Widows & Orphans (33 page)

‘Why not pack me off to Castlemaine and have done with it?’ she asked.

‘There are other options, Mother. I had hoped … we had hoped,’ Duncan said, determined to involve Alison, ‘that you’d be able to stay here for the rest of your life.’

‘Forgive me if I’ve upset your plans.’

‘Even if you could pay for the upkeep, this house is far too
big for you. Either you’ll have to move somewhere smaller or else we must split it up into flats.’

‘I agree,’ Adele said cheerfully.

‘You do?’ Duncan asked, turning to Alison, who shrugged.

‘We should make a flat for you.’

‘What?’

‘It’s the perfect solution. You’ll have to leave Mercury House and you can’t afford to rent anywhere else. This way I’ll be able to keep an eye on you, make sure you don’t brood on what went wrong. And you’ll be able to take over some of Chris’s jobs – that’s if he ever deigns to come back.’

‘You mean I’ll be an unpaid carer?’

‘You’re the one who told me to economise.’

‘It’s very kind of you, Mother,’ Duncan said, breathing deeply, ‘but I have other plans. I hadn’t intended to mention it yet but now’s as good a time as any. I’m going to marry Ellen.’

‘What? Since when?’

‘That’s marvellous news, Duncan,’ Alison said, springing up to kiss him. ‘I’m so pleased for you.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You haven’t met her mother,’ Adele said to Alison.

‘I’m not her greatest fan either,’ Duncan said. ‘But it’s not her I’ll be marrying.’

‘Of course not, darling. I’m thrilled for you. I’ll cross all my fingers that this time it’ll work out. But it needn’t stop you living here. There’s plenty of room for Ellen.’

‘She has her own house in West Francombe. I’ll move in there, at least for the time being.’

‘Have you set a date?’ Alison asked.

‘Not yet, but we’re looking at March. At our age there’s no point in hanging around.’

‘“Marry in Lent, live to repent.”’

‘Mother!’ Alison said.

‘I’m not the one who wrote it! Anyway, I don’t suppose they’ll be having a church wedding.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong. I’ve asked Henry if we can use St Edward’s.’

‘But you made such a fuss last time,’ Adele said.

‘Because we were under so much pressure, from Jack and Brenda as well as you. Ellen and I are agreed. We’re not worried about making our vows before God but we do want to make them in public, before the wider community. And these days a church congregation may be our best bet.’

‘Will you be using the 1662?’

‘I doubt there’ll be much “obeying” but for the rest, yes. I still squirm at the memory of Stewart and Laura Canning’s promise to take on each other’s “brokenness”. What’s more, we thought we might use one of grandfather’s anthems, maybe the
Magnificat
?’

‘Oh darling, that would be splendid,’ Adele said, her face glowing. ‘I’d be so proud.’

‘I’ll say one thing for you, Duncan Neville,’ Alison whispered in his ear. ‘You certainly know how to get the old girl eating out of your hand.’

Doubtful of his mother’s discretion, Duncan alerted Ellen to the need to break the news to their children as soon as possible. All three in their different ways were victims of the woodland attack. Rosalie’s friends, ignorant of Sue’s attempt to intervene, accused her of betraying her companions to save her own skin. Shunned by her schoolmates, she was now content to spend her evenings at home studying for her GCSEs, with the result that a mere two weeks after the hearing her form teacher had revised her prospective grades from Cs to Bs. Neil, meanwhile, had been targeted not only by Craig’s and Alan’s friends but even by some of their enemies who set aside past differences to join in condemnation of the ‘snitch’.

Jamie was hit hard by Craig’s imprisonment. However regrettable the circumstances, Duncan rejoiced at his release from his stepbrother’s tutelage. Linda had been convinced
that the rupture would occur when Craig went to university, but that might have been too late. Who could say what trouble they would have been caught up in before then? Craig’s sentence offered Jamie the chance of a fresh start. Besides, with Craig out of the picture, Duncan dared to hope that Jamie would be more agreeable to Neil. So it was with new confidence that, on the Sunday afternoon he had appointed with Ellen for their disclosures, he took Jamie on to Salter cliffs, stopping beside the ruins of the Martello tower where, with waves lashing the rocks and herring gulls wheeling in the sky, in the very spot that he had previously chosen for his proposal to Ellen, he announced his engagement.

‘You mean you’re going to live with Neil Nugent?’ Jamie asked, with such desperation that Duncan regretted not having stayed at sea level.

‘The same way that you live with Derek. I hope we’ll become friends,’ Duncan said, drawing him away from the edge, ‘but I’ll only ever have one son and that’s you.’

‘What will he call you?’

‘Duncan, I suppose. Probably “hey you”,’ he said, failing to raise a smile. ‘Remember he calls his grandmother Barbara.’

‘He’s an arse wipe.’

‘May we dispense with the insults? I’m asking you to make an effort. You’ve been gratuitously cruel to him and I’m not just referring to that text. Suppose it had been the other way round and you were the one who’d moved to a new town.’

‘When you and Mum split up, you said you’d always put me first. Now’s your chance to prove it.’

‘I do put you first but that doesn’t mean I have to order my life around your prejudices,’ Duncan replied uneasily.

‘In other words you’re a liar and a hypocrite. Can we go now? Why did you bring me out here? Couldn’t you have been normal for once and told me in a room?’

After driving Jamie home, Duncan returned to his flat where he texted Ellen that he had told Jamie, who took it
‘much as expected’. She rang him an hour later in a voice so strained as to be barely recognisable.

‘It’s done,’ she said.

‘And?’ Duncan asked, praying that the strain was due to emotion rather than effort.

‘Sue was amazingly positive. She said she was happy for me.
For me
: can you imagine? Just a few weeks ago she treated happiness like a playground where adults were only allowed in if accompanied by a child.’

‘And Neil?’ Duncan asked hesitantly.

‘Well, you can’t have everything – or anything when it comes to Neil. He says he hates you and he hates Jamie even more. He wants us to leave Francombe and, when I refused, he accused me of putting my pleasure above his future … actually, the phrase he used was a good deal more graphic.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘I told him that running away from your problems was never the solution. So he asked why we’d left Radlett and called me a liar and a hypocrite.’

‘What?’

‘A liar and a hypocrite.’

‘That’s exactly the phrase Jamie used about me.’

‘Then at least they have something in common,’ Ellen said, with what was either a stifled sob or a muffled laugh. ‘I told him that we’d be a proper family again and life would be better for all of us. I truly believe that, Duncan.’

‘So do I.’

‘But is he right? Am I kidding myself? Pursuing my own happiness at the expense of his?’

‘Neil has to find his own happiness. At least now you – we – can set him an example.’

‘He spat out more of my mother’s vitriol.’

‘Oh no!’

‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have mentioned it. Doesn’t she realise the harm it can do to an impressionable boy?’

‘I’ll just have to try twice as hard to make up for it.’

‘No matter what you say about bridges and bygones, my mind’s made up; I won’t have that woman at the wedding. Being with you has finally given me the strength to cut her out of my life.’

The stopped clock on the Town Hall tower confirmed the drop in temperature. Three years ago Duncan had written an impassioned leader on the blow to civic pride dealt by a mechanism so susceptible to the cold that every winter, ‘as regular as clockwork’, a severe icy spell thickened the oil in the lubrication system and clogged the works. The only official response, however, had been a letter from the Director of Finance citing budgetary cuts. As he walked up the slippery steps into the building, he acknowledged with a mixture of relief and regret that in two days’ time it would be somebody else’s concern.

He entered the lobby, its black lacquer console tables, cream leatherette sofas and angular chrome coat stands (which, as a boy, he had secretly anthropomorphised on visits with his parents) contrasting sharply with the austere neo-classical exterior. He climbed the sweeping white marble staircase to the first floor, his eye as usual drawn to the large mural in which an affluent man sporting a trilby and cane and his elegant wife wearing a cloche hat and wrap-over coat, greeted a heavily mustachioed fisherman who was selling his catch on the Front, while his ruddy-faced, ample-bosomed wife sat placidly mending his nets and their four barefoot children played hopscotch on the sand. Duncan could not restrain a smile at this fantasy of social cohesion painted in 1923, two years after the town had been torn apart and the Town Hall itself burnt down by rioters, many of them ex-servicemen, protesting at rising prices and unemployment. But his smile faded at the thought of how completely the event had faded from the collective memory, with no longer any prospect of an ‘On This Day’ column to bring it back.

He made his way down a corridor lined with seascapes of tablemat blandness to the Council Chamber, another striking example of art deco design, with a mosaic allegory of the seasons on the ceiling, pressed-metal panelled walls and bronze-and-alabaster sconces. Having attended more
Planning Committee meetings than all but the longest-serving councillors, he knew the form. As an interested party, he took his seat on a cracked leather banquette alongside Glynis Kingswood and Jocelyn Dunning of the High Street Traders Association. Geoffrey Weedon, with his architect and agent, sat two rows in front and Ken Newbold, assiduously covering his last ever story for the
Mercury
, was in the row behind. Lucy Blackstone, the Committee Chair, flanked by a clerk and a legal adviser, presided beneath a large bronze sunburst. To her left were the planning officers presenting the applications; to her right, twelve of the fifteen councillors who made up the committee. The general public was confined to a cramped gallery at the back. Twisting round, Duncan spotted several familiar faces and one unmistakable hairstyle: Lea Brierley’s multicoloured fringe.

Knowing the pier application to be the last item on the agenda, he had timed his arrival to avoid the usual batch of garage extensions, loft conversions, tree removals and changes of use, along with the routine disclaimers by councillors that any discussions they had held on the proposals were prejudicial. Even so, he had to sit through applications to build four petrol pumps and two jet car washes outside the Bartholomew Road Tesco; to adapt the main gatehouse at Seacombe Court into a farm shop; and to turn a piece of arable land outside Switherton into open storage. The first two were passed, while a decision on the third was deferred pending a site visit.

Finally, they came to item twelve: Application FS2014/37286 for planning permission and listed building consent for the partial demolition and reconstruction of Francombe Pier, the erection of new pier buildings with alternative leisure use, the extension of the existing footprint and landscaping of the immediate surroundings. ‘I’m aware that there’s a lot of feeling locally about this application,’ the Chair said, as an air of anticipation permeated the room, ‘but members of the committee, led by myself, will consider it without fear
or favour, just as we have many similar applications in the past.’ As two planning officers placed the architect’s model in front of the dais, several male councillors craned forward to study it with playground excitement. The designated planning officer, whose dark hair, thick-rimmed spectacles, neatly clipped beard and black turtle-necked sweater gave him the look of a man about to deliver a lecture on structuralism at the Sorbonne rather than to discuss the nuts and bolts of a building project in Francombe, set out the application.

After emphasising that his decision to recommend it was based solely on merit, he outlined the conclusions of the Environmental Impact Assessment that there would be no discernible damage to the air, soil, water, natural landscape or cultural heritage either during construction or after completion. The minimal increase in noise in the immediate vicinity, where the only residential dwellings were DSS hostels, would be offset by a significant reduction in both noise and congestion in the centre of town as traffic shifted away from the existing pubs, clubs and leisure facilities. Moreover, the developers had pledged to extend and improve the Promenade in front of the pier, setting back the entrance pavilions and putting up a new pelican crossing.

Dimming the lights, he showed a series of slides of the proposed buildings, followed by highly idealised artist’s impressions of the completed pier, both by day beneath a canopy of leaves, and by night as brightly illuminated as a cruise ship in port. He concluded by reminding the committee that ‘this site has a lot of planning history. There’s no reason at all why, in fifty, forty or even twenty years’ time it shouldn’t be transferred to a different usage. But at present, after balancing the protection of the historic and social environment with the need for economic growth and agreeing with the developers an extensive list of Section 106 underpinned controls relating to design, development, implementation and management, I strongly recommend that approval should be granted.’

Having thanked the officer for his concise presentation, the Chair announced that they had received a record 182 objections to the application. Four community representatives had been allotted three minutes each to put these in person, after which the developers would be afforded equal time to reply. She called on Jocelyn Dunning to speak first, failing to mask her surprise at the bass voice that responded. Casting repeated glances at his watch, Jocelyn declared that although the developers had trumpeted the support they had received from hotel owners and the Chamber of Commerce, his own members had grave anxieties about the impact of the scheme on their already ailing businesses. Such a radical reordering of the town’s amenities would leave the centre deserted, particularly at night, resulting in increased antisocial behaviour and crime. Jocelyn was followed by Nigel Taylor, the Methodist minister of St Anne’s, who argued for the preservation of Francombe as a family resort, even if this entailed demolishing the pier. While in the light of recent events Henry’s reluctance to act as clerical spokesman was understandable, Duncan had hoped for a more impressive substitute. For all his sincerity, Taylor’s reasoning was naïve and his delivery surprisingly hesitant for someone with chapel training. It came as a relief when, showing little respect for his cloth, Councillor Blackstone carried out her threat to switch off his microphone when he ran out of time.

With Glynis having renounced her right to speak in order that Duncan might present a more sustained argument, he had double the time available to his two associates, a fact to which he drew attention when, constrained by the need both to stay seated and talk into a fixed microphone, he began. ‘I have six minutes – a mere 360 seconds – to save this town from the greatest peril it has faced since the threat of invasion in 1940. Then, Salter Pier was blown up to prevent its furnishing a landing stage for the enemy. Now, the enemy has taken over Francombe Pier and is using it to launch a direct attack on the
moral and social fabric of the town. Some of you may accuse me of scaremongering, but anyone who’s read the
Mercury
over the past few months will be under no illusions about the risk. I trust that I’m as conscious as anyone here of the hardships that Francombe has endured in recent years, but this is no way to set about reversing them. Strange as it sounds, the Recession that has caused us so much pain now hands us a golden opportunity. With more and more families choosing to holiday at home, we should be targeting them, restoring the pier to its glory days as a place of all-round entertainment, not turning it into a replica of a sleazy backstreet in Bangkok.

‘Take this drawing.’ Duncan pointed to the artist’s impression of the pier at night, the final slide, which remained a ghostly presence on the screen in the glare of the overhead lighting. ‘It looks so inoffensive, decked out in fairy lights as if the town is finally enjoying the festive display it was denied on the Parade this Christmas. What it doesn’t show is the corruption, the crime, the intemperance (by which I mean far more than drunkenness), the exploitation and misery that inevitably accompany such enterprises. It doesn’t show the danger to children for whom the illicit amusements will offer both a lure and a challenge. I appeal to the members of the committee not to be deceived by all the talk of profit to the town. This is a project that exists for one reason and one reason only: to line the developers’ pockets.

‘To which end we, or rather you, the members of the Planning and Regeneration Committee, are being asked to grant an application that will change the nature of our town for ever.’ It may have been his reference to 1940 but he heard his cadences becoming Churchillian. ‘I entreat you to save us from a development that will be a blight on our lives and a blight on the lives of all those who come after us, a development that is a betrayal not just of the people of Francombe but people the length and breadth of the country – and beyond – who come here to enjoy the innocent pleasures of the seaside.
I speak in fervent opposition to this application, which I ask you to reject.’

Duncan’s plea drew loud cheers from the public gallery and a single clap from one of the councillors, cut short by a glare from her neighbour. Glynis Kingswood clasped his hand in support. Councillor Blackstone, who remained impassive, declared that having heard all the objections (prompting a cry from the gallery of ‘Not half you bloody haven’t!’), she would now call on the applicants. First to speak was the architect, Archana Nayar, wearing a far more sumptuous sari than at the consultation: cream silk with a motif of pink and blue petals. Grinning at the committee as if already thanking it for its endorsement, she defended her designs, explaining that they were inspired – albeit loosely – by several of the previous structures on the site and had received the full support of the Victorian Society, the National Piers Society and the Francombe Civic Society. At the mention of the last, Duncan turned to the gallery where its secretary and leading light, Jamie’s former history teacher, David Westbrook, determinedly avoided his gaze.