CHAPTER VIII
DICK"S DILEMMA
Dick had been shocked, and worse still found that he could not even tell his wife how he had felt about it all. His sister had been having an affair for twenty years with an older man, an older man they had all known from their childhood, and most of those years he was married!
He tried to rationalise things in his own mind. He did not see Dot's behaviour as immoral, he just couldn't understand it. Over the years he thought she must have had boyfriends, but she never mentioned anyone, she wrote to him in America almost every week and there was a lot of news in her letters but never anything about men. There had been a short time, when he had heard from her about Nancy and Daisy, when he even thought perhaps she was like that too. 'Like that', he couldn't believe what he was thinking, he was happy for Nancy, he had respected her for years, and when she had met up again with Daisy they seemed such an obvious couple.
But Dot? A married man? Was he being overprotective? He felt responsible for his sister, but how could he have been when he was living on the other side of the Atlantic? It occurred to him that they never discussed friendships of any sort other than those they made in childhood, it just never arose. He knew nothing of Dot's 'private' life and, of course, she knew nothing of his; not that there was much to tell. Given his wartime work, and his post-war work, he rarely met women who were interested in the things he was, or understood some of the things he worked on. At Bletchley very few of the code-breakers or those that worked with Tommy Flowers were women, maybe four or five, not that there were none capable, they were just not encouraged. He remembered there was one or two at University, their ability at logic was better than his, what happened to them?
None of these thoughts helped him understand Dot's behaviour. To make it worse, his wife knew.
Titty knew!
He admired her loyalty, but wondered why it extended to exclude him. Then he remembered his work in the war years, who did he tell? Nobody, he was even reluctant to tell Susan in the sixties even though she made it very clear to him she knew. So perhaps Titty's loyalty was not so unusual.
Poor Dot, all that money, what was she going to do with it. She had made it very clear she didn't want it, why, he couldn't quite understand. She wasn't wealthy, it would give her a comfortable life; he supposed she felt she didn't deserve it. But she did, she had been loyal to Timothy, she had caused no trouble when she could have done. No, he thought, this doesn't make sense.
Titty called to him from the kitchen.
"Dick, can you help me?" As he walked through to her he answered.
"Yes, of course." Titty closed the kitchen door as soon as he came in the room.
"Actually I don't need help, Dot's gone to try and get some sleep. What are we going to do?"
"There's not much we can do. She can't refuse it, and if she did the wife may get to find out where it went to."
"Can a solicitor actually hide a bequest like that?"
"I assume he can and that's why Timothy made it part of a trust, the wife will never know unless she spends money going to court, but she's bound to wonder what this trust is for."
"I'm sorry Dick." Titty walked across and kissed him.
"What for, you haven't done anything to be sorry for."
"I didn't tell you about Dot and Timothy, I nearly have over the years, many times."
"You were loyal to Dot, what you knew didn't effect me in any way, so why should you have told me?"