Burley Cross Postbox Theft (9 page)

For all the pain she caused you (and the frustration and the disappointment), the end result of your awful rift – the marvellous upshot – was that you were set free (without guilt) to pursue what was to become your glittering career in the Diplomatic Corps.

Glenys often said things that were cruel. She could be savage and mean. But her assessment of me back then was clear-eyed and entirely accurate. I was a liability. I was a wreck. My epilepsy was so severe…

Now I’m not suggesting that it was ever just a case of ‘shooting the messenger’ (how could it be, when the messenger was the only one among us bearing arms?!), but I am saying that while it was a hard truth to bear at the time (for both of us), perhaps Glenys’s greatest crime (although not her only crime, by any means) was simply presenting things as they truly were – the bald facts – without the calming balm of artifice.

I would never have coped with the life you were destined for. I would have smothered your hope, your promise and your
desire. If you had stuck with me (and my numerous maladies), you wouldn’t have married your ex-wife, Patricia, and she couldn’t have borne you your two handsome sons. You wouldn’t have taken on the greatest role of your life: to be a father.

The very thought makes me shudder.

And then, of course, there was always Rhona. She’d sacrificed so much for me, and with such a huge sacrifice comes a strong sense of obligation. I was obliged to her, Donovan (I think I always will be). She gave up her vocation in the Church to take care of me after Mother passed. She abandoned her calling. It would have been an unforgivable crime to desert her just when her faith – her trust in God – was starting to falter.

But let’s not dwell on these things! The past is the past. It is gone and forgotten. Although (to hark back, for just a brief second) it would be difficult for you to conceive how much comfort I took over the long years that followed – and still take, every day – in your manifold achievements as a UN negotiator in West Africa.

You have moved mountains, Donovan. You have altered borders. You have shifted the world’s emotional geography. You have shaped lives. You have saved lives. You have had a hand in making history.

How could I – one weak and waffling female – have dared to stand in the way of all that?!

If Glenys’s temper was a dam wall – threatening, at every second, to collapse or implode – your will to make peace, to intercede, to unify, was a force every bit as compelling and as powerful.

There’s a lesson in that, surely? And a rich irony. You have become one of the world’s most admired and respected Conflict Resolution specialists, because the most important conflict in your own life could never be resolved. It was unsolvable. Glenys’s implacability was the cruel spur that
drove you. It was both your inspiration and your goad.

She was (in Rhona’s words) a silly old trout (and sometimes worse!). But oh, how I loved her, Donovan, for all her many faults! I loved Glenys. I don’t even mind admitting it, now. I loved her because she was the opposite of you, I loved her because to love her – the mother, your opposite – was as close as I could get to loving the son. I made loving her my life’s work (my trial, my test, my passion), and I feel such a gaping hole inside of me – a ludicrously huge void – now that she has gone.

Of course I don’t suppose for a moment that she ever loved me back! Glenys tolerated me, at best. It’s not that she was entirely cold. There were signs of warmth, on occasion (not heat, no – just the dull, red coals that glimmer in a cooling grate at the end of a long, inhospitable evening).

She could be funny – often unintentionally. I wouldn’t call her ‘unkind’, not as such; there was kindness there (microscopic little drops of it). It just wasn’t very well distributed. It was like those tiny scraps of burned newspaper that fly out of a bonfire – delicate tornadoes – on a gusty autumn afternoon.

She certainly cared for her animals. In their case you might almost say she cared too much. Her love could be ruinous (not to mention her over-feeding!). She killed three dalmatians ‘with tenderness’ over the past twelve years. When the last one died – Faith, a fine, good-natured, liver-coloured bitch, only five years old – it took three men to carry her out (rolled up in two blankets). They could barely squeeze her through the garden gate.

But enough of all this! I’m straying, once again, from the real purpose of my letter (I can hardly bear to engage with it, the subject is so painful – to both of us, I’m sure), so here goes… Deep breath…

Please try and forgive us, Donovan, for all the crimes you feel we have committed against you. If they were committed,
then they were completely unintentional. You are one of our oldest and our dearest friends – a brother to us both. Let us start afresh. Let us put aside all the misunderstandings and the rancour and the pettiness (it can be done, it is possible, all it takes is a small act of will)! Let us try and return to the way things once were! The good old times!

If only you could be persuaded to believe me when I tell you that Rhona and I had no idea – not the slightest inkling – of the many arrangements that Glenys had set in place prior to her death. Glenys didn’t tell us about her burial plans, I swear (not so much as a whisper)! When I wrote to you (on the sad day she died), I had no notion (absolutely none!) of the strange events that were soon to unfold.

She had never (never!) discussed the details of her will with us (we didn’t even think there was a will. We had no earthly reason to expect that there might be. You were her natural heir, her only child).

After she died we did not – as you suggested in your last communication – ‘ransack the cottage searching for valuables’ or ‘take up partial residence’ there (it frightens me to think who could have fed you these untruths, because I know – I’m
certain
– that you couldn’t possibly have come up with them all by yourself).

I’ve racked my brains and I still can’t settle on any one individual in the village who might have anything positive to gain by stirring up such cruel rumours against us (although Rhona, alas, is not of my bent). In fact I’ve become profoundly depressed about it all. I’m currently on a course of sleeping medication and Rhona has lost over two stone in weight (although her doctor says this is no bad thing: every cloud has a silver lining, I suppose!).

After thirty years in Burley Cross I’ve started to find the atmosphere here stifling and claustrophobic. I’m constantly on edge, staring at all the kind people I’ve known for years with nagging feelings of suspicion and disquiet.

It’s been horrible.

It pains me to have to go into all the details once again, but just so that there can be
no further confusion on the issue
, since Rhona discovered poor Glenys’s body on that awful day, I can assure you – hand on my heart – that we have crossed the threshold into Camberwell Cottage on only two occasions, in total (even the estate agent went in alone).

The first was to select a suitable dress for Glenys to wear in her casket (when we found her, as I mentioned previously, she was in her nightdress), and to clean out the perishable contents of her fridge (none of which we kept – all of which we disposed of).

The second was to facilitate the delivery of a commode (the driver refused to take it back, although he did kindly agree to dispose of the old one). I can only guess that the ‘disinterested party’ your lawyer referred to when he called was a witness to this transaction and leapt to all the wrong conclusions.

For the record, the new commode (which was ordered – and paid for – by me) currently sits, still boxed up, in Glenys’s hallway (even if Rhona or I had found it a desirable artefact, neither of us – thank God – have any need of it, as yet!).

In regard to ‘prettying the place up for ourselves’ (and it cuts me to the quick to even write down those words) I can tell you that we have continued to trim the grass and prune the roses. This was something we had always done for Glenys, and something we have continued to do – as an act of good will – for you.

And why? Because the house is yours, Donovan. It was always yours. I thought we made that plain when this thorny issue first arose. It never entered our minds that it should be otherwise. Your extraordinary theories about Glenys being ‘under our spell’, ‘subject to our wiles’, ‘frightened, desperate and vulnerable’ (and countless other bizarre notions which bear no relation to the truth), I can only imagine were uttered in the dark haze of grief.

What confuses me the most (and forgive me for this, because I know I can be a little slow on the uptake, sometimes), is your apparent determination to make the whole thing ‘a matter of principle’. Which principle? I don’t understand! There is no principle at stake here! The house is yours, Donovan, both by warrant and by right!

As you are well aware, Rhona and I had already consulted a lawyer (and at considerable expense) to begin the process of handing it over. That process is now in abeyance. If it were down to me, this would not be so, but it is not down to me. Rhona must also have her say in the matter.

To put it plainly, Donovan, Rhona’s feelings have been hurt – her pride has been deeply injured – and when Rhona feels something strongly, experience has taught me that there is only so much that I can do to guide and counsel her. It may help you to understand the apparent severity of her reactions to your accusations when you discover that, far from ‘sitting on a nice nest-egg’, Glenys had been under increasing financial stress over the last few years.

In the autumn of 2005, for example, her boiler stopped functioning and Rhona cashed in a portion of her own pension to fund a replacement for her. We paid Glenys’s phone bill on countless occasions. We had Glenys’s roof insulated when our own was done. For the final five or so years of her life, we fed Glenys at least two of her daily meals.

Wherever Glenys needed to go, we drove her. We arranged incontinence care (which she rejected, for the most part). Whenever Glenys came over to visit us in Threadbare (which was most days), we had to wash/clean/disinfect the upholstery (although we always tried to ‘guide’ her into a particular chair).

These are small things, silly things, things that shouldn’t need to be mentioned, but I am saying them here, Donovan, I am writing them down, in my silly green ink, even though I feel humiliated by it, belittled by it, because I want you to understand that the only crime we have ever knowingly
committed against your mother was the crime of kindness.

Sometimes I sit and I wonder why it was that Glenys made the decision that she did. Was it out of gratitude? (She was never very big on saying thank you, but then nothing we ever did for her was predicated on that.) Or was it simply to cause mischief? To break your poor heart? To forge a rift between us? Was it a final, cruel way of making it plain that she had never truly forgiven me for the breach I had (unwittingly) caused, all those years ago, between you and her?

I don’t know. I don’t want to know (I’m just so sad, so worn, so exhausted by the whole affair). What I do know, though, is that all this procrastination over the will and its outcome is costing Rhona and me dearly (and not just emotionally). Camberwell Cottage is presently being sold. Rhona and I had no choice in the matter (we are currently liable to pay death duties and under threat of losing our own home).

I also think it only fair to warn you that two days ago Rhona told me that she was withdrawing £3,500 from Glenys’s account (last May Glenys’s depleted finances received a much needed injection of cash after an old insurance policy came into fruition. Up to that point she was over £5,000 in the red, a debt we were liable for. I’m not entirely sure of all the exact details, but I can find them out, soon enough, if you want).

I have no idea what the money is for. I presume that it is to cover legal fees and other debts incurring to us as a result of this impossible situation (Rhona had sworn that ‘nothing on God’s good earth’ would impel her to touch a penny of the money. I can only guess that something important has changed her mind).

I am unhappy about the withdrawal, and I felt that it was only right to let you know about it. Can I assure you, though (for my own part, at least), that my determination not to access Glenys’s account remains as strong now as it ever was.

So there you have it. I’m not sure there’s anything left to add. If you still are resolved to pursue the case against us, then
all I can do is wish you well. I think it only fair to tell you, though, that both our lawyer, and Mr Baquir, seem to think your hopes of achieving anything by this course are not good.

Please see sense, Donovan! Don’t let foolish pride get in the way of a happy outcome. Stop this mess while it can still be stopped. We are your dear friends. We love you deeply. You are always in our thoughts and in our prayers,

Tilly

PS On a slightly lighter note: someone bought us a duck! He’s a Muscovy and very fine! Rhona sank a bath for him in the back garden, but he still persists in following me up on to the moor for a swim in the ghyll each morning. He had befriended a lone swan up there who unfortunately died after swallowing a load of fishing twine. By rights we should clip his wings (we’ve had complaints about him – he’s quite a beast!) but we’ve yet to catch the little devil!

Do take care.

XX

1, The Old Cavalry Yard
The High Street
Burley Cross
Wharfedale
WD3 4NW

20/12/2006

Dear Mr Vesper Scott-Jones,

I am writing to you, care of your publishers, because I have contacted you via your website www.sky-turns-black.com on three separate occasions and have received no direct answer to my enquiries. Instead my questions (and my email) have ended up – in bastardized form – on a ‘fans’ forum’ to be chewed over and debated by other ‘fans’, which isn’t at all what I’d had in mind (and, to put it bluntly, their various contributions have, by and large, been nothing short of asinine).

If I had wanted to know what Joe Bloggs thought on a variety of issues relating to your ‘oeuvre’ I suppose I could always have strolled out on to the High Street, right here in Burley Cross (West Yorkshire), and conducted a small random poll myself (I don’t doubt that it would have taken me considerably less time and been infinitely more illuminating!).