of his entire family. His children needed to know exactly what sort of man their father was. They’d abandon him, then, to his London mistress and his bastard child, and they’d circle the wagons of their devotion around their mother, and that would be how Bernard would pay for his sins. For the children were Faircloughs by blood, the three of them, and they would not brook the obscenity of their father’s double life for an instant. Then, after a suitable amount of time had passed, she would forgive him. Indeed, after nearly forty-three years, what else was Valerie Fairclough to do?
She went to her bedroom window. It looked out upon Lake Windermere. Thankfully, she thought, it did not look out on the children’s garden that now probably would not be. Instead, what she gazed upon was the great wide platter of the lake itself, still as a mirror flung onto the earth, reflecting — as a mirror would do — the fir trees along the shore, the fell rising opposite the land of Ireleth Hall, and the great cumulous clouds, which were the usual aftermath of a stormy night. It was a perfect autumn day, appearing clean and polished. Valerie looked upon it and knew she didn’t belong in it. She was old and used up. Her spirit was dirty.
She heard Bernard come into the room. She didn’t turn. She heard his approach and she saw from the corner of her eye that he’d brought a tray with him and was placing it on the demi-lune table between the room’s two lakeside windows. Above this table, a large mirror hung, and reflected in it Valerie saw the tray held an offering of tea, toast, and boiled eggs. She also saw reflected her husband’s face.
He was the one to speak first. “I did it because I could. My life’s been like that. I’ve done what I’ve done because I could do it. I suppose it was a challenge to myself, much like winning you. Much like making more of the firm than your father and grandfather had been able to do. I don’t even know what it means that I’ve done what I’ve done, and that’s the worst of it because that tells me I might well do it all again.”
“Isn’t that a comforting thought,” she said dryly.
“I’m trying to be honest with you.”
“Another highly comforting thought.”
“Listen to me. The devil of it is that I can’t say it meant nothing to me because it did mean something. I just don’t quite know what.”
“Sex,” she said. “Virility, Bernard. Not being such a little man, after all.”
“That hurts,” he said.
“As it’s intended.” She looked back at the view. There were things to know before she decided and she might as well know them, she told herself. “Have you always?”
He did her the courtesy of not misunderstanding. “Yes,” he said. “Not all the time. Only occasionally. All right, frequently. Usually when business took me elsewhere. Manchester, perhaps. Birmingham. Edinburgh. London. But never with an employee until Vivienne. And even with her, it was like the rest, at first. It was because I
“Clever you,” she said.
“Clever me,” he replied.
She glanced at him then. Such a little man, actually. He was shorter than she by nearly five inches. Small, a little delicate, mischievous looking, cocky, grinning… My God, she thought, all he needed was a hunchback, a doublet, and tights. She’d been as easily seduced as the Lady Anne. She said to him, “Why, Bernard?” and when his eyes narrowed, she added, “Why two lives? One is usually more than enough.”
“I know that,” he said. “It’s the curse I live with. One life was never enough for me. One life didn’t… I don’t
But she knew and perhaps she’d known all along. “One life couldn’t prove to you that you were more than Bernie Dexter from Blake Street in Barrow-in-Furness. One life could never do that.”
He was silent. Outside the honking of ducks drew Valerie’s attention back to the window, and she saw a V of them flying in the direction of Fell Foot Park, and she thought of how ducks taking flight or landing made such a silly, awkward spectacle but ducks in flight were as graceful as any bird and the equal of any bird doing what birds do. It was only the getting there that was strange and different.
Bernard said, “Yes. I suppose that’s it. Blake Street was the pit I climbed out of but its sides were slippery. Any wrong move, and I’d slide back down. I knew that.”
She moved away from the window then. She went to the tray and saw he’d brought only enough for her. One cup and saucer, two boiled eggs but only one egg cup, cutlery for one, a single white napkin. He wasn’t so certain of himself after all. There was a small mercy in this.
“Who are you now?” she asked him. “Who do you want to be?”
He sighed. “Valerie, I want to be your husband. I can’t promise that this — the two of us, you and I and what we’ve built — won’t all end up going down the Fairloo in another six months. But that’s what I want. To be your husband.”
“And that’s all you have to offer me? After nearly forty-three years?”
“That’s all I have to offer,” he said.
“Why on earth would I accept that? You as my husband with no promise of anything else, such as fidelity, such as honesty, such as…” She shrugged. “I don’t even know any longer, Bernard.”
“What?”
“What I want from you. I no longer know.” She poured herself a cup of tea. He’d brought lemon and sugar, no milk, which was how she’d always taken it. He’d brought toast without butter, which was how she’d always eaten it. He’d brought pepper but no salt, which was how she’d always seasoned her boiled egg.
He said, “Valerie, we have history together. I’ve done you — and our children — a terrible wrong and I know why I’ve done it and so do you. Because I’m Bernie Dexter from Blake Street and that’s all I’ve had to offer you from the first.”
“The things I’ve done for you,” she said quietly. “To you, for you. In order to please you… to satisfy you.”
“And you have,” he said.
“What it took from me… You can’t know that, Bernard. You’ll never know that. There’s an accounting that needs to be made. Do you understand that?
“I do,” he said. “Valerie, I can.”
She was holding her cup of tea to her lips, but he took the cup from her. He placed it carefully back onto its saucer.
“Please let me begin to make it,” he said.
GREAT URSWICK
CUMBRIA
The police had taken Tim directly to hospital in Keswick. Indeed, they’d radioed for an ambulance to do so. Manette had insisted that she ride inside the vehicle with the boy because if she knew nothing else about Tim’s condition and the prospects for his healing, she knew that he needed to be close to what was standing in place of his immediate birth family from this time forward. That was Manette.
The alarm had still been howling like a warning of the apocalypse’s imminent arrival when the police burst onto the scene. Manette had been sitting on the makeshift bed with Tim’s head in her lap and his body shrouded by the nightshirt, and Freddie had been crashing about looking for the guilty parties — long since flown — as well as for evidence of what had been going on in this place. The camera was gone, as was any sign of a computer, but in their haste the other members of the cast and crew of the spectacle being filmed had overlooked such items as a jacket containing a man’s wallet and credit cards, a woman’s bag containing a passport, and a rather heavy safe. Who knew what would be inside? Manette thought. The police would find out soon enough.
Tim had said nothing other than two numbly spoken sentences. The first was “He promised” and the second “Please don’t tell.” He wouldn’t clarify who promised what to whom. As to what he meant with “Please don’t tell,” that was fairly clear. Manette rested her hand on his head — his hair too long, too greasy, too unnoticed by anyone for far too long — and she repeated, “No worries, Tim. No worries.”
The police had comprised uniformed constables on the beat, but when they saw what they had walked into,
