Half-truths & White Lies (15 page)

'Did my aunt ever go out with anyone in the band?' I
asked.

'Faye?' He frowned, as if it was possible that I might
have been talking about someone else.

'She looks like the girlfriend of a rock star. Or maybe
even one herself.'

'I loved the contrast between your mother and Faye.'
He didn't take the bait, or maybe he ignored it, but
instead enthused about a photograph he had found of
the two of them. 'They were completely different ends
of the spectrum. Looking at Faye in these shots, you'd
never believe that she was this shy little girl who
wouldn't say boo to a goose.'

'I was born seven months after my parents' wedding,'
I mused, trying to pull him back to my direction.

'Between you and me, you were a bit of a surprise.
Your parents actually thought that your father couldn't
have children. Your mother had no idea she was
pregnant when she got married. I don't want you to go
thinking that your parents were marched up the aisle.
Completely the opposite, in fact. I think your grandparents
would have done anything they could to stop it.'

'Really?'

'They thought that Tom was completely unsuitable.'

'What was wrong with him?'

'He was dangerous, had long hair, no job to speak of.
I probably shouldn't tell you this, but your parents were
blamed when your grandfather had the heart attack that
killed him. The wedding almost didn't happen at all.'

'See! That's the problem with living with Nana.
They never talked about things like that with her
there.'

'I expect that there was quite a lot they didn't talk
about. It took your grandmother years to get over it.
And quite a while for her to get used to Tom. She was a
tyrant in those days.'

'Nana?'

'I've found myself in her bad books once or twice and
I can tell you that I wouldn't have wished her on my
worst enemy. She was quite a force of nature.'

I was reassured by what Uncle Pete told me. That their
best friend had been around when my mother was
pregnant pushed the nagging doubts to the back of my
mind.

'Now, has that answered all your questions for today?
Do you think I can have that tea you promised me
hours ago?'

'Yes. That's it – unless you can tell me why I can't trace
my birth at the local register office. I don't seem to exist
on paper.'

He nodded. 'That would depend on where your birth
was registered. You see, you weren't actually born here.
I didn't meet you until you were two weeks old.'

I was greatly relieved to hear this. 'Then I've been
asking the wrong questions!'

'So that's what this is all about. You don't think that
you're Laura's daughter?' Suddenly, Uncle Pete looked a
little off colour and put out an arm to steady himself.
'Must have got up too quickly,' he explained, when I
asked if he was feeling unwell.

Later, before he left, he put a hand on both of my
shoulders and said, 'When you were a little girl, I would
look at you sometimes and feel as if I was looking at a
mirror image of myself. Have you ever felt like that
before?' I could feel his hands shaking.

'Are you sure you're feeling better?' I asked,
embarrassed by his sudden intensity. I put my own
hands up to steady his and removed them from my
shoulders at the same time.

'I'll take that as a no, then.' He looked half relieved,
but his gaze was still fixed on my face and his
expression was a question mark.

'Sometimes I look in the mirror and I don't even
recognize myself any more.'

'I thought that was my age.' He laughed. 'That
shouldn't be happening to you for a few years yet.' Then
he was suddenly serious. 'It will get easier. Give it time.'

Left alone, I took the record and wandered upstairs to
my parents' bedroom, their domain. Even half cleared
of their possessions, it was the place where I felt closest
to them. I sat at the dressing table in front of the three-sided
mirror and turned the side mirrors inwards so that
I could see an infinite number of reflections of myself.
As a child, I had perfected the art of staring at the main
mirror. Sometimes when I did this, a tiny detail in one
of the side mirrors would jump out at me. Uncle Pete's
question had touched a raw nerve somewhere.
Something I couldn't quite put a finger on. I looked for
some evidence that I was my mother's daughter. Having
spent the afternoon studying photographs, I had a very
clear image of what she had looked like at my age. But
the faces that looked back at me in profile were not my
mother's. They were not my father's. Suddenly, it was
very clear to me what Lydia would find on her visit to
London. There was no doubt in my mind that I was an
Albury – but I was certainly not a Fellows. It was equally
clear that Uncle Pete had just arrived at exactly the same
conclusion, and his reaction had been one of shock. No
wonder my aunt had tried to put me off researching our
family history! My father – if I could still call him that
– had been right to suggest that a tree was not the most
accurate way of illustrating our family, but I now realized
that wasn't only due to his absent father. Our story
was obviously far too complicated for that.

As much as I had been hurt by their lack of contact
while they were away, Laura and Tom made it difficult
to be angry with them. They turned up at my new house
unannounced with the baby, a bottle of wine and
stories of their travels and their momentous return.

Tom did a fine impression of Mrs Albury, declaring, 'I
will not, under any circumstances, allow a grandchild of
mine to grow up in a flat above a fish-and-chip
shop.'

'And the thing is,' Laura explained, 'that was her idea
of how to offer us a roof over our heads. She thought
she was being nice.'

'It just happened to sound like a declaration of war.'
Tom snorted. 'She seems to think that I'm completely
incapable of supporting a family.'

'So what did you say?' I asked.

Laura smiled, trying to stop herself from laughing. 'It
was a classic.'

'I said "I couldn't agree with you more, Mrs Albury." '
Tom shook his head as he remembered his own cheek.
'That's why we're moving to the flat next door above the
launderette.'

It was true. They were swapping a flat with one bedroom
for a flat with two, but the rent was going to be
the same. The landlord had been impressed with Tom's
handiwork in the smaller flat, and he had a few odd
jobs in mind for the new one. In fact, he was fairly
confident that he could pass some work in Tom's
direction at some of his other properties.

'You should have seen her face.' Laura laughed until
the tears ran down her cheeks, but I noticed how drawn
she looked despite the few extra post-baby pounds,
which were exaggerated by the dress she was wearing.
There was something different about her, but I
supposed at the time that giving birth was a life-changing
event.

'Still, this place looks nice enough.' Tom looked
around him. 'It's a good size. You must have a spare
room or two going to waste.'

'I've got a few jobs that need doing if you're offering.'

Everything about the baby's face and hands was
scrunched, protesting that she had been quite happy
where she was before she had been disturbed. I hadn't
seen too many babies up close before, but I stroked her
hand and she grasped mine.

'She's got a strong grip,' I said.

Laura looked at me large-eyed as if she was desperate
for my approval, but when she turned back to the baby,
I saw a side of her that I had not seen before.

'You're going to make a fantastic mother,' I told her.

'I hope so.' She was shy in her new role, not yet
confident.

Tom slapped me on the back. 'So, when are you available
for babysitting?'

'I'm glad to see you didn't have any problems . . .
what with the mumps and all.'

'No,' said Tom. 'Apparently everything is in perfect
working order. Just needed to find the right woman.'

'Well, what do the doctors know?'

'Precisely.'

'So, what news of the band?'

'First practice for five months next week.' He rubbed
his hands together. 'Minus one drummer, the traitor.
You coming? Might even have to go and wet the baby's
head afterwards.' Laura looked questioningly at him. '
If
I can get a late pass.' He looked at her winningly with his
palms pressed together as if in prayer.

'Oh, go. Go! I've got to get used to being the one
without a social life. This' – she nodded to the bundle
in her arms – 'is what I wanted, after all.'

'Yes!' Tom mouthed silently, triumphant, behind her,
punching the air with a fist.

My eyes passed from one to the other, watching the
interaction with the baby. Laura was quieter than usual
while Tom carried on more or less as he always had,
talking about his engineering work at the recording
studio and how he now understood what his album
could sound like. But when the baby cried, it was
Laura's expression that changed to one of panic, and it
was Tom who swooped mid-flow to throw Andrea over
his shoulder as naturally as he would a guitar. He sang
a few lines of a song that I hadn't heard before that
clearly had 'Andrea' in the lyrics, while walking and
patting her back in time. The noise stopped almost
immediately and Laura visibly relaxed.

'That's Andrea's song.' Laura yawned. 'Excuse me! We
had a bad night last night. Change of scenery and meeting
the grandmothers must have done it.'

'Still working on the chorus. I'll nail it tonight.'

Glad as I was to have them back, it was clear that I
would have to change to fit into Laura and Tom's new
world. I was only partly right. Laura had thought that
having a baby would be the way to tame Tom, but it
wasn't to be that easy. Tom was a natural with Andrea
from the start. He understood how babies worked without
reading manuals on the subject, while Laura was
forever consulting medical dictionaries or rushing to the
doctor. Although it was occasionally hand to mouth, he
had no problem earning enough money to support
them, running the band and getting up in the middle of
the night with Andrea. He had more energy than the
rest of us put together. Keeping irregular hours had prepared
him for life with a baby. We nine-to-fivers were
used to our eight hours' sleep, but Tom had always
grabbed a few hours whenever he could, wherever he
could. In his mind, there was no reason to change
because nothing needed fixing. He had the best of every
possible world.

'Ideally,' he confided, 'we would have liked a little
more time on our own before Andrea came along, but
we made the decision to start trying straight away in
case it took a while.'

Of course, he had no idea that Laura had been trying
long beforehand.

'Having a baby makes things a bit more difficult – but
not impossible,' he explained. 'Everything just needs a
bit more planning.'

But the things that he wanted were still not
necessarily the things that
they
wanted. The big issues
were still looming.

Things settled down into a routine and for a while Laura
and Tom were happy – and I was happy for them. It
gave all of us the chance to be real friends again and, in
a way, Laura and I were closer than we had been for
years.

'I can't get out much,' Laura claimed. 'Having a baby
is a much lonelier business than I thought it would be.'

'Well then, I'll just have to come round to see you
more often.'

I made sure I dropped in on her regularly and I was
always impressed by what I saw. Although she didn't
plan to go back to work, spurred on by Tom's resourcefulness
she built up a small stream of income by doing
dress alterations at home and the occasional more
ambitious dressmaking project. When she needed a
break, or if she had a deadline to meet, Tom took
Andrea to his mother's or on his rounds, where he
found no shortage of volunteers to watch her while
he fixed dripping pipes and leaking cisterns. Andrea
even came to band practice, where the hangers-on
would keep an eye on her while she slept, or dance her
on their knees when she woke. She was not necessarily
a beautiful child, but one whose face was completely
transformed when she smiled, so adults loved to
entertain and amuse her. As a photographer, I got
to know that face as well as I do my own. The only
people in the arrangement who didn't get to see as
much of each other as they would have liked were Laura
and Tom, but hadn't that always been the case?

The band's new drummer was quite a find and gave
the music an added dimension that it had lacked. After
a few weeks back in rehearsals, Tom knew that he had a
song on his hands that was a single.

'This is the one, boys,' he said with certainty.

Rather than take the band on tour, he called his
friends in London and managed to negotiate some free
time at the recording studio where he had worked. The
Spearheads were away for two nights, sleeping on
the floor of Faye's flat. Tom returned with a grin on his
face and a tape in his pocket, which he planned to take
to record companies in person.

Laura voiced her concerns to me privately. 'I only hope
he's not building himself up for a disappointment.'

I shook my head. 'This is the song that's going to
make it happen.'

'Do you think so?' she asked, with a smile that made
me know that she too believed this was the one. We
were all trying to hold back our enthusiasm.

Things moved slowly until a copy of the tape made its
way to John Peel, who was known for his support of
new bands and played it on Radio 1 a few nights in a
row, albeit late at night when few people were listening.
The few people who did hear it phoned in and wanted
to know where they could get hold of it. Then the
phone started ringing. For the first time, Tom had
managers and record companies chasing him. Tom was
firm that he wanted to stay in control in terms of
management.

'I want you to be the band's solicitor,' he told me.
There was no asking involved.

'I'm afraid I don't know the first thing about media
law,' I explained. 'You need a specialist.'

'What I need is someone I can trust,' he said, 'and if
that means you're working outside your area of
expertise, so be it.'

'Tom, as a friend . . .' I protested, but he insisted.

'As a friend, I know that you'll do the best job that
you can. And that will do just fine. Don't say no. I need
you.'

How could I have refused? We shook hands on it.

The contract terms on offer were shoddy, there was no
doubt about that. I was against them signing.

'I'll take the responsibility,' Tom said. 'We've got to get
the single out there while people are interested. We'll
do the best we can with what's available and renegotiate
once we've started selling records.'

'You're the boss.' I passed the contract to him and he
signed. Even Tom the family man was less focused on
money than he should have been.

On 1 December 1977, the Spearheads' first single was
released up against some pretty stiff competition for the
all-important Christmas number one. The track had
been ready in the autumn, but delays, as we soon
learned, were commonplace. Tom was confident that
his market was completely different and that sales
wouldn't be affected. He wasn't aiming for a Christmas
number one. That was the reserve of the novelty songs
and Christmas carols. The previous year, Johnny Mathis
had charmed everyone over the age of sixty with 'When
A Child Is Born'. Nineteen ninety-seven would be the
year for Wings with 'Mull of Kintyre'. It even beat Bing
Crosby's 'White Christmas' to the top. I loved the sound
of bagpipes for weeks one and two. By the time it had
been at the top of the charts for nine weeks, I was with
Tom. What did it have to do with 1977?

David Bowie had sung about heroes, Talking Heads
had sung about a psycho killer, Iggy Pop had a lust
for life, the original disco diva, Donna Summer,
shocked with 'I Feel Love', the Bee Gees were 'Staying
Alive' and Freddie Mercury announced, 'We Will Rock
You'.

It had been the year of the Queen's Jubilee and the
Sex Pistols had reacted with 'God Save the Queen',
the year that
Star Wars
was released, the year that Steve
Biko died in custody, and we put the 'Great' back in
Great Britain with the launch of HMS
Invincible
, one of
the largest ships ever built. But you would have been
forgiven for thinking that the only thing that mattered
was the fate of a giraffe called Victor who tore a leg
muscle at Margate Zoo.

The Spearheads' single sold, but not enough to chart.
For the first time in all the time that I had known him,
Tom was unable to keep up his happy-go-lucky act. This
mattered desperately to him and all of his talk about
just waiting for the right opportunity must have been
echoing in his ears.

Laura tried to comfort him. 'Maybe the timing wasn't
right.'

The record company were fairly clear what they
thought had gone wrong: the Spearheads' lack of live
dates.

'Oh, no,' Laura said disbelievingly, as Tom delivered
the news to us in their flat. 'Apart from the fact that I'll
be here on my own, if you're not earning, what are we
going to live on? How will we pay the rent? You said
your plan didn't involve being away from home. I won't
be able to work if I'm looking after Andrea full-time. We
can't just hand her back when it doesn't suit us, you
know.'

'It's not
my
plan, love.' Tom spoke quietly with his
head in his hands. 'I thought that we could manage
without, but if we don't sell some more records, the
contract will be cancelled and we'll end up owing them
for studio time. It's money that I don't have and I can't
ask the lads.'

'Is this true, Pete?' she demanded.

'I'm afraid it is. The band is obliged to do everything
to help market the release, otherwise they'll be in breach
of contract.'

'Well, why the hell did you let him sign the damned
thing?' Laura post-baby was more confident: happier to
speak her mind than she ever had been before, and less
afraid to say what she thought. She had someone to
protect other than herself.

'It's not Pete's fault.' Tom paced the floor. 'It's a
standard contract term in this business. There's not one
record company that would give out a contract that says
the band doesn't have to tour.'

'We had a deal!' Laura was trying to contain her anger
with limited success. Even though her voice was not
raised, her colour was.

'Ten dates. If this doesn't work, I'll give it up for good
and I'll get a proper job.'

'Two weeks,' she negotiated.

'A month.'

'A month, and if it doesn't work, a permanent job.
And what will we do in the meanwhile?'

'Stay with me,' I offered. 'I'm not going anywhere and
I can help out in the evenings. You might even be able
to get some work done.'

'Oh, we couldn't,' Laura stammered, looking at Tom,
suddenly unsure of herself.

'I was involved in arranging the contract,' I insisted.
'It's the least I can do.'

Tom turned to Laura. 'I'd be much happier if you
would. I don't like to think of you here on your own.'

'I could go to my mother's,' she offered.

'Do you want her to think you've gone crawling back?
She'll be bad-mouthing me the entire time I'm away.'

'Then your mother's . . .'

'Look.' I picked up my coat to leave, sensing that I was
in the way. 'If I've embarrassed you by offering, then I'm
sorry.'

'Pete, you're our best friend in all the world.' Laura
looked at me appealingly. 'We don't want to take
advantage. I always end up leaning on you and it
doesn't seem fair.'

'I wouldn't have said anything if I was going to be put
out. But just a suggestion. If Faye's not working at the
moment, what about asking her to stay with you? She
hasn't been home for a while and you must be missing
her.'

They both started speaking at once. 'I don't think
that's a very good idea.' 'Faye really doesn't like babies.'
'And she's not very well.' 'We'd love to come and stay
with you if you'll have us.'

'Obviously another useless idea on my part. Was that
a "yes" I heard in there somewhere?'

Laura smiled at last. 'That was a yes!'

'Well, that's settled.' I made as if to leave.

'Where are you going?'

'To lock all my valuables away.'

'Valuables?' she joked. 'You have valuables? You never
told me.'

'Thanks, mate. You're an absolute star.' Tom shook my
hand at the door. 'There's not many men I would be
prepared to trust with my little girl. And there's only one
I can trust with my missus.'

Trust. It's a very fragile thing.