Once I Was A Soldier

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Once I Was A Soldier - book excerpt

Chapter One 

Two Years Earlier In November 1992

When Margret Elizabeth Iverson passed suddenly away her husband, Albert, quickly descended into a darkness of sorrow from which he never recovered. The medical diagnosis, as stated on his death certificate sixteen days after his wife had left him, did not recognise grief as the reason for his demise. It identified a weak heart as the primary cause, initially inflicted when he was five years of age and suffered rheumatic fever. The fact that his heart failure happened so soon after Margret’s death was said to be nothing but a coincidence. Melissa, their only living child, disagreed with that view. She checked the bathroom cabinet where Albert kept his medication the day after his death.

There was almost half a month’s supply of blood-thinning tablets along with his diabetic and sundry medication which she found odd, as it was she who had arranged the collection of his usual twenty-eight-day prescription from the town’s chemist; exactly twenty-three days ago. There should only have been five days’ supply left, she said silently to herself, before loudly adding, “Daddy,” said with tears wheeling in her eyes, “how could you do this to me?” knowing full well that no answer could come from the private ambulance in which he’d been taken from Iverson Hall and there was no one else who could supply an answer.

* * *

The Iversons had enjoyed their wealthy status since Melissa’s great-great-grandfather developed the successful use of a cylindrical wrought iron tunnelling device and then the linings used inside those tunnels that were beginning to criss-cross London, then Europe and North and South America in underground railways systems. It was his money and enterprise that bought the foundries and smelting works which in time had laid the foundation for the Iverson Iron and Steel Company that Albert had managed from 1968 at the age of thirty-nine until his untimely death, at the age of sixty-three. Now it was to be Melissa’s responsibility and the one she had emphatically shied away from whenever mentioned by Albert.

* * *

          “You remind me of a lonely old man standing over the toilet pan taking a long slow, excruciatingly painful piss over and over again before realising that something in his life is drastically wrong. I’m telling you that I will not become a slave to some smelly, filthy industry like you have done, for the rest of all my life. I have my own life ahead of me and I intend to lead it in the manner I choose. It’s not my fault that Mother could not bear you another son to carry the bloody family name on and you can’t keep punishing me for Frederick’s death. It was a bullet that killed him, not me! His choice to join the army, not mine. I never forced him nor wanted him to leave. He was the only one in this house that I liked!” She took a deep breath before she continued her denunciation of her family’s heritage.

          “I’ve sat with you at those board meetings and I’ve been treated as if I don’t exist. Men like them despise women in general and particularly young ones like me. They do not need to see me once a month for an opinion on what’s happening in the iron and steel market and quite frankly I find York old, antiquated and boring. In fact, I find the whole of Yorkshire the same! What I know about steel fabrication could be written on the tip of my lipstick. And they know it! They tolerate me because of you, Father. As far as I’m concerned when you’re gone I’m selling your majority shareholding and be done with all their pretend smiles and platitudes.”

* * *

In so many ways Melissa mirrored her father and not only in appearance. She shared his height, just under five foot eleven inches and the colour of his hair; black as the freshly mined coal that was carried daily to the factories. His hair, however, was straight, as was her mother’s, but it was only in her childhood that she complained about her curls. He was strongly built, being wide-shouldered and slim at the waist, whereas Melissa’s build was acutely feminine in every degree. The close-set emerald green eye colouring came from him, as did her stubbornness, her temper and determination to succeed. But her measure of success was not one she shared with him. This defiant disposition was on show as Melissa raged at Albert on the evening of the day of Margret’s late October funeral.

          “I’ve had enough of this constant nagging away at me. I will not take on those factories. They go as soon as you go. The same day, the same hour! The more you go on about it the more chance there is of me phoning your broker than calling for an ambulance if you keel over like Mother. Leave it alone, Father, or I swear ……” She had no need to finish her sentence as Albert knew exactly what she would have sworn to do next.

But it was a subject that he couldn’t leave alone. For those sixteen days that Albert had Melissa to himself the two of them fought ferociously, especially when Albert appealed to his daughter’s benevolent side.

          “There are the employees, Melissa. You must consider them before you barter their livelihood away for your own greed. A good many of them have for generations worked for our family since the foundries were first established. There is no other work in most of the areas available to them. If you were to sell our holdings in one go, confidence in our stability would plummet overnight. With the present state of the steel market being what it is that action could be devastating. Think about it another way. Run the business through an advisor. I’ll find you one. You have your whole life ahead of you to fulfil your ambitions, after all you’re only just out of university. There’s ample time. One day you’ll no doubt marry and have children. It’s common practice now for a wife to add her family name to that of her husband. If you have a son there will be the legacy of more than a hundred of years of Iverson business to inherit, not just mere money. Give a thought to all those people who will be affected by your decision before it’s too late.”

Unfortunately, if there was a caring side to his daughter it wasn’t to be found on this or any of the other days they had together.

          “Why would I be in the least bit interested in people I’ve never met nor am likely to, Father! Would they care about me? Of course they wouldn’t. As for marrying; no thank you. I’ve seen enough of your own to see that doesn’t work. Children! Where did that come from? Any thought of me mothering a snivelling, screaming child to carry on your name can be put right out of your head because that will never happen. No, the factories will close and the sooner the better. Of course, none of this matters whilst you’re around and who knows how long…?” She turned from the fireplace where she had stood warming herself, to see that her father had left the room. She gave no thought to his sombre mood nor any to his pleas for humility. Although she knew the meaning of that word, at the age of twenty-three it was not something she possessed. 

Albert had felt every vitriolic word of what she said until they stabbed his heart into submission. She was right about his marriage. Some things have to be endured for the good of all, he had often said to his wife, who in turn had agreed, but here was his daughter who would not put a single person in front of her self-interest. He retreated to a room on the ground floor which for almost a year had served as his bedroom as well as his place of work. No longer able to climb the twenty-one stairs of the family’s sprawling ancestral mansion outside Hollow Meadow, on the outskirts of Sheffield in Yorkshire, he fell heavily into his favourite, olive coloured, worn wingback leather chair and stared at his desk. His determined gaze fixed on the tarnished silver-framed photograph of a uniformed young man; his son, Frederick.

          “Things would have been different if you had lived, Freddie, my boy. Perhaps, even Melissa would have grown up differently. I have nothing to live for now that your mother has passed away and there’s nothing I can do to keep the factories in this family’s name. But I will not allow them to be sold simply to fill your sister’s purse, to be wasted away on useless men and her other frivolous pastimes.”

He reached for the decanter of brandy which was always close at hand, put there by his ‘man’ Joseph. It was beside him with his glass on the fireside table. On pouring a large measure he sat in silence, fondly reminiscing on more enjoyable times when the house was busy with staff and entertaining was the norm. Nowadays, Joseph and his wife Carol were the only staff at the house, but they were more friends than servants. Part-timers were hired when required and contractors used for the extensive gardens and grounds, but at least with Joseph’s help he was able to tend his grapevines in the conservatory. 

He gently lifted his son’s photo from its place and, cradling it in his spare hand, spoke as if the inanimate object had become alive with feelings and thoughts.

          “I could have given you the excitement you said you craved, Freddie. You could have found that alongside me in the world of corporate business instead of the Army as your chosen vocation. Your mother and I really did believe you when you told us that being a young subaltern meant that you would be kept clear of the action in Northern Ireland. Fools, weren’t we! Hindsight is a brutal companion.”

The depth of the self-examination into his conscience ran concurrent with his consumption of brandy, until he arrived at that point where he was questioning his most passionately held core values. This time his strangled voice was silent.

          Was I wrong to assume that either my son or daughter would want what I wanted so long ago now that I’ve forgotten the reasons behind the choice I made? Was it a choice, or did I just blindly follow the route I was expected to take as the only son? Was the work ethic I adhered to directly to blame for those miscarriages Margret had to suffer? Or was work the excuse I made for falling into bad company with the results of that too cruel for her to bear? So many hours away from home chasing new markets and potential customers as though my life depended on it. If that’s the case then I’ve been the fool and it’s Melissa who is wise wanting away from the business.

Finally came the depression-ridden thought that had lain dormant until released by the alcohol.

          Was there any point to my life, or, was I deluding everyone?

The inevitable anger was next as he concluded his conversation with his inner self, and took the only options left open to a normal thinking man when confronted by the enormity of abject disillusionment. He relinquished his grasp on his tangible life provided by his medication and renounced all claim to the reasons he had lived for. That was when normality died and Albert decided to stop living.

During this period of introspection he had been frugal with the truth. Perhaps, it was simply a clouded memory, or the memories of the many disagreements he’d had with his son banished from recollection through necessity. Only he knew the truth, but the inheritance of an iron and steel business was the primary cause of Frederick’s decision to join the Army and escape from his father and the same responsibility that reflected in Melissa’s emerald green eyes as she stared into that fire.

* * *

Before Frederick died so cruelly in an IRA ambush on the outskirts of Belfast he had developed into a strong-minded individual, tall, good-looking with a determined face and strikingly blue eyes, the very picture of his mother. His arrival was not unnaturally welcomed by both his parents, but that wasn’t the case when his sister arrived six years before the sniper’s bullet slapped through the army helmet he wore, killing him outright.

For reasons unclear to Melissa, Margret never took to her in an affectionate way. She was distant and aloof, laying blame on her for seemingly everything that was wrong in her own life. On the day Frederick died it came to a head. 

          It was her continual crying that drove Freddy from this house, Albert. Freddy’s dead because of her! I want nothing more to do with that child. Nothing!

In later life when she knew of those miscarriages Margret had, it was those that Melissa blamed, but in her early years away from Margret it was the nannies and housekeepers who took over a mother’s role, then, when of school age, she was sent off as a boarder for her elementary schooling and for her secondary education. At the age of eighteen her enrolment at university lifted the tension at Iverson Hall that happened on every weekend she spent with her parents. Albert tried his best to be there for those, but when the demands of the iron and steel business were unavoidable Margret made excuses and left to stay in London at an address unfamiliar to Melissa.

It was through necessity that over her formative years Melissa developed into a self-sufficient individual, asking for little and wanting less. Her parents became strangers to her, two people she was aware of but with whom she shared nothing in common other than an aversion to each other’s standards and morality. She quickly detached herself from the rigours of formality. University was where she found room for her simplistic appraisal of life that centred around the principle that one studied alone to achieve a success enjoyed alone, and one partied with those one chose rather than those forced upon one. 

Through choice she became confrontational, always having an answer for everything and never accepting fault. Through design she skipped in and out of amorous entanglements that added nothing to her happiness or advantage, and through dogged hard work she gained the degree of education she was after. However, that education came only with prestigious letters after her name; it did not come with any degree of certification into the understanding of human life.

Clothes are easily changed, but a person’s skin is the fabric containing the vital forces of life that unless hit by a thunderbolt remain the characteristics of that person until death. Melissa did not have to wait quite that long for her change on the road to her own Damascus, but she came perilously close.

Wednesday 22nd November 1992

The day after her father’s interment in the family mausoleum, Melissa paid a visit to the manager of the private bank in the city of Leeds that handled her father’s and his company’s business banking affairs, ostensibly to discuss the running of the six factories in the family’s Iron and Steel Company. Her real intentions were far from that obvious.

          “Please accept the bank’s sincere condolences for your tragic loss, Miss Iverson. We were all so shocked to hear of your father’s death. I must say that when I saw him he did look exhausted and under tremendous strain. It cannot have been easy on either of you since Mrs Iverson’s passing.”

          “When did you see him last?” she asked, somewhat confused by her father’s visit she was unaware of.

          “Let me see now.” He checked his desk diary. “Yes I have it here. A week ago on the fifteenth! I followed his instructions as to the ownership of the freeholds of the factories and his personal shareholdings in the business. I was under the impression that he had discussed it all with you!” His consoling countenance was quickly replaced by one of bewilderment.

          “Were you indeed. And what precisely were those instructions, Mr Bateman?” Melissa asked belligerently.

          “I’m afraid I’m unable to say, Madam,” he replied, conscious of the minefield that might lie ahead. “His plans are now in the hands of the company secretary in London and without his authority my hands are tied. But I can say this much. It would be in your best interests to visit your solicitors. Lord Belsize is in receipt of your late father’s will. That’s where your father told me he was off to when he left these offices last Wednesday.”

          “Are all of his banking accounts closed?” she asked, flabbergasted.

          “All related to the business are, Miss Iverson, but his personal account and your own of course are not. They are operational as normal. Would you like a balance whilst you’re here?” he replied, uncomfortable with the conversation and hoping that it would end soon.

A taut, nervous “of both please” was uttered in reply by the emotionally shaken Melissa. 

          “Yes, I can give you those. You will need a letter of probate before any transfer can be made from Mr Iverson’s account to your own and, for that matter, those in your mother’s name to your own account. But your solicitor will see to all those technicalities, I’m sure.”

The short meeting was concluded much to the bank manager’s relief but not Melissa’s. She was somewhere between being confounded by her father’s secrecy and in admiration of his deceit. She was speechless as she left the building on her way to the station and the next train to London.

          What have you done, Father? was the nagging question that travelled with her for the next three hours.