Julia chapter 20 / 22

Chapter 20 ‘She be alright when they work’ she reassures me. I watch, and a part of me wonders what it would have been like if I’d left her and she’d just passed away. It’s not a thought I want, or welcome, but it comes from me so I must hold some responsibility for it. Later that day I thank Lucy for her help. ‘That alright Mrs.’ she replies and then goes about her work. I recognize I did not handle things well. I should’ve noticed the signs, the pattern that always leads mother and I into conflict, but I didn’t. There were so many issues in one conversation, so many triggers that set a trap for my unwary mind. I feel as if I have failed again just when I was doing so well, and I may have lost forever the one thing I need, to get some understanding of her before she dies. She won’t want to see me for days now. I will be excommunicated like a disobedient nun. In her mind I’m probably already being burnt at the stake for heresy.   

Chapter 21 It’s been a week since the argument, and as suspected I’ve been effectively banned from her room. She’s in one of her famous silent sulks and I don’t have the energy or inclination to attempt to pull her out of it. What she has said has left me angry and unable to think of her in a positive way.  She knew how much it would hurt me to say that she didn’t want a child when I have spent most of my adult life coming to terms with my own infertility.  Even if that was how she felt, she should not have expressed it.  As for the remarks about my father, I’ve been thinking about them.  I know I was not the easiest child but in a naïve way I suppose I’d always thought that was what parents took on board when they had children.  My father had never expressed anything but compassion towards me as a young child and so I grew up believing he could cope with my need to be wild and free. Later in life I now realize I did see the signs of irritation, but do teenagers ever recognize the feelings of adults? Can they ever understand the day to day pressures of life their parents are under. I think not. As far as my father is concerned, the difference between mother and I is that he was dealing with her as an adult and me as a child, but she cannot see it that way.  She is either looking at us both as adults or both as children, making us equal in some ridiculous way and I am beginning to wonder if it is the latter.  She has always behaved like an angry child herself, spiteful, devious, and demanding, as if a part of her is stuck in her own childhood. Lucy walks into the room rolling her fingers as she does when she is agitated.  Something is wrong but she obviously doesn’t want to say.  ‘How is mother today?’ I ask.  ‘She ok Mrs. She watching TV.’ Lucy is well aware that mother and I have had a blazing row. No doubt mother has been complaining bitterly about her wicked daughter.  ‘Are you alright?’ I am concerned that she has a permanent frown on her face nowadays and this morning even more than usual.‘I ok thank you Mrs.’ She’s not telling the truth but I can’t force her to tell me how she does feel, so I say no more.  I can’t help thinking that the change in Lucy came about after that incident in the night when I found her in the kitchen. 

My mobile phone rings, it is Valerie.  ‘How are things?’ I ask ‘They don’t get any better’ she replies. ‘Any news of Geoffrey?’ Valerie sighs loud enough that I hear her.  ‘No, but the police are following up a lead that he has either taken himself off to New Zealand of all places, or Canada. It would make sense as both have plenty of wild space. If you want to get lost but don’t want a problem with the language then they are the places to go.’  ‘So they’re still treating him as the prime suspect?’  ‘Yes, with me in second place.’ ‘Oh come on Valerie, they surely can’t…’   ‘Don’t you believe it.  I’ve been interviewed three times now.  Twice with a solicitor present because they keep suggesting I could in some way benefit from all of his crimes.’  ‘But surely they can see that Geoffrey ran away and you didn’t? I mean it’s obvious you weren’t involved otherwise you would’ve gone with him.’  ‘I wish it were that plain to them.  One of the problems is that we have apparently been living off Geoffrey’s clients money for the past four years.  Guess what, Geoffrey had a penchant for prostitutes and gambling.’  ‘Geoffrey! You’ve got to be joking.’  ‘I wish I was Julia.  All those business trips, all those meetings into the night, all of those international conferences were actually when Geoffrey was spending other people’s money on the roulette wheel and whores.’

‘Jesus!’  ‘I feel such a fool.  A total idiot. I’ve lived with someone I didn’t know for all these years.  I feel as if I’ve been raped for the past twenty six years.  Every time we were ‘making love’ he was probably thinking about some little slut he’d had the week before. God Julia, this is never going to be put right.  If it wasn’t for the children I would end it all now.’  Valerie is bitterly sobbing on the end of the line.  ‘Do you want me to come up there?’ I ask.  ‘To do what?  Don’t get me wrong, I would like to see you but there isn’t a thing you can do. The only person who can help at the moment is mother, the one person I least want to talk to. I need money Julia, just to keep the house and everything going.’  My heart sinks as I realize I am going to have to tell her what I know, and what she has not yet worked out.  ‘I am really sorry about this Valerie but I have got to tell you more bad news.’  There is silence. I imagine Valerie is bracing herself.  ‘Mother had a letter from Geoffrey’s firm to say that she was one of the clients from whom he stole money. Not only did he dupe her out of the house, but then he raided her personal account and took the rest.’  The silence continues. ‘Valerie, Valerie?’  ‘It’s ok I am here’ her voice is devoid of emotion, it is cold and dead.  ‘It looks as if mother is in the same situation as you are.’  ‘What am I going to do Julia?  What the hell am I going to do?’     ‘Sell the house?’ I reply naively.  ‘The one with the £300,000 mortgage’ she replies.  ‘But you don’t have a mortgage, you haven’t had one for years.’  ‘That’s what I thought until last week. Geoffrey took one out four years ago, when the debts began to accumulate, and then he decided to accumulate a few more. I am destitute Julia, I have nothing.’  In my heart I feel like saying ‘you have two children who adore you’ but she would not understand about the things  money cannot buy, so I leave it unsaid. ‘Look, try to get away, come down here, it would be good to have you around. Mother and I have had a massive row and we aren’t speaking so we could support one another’. In truth I am afraid for Valerie, she’s not usually unstable but that comment ‘if it wasn’t for the children I would end it all now’ keeps echoing in my head.  ‘I will Julia.  I have some things to do tomorrow, more fire fighting and mopping up, but then I will.’  We part on those words as the phone goes dead. 

Chapter 22   Lucy comes to find me. She says mother wants to speak to me.  I take a deep breath and head for her room.  She is either going to tell me to pack my bags and go, or she has the hump with Lucy and wants to go to the bathroom.  Her room smells stale and I open the window.  ‘What are you doing that for, it’s draughty.’  She scowls at me. ‘Because I need some fresh air.’ She tutt’s. ‘What’s this?’ she asks handing me the white envelope. I go cold.  She has noticed the deception, read the postmark or is missing the company logo. I pretend not to know.  ‘What? I ask.  ‘This!’ she says handing me the envelope. ‘Read the letter’ she says ‘I don’t understand what they are saying.’ I relax slightly, hoping the threat of discovery is over. I take my time pretending to read what I already know to be its contents.

‘Oh no’ I say ‘I think Geoffrey might have stolen your money.’ ‘Geoffrey? What do you mean?’  She doesn’t suspect.  She is totally unprimed for what I am about to say.  ‘It turns out that Geoffrey is not the person everyone thought he was.’  ‘What do you mean?’ She has that hard look on her face.  ‘Geoffrey has disappeared and the police are looking for him, not only in connection with Brian’s death, but because he has been stealing from his firm’s clients.  It looks as if he has taken your money amongst other people.’  She looks at me and says nothing.  Then she says something totally unexpected.  ‘Men are bastards, every one of them.  They just take what they want and leave you to pick up the pieces.’  It is an unexpected response, but for once I almost find myself siding with her. This I do not want to do. ‘I’m sure they aren’t all bad, but it seems that way at the moment’ I reply, trying to be positively different.     

‘Well yours didn’t do you any favours.’  I hear the words and they penetrate but I am determined not to let her continue the argument we left off three days ago.  ‘Michael always wanted children’ I reply ‘and if I’m honest we had moved away from one another in recent years.’   ‘Hmm..’she mutters ‘well he could have at least divorced you before he took up with that young floosy.’ Valerie has obviously told mother about Michael’s girlfriend. Sometimes we women are too good at communicating.   ‘That’s a very old fashioned view of things mother, nowadays it doesn’t matter.’ ‘Yes well that’s just one of the things that is wrong, nothing matters, everything is cheap, throwaway, nothing has any value. Anyway I won’t be around to see the consequences of it all. I’ll leave that to your generation and those following you.’ 

I am surprised and glad she has dropped the subject of Michael so soon.  ‘What about my money?’  She looks at me as if expecting me to answer to it all.   ‘I don’t know.  I assume his firm is insured against such things but it isn’t a given. Even if they are you won’t be able to access anything until they’ve sorted things out, and you know how long that could take. In the meantime it seems you don’t have any money, unless you’ve stashed some under the bed?’  She gives me a withering look but I take it on without flinching.

‘At least you’ve got your state pension.’

‘Pah that’s not worth a light. What about her?’ she asks pointing to the door. I half expect Lucy to be standing there but she is not. ‘You mean how is she going to be paid?’  ‘Yes.’  ‘I don’t know.  Who pays her now?’  It is a question I had not thought to ask until that moment.  ‘Geoffrey dealt with it all’ she replies.  ‘Oh god, I might have known.  So we can assume she won’t be getting paid anymore then. I need to talk to her.’  ‘We don’t need her anyway’ says mother. A deep feeling of despondency seeps into my body as I realize what she is implying.  ‘I think we do’ I reply.  ‘I really think we do.’ ‘Have it your own way then’ she says ‘but you’ll have to find the money.’

The bleak nature of the situation is upon me.  We have gone from a family with money, a family with well stocked larders and bank accounts to one where we will all be scrabbling around for crumbs.  It is only when access to money is denied that it’s importance suddenly engulfs every aspect of day to day life.  How are we going to pay Lucy, how are we going to buy food, how do we pay the gas bill, the electric bill, the water bill…….. The list is endless and it is not just mother and I, it is my ‘wealthy’ sister Valerie who now has debt which is mounting. 

The question of Lucy is solved in the most bizarre way later that morning when there is a knock on the door. I go to answer it as Lucy is not about. A man and a woman are standing on the doorstep, the man holds out a leather wallet in which there is a card for me to read. ‘Simon Jacks, National Crime Agency’ he says, confirming the information on the card. ‘Yes?’ I reply. The woman’s eyes look towards the man as if to say ‘she doesn’t know.’ ‘Doesn’t know what?’ is the question.  ‘We believe you may be employing an illegal alien, may we come in?’  ‘I don’t quite understand, what do you mean?’ ‘You have a woman working here, Viola Castillo?’ ‘No?’  ‘You do have an employee working for you?’ The man’s voice hardens. ‘Yes, we have Lucy, who…..’  it suddenly dawns on me who he is talking about.  ‘Come in’ I say.

The two enforcement officers enter and I call for Lucy. It is pointless of course because she has long since gone. The back door is open and on going to her room her things are missing. She has fled, no doubt forewarned. Mother hears the three of us on the stairs and calls out to ask who is in the house. I reassure her but know she will grill me when they have gone.

‘We have uncovered several gangs of illegal workers from the Philippines in recent months’ explains the officer ‘following the hurricane that devastated the area there was an influx of aliens mostly into Australia and New Zealand but also surprisingly enough into Europe.  Your employee is one of those.’ I tell him that Lucy wasn’t actually my employee, and that she was hired by my brother in law on behalf of my mother.  ‘As you know, it is illegal to employ a non-resident of the EU without proper authorization and a prosecution may follow.  Where can we find your brother in law?’

I start to laugh, but catch myself just in time. ‘The police are currently looking for him in connection with the murder of my mother’s late husband.  You need to speak to them I’m afraid.’ The information I have just imparted shocks the officer and his face shows his confusion.

‘I can give you the contact number of the officer leading the case if you like?’ He thanks me and takes out a small note book with a gold crown printed on it.  Soon after, they take their leave. I’m left standing at the front door watching their shadows fade through the stained glass panel in the door.   

Poor Lucy, what would she do now? No wonder she was prepared to put up with mothers endless bitching.  Such is the silence of slaves, and I have unwittingly been party to her oppression.  I didn’t even bother to wonder how she came to be there at Cove House.  Once again Geoffrey comes into our lives to add to the confusion and destroy another’s life through his selfishness.  He was never my favorite man, our politics and opinions clashed in so many areas, but now I’m beginning to develop a deep and solid hatred of my brother in law.  He is proving to be the man I imagined he was and so much more. We’d tolerated one another to keep up the pretence that there was something worth maintaining in the wider family.  I was Auntie Julia to his children, and he couldn’t openly attack me in case they saw him in his true colours, but I know he derided my life and views in private.  Mother kindly told me this on several occasions.  One summer when my nieces were quite young she said, 

‘You know Geoffrey thinks you are a hippy don’t you? That’s why he doesn’t invite you to the house in Tuscany.’ I remember telling her that I wasn’t interested in spending the summer with ‘Mussolini’ or his fascist friends.  I knew of course that she would relay my private name for Geoffrey to Valerie but it didn’t matter.  Why should it when it was the truth.  He was a fascist but Valerie would not see it, she had too much invested in him.  Mother always defended him of course.  He had everything she might have wanted in her own husband, status, money, and connections.  In her view Valerie had done very well for herself.  Like something out of a Jane Austin novel she had ‘done the family proud.’ Unfortunately Jane Austin seemed to have recently turned into Stephen King. Her precious son in law had morphed into the villain of a steadily darkening novel in which she was a key part. 

I need to tell her what has happened.  ‘Who were those people.’ she asks as I enter her room. ‘They were from the National Crime Agency.’ ‘The what?’  ‘The department that investigates serious crime.’ ‘Oh not more about Brian!’ she protests.  ‘No, not Brian this time, I’m afraid it was about Lucy.’ ‘Lucy? What about Lucy?’ ‘It seems Lucy was illegally working in the United Kingdom. According to the officer she was trafficked.’ ‘Trafficked! What do they mean?  She was paid by me, Geoffrey arranged it. They’ve obviously got their wires mixed up. Where is she, she’ll tell you.’ ‘She's gone.’ ‘Gone where?’ I shake my head. ‘She’s run away, she must've been told the NCA were on their way.