I hadn’t expected this. He had never spoken about the war before now and if he had, perhaps things could have been different.
‘Still, it doesn’t excuse—’
‘None of us could escape the horror of it. We had to defend King and country. So I did what I had to do.’
‘What? Killing your own soldiers before the enemy could?’
‘By making an example of their cowardice. Armies are ruled by fear. Do you think those men that volunteered understood the carnage that lay ahead of them? Don’t you think that every man out there wished with every fibre of their being that they could leave that hellish place? What do you think keeps men marching forward to their death?’
I didn’t know.
‘Duty. Honour. Those weasels that you now seem so bent on protecting had neither of those things. They were out-and-out cowards.’
‘If you truly believe in honour, then you will know, somewhere in your heart, or if you do not possess one, which I doubt you do, then in your conscience, that you were wrong. The families of those men have carried the shame for too long and for what? Even if those men felt fear in the face of a formidable enemy, is it a crime punishable by death? You could have pardoned them. Most Commanding Officers did. But not you. Why must you crush anyone who does not meet your exacting standards? Why must you humiliate and torment—’
‘Enough!’
He walked away from me and poured himself a drink from the crystal decanter. I tried to steady myself, although my legs were shaking and I longed for a drink also.
‘It’s always your pain, your suffering. You never think about anyone else.’
I didn’t even bother replying. There was little point.
‘Can’t you imagine for a moment the suffering I have endured from this?’ He pointed to the side of his body that was burned. He took various bottles of pills from his pockets and threw them on the table. ‘They barely touch the surface,’ he said, calmly now. ‘I did my duty out there. I put my body on the line and what did I get in return?’
‘They gave you medals, didn’t they?’
‘Hah! Medals. I wanted respect. I wanted a future. A family. No woman would come near me when she saw this. I could no longer provide a wife with children, in any case. A useless specimen. I had to beg for a job. Do you know how humiliating that was? The one thing I asked you to do.’
‘Marry Bingley?’ I asked.
‘And there you were, flaunting your freedom in front of me. The freedom I paid for!’
‘Lyndon, if only you had spoken of this before, I could have helped.’
‘What could you have done? You were only good for one thing and you wouldn’t even obey me in that.’
‘Obey you?’ I almost laughed at the thought. What right did he have? He always acted like he had authority over me and I suppose our age difference normalised his behaviour. Not any more. ‘You make it sound as though I owe you something and believe me, Brother, I owe you nothing.’
‘You owe me everything! You would be dead if it weren’t for me.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘Your mother wouldn’t keep you. To this day, I still can’t be certain you’re even mine. French slut.’
It was as though I had wandered into someone else’s conversation. His words didn’t make any sense to me.
‘My mother?’
He walked to the sideboard, picked out a cigar from a silver box and lit it with a round marble lighter. His eyes narrowed as he sucked and eventually blew smoke into the still air.
‘You may as well know, now Mother and Father are both dead. Your grandparents.’
I shook my head. None of this sounded right.
‘I’m not going to listen to this madness,’ I said, turning to leave.
‘Not so keen on the truth now, eh?’
I stopped dead.
‘I thought you were here to set the record straight, to bring all of my past transgressions into the light? Well, you may as well know all of it then.’
I felt nauseated. There was a sickening feeling creeping up my veins and into my chest. I realised I knew what he was going to say; had somehow always known somewhere deep inside of me, but never allowed myself to see it.
‘And when that cheap rag of a newspaper prints your version of events tomorrow, you will know that you have betrayed your own father.’
I turned around and looked him dead in the eyes.
‘No,’ I said, shaking my head again. ‘You can’t be.’
‘We were touring Europe, the summer of 1900. My grandmother – your great-grandmother – paid for the trip. I was with some friends from university, doing the Grand Tour, as was the custom for a young man. I was twenty years of age, much like yourself when you made your own escape to the continent.’
I hated that he was comparing us. I was nothing like him.
‘We were visiting the French Riviera. She made herself available to me—’
‘Shut up!’ I covered my ears with my hands. It was too much. But he came towards me and pulled my arms down by my side.
‘It’s the natural order of things, Opaline. Young men must sow their wild oats. But girls like her, they know an opportunity when they see one. Before I left, she came to me, saying that she was pregnant and couldn’t afford a child. I told her she would get nothing from me, but she had my name and must have found our address. A year later, she showed up at our door and left you like an unwanted gift on the doorstep.’
I was crying, but he kept on.
‘I suggested an orphanage, but Father, being the weak-willed man that he was, insisted on keeping you. I wanted nothing to do with it. I had my career in the army. So they brought you up as their own and you have been the thorn in my side ever since.’
I had stopped struggling and so he let my arms go, then walked back to the sideboard and poured two large glasses of brandy from a decanter. When he handed it to me, I drank it down in two large gulps.
‘Father wasn’t my real father?’
We stood in silence for a time, the dust settling on our words.
‘What was her name?’
‘Who?’
‘The woman. My … mother.’
‘How the devil should I know? It’s over forty years ago. Celine, or some such. Or was it Chantal?’
I threw the crystal glass at him, but it hit the sideboard and shattered.
‘You really are despicable. You have no feelings for anyone but yourself. You locked me up in that … that place for all those years. Did Dr Lynch know that you were my father? My God, it all makes sense now.’
‘I did you a favour. I could see you were heading the same way as your mother, getting pregnant without a ring on your finger. So I got rid of it for you. And what thanks do I get?’
I was so angry and overwhelmed that it took several moments before I could process what he was saying.
‘How did you know I would lose the baby?’
‘What’s that?’
‘The baby. She was stillborn. You said you got rid of her, but there’s no way you could have known that would happen.’
He poured himself another drink.
‘Lyndon, what have you done?’
‘I should have put her in a bag and drowned her like the unwanted kitten she was.’