Free The Reunion by R J Gould Page A

at the reunion
before accepting his invitation to meet up the following Wednesday evening
after work for a drink at The Greyhound. He was a teenager again, his heart
racing as he asked her, then mumbling incoherently after she had accepted.
    He passed Junction 14, the Milton Keynes turnoff. This
was almost half way and so far so good. After listening to ‘From Our Own
Correspondent’ on Radio 4 he switched it off. He needed to concentrate on how
best to tell his mother about the disintegration of his marriage. She would be devastated;
she was very fond of Jane. She was from the generation of female stay-at-homes with
life devoted to supporting her husband and children, and for her a closely knit
family was paramount.
    David had been her favourite. She’d made no attempt to
hide this and it had created considerable tension between him and his sister Charlotte.
Day in day out, as they stepped through the front door after school, the two
children had been greeted enthusiastically with ‘tea dears?’ His routine reply
of ‘yes please, mum’ was swiftly followed by her bringing a pot of tea and
plate of biscuits into the lounge. Charlotte usually declined the offer to join
them, intent on going straight to her bedroom to blast her punk music. They
always sat on the same two armchairs. His mother then endeavoured to drag out
any detail she could about his school day. She was proud of even the smallest
achievements. The older he got the less he revealed and now, approaching thirty
years on, there was a tinge of guilt about how he had shunned her, particularly
when she most needed his support and affection.
    He could still visualise the ashen faced, swollen eyed
mother who met him at the front door on the day his father died. A policewoman
was supporting her. As he stepped in she rushed up and squeezed him with
extraordinary force.
    "Daddy's dead," she wailed. "Daddy’s
dead," over and over again. "My poor Cyril."
    A heart attack. At work. No warning and no second chance.
Dead on arrival at hospital. David was seventeen and Charlotte was two years
older.
    His mother struggled to cope and considerable responsibility
was placed on Charlotte and his own young shoulders. Between tears she would
reminisce about family times together. The same stories over and over again. Journeys
to the seaside in their Ford Capri. Competitions for who would be the first to
spot the sea as they reached the summit of the South Downs. Breaking into a
refrain of Oh I do like to be beside the seaside! S triped windbreakers
providing protection from the harsh breeze. Thick grey clouds filling the sky,
obliterating the blue. A rapid collection of possessions and a dash back to the
car. Then the slow journey home, stretched out, exhausted, the two children
falling asleep on the back seat. He was unsure which parts of the stories were
genuine memories and which were family mythologies.
    A few months after his father’s death he left for
university, a planned exodus to far away Exeter with the strong intention never
to return home to live. ‘The Great Escape’ Charlotte called it, resenting David
for the resulting additional responsibility she had to endure. She didn’t go to
university; she worked as a secretary in a local estate agent’s office. From
there she plotted her own getaway, achieved four years after their father’s
death when she married one of the estate agents.
    It was many years later when they found out that the
official account of their father’s death at work wasn’t quite the truth. He was
having an affair with a colleague and died astride her on her bed. That morning
over breakfast he’d informed his family he was going to be late home. ‘I’m
rushed off my feet,’ he’d said. His mother knew the truth all along of course
because the emergency team were called to the distraught woman’s flat. The
cause of death was recorded as a heart attack brought on by physical exertion. Their
mother had protected them from the facts