Buch lesen: «The Crightons»

Table of Contents

Cover

Excerpt

About the Author

The Crightons

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

EPILOGUE

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

‘HOW’S GRAMPS?’

‘Not too good, I’m afraid, Joss,’ Jenny Crighton admitted in response to her youngest child’s question, looking past the tall, gangly shape of the seventeen-year-old to where her husband Jon was standing, frowning a little.

‘Maddy managed to have a word with me in private after I’d been to see him,’ Jenny told her husband. ‘She’s very concerned about the way he seems to be deteriorating. Despite the fact that medically both his hip operations have been a success, he still complains that he’s in pain and that his joints ache. He’s quite definitely losing weight and Maddy’s worried that he isn’t eating as well as he was. He’s looking positively gaunt.’

‘He is in his eighties, Jen,’ Jon reminded her, but Jenny could see that he was still frowning and she knew he was troubled. Ben was his father after all and even though they all knew that Ben could not possibly receive better care than that given to him by Maddy, their daughter-in-law, the wife of their eldest son Max, Jenny also knew that Jon still felt that he should be the one to carry the main responsibility for Ben, just as he still felt guilty because …

‘Aunt Ruth says that Ben is turning into a curmudgeonly old man,’ Joss informed them both. ‘She says he actually enjoys being grumpy.’

‘Grumpy perhaps,’ Jenny allowed, ‘but no one enjoys being in constant physical pain, Joss,’ she reminded him gently.

Joss had always preferred the company of Great-Aunt Ruth to that of his grandfather, and Jenny knew that she could hardy blame him. Ruth had been far more of a grandparent and a mentor to Joss than Ben had ever been.

Out of all his grandchildren, there was only one for whom Ben Crighton had ever shown any real liking and that was for Max. Not that such favouritism had had either her or Jon’s backing. Once there had been an acute degree of antagonism between Max and his parents, but thankfully that rift was now healed. Jenny only had to watch Max with his wife Maddy and their three children to feel overwhelmed not just with love and pride but with a humbling gratitude to whomever or whatever had drawn the master plan for her son’s life.

To say that Max had completely changed virtually overnight from a human being even she as his mother had sometimes come close to loathing to one whom everyone who now knew him spoke of with respect, admiration and love sounded overly dramatic and theatrical, but it was no less than the truth. But in order to undergo such a transformation, Max had had to sail terrifyingly close to the fine, dark edge that separated life from death. Not willingly or voluntarily but through the trauma of a vicious physical attack that could have ended his life or left him permanently injured.

Mercifully, it had not, and Max had returned to them to begin a new life here in the small Cheshire town of Haslewich.

Families! Jenny gave a small sigh, but she wouldn’t be without hers, not a single member of it, including her irascible father-in-law, Ben.

The Crighton family was a large one with several branches. But one thing that linked all of them together, one inheritance they all shared, was their fascination with the legal world, the world of lawyers, solicitors, barristers and judges. It was an in-joke in the family that every Crighton child, just as soon as he or she was old enough to know what the words meant, when asked what they wanted for Christmas or birthdays, would respond eagerly, ‘I want to be a QC.’

Queen’s Counsel. It had been a goal to which Ben had strived unsuccessfully, the goal to which he had relentlessly tried to push his own son and then more recently his grandson Max.

There had been a time when Jenny knew that had Max attained that goal, she would have felt it was somehow tainted and wrong, but when, the previous year, Max had come over to tell them that he had heard on the grapevine that he was going to receive this accolade, Jenny had been filled with love and pride for him. So, too, had Jon, who had embraced Max with emotion as he congratulated him.

But, typically, when Ben Crighton had praised his favourite grandchild on his achievement at a family gathering, he hadn’t been able to resist adding brusquely, ‘It should have been my son David. It would have been David,’ he had told them all fiercely, giving his granddaughter Olivia an angry glower, ‘if it hadn’t been for your mother.’

Olivia hadn’t responded, but Jenny had seen the look of pain in her eyes and the anger in her husband Caspar’s and she had felt for her.

There had been no point in trying to console or comfort Olivia by reminding her that Ben Crighton gave as little value and love to her own daughters as he did to Olivia. Ben might have been born into the twentieth century, but he had never embraced its ethos to the extent of accepting that women were as professionally capable as men. The achievements of the female members of his own family were something Ben either ignored or criticised as women taking jobs that should more rightfully belong to men.

‘Is Gramps going to die?’ Joss asked his mother now, the anxiety in his eyes reminding Jenny that despite her youngest son’s growing maturity, the sensitive side of his nature, which had so marked him out as a child, could still hold him emotionally hostage to his fears.

‘I don’t know, Joss,’ Jenny answered him honestly. ‘According to the doctor, there is no physical reason why he should.’ She paused, choosing her words carefully. ‘But your grandfather has never been a man who has enjoyed life. He—’

‘He still misses Uncle David, doesn’t he?’ Joss cut in.

Jenny and Jon exchanged speaking looks. Joss had accurately and swiftly highlighted the true cause of Ben’s deep-seated malaise.

David Crighton, Jon’s twin brother, had disappeared just a few weeks after their joint fiftieth birthday party, only a short time ahead of Jon’s discovery that David had fraudulently plundered the bank account of an elderly widow whose business affairs he had been responsible for.

Had it not been for the fact that Jon’s aunt Ruth had stepped in and offered to repay every penny of the money David had ‘borrowed’, the resultant scandal would have damaged not just the guilty but the innocent, as well. David could have put into disrepute the family’s legal firm in which he was the senior partner although, in truth, it had been run by his quieter and less flamboyant brother, Jon.

Even so, Jon had argued passionately against Ruth’s decision, insisting that the interests of truth and honesty must be put before those of the family and himself.

In the end, though, Ruth had prevailed upon him to listen to what she was saying because, as she had insisted at the time, since David had disappeared, none of them had any means of knowing if David himself had intended to repay the money or indeed if the now deceased widow had actually loaned or given it to him.

Initially, only Jon, Olivia and Ruth knew the truth, but after an emotional discussion it had been decided that they would tell their ‘nearest and dearest’ because, as Ruth had put it, secrecy between couples and close family members could be very hurtful and damaging. But the truth had been kept hidden from Ben for the most altruistic of reasons.

Since his disappearance, nothing had been heard of David despite Jon’s attempts to discover his whereabouts.

The last contact they had had from David had been from Jamaica, but when Max had flown out there to look for him, no trace could be found. All Max had got for his pains was a vicious knife attack on one of the local Jamaican beaches.

After David’s disappearance, his wife Tania had returned to her parents’ home on the south coast. The marriage was well and truly over and Jon and Jenny had brought up Jack, David and Tania’s son, alongside their own.

There were only a couple of years between Jack and Joss. They had always got on well together and were as close as brothers.

Right now, though, Jenny’s concern was not for the younger contingent of the Crighton family, but for its oldest member, Ben, who was visibly getting frailer with each month that passed.

‘He called me David last week,’ Joss told his mother sadly.

Jenny frowned. There was no way Joss looked anything like his uncle.

‘Do you think Uncle David will ever come back?’ the boy asked.

Jenny looked helplessly at her husband.

‘I doubt it, Joss,’ Jon told him gently. ‘David was … is …’ He stopped and shook his head, not wanting to tell his son that David had not just been a braggart and as careless with other people’s feelings as he had been with their money, but that he had been a coward, as well. Thanks to their father, David had grown up believing he could do no wrong. Ben had shielded David from the harsh consequences of his behaviour all through his life, often at Jon’s own expense. David was the favoured child, the blue-eyed boy, and Ben had set him upon a pedestal, which, it seemed now to Jon, was so high, it was inevitable that sooner or later he would have had to fall.

Despite the cruel comparisons his father had made over the years, Jon had always loved David—did still love him—but no longer with the blind love that his father had compelled him to give his sibling, no longer in a way that meant he had to subjugate his own needs and feelings to those of his brother.

Without David’s presence casting its dark shadow over his life, Jon’s personality had flourished and blossomed, but that did not mean that he had stopped loving his twin—not for a moment.

‘I don’t think he would ever want to come back,’ Jon offered quietly.

‘Not even if he knew how much Gramps wants to see him?’ Joss asked.

Helplessly, Jon looked at Jenny.

‘It isn’t quite as easy as that, Joss,’ Jenny told him. ‘There are problems … and—’

‘Because of the money,’ Joss interrupted her. ‘But he could still come back. He could still see Gramps. Surely if he knew how much Gramps wants him …’

‘Maybe if he did,’ Jenny agreed. Privately, she didn’t think it would make the least difference. David had always been self-absorbed and selfish; a vain, weak man who had never put another person’s feelings or needs before his own in the whole of his life. ‘But since we have no idea where he is nor any way of contacting him—’

‘But he and Dad are twins,’ Joss interrupted, startling them both by adding not entirely jokingly, ‘There’s supposed to be a bond between twins that means they are telepathically linked.’ When neither of his parents responded, he reminded them urgently, ‘Katie and Louise have it.’

Jenny sighed. It was true their twin daughters did have that special bond that twins do sometimes experience, that ability to know when the other was in need or in pain despite the miles separating them.

‘Joss, I don’t think …’ she started to respond, then stopped, turning to look at Jon.

‘David and I were never close in that kind of way,’ Jon told Joss gruffly.

‘But you could try,’ the boy persisted. ‘For Gramps’s sake.’

Uneasily, Jenny studied his set face. Something was bothering him, something that he wasn’t saying.

‘Joss—’ she began gently, but as though he had read her mind, Joss continued quickly.

‘When Gramps mistook me for David, he …’ He hesitated and then told her chokily, ‘He started to cry … he said that he had missed me … and that life hadn’t been worth living without me. I never really had much to do with Uncle David and I know what you all think about him. Even Jack says he wishes that you were his father, Dad, but Gramps …’

Wordlessly, Jon reached out and put his arm around his son. Tall as he was, just that little bit taller than Jon himself now, his body, his bones, still had that terrifyingly vulnerable feeling of youth.

As he hugged him fiercely and ruffled his hair, Jon knew that the tears he could see gleaming in his son’s eyes were mirrored in his own.

‘We’ve tried to find him, son,’ he told him huskily. ‘But sometimes people just don’t want to be found. He could be anywhere,’ he added gently.

‘But what about Gramps? Doesn’t he care that Gramps is missing him and that he’s getting older?’

Not knowing what to say, Jon sighed as he heard the emotion breaking up his son’s voice.

His twin and their father had always been close, far closer than he had ever been to either of them, but it had been a closeness founded on their mutual promotion of David into a person he had never actually been. Keeping up that kind of fiction, that kind of falsity, year after year, decade after decade, had ultimately resulted in the relationship self-destructing or being destroyed, which, in effect, was what David had done with his disappearance.

Of course, Jon knew how much his father missed David, but the David Ben missed was someone he himself had created.

Jon suspected that the realisation that he was not the superhuman that his father had always lauded him as being had been as traumatic to David as its discovery would have been to their father. But that was in the past now. David’s dramatic exit from their lives had heralded a series of transformations that had seen his own marriage develop into the deeply fulfilling emotional and physical bond he had always longed for.

If David were to return now, Jon suspected that he would be thoroughly bemused by the changes that had taken place. David’s daughter, Olivia, was now married and a mother. Jack, his son, had grown from a boy into a young man, just nineteen and about to start his first year at university. Max, Jon’s son, was married and the father of three.

Yes, there had been plenty of changes and a whole new generation of babies born, including David’s own granddaughters.

Olivia, he knew, had never forgiven her father for what he had done nor for the fact that his actions had almost resulted in the destruction of her relationship with her husband, Caspar.

Her mother, Tania, a victim of the eating disorder, bulimia, had been more the child in the relationship between herself and Olivia than Olivia herself had ever been, and although she had never said so, Jon knew that Olivia placed a large part of the blame for her mother’s disorder on David’s shoulders.

Olivia. Jon frowned as he released his son. He had become increasingly concerned about his niece over the past few months. When he had tried to suggest to her that she was working too hard and that for her to be at the office before him in the morning and still there when he left at night was an excessive devotion to duty, she had snapped crossly at him.

Later, she had apologised, explaining tiredly that it was impossible for her to take work home. ‘Caspar feels that when we’re at home we should spend as much time as we can with the children. Of course I agree with him, but sometimes when I’ve got statements or counsel’s opinions to read through …’

Jon had given her a sympathetic smile, but he couldn’t help thinking a sense of responsibility to one’s work was one thing, but using it as a means of putting a barrier between oneself and one’s family was another entirely. Perhaps he ought to ask Jenny if she could have a word with Olivia. They had always got on well together.

A LITTLE LATER that evening as they were preparing for bed, Jenny told Jon musingly, ‘I was just thinking about that time when Louise gashed her leg so badly and Katie, who was miles away at the time playing with a school friend, insisted on coming home because Lou had hurt her leg and needed her to be with her. Do you remember?’

‘Mmm …’ Jon acknowledged, guessing what his wife was leading up to.

‘When you were boys, did you and David ever …?’ Jenny persisted, then stopped as she saw the look in his eyes.

‘David and I never shared the kind of relationship that Lou and Katie have. You know that,’ Jon told her quietly and then added almost brusquely, ‘Do you think if there was any way, any way at all I could bring him home for Dad that I wouldn’t use it?’

As she heard the pain in her husband’s voice that couldn’t be masked by his anger, Jenny went up and put her arms around him.

Even though he was in his fifties and had a relatively sedentary lifestyle, Jon still had a very sexy body—well, she certainly thought so, and after all the sterile, weary years of having to hide her feelings for him, to be able to caress it … him … freely and openly was something that never failed to give her joy, but the caress she gave him now was one of tender emotion rather than teasing sensuality.

Like all the Crighton men, Jon was good-looking, tall, broad shouldered with a very masculine profile. His hair was thick and closer to caramel colour than blond. Women’s eyes still followed him when they went out and hers followed them. Not that Jon ever noticed their glances of discreet female appreciation. He was a wonderfully loyal and loving husband and she was a very lucky woman to have such a fulfilling marriage, such a truly loving and lovable man, but Jon was no saint. He could be stubborn and even a little blinkered at times, but for him to be angry was a very rare occurrence indeed and she knew that the fact he was now was an indication of how deep his feelings went over the issue of his twin.

A man with a weaker personality than Jon’s, a man lacking in his emotional strength and compassion, might have been badly warped by the obvious and relentless favouritism of their father for David. But Jon was too kind, too caring a person to fall into that trap, and Jenny loved him all the more for what his father had once so contemptuously dismissed as Jon’s softness.

‘Come on,’ she said now, kissing his chin. ‘Let’s go to bed.’

JON GLANCED at the bedside clock. Jenny was asleep at his side, curled up next to him like a little girl. He smiled as he looked down into her sleeping face. They had made love earlier and she had fallen asleep almost immediately afterwards, his prerogative as a male, surely? And to be fair to Jenny, he was the one who normally fell asleep first, but tonight for some reason he just hadn’t been able to do so.

For some reason … There was only one reason why he couldn’t sleep—David. Not even to Jenny had he confided … admitted … how often he thought about his twin, or how much he missed him. It was ironic, really, because he knew damn well that David wouldn’t be thinking about or missing him and he knew, too, that without David’s presence in it, his own life had improved immeasurably.

Where was David now? Did he ever think of them … of him? Deliberately, Jon closed his eyes, letting his mind drift back through the years to their shared childhood. Those childhood years had been so painful for him, pushed as he was by their father into the shadows, ignored and unwanted, unloved, he had always felt, constantly reminded by their father of just how lucky he was to be David’s brother.

‘David is the first-born,’ their father used to say, and Jon had known almost before he could analyse what that knowledge meant how important it was that David should be the first, the sun, the star, and that he should never attempt to preempt David’s role.

As they grew up, it had become second nature to him to remain in the shadows, to withdraw into himself so that his twin could be first.

David … Stored away in his memory, Jon had a thousand, a million different images of him. David …

‘YOU SEEM … PREOCCUPIED. Is there something on your mind?’

David smiled warmly at his companion and teased him gently. ‘Once a Jesuit priest, always a Jesuit priest.’

The older man laughed. ‘I confess that there are times when the habit of encouraging another’s confession is too strong to resist, but purely for the most altruistic of reasons, I hasten to add.’

Looking away from him, David said passionately, ‘On a night like this, I can’t help wondering what it is about us human beings that compels us to behave so imperfectly when we have been given the gift of such a perfect universe, the potential to enhance our lives, to be the best we can be….’

‘It is a perfect evening,’ Father Ignatius agreed gravely as he sat down slowly next to David on the rocky outcrop of land from which it was possible not just to look up into the star-studded Jamaican sky above them but also out to sea. ‘But there have been other equally perfect evenings and they have not resulted in such a philosophical outburst.’

‘Philosophical.’ David shook his head. ‘No. To be philosophical is to be detached, to talk about the human condition in general terms, whereas I was thinking … wishing … regretting …’

He stopped whilst the priest looked at him and said knowledgeably, ‘You want to go home.’

‘Home!’ David gave a mirthless laugh. ‘This is my home and a far better one than I deserve.’

‘No, David,’ the priest corrected him gently. ‘This is where you live. Your home is where your heart is. Your home is in England … in Cheshire …’

‘… in Haslewich,’ David supplied wryly for him. ‘I dreamed about my father last night,’ he said to the priest abruptly. ‘I wonder what they have told him … about me … about my disappearance. I wonder if …’

‘From what you have told me of your family, your brother, your twin,’ the priest emphasised, ‘I doubt they will have told him anything that might hurt him. But if you really wish to know, then you should go back,’ he said gently.

‘Go back,’ David repeated brusquely. ‘No, I can’t do that.’

‘There is no such word as “can’t”,’ the priest replied sturdily.

‘I’m a thief, a criminal. I stole money,’ David reminded him sharply.

‘You sinned against one of God’s laws,’ the priest agreed. ‘But you have repented your sin, acknowledging it with humility and genuine contrition. In God’s eyes, you are making atonement.’

‘In God’s eyes, maybe,’ David agreed grimly. ‘But in the eyes of the law, I am still guilty.’

‘Which is more important to you, David?’ the priest questioned him softly. ‘The burden of guilt you carry for the debt you owe your family or that which you carry in the eyes of the law?’

‘My father might no longer be alive.’

‘You have other family,’ the priest pointed out. ‘A brother … a daughter … a son …’

‘They are better off without me,’ David told him curtly, turning his head away so that the priest couldn’t see his expression.

‘Maybe … maybe not.’

‘I can’t go back,’ David repeated, but the priest could hear the uncertainty and yearning in his voice.

Ever since he had read the report of David’s nephew, Max’s knife attack, in the island’s paper, he had been preparing himself for this moment. David had become as close to him as a son and the love he felt for him was that of a father, but he was not David’s father, and had he been he knew perfectly well that it was the duty of a loving father to set even his most beloved child free to live his own life.

Since David had been working here helping him in his self-appointed task of nursing the island’s terminally sick, those too poor … too shunned by society to merit any other kind of help, Father Ignatius had come to realise just how solitary and lonely his life had been.

He had found David lying drunk in one of Kingston’s stinking gutters and even now had no real idea just why he had stopped to help him, a man who had cursed him and who, when he was sober enough, had blamed him for not allowing him to die.

It had been months before David had finally brought himself to start talking to him about his life, his past, but once he had done so, the priest had not passed any judgement. Why should he? Judging others was not what he was here for. Helping them, healing them, loving them; those were his duties.

Originally, when he had entered the priesthood, he had been filled with such ideas, such visions, but then had come the faith-shaking discovery that the man he most admired, his inspiration and guiding light, had been guilty of one of the most unforgivable of sins. Father John had broken his vow of chastity and had not just had a secret relationship with a woman but had also given her his child. Torn between conflicting loyalties, tortured by what he should do, in the end the younger man had simply felt obliged to speak up.

The result of his action had been catastrophic. Father John had taken his own life and he, Francis O’Leary, known by the church as Father Ignatius, had been to blame. Totally and absolutely. Even the bishop had seemed to think so.

He had been sent away out of the area, hopefully to get a fresh start, but the news of his role in the tragedy had followed him and he had become untouchable, defiled, someone to be avoided, a priest whose faith not just in others but in himself had been destroyed. He had volunteered for missionary work and had been granted it.

‘Even if I wanted to go home, I couldn’t,’ David said, bringing the priest back to the present. ‘There’s no way I could raise the cost of the airfare.’

It was true they lived very simply and meagrely, growing as much of their own food as they could and relying on the generosity and gratitude of the patients and their families for the rest of it.

‘There are other means of travel,’ Father Ignatius pointed out and then added, ‘There’s a yacht in the harbour now waiting to be sailed back to Europe. The captain was in the Coconut Bar yesterday saying that he was looking for a crew willing to work their passage.’

‘A yacht bound for Europe? What’s her cargo? Drugs?’ David asked him drily.

‘No, but her owner is dying and he wants to go home.’ The two men exchanged looks.

‘AIDS?’ David asked him forthrightly.