipping Welsh slate tiles, was cornered by four intricate barley-twist brick chimneys in varying states of collapse, and the vast land was so taken over by elder and brambles the potential view was obscured. ‘Oh, well, we're here, now, so we might as well go in', Piers sighed.

Thus they turned the key in the back door to find a saturated floor, a shallow porcelain sink, and a rusty ancient range; the only clues to the word kitchen. But with further inspection to the front they found manifest joy. Wide floorboards, old flagstones, high ceilings, sturdy beams, stained glass, and an imposing mahogany staircase that announced the exquisite house it had once been, and could be again. But the most stunning feature was the sitting room (or ‘the grand hall' as it was described), of around nine hundred foot square, with an inglenook fireplace, large enough to roast a pig.

Steeped in the wonder of newly-found love, they wandered hand in hand, open-mouthed with wishes, hopes and dreams. Touching things with amazement, even though deep layers of filth stuck to their fingers. The solid newel posts, the carved beams over the fireplaces, and the slightly distorted panes of window glass that had survived for four hundred years. The internal shutters, the high, wide doors, and the original knobs, hinges, and locks.

‘I could make this a wonderful home for us,' Piers said. ‘Let's go to the pub and talk about it.'

Once in The Dog and Duck, and with a Ploughman's lunch before them, Piers explained the facts. ‘I'm an only child. My mother died ten years ago and my father last year. He was a civil servant. Worked all his life for the foreign office. Certainly not a millionaire, but he left me the family house, a huge pile in Belgravia, and I've just sold it for thirty-five thousand. I shall settle fifteen on Merryn and the children, and the rest I can invest in The Hall. We'll get it totally gutted and make it our home. And as soon as I'm free we'll get married.' He lifted her hand and kissed her palm. ‘It'll take a while but it
will
happen.'

Angela had decided she had no interest in details of the marriage fracture. It had to include the lost baby, Merryn's infidelity, and her subsequent collapse into madness (well, she'd always known she was loopy). And she really
didn't
want to know anything. Knowing meant being burdened with all the copious details, the tedious conversations of, ‘I said this,' and, ‘she said that', and endless updates on current situations. And worse still, she'd be expected to have opinions, and offer advice. All she needed to know was that the feeble Merryn was out of his life forever, and as to his children they were a taboo subject as well. Discussing them and their future would mean sympathy and responsibility, and – heaven forbid – entertaining them. Something else she also wanted to kick firmly under the carpet.

‘I've got a good feeling about The Hall for us,' he said, smiling into her eyes. ‘My head tells me the project's madness, but my heart tells me we must buy it, so let's get some professional advice and take it from there.'

April 2014
Fair Cross Green,

M
y
mother's nursing home is a large Edwardian villa set behind high brick walls on the edge of the quiet village. The frontage displays the usual grandeur of a country house, but a large purpose-built unit is attached to the back, designed to look after its vulnerable patients in a safe, bright atmosphere of devoted care. As I drove into the gravelled car park I was, as usual, braced with anxiety, wondering what state my dear mum would be in today. Silent and staring? Agitated and fumbling? Sound asleep? Calling out with loud, pitiful shouts that no-one could quieten?

‘Howie, you must be prepared for her strange behaviour,' I said. ‘I've seen her condition develop for years, and I know what to expect, but it can be a bit of a shock.'

‘Oh, I've seen it before,' he replied. ‘On my travels. In my other life.'

Maybe it was my cue to ask him to enlarge, as I was desperate to do. But no. He was getting out of the car, and heaving up the bag of photo albums.

Mummy was seated in the large, secure day room that overlooked a wide lawn, calm but rigid in a high-seated chair. She was wearing a hideous crimplene dress (essential for frequent laundering) of loud pattern and dated design, but if the stylish, ethereal Merryn had known how truly awful the dress was she'd have whipped it off and thrown it out of the window. I kissed her and introduced Howie, but she didn't move a muscle. Just stared at him intently. I showed her the flowers – no reaction – and made a big fuss of putting them in a vase, chattering on, saying things for something to say, telling her about the boys and their weekend trip to Legoland with Mark.

I briefly left to put the flowers in her bedroom, and when I'd got back Howie was close up beside her with an album, gently describing the scenes depicted on the shiny old Kodak prints; now aged to faded colours and poor clarity. Earth moving machinery and huge mounds of mud and rubble. The grubbing out of the wild, overgrown trees, and the planting of new ones. The creation of the long, wide herbaceous borders either side of the long lawn. Multiple shots of she and Pa, youthful in their thirties, and us four little girls frozen in time. My dainty, blonde sisters, posing like Mary Cicely Barker fairies, and sturdy toddler Sarah, with her chubby face and curly hair. After several minutes he was unable to get any sort of rejoinder, so he closed the albums. ‘She might be aware but she's so locked in she's got no way of telling us.'

I sat down, took Mummy's hand, and decided I would sing to her, choosing one of her favourites pieces called Myfanwy; a traditional Welsh anthem she'd played so often on her harp, and we four had accompanied as a choir. But suddenly she sprang to her feet, and clumsily clutched at Howie's shirt. ‘Hose A,' she said, slowly and deliberately. ‘Hose A.'

‘Aye, a hose,' said Howie, opening the album again, and looking for a garden hose being sprinkled. He smiled widely at me. ‘She kens.'