The Last Witness

THIRTEEN

‘I’m sorry, so sorry… I just didn’t know how to tell you at the time.’ Elena shook her head. There were no tears left now: she’d cried them all out during the day, ruined two sets of make-up.

‘But you could have told me.’ Gordon held one hand out, as if clutching for an invisible explanation in the air. ‘I thought we could admit anything, confess anything to each other. I thought we had that sort of relationship. Obviously I was wrong.’ He hovered the wine glass in his other hand close to his lips, then put it down firmly. He’d drunk four glasses during dinner and the hour since waiting for the kids to go to bed, and was now most of the way through a fifth. Although it had adequately dulled and mellowed his mood, which is what he’d wanted, he sensed that it was starting to make him confrontational: not what he wanted. After twelve years of secrets and silence over this, the last thing he needed was for Elena to become defensive and clam up, retreat back into her shell. ‘I’m sorry… I didn’t mean that. I just need to know, that’s all…. I just need to know.’

Elena was stung by the pathetic plea in his voice. She’d run an emotional sword straight through the man who most loved and trusted her, a sword she’d worked inch by inch through his guts the past twelve years without him knowing, and all he wanted to know was why?

Gordon’s only retaliation and payback had been to leave her alone all day to dwell on the bombshell problem. He’d received the folder in the early morning post, and dumped it in front of her half an hour later. ‘I’ve already read through it. I’m going out now to see clients. Perhaps you’d like to explain it all to me when I get back. His tone and his sharp stare made her realize immediately that it was no light problem. But Gordon hadn’t returned until the kids came home from school, Elena thought on purpose, so they’d moved around each other like two awkward bantam cocks, avoiding eye contact and with conversation kept to curt, abrupt comment when absolutely unavoidable — until after the children had gone to bed. Hardly a virulent payback: A day’s awkwardness to compensate for twelve years of deception. And already there was no fight left in him. He just wanted to know.

She started with what Gordon did know about her background and her past rift with her father: the years in Marrakech and in hippie communes and squats when she returned to England, the drug busts, the demonstration marches. The years of rebelliousness not just against her father, but all he stood for. ‘That was all that appeared on the surface. The visible symptoms of the root problem.’

Gordon looked at her aslant. ‘Are you saying that perhaps I should have known — or guessed — that something else was wrong from all of that?’

‘No… no.’ She shook her head vehemently. ‘How were you to know? I wouldn’t have been the first rich kid to rebel against establishment parents. In the Sixties, it was practically mandatory.’ She forced a wan smile. But she sensed she wasn’t going to get far fluffing around the edges: the only way she was going to get through this was by going back to the beginning. Back to her pregnancy at fifteen and how she’d come close to death twice within a month.

‘His name was Michael Kiernan. We were very much love — such as love is when you’re only fifteen. At the time it seemed all-consuming. He was all I cared about. He had wavy dark hair and the most incredible blue eyes, and at nineteen he seemed to me so adult and masterful, so in control.’ Greeting her at the door for their second date with a single white rose and a Theodorakis instrumental of ‘The White Rose of Athens’. ‘He was caring, romantic — rare I suppose for that age looking back now — and had one of those easy smiles that made you feel warm, alive.

‘My father hated him on sight. Too smooth, too smarmy by half. When pressed, my father said that he just didn’t trust him, “didn’t think his intentions were good.” Though I suspected — and probably my mother too if you could ever have got her to speak out against my father on anything — that it was more to do with Michael’s family background. Only two things counted to my father: serious money or status within British society, preferably both. Michael’s father had a successful landscape gardening business, but it fell far short of where my father had set his sights by then, and his nationality too was a drawback.’

Elena noticed Gordon look quizzical for a moment, not fully grasping, and she went on to explain about her father’s early days in England and the discrimination he’d felt, both shielded and overt. How even at the stage he’d built up a successful import trading business, he was still refused membership of the local golf club. ‘Don’t forget it was the Fifties, and minds were narrower then. But those memories rankled deeply with my father; that’s why later he completely anglicised himself and buried his Greek-Cypriot background: to feel accepted, part of British society. Apart from the transformation to Anthony George, he wore tweed and herringbone, tried to play the perfect English gent you might see on a Pearl amp; Dean advert.’ Elena smiled crookedly. ‘And so with Michael’s family being Irish, my father saw them as only one rung above the Cypriots in British societal acceptance. It just wasn’t enough for my father by then.’

Gordon still looked vaguely puzzled. ‘But why was that all so important? You were only fifteen — you could have been looking ahead to scores of different boyfriends over the years before getting close to finding the right one.’

‘The pregnancy. The pregnancy was what made it so important right there and then. If Michael had fitted the bill more, my father might have pressed him to marry me, do the right thing. But instead it quickly became I told you so time: “I told you he was no good”.’

Gordon nodded knowingly. ‘So that was the abortion?’

‘Yes. But I lied about everything else about it — not only to you, but everyone else at the time. Which is what caused most of the problems. You see, it was nine weeks before my sixteenth birthday when my period didn’t come on, and I hoped first of all that it was something else. Then the second month, and still I didn’t say anything. I was desperately fearful of my father’s reaction not just for myself, but by then for Michael as well: I knew that if my father discovered I’d conceived under-age, he’d have been blind with fury, would have probably called the police and had Michael locked up. So I fluffed and kept quiet about it until after my sixteenth birthday — though the first point I could have worried I was pregnant then from missing my period wasn’t until about seven weeks after. The earliest date of possible conception I proposed was ten days after my sixteenth birthday — which was when I claimed I’d first had sex with Michael. I said that we’d been together only twice since. But instead of trying to get the ‘poor girl has just been unlucky’ sympathy vote, I should have been more concerned about that three month lie — because it almost ended up costing my life.’

Elena watched Gordon’s eyes cloud and glance down for a moment: some sympathy at last, thirty years later. Elena took a hasty gulp of wine and shook her head.

‘You know, nobody actually asked me if I wanted an abortion. I’ve never seen a family rally round so fast — all of them talking and arguing about what to do as if I wasn’t there, had no say in the matter. Only Uncle Christos boldly ventured that I should be asked what I wanted, but he was shouted down — mainly by my father with everyone else just numbly going along, too afraid to go against him. Single mothers were social lepers in those days, Michael wasn’t suitable, so it was the only remaining option: a quick, quiet abortion. The whole matter quickly swept away and forgotten.’ Elena waved one hand as if she was swatting a fly, her eyes filling. She closed them tight for a second.

‘Oh God, I was so frightened. I knew nothing, read nothing, was so young and naive — and even my closest girlfriends I didn’t confide in because I feared the secret would get out. And for the same reason my father didn’t have any tests done that might have revealed that I was lying about the date I conceived. All he did was arrange a back-street Kilburn butcher — and lead me there by the hand a month later.’ Looking across and recalling that the last time her father had held her hand like that was five years earlier at a fairground, leading her safely onto one of the rides. The welling tears spilt over, started running down Elena’s cheeks. She dabbed at them with the back of one hand. ‘He thought I was only two and a half, three months pregnant — but I was already almost six months gone.’

She glanced at the light glinting off a lone knife and spoon left on the table after dinner. Instruments glinting on a white cloth. The cold press of the Formica table against her back. Staring up at a bright fluorescent strip-light that washed in and out of focus. ‘It was all decided in those twenty minutes: the dye cast on practically my whole life ahead. I remember the doctor giving the abortion — if indeed he was a doctor — had a faint Irish lilt. And I remember, looking back at it all, if that was all part of my father’s cruel humour: “an Irishman to give it to you, another to take it away”.’

Elena smiled crookedly, but Gordon could see that it was just a weak attempt at relief from the descent into hell at play behind her eyes.

Elena shook her head. ‘But at the time I was too numbed, to frightened to think anything. The abortionist realized halfway through that he was dealing with a fully developed baby rather than something hardly beyond a foetus — but by then it was already too late, the damage was done. My water had broken and I was bleeding heavily from a ruptured womb.’ Blood running off the table, droplets starting to splatter rapidly against the linoleum floor. The doctor shouting frantic instructions to her father for fresh instruments, swabs, fresh towels, water.

‘There was a suspended moment between my father and the doctor when my father said, “Do something with him.” And after a moment the doctor very slowly and deliberately stated that he merely stopped babies being born, he didn’t kill them. The main problem by then was with me, the doctor reminded him: If I didn’t get urgent attention, I could die. And whether to appease what he thought was a dire concern of my father’s, he added that born so prematurely it was unlikely the baby would survive in any case. We couldn’t go to a hospital, too many questions would be asked — so he rang ahead to a colleague in Swiss Cottage, a doctor with a fully equipped surgery who dealt with a lot of ‘quiet’ pregnancies for Arab and foreign clients.’

Elena closed her eyes for a moment. Her voice trembled with the effort of biting back the tears to get the words out. ‘You know, that was the first moment, holding him in my arms on that four-mile drive, that it hit me what I’d done.’ Streetlights flashing in rapid bars across his tiny, bloodied body, his eyes struggling to open and see against the piercing strobe effect. ‘Call it that moment of maternal bonding, or what you will — but it hit me then that it was a life. A life that was a part of me and I’d tried to get rid of. My life-blood was fast flowing away over the seat of my father’s new Mercedes-’ That crooked smile again which didn’t quite make it — ‘But all I could think of in that moment was him. Willing with every ounce of me that he would stay alive, and too numbed, beaten up and washed out to care anymore about myself.

‘And as I hugged him close, my father fired me a strange look that I just couldn’t read: anger at the nightmare I’d caused, still wishing my baby dead, or anger at seeing me so close to someone else? A closeness I’d never really shown him. But I remember thinking: thank God it’s not me driving and him holding the baby. A horrible, creepy feeling that he might have smothered or strangled it en route.

‘Four days in an incubator and little Christos — that’s what I’d decided to call him by then — survived, as did I.’ Elena waved a hand dismissively and shivered, as if someone had laid a cold hand on the back of her neck. ‘Except that part of me that would ever again be able to have children.

‘I wanted to keep him… Oh God, I wanted to keep him — but again I was given no voice in the matter. I was too young, had my whole life ahead of me, didn’t have a husband. My father made the running, and the rest of the family quickly supported: he was going for adoption. I was still too numbed with it all — and in any case felt it would have done little good — to even trouble to fight back. But as those plans became set in stone, that feeling of powerlessness and a terrible sense of loss and desolation at what I’d done, gripped me hard. I felt totally worthless: that with him gone, there could be nothing good ahead anyway, even if I could face another day, or myself, with what I’d done. I tried to take my life, emptied half a bottle of aspirins from a bathroom cabinet down my throat. My mother found me, my stomach was pumped… once again I made it.’ Elena tapped her chest and fired a brief, laconic smile. ‘Either God was watching over me… or more likely he wanted to keep me alive because he had a much longer, more fitting punishment in store. That would have been too easy a way out.’

Elena cradled her forehead for a second before running her hand roughly through her hair. She took a quick sip of wine. ‘But at least when I came around, I’d found my voice: I wanted to keep him! My father fought me every inch: papers are already done, cut and dried. Then he brought up the suicide to get a court ruling that I was unstable, unfit to be a mother. Finally, he said that if I fought him any more over it, he’d have Michael charged with having sex with a minor and put away. I dropped it, didn’t even trouble to turn up for the final ruling — I knew already what it would say. But even with what fight I’d put up, or perhaps fearing that I’d change my mind again in a few months — my father vowed that he’d bury him out of reach and out of sight. I’d never find him.’ She traced one finger absently across the tablecloth. ‘And looks like he was right. I never could win the day against my father… and now it’s much the same with Ryall. Powerful men: blight of my life.’ Elena grimaced tightly and looked down for a second before looking back directly at Gordon. ‘But at least you know now why there was such antipathy between me and my father. Why I rebelled against him so all those years.’

Silence as she finished, crushing silence: she could practically hear Gordon swallow as he tried to summon his thoughts and some composure to be able to meet her gaze with equal steadiness.

After a moment, she added thoughtfully: ‘I suppose there might have been some sort of tame reconciliation later if it wasn’t for Andreos’s suicide. I blamed my father mostly for that too — always pushing towards this perfect picture of what he thought everyone should be doing with their lives. But nothing was ever good enough for him.’ She bit at her bottom lip and lightly shook her head. ‘After all, who could live up to the great Anthony George?’

Gordon merely nodded, the stifling silence returning. ‘You could have told me,’ he said at length. ‘I’d have understood.’

‘Could I… could I?’ She saw him flinch under the feverish intensity of her stare and look slightly away again, suddenly not so sure. ‘This wasn’t just about you not knowing, Gordon, it was about everyone not knowing — but most especially me. Because if I had to admit what had happened to anyone, I’d have also had to admit it to myself. And before you know it, I’d have been back in the bathroom, swallowing another bottle of pills. And so I buried it: buried the thought, buried the memory, buried everything. It never happened.’

She rubbed her left temple, her brow furrowing heavily. ‘The years in Marrakech and in hippie communes weren’t just to seriously piss-off my father — it was all part of the oblivion, the forgetting. Then eleven years later I woke up in a Camden Town squat laying partly in somebody else’s vomit, having lost a flatmate just the month before from an OD, and trying to fight my way through an LSD haze to work out if the pattern on the wall ahead was wallpaper or just in my mind — and finally said enough. Enough! I realized then that I was punishing myself more than my father — he’d probably given up caring long ago. And meanwhile I wasn’t making good on what I’d done: no amends were being made. That’s when I cleaned up my act and started working with Uncle Christos. Then a few years later we met, married and started adopting — which was how I felt I could possibly make amends.’

‘Uncle Christos to the rescue again.’ Gordon raised his glass, but it lacked any exuberance: the mire of abortions, attempted suicides, lost children and lost years, clung too heavy in the air for even a trace of a smile. ‘Was it always him that helped you?’ Gordon remembered her telling him that during the years in the hippie wilderness, Uncle Christos sent bits and pieces of money. Her father had set up a trust fund for her, but she refused to touch it on principle — so Uncle Christos had stepped in.

‘Yes, pretty much. You know, my father was annoyed even that I wanted to name the baby Christos. He protested: "You only name children after dead relatives”.’ A fleeting wry grin curled her mouth. ‘There was always this rivalry between them, mostly coming from my father's side: "If Christos had done this, if Christos had done that — he could have been as successful as me." But my father seemed to have missed the point completely. Uncle Christos was too laid-back to be bothered to compete. He didn't want to be a big shot like my father, didn't have the first inclination to be ruthless or determined like him. And when I saw those qualities as endearing, started to see Uncle Christos as an alternate father — that incensed my father even further. He couldn't stomach it — or maybe he truly couldn't comprehend it — but he used to rub the salt in all the more about Uncle Christos being a failure.'

She looked at her glass and tapped its rim, as if prompting where she was with has story. ‘So making amends became the thing. We adopted, named him Christos, and though for a while everything was fine — it still wasn’t enough. So when he was old enough, I joined the agency… to see how many children I could make happy after the child's life I might have destroyed — my own child.’ Elena gripped the stem of her glass tight. Here eyes were watering heavily again.

Gordon wanted to reach across to grip her hand, assure her that everything was all right. He understood. But her other hand was clenched tight into her, and with her still caught up in the throes of her confession, her body trembling slightly, his reaching all the way across would have felt like he was imposing, invading her space. He felt frustrated, inadequate. A decade of secrets stripped away between them, and he couldn't reach across to bridge that final gap of the table-top.

Elena shrugged helplessly. ‘But still it wasn't enough. I had to save one of those children myself… so we adopted young Katine. Still something missing, a need there — and the only thing that helped fill it was each child I saw successfully placed with a happy family. Because each one told me that the son I'd given up had probably gone to a good family somewhere: he’d been happy, had had a good life. And I was doing fine…’ Elena smiled crookedly. She was suddenly reminded of a line from an old Bill Cosby LP. ‘I was doin’ fine… only then my eyeballs started bleeding.’ The thought seemed so ridiculously out of place that she burst out with a nervous laugh; but it went awry, became a half-laugh, half-cry, her muttered ‘Until…’ on a fractured breath barely out before her face contorted, the build-up of her emotions finally too much. Her shoulders sagged as if a sack had been laid across them and her head dipped as she sank into uncontrollable sobbing.

That brought Gordon around to hug and console her, though still he felt inadequate: it had taken the final submission of his wife’s tears for him to be able to cross that last distance between them: it wasn’t that noble.

He hugged her a moment more, trying to savour that now, finally, there were no more secrets between them; but apart from the gentle quaking of her body with her crushing emotional distress, it felt no different to all the other times he’d embraced her.

He made fresh coffee for them both — always Gordon’s solution in times of trouble, Elena thought wryly, wiping back her tears: make tea of coffee — poured a Bailey’s for her and a Glenffidich for himself, and she told him the rest: how Ryall with Lorena had finally broken down the wall she’d long built up and set her on her search of the past ten days that now too, like her help mission for Lorena, had hit a dead-end.

‘Until Ryall I’d always told myself that my son was probably in a good home somewhere, happy. And each child I saw successfully placed re-affirmed that. Then with Ryall it hit me that no matter how secure and happy-looking that home might be on the surface, all kinds of horrors can be lurking beneath. And suddenly I had to know. I had to know what kind of life he’d had. Whether he had been happy, or whether I’d abandoned him to a wolves’ den, a living hell.’

Gordon thought of venturing how that might help: if he’d had a bad life, how she’d even begin to make up for it. But that base desire to find a long-lost son he knew rose above all else: rationalising wouldn’t help. And besides, the possibility of ever finding him now looked gone, chapter closed — so in the end all he said was, ‘I understand…’ Then after a moment he shook his head. ‘You know, I should have known… should have at least guessed. All the signs were there.’ The depth of antipathy with her father, the lame story — now in retrospect — of her not being able to have children due to an early horse-riding accident, the aid agency, the adoptions… She’d held up a giant route map in front of his face, and he’d hardly noticed.

‘How could you have known?’ She raised an eyebrow, sensing that he was just saying it to make her feel good, take some of the burden away that she’d held all of this secret throughout their marriage, deceived him. ‘I’d buried it even from myself, so everyone else was a step further removed. They couldn’t get there until I got there first.’ As she saw the acceptance slowly filter through in Gordon’s eyes, she looked away again, fixing blankly, distantly ahead.

Gordon came and snuggled her close again. He felt her breath against the hollow of his neck and slowly closed his eyes. She’d finally got there, and now didn’t know where to head next. The route-map had finished in two dead-ends. And he wished he could think of some bright, snappy answer to buoy her spirits.

Because while the barrier of twelve years of secrets between them had suddenly gone, the son that she would now never be able to find again had as quickly taken its place. While that stayed unresolved, he knew that a part of her would remain distant, out of reach. The barrier would continue, having lifted only briefly for those few moments of her pouring out her heart to him — before crashing back down again. Like some cruel magician’s trick.