Every Man for Himself - Beryl Bainbridge [40]
‘Is it possible he’s still alive?’
And then he understood me, and hope died, for he said, ‘I’m not your father, Morgan.’
Of course I pretended he’d misunderstood me, that I hadn’t thought any such thing, and of course he said he knew I hadn’t and even if I had that he would have taken it as a compliment. After that we both laughed, fell silent, and then I wept.
Scurra got to his feet, cleared his throat several times, took out his handkerchief and thrust it at me. He walked up and down while I remained standing in the middle of the room, shoulders heaving, the tears running down my cheeks. He didn’t tell me to be quiet or urge me to pull myself together. Now and then he squeezed my shoulder as he passed.
I suspect my loss of control had much to do with the blow to my forehead. Delayed shock, I shouldn’t wonder. The odd thing was, I didn’t feel in the least ashamed, though thinking about it now it was a pretty unmanly way to behave, and had it been the other way round and it was Scurra who broke, or any other fellow for that matter, I’d have wished the ground to swallow me.
Gradually, I grew calmer and Scurra barked, ‘Blow your nose.’ Then he ordered me to go and bathe my face, and when I’d done so and emerged restored, he refilled my glass, waved my apologies aside and told me to sit down.
‘When you first saw me,’ he said, ‘you thought you had known me before. Am I correct?’
‘Something like that,’ I replied.
‘We have met twice before,’ he said. ‘The second time was ten years ago in Luxor, when I was staying at the Winter Palace and joined your uncle’s party at a picnic amid the ruins of Karnak—’
‘I don’t remember,’ I cried.
‘You had climbed on to the feet of Rameses II and were throwing hard-boiled eggs at your friend Van Hopper.’
‘I don’t remember,’ I repeated.
‘Nor do I expect you to remember the first time,’ he said. ‘You were five years old and sitting in the office of the superintendent of an orphanage in Manchester.’
I was so agitated, so astounded that he had known me before I had known myself, that I jumped up and would have seized him by the shoulders if he hadn’t pushed me away and warned that if I didn’t compose myself and remain seated he wouldn’t utter another word. I did as I was told; there was something of the lion tamer about him as he strode back and forth, stabbing the air with one finger as his clawed mouth spat out the facts.
‘I was instructed by your uncle’s lawyers to make enquiries into your background. You had the right name and nothing else. You had been brought to the orphanage by a man called Mellor, landlord of the house you had previously lived in with your mother. The two rooms on the back of the ground floor were occupied by a wealthy spinster named Barrow who had £1,600 invested in India stock and a considerable sum in an account with the Salford and Manchester City Savings Bank. She also owned the leaseholds of both a public house and a barber’s shop. Under her bed she kept a tin trunk containing never less than £400 in gold. It was evident she had no need to live in such squalid surroundings, but it was thought she’d become addicted to alcohol and been obliged to leave various other premises on account of it. Miss Barrow had taken a particular fancy to you and when your mother died of influenza, one week after your third birthday, she took you in, neither the landlord nor the authorities raising any objection.’
Here, Scurra paused, presumably to see if I was about to raise an objection of my own, but I held my tongue. Most of what he had told me, save for Miss Barrow being the proprietor of a public house, I already knew of from Jack’s newspaper cuttings.
‘In summertime, eighteen months later, Miss Barrow became ill with stomach pains and took to her bed. Her upset was first put down to a piece of fish that had gone off and then to the unwholesome gases rising from the river below her window. In September, having been seen by two doctors on four occasions, she grew worse. During her last days she suffered from continuous vomiting