Jac’s children were not convinced (ref. the preceding post) and knowing their mother had wanted only their security they felt unwilling to accept Jim Perrin’s story of her ‘last wish’;  they were well aware their landlord had given Jac his assurance that they would be able to take over the tenancy should the need arise…

They told their ‘Welsh’ aunt about the conversation and she drove over to their house to discuss this  latest development.  She had spoken with Jac at great length in the recent days — as had each of her sisters — and she was able to say with certainty that there could have been no such ‘last wish’. Indeed Jac’s last thoughts had been quite otherwise: they were concerned with how Jim Perrin would treat her children if he did have control over them, and knowing how badly he had treated them she was deeply anxious. Her ‘Welsh’ sister had reassured her as best she could and had faithfully promised her that she would protect them should it become necessary.

For the record:  Jim Perrin lied when he wrote that he was with Jac when she died, nor had he been, for many hours, at her bedside whilst she was alive.  He had left her quite alone, early on the previous evening,  yet afterwards he spoke with two of her sisters in phone calls, telling them that she ‘was much better’, ref. our post Our account of Jac’s illness — part three and, in the period between taking her into hospital in Chester on Wednesday,  gravely ill with her cancer,  he had made time to leave her and to drive to Derbyshire where, he wrote, he stayed with friends. ref. our post Our account of Jac’s illness — part four — before he ‘hurried back to her side’!

Nevertheless, despite certainly realizing how desperately ill she had become, ref. his own descriptions of that time — he had told two of her sisters only  that night, when she was dying, that he ‘thought she was improving’ and gave them no sense of any urgency.

It was her ‘Welsh’ sister, together with Jac’s daughter and her boyfriend, who were with Jac at the last moment of her life, ref. the preceding post, and Jim Perrin arrived so extremely late (and long after she had died) that we were all mystified by his delay — he never did explain himself…

Jim Perrin’s invention of her ‘last wish’ was revealing not only in its cynical absurdity but as an example of his completely unscrupulous behaviour and lack of moral fibre when dealing with those — man, woman or child — by whom he means in any way to profit.

*     *     *     *     *

When his stratagem failed, and within weeks he had left the house, in a rage as pure as poison he wrote the ‘anonymous’ and falsely accusatory letter to their landlord:  it was an attempt through deep-brooded malevolence to cause Jac’s children to be evicted. We posted this ‘anonymous’ letter with a transcript and the professional analysis, in earlier posts.

When writing of this period in his book West he said about the house and its surroundings:  ‘It never felt like home’. (He may say so, nevertheless he had schemed to make it his own,) and described his feelings:  ‘But not so glad as I was to leave that dreadful place in the dip of the moors to which I never returned’. It was BECAUSE he had failed to manipulate the take-over of the tenancy…

Yet, had his plan materialised and his desired ‘possession-in-tenancy’ been achieved, he certainly would not have left nor gone ‘West’ — faute de mieux — it had all along been his determined intention to continue living there, in our sister’s house, after her death.

Jac’s sisters.