Chapter 2

Sunday 5 February 2015, 1525hrs

After parking the Rolls-Royce at the farm, I had only been back at the cottage for about half an hour and had only managed to light the wood burner in the parlour and put the electric kettle on for a mug of tea. I was sitting out on my back veranda, really well wrapped up against the cold, looking at the sunset gleaming off the iced-over canal, warming my hands on the tea and thinking about what to have for supper. At my age, 84 and approaching 85 by the spring, I didn’t like to eat too late in the afternoon.

It is so quiet where I live that I could hear someone crunching down the frozen towpath, which wasn’t the wisest approach, when the path was covered in six centimetres of fresh snow over the six centimetres of frozen ice from several days before, and the natural camber of the path was designed to drain water into the presently deeply frozen canal.

“Walk on the grass near the fence, away from the canal, it’s safer!” I stood up and shouted to the walker. The walker waved back and fortunately moved over away from the edge to where the ice underneath was less compacted. Now I could see that it was a woman and she was having trouble dragging along a wheeled suitcase behind her.

‘No it couldn’t be,’ I thought, ‘I’d literally only spoke to the woman for a few minutes at lunchtime, for the first time in ten years. We had called a truce and I then invited her to visit me anytime she liked. Not that I actually told her where I lived. I assumed she’d take me up on it in the spring or summer, not in the middle of the big freeze ... and bringing a suitcase it looks like she means to stay!’

I stepped down into the back garden and met her at the back gate. I had already swept and salted the stone path because, although I rarely came in that way from the garden gate, except to inspect the bee hives, I often started my daily 10k run that way, the circuit taking me round the back to finish at the front of the cottage, but still re-enter through the back door. The front door opens directly into my bedroom and is blocked by an internal thick woollen curtain to reduce the draughts. You might think running 10k daily in my middle eighties was a remarkable feat, but in our local running club we had a number of keen runners of my age and above. And I had kept fit all my life although not seriously taking up road running until I left Gina ten years ago and moved here.

As soon as she came through the gate, all muffled up and almost unrecognisable in hat, coat and scarf, I took the handle of the case out of her gloved hands and lifted it up. It was light, so at least she hadn’t brought the kitchen sink with her. She preceded me into the kitchen and kicked the snow off her shoes inside instead of outside. I blame it on her upbringing, they always had welly rooms in the backs of the big houses she lived in and had housekeepers to clean up the mess after them. I set her case down while she pulled off her hat, scarf and gloves, while I looked out the mop and bucket from the cupboard to clean up her mess.

“Brrrr! It’s cold out there. You could’ve warned me about that treacherous path,” Gina complained, in only our second conversation in a decade. “I almost fell in the canal twice. And because I couldn’t see your car in the car park back there I wondered if I had got the wrong address or you had gone out somewhere and might not get back for hours. I couldn’t get a signal on my phone. Then I noticed the frozen canal and Soph had said you mentioned you lived right by the canal, so I pressed on.”

“I suppose you got the postal address off Sophia Elizabeth? The only daughter that ever writes to me and in common with all my old family refuses to actually come and visit me here?”

“Yes.”

“Well. If you had written to me to say you were coming I could have given you the postcode of the farmyard at the other end of the bridle path that crosses the canal. The farmer there always keeps that path clear of snow and ice and it’s not dangerously next door to deep freezing water.”

“Well, as this christening was the first family event you’d been to since ... whenever,” Gina said, “Anyway, why come to this particular christening, after you had ignored all the invitations to the christenings and marriages of all the others in the family?”

“Sophia Elizabeth sends me two cards a year and two long letters full of news, I assume, although some of them may be begging letters, I wouldn’t know. Sometimes, mostly, the letters are tucked in with the cards, sometimes they are posted separately. About eight or nine years ago I was reading the letter and on the very first page she started going on about my ex-first wife —”

“Mavis.”

“Yes, her. Apparently, Sophie Elizabeth reported, she who I haven’t named for forty years was getting divorced from her second husband. I stopped reading immediately and wrote back to Sophie Elizabeth saying I don’t want anything in her letters about ex-wives, nothing, absolutely nothing, they are not my family any more and I wasn’t interested. I told her that if she sends any more letters with any mention of either you or your predecessor in it, I ... I told her I’ll stop reading them, any of them.”

“And?”

“When I got the very next letter, at Christmas I remember, I was half a paragraph into reading the details that came out during my ex-wife’s divorce, before I realised what I was reading, and that her soon-to-be-ex-husband had evidence that Mavis was sleeping around within the first month of their marriage —”

“They had an open marr —”

“I don’t care what they had, I didn’t want to know. I don’t want to know then, I didn’t want to know now. I couldn’t ‘unread’ what I’d just read. I wrote to Sophia Elizabeth and told her not to send any more letters or cards as I simply won’t read any of them ever again or even bother to reply to them.”

“So how did you hear about Christina’s christening?”

“I never open a letter, and I never open a birthday card. I do make an exception and open the Christmas card she sends ... the Farmer drops one in every Christmas and one card on its own looks sad. I never read the letters that come folded in with the card, they’ll all unopened, still folded and in a drawer in the kitchen. However, the invitation to the Christening was inserted inside the last Christmas card, loose with no letter. I tucked it behind the clock where it has been for the last five or six weeks. I saw it again a couple of days ago and I turned up at the church on a whim and sat at the back as a curious observer. I looked around, I saw you, I saw about three babies that were being christened, but I didn’t actually recognise anyone with any of them. For the life of me I don’t know why I went in the first place, I must be getting senile in my dotage.”

“I saw you sneak into the back of the church. I knew it was you, even with the shaggy ‘Father Christmas’ look, your long white beard. No-one was expecting you and no-one knew you were there. Have you sneaked into family events before, Harry?”

“No. Never.”

“And you didn’t even take the opportunity to see and hold your great-granddaughter.”

“Well, once you’d sussed me out, I didn’t want to stay on as a curiosity, a dinosaur from the past, for a bunch of strangers that may or may not even be related to me.”

“What do you mean, not related to you?”

“I don’t know the baby Christina’s’s parents at all, even though the mother’s supposed to be my grandchild, they’ve never visited or written, and haven’t seen Sophia Elizabeth or any member of her family in the flesh for nearly forty years. I wouldn’t know anybody at all, besides, now, thanks to Sophia Elizabeth’s fucking letter of ten years ago, I don’t know if my ex- was also sleeping around on me within a month of our wedding. I don’t know if Gerald or Sophia Elizabeth are even my kids.”

“Tosh! They are definitely yours, Harry, all four of your children look like peas in a pod, your wives’ genes get completely smothered by yours, they can’t even get a bloody look-in. Gerald could be your twin, even down to the beard, though his beard is grey, a little shorter and ... professionally shaped by his barber.”

“I wouldn’t know, not seen Gerald for about forty-five years, when he was about 15, he refused to see me as soon as his mother asked for the divorce. He knows for sure that I’m not his dad.”

“See what I mean Harry? He could be your exact double, as stubborn as a mule and he cuts off his own nose to spite his face, just like you do. He’s your child, Harry, without a slightest shadow of a doubt.”

“Well, it’s been written into my will in blood red ink, no DNA evidence, no share of my vast fortune buried in the cellar.”

“That’s just nasty and cruel, H. Besides, you’ll probably outlive him, Gerald’s undergoing treatment for prostate cancer.”

“You might see me at the funeral then,” I sneered and almost regretted it as soon as it left my bitter lips.

Gina glared at me but didn’t say anything. Then she started looking around the room.

“Well, this is cosy, Harry, I had the impression reading from your three as-rare-as-rocking-horse-shit letters to Sophia Elizabeth that your place was a lot smaller than this.”

“It is smaller, a whole lot smaller, Gina. There are three cottages in this terraced row and I only rent the downstairs of this end of the row, although I do have two-thirds of the garden, where I keep my beehives.”

“So, how many bedrooms do you have here, Harry?”

“One, plus the parlour and this kitchen, three rooms and a privy, the full extent of my blessed domain.”

“That could make the sleeping arrangements awkward or even a tad more interesting, Harry.”

She grinned at me with her perfect smile, showing her perfect set of teeth. She was still a stunning looker even in her early seventies. Older, her face more lined than it was ten years ago when I loved her unreservedly, sure, but she still had that lively spark about her. She probably always would. Meanwhile, in comparison, although between Gina and I there never was any comparison, she was completely out of my league, and with my incessant running schedule and meagre diet, I was all skin and bones, with only wrinkled skin in between holding all my bits together.

“When I foolishly invited you here, Gina, just a few short hours ago, I envisaged you coming to tea or lunch, in the Spring, Summer or early Autumn months, when we could relax outside and come to some sort of closure in our relationship and call a halt to the present atmosphere of hatred and spite. I never intended that you’d arrive prepared to spend overnight in mid-Winter with at least 6cm of snow on the ground outside and a tension inside the cottage that you could cut with a knife. Gina, my once dear friend, there’s no room at the inn and the unheated outhouse is full of gardening tools and a workbench.”

“You wouldn’t throw a poor girl out on a dark cold night like this, would you, Harry?”

“I don’t think you fit any broad category of ‘poor girl’ in any dictionary I know, Gina.”

“I am poor in regards to being denied close proximity to people that I really care about, Harry. I’ve been lonely for a long time. Have you been lonely here, miles from anywhere? I thought maybe, that’s why you came out of hiding and came to join us at the church.”

“Yes, meeting my mortal enemy upon the sanctity of Holy Ground, eh? No, I was just curious I think. I enjoy my own company, Gina, I’m a fully qualified and practising hermit. This hovel is my hermitage, my monastic cell of celibacy away from the sexual avarice of womankind. Only you have crossed this threshold by invitation and I’m already regretting it. So, I’m never lonely, besides, I have adapted and made a few, very few, new friends.”

“What kind of friends?”

“Gina, we’ve been separated for years, ten years to be exact, you don’t have the right to ask me who my friends are, as I wouldn’t even pretend to have any interest in any of your friends.”

“My friends are just neighbours, Harry, girls from the gym and the sports centre. Nobody close. I suppose you’re friendly with all your neighbours?”

“No, not at all. The old lady at the opposite end of this terrace lives on the ground floor with fifty old cats and fresh cats seem to follow her home on a regular basis. That’s why we never see any birds in my garden but I’m forever digging up her bloody cat’s poo from my veg and fruit patches and throwing it back over the fence. And the chap living in the middle cottage, the one with all of the upstairs rooms, grows his own pot in at least one of the back bedrooms, so, no, I don’t have a lot to do with him either.”

“Interesting neighbours you have, H.”

“No, Gina, they are quite boring, compared to the interesting and no doubt constantly changing social circles you probably run around with.”

“I hardly see anyone nowadays, H, since I was forced to step aside and urge Giles to run the company against his will.”

“Yes, I heard, I kept getting email bulletins long after I resigned from any contact with the board.”

“Then you know that I was sacked. You got me sacked for contravening company policy on relationships with subordinates, Harry, that was vindictive. I worked all my life for King’s and the Tremblett’s Group.”

“Well, I kept seeing in my mind’s eye that BBC interview you did on that series on ‘Women at the Top of Industry’, I think, only about two weeks before I was told of your long standing love affair —”

“It wasn’t a love affair,” I barely heard her mutter.

“— and how you told the public that you needed the support of your family of loving husband and growing children to be able to juggle business and family and how wonderful a team we all were together.”

“We ... we were a team,” Gina said quietly, “I had forgotten about the—”

“You forgot a lot of things, Gina, and I was the only one who thought I was part of a team, you were too busy freelancing your favours ... and you lied to me for eighteen months —”

“No, it wasn’t that long and I’d not exactly lied —”

“Mrs Whatshername, when I tracked her down and told her what hubby was up to, confronted her husband and he admitted to her that the affair had gone on for as long as that.”

“Maybe it was that long, I wasn’t really watching any calendar. You didn’t have to burn poor Julian, though, he had a family, three young children. Harry, you completely destroyed him.”

“No, Gina, you destroyed poor Mr Whathisface as soon as you started fucking him. His wife kicked him out, and I hope she took him to the cleaners. As an ex-officio member of the board, and in charge of group and company policies, including staff relationships, I thought I ought to tell your precious Board what had been going on and that they’d better prepare for a shit storm in the marketplace from the fallout. That was just before I resigned from the Board.”

“It was a nightmare. Sacking me, promoting Giles to the job he never wanted. Did you ‘out’ our son too, Harry?”

“No, I never knew for certain he was gay, but I guess having a secret sex life just runs in the Tremblett family lifeline. First his father Eric fucked his fellow workers, then so did his mother, so being unmarried and secretly arse-fucking consenting males, even though some might or might not be some poor women’s husbands, was at least a slight departure from only fucking his subordinates.”

“Subordinate, I only fucked one subordinate.”

“But not just once, though, eh, but regularly for eighteen months? How many times?”

“Probably around daily Monday to Friday, maybe four times a week on average.”

“Over what ... three hundred fucks? That bloke was getting a lot more of your precious fucking arse than I was.”

“He was thirty years younger than you, Harry.”

“Yeah, And twenty years younger than his boss. So he was getting four times the pussy than I was, so was it you or him than decided that he could also butt in on my Saturdays? And when exactly were you planning on putting me out to grass so that you could make it with the studmuffin seven days and nights a week, huh?”

“Never, H, he would never leave his wife and family, that Saturday was just a one-off to do it in a bed instead of the couch in my office.”

“Whose bed? Our bed?”

“No, a hotel bed, it really was only sex, Harry. We never loved each other.”

“It was only sex for you or was he looking for romance?”

“Neither of us was looking for romance. We ... when it all started we had a team working day and night to get that contract for assembling laptops at our Romanian plant, competing against a rival assembly plant in Indonesia. We just couldn’t get the wage rates down near enough to compete, when almost at the last minute Julian and his team came up with a robot assembly line in Finland that, if it worked, would undercut the costs even of the Far East. The Finnish company had extended their credit and were struggling to meet the bank payments. Julian’s consultant team were called in to put the software right and his foreman on site said he’d identified the glitch and asked if we wanted to take advantage of that knowledge. We bought the plant and made it fully functioning within a week and beat the deadline for the tender to assemble the new laptops. We won it with capacity to take on more and use that plant as a model for more assembly lines.”

“So you fucked him as a reward?”

“No! ... No, not really...”

“Not really? How do you define ‘not really fuck’?”

“OK we did fuck. It was unplanned and just happened. We opened bottles of champagne, the team celebrated but we were all tired. We were relaxed, after so much work under tension, It was a relief to all that built-up tension, we’d saved the company and I sent everyone home happy. Julian stayed to help with the mess. We were relieved, happy it was all over, and spontaneously we embraced and kissed ... and...”

“And you fucked, huh?”

“We fucked, but that was all it was, H, a fuck. We were ashamed, both of us were happily married and had loved ones at home.”

“But it wasn’t just ‘A fuck’ and you weren’t so happily married that you wanted something on the side. It was, I presume, the first time you had fucked outside your marriage?”

“Yes.”

“And so you made your husband a useless cuckold, again. And then you simply carried on and fucked him another 300 times by your own admission and are only telling me you stopped fucking him when I found out about it and kicked you to the kerb.”

“I know and I am so ashamed and so sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”

“But you did hurt me. You once stood beside me and swore in front of me and our families that you would forsake all others, not that you would make an exception and fuck a worker just for doing the job he was already paid well to do? Don’t you have a bonus system, or do other grandmother CEOs make love to their workers like drones in a hive?”

“We didn’t make love, Harry!”

“I might believe a one-off, maybe, or drunk, drugged or on the spur of the moment during the euphoria of your success, perhaps, but casually, habitually, fuck him 300 times? At the rate we were having sex at the time, that’s equivalent to about six years of sex in our marriage. A survey in the US two years ago said the average first marriage lasts 8 years and divorcing couples on average consider divorce for two years before starting proceedings. So your affair had enough lovemaking in it for a full marriage and it effectively finished ours.”

“No, No. What you and I had was lovemaking. With Julian at work it was just sex, just like having a workout in the middle of the day to get the endorphins going.”

“Oh, that’s all right then, because in reality that’s all we really did at home, we just had sex at the weekends, we never made love, Gina. I was just a much better actor than you or Julian.”

“What do you mean, Harry, you were acting like you loved me?”

“Of course. You were just a piece of arse, Gina, that’s all you ever were. I ... never ... loved ... you ... do you get that? At no time during our almost thirty years of marriage did I ever love you.”

“No!” she screamed.

“At first you were just a cute bit of arse I had to fuck on a regular basis to maintain my luxury lifestyle.”

“No, Honey, I know you really loved me.”

“Do you think I’m stupid? No, Gina, I was just living a lie, just like you were, getting a few endorphins to make the weekend go by until I could have some peace and quiet at home while you were at work. It was OK while it lasted, but when it ended? Well, I found I never really missed fucking your saggy old arse, not one little bit. And I thought when the marriage was finally over, I was more upset about Villa losing the game than I was about ending our farce of a relationship. ‘Hey!’ I thought, ‘So what, it was no biggie’.”

“No biggie ... no fucking biggie!” Gina exploded.

“So what are you complaining about, Ex? You and me, at the time, we were absolutely made for each other. I lied to you for years, you’ve lied to me for years, so we’re even. Like I said, it was no biggie for me when we parted company and I was delighted that I didn’t have to touch your skank arse any longer.”

“What the?” Her mouth spluttered open and closed. I could see she was confused.

“Look, let’s be adult about this, we’re both tired tonight. All this arguing by two old farts over a few meaningless fucks here or there that didn’t really mean anything in the scheme of things. You take the bed for tonight, Gina. I’ll sleep in the armchair and in the cold light of the morning, you can leave here with your suitcase and go back to your life of luxury. We can continue with our happy, truthful, completely separate lives for ever and ever, and never ever see each other again, the end. A fairy tale ending where it all ends up right with the world.”

“But...”

“Look. You took what you wanted from our marriage while it lasted, Gina. I took what I wanted while it lasted, so we’re even-stevens. And, hey, if you want to slum it and visit me here again, you know, give us a chance to chew the fat, by all means come back in the summer, stay for the whole day. There’s pleasure boats on the canal passing through the lock all the time. You might even spot a likely randy skipper or two, maybe you could flutter your eyelids and go on a fucking naughty nautical cruise together.”

“You never ... loved me, really Harry? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Wasn’t it obvious, Gina? I’m a salesman, a very good one, so in this instance I sold myself. Did very well out of it I must say, for a while I lived in a nice house, I had a big garage for my Roller, you even bought me a new Roller for our 25th anniversary.”

“It’s still at home in the garage.”

“See, it all worked out amicable. I didn’t need the other Roller, I had one in my name already, it was clearly just a salve for you’re conscience. You got to save your family business, started a new family consisting of a pair of selfish kids who couldn’t give a shit about their old man, and I got a bit of free pussy for nearly thirty years. It wasn’t as exclusive a free pussy as I thought it was, but, on balance, it was win, fucking win, all round I think. So no harm done.”

“No, that’s not possible...”

“What can I say? I guess I deserved an Oscar for my performance and all I got was the Spirit of Ecstasy.”

“No. I can’t believe it. You really never loved me, Harry?”

“Never. Look, babe, you offered your arse to me on a platter back then, so I took it, thank you very much. I mean, what an opportunity? You were really cute back then, so mostly, it was all a bit of fun on my part.”

“So that was all it was to you? Our marriage? A bit of fun?”

“Yes, fucking fun. Imagine if I took it seriously, I might have ended up with a broken heart, but luckily you were just easy pussy. I guess I got complacent. I suppose I thought I’d be able to dupe you right to the end, but you got me good and I wasn’t really expecting you to start fucking somebody else, not when you were in your sagging sixties. So, I have to admit that I had had a bit of a hissy fit when it all ended and I heard you had taken a younger rival lover—”

“Julian was never, I repeat, never ever my lover.”

“So what? Look, I was probably angry on that Saturday when I found out. And because Villa had just lost at home, I was miserable and I didn’t want to speak to you, but you kept ringing me and I didn’t want to talk, so I threw the phone away ... while on the motorway. I’ve never even replaced it. In fact I still use the same Finnish laptop you gave me the Christmas before, and I never knew that the gift was either ironic or a subliminal message of your cheating with the mastermind behind the Finnish factory.”

“I never even thought ... the company were proud of that laptop, we gave a load of them away that Christmas. There was nothing subliminal about it, honey, honestly.”

“Honestly? Life’s a bitch when you find out that your partner never really loved you, though isn’t it? Well, I wouldn’t know anything about that, of course, because it only happened with Mavis, but I can imagine it would be. You knew what it was like though, because you went through it with Eric, but when you got over it I was his ready and willing replacement to do with what Eric did to you. Was this a sort of revenge on me because you couldn’t get back at Eric?”

“No! Absolutely not. Revenge had nothing to do with it. I was just a stupid, irrational woman who did a really stupid thing and it quickly became a dumb habit. I wasn’t in love with Julian, I was ... I am ... still in love with you.”

“Mrs Whatshername said she was in love with Whatusface too, and it hit her right where it hurts when she found out she was sharing hubby with his antique boss.”

“You spoke with Jennifer?”

“Jennifer?”

“Julian’s wife, Jennifer?”

“I don’t remember names, something about my age I guess, the old memory banks are full and they don’t make new grey cells in Finland by robots, ready to hand out free to simpletons like me, not yet anyway. We spoke on and off, me and your Mr Whatshisface’s missus, but mostly we were too breathless for talking much. The experience of meeting me in person for revenge sex on a regular basis was apparently cathartic for her.”

“Cathartic or not, she took him back.”

“She did?” I asked. “I’m surprised.”

“They reconciled after a couple of months apart, I think. For the children’s sake. I hear they are still together and he’s very successful as the CEO of one of our rival companies. We should never have let him go.”

“Did YOU ever let him go, Gina?”

“Yes, immediately, of course.”

“Then I think I do know how he feels, I was clearly let go, eighteen months before I even realised. It won’t happen again. I’m off that treadmill for good.”

“I was never going to let you go, Harry. You left me and I want you back. I want you to come home. And I promise I will never let you go again.”

“And now you’re trying to entice me back into your sticky web? No thanks, I’m already home. I’ve had ten years of freedom from interfering younger women. I make exception for Mrs Whathisname, of course, she can interfere with me any time she likes.”

“I told you, they’re still married, they’re still together.”

“That’s probably why she stopped coming round quite so often then, except...”

“Except?”

“Yes, the first time she came over, she dropped her three sprogs off at her sister’s for the week. You know, the youngest was only six months old, the others only four and two? Your lover boy was a walking baby maker, so you were lucky, or maybe you were just safe? ... anyway, Mrs Whatshername spent the whole week here, she certainly didn’t complain about the sleeping arrangements, not that there was much sleep going on. I even missed going to one particular match, Villa v Stoke, I think, while I first took her virgin arse. She was still carrying a bit of weight from the third child, but that’s only to be expected. She was a little unfit and a bit soggy round the middle, and her tits were full of milk, but she was eager to lay the ghost of her cheating husband. I was glad she went home in the end, though we were running out of tea, fresh food, blue pills...”

All the while Gina was standing in front of me shaking her head in disbelief. “No...”

“Oh yes, now Mrs Whatshername only comes over twice a year, on my birthday and as for the other day she says she would never miss each anniversary of our first anal fuck.”

“You ... you bastard!” She slapped me as hard as she could, turned and ran to the bedroom, slamming the door after her.

“Want a cup of tea ... love?” I shouted after her. “Just putting on the kettle and making some sandwiches for tea, I don’t like eating too late in the evening.”

All I heard was a muffled, “Fuck you!”

That’s the trouble with cheats and liars, they are so caught up in their own fantasy weaving to justify their cheating arses that they can no longer differentiate truth from a complete fucking pack of lies.

So I put the kettle on and looked out the tea pot from among the cupboards, especially searching those areas where the seldom used utensils were kept. I usually make tea for one in the cup but, having company round the house for the first time since I moved here ten years back, called for a proper tea pot and I knew I had one stashed away somewhere. The Farmer supplied the place partly furnished, by whoever rented it before me. I could keep what I wanted and dump the rest. I remembered there was a teapot. I found it by torchlight at the back of a cupboard.