CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Tommy looked down the row of backlit buzzers affixed to the facade of the Panorama Apartments and pressed the intercom button marked 16. He checked his watch; he didn’t realise it was so late. While he waited for an answer, he wiped away a wet drip from his nose with the back of his hand. Waves crashed onto the beach and filled the night air with a fine mist. He ran his tongue over his lips and tasted the salt.
‘Hello?’ Suellyn wasn’t expecting anyone, especially at this time of night.
‘Sues, it’s me, Tommy.’ He spoke into the intercom slowly and clearly, not knowing whether he could be heard. He ran his hand over his chin, it felt like sandpaper and he realised that he’d forgotten to shave.
‘Tommy, what are you doing here?’ she whispered. ‘William’s home, you should have phoned first.’
‘I don’t care. We need to talk. I need to talk to both of you. William needs to know the truth.’
‘Okay then, come on up.’ Suellyn pressed the security door release button and waited for a moment before she asked, ‘Are you in?’
Tommy didn’t answer, but Suellyn heard the distinctive click of the door as the lock released and the entrance door shut. She opened the door to the apartment before Tommy had a chance to knock. She flinched at the sight of him as his body framed the doorway. His hands were in the pockets of a pair of black jeans and the bomber jacket he was wearing gave him a youthful appearance. His cheeks were flushed from the cold, his hair unruly, ruffled by the wind. As he gazed into Suellyn’s eyes, he tilted his head to one side, sheepishly, as if he expected her to suddenly take him in her arms and kiss him. When he realised that this wasn’t going to happen he didn’t wait for her to invite him in. He shot her a smile, kissed her hard on the lips anyway, nudged past her and walked down the hallway and into the lounge-room. Tommy knew the apartment like the back of his hand and looked about for William.
‘Hello,’ William said. He was holding an opened bottle of red wine in one hand and two wine glasses in the other. William was annoyed, but not surprised by the sight of him. He was hoping to spend a quiet evening alone with Suellyn to find out if there was anything left in their marriage worth saving and to find out more about Tommy Dwyer. Now he would have a chance to find out about Tommy without having to ask his wife. ‘We met at the funeral,’ William said, as a statement of fact. He put down the wine glasses and offered his hand. Tommy grabbed it firmly.
‘Have a seat. Would you like a glass?’ He raised the bottle. ‘Suellyn and I were just about to have one.’ William looked at Suellyn. She was standing in the middle of the lounge room, looking awkward, guilt written on her face like tarnished silver waiting to be polished. They had both calmed down after the outburst earlier in the day but William knew Suellyn well enough to know that he had to keep her calm if he wanted to get some answers from her.
‘Thanks, I could do with a glass of vino,’ Tommy said. ‘It’s blowing a gale outside.’
Suellyn looked at Tommy and noticed the smug look on his face and the cockiness in his manner. William knew from years of legal negotiations that Tommy Dwyer looked as if he knew he was holding all the aces. His eyes were bright, his lips moist. The expression splashed across Tommy’s face was one that Suellyn had never seen before. He turned away from her, accepted a glass of wine from William and made himself comfortable on the leather lounge. Suellyn draped a pale blue pashmina around her shoulders and sat opposite him on the ottoman and looked at the two men, wondering who would speak first.
It was William who broke the awkward silence. ‘Suellyn tells me you live up the coast and that you are a friend of Kerry Dawson.’
Tommy nodded and took a large mouthful of wine. Tommy wasn't here for small talk and he had never heard of a Kerry Dawson. A fabrication no doubt thought up by Suellyn to explain how she knew him. ‘William,’ he paused for a moment to gather his thoughts, ‘at the funeral, I said that your mother and I went way back.’
‘Yes, I remember you saying something like that.’ William leant over and topped up Tommy’s glass trying to make light of the situation they had all found themselves in. William had a gut feeling after their meeting at Rose’s funeral that Tommy Dwyer was going to turn up again one day and here he was. He didn’t like this cocky fellow sitting across from him in his apartment, drinking his expensive wine and looking at his wife in a way which suggested that they were more than just friends. William decided to get in first before Tommy had a chance to take control of the conversation. ‘Before you say anything Tommy, I know from Rose’s will that you’re probably my half-brother. Some sordid story no doubt. So, let’s cut to the chase, which half are you?’
‘William,’ Tommy hesitated for a moment, then looked him square in the eye.
‘Rose is... well, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but Rose wasn’t your birth mother. We’re half brothers, same mother but different fathers.’
William’s body straightened as if it had just turned to stone. For the first time in his life, he didn’t know how to respond. The answer wasn’t the answer he’d been expecting. William knew he had just broken the first rule of cross examination, never ask a question to which you don’t already know the answer. He placed his glass of wine down carefully on the coffee table, not trusting himself not to spill it, and sat down on the lounge chair opposite Tommy. He gave him a puzzled look, a please explain kind of look.
‘What do you mean Rose wasn’t my mother? Of course she was.’ William’s dark eyes narrowed and darted towards Suellyn. ‘Tell me you don’t know anything about this.’
Suellyn looked down at her hands and fiddled with her wedding band. By not answering he knew she knew.
William’s heart pounded painfully through his chest as if Suellyn held it in her hands and was squeezing it, squeezing it hard, hard enough that it felt as if it was about to explode and break through his chest.
Suellyn pouted her lips as a small child does who was not used to not getting her own way. She put her head in her hands and began to sob. Tommy drained the remaining drops of his wine and placed his glass on the coffee table next to William’s.
‘Somebody, tell me what’s going on,’ William demanded.
‘As I said, you’re my half-brother and Rose wasn’t your birth mother. I don’t really know what else to tell you or what it is you want to know,’ Tommy said goading William in a toneless, flat voice.
William walked out onto the terrace and gulped the fresh air greedily, as if it were a glass of iced water. He moved to the edge of the balcony and grabbed the top of the railing. With his feet spread wide to balance himself, his eyes blinked and watered with the force of the wind. It was gusting at least thirty knots and William stood looking out to sea like a ship’s captain standing at the prow of his doomed ship, knowing what was to come, waiting for the next giant wave to strike and engulf him. His self-confidence had been stripped away, he felt raw and naked, it was as if the person he thought he was, no longer existed. The ocean was wild tonight. The coal black waves tumbled over each other in the shallows with a roar; piggy backing each other like survivors of a ship wreck in a scramble to make it to shore. He took another deep breath, this time filling every inch of his lungs with the smell and power of the ocean, trying to take in the information, absorbing it, casting it about in his mind, and wondering what he would do with it. The sky was full with growling dark clouds, thunder was stalking in the distance, the ocean was ripping itself apart. William wiped his eyes and tugged at his hair. He turned around slowly and walked back inside to face the truth and to face Tommy Dwyer.
He stood looking at his half-brother for a moment before he spoke. ‘There’s more to all of this. You aren’t telling me everything, so let’s start with where have you been all my life? It was bad enough being lied to by my mother about the identity of my father. And by the way, I still don’t know the answer to that question. I wanted nothing more to do with her and never forgave her for leading me on like that, encouraging me to
believe that a photo of some soldier she found in a dusty second hand bookshop could be a substitute for a father. Making me think for all those years that he was some great war hero and that he died before I was born. What a joke.’ William paced around the room. ‘If only she’d been honest with me and for that matter, honest with herself right from the beginning. She was such a stupid woman.’
Tommy looked down at his feet attempting to suppress the pleasure he was experiencing from William’s outburst.
‘Enough of talking about Rose, I’m on a roll here. Have I got this right? My mother was not my mother, my father was not my father, but you are my half-brother and can I also assume that you are having an affair with my wife?’ William was pacing backwards and forwards now, like some caged, wild animal, rubbing the back of his neck with his head bowed, his fists clenched. ‘Suellyn, did you know that lover boy here was my brother when you started cheating on me?’
‘Of course I didn’t. Tommy and I met at a bar in town and we just sort of clicked. It was as simple as that, a chance meeting. Besides, our marriage was already over in my mind.’
Suellyn reminded William of a pathetic clown, her tears had caused her mascara to bleed, thick, black tracks ran down her cheeks, her lipstick was half eaten away and her hair was disheveled. She blew her nose loudly into a tissue and when she had finished, she stuffed the crumpled square into the pocket of her jeans.
Suellyn crossed her arms firmly against her chest. She had finished with the hysterics, now she was just mad. ‘I’m sick to death of all the lies and secrets! I don’t need any of this.’
William drank from his glass and was about to take another mouthful, but decided against it. He knew he had to remain sober. He was already too upset and perhaps already a little too drunk. He knew he needed a clear head so he could deal with this. He slammed the glass down on the coffee table for effect as much as anything else and was not upset that the contents spilled over the pile of Vogue magazines he knew that Suellyn had not yet read. ‘You’re sick of the secrets! Christ, Suellyn, after everything that’s been dumped on me tonight, you’re going on about secrets?’ William’s mind was racing but his legal instinct was starting to kick in. He turned from Suellyn to Tommy. He was trying to control his desire to grab him by the throat, drag him out onto the terrace and throw him over the railing onto the street below. ‘Okay, one thing at a time,’ William said coolly. ‘Would you mind telling me who my mother and father are, Tommy, or at least who they were?’
There was a pause. Tommy looked around the room before he began. ‘My mother, Isabelle Dwyer,’ Tommy shifted in his seat. ‘I mean our mother, died about six months ago. When I was going through her garage to clean out the rubbish she had accumulated over the years, I found a couple of cardboard boxes hidden behind a row of shelves. She’d probably forgotten that they were even there. I didn’t bother to look through them at the time. I was a bit emotional, understandably so. I just packed them up and took them back to my house along with a few other things that had sentimental value. I’d forgotten all about the boxes until recently when I was going through my wardrobe sorting out all my junk for a garage sale I was planning to have. When I found the boxes next to my golf clubs, I went through them more for curiosity sake than anything else and discovered a letter from my mother to Rose Phillips. It confirmed what I already knew about the circumstances surrounding your birth. I also found other letters to Rose and I must tell you, at the time, I found the whole thing quite shocking. My pious mother. Anyway, I digress. To cover up the mess she'd found herself in, she told my father she wanted to travel abroad for six months to visit her parents in England. My father indulged her, as he so often did. I don’t know whether he ever expected anything at the time but he let her go anyway. I know he found out some years later because before he died he told me the whole story.’
William was not aware that his mouth was open. He stared at Tommy. ‘But what’s all this got to do with Rose? Where does she fit into all of this?’ William asked incredulously.
‘That’s the next part of the story. It gets worse I’m afraid,’ Tommy said as he scratched the side of his forehead. ‘But before I tell you, can I have another drink, something a little stronger this time?’
William grabbed the whisky bottle and a clean glass from the sideboard. ‘Well?’ he said as he handed Tommy the glass. ’Get on with it, we haven’t got all night.’
Tommy took a swig and looked into the glass, then his eyes lifted and he looked back at William. He was enjoying watching William squirm. ‘Before Isabelle left for England, she went to the Northside Hospital for a check up. I suppose she wanted to make sure that the pregnancy was still viable. You know, to make sure that she was still pregnant. Imagine if she had gone to all the trouble of travelling to England for nothing. Her plan was to have the baby in London, adopt it out and return home as if nothing had happened. Very calculating our mother, don’t you think William?’
William didn’t say a word.
When Tommy realised William wasn’t going to say anything, he continued. ‘Well this is where Rose comes into the picture. Rose Evans just happened to be sitting next to mother in the waiting room. Rose had lost her baby, an early term miscarriage apparently. Her parents had already kicked her out of home and the father had done a runner. Isabelle being the sort of person who could see an opportunity when there was one, took advantage of the situation and came up with a plan which would benefit them both.
Isabelle and Rose travelled to London on the SS Arcadia. She had it planned well. She paid for Rose’s passage on what you call a slow boat to London and arrived at Tilbury Dock where she was met by her cousin, Hetti Blakehurst. She didn’t tell her parents she was in the country, all very hush, hush.’ Tommy took another mouthful of whisky and continued. ‘It was all organised, Rose would be recorded on the birth certificate as the birth mother and Douglas Phillips as the father, a fictitious name Rose had thought up. Isabelle had already organized a midwife who was open to a bribe or baby bonus as Isabelle called it and her cousin Hetti worked at the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages so falsifying the records was straightforward. Isabelle gave birth to you three months after arriving on English soil and then just handed you over to Rose. With no family to speak of, Rose was more than happy to go ahead with the arrangement if it meant that she would have the baby she longed for. Simple, really. Apparently, nobody asked any questions, either here, or in England. Rose was your mother, a mysterious man called Douglas Phillips was your father and you were their son. Isabelle stuck to her side of the bargain and supported you and Rose financially until you left school. After going through her bank accounts it looks like she paid for some of your university fees as well.’
‘But why did Isabelle go to all the trouble of taking Rose with her. Why not simply adopt me out and then return home?’ William asked.
‘Isabelle realised that she couldn’t go through the whole business on her own. She needed Rose for support and companionship. She knew Rose would look after her. After all, you have to remember Rose was a stakeholder in all of this. And as far as adoption, I can only assume that she didn’t want her name to be associated with any official record of your birth. Isabelle and Rose had a pact based on guilt and loss, but in the end they both won out. Isabelle's respectability remained intact and Rose had the baby she thought she had lost forever. Rose sent photos of you, but I don’t think Isabelle was that interested or maybe she just wanted to forget the whole thing. As far as she was concerned, she had only one son and that son was me, the one and only, Tommy Seymour Dwyer.’
They sat in silence.
William didn't know what to say. Words failed him as he stormed out of the apartment and left Suellyn and Tommy sitting together in the lounge-room. Neither of them knew where to look or what to do.
‘You should have told me Tommy, you should have told me from the beginning that William was your brother. I would never have got involved with you if I’d known. What am
I supposed to do now?’
‘You’ll have to work it out for yourself Suellyn. I’m fed up with all this drama. At least the truth’s out now.’ Tommy pulled himself up from the lounge and walked towards the door. He was a little unsteady on his feet, he didn’t know whether it was from the alcohol or from all the emotion that had been floating around the apartment. He turned and looked at Suellyn sitting on the ottoman clutching the glass of whisky in her hand, her hair was loose. ‘Don’t worry Suellyn, don’t get up on my account, I’ll see myself out. I’m staying at The Barclay Hotel in town if you want to talk.’
Suellyn stared after him as the door closed behind him.