Spirit of Agony

PROLOGUE

Saturday 2 October 2005, 1643hrs

Harry Crabtree had just seen his beloved Villa go 2-3 behind in the 88th minute and was in dismay at the certainty that they would stay in the bottom three relegation area for the next fortnight. Then, he felt his Palm PDA vibrate to show he had received an email. Glancing at his mate Gary, who was using Harry's wife's season ticket seat for this game, he apologised saying, "I must just check this out."

Harry's wife was absent from this game because of a last-minute wedding present shopping for her best friend Karen's granddaughter, and other pre-wedding shopping, otherwise she never missed a match. However, the preparations for her friend's Christmas Day church wedding was reaching a critical stage. It was probably her now, asking if it was all right to spend some ludicrous amount on something. Harry and his wife both knew he'd approve anything that she asked for, but she would still call him to ask, just as he would call her if he wanted permission to buy a new set of golf clubs. It was these little niceties that reinforce a good marriage and Harry thought he had a great one.

He pulled the Palm out and checked his message. It wasn't from the missus, but from someone called "kayleigh.wilson@hostname.com", a name he'd never heard of before. He opened it, holding his breath as the message unfolded in front of his eyes.

"You dont no me mr crabtree but Ive workd in mrs crabtrees office as summer intern & no 4 certain that shes in adulterous affair with coworker im a christian & cant let this sin go by sorry im barer of sad nuws."

Almost automatically, he took off his gloves and typed a brief reply on his thumbs, "

Seventy-five-year-old Harry was in shock. The last two minutes of the match were a complete blur to Harry as he awaited a reply and thoughts about his sixty-four-year-old wife and near thirty year marriage flashed before him.

***

From Spring 1976 until October 2005, twenty-nine and a half years, I thought that Gina and I were a strongly devoted couple and the pivotal part of a loving family.

When I found out about her affair, that fateful day in 2005, I resigned from all the boards and broke all contact with King's. I was only pleased that Gina's sweet parents were no lo,nger around to be disappointed by her betrayal.

Chapter 1

Saturday 2 October 2005, 1729hrs

I tried to ring a dozen times in the previous half hour, as soon as I left the built-up area around Aston Villa and got on the motorway. Normally, on the rare occasions that Gina didn't attend the matches with me, our season ticket seats were next to each other, I would've expected her to answer. Now that every businessman or businesswoman carried a mobile phone and was ready to answer even if they were in the middle of shopping, I increasingly feared the worst, that this was not a one-off tryst, but this was time stolen by lovers from our expected afternoon together. I stopped at a service station, copied the text I had received and sent it to her in an email with an added, 'is it true?'

It took ten minutes before my phone rang. It was her.

"Harry—"

"Answer the question, Gina, is it true?"

"... yes, but —"

"Goodbye, Gina, hope you both have a good life."

I broke the connection, but Gina kept on ringing me. I didn't answer, except a couple of times I pressed the decline switch. She pinged texts, she rang me again and again. I was on a motorway but not really heading anywhere, and certainly not heading home, it was no longer 'home' for me. I just needed to do something, anything but talk to Gina. Then she bloody well rang me again, this time using someone else's number. I answered.

"H, we need to talk—" she said.

I hung up and threw the phone on the passenger seat.

This was an emergency, I felt, so pulled off onto the hard shoulder. I took the phone that was ringing again, walked up to the corrugated road barrier, and hurled that phone as far into the unlit inky blackness of the empty countryside as I could.

Almost as soon as it left my hand I knew I would have trouble contacting my two kids because their numbers were recorded on that phone and nowhere else. I knew I had Sophia Elizabeth's work number on my laptop in the boot of the car, because she was working for King & Son now that her children had left home shortly after her divorce. She would have the other numbers. My eldest son Gerald was in his fifties by now, still teaching maths and completely indifferent to me. Sophia would speak to him on my behalf. My adopted son Giles will have heard his mother's side of the story by Monday at work, Giles was Deputy Chairman of Gina's company. Bobby and Maisie had their own lives to lead and could contact me through Sophia Elizabeth. Funnily enough, they never did. Gina must've got her version of the story in before me and they believed her.

Sophia Elizabeth was still able to write her occasional letters to me via a Post Box number, which I sent her in a text a few days later. I was able to pick the letters up when I drove into that town for shopping every couple of weeks. She was the only member of the family that bothered to contact me, sending me a birthday card and letter, then a Christmas card and letter that first couple of years. I eventually gave my postcode and the number 3, my number on the door of the cottage. I never got any visitors from anyone in the family. I'd left no forwarding address so I got no other letters or bills, not even the divorce papers. Basically, from October 2005 I lived the life of a bitter recluse.

Chapter 2

Sunday 5 February 2015, 1525hrs

After parking the Rolls-Royce at the farm, I had only been back at the cottage for about half an hour and had only managed to light the wood burner in the parlour and put the electric kettle on for a mug of tea. I was sitting out on my back veranda, really well wrapped up against the cold, looking at the sunset gleaming off the iced-over canal, warming my hands on the tea and thinking about what to have for supper. At my age, 84 and approaching 85 by the spring, I didn't like to eat too late in the afternoon.

It is so quiet where I live that I could hear someone crunching down the frozen towpath, which wasn't the wisest approach, when the path was covered in six centimetres of fresh snow over the six centimetres of frozen ice from several days before, and the natural camber of the path was designed to drain water into the presently deeply frozen canal.

"Walk on the grass near the fence, away from the canal, it's safer!" I stood up and shouted to the walker. The walker waved back and fortunately moved over away from the edge to where the ice underneath was less compacted. Now I could see that it was a woman and she was having trouble dragging along a wheeled suitcase behind her.

'No it couldn't be,' I thought, 'I'd literally only spoke to the woman for a few minutes at lunchtime, for the first time in ten years. We had called a truce and I then invited her to visit me anytime she liked. Not that I actually told her where I lived. I assumed she'd take me up on it in the spring or summer, not in the middle of the big freeze ... and bringing a suitcase it looks like she means to stay!'

I stepped down into the back garden and met her at the back gate. I had already swept and salted the stone path because, although I rarely came in that way from the garden gate, except to inspect the bee hives, I often started my daily 10k run that way, the circuit taking me round the back to finish at the front of the cottage, but still re-enter through the back door. The front door opens directly into my bedroom and is blocked by an internal thick woollen curtain to reduce the draughts. You might think running 10k daily in my middle eighties was a remarkable feat, but in our local running club we had a number of keen runners of my age and above. And I had kept fit all my life although not seriously taking up road running until I left Gina ten years ago and moved here.

As soon as she came through the gate, all muffled up and almost unrecognisable in hat, coat and scarf, I took the handle of the case out of her gloved hands and lifted it up. It was light, so at least she hadn't brought the kitchen sink with her. She preceded me into the kitchen and kicked the snow off her shoes inside instead of outside. I blame it on her upbringing, they always had welly rooms in the backs of the big houses she lived in and had housekeepers to clean up the mess after them. I set her case down while she pulled off her hat, scarf and gloves, while I looked out the mop and bucket from the cupboard to clean up her mess.

"Brrrr! It's cold out there. You could've warned me about that treacherous path," Gina complained, in only our second conversation in a decade. "I almost fell in the canal twice. And because I couldn't see your car in the car park back there I wondered if I had got the wrong address or you had gone out somewhere and might not get back for hours. I couldn't get a signal on my phone. Then I noticed the frozen canal and Soph had said you mentioned you lived right by the canal, so I pressed on."

"I suppose you got the postal address off Sophia Elizabeth? The only daughter that ever writes to me and in common with all my old family refuses to actually come and visit me here?"

"Yes."

"Well. If you had written to me to say you were coming I could have given you the postcode of the farmyard at the other end of the bridle path that crosses the canal. The farmer there always keeps that path clear of snow and ice and it's not dangerously next door to deep freezing water."

"Well, as this christening was the first family event you'd been to since ... whenever," Gina said, "Anyway, why come to this particular christening, after you had ignored all the invitations to the christenings and marriages of all the others in the family?"

"Sophia Elizabeth sends me two cards a year and two long letters full of news, I assume, although some of them may be begging letters, I wouldn't know. Sometimes, mostly, the letters are tucked in with the cards, sometimes they are posted separately. About eight or nine years ago I was reading the letter and on the very first page she started going on about my ex-first wife —"

"Mavis."

"Yes, her. Apparently, Sophie Elizabeth reported, she who I haven't named for forty years was getting divorced from her second husband. I stopped reading immediately and wrote back to Sophie Elizabeth saying I don't want anything in her letters about ex-wives, nothing, absolutely nothing, they are not my family any more and I wasn't interested. I told her that if she sends any more letters with any mention of either you or your predecessor in it, I ... I told her I'll stop reading them, any of them."

"And?"

"When I got the very next letter, at Christmas I remember, I was half a paragraph into reading the details that came out during my ex-wife's divorce, before I realised what I was reading, and that her soon-to-be-ex-husband had evidence that Mavis was sleeping around within the first month of their marriage —"

"They had an open marr —"

"I don't care what they had, I didn't want to know. I don't want to know then, I didn't want to know now. I couldn't 'unread' what I'd just read. I wrote to Sophia Elizabeth and told her not to send any more letters or cards as I simply won't read any of them ever again or even bother to reply to them."

"So how did you hear about Christina's christening?"

"I never open a letter, and I never open a birthday card. I do make an exception and open the Christmas card she sends ... the Farmer drops one in every Christmas and one card on its own looks sad. I never read the letters that come folded in with the card, they'll all unopened, still folded and in a drawer in the kitchen. However, the invitation to the Christening was inserted inside the last Christmas card, loose with no letter. I tucked it behind the clock where it has been for the last five or six weeks. I saw it again a couple of days ago and I turned up at the church on a whim and sat at the back as a curious observer. I looked around, I saw you, I saw about three babies that were being christened, but I didn't actually recognise anyone with any of them. For the life of me I don't know why I went in the first place, I must be getting senile in my dotage."

"I saw you sneak into the back of the church. I knew it was you, even with the shaggy 'Father Christmas' look, your long white beard. No-one was expecting you and no-one knew you were there. Have you sneaked into family events before, Harry?"

"No. Never."

"And you didn't even take the opportunity to see and hold your great-granddaughter."

"Well, once you'd sussed me out, I didn't want to stay on as a curiosity, a dinosaur from the past, for a bunch of strangers that may or may not even be related to me."

"What do you mean, not related to you?"

"I don't know the baby Christina's's parents at all, even though the mother's supposed to be my grandchild, they've never visited or written, and haven't seen Sophia Elizabeth or any member of her family in the flesh for nearly forty years. I wouldn't know anybody at all, besides, now, thanks to Sophia Elizabeth's fucking letter of ten years ago, I don't know if my ex- was also sleeping around on me within a month of our wedding. I don't know if Gerald or Sophia Elizabeth are even my kids."

"Tosh! They are definitely yours, Harry, all four of your children look like peas in a pod, your wives' genes get completely smothered by yours, they can't even get a bloody look-in. Gerald could be your twin, even down to the beard, though his beard is grey, a little shorter and ... professionally shaped by his barber."

"I wouldn't know, not seen Gerald for about forty-five years, when he was about 15, he refused to see me as soon as his mother asked for the divorce. He knows for sure that I'm not his dad."

"See what I mean Harry? He could be your exact double, as stubborn as a mule and he cuts off his own nose to spite his face, just like you do. He's your child, Harry, without a slightest shadow of a doubt."

"Well, it's been written into my will in blood red ink, no DNA evidence, no share of my vast fortune buried in the cellar."

"That's just nasty and cruel, H. Besides, you'll probably outlive him, Gerald's undergoing treatment for prostate cancer."

"You might see me at the funeral then," I sneered and almost regretted it as soon as it left my bitter lips.

Gina glared at me but didn't say anything. Then she started looking around the room.

"Well, this is cosy, Harry, I had the impression reading from your three as-rare-as-rocking-horse-shit letters to Sophia Elizabeth that your place was a lot smaller than this."

"It is smaller, a whole lot smaller, Gina. There are three cottages in this terraced row and I only rent the downstairs of this end of the row, although I do have two-thirds of the garden, where I keep my beehives."

"So, how many bedrooms do you have here, Harry?"

"One, plus the parlour and this kitchen, three rooms and a privy, the full extent of my blessed domain."

"That could make the sleeping arrangements awkward or even a tad more interesting, Harry."

She grinned at me with her perfect smile, showing her perfect set of teeth. She was still a stunning looker even in her early seventies. Older, her face more lined than it was ten years ago when I loved her unreservedly, sure, but she still had that lively spark about her. She probably always would. Meanwhile, in comparison, although between Gina and I there never was any comparison, she was completely out of my league, and with my incessant running schedule and meagre diet, I was all skin and bones, with only wrinkled skin in between holding all my bits together.

"When I foolishly invited you here, Gina, just a few short hours ago, I envisaged you coming to tea or lunch, in the Spring, Summer or early Autumn months, when we could relax outside and come to some sort of closure in our relationship and call a halt to the present atmosphere of hatred and spite. I never intended that you'd arrive prepared to spend overnight in mid-Winter with at least 6cm of snow on the ground outside and a tension inside the cottage that you could cut with a knife. Gina, my once dear friend, there's no room at the inn and the unheated outhouse is full of gardening tools and a workbench."

"You wouldn't throw a poor girl out on a dark cold night like this, would you, Harry?"

"I don't think you fit any broad category of 'poor girl' in any dictionary I know, Gina."

"I am poor in regards to being denied close proximity to people that I really care about, Harry. I've been lonely for a long time. Have you been lonely here, miles from anywhere? I thought maybe, that's why you came out of hiding and came to join us at the church."

"Yes, meeting my mortal enemy upon the sanctity of Holy Ground, eh? No, I was just curious I think. I enjoy my own company, Gina, I'm a fully qualified and practising hermit. This hovel is my hermitage, my monastic cell of celibacy away from the sexual avarice of womankind. Only you have crossed this threshold by invitation and I'm already regretting it. So, I'm never lonely, besides, I have adapted and made a few, very few, new friends."

"What kind of friends?"

"Gina, we've been separated for years, ten years to be exact, you don't have the right to ask me who my friends are, as I wouldn't even pretend to have any interest in any of your friends."

"My friends are just neighbours, Harry, girls from the gym and the sports centre. Nobody close. I suppose you're friendly with all your neighbours?"

"No, not at all. The old lady at the opposite end of this terrace lives on the ground floor with fifty old cats and fresh cats seem to follow her home on a regular basis. That's why we never see any birds in my garden but I'm forever digging up her bloody cat's poo from my veg and fruit patches and throwing it back over the fence. And the chap living in the middle cottage, the one with all of the upstairs rooms, grows his own pot in at least one of the back bedrooms, so, no, I don't have a lot to do with him either."

"Interesting neighbours you have, H."

"No, Gina, they are quite boring, compared to the interesting and no doubt constantly changing social circles you probably run around with."

"I hardly see anyone nowadays, H, since I was forced to step aside and urge Giles to run the company against his will."

"Yes, I heard, I kept getting email bulletins long after I resigned from any contact with the board."

"Then you know that I was sacked. You got me sacked for contravening company policy on relationships with subordinates, Harry, that was vindictive. I worked all my life for King's and the Tremblett's Group."

"Well, I kept seeing in my mind's eye that BBC interview you did on that series on 'Women at the Top of Industry', I think, only about two weeks before I was told of your long standing love affair —"

"It wasn't a love affair," I barely heard her mutter.

" — and how you told the public that you needed the support of your family of loving husband and growing children to be able to juggle business and family and how wonderful a team we all were together."

"We ... we were a team," Gina said quietly, "I had forgotten about the—"

"You forgot a lot of things, Gina, and I was the only one who thought I was part of a team, you were too busy freelancing your favours ... and you lied to me for eighteen months —"

"No, it wasn't that long and I'd not exactly lied —"

"Mrs Whatshername, when I tracked her down and told her what hubby was up to, confronted her husband and he admitted to her that the affair had gone on for as long as that."

"Maybe it was that long, I wasn't really watching any calendar. You didn't have to burn poor Julian, though, he had a family, three young children. Harry, you completely destroyed him."