Rag Doll Ch. 08.2.2 - Connections

"How did you find us, this place?" She asked and Jamie pulled me closer.

"My father's sister is Barbara Morrison, she's been missing since before I was born, we've been trying to find her, or maybe find her family, where she went, what happened to her to make her cut dad off so abruptly. We found this place and that headstone on an internet search and came to see if it was her; the name was spelled differently, but we had a hunch this was the place to look and so we came, we had to see for ourselves. Barbara is my dad's baby sister; he needed to know what happened to her... "

The other brother spoke then.

"Hi, I'm Rick, you have no idea... this is so... I can't describe how this feels, it's so... things like this don't just happen, I don't know what... we need to sit down and talk about this properly. We live not far from here; let's go there. This needs coffee..."

I liked his wry grin; for a fleeting second he looked not only like Barbara, but also uncannily like Cherie and Rosa, yet more family traits coming out...

*****

We followed the two cars back to their home and yes, they did live a just a short way away, walking distance, in a very impressive, imposing red-brick Victorian manse standing by itself in a neat, well-kept garden. The house was huge, four floors, with a double-aspect to the front, High Victorian, and obviously built to impress.

We were ushered into a very grandly proportioned sitting room, but the hominess of it took away any feeling of oppressive grandeur one might have picked up on. The toys and dolls and teddy-bears, the stacks of Disney DVD's, and piles of colouring books and ice-cream cartons full of crayons on the tables, the tubs full of Lego, and the pair of chalk-board easels against the wall with childish drawings of dinosaurs and stick figures and spaceships made me feel right at home. We had the same toys and things, in pretty much the same kind of order, at our home.

Robert collected coats and jackets and made the introductions. He took the hand of the taller girl, the one with grey eyes, who I noticed had a baby-bump.

"This is my wife, Shereen, but the family call her Shari, and Ricky's wife is her sister Yasmin, Yaz to family. "

The girls shook hands with us, obviously still a little wary of what was going on here, but they smiled and relaxed when Jamie turned his beautiful 'naughty schoolboy' grin on them.

"I'm very please to meet you all, " he grinned, "As I said, I'm Jamie Morrison, and this is my wife Nguye't but everyone calls her 'Nia', I hope you will too, we're all family here."

Yasmin, who had the most amazing eyes, luminous light green-hazel, a shade I'd never seen before, and so bright they seemed to be lit up inside, spent the next few minutes introducing their kids, having the same problem I do, getting them to stay still for more than a couple of seconds.

"These two rascals are my baby-boys, David and Leon, although if you call him 'David' he pouts; call him 'Ritchie', he likes having the same name as his daddy."

Bobby fielded the other two and sat them down.

"This is my baby girl, Ayesha-" He held the prettiest, most striking little girl I'd ever seen, with her mother's beautiful bronze-red hair and Yasmin's startling eyes, "-and this little monster is Nick, he'll be your best friend if you give him ice-cream."

The gorgeous little boy was the spitting image of Robert, the same warm grey eyes, the same pale complexion and dark, wavy hair. All in all, they were an amazingly good-looking young family.

Yasmin took the kids into the other room, leaving the door ajar so she could listen for the sounds of bedlam and mayhem, the exact same thing I do when I need to talk to Mummy, and sat on the floor, leaning against Rick's knees.

I didn't know where to start, so Jamie took it up.

"My dad, James Morrison, had two younger sisters, Barbara and Rosa. We know what happened to Rosa, and now we found her daughter, our cousin-"

Both Robert and Richard looked up sharply at that,

"-but what we didn't know was what happened to my aunt Barbara; all we know is that shortly after she and her new husband, your father, I assume, moved away from London, to Coventry, they dropped out of sight. This was before I was born, so I only have what my dad knows. After that, nothing, a complete blank, no letters, no Christmas cards, birthday cards, nothing, and that hurt Dad most of all. He and Barbara were close, and they both looked out for their little sister, Rosa. Let me show you something."

Jamie passed over the package I'd put together with pictures of Daddy, Barbara and Rosa when they were young, photos of Barbara in her teens, and our grandparents. I could see the emotion on their faces, in their eyes as they looked at those pictures, and when I looked away I saw, on the mantel one of the photos Daddy had sent, Barbara in her late teens, smiling happily and proudly showing her bracelet to the camera.

Shereen saw me looking at the picture and went and took it down so I could look more closely at it. When Jamie saw it his eyes widened and he rifled through the file, pulling out a smaller version of the same photo. Bobby saw it and his eyes shone.

Jamie brushed the picture of Barbara's bracelet with his pinkie fingertip.

"Dad gave Barbara that bracelet on her eighteenth birthday, a rose pendant for Rosa, and the bracelet for Barbara. He never got to give Rosa her pendant, but he said Barbara loved her bracelet, whatever spare money she had she'd buy little charms and trinkets to hang on it..."

Bobby looked transfixed, as if something had just become clear, and stood up and abruptly left the room. I thought it was something we'd done, but Shereen put her hand on mine and shook her head.

"It's okay, he'll be okay, it's just the bracelet... it's all he has of her. We never knew the story about where she got it... don't worry, please, but there's more. It's a difficult story but he needs to tell it his way... "

The door opened and Bobby came back in carrying a small blue velvet necklace box. He sat down and Shereen pulled his head down to whisper something in his ear, and peck him on the cheek, making him smile, just a quick twitch of his lips, but it seemed to lift him.

"I want to show you something," he said, opening the flat blue case. Inside was the bracelet in the photograph, Barbara's bracelet. Bobby held it flat in the palm of his hand, and carefully sorted through the tiny charms and tokens hanging from it, finally pulling one out so we could see it: a tiny, silver horseshoe with something engraved on it, three letters.

"After her funeral we never found this in among her possessions; the bracelet only came to me later," said Bobby. There was a strange look on his face, a mixture of wonder and sadness that I couldn't figure out, only that there was something else here, a story that went with how the bracelet came to him.

"You know what this means, don't you?" he asked, gently nudging the tiny charm. Jamie looked closely, and gently moved the little horseshoe with his fingertip so I could see it more clearly.

"JBM: James Blake Morrison; my dad..." he whispered, looking up to lock eyes with Bobby, who nodded slowly. I spotted a small, red-enamelled silver rose charm, and when I turned it over, the initials RJM were engraved on it.

"RJM: Rosalie Jean Morrison," I said, and Robbie stared at me as two tears spilled from his brimming eyes to run unheeded down his cheek.

"I've been wondering for so long, why she gave it to me, was she trying to tell me something? I never knew how to put it together; I've been looking and praying, and hoping for a sign, some kind of clue, for something, anything from her, something to tell me where my family was and they were here all along. It's why she gave it to me..." he whispered hoarsely, his free hand twining restlessly with Shereen's.

Shereen pulled him close, holding him to her. Whatever he was so obviously feeling was tightly buttoned-up inside him, but enough of it was spilling out into the room that I caught the edge of it, but it was enough to really make me feel for the poor guy, for what he was feeling. I guessed our coming here had brought up stuff he'd never really been able, or wanted, to think about.

I glanced at Richard, saw his drawn, white face as Yasmin uncurled from her place on the floor and slid up next to him, putting her arm around him and her free hand on the back of his neck, holding him as she whispered urgently in his ear.

I was at a loss to understand what was going on, other than the obvious fact that something very significant had just happened. Shari held Bobby close as he slowly got his emotions back under control, until finally he relaxed his white-knuckled grip on her and smiled faintly when she finger-combed his hair back out of his eyes.

"I'm sorry, it was... it's a lot to suddenly take in, please, I apologise... " he began, but Jamie waved it off; my Polar Bear is very perceptive, and he could see as well as I that there was a story behind that bracelet, and it wasn't a happy one.

"There's no need, really; this is family, and I can tell there's too much to just sit and chat about, so let's take this down a notch. Just tell it in your own time, Bobby; we're not in any big rush... "

Shari patted his knee, and Bobby covered her hand with his.

"Let it go, babe," she murmured, "they need to know. This is family, no more secrets... "

I looked sharply at her on hearing her say that; Mummy had said almost the same thing when she'd asked Sherry and Danny to share their story so we could share ours. Bobby looked her steadily in the eye, and slowly nodded.

"You're right. This has to be over, we have to put this away once and for all... "

Jamie and I exchanged glances. What was going on here, more secrets? What was with our family and dark secrets?

"Wait, baby," said Shari, "I'll go make coffee; you guys are going to need it. Back in five, baby... "

Both girls disappeared for a few minutes, while Bobby, Rick, Jamie and I all stared at each other. Whatever was coming, it couldn't be good. Both of them looked really uncomfortable at the thought, but no one said anything, so we sat in silence and waited for Shari and Yasmin to return.

Finally, coffees in hand, and with everyone ready to hear it, Bobby began his tale.

*****

"Barbara, my mother, died almost ten years ago. I was seventeen, Ricky was fifteen, and our brother, Nicky, was just twenty-one. My father was married before he met Barbara, although we didn't know that; we just grew up with our half-brother, Nicky in the house, and we thought Barbara was his mother, not ours. Dad never once told us she was our mother; Nicky was our older brother, but different to us, not one of us, so we were led to believe she was his mother, not ours."

He must have seen the puzzled looks on Jamie and my faces, and back-tracked a little.

"We worked out the timeline, Ricky, Shari, Yaz, and I; when Dad married Barbara in London he was still married to Nicky's real mother, in Albany, New York State. He lied to everyone, he even lied on the marriage certificate we found that he signed when he married Barbara, he lied about his name, his age, and left out the fact he was married in the US. While he was married to Barbara, he was going back and forth to Albany and making out like he was living there, sharing custody of Nicky with Julia, Nicky's mother."

He shook his head sadly.

"We found out much later that he'd abducted Nicky when he was three and brought him back here to England, changed his name, and gave him to Barbara to look after. She brought him up, he thought she was his mother, too, but he never let him, or us, call her "Mum". She was just "Barbara", nothing else."

Jamie stirred.

"You have another brother, this Nicky; where is he now?"

Bobby smiled.

"Nicky and his family live in Albany, New York State. He's a great guy, he always was, we just never let ourselves see it for ourselves. His wife Ashley is a lovely girl, and he has two lovely kids, Barbara and Judy. His mother, Julia and her husband also live there."

I was watching him closely, and at mention of Nicky's mother his eyes softened and his lips twitched; obviously Bobby had some kind of personal connection with this 'Julia' person. Yasmin pulled a photograph album out from a drawer in the coffee table, and opened it.

"This is Nicky," she said.

I was astonished; Nicky was yet another version of Bobby and Rick, this time a golden-haired, tawny-eyed version almost identical to Ricky. It was almost eerie how similar they looked, almost like triplets, even though there were several years between all of them.

Bobby took the album from me and put it on the table, a sombre expression on his face.

"My father treated Nicky very badly; whatever he did wasn't good enough; he was always covered in bruises, sometimes black eyes too, and it was the same for Barbara. Rick and I were a pair of disrespectful little pricks; my father treated Nicky like shit, so we did too, with a big helping left over for his mother, Barbara."

"But she wasn't... " I began, but Bobby stopped me.

"We know that now, but we didn't then: we just thought that we could do what we wanted. Nicky and Barbara were nothing to do with us so we could say or do what we wanted to them, and my bastard father never once put a stop to it. This was how we grew up. We left them out, and all they had were each other."

He smiled, just a twitch of his lips, but it was genuine.

"She used to call him "Little Saint Nick," you know; she really loved him, and he loved her, he still does; he found his real mother, he went back to America and found his birth mother, and he loves her very much; she didn't abandon him, or give him away, he was stolen from her and he knows that, so he does truly love her; every so often he'll remember something about her back when he was a toddler and he was still her son, but in his heart Barbara is "Mum", and she always will be. He loved her more than life itself, and we hated him for it, and we hated her for loving him. I know, but we did it because my father, that sick, twisted piece of... "

He knuckled his eyes.

"He encouraged us, so we did. I have no excuses that make a damn's worth of difference; we knew better, we knew down inside us that it was wrong and we did it anyway."

"What about Barbara... " began Jamie, but the haunted look on Bobby's face quelled him.

"My father used to drink, and when he'd had enough to drink, whatever he'd been brooding about, or cooking up in his twisted mind, he'd take it out on her. We used to listen, and you know what we did? We'd laugh, and giggle like ninnies, and listen to the sound of Barbara crying and asking him to stop , please stop, and he never did, and we did nothing, ever. Not once, and then... "

I glanced at Jamie, at his set, expressionless face, but I grew up with him, and I knew that face. He was angry. So was I, but I hadn't heard the whole story yet.

"What happened to Barbara, what did he do to her?" he asked, his voice even and uncoloured by emotion, but again, I know Jamie better than anyone in the world does except Mummy, and I could hear the "Angry Jamie" harmonics in his voice.

Bobby's knuckles showed white as he clenched his fists, and the tendons in his neck stood out starkly, taut as violin strings.

"We don't really know what happened, not first hand. We got this from Nicky several years later, but from what we could piece together, he was drunk one night, beating Barbara as usual. Nicky went to try and help her and dad hurt him. Years later I saw what dad did to him, we all did. He nearly killed Nicky. Ten years later he's still in pain. It's never going to stop for him."

He paused, his expression bleak and bitter, staring at something only he could see. When Shari nudged him he gave a start, as though he'd forgotten we were there, so lost in his memories was he.

"What happened to Nicky?" I asked softly, almost afraid to find out.

Bobby's face twisted in distaste.

"My... father, that psychopathic... he beat Nicky with his belt, but not just any belt, no; he had a special belt, one he'd had the buckle specially honed with an edge on it. He took it, and... and he flayed Nicky, he took the skin off him, like one of those medieval torture floggings? Today, Nicky's back is just a mass of scar tissue and open sores. That's what he did to him, but that's not the worst of it."

He paused and I braced myself; something bad was coming, I didn't want to hear it, but I knew I had to. I tried to slip my hand into Jamie's but I couldn't, his hands were clenched tightly, with the knuckles showing white and his forearms stiff, the muscles tense and unyielding. His posture was stiff and ram-rod straight, outrage evident in his every line.

"Barbara tried to clean up Nicky. She made him get out of there, she knew Dad was going to keep hurting him until he killed him; it was just a matter of time. She had some money, and she had gone through Dad's papers and found Nicky's real mother, his birth certificate, stuff he needed, so she gave him those as well, and she took him away in the middle of the night, while Dad was passed out. Barbara put him on the London train and that was the last we knew of him until... until... "

His expression grew even bleaker.

"Dad found out next day that Nicky was gone, and that Barbara had gone though his papers, and... and... "

Two tears rolled down his face as he bit his trembling lip.

"Please, no more. Don't make me do this, I can't, not again... " he whispered to Shari, who shook her head, her own eyes brimming as she thumbed his eyes dry.

"You have to finish this, baby, they have to know, she deserves it... " She murmured. "Finish it, Bobby. For her."

Rick slid up next to him and, surprisingly, Yasmin too, who slid behind Bobby on the couch and hugged him, resting her head on his shoulder.

"Please Bobby; tell them, you have to let this go, please... " she murmured as Rick laid his hand on Bobby's shoulder too, holding onto Yasmin's hand.

"You have to, Big Feller," he murmured. "It's the only way."

Bobby breathed deeply several times, psyching himself up for what was coming, while I took in the sight of an entire family huddled together, bonded into a single unit because they shared a terrible burden. I knew it was bad, their body-language shouted it out and Jamie had picked up on it too, from the way his hand crept into mine and held me tightly.

Bobby nodded at Shari, squared his shoulders , and started speaking again, telling us the whole shocking, unspeakable thing, the final truth of what had really happened to my daddy's beloved little sister.

"When Dad sobered up the day after Nicky... left, he knew my mo... that Barbara had been through his stuff. He knew and he punished her. The first we knew of it was when the police showed up. Dad had called them, because Barbara had... because... it... Shari, I can't do this, please don't make me do this... "

He turned to Shari and buried his face in her shoulder, his body shuddering . Shari stroked his hair even as tears poured down her face at Bobby's distress. Yasmin and Rick both hugged Shari with tears in all their eyes, as they maintained that close physical contact while Bobby's grief worked through him.

Jamie looked at me, back at Bobby, at me again, and I saw the question in his eyes: just what in the Hell had been going on here?

Bobby looked up from Shari's shoulder, his eyes puffy and red, but his emotions back under control; his knuckles were white though; he was still wound-tight over this.

"My father... that worthless, lying, filthy piece of... he'd called the police, because Barbara had committed suicide: she'd hanged herself in the old Butler's Pantry. She was dead... "