The first time I met my stepmother was on her wedding day to my 83-year-old father. After a whirlwind courtship, he married her less than a year after my mother died. There are flower girls, designer dresses and lavish ceremonies more suited to couples a half-century younger.
But the most important thing was the first words she said to me: ‘Did you hear how I played the Merry Widow in church? Only I have buried two wives!’
Five days later my father died and that number increased to three.
And this woman who is a complete stranger, who has gatecrashed our tight-knit family, waltzed away with all the money my thrifty father has made in the distinguished 45-year banking career – figures nudging seven figures. All the poor mothers have helped him get by faithfully standing by him during his bad mood, drinking, frequent absenteeism, hypochondria and lying.
Journalist Glenys Roberts in her youth
It’s not just Dad’s money that is being held. There is a humble collection of china from my mother, Beatrix Potter bunnies and Alice In Wonderland figurines. China hurts more than money, because it is a reminder of my mother’s sweet and innocent character.
My stepmother was desperate for him to sell on the market stall before he got his big prize: the family home in lush Surrey, my dad’s generous pension and his sizable savings (never spent anything).
My father was the victim of a predatory marriage, which is considered a common occurrence between a young nubile woman and a senile old man who has been dating his nearest and dearest. But none of that applies to us.
Not only was his new stepmother the same age as Dad – it turned out that she had been his teenage girlfriend.
For ten years, since a gardening accident left my mother in a wheelchair and living in various care homes, my sister has been shopping, cooking and cleaning for my apparently deceased father. I work in London, where my son goes to school, but I try to visit him every weekend.
My mother died in 1992 – and my father’s response seemed so cruel, I could not forgive him. He refused to have anyone at the funeral but my sister and me, and even snatched his hand from mine when I tried to comfort him.
Then father came home, dug up all the yellow roses that mother liked and put them in the fire. Yes, they have a difficult relationship, but I think it should be a feeling of sadness rather than unkindness.
Despite his legendary meanness, his failure to enjoy anything if the spotlight is not on him, his negativity and pigheadedness, he is still my favorite, attractive, smart and oh-so-vulnerable.
After my mother died, my father went to North Wales for a bank dinner. He grew up there and started his amazing career as a tea boy in a small village branch in the National Province. And though he had become a big name in the City of London, he always wanted to go home, with a longing for the old country that afflicted the Welsh.
At dinner she sat next to her young lover, who had married two local bank managers and had cheated on the seating plan. As we learned later, he rejected her when she had no money. Now that she has made something of herself, she returns, using her womanly wiles to turn the old widower’s head.
My father returned to Surrey with a spring in his step. Soon there were daily calls and more trips to Wales. It’s the beginning of his heady rejuvenation – and who can blame a person for wanting to feel young again?
As a girl with her parents and sister on vacation in Wales
The miserly old hypochondriac whose only pleasure was a strange game of golf and a bottle of whiskey seemed very happy that I wanted to meet a new woman in his life. But all proposals were rejected.
I told my father he was welcome to stay with me in London, and tempted him with outings to the theater and dinners in the West End. He always said no. ‘She’s just a simple village girl,’ maintained the besotted father.
In hindsight, I realize this is a classic tactic of a predatory woman seeking to isolate her quarry for her own ends.
All the signs were there, but my brother and I couldn’t see it. Our pinching father has rarely indulged mother, even refusing to install central heating in the retirement home because he himself does not feel cold. He also won’t buy a new engagement ring when he loses the original one in the garden. But suddenly he flaunts his money in front of his old flame.
He lavished her with new dresses, promised her a trip abroad – and gave her that cherished china collection because she said she would be happy to have known my mother.
We were very happy to see him happy, although he had authorized it when my mother was ill, but it was not used.
Maybe we can control their finances? It’s impossible, because – while he also behaves like an irrational teenager – he can still discuss politics, do crossovers and drive; what reasons do we have?
Then came the day when he said to me: ‘When I kissed him, I felt like I was 19, and when we got married, he said I would be so happy, I wouldn’t need to take heart medicine anymore.’
Now, the alarm bells are ringing.
Glenys parents Marjorie and Stanley Roberts with their dog Robin
Marjorie and Stanley’s wedding day was in 1937. They remarried after Marjorie’s death in 1992.
This was the first time we heard about the wedding, and my father was not well. He had an early heart attack, suffered from angina and took several pills every morning. Will this unknown woman take care of him like my brother? The day before he moved permanently to Wales, he came to spend the night with me. I feel that as a high-flying professional with a very cautious streak, he has thought this all through.
I was waiting for some assurance that his family would still be a part of his life after this hasty marriage. When no one came, I firmly said: ‘Dad, we hardly know this woman – are you sure she doesn’t have another agenda?’
There was then a predictable torrent of invective intermingled with praise for her: ‘She is a wonderful little woman. He lives in a small village, he doesn’t know the way to the lawyer’s office.’ And with that he went to marry her.
My brother, my daughter and I forced ourselves to go to the party. As the breakfast glowed, I sat across from the bride and her best friend, a retired doctor. His new stepmother was inexplicably provocative. ‘Look at this ring,’ he said, holding out his left hand. ‘These emeralds were given to my first wife – oh, how she suffered. This diamond was given to my second wife – she kept it. This ruby ​​was given to me by your father. . .’ How could he say that to me? Is this my imagination, or is this a sign of things to come?
‘Take care of her,’ I said as they prepared for their honeymoon to the small hotel in Betws-y-Coed, where they had been dating 60 years ago.
Five days later, my phone rang at 8:30. He is a hotel manager in North Wales.
‘Your father is dead,’ he said.
Tired of disbelief, I asked after the stepmother and finally she came to the phone.
‘Will you stand with me?’ that’s all she said. Stand by him? What does he mean? What happened?
My father chose to trust his new bride to his family to remain an unfathomable traitor, Glenys said
Then he told me a story that I can’t remember. The ramshackle country hotel was no longer suitable for him, so he ordered my father to drive to a five-star hotel on the coast, where he arranged a party with his family.
My dear poor father, with no night vision and an aching heart, negotiated 100 miles of unlit Welsh mountain roads in the pouring rain, stopping for a slug of amyl nitrite for angina.
‘Why don’t you go back to the hotel?’ I asked.
‘We can’t,’ he said, ‘my family is waiting.’
‘Didn’t you call the doctor when you got to the coast?’
‘We can’t, dinner is ready.’
My father, who didn’t sleep past 9:00 PM for 20 years, didn’t go to bed until 1:00 AM, and he drank a lot of whiskey.
At 6 o’clock in the morning he was dead, and his widow made the first call with a doctor friend who signed the death certificate. There were no words to express the deep sorrow or suspicion, which the coroner also expressed. ‘I can’t spend public money,’ he told me, ‘because he’s an old man with a history of heart disease, but if I were you I’d have a pathology report’.
The report came back. There are no signs of heart medication to be taken for life, but no arsenic.
‘Everything is clear,’ said the pathologist triumphantly, taking a good look at the widow’s beautiful little woman, and her grandchildren attending the same school as her children.
‘Was he buried not cremated,’ advised the coroner. ‘If anything happens later.’ But the widow died.
Glenys with her sister Alun and her mother on holiday
So, a few weeks later, we returned to the funeral.
The train was late and he couldn’t get to the church because of the flood. We arrived to find a grieving widow anxiously watching the clock if we missed the crematorium slot.
When I later invited him to join us for a drink, he slammed the limousine door in his face and refused to speak to us ever again.
Later, this lovely little woman who didn’t know the way to the lawyer’s office, took us to court when I tried to protect the family by arguing that – even though the marriage law automatically revokes all previous wills, with all the money going to the spouse. unless a new will has been written – there is a case for his family to benefit because my father clearly wanted it in the will that was made up before.
It’s not good. We have no rights. This woman was his cousin. It is hopeless to ask him to show us the estate: he has no feelings for us.
More sadness is coming. He rejected all suggestions to spread his father’s ashes on the local hill where he played as a child, and has always trusted me as the only place where he felt free.
Then my sister had the best idea of ​​her life. They asked DHL to collect it from the church and bring it back to Surrey. There, he organized a ceremony at his mother’s grave.
‘Our father is buried with our mother,’ I wrote to Widow Merry. And thank God I never heard from him again. He had a fatal heart attack in a supermarket two years later and all my father’s hard-earned money went to a family he barely knew.
For years, my father chose to trust his new bride to his family to remain an unfathomable traitor. And it will take more time than I have left to forgive the one I once loved.
