Sarah Rayne - House of the Lost

For a while he thought Helen was not going to reply. She was still half kneeling on the landing stage, her arms wrapped about her as if for warmth, but she finally managed to go on.

‘Desmond isn’t your father, Theo. It’s the other way round. Your father was Charmery’s father. John Kendal and I had an affair just before he died. I have no excuses,’ said Helen, helplessly.

‘Haven’t you?’ said Theo, through the choking fury against his father. ‘Did Desmond know? Did my mother know?’ He thought there was a split second before she replied, but then she said, ‘No. Neither of them knew.’

From behind the curtain of hair, Charmery said, ‘Are you sure about that?’

‘Yes,’ said Helen. She made another of the tentative gestures towards Charmery, then recoiled and looked back at Theo. ‘Desmond was very upset at John’s death – they had been as close as if they were brothers, in fact they practically grew up together. I think that’s why he accepted the overseas contract – that Eastern European state you all laugh about. He left in January – mid-1980s it was – and I went out there to be with him in May. You were born out there, Charmery – we stayed until you were old enough to travel back to England.’ She stopped, and Theo saw she was fighting tears again. ‘I told lies and I deceived people,’ said Helen. ‘People I cared about very deeply. But out of it all, I got you, Charmery. I could never regret that. Even now, even this afternoon, I don’t regret it.’

‘Well, thank you,’ said Charmery, and Theo could not tell if she meant it or if she was merely embarrassed. The thought flickered in his mind that he would have expected Charmery to challenge her mother – almost to attack her, but she did not.

‘Theo, in other circumstances I wouldn’t go up in smoke about this,’ said Helen, looking back at him. ‘It was my generation who thought it invented the permissive society, anyway. But given the real relationship marriage would be illegal, and what’s happened today – what’s clearly already happened between you – is certainly unnatural.’

Theo wanted to say it had felt like the most natural thing in the world. Instead, he said, ‘If we made sure never to have children— I’d have that operation – a vasectomy.’

‘No!’ said Helen. ‘Theo, my poor dear boy, there’s no way round it. It can’t happen, not under any circumstances. I couldn’t let it happen. I’d have to tell people the truth.’

She was crying all over again, and Theo said, ‘All right. I understand. I suppose you’re right.’ At his side, Charmery was still huddled over silently, as if hugging the misery of it all tight inside her. Theo ached to put his arms round her, but knew, with sick despair, that he could not. Not ever again.

‘For the moment we’d better focus on the immediate,’ said Helen, the tears drying on her cheeks. ‘On getting through the rest of this holiday, including, oh dear God, Nancy’s bonfire. It’ll be a nightmare, but it’ll have to be done. Can you do it?’

Theo did not say he would have to focus on getting through the rest of his life. He managed to say, ‘Yes, I can do that.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, and without looking at Charmery, went out of the boathouse and back to the house.

Only then did Charmery push back her hair and sit up straight to look at him.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘That isn’t what I intended to happen.’

Theo had hoped the world would stop spinning when Helen went away, but Charmery’s words and her tone were sending it spinning in a different direction. She’s apologizing, he thought, and before he realized it, he said, ‘You knew.’

‘I knew Desmond wasn’t my father,’ she said.

‘How did you know?’ Theo made an angry gesture. ‘It doesn’t really matter,’ he said, ‘but tell me anyway.’

‘If you must have the sordid details,’ she said impatiently, ‘I found some old letters last year – mother was having a bedroom re-fitted and there was a massive clear-out going on. There was a big envelope at the top of an old wardrobe stuffed with ancient medical cards and hospital appointments and things, so I looked to see if there was anything interesting.’

‘And?’

‘And there was a letter addressed to Desmond Kendal, dated way back – 1981 or 1982. It was confirmation of some tests.’

‘What kind of tests?’

‘Fertility tests,’ she said. ‘Only he wasn’t – wasn’t fertile, I mean. It was absolutely clear on that. Zero score. Sad, isn’t it? Some childhood illness, it said. But it was absolutely definite and clear. He could never father children, not ever. So I knew he wasn’t my father.’ She reached for his hand. ‘But honestly, Theo, I didn’t know the truth.’

‘Didn’t you ask Helen?’

‘No, I couldn’t. At first I wondered if she’d had – what do you call it? – in vitro fertilization, but I don’t think that was very common or successful in the 1980s. So then I thought she might cry among all the paint-pots and stepladders and give me a lot of guffle about star-crossed love and doomed romances – like Brief Encounter or something equally nauseating. Massively embarrassing to hear one’s mother bang on about some torrid old love affair. I didn’t want to hear it. Lot of slop,’ said Charmery, on a sudden sob.

‘But did you guess the truth? Charm, tell me honestly.’

She bent her head again. ‘I did think it might be your father,’ she said. ‘He sort of fitted the profile – he seems to have been very much part of the scene, and according to all the stories he was very charming.’

‘So I believe,’ said Theo in a hard voice.

‘I didn’t know for certain, though. Does it matter so terribly much? We could be really secret about it…’ She suddenly leaned over to kiss him, and Theo’s lips opened involuntarily and his body responded with the familiar hard longing. When she stopped kissing him, her eyes were wide and shining.

‘It’d be a really exciting secret to be lovers like this, wouldn’t it?’ she said.

‘It’s not exciting at all,’ said Theo. ‘It’s sick.’ But he remained where he was, and after a moment she slid her hand down between his legs. I’ll push her hand away in a minute, he thought. In just a minute… His emotions were in turmoil, but the familiar longing was already spreading through him like a fire. She doesn’t understand, he thought, but in the same heartbeat remembered how she had made him promise not to tell anyone about their love-making in the summer. ‘Not to my parents,’ she had said, and the memory of those words sent a spike of anger through Theo. Had she known the real truth all the time? Had she manipulated him, purely for the excitement of it. It’d be a really exciting secret to be lovers like this …

He managed to say, ‘Charmery, we can’t turn our feelings off like flipping a switch, but we’ve got to try.’

‘Why? No one needs to know. As long as we keep it from my mother and Desmond.’

‘That’s not the point.’ Theo clung to the flicker of angry suspicion that Charmery could have known the truth and it gave him the strength to push her hand away. ‘We can’t do this, Charmery. Helen’s right. Not now. Not ever again.’

A look he had never seen before came into her eyes. ‘What a hypocrite you are,’ she said. ‘So bloody moral and righteous when all the time, you’re bursting your skin to fuck me.’ She stood up. ‘Well, fuck you, brother dear, because you won’t get the chance to do it again.’

Without looking at him, she half ran out of the boathouse. Theo sat for a long time, his mind a churning mass of raw agony. But within the agony the spikes of anger were still jabbing into him. He thought if anything were to drag him through this sick despair, it would be that anger. What if she really did know? She could have done. After she found the medical report on Desmond’s infertility, she’d have been tuned in for any clues about who her father really was. Maybe she came across a letter Helen had kept, or Helen had said something unguarded. Charmery was sharp enough, intuitive enough, to piece together any small fragments. But if Theo once believed this, he might start to hate her instead of loving her.