“Sorry, Bert. Haven’t got time.”
He scratches his groin. “Aw, come on, you’ve got time for a drink with me, haven’t you?” he wheedles. “I’ve not seen you since the... you know.”
Lily shakes her head. “Sorry, Bert. I’ve got stuff to do.”
He watches her lug the rusty old lawn mower down his path. “Why don’t you come round later? I’ve got steak and kidney pudding.”
“I’m vegetarian,” she calls back from the street, which isn’t strictly true but she does draw the line at Fray Bentos. “But thanks.”
The grass is too long for the lawn mower and also appears to be full of stones, so Lily fetches a chair from the kitchen. She stands on it to cut the hedge in the still warm sunshine and snaps at a few leaves, but her arms are screaming at the effort required to hold the shears aloft.
At the local SPAR, Lily refuels with a cheese and onion pasty and a packet of prawn cocktail Skips. She wanders around the shelves, trying to visualise what else is written on the shopping list, which is sitting at home on the kitchen worktop. She adds a loaf of bread and tub of margarine to her basket. As soon as she gets home she puts the kettle on, but then realises she’s forgotten to get milk, so she pours herself a very weak vodka and orange instead, to help the pasty go down. Fortified, she has another chop at the garden, but the sun has lost its warmth and Lily’s breath hangs like icicles. She goes inside and lights the gas fire.
Lily spends another evening staring at the wedding album, tracing her father’s face with her finger, unable to believe that soon this face will be fleshed out for her.
The next two weeks slip quietly past, Lily content in her domesticity. She borrows a wheelbarrow from Mr Peterson and spends three days wheeling her mother’s empty Coca Cola bottles to the recycling bins in the supermarket car park. The Special Brew tin cans, she bags up in black bin liners in the back garden. As soon as she can face spending any time with him, she’s going to ask Bert if he’ll drive her down to the tip. She bought a pack of safety pins too, so her father’s arms and legs are hanging on with more confidence in her mother’s bedroom.
Lily wakes to the sound of the postman whistling as he closes the gate. She runs downstairs, as she does every day now, to check what has arrived. And today it beams up at her from the doormat, a slim, white envelope with her name on the front. She jumps down the last four stairs in one swoop and pounces on it:
Dear Lily
We are writing to advise you that we have now concluded our enquiries with regard to your father, David. Unfortunately, it has not been possible for us to reunite you with your father, and we are left with no alternative but to bring our investigations to a close. We do understand that you will be disappointed at the outcome of this enquiry, but can only assure you that everything possible has been done on your behalf.
May God bless you.
For a while the silence is only broken by a strange throbbing in her ears, where she swears she can feel the membranes of her brain. Her head swims as she tries to understand. Her first thought, her worst fear, the one that’s festered since she was a small child, is that her father is dead. Did the stupid receptionist get it wrong? Is that why she needs God’s blessing? Is she an orphan, destined to know neither her mother nor father? The days are getting shorter and the light is already starting to fade by the time she rings the number written on the top of the letter.
“Good afternoon, Major Farley-Greystone speaking. How may I be of assistance?”
He coughs when she tells him her name. “I just want you to explain what your letter means…” Lily starts. The Major doesn’t speak. “I mean, can’t you find him? Has he emigrated?” Lily chews a fingernail. “What does that mean, ‘It has not been possible to reunite me’?, It could mean anything.”
“Yes.” His tone is slow and deliberate. “I can see where the confusion arises.” Another lengthy pause but this time Lily rides it out. “I, er, I was trying to break the news gently.”
Lily closes her eyes. “Is he, is he dead?”
He coughs again, clearing his throat. “No. I, well, we did manage to ascertain his location. He isn’t dead, but, well there isn’t an easy way to tell you this. He doesn’t want to get in touch with you.”
Lily counts the flower petals on the wallpaper and wonders why she’s never noticed how uneven the pattern was; the ink doesn’t run to the edges of the outlines, cheap crap. She becomes aware that she’s holding the phone to her ear but no one is speaking. “Is he allowed to do that?” Her voice rises in pitch. “I mean, doesn’t he, don’t I have a right…”
“We have to respect his wishes.” The Major seeks to stamp out this line of enquiry. “If the boot was on the other foot, as it were; if he’d tried to contact you, we would respect your right to say no.”
“But that’s totally different,” Lily is confused, “I never left him, I’ve never even met him.” She tries to breathe, collect her thoughts. She presses her forehead against the cool glass of the front room window. “I have questions. What about…” she casts wildly around, trying to think of some justification as to why it is her right to meet the man who fathered her, “my health. When I registered at the doctors, I couldn’t even complete the form because I don’t know anything about my genes.”
The Major doesn’t respond. Lily senses she’s not going to win this man over with mention of her rights. Her body sags. “Did he say why?” a small voice, a little girl’s voice she doesn’t recognise, asks.
“I’m afraid I am unable to give you details.”
“Has he a heart complaint? Or...” Her mind flails around, trying to think of valid reasons for a man not to want to meet his daughter, his only child.
The Major sighs heavily. “He says he has never been in contact with you. Is that correct?”
“I have no idea, that’s the point. Did you explain my circumstances to him?”
“Look…”
“Does he know my mother’s dead? Did you try to persuade him? Couldn’t you…”
Major Farley-Greystone sighs again, even louder this time, so it sounds like a gust of wind whistling down the phone. “Can’t you accept…”
“Will you ask him if he’ll meet me just once? If you explain…”
“Listen, I can tell you he wrote us a letter and it says... bear with me.” As she hears the rustle of paper, Lily hates this man for the power he holds over her; for the fact he’s holding a letter from her father in his hand; that he knows what it says, what his handwriting is like, he knows where he lives and... “Yes, here we are.” His words are fired as if from a machine gun. “He’s written, and I quote, ‘I have no…” Major Farley-Greystone stresses the word no, makes it last several seconds, “wish to communicate.’” The Major pauses, allows the weight of the sentence to hit home before continuing. “The word ‘no’ is in capital letters...” there’s a dramatic pause, as Lily feels the hairs on the back of her neck stand to attention, “and underlined.”
He finishes with a flourish; as if confident he has now demonstrated to her that there is no possible way in the whole world that her father would ever want to meet her. How much more definite can a man get; capital letters and underscoring.
Every childhood fantasy Lily’s ever entertained dies in that moment. The hours, weeks, probably even years of her life she’s spent dreaming of him and their eventual meeting. Everything dies, collapses. Lily slides down onto the floor, her back against the wall and bumps the back of her head against it to try to ease the pain.
The Major sighs again. “You see, this is why we tell people not to trace people if they can’t handle rejection,” he blusters. “Don’t start getting all upset now. It won’t do you any good.”
Lily hangs up, because the receiver is making her ear ache. She curls up in a ball, like a kitten, hugging her knees to her chest. When she comes to she isn’t sad anymore. She stands up and kicks out at the wall and then winces in pain as she realises she’s not wearing shoes. Anger and despair collide. She wants to run out into the street, grab her father, hold him against the wall and force him into a conversation. Hold a gun to his head. Why didn’t he want to see her? Did he know something about her? Something that made him know he didn’t want to meet her? Did he know anything about her? If he didn’t then why wouldn’t he at least be curious? She wants his address, wants to turn up on his doorstep, to lie in wait for him. No way is this the end.
Nights merge into day, with no distinguishing features. She stops dressing, cleaning her teeth, caring at all. She’s drinking heavily and existing solely on toast and Marmite. The house slowly reverts to its normal state. The empties start to pile up again.
And then one day the phone rings. Lily is sitting next to it as it suddenly bursts into life and she picks up the handset automatically, to stop the noise, without thinking whether she wants to speak to anyone. Her voice is hoarse.
“Hello?”
“Lily!” A female voice screeches at her.
It takes a moment for Lily’s brain to process the information. Her brow creases, making her eyebrows ache. “Jo?”
“Why haven’t you rung me? I’ve been going out of my mind worrying about you. I had to steal your phone number from student services.”
“You didn’t?”
“Why haven’t you rung me, you cow? I was worried I was never going to see you again. It’s been over a month, Lily. Where the fuck have you been? What are you doing? Are you coming back? You room’s still here you know.”
“Oh Jo, I didn’t, I can’t, I don’t know...” Lily closes her eyes.
“Tell me where you live, Lily. I’m coming to get you.”
It takes less than three hours for Jo to appear on Lily’s doorstep. “Jesus Christ girl, look at the state of you,” says Jo, as she grabs hold of Lily and hugs her tightly. Lily nearly faints at the intensity. Jo steps inside, into the front room and, without meaning to, recoils slightly. Lily looks around at the small, chocolate brown room, and sees it for the first time through a stranger’s eyes. Dark brown curtains, that may or may not have been patterned once upon a time, hang haphazardly at the window. The walls are streaked with nicotine stains and the gas fire burns yellow in the centre of the room. The floor is littered with chip wrappers, polystyrene boxes, empty bottles and full ashtrays. “Like what you're doing with the place, Lil. It’s bold, it’s uncompromising...”
“I’m a mess. You shouldn’t see me like this. No one should see me like this.”
“Shut up.” Jo climbs over a couple of boxes full of newspapers. “I’m your best mate. What’s the smell?”
“Don’t ask.”
“Where’s the sofa?”
“Oh I... I think probably, I don’t know, probably my mum rotted onto it.”
“Ok.” Jo stretches out the ‘K’, making it last about seven seconds. She looks around the room sizing up their options. “Let’s clear a bit of space in front of the fire. I’ve brought food and spliff.”
Jo’s wearing a T-shirt that says, ‘fuck the right to vote’, but for all her revolutionary politics, she has never witnessed such squalor first hand. The house they share in Leeds could never be described as posh, but it’s an old Victorian terrace with high ceilings. Neglected for the past twenty years by successive landlords, it still contains a hint of former glory. Here, in this 1950s council house, the walls tell of cheapness and mundanity. Nothing great ever happened here. No one ever cared for this place, not the architect who designed it, the builder who built it, the council who own it, nor any of its inhabitants.
Jo starts clearing a space with her feet, kicking the rubbish to one side. Underneath, the carpet is cheap, brown nylon with deep ridges that look like they would cause pain if sat upon. “There must be something we can sit on, Lil. What about a mattress?”
“There’s one on my mum’s bed upstairs,” Lily ventures. Jo hesitates, images of Lily’s rotting mum, still at the forefront of her mind. “She hasn’t slept… hadn't sleep in it for years. She couldn’t climb the stairs.”
“Come on then, let’s get comfy. Let’s pile all this stuff up against the wall and then we can carry it downstairs.”
It is not until Lily opens the door of her mother’s bedroom that she remembers her father’s clothes hanging from the fitted wardrobe door handles. Jo looks at her quizzically. Lily shrugs her shoulders. “It’s a long story.”
Together they lug the mattress, half throwing it down the stairs, and lie it on the floor in the front room, one side against the wall, to form a makeshift settee. Lily gathers as many pillows, cushions, and duvets as she can find, and they then both collapse on top of it, exhausted from their exertions.
“Tomorrow, you and I are going to get this place looking great, but this will do for now. Now, get your laughing tackle round this,” she passes her a huge joint she’s pulled from her canvas bag, “and then we'll eat.” Jo’s been through the kitchen while Lily was upstairs fetching blankets, and found a couple of small bottles of Coke and half a pint of suspect milk in the fridge. In the cupboards, a couple of ancient looking pot noodles, a few tins of baked beans and half a packet of chocolate hobnobs, stare back at her. “You’ve got way too skinny, Lil. You look like Lena fucking Zavaroni.”
Lily takes a deep drag on the spliff. She’s missed her dope; she’s been drinking more to compensate, and the hangovers have been getting her down. But she finds drink better for holding onto anger and she so much prefers the anger; afraid the sadness might kill her. Even the smallest acts of kindness are now enough to send her completely over the edge. The man in the corner shop had let her off 20p yesterday. She’d run out, her face so red she might have been slapped.
“I’m really sorry about your mum, Lil.”
“Thanks.” Lily lies back on the mattress and closes her eyes. “I always thought I’d be pleased, not, ‘oh hurrah, she’s dead, but thank God I don’t have to worry about her anymore’ you know?” She opens an eye, Jo nods but she has no idea. “But there’s more than that. A lot’s happened.”
Jo pulls packets of salt and vinegar crisps from her bag. She opens a bottle of Thunderbird and pours it into two chipped tea cups she finds in the kitchen.