Family Secrets

Family Secrets

“Are you joking?” he asked, mouth wide open. “That can’t be true. Who told you? When did you find out? Come on tell me what you know”. Jake shifted about in his leather office chair. He was enjoying being the ‘town crier’ for once, although the thought that it was scandal about someone from his own family was difficult to believe. Usually it was him who was asking the questions from Phil. He liked it better this way. “Jake, you got me to come into town to your office on my one day off for you to tell me about something that may or may not be true? You text me saying that it was too delicate to tell me over the phone, so I’m not leaving until you spill the beans, and I mean everything, not some vague notion that one person passed on to another!” demanded his brother Phil. “Well” Jake said. “I spoke in person to Richard last night. He hardly said anything. I can’t tell you too much about it when it hasn’t been proven yet but I’m almost certain it’s true”. What do you mean ‘almost certain’? It is or it isn’t” said an exasperated Phil. “Ok look, what I just told you was when Richard was sober. “Well that will make a change” Phil murmured under his breath. That is the truth. Believe me. Richard has just found out himself but I think he was in a bit of shock and needed to tell me about something bothering him – although in the end he didn’t know what to think or say. Poor old Richard was in quite a state when he asked me to meet him. He said knowing what he knew was something that would shock us all!” Jake added, wanting it to sound as intriguing as possible. “But Jake, who told Richard? If it was someone at the pub then it could be a load of old rubbish” Phil argued. “No” Jake replied, “It was someone he bumped into from years ago who thought Richard knew already”. That person probably wanted to drop dead on the spot at the time.

“What about Linda knowing. Shouldn’t we tell her? ” Phil questioned. “ Wait until it is corroborated, and Phil, it has to be a secret. Have you leaned to keep a secret?” Jake loved the role of being in charge. “Of course I can. Remember when we saw Linda smoking behind the shed. She asked us to keep that secret from Mum and Dad and we both did. “Yes, you did keep it from Mum and Dad, but they eventually found out because you couldn’t keep your mouth shut at school. They were informed at the P and C meeting from that horrible Jane Huge-gob”. “Oh I remember” pondered Phil. “Was that her actual name, Huge-gob?” “No of course not you fool”.

Phil was intrigued but as Jake was a leading actor in the local amateur production company, he was known in the family for putting on a good act at times. He could spice things up at the ‘drop of a hat’ and make out information was going to be much more interesting than it really was. And to take the word of Richard, well…… But if it is true, I’ll find it hard to believe. I’d love to ask Mum about it, but to be honest I’m not sure if she could take it all in really. I wonder if Mum knows. Wouldn’t she have told us about it herself? She will have to be told if she doesn’t already know and I don’t want to be the one to do that?

Jake and Phil lived on the opposite side of town to each other. Jake was in a block of four two story, limestone town houses. His townhouse was a ‘four by two’. They were well established as were the super neat gardens – trees and bushes seemed to all be the same height and distance apart as if a spirit level was used to check them weekly. The building was close to the centre of town and Jake’s office block. He lived with his girlfriend Alice. 

Phil on the other hand lived in a block of thirty two flats, ground floor, with no established garden. A smelly old lift took you to the top of the building, or you could take the stairs. The latter option was the one Phil always took to look for his cat on the ‘garden roof’ (an empty space surrounded by a small wall in which a lot of tenants would throw their rubbish if they happened to have missed the bin man for the week.) Phil would pick up some of the rubbish while up there searching for Fluffball, his cat and feel dismayed that people could actually do this. Then he would walk down all the flights of stairs carry the soft white cat in his arms. “I would never get inside that lift again. Once was enough. I couldn’t get the smell of urine out of my nostrils for a week” he exaggerated.

The two boys and their sister Linda were brought up by their Mum and Dad in a small, brown brick semi-detached house. As children the house seemed quite spacious, upstairs and down, but as adults the house their Mum still lived in, seemed very cosy. Their Dad had passed away about five years ago but after the initial shock of a sudden heart attack, and a period of mourning, their Mum just got on with her life again. Jenny was a very strong woman, having been brought up during the war. Both her mother and father died when she was in her late twenties, and this was probably a contributing factor in her independent and stoic personality. Jenny still thought of her own mother at times, usually on her birthday and other special occasions but what saddened her the most was that she hadn’t lived long enough to meet her grandchildren. She had been very close to her and as the only daughter had enjoyed being the sole focus of her mother’s attention as she was growing up. They would often sit down together with a cup of tea and have a chat. Her father never sat with them. Instead, when he was home, before being sent off to war, would wander off on his own, and could often be found pottering in his garden or sitting on a wall somewhere contemplating……but no one ever knew what. He was very different to her mother and a difficult man to get close to. Not a very smiley man, he didn’t ever seem very happy with life. Times were hard and money in very short supply but even when the war had ended and the family was all back together celebrating meals and long standing friendships that hadn’t been torn apart by the war, he seemed removed by what was going on around him.

Jenny never asked her mother if her Dad was happy when she first met him or if so, when did he start to change. She remembered him as a quiet man when she was growing up but she thought he seemed quite happy. When Jenny was a girl it was considered rude to ask too many personal questions and as far as she was concerned her childhood was the same as most of that era. Her parents seemed to understand each other and she never heard them arguing so it didn’t seem a problem for her mum.

When Jenny’s mother died her father didn’t shed a tear. It wasn’t that he didn’t show sadness at her passing. He seemed like a broken man staring at the wooden coffin inside the small brick church with Jesus and his Disciples staring down on everyone from the stained glass windows, but it was as if his emotions had completely dried up – even though there probably weren’t many to start with. At the funeral he stood up in front of the mourners, slightly stooped in his too big suit and talked about his late wife with love and admiration and said how sorry he was – maybe he knew that he should have tried to be happier but his face was a blank canvas and his eyes vacant.

A lot of people said that even though Jenny’s dad didn’t show much feeling he must have been crying inside, when he died peacefully in his sleep six weeks after her.

Richard was Jenny’s cousin. Their mothers were sisters, only eighteen months difference in their age. The sisters had lived fairy close to each other for most of their lives. Richard and Jenny spent a lot of time together when growing up. He was an only child too so it made sense that they played together most days after school and didn’t seem to need many other kids around. They were friends all through Primary School and then onto High School. But life changes and for a while they went separate ways – and missed each other.

When Jenny was nineteen she went off to London to do secretarial work, met her future husband in the bank, married and came back to settle down in the country.

Unfortunately Richard had started drinking heavily when he went off to University but he was always able to hold down jobs and live life as normally as shrewd big drinkers can. The fact that he was classed as an alcoholic didn’t seem to matter to him. He did once join AA but that didn’t last long. He made friends with a blonde girl from the group and they would go off drinking together after the meeting. His drinking was most probably the reason he had never settled down with one person. He had many girlfriends over the years and even a few long term partners but the relationships always ended – usually amicably, with Richard going to the pub, getting plastered and telling anyone who would listen about his woeful love life.

Richard came back to live in the country after many years of working in the City. Phil and Jake got to know him and enjoy his company although you never knew if what he was saying always ‘rang true’……even if he was sober.

Five weeks after Phil was asked to keep ‘the secret’ he had to use all of his resolve not to tell his Mum. She had been sick in bed with the flu. His sister Linda, a nurse, was looking after her, but he still worried – even though she was usually robust and a tough cookie, she wasn’t getting any younger. As he walked into his mum’s bedroom and looked at her, the frailness of her lying there shocked him. She looked so pale and tired. “Hi Mum” he said as he bent down to kiss her cheek, with an overwhelming thought that if anything happened to her, she would die not knowing what her sons knew….if proven true. He knew that he couldn’t tell her – he had promised to keep a secret and he would.

“Do you think we should ask Richard about it again or not?” Phil had ridden his bike to Jake’s place to discuss the ‘situation’. It had been nearly six weeks since the initial meeting between Jake and Richard. “I mean he can’t say what he said and leave it at that. I nearly told mum when she was sick. It doesn’t seem right to keep her in the dark. What do you think Jake?” “Oh I don’t know. I would rather wait. We have to know for sure. How do you think Richard feels having to wait. He told me last week that we would have definite answers soon. I don’t want to think that Mum is going to get told something quite shocking, at her age.” Jake answered in a slightly worried tone. “I mean if it is true then it changes a lot of things drastically. It’s pretty significant. Imagine how upset she will be and what emotional stress it will be for her. We have to be careful how we go about it”.

Richard confirmed what he had originally told Jake. He had been waiting on DNA results taken from him and also Jenny. What Jake and Phil didn’t know was that Richard had enlisted the help of Linda. She had easily got some things belonging to Jenny – her hairbrush and toothbrush. Well she could keep a secret.

Richard was devastated – not so much for himself but for Jenny. He knew that she would find it hard to believe and as he thought she would, asked if it was one hundred percent correct or if there could be a mistake.

And she was understandably devastated. Jenny felt like her life had been lived as a lie. Nothing seemed real and for the first time in many years she missed her mum and wanted her by her side. But she would have known and never told me, Jenny thought sadly. It would have changed everything if she had told me. And how do I ever forgive my sister? We were so close and I thought we never kept anything from each other. Well I know that wasn’t true. You slept with my husband. How many times? I’ll never know. Was it love or just lust? Was it because your husband was away and mine was still around at the time. How could you do that to your own sister? She couldn’t answer any of these rhetorical questions. It didn’t seem real. Crying into her pillow she fell asleep.

When she woke up, the questions that couldn’t be answered just kept going around and around in her head. I think I know now why my husband was never really happy. Either he was disappointed in himself all those years, for what he did or was he was just unhappy that he was married to me? I’ll never know the answer to that either. Did the man who Richard called ‘Dad’ ever find out that he wasn’t the real father? He probably didn’t. I don’t think anyone wins out of this.

Sitting talking to Richard, Jenny realised that this news had affected him as much, if not more than her. The fact that someone else had fathered him was something he felt he couldn’t ever come to terms with, let alone the news that it wasn’t just a stranger who slept with his mother, but his uncle. It all sounded so sordid in a way.

Jake, Phil and Linda were understandably concerned for their mother and Richard. It was a family secret that had been kept for years. It had affected everyone in a way, but knowing that both Richard and Jenny had decided it was no good wallowing in sadness for what had happened but better to just ‘get on with it’, made it a lot easier for them.

“You know Jen, the only positive to come out of this whole mess is my knowing that you are not my cousin, but actually my sister”…… I think we should drink to that.