Half-truths & White Lies (27 page)

My history no longer fits neatly on to a family tree. If I
have to explain who I am and my place in what I now
refer to as my extended family, I follow my father's
suggestion and draw a Venn diagram. I have experimented
with putting a variety of people at the centre.
Nana, the matriarch, who rules over her family with a
rod of iron and a heart of gold. My mother, Laura
Albury, who thought that her looks defined her, but discovered
that she was defined by whom she loved. Tom
Fellows, father, musician, engineer, mechanic, artist, all-round
good guy, who regained his strength despite
losing his hair. My Uncle Pete (and I still find it difficult
to call him by any other name), who was responsible
for bringing my parents together not once but twice. My
Aunty Faye, well travelled, independent, feisty, a sister
who was so close that she gave away what she thought
she didn't need in her life and lived to regret it. Me, the
child who so many people showered with affection to
make up for their other losses, an unwitting referee in so
many relationships. Derek, the child whose absence was
so keenly felt that I now realize it was as much a part of
the make-up of our family as I was. Even Lydia, whose
ears we pour our stories into, whose ample shoulders
we all cry on, whose endless pots of tea without which
we would all die of thirst. She is the cement that holds
our little neighbourhood together. Our keeper of
secrets. Ironically, if our new family has a mother figure,
it is her.

There is nothing that I enjoy more than to spy on
Uncle Pete and Derek as they sit out on their front steps,
separated by a fence but by less than a foot. From the
movement of the net curtains in a parallel room two
doors away, I know I am not the only onlooker. The
men exchange only a few words, but the lengthy gaps
between sentences are not awkward. Derek feels that
gaps between words are an essential part of conversation.
How can we possibly find the meaning of what
is being said if hundreds of words tumble out unrestrained
one after another? How can we enjoy
conversation if we don't take the time to appreciate
what the other has just said? To you and me, a comment
like, 'Isn't it a lovely evening?' might sound like a throwaway
exchange. To Derek, it is something miraculous to
contemplate. He will consider the temperature, how the
breeze feels as it touches his skin, how the streetlight
reflects in puddles in the pavement. On clear nights he
will be mesmerized by the number of stars in the sky,
captivated by the cycle of the moon. On a cloudy night,
he will observe how the moon is partly obscured and
the resulting ethereal glow. He might enjoy the silence,
or the whoosh of tyres on a wet road, the rumble of a
distant train, the roar of a motorbike, or the bark of
a dog. He carefully considers the company that he is in,
and what impact it has on the whole experience. It
might be a good quarter of an hour before he replies,
'Aye, it is at that.'

Uncle Pete, I'm sure, enjoys the welcome escape from
the women in his life. I suspect there are moments
when he regrets the loss of his bachelor pad, when he
would gladly go back to the days when he was not
expected to understand the inner workings of a washing
machine simply because of his gender.

Uncle Pete and Derek are slowly adjusting to their
new relationship. Bill will always be his da, but it is also
hard for Derek to give up on the idea that he is Tom
Fellows's son. He virtually modelled himself on him. It
is certainly where he thought he inherited his practical
talents from.

'It can't be genetic,' Uncle Pete says. 'He certainly
didn't get that from me.'

It seems obvious to me whom they came from. My
mother had always designed and made her own clothes,
and turned old garments into new ones for me. They are
forgetting that my father wasn't the only person who
could fix things in our house.

Derek has no doubt spent many years contemplating
the meaning of the word 'father', and Uncle Pete is right
to tread gently. If anyone other than Bill announced that
he was his dad, I suspect that after a long silence,
Derek's response would be: 'No, you're not,' because
that man hadn't been there to teach Derek how to play
football or to buy him his first bike; it hadn't been his
loose tobacco that was Derek's favourite smell; he
hadn't been there to tuck Derek in at night or to read his
school reports, or to watch his first school play. Uncle
Pete is keenly aware of each of these missed opportunities
and feels each one as a loss. At the same time,
Derek doesn't bear him a grudge for not being there. He
is too grateful for the opportunity that he had to have
Lydia and Bill as his parents. And, now, just when he
needs one, he has someone who is willing to be a father
figure in his life – if he wants one. If not, Uncle Pete has
made it clear that he is happy to settle for being a neighbour.
As long as he can be a good neighbour.

At least when Uncle Pete claims that he wasn't there
for the main events of my life, I can remind him that,
actually, he was present for most of them. I still have the
bear that he gave me for my first birthday. He still has
an autographed portrait that I drew of him just after I
had learned to write my name. After I remarked that,
other than a two-year gap, there isn't a part of my life
that he hasn't been there for, he came next door with
three beautifully wrapped presents.

'What are these?' I asked him, laughing.

'These are your fourth, fifth and sixth birthday
presents.'

'But you've given me too much already.'

Gifts come in all shapes and sizes. When I was a baby,
he gave me and my mother a home. When I was three
he gave me my daddy back. And when I was twenty-five
he put my family back together once again, and gave
Nana and me security when we most needed it.

Everyone thought that the shock of finding her grandson
living down the same road as her would be the end
of Nana, but when Uncle Peter told her, all she said was,
'I knew it!' She was more surprised to find that she is
related to Derek, who she had always declared to be a
little soft in the head, but she managed to come up with
numerous explanations of what she actually meant
when she called him 'simple'.

Aunty Faye has taken to referring to Uncle Pete as the
'man of the house'. It's a slight improvement on 'that
dreadful man'. The days when she and Uncle Pete tiptoed
around each other were short-lived and they now
fight like cats and dogs one minute and make up over a
bottle of his best malt whisky the next. Nana and I are
glad of the wall that divides us, although you can
probably guess what her verdict is.

'Mark my words,' she confides to Lydia and me, 'one
of these days . . .'

But I disagree. It is their history that binds them
together and it is the same history that pushes
them apart. They have settled on a way to divert the
mud-slinging. When one of them strikes out with a
maliciously aimed home truth, the other will shrug and
say, 'Nobody's perfect.' Because, at the end of the day,
that is the only truth we can be certain of. None of us is.
Sometimes, we do terrible things to each other in the
name of love. If we're lucky, we get the chance to make
up for them.

Nana now refers to Uncle Pete as the family solicitor.
And although we have agreed that I shouldn't call him
Dad, I have consented in principle to drop the 'Uncle',
but it's hard to change the habit of a lifetime. There are
some words that just go together. Bucket and
spade, Tom and Laura, Uncle and Pete. No, if I am confused
about what to call people, I am no longer
confused about who they are. To me, Peter Churcher
will always be my godfather. When I tell you that I have
taken a leaf out of Derek's book, I hope you realize that
I don't use that term lightly.

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