Page 52 of The Dead Come to Stay
“Alfred Jones was a hard man.He’d spent a few years in service to queen and country, had been stationed with Americans and learned to hate them. But he didn’t care much for his fellow Brits, either. He loved very few things. Money was one. Order, another. An order he was sure existed in the past and not now, something lost in the generations sincehisfather. Bought things with cash, like his house and his car, and—in 1973—Julia, daughter of the local barrister. The marriage dissolved. Not in divorce, but in a more literal sense. Unhappy for seven years, Julia drank herself to death, and Alfred locked himself into the routine he’d keep for the rest of his life. It might have been right enough, except by then there were two children to think of, a boy and a girl just a year apart. He trained them up on rigor and abstinence; never give in to drink or love or joy. Was a miserable, awful life, and Aiden and your mum clung to each other like babes in a storm.
“Now me, I knew myself by age six. Aiden took a little longer. Twelve years old he had his first crush on a boy, and he told the only person he thought he could trust—his sister, Caroline. Your mother.
“Caroline kept his secret a long time, because if Aldred knew, he’d disown the lad. This went on for another nine years; Aiden finished grammar school and had gone to Newcastle University. That’s where he met Thomas—Thomas Oliver Lofthouse. They were together a while, but Thomas couldn’t settle. Too pretty, you know. All the boys, and all the girls, too; who didn’t want to put hands through his red-gold curls or kiss the rosebud mouth? Does it sound like the portrait ofDylanThomas? It should. Aiden compared him to it often; it’s why he took to Augustus John, as an artist. Aiden brought pretty Thomas home with him on holidays. Maybe he thought his flirting with your mum was cover, something to keep him in good with Aiden’s father. But Aiden didn’t know Thomas half so well as he thought.
“I don’t know when the affair began. It certainly went on for some time, Thomas courting brother and sister. But there’s a thing about being a woman, isn’t there, pet? Some things can’t stay hid. Caroline got pregnant, and she told Thomas, and Thomas toldherhe was engaged to be married to the lovely heiress of a packing plant fortune.
“He left Newcastle. He left Caroline. He left Aiden—but not before confessing what he’d done. They should have come together for comfort and solace. But love is painful and messy; it eats up your heart and much of your brains. Heartbroken, devastated and feeling doubly betrayed, Aiden told their father about her condition. As predicted, Alfred threw her out and Caroline fled to the cold welcome of her widowed aunt—but not before getting revenge in kind. She told Alfred that Aiden was gay.
“Alfred Jones never spoke to either of them again. When he died some ten years later, alone, as deserved, he left every penny of his hard-won money to a trust for ‘moral education’ so that his children could never touch it. Thomas went before him, in the ground before you were more than seven or eight. Pride, hurt, private shame—those are powerful things, especially when there’s none left to make a clean breast with. Your uncle and mum should have made amends...
“But they didn’t,” Chen finished.
“He—he tried.” Jo heard herself say the words, as if from a long way off. The feelings pent up upon receiving Aiden’s letters had not resurfaced; rather, they were the medium in which she was now drowning.
“I think that’s why he wanted me,” Chen said. “He couldn’t connect forward, so he wanted to connect backward. Try to find family that way. And when he saw the ruined painting, he knew it was an Augustus—and that the other two weren’t. Which meant there must’ve logically been something happened—a breaking point between the siblings.”
Evelyn reminded him of Caroline, Jo said in the long hallway of her brain. The words never came out, though, and Chen carried on.
“I took on the work,” she explained, “and Aiden sat in a chair and watched me, just so. Said I should make sure the eyes were on him.”
This piece of information shook Jo out of herself, and she clambered desperately to the surface.
“Hetoldyou to set her eyes that way?”
“Aye, pet. You don’t think I’d do that on purpose, do you? The wrong angle, not by much, but it’s there. He told me all these things while I painted, and I think... maybe he just wanted someone to see him.”
Jo could envision her uncle, already ill and in treatment, hiding some of this even from Arthur, whom he loved. Aiden, telling Chen what he never told anyone else. Aiden, slipping away as Evelyn’s painting came to life.
“He went into care just as I finished the painting,” Chen said, and now her own voice grew husky and strained. “The last thing he told me was that, if he beat the cancer, he’d give me my painting back. He was done hiding. He’d marry Arthur and sell the York flat, make a clean breast of things.” A tear crested the wrinkles around her dark eyes and found its way toher chin. “Imagine. He didn’t need the talisman anymore. No more hiding.”
These had been the words that broke Jo.
And it told her, again, of a tragedy that somehow wasWuthering HeightsandGreat ExpectationsandMill on the Flossall at once—cast-off children and divided siblings and hopes forever lost in the flood. But awful as it was, horrid as the tale was, what hurt the most was knowing her mother had made it so. Caroline was the one who didn’t reach back. She was the one who locked everything away, who kept all her secrets, and who—in doing so—stole them from her daughter.
Stole them. From me.Jo loved her mother. Loved and missed her and didn’t know how to also be angry. The feelings wouldn’t stay fast. She’d left the café; she’d wandered. Tears already streaked Jo’s cheeks, leaving them hot and wet, and a tremor had begun deep in her sinews. She needed to get back to the hotel. The ugly, squat, unappealing hotel, which—when she finally found it—offered itself like hope’s own beacon. She threw herself inside, navigating the stairs and feeling the final wave pressing, pressing.Fetal position. Please.And wracking sobs the likes of which she hadn’t experienced since she’d told Gwilym about her mother’s diary.
Thomas Oliver Lofthouse, her long-awaited father, had broken two hearts and then walked away. Married. Divorced. Dead.
Caroline Jones had been betrayed, responded by betraying. She gave birth to a daughter who always reminded her of it, and made sure that daughter would never, ever meet the source of her pain.
And then there was Aiden, who wanted to make amends, but made them much too late—dreaming of future happiness as the cancer ate him away.
And finally Jo herself, who had not managed to make itintoher room, but was curled up in her black dress on the horrible hall carpet, sobbing for herself, the world and everything in it.
***
MacAdams wasn’t overfond of York Central Station—and tried to assure himself it wasn’t professional jealousy. Upon his spontaneous visit that day, however, he received a hero’s welcome from the staff—probably a consequence of keeping the department clear of wrongdoing in his last case.
“Tea? Or coffee—it’s one of those fancy machines,” said Superintendent Charles Fernsby. He hovered over a small black Nespresso knockoff, with its tiny tin pods. “I’m trying the espresso today.”
“I’ll follow your lead,” MacAdams said, mostly to be polite. He’d rather go for one of Ben’s hard-won creations on his brass-topped, ever-breaking-down device.
“I’m told this isn’t a social call,” Fernsby said, producing two demitasse cups and putting them on matching saucers. If it weren’t for the clearly spilled and forgotten sugar packets on the coffee cart, Fernsby’s neatness might approach the late, unlamented Jarvis Fleet.
“Murder case; Ronan Foley. And I’ve since discovered that he oversaw a development for Hammersmith here in town—a sort of galleria south of town,” MacAdams said. “I have some questions.”
“Yes, the defunct shopping center. As I said over the phone, I am only too happy to help. What would you like to know?”
