Half-truths & White Lies (14 page)

The visit to Lydia sparked an interest in me that I hadn't
felt for a long time and I decided that I would piece
together my family tree in earnest. The only problem
was that with my parents and Grandma Fellows gone,
and Nana teetering on the brink of reality, I had no one
to ask about our family history other than my aunt. She
was unusually short with me when I approached her.

'You can count us all on the fingers of both hands.
You're wasting your time.'

'But what about Dad's father? There might be a story
there.'

'He left when Tom was very young. Your dad didn't
want to know who his own father was. If he's still alive
– and I very much doubt it – Tom obviously never
wanted him to meet you. So I would leave whatever
story there might be well and truly buried if I were you.'

'Did you know your grandparents?'

'A little.'

'Is there anything you can tell me about them?'

'They were old,' she said sarcastically.

I decided to consult the local register office. Not
knowing where to start, I found that I had to ask for
assistance, already feeling wobbly. The clerk found a
volume covering the five-year period from 1975 to
1980.

'I'm sorry,' he told me after helping me to search
under the year of my birth. 'There's nothing under your
name for that date.'

'Are you sure?' I could already feel that my eyes were
brimming with tears and I blinked to try and keep them
back.

'Absolutely sure.'

'There must be a mistake. Could you please check
again?' I tried to brush a tear away with a quick swipe of
the back of my hand while he was looking down the
columns to humour me.

'Are you all right, miss?'

'I'm fine. I'm just in a bit of a . . .' I was desperately
avoiding his gaze. 'Is there a . . . ?'

'Shall I get you a tissue?' he offered.

I nodded and he disappeared. I checked the next page
of columns and the page after that, then turned a
number of pages in frustration as much as anything
else. It was only when I reached the entries for 1980 that
I wondered if there would be an entry for my stillborn
brother. As I had no idea of his name, I focused on the
column for the mother's name. And there it was in black
and white. Laura Fellows gave birth to Derek James
Fellows on 25 July 1980. Only one detail was missing:
the father's name. Unusual for a married lady.

'Here we are.' I looked up guiltily from the register to
find that the clerk was holding a box of tissues. 'I see
you've had another look. Found anything?'

I shook my head. 'Where do I go from here?' I asked.

'You need to try the Family Records Centre if your
birth wasn't registered here. That's where the records
from all of the local offices are held. I'll write the details
down for you, but it would mean a trip down to
London.'

I could feel tears welling up again and was glad of
the tissues on offer. A trip to London was out of the
question. A walk into town had been as much as I could
handle.

'If you need the ladies,' he confided in me, 'there's a
washroom down there on the right. It says "Staff Only"
on the door, but that's just to stop people walking in off
the street.'

I tried to smile vaguely in his direction before
stumbling off in the direction that he had indicated.
Once inside the safety of a cubicle, I sat and allowed
myself the luxury of a few sobs before I made myself
take deep breaths and blew my nose. I would have liked
to have found the clerk and apologized, explaining that
my parents had recently been killed in a car crash and
that although I had thought I was ready to face the
world again, it was too soon. Aware of the effort that
would be involved in saying those few short words
aloud and accepting the pity that would follow, I
decided to leave him with the opinion that women are
hormonally imbalanced, emotional wrecks.

In need of comfort and unable to face an empty
house, I called on Lydia who prescribed a sit-down and
a cuppa, her solution to most of the world's problems.
'You'd better come on through.' She busied me into the
kitchen, mentioning as she passed the front room,
'Andrea's here, Kevin.' She chattered away as she boiled
the kettle and assembled the tea-making equipment
with all the seriousness that my father used to employ
when cleaning shoes. Then, after placing the pot on the
table, topping it with a padded tea cosy and arranging
cups and saucers, she sat with her forearms on the table
and her hands clasped together.

'Your turn.' She nodded with a smile. 'I'm all
ears.'

I told her about my trip to the local register office, my
dismay at having failed to trace my own records and
my discovery about my brother. I also told her that I
would have to put my search on hold as I couldn't face
a trip to London.

She looked thoughtful, 'Well, I just might be able to
help you out there. Won't be till next month, mind,
but I'm due a visit to see a dear old cousin of mine
who lives in Surrey. I go every year and we always treat
ourselves to a trip up to town to see a show. I've always
liked a good musical and, with the best will in the
world, we don't get a good musical round here, do we?
I'm sure I could persuade her to tag along. You give me
those details and I'll sort it.'

'Will they let you if you're not family?'

She smiled. 'You fill in a form giving a reason. I'll
write "family research". I just won't say whose family
I'm researching.'

I was so grateful that I almost burst into tears again.
She put one of her large arms around me and hugged
me to her. 'Ah, you see! There's always a solution. But
don't you go thanking me yet. You don't know what
news I'll have for you. Families have this knack of
throwing up a few surprises.'

'Mind if I have a word with Kevin?' I asked. 'I want to
ask what he thinks about something.'

'You go right ahead, love. He's in the front room
putting his feet up. I'll finish my tea. I haven't sat down
once all morning.'

'Hello, Kevin,' I announced myself and perched on an
armchair. He was slouched on the sofa, his shoulders
hunched up and his feet on the coffee table in front of
him. 'I hope you don't mind, but I thought you might
be able to give me some advice.'

'All right,' he said, uncertain, his eyes still focused on
the television.

'I've started to look into my family history and I've
found out enough to know that there's going to be a
couple of surprises in there. It looks like I might
have been adopted too. What do you think I should
do?'

'What do you want to do?' He answered me with a
question, only his mouth moving.

'I don't know. Why do you think you never looked at
your birth certificate?'

'Ah already know who Ahm.'

'Do you mean that you know who you are, or who
your birth parents are?'

'Both.'

'Is it important to you who your birth parents are?'

'Yes an' no.'

'Can you tell me why?'

'Yes, because Ah wanted to know they were good
people. No, because Ah already had Lydia an' Bill.'

'Don't you want to know why they gave you up?'

'If they hadn't, Ah wouldn't have lived with Lydia an'
Bill.'

'Did you wonder why they couldn't take care of you?'

''Course Ah did.'

'Did it make you angry?'

'Sometimes.'

'Have you ever met them?'

'Yes.'

'Spoken to them?'

'Aye.'

'Did they know who you were?'

'No.'

'Did you want to tell them who you are?'

'Nope.'

'Why not?'

'Ah didn't want to change anything. Ah like living
with Lydia. Ah couldn't have axed for better parents.'

'What do you think I should do?'

'D'yer think you know the answer already?'

'No. I just have this feeling.'

'Did you have a happy childhood?'

'Yes.'

'Would you have changed anything if you could?'

'No.'

He shrugged and I gathered that our conversation was
over. On the one hand, conversation with Kevin could
be frustrating, because he only answered exactly what
had been asked and volunteered so little. On the other
hand, he made things seem so refreshingly simple that
I wondered why I spent so many hours fretting over
unimportant details.

'Thanks, Kevin.' I stood and took my leave, and
wandered into the kitchen, where Lydia was drying up.

'You done out there?' she asked. 'Staying for lunch?'

'I think I'll be off now, if you don't mind.'

'But we'll be seeing you soon. And I'll let you know
how I get on.'

Despite Kevin's assurances, I felt that my life was on
hold until I had traced my birth details. Although I had
nothing concrete to go on, I couldn't stop my mind
from churning. I had always been told that I looked like
my father and we had been extremely close. I had never
looked remotely like my mother. I toyed with the
possibility that I might have been my father's child with
another woman. A groupie from the band, possibly.
That would also explain why I had never been told that
I was adopted. And as both my mother and father
obviously adored children, I assumed that they would
have only given my brother up for adoption if they
could not take care of him themselves. Possibly he'd
been disabled. Would there have been such a great
stigma about this that they would have pretended he
was stillborn? Like Kevin, I had enjoyed a very happy
childhood and I wouldn't have changed anything for
the world. But what was at first a welcome distraction
from the other thoughts that plagued me soon grew
into an obsession.

I started to quiz Uncle Pete about the band more and
more, especially about the people who hung around
with them. As always, he was a reliable source of information
and far more willing than my aunt. Even if
his memory needed a little jogging, he was usually able
to supply photographs. These were particularly useful as
he had enjoyed taking shots of people's reaction to the
band. He talked about how he had tried to capture the
atmosphere at the Spearheads' early gigs. In those days,
audiences dressed up just as much as the band and his
focus was on the most outrageous, among them Aunty
Faye showing a side of her I had never seen before. He
told me how bands like Pink Floyd and Genesis, with
their original line-ups, and artists like Bowie and Roxy
Music had introduced a theatrical side to music.
Although the Spearheads weren't influenced by the
punk explosion, its impact could be seen in the clothes
that the crowd wore, particularly with my aunt's art-school
group, who wanted to stand out and to shock.

'Your dad always said that the Spearheads would have
done better if punk hadn't happened,' Uncle Pete said.
'Tom thought that their moment was stolen from them.
After the Sex Pistols, everyone thought that they would
have a go. There was one Sex Pistols gig that was seen by
Peter Hook and Morrissey. Without the Sex Pistols we
wouldn't have had Joy Division or the Smiths. Plus,
there is nothing that affects record sales like the death of
an artist. Nineteen seventy-seven was a bad year for
music. First we lost Elvis, then Marc Bolan and most of
Lynyrd Skynyrd. That reminds me! All this talk and I
almost forgot! I thought you might be interested in this.'
He handed me a tatty white sleeve with a cut-away circle
in the middle. 'I found it when I was clearing up.'

'Is this what I think it is?' I asked, looking at him.

'It's probably a collector's item.'

I pulled the record from the sleeve and held it by the
edges as if it was a priceless antique. ' "The Spearheads",'
I read. ' "What Were You Thinkin' Of?" and "Sugar
Mama".'

'The B side is the cover of a Sonny Boy Williamson
track.'

'Can we play it?' I asked.

'One small problem, I'm afraid.' He shrugged apologetically.
'I don't own a record player any more. You're
going to need to find someone who still listens to vinyl.'

'I can keep it?'

'You should own a copy of the recordings of Tom
Fellows. I don't expect you've ever heard him playing
before. If there was any justice in this world, he would
have been up there with the best of them.'

'Have you got any photos of him rehearsing in the
garage?' It was there that I thought people might have
been relaxed enough to let down their guards. I spent
the afternoon trawling through face after face before
Uncle Pete mentioned to me, 'Of course, I was never at
their recordings or any of the gigs when they went on
tour. I was always working.'

'They went on tour?' That broadened the search
considerably.

'When you were very young. You and your mother
stayed with me so I could help out. You probably don't
remember. Faye would be able to tell you more about it.
The band sometimes stayed with her in London in the
early days.'

'Do you know where she lived?'

'Small place. Can't remember the name, but I do
remember that it was the last stop on the Tube. I went
there once myself, but that was years ago.'

I could almost hear my mother saying,
You're a cross
between my absolute two favourite people, so that makes you
my number-one girl
.

Was it possible that my father had had an affair with
my aunt? I remembered the photographs from the
album when my parents were so obviously in love, and
my aunt's distress that there were no photos of her. But
how could the same person who was attracted to my
mother also have been attracted to her sister, even if it
was only for one night? 'Chalk and cheese,' my father
used to say, shaking his head in disbelief. 'Who'd have
thought that two sisters could be so different.' Having
said that, the Faye in the photographs was not the Aunty
Faye I knew. She wasn't even the Faye I remembered as
a child. She was someone you would notice in a crowd
as they were watching you. Someone that you wouldn't
forget easily. Not obviously beautiful, but interesting.
Edgy. Dangerous-looking.