Abandoned (14 page)

Chapter 30

T
hen I eventually found out who my father was I was fourteen years old. I was sitting cross-legged on a bed opposite Kathy in the Savoy hotel, and had been guessing. Until then I’d been told me that my father was dead, but as I got older I wanted more information than that, wanted to piece my identity together. And for some reason she finally decided to tell me the truth.

She told me he wasn’t dead, but that she had been waiting until I was old enough to understand.

‘He wants to meet you,’ she said.

‘When?’

‘He’ll be joining us on Monday,’ she said.

Thoughts were going through my mind so quickly I could hardly process them. I suppressed a nervous laugh and stared at her, trying to guess her feelings. But when it came to emotions, Kathy had always been as unfathomable as I was; I had no idea what she was thinking. I watched her place her cup back on its saucer, and dab her lips with the corner of the linen napkin spread across her lap. Everything she did seemed to be for an audience, a bit unnatural—‘all show’, I heard my uncle’s voice say loudly in my head. I blinked it away, but his words brought back memories my mind had been trying to bury for years, and particularly of all those times he had wanted to know who my father was.

She wasn’t pushing me for a response and I still didn’t have one. I just felt flat. Dozens of questions came into my mind, but none would settle. I couldn’t believe that my father was alive and I was finally going to find out who he was.

‘He’ll join us on Monday,’ she’d said, saying it in a way that made us sound like a family: a mother and daughter waiting for Daddy to arrive home for supper.

She wouldn’t tell me who he was, though, or anything else about him. She said they had decided to wait until Monday, to tell me together. It felt like they were almost treating it as a game; him letting her break the news first, expecting me to wait a whole weekend until we went to Heathrow to meet him, saying she’d promised him she wouldn’t tell.

‘We agreed,’ she said, leaning back on the bed on her elbows and smiling warmly. I couldn’t bear the suspense or understand the reason for it. One bombshell was enough. I wanted to know who my father was before he arrived so I could prepare a reaction. Kathy was evidently enjoying the game of happy families she was playing. She seemed to relax and her face lit up in a way I hadn’t seen before. We were suddenly a family unit and she looked like the cat who had finally got the cream.

I soon fell into the new role, becoming intrigued and more and more excited at the prospect of being part of someone’s family again—replacing Kathy in my mind with Mummy, of course. All evening I plied her with questions about him. It was fun for both of us for a while. I sat guessing aloud who he could be, becoming more and more outrageous with my suggestions and the questions I asked to narrow him down. When she told me that he was looking forward to meeting me at last I giggled nervously, feeling everything at once.

‘Is he?’ I asked, smearing Vaseline on my lips, and trying to show I wasn’t that concerned.

‘Of course. He loves you.’

It was hard to imagine being the focus of someone’s love all those years and not knowing about it.

I’d already wrestled some information from her: I knew he was Irish, and her strained expression when I asked told me that I had already met him on one of my visits. I tried to recall all the Irishmen I’d ever met, calling out half-remembered names or descriptions randomly, groaning into the pillow as I considered the awfulness of some of the possibilities. Kathy’s usual reserve around me fell away too, and her laughter seemed easy and genuine; the way she laughed with everyone else.

I decided to be more systematic, to work out who he was by a process of elimination. I started by ruling out Brendan.

‘It isn’t him, is it?’ I said.

It wasn’t really a question. I said it dismissing him, as my mind raced on searching my memory for other men it might have been. Brendan had already told me it wasn’t him anyhow. Driving alongside the canal on the way back to school at the start of the summer term the year before, I’d asked him out of the blue if he was my father. I didn’t dare look at him, staring out at the long chain of barges roped to the sides of the canal as we passed.

When he said that he wasn’t I blushed, remembering all the times as a little girl that I had secretly wanted it to be him. Anyway, if it had been Brendan, Mummy would have known. Eventually she would have given in and told my uncle during all those years he was convinced it was Brendan, rather than go through all those arguments, all that drunken rage and violence. Much as she loved her younger sister, and would have wanted to keep her secrets and protect her, she wouldn’t have gone through all that if she could simply have told him who the father was. Also, she was my mother by then and no mother would have let her child endure all that name-calling and fighting. It would have broken her heart to watch her child suffering like that. She would have screamed it out as loudly as she could. Eventually.

I saw Kathy’s face flood with colour when I said that it wasn’t Brendan. Although there was hardly any change of expression and her eyes were downcast, she was clearly agitated, unconsciously twirling the ring on her finger. Waves of panic rolled through me as I watched the flush work its way up her neck and spread across her face, and she must have seen the colour drain from mine. I felt my whole past rearrange itself in a flash.

‘It’s not…is it?’ I asked, desperate for the answer to be no, but reading a yes from her face even before she finally nodded.

A stampede of memories came into my head: twelve years of fists and screaming and all-night arguments. A whole childhood of Mummy answering in a thousand ways that‘Honest to God…I swear on my father’s life,’ she didn’t know who Kathy’s‘fancy-man’ was,‘but I know for a fact that it’s not Brendan Walsh.’

As the years had gone by, and I came to like Brendan more and more, I felt disappointed that it wasn’t him. He was always so different from the other men in our lives: gentle and kind and sensitive. But he was always Mummy’s weapon of last resort too. She had threatened my uncle so many times that Brendan was involved in the IRA (though of course he wasn’t), and that one phone call from her‘was all it would take’.

‘All it would take for
what
?’ my uncle would scream. Then the insults and obscenities he kept exclusively for Brendan would begin, the special lexicon of hate he reserved for him unleashed like furies around our front room.

‘Why are you lying for them?’ he’d roar.‘Tell me who the father is, or their bastard is out,’ he’d say, leaping over to punch me for crying. And all the time it had been Brendan.

‘Did Mummy know?’ I finally asked, getting it out at last.

She looked almost surprised by the question. She still had no idea exactly how much trouble she had caused by flitting in and out of our house and our lives over the years.

‘Yes,’ she said, quietly, but with no real sense of apology.‘Mummy always knew.’

I couldn’t have said whether I felt angry or shocked or betrayed. Nothing made sense. Not anything. Why wouldn’t Mummy have told my uncle if she knew? Kathy couldn’t have realised how important it was for me to know whether Mummy had known. The thought that Kathy and Brendan had been having an affair all the time, betraying his wife and daughters, shocked and appalled me. I had truly but naively chosen to believe over the years that they were just good friends—him helping her out because she never had anyone else. I even felt guilty, that I was somehow implicated in the whole deception now. But the fact that Mummy knew who my father was all along, yet kept her sister’s secret for her all those years, stunned me.

I couldn’t speak, no words came out. I just broke down in floods of tears. Over and over I heard Kathy asking me what was wrong and why I was crying, and please could I tell her what I was thinking—but her voice came from somewhere far away and I couldn’t respond. I wanted to, and I wanted to stop crying. I was nauseous and exhausted from it; my head was pounding but inside it was numb. All I could think was what Mummy had been put through all those years because of me being there, just because they forced her to lie about Brendan in order to protect themselves. They could have helped her so much by telling my uncle the truth.

Kathy came and sat on the edge of the bed and put her arm across my shoulders. I tensed under her touch, feeling her rings through the thin wool of my sweater as she slowly rubbed my back. I had longed for somebody’s touch all those years but I shrugged her away and cradled my head in my hands. I had the kind of headache I’d had as a child, like all the bones of my skull were being crushed, my brain squeezed to the size and tightness of a fist.

She crossed to the bathroom. I heard the screech of the taps and water gushing into the hand basin and then the swish of her skirt coming back towards me.‘Here,’ she said, taking my hand and lifting it up to a cold, wet flannel. Her touch was so light.‘I wish you would tell me what you’re thinking…This is difficult for me…Is it good, or bad? Just nod.’

I wanted to tell her all the things we’d gone through with my uncle because they wouldn’t tell him who my father was, but I couldn’t. In my head I heard Mummy say,‘Don’t tell her, I don’t want them looking down on me.’ So I didn’t, because I didn’t want that either.

Kathy lit another cigarette and tried to phone Brendan.‘You’re frightening me,’ she said.‘I don’t know what you might do.’

I went and locked myself in the bathroom. When I came out several hours later I felt so light-headed and weak that I could hardly walk to the bed. Even the blankets touching my head hurt. Kathy was already curled in the other bed next to me with the lights off and her back turned. Once I was in bed she told me in a small, shaky voice that she had phoned Brendan and he would be coming over the following morning now instead. She was scared of being alone with me; but it was me who was most scared. Why couldn’t they see that?

Chapter 31

T
he next day we went to Heathrow to meet him. I hadn’t wanted to go but Kathy insisted. I trailed reluctantly through the airport behind her, feeling tense and nauseous and ashamed of them both.

Brendan hardly changed over the years. He came through Arrivals with his long, loose stride, wearing his winter coat open over his pinstriped suit and swinging his overnight bag. He looked the same as I remember him walking along the landing of our flats all those years ago, tall and athletic. But this time he was grinning sheepishly, making him look more boyish than ever. My eyes welled up again and I wanted to run in the opposite direction. I felt so deceived by them both.

I also felt a bit disappointed to find out that my father was‘just’ Brendan, having fantasised about who else it might have been most of my life. He walked over to say hello, putting out his hand to touch mine, but I shoved both hands into the pockets of my duffle coat and looked away. There was a long, awkward silence, the three of us just standing there as around us‘normal’ families talked and laughed and flung their arms around each other. He gave Kathy a peck on the cheek for the first time ever in front of me and I turned away, embarrassed in case anyone knew they were having an affair. I felt like I was intruding on something now; I felt even more shut out.

Brendan started writing me long letters at school to win me around, one every fortnight. I pushed them down under the waistband of my skirt and read them upstairs in my room later, humiliated in case any of my friends saw them. The letters explained how they had met and everything that had happened, how much they had tried to stay apart and how much they both cared for me.

They stayed with me together more often after that, keen to explain things to me and to give me a bit of‘proper’ family life now I knew Brendan was my real father. It seemed a relief to both of them to talk about their affair with me. And knowing that I was one of the few people they could talk to about it made me feel valued in a strange way, and in some ways it brought us closer—although, as a teenager, I was still ashamed of them for it, especially since I knew Brendan’s wife and children.

They’d still arrive at hotels and leave a few days apart so they weren’t seen on the same flights. And Kathy would still hide in the bathroom when room service arrived so they weren’t seen in the room together in case the waiter or waitress was from Ireland and somehow knew them. But at least now I understood why.

‘It was true love. We tried to stay apart, but sometimes when a love like that comes along…’ Kathy said defensively, but almost dreamily, sitting prim and upright on the edge of the bed, picking at her room service meal as Brendan admired her every move. She was telling him more than me, both of them animated now that I knew who he was, unused to having anyone to tell their secret love to and enjoying having an audience for it.

I should have realised Brendan was my father; I resembled him in so many ways. His colouring was different to mine and I didn’t have his height or his heavy splattering of freckles, but behind them you could see me there. Our natures were very similar too. But no one ever mentioned the resemblance between us growing up, except Brendan himself occasionally. One day on the way to Hyde Park in a black taxi, he lifted my hand as I sat with him. He unclenched it gently, finger by finger, as my body tensed, and laid it palm to palm on his to measure it. My hot and clammy hand was half the size of his then but undeniably his in miniature—the same shape and proportions, the same narrow wrists and long, almost evenly-sized fingers—but at the time I didn’t think that meant he was related to me.

I had imagined things would change completely once I knew who my father was, but they didn’t. Especially now that it turned out to be Brendan. At times I could convince myself that my relationship with him and Kathy, and our playing‘happy families’ in hotel rooms for a few days at each end of my school holidays, was‘normal’ family life, but in truth I knew that it wasn’t.

He made an effort to get closer to me, giving me lots of attention, and now that I knew he was my father the promises piled up. He even talked about getting a‘family’ home for us to live in one day.

But inside I still felt like I didn’t belong anywhere. Even though Brendan said I could rely on him I knew I couldn’t, that his family and his own children—who could never know about me—would always come first.

Even before I found out who my father was, I had always known my existence was awkward for everyone. Eventually that feeling became too much, and almost two years later I decided everyone would be better off if I wasn’t around. I decided to end everything once and for all. I locked myself in the big, cold bathroom on the laundry corridor at school, the ‘haunted’ bathroom that everybody tried to avoid, and cut my wrist several times with a razor blade. Slumped there on the white painted floor, watching the blood spurt across the white planks, I completely expected and hoped to die. I’d taken painkillers beforehand and had a flannel in my mouth to muffle the screams, but the pain was excruciating and I couldn’t cut deep enough.

Eventually, when someone rapped at the door asking me how long I was going to be, I asked them to use another bathroom. But they kept coming back. When they had gone another time I knew I somehow had to get back to the dorm before someone discovered me and sent for an ambulance, which would prevent me from dying. I tightened my school tie around my wrist just above the cut, pulling it as tight as I could with my teeth and other hand, cleaned up as best I could and bundled several hand towels around it. The lights were already out and everyone was asleep and I lay in bed with the towels wrapped around my arm soaked in blood, expecting to fall into a coma and not wake up next morning. But I did. The bleeding had stopped. Although the gashes were pretty messy for a long time, with a lot of effort I managed to conceal it all.

Things were even more unsettled after that. I felt more self-conscious and ashamed. It was another secret to hide, another incident to alienate me. I withdrew from my friends more and more—I didn’t need
anyone,
I told myself.

That half-term Brendan was meant to meet me from the train, but he wasn’t at the station. He was never reliable, always turning up late and breathless or getting arrangements wrong. We weren’t allowed to leave without someone meeting us, but eventually I slipped away from whoever was chaperoning us and waited all day on the spot where I had agreed to meet him if ever that happened. I was feeling on the outside of everything, watching everyone meeting and greeting around me. He was supposed to be there at 11 a.m. I phoned his home number and his wife said she didn’t know when he would be back, that he was away on business for a few days. I felt like telling her that I was the‘business’, but of course I didn’t. Hour after hour passed and I stood there at the station until 11 o’clock that night, ridiculously thinking that maybe he thought we were meeting at 11 p.m. rather than in the morning. Finally I went to the station police and a policewoman phoned the school for me.

She tried to chat to me, asking me about my family and what they did, and if I had any brothers and sisters, but every question felt like a trap and I shrugged most of them off. I had to censor everything, hold back, unable to be myself. I couldn’t tell anybody I had brothers and sisters because it would have seemed odd if I was the only one who went to boarding school. Even my best friends at school had never known. I couldn’t tell her where my‘parents’ lived in Ireland either, or give her a telephone number to call either of them at home, in case Brendan’s wife answered, or Kathy’s father. Nobody was supposed to know about me. I was a secret.

I knew my silence made people feel uncomfortable, but it was easier to tell them nothing than tell them the lies and half-truths I was supposed to. Most of my life was a secret now—nobody at school was allowed to know about my‘past life’ with Mummy and all my brothers and sisters. But if Mummy had had a telephone number I probably would have given her that, but she still didn’t have a phone then.

Although I had already missed my last connecting train, they arranged for me to go back on the last train part-way, and for a taxi to meet me and drive me all the way through the foggy countryside to school. It was well past midnight when I got there and I felt stiff and cold and sleepy. I decided to have a hot shower to warm myself up. I didn’t hear Matron coming until she ripped the shower curtain open angrily, demanding to know why I was having a shower at that time of night.

‘What were you doing all day at the station?’ she asked, her thin lips trembling with anger.

‘Waiting,’ I said, wrapping my arms around my dripping body, ashamed to be seen naked. It was only years later that I realised what conclusion she must have jumped to and why she was so angry.

I spent the rest of the half-term at school with the overseas girls who had no one in Britain to go to either. It was a small school, so they were all my friends and we had a nice time, but I still felt left out, lonely and intensely aware I was a burden to Kathy and Brendan.

Everybody else just got on with things, so I did too; I knew my feelings must be wrong, so I pushed them further and further down. I withdrew more and more and felt alienated, certain that nobody could understand me, and by the end of the year I felt I didn’t fit in at school either.

Staying with Kathy and Brendan in another hotel room, this time the Sheraton Skyline at Heathrow, I decided to tell them I wasn’t going back the following term; that I wasn’t going to school again, anywhere. There was no one to force me to. What could they do? They behaved like parents only when it suited them. I knew they’d be angry because the last thing they would want was the authorities getting involved.

I leaned back against the radiator in the hotel room telling Brendan of my decision. I felt almost detached, curious about what he would do as much as anything else. Deep down I wanted him to force me to go back, to take charge like a parent should if he really cared about me.

Brendan told me how selfish and ungrateful I was. That afternoon he stormed back to Ireland early and I was left wandering around Heathrow pretending there was nothing wrong. I’d wanted to be able to speak my mind, to shout and scream and tell him that I didn’t want him there, but I didn’t want him to actually walk away and leave me. I could never have told anyone that, though.

Marie and Peter let me stay at their house, even though they had two children by then and Marie was heavily pregnant with their third. There were only three bedrooms, and since I was in one, all three of her children had to share one room. Nobody said I wasn’t welcome, but once I was living there full-time I felt in the way. In the end I realised I had to go back to school but they had already told my headmistress I wasn’t going back, so for a term I went to the local girls’ comprehensive. It was a shock to the system after all those years at boarding school, and because of the time I’d missed I got moved back a year. I was soon bored with the classes and never made friends or settled in there.

No matter how kind Marie and Peter were and how lovely their house was, it never felt like a home I could really call my own. Brendan was paying them for my keep and I felt like a lodger, and still had this sense of longing for something I almost didn’t recognise any more.