The Love That God Forgot

by Alexander Cordell

Genres: Historical Fiction; Sagas

Synopsis

Wales has reached the apex of her industrial clamour. But young Tom Mortymer, son of rich industrialist Iestyn Mortymer, has turned his back on his inheritance, exchanging the bell-clang and fire of his Upper Forest Tinplate Works in Morriston for the simplicity and wanderlust of a gypsy existence with his young Romany wife, Jen Wildflower. In time they come to settle on Flatholm Island where they become a refuge for the animals. Self-sufficiency is their ultimate goal; the substantial income from tinplate is ignored. But their simple idyll does not last. They are aware of a strange malevolence towards them. One frightening incident follows another until it is clear to tom and Jen that they will have to abandon their home and return to Cefn-Ydfa, their mansion in Maesteg. Their decision coincides with the arrival in Cardiff of Jethro Mortymer, Tom's uncle - whom he had long believed dead. Would Jethro be able to shed any light on Tom and Jen's continuing nightmare?

Release date: September 4, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 280

Sample

It is said that God, because He couldn’t be everywhere at once, invented mothers. Of one thing I am sure; He never intended them to be treated by the world as badly as has been the case. From the sun-black mammy suckling in Africa to the stringy matriarch telling everybody where to get off in Bond Street, they need all the pity He can give them; mothers usually being behind the door when consideration is handed out. My own mother, known locally as Dozie Annie, certainly had little to boast about in having me.

Indeed, she is a case in point. Perhaps I never adequately forgave her for having me out of wedlock. The truth of one’s origins invariably slips out in close-knit communities like Maesteg, and being called a bastard in the playground at the age of ten, is scarcely productive of good family relationships, particularly when it is true.

Because of this, the affinity between myself and Mother (Dozie Annie, the butt of local jokes) began seriously to fade after I left Upper Forest House (the home of the Mortymer family) in Morriston, and set up home with one beauty after another in London.

Here, rising to the editorial chair of The London Mercury, I retired early at the age of fifty (when most of my lovers had left me for more virile competitors) and settled down to a pipe and advanced middle age in respectability and little compensation: young men manufacture fantasies and leave old men to their visions, so my friends were few.

Looking back across the editorial room with its rush and bustle about nothing in particular, I now had time, before collecting up my papers for a dog and stick quiet … to puff at my pipe in bachelorhood and wonder what the hell it was all about. In retrospect, while a woman in a bed was acknowledged as the essence of enjoyment, these days I would throw stones at it. Take it from me, you young ones: viewed from the wiser perspective of approaching senility, it is worth nothing more than a good winter sneeze.

Biology always plays the last card in the game of life, so Dozie, my mother (remembered more kindly in her doze of lavender and lace) now became more clearly observed; and probably because I had nothing better to do (for I must be truthful) decided in my own loneliness that she wasn’t such a bad old crow as relatives go … and paused betimes to remember the guts of it … the sweating labour and joyful eyes of a mother delivered out of pain.

She had started her labour they tell me, on the floor of the stables of the mansion of Cefn-Ydfa with Old Bid, the cook, in attendance; and Dai Dando (now long dead) said, for it was he who had discovered her, “Oh, my poor little duck, what you doin’ out here?”

“’aving a baby, Dai, please don’t tell nobody!”

At which point Iestyn Mortymer, the master of Cefn-Ydfa came in from riding, and said at the stable door, “What’s happening here?”

“It’s our Annie ’aving a baby, sir,” said Old Bid.

“But that can’t be … only yesterday …”

“It’s a seven monther, sir; she strapped ’erself up.”

“Bring Annie into the house, and you come with her,” Mr Mortymer commanded. Thus was I born, not in a stable, but in one of the best bedrooms of Cefn-Ydfa.

“Mind you, George,” said Dai to me later, “you was a big sod, especially in the ’ead – you bloody nearly killed ’er.”

And now, this same mother was the sole occupant of Upper Forest House in Morriston; all the blood Mortymers including Tom having taken the rocky road to the grave.

Was it my own loneliness, I wonder, that reminded me on that hot June day of my duty to my mother? Or was it one of those inexplicable occurrences that are part of psychoanalysis? More likely just plain guilt, I reasoned later, because, as they say in Eton, when a boy’s face shines, look behind his ears.

Coincidental with this sense of guilt was a much more potent happening; one that caused me to send a headline article – the last of my editorship of The London Mercury – down to the printer in the basement with accompanying photographs of the lighthouse area of Flatholm.

The headline read:

‘TWO BODIES ASHORE ON WELSH ISLAND

(from a special correspondent)

The skeletons of a man and a woman were this morning taken from the remains of a small yacht presumably wrecked many years ago on the rocks below Lighthouse Point on the island of Flatholm, which lies in the Bristol Channel off the coast of South Wales …’

My intention being made urgent by a report of an earlier skeleton which was found in roughly the same area, called The Unsolved Mystery of the Hanging Man of Maesteg: a headline I myself had coined for an article I had written five years before when a reporter on the Mercury.

History, it appeared, was about to repeat itself, but this time, given luck, I might help the police to find a murderer?

Unsolved murders, especially where skeletons are concerned, are usually thin on the ground through time-span – motives and reasons being long disseminated.

Skeletons editorially may be acceptable in single numbers; but when people start making a habit of it, there must exist a story; and when one is journalistically wounded by the pen, it never completely heals.

Therefore, on the morning after my official retirement, instead of clearing the editorial desk and taking a taxi to the penthouse flat I had rented, I found myself again in a First Class compartment on the Express from Paddington to Swansea, and Dozie Annie, my mother.

God knows what reception awaited me, for I hadn’t been home for years.

It was not only a nagging conscience that took me to Morriston: news that Mother had now taken to her bed, coincided with the tragic discovery.

The last report I received before leaving London was the Coroner’s. Both skeletons showed evidence of bone damage, it said; the man having been shot in the head while one of the woman’s ribs had been fractured near the heart; a wound also thought to have been caused by gunshot. I was unaccountably convinced that the skeleton of The Hanging Man found some years earlier in an underground coal gallery at Maesteg, was linked with those now discovered in the debris of the wrecked yacht.

Parents get even with reprehensible relatives by falling ill just at the time when you hope to find them hale and hearty; thus adding remorse to the sense of guilt, and so it was with Mother.

My taxi from Maesteg put me down at the drive entrance to Upper Forest House and the place was as lifeless and shuttered as a monastery in Lent; three times I jangled the entrance bell without reply; then footsteps sounded within, and the door slowly opened.

A woman about my age stood in the doorway, evincing an air, like most Romanies, of aristocratic independence. Her bangle earrings matched the dark sheen of her skin; her hair, plaited either side of her face, was black and I knew her for one of those who towed their caravans around these parts.

“Yes?” Her dark eyes questioned.

I said, “I’m Annie Evans’s son – George. May I come in?”

The eyes swept over me. Once, clearly, she had been beautiful, but the years, as for me, had more closely stamped their authority now, and I saw that she was a little older than I’d thought. (You can tell a horse’s age by its teeth, a man by the back of his neck, and a woman by her throat.)

Inside the house, although mid-summer, it was as cold as a Spanish prison, and our feet echoed on the decorative mosaic of the great hall.

“My name is Jen Mortymer,” said the woman. “Since your mother moved in from Corn Hwtch about a year ago, I come over from Flatholm from time to time to keep an eye on her.”

“Thanks very much,” I said, and followed her into the spacious drawing-room.

“Thanks very much isn’t good enough, Mr Evans.” The reply was instant. “Your mother is lonely and you should be more responsible: a woman her age shouldn’t live by herself in this great barn of a place. Do you realise she’s ill?”

“I didn’t know, Mrs Mortymer.”

She looked me up and down as if judging a porker contest.

“She tells me you’re leaving Fleet Street. I had hoped you were moving in here.”

“It … it wasn’t my intention.”

“Nor mine to continue coming over from Flatholm once a week. I’ve been doing it because she’s the last of the old retainers. My husband, Tom, was very fond of her.”

“Ah yes, Tom Mortymer.”

She nodded. “He died two years ago, about the time Annie moved in here when dear old Dai Dando passed away. I still say she’d have done better staying on at Corn Hwtch.” She looked around her vacantly, as a woman does when there is little more left to say, adding, “Your mother’s incontinent now, Mr Evans. A district nurse comes in daily, but you ought to do better than that – she really needs constant nursing, and from what I hear there’s no shortage of money.” She added tersely, “Or perhaps you’d prefer to put her into a home?”

The antagonism was growing, possibly because of my unresponsive silence. Being better able to express myself upon paper; oral interviews, especially if lacking empathy, have a disastrous effect upon my psyche. Yet, a strange and unusual affinity bound me to this woman, even allowing for her intolerance.

I found myself saying, “I am sorry about your husband, Mrs Mortymer.”

We stood uncertainly, and I added, “My … my mother told me of his death in a letter, but the newspaper was in difficulty at the time – projected take-overs and God knows what – and I fear it slipped my mind …”

“Don’t let the same thing happen with your mother, Mr Evans. Now’s a good opportunity to give her the attention she needs – remorse is a useless commodity: it’s no fun in the cemetery, give me my flowers now.” She fussed and fidgeted with her gloves. “Ah well, back to my other patients!” and she went to the door.

The sun was a ray of gold upon her face as she opened it, and I thought she looked beautiful.

“Patients?” I wasn’t interested in her reply, but wanted to delay her.

“Surely you’ve heard of my Rescue Centre on Flatholm?”

“Mother mentioned it, but not in detail.”

“She knows more about it now, for I’ve just been telling her; it has grown enormously since Tom and I started it all those years ago. We now have an official vet – he comes over from Sully once a week, and with public donations coming in, it’s my intention to build a little Rescue Hospital; lots of shearwaters and other seabirds get injured in migratory flight, and the morning clinic is crowded out these days with buns and …” She paused, gulped and said with an effort, “Tom would have loved to have seen the hospital built, but … well, there you are … it’s the way life goes!”

Her eyes were bright and I thought she was going to cry; then she patted herself to see if she was still there, as women do when fighting tears, and added, “Ah well, if I’m going to catch the Flatholm boat, I … I’ll have to get going,” and raising her face, smiled brilliantly. “I’m sorry I’ve done all the talking. How long are you going to stay?”

“I’ll stay until Mother is better.”

She nodded, saying, “Good. There’s a full-time nurse starting in the morning, so you’ll receive her bills in due course – kindly leave your home address when you go.”

“Certainly.”

“Goodbye, Mr Evans!”

“Goodbye, Mrs Wildflower.”

“No – Mrs Mortymer – I’m a widow now, remember!” She offered her hand.

“I do hope you will come again …?” I said.

“Not all the time there is somebody here with Annie – I simply can’t afford the time with so many other invalids …” She hesitated, one eyebrow slightly raised as if fearing a reaction. “But surely there is nothing to stop you visiting my brood on Flatholm?”

“I will come!” and wondered if I sounded too enthusiastic.

I was still standing at the door as she went down the drive, and continued to stand there, as if she had taken my legs with her; she having made upon me a greater impression than any woman to date … one reason why so far I had managed to side-step the altar.

Mother was sitting up in bed, awaiting me. A glance told me that in another few days I might have been too late. Life appeared to have taken her by the throat and thumped her into skin and bone since I had last seen her.

Holding her, unseen, I wept without tears.

Nobody could have envisaged that the carroty-haired misfit with the turned up nose, known in Maesteg as Dozie Annie, would one day end up as the mistress of Upper Forest House; and even more unbelievable was it that what was left of the Mortymers should look upon her as a beloved friend: such affinities do not exist much between master and servant today. To be fair, my mother, the embittered husk of a woman betrayed, possessed little in terms of personal attraction. Yet, not only had she acquired Upper Forest House with its land and appurtenances, but had also become rich through the will of Tom Mortymer, deceased. Worth consideration, when as Mother’s surviving relative, all such assets would one day come to me!

However, financially comfortable in my own right, I was much more interested in the story rocking Wales at the moment … the identity of the skeletons recently discovered in the wreck of the yacht.

“You met Jen Wildflower, George?” (Mother meant Mrs Mortymer.)

“She opened the door to me.”

“Beautiful, ain’t she!”

I did not reply; for as long as I could remember, Mother had never flagged in her efforts to see me ringed by the nose; she was still at it.

“Who you living with now; George?”

“Nobody.”

“Then who’s going to shake a leg for ye when you retire from Fleet Street?”

“I’ll manage quite well on my own.”

This set her up for the usual confrontation.

“Oh no, ye won’t; you’m hopeless in a house, and ye know it. Time was I used to come and dig out your places – one flat after another, but I’m past it now. You was never like your pa, ye know: everything ’ad to be Bristol ship-shape wi’ him – ye could tell he’d been a sailor. And he were no philanderer, neither, like the vicar called him once – never liked that vicar, I didn’t, talking about my Bert like that. He were the only fella I knew who was white all over inside an’ out. It were the Boer War that took ’im, or he’d ’ave been here to see me buried.” She dabbed at her eyes with a little lace handkerchief. “I want you to think well o’ your feyther, George.”

“He was one of the best, Annie,” I said.

“Ay, ay! He were a good ’un!”

He was, in fact, one of life’s natural bastards born legitimately. He had courted her; disdainful of her generosity, he had seduced and left her without a penny, and I’d pledged myself to the day that I might catch up with him. Nature has her own ways of relieving grief, or few of us would be alive, and false compassion had built an image within Annie’s longing heart; caricaturing her lover into what she prayed was a good husband and not the village waster who put one serving-maid after another into child and Swansea Workhouse.

One of these unfortunates (not too bright) was Annie Evans, my mother.

“You’d ’ave loved ’im, mind!” she added.

“He was my father, I love him now,” I said, for if a lie is worth telling, it’s worth repeating.

“God bless you both,” said she then, and slept.

The new nurse didn’t come for a week. Bright with summer’s disposition she arrived to live in; with a breast for weeping on, she was a big woman who took us over with ebullient confidence; and Annie glowed with new energy. We had a bath chair delivered; got her into it and out into the conservatory’s sun.

Sitting there planning, Mother surveyed Upper Forest’s shining acres.

“What about that Jen Wildflower, then?” she asked optimistically.

“Mrs Mortymer? What about her?”

“You promised her you was going over to Flatholm. You interested in her, son?”

“Not particularly, but there’s a good story knocking around on her island.”

“You mean the wreck of the yacht, and the bodies?”

I nodded, lighting my pipe. “If there’s anything in it I’ll cable it back to the office.”

The nurse came in with morning coffee, put down the tray and went out again, saying over her shoulder, “I say there’s more in that than meets the eye, sir.”

I nodded. “Have they identified them yet?”

“Not that I’ve heard,” she answered, “But yesterday they found a gun in the wreck of the boat, I heard say.”

I thought: if I don’t get over there soon, this story will be ancient history, and the nurse added, “Lovely place, mind, that Flatholm! My hubby hopes to buy a boat and get around there and Steepholm, when he can afford it.”

My mother added, “Jen Wildflower and Tom used to ’ave a boat when they lived on Flatholm, ye know.”

“What kind of a boat?” I asked.

“Search me, son – just a boat. They used it for fishing and more than one dish o’ cod and flounder they dropped into Upper Forest for poor old Annie.” She put a finger under her chin and made no eyes to mention, adding, “That was before they left Flatholm the first time, mind.”

The nurse returned with Mother’s morning medicine. Recalling that the doctor was due at midday, I was keen to get going to catch the 2 o’clock ferry from Sully. Idly, I asked, “What made them leave?”

“Flatholm?” Mother shrugged. “They ’ad a bit o’ bother with some of the locals, I heard – old Dai Dando knew more’n me about it.”

“Bother?”

“Well, it seems they kept animals even then – patching up injured gulls and suchlike, and somebody on the island kept knockin’ ’em off.”

I waited while she took her medicine.

“Did they find out why?” I asked.

“’cause they was strangers, I suppose. Boiled one o’ their animals, too, I heard.”

“They did what!”

“Like I said – they ’ad a pet cat, a big tom, and then they came back one day and found ’im in the saucepan on their stove, skewered, knotted up and boiled hot for eating – and he still ’ad his fur coat on, poor sod.”

“How terrible,” said the nurse, and fluttered me a smile.

Mother made a wry face. “Aye, well folks is queer, ain’t they, everybody knows that. One way of getting rid o’ them off Flatholm, I suppose. But accordin’ to old Dai, who ever done it killed off their chickens, too and cut the throat of a goat they were milkin!”

“Good Good!” I said. “Why?”

“Didn’t like ’aving them around, I suppose.”

“So they left the Island?”

“That’s it. They was living in a cottage, Dai said, so they locked it up, took the ferry to Sully, harnessed up their ’orse to their gypsy caravan in Thomas’s field, and went off.”

“To where?” I asked.

“Up to Scotland, of all places, said Dai, and after a while they took a boat to France.”

“Why France?”

Mother emptied her hands at me. “Lots of Romanies in France, mind.”

This was getting interesting. “And then?”

“Then they come back to Maesteg and Cefn-Ydfa – Master Tom didn’t have this place till later, though he lived ’ere after Jen Wildflower left ’im, poor lad.”

I had turned away to the window in contemplation, looking out on to the bright summer-lit fields: curlews were calling, I remember.

“Why did Jen leave him?”

She did not reply, and I knew she had something under her apron that would soon come out.

“Come on, Mam!” I prompted.

“I reckon that’s their business.” Lips pursed, she sat.

“How long was she away from Tom?”

“About a year – no, more, if I remember!” And she looked huffed and impatient. “Anyway, it’s all past now, so why don’t you go over to Flatholm and see Jen Wildflower – she’s an attractive piece, and I’d like to see you settled before I pops me clogs.”

I said, carefully changing the subject, “You remember – it must be five years or more ago now – how you tipped me off about the first Maesteg skeleton, ‘The Hanging Man’, I mean. I came down and did a piece for it in the Mercury?”

Mother nodded.

“Do you think the finding of these latest bodies has any link with that?”

“’course not!”

“I think there is; don’t you recall that you suggested I should write a book about the Mortymers – old Dai Dando called it ‘the love that God forgot’ – remember?”

She remembered all right; I could see it in her face. I added, “Then you suggested that the Mortymers ought to write it themselves? Come on, surely you remember that! Did they produce anything?”

There was a long silence: then, “They produced a book,” said Mother, disinterestedly.

“What!”

“Like you said, we suggested that they wrote a book about their times together on Flatholm, and they did!”

“No! Did they publish it?”

“Not likely. I got the manuscript in the safe here.”

I was astonished. “What’s it doing in there?”

“They had no safe place to keep it on Flatholm.”

“You say you’ve got the whole book? Last time I heard about it they’d only finished one chapter!”

“The whole book – nigh forty chapters.”

“Have you read it?”

“Can’t read, can I? Why do ye think they trusted me with it?” She shielded her eyes from the sun, adding, “Jen Wildflower’s writing a final chapter now, she says.”

“A final chapter?” I was stupidly repeating her.

“One she’s calling ‘Expiation’. Now that her Tom’. . .