Secrets My Mother Kept (30 page)

Once Sherry had left, I plucked up the courage to slide my finger under the flap of the envelope and open it up. I held the sheets of paper in my hand and began to read.

The letter told of Sheila’s life, as a journalist, author and mother of five. She asked about us, what we did, whether or not we had children, a kind of easy-going letter that you might write to a long-lost acquaintance, not a sister – not even a secret one.

I sighed, and sat down to reply. This time I would dig a little deeper.

I tried again and again, but every letter I got back was the same: friendly and interesting, but giving nothing away.

During the months that we stayed at Sherry and Colin’s, I still felt removed from Sam. It was a strange feeling, a detached, arm’s length kind of relationship that I had with him. I would hold him, I played with him, I kissed and cuddled him, but it wasn’t quite right, and I’m sure he sensed it too. Then not long before we moved into our little cottage things changed. We had taken Sam to hospital for an overnight stay as the consultant was worried that he had seen something that might mean yet another operation. Colin and I had been so worried, but we had got the phone call early that morning to say that there was nothing to worry about; it must just have been a shadow on the X-ray. When we arrived to pick Sam up, weak with relief, something strange happened.

Colin and I walked into the ward just as the children were being given breakfast. Sam was sitting on a tiny chair, still with a drip in his arm, tucking into a mashed up bowl of Weetabix with a serious yet determined look on his tiny round face. I looked at him, his big blue eyes, his red-blond hair, and suddenly my heart gave a lurch. All the love that I had kept in check, all the tenderness, swam over me and I almost drowned in the warmth of it. I felt such a surge of powerful love that I had to hug him. As I bent down I stroked his soft little face, I breathed in the sweet smell of him, and whispered in his ear, ‘Mummy’s here now.’ He turned towards me and gave me a huge smile. It was as though he knew that his mummy was really here now, that things were going to be different from now on, and indeed they were. Sam was mine now and I was his; we had found each other at last.

47

Talking to Aunty

Margaret had not long had her third baby, and everyone had come for the baptism. They called her Elizabeth Edith, which seems like fate now because she would be the last baby that Aunty Edie would hold.

Aunty was becoming more and more fragile, although she still retained her sense of fun. ‘Come out, Jimmy Green!’ she would say with a mischievous smile when she accidentally passed wind. Her hair was quite grey now, but still thick and curly. She had never been as overweight as Mum, but more recently she appeared to have shrunk into herself.

The day after the baptism Aunty and I were invited to lunch at Margaret’s house. As it was an unusually warm day for April, Margaret suggested we sit in the garden.

She placed baby Lizzie in Aunty’s arms for a cuddle.

‘Ooh, she’s the model of yer mother,’ Aunty said, rocking the baby back and forth. ‘Hello my darling,’ she cooed gently.

Lizzie gazed up at Aunty, spellbound.

‘
Little girl you’re crying, I know why you’re blue
,’ sung Aunty, softly rocking the baby in her arms.

The sun was shining, and the smell of lilacs was heavy in the air. Feeling warm and lazy like a cat, I felt myself starting to drift off to sleep.

Margaret broke the silence suddenly. ‘Aunty, can I ask you something? Do you know who our dad is?’

I jerked awake with a start. Surely I must have dreamt that?

Aunty carried on singing:

Better go to sleep, now, little girl you’ve had a busy day.

You’ve been playing soldiers, the battle has been won,

The enemy is out of sight

Come now, little soldier,

Put away your gun, the war is over for tonight.

‘Aunty,’ she repeated, louder this time, in case the old lady hadn’t heard, ‘if you know, please tell us.’

Aunty stopped and looked down at Lizzie. ‘You’d better put ’er to bed; she’s gone fast asleep.’

Margaret took the baby gently and laid her on her lap.

‘Did you hear me Aunty?’ she continued, refusing to let it go.

‘Yes I ’eard yer,’ Aunty answered, irritated, ‘I’ve told yer before, I can’t tell yer about yer father without telling yer about yer mother.’

‘Please Aunty,’ I joined in now, ‘we really have a right to know,’ but Aunty just looked away towards where the other children were playing at the end of the garden.

‘Be careful now,’ she called out to them as a clod of mud flew up in the air. ‘Mind yer ’eads.’

Margaret and I exchanged an exasperated look, when suddenly Aunty continued. ‘He was good to ’er, ’e was,’ she said, refusing to meet our eyes. ‘He would ’ave stuck to ’er like shit to a blanket, if she adn’t dun wot she did.’

We sat bolt upright now, hardly daring to move, knowing from experience that the slightest distraction could stop the conversation dead.

‘Jewish ’e was, so kind, always ’elped ’er out, money, flowers, whatever she wanted. But then when it all stopped, she couldn’t manage, you see, that’s why she ’ad to do it, and they took ’er away again.

‘I said to your Granny more than once, “I can’t stand no more; either she goes or I go,” and do yer know what yer Gran used to say? She said “She’s going nowhere.” I knew then, see, that she couldn’t turn ’er out, not with all you children, so I just ’ad to put up with it.

‘Anyway,’ she added, ‘yer mother was always ’er favourite. It was always Florrie that she wanted.’

Aunty gazed into the space around her, seemingly gathering her thoughts and then continued. ‘She was determined not to die till yer mother got out, yer see, but as soon as she came back home, your Gran gave up. You must ’ave been about the same age as Becky and Sam are now, maybe a bit older.

‘Anyway, where’s me cup of tea? I feel like me throat’s been cut,’ and with that Lizzie woke, and Margaret fed her out there in the garden, with the children playing, the sun shining, and one more little piece of the jigsaw falling into place.

48

A Sudden Death

Later that summer we went with Pat, Josie and Mum to Crewkerne in Somerset for a week’s holiday during the May half-term.

We were staying in a lovely old stone cottage, complete with leaded windows, and exposed beams, surrounded by the most beautiful cottage garden, spilling over with flowers. ‘Aunty would love it here,’ I said to Colin, while we watched Sam playing with Mr Lion, his favourite plastic ride-on toy.

‘Perhaps we should try to take her some cuttings?’

We decided to take Sam for a walk in the nearby woods, and set off promising to be back by dinner time, leaving Mum and my sisters to enjoy the garden in peace. The trees were almost in full leaf, and when the sun shone through their branches it sent dappled drops of light sweeping across the forest floor.

As we walked, we talked about Mum. I had always shared everything with Colin, and he knew as much as I did about my past; we didn’t believe in secrets. He also knew that there was a deep, burning need in me to know who my father was, to understand my Mum and make sense of my muddled memories.

‘I really find it hard to understand why you can’t just ask her outright,’ he said, not for the first time.

‘You know what she’s like; she wouldn’t answer me, or she would pretend she hadn’t heard, like she did to Mary when she plucked up the courage to ask.’

My sisters and I had laughed when Mary had told us that Mum had just said, ‘Yes, I will have another cup of tea,’ when she had asked about her dad. We all knew the rules, and what to expect if we tried to flout them.

‘There’s just no point,’ I continued, watching Sam weave in and out of the trees.

‘Mummy, can we have a dog like Aunty Pat’s?’ he asked.

Pat and Sam were best friends and adored each other. She spoilt him terribly. He could do no wrong in her eyes, and the feeling was mutual.

‘One day maybe,’ I said absentmindedly.

‘But surely if you tell her how important it is to you to know, surely then she would have to tell you?’

‘I don’t want to upset her.’ I knew how hard it must be for Colin to understand the complexities of the relationships in our family. Nothing was as straightforward as it seemed.

‘Well then, what about Pat or Josie? You’re not telling me that they don’t know more than they’re saying.’

I just shrugged. It was like an itch that I couldn’t scratch; every now and then the ignorance, the secrets, became intolerable.

We carried on walking in silence, both lost in thought, with Sam running up every now and then to show us an interesting stone, or a bug that he had spied crawling through the undergrowth.

When we approached the cottage, Mum was standing outside smoking a cigarette and leaning on the door frame. She looked strangely distracted.

Sam ran up to her. ‘Nanny, I got you some flowers!’ He thrust a handful of daisies towards her.

She bent down and took them and patted his head. ‘Go in and find Aunty Pat.’ When he was out of earshot she drew deeply on her cigarette and said in a flat, unemotional voice, ‘Aunty’s dead.’

The breath was sucked out of my body as I tried to comprehend what she was saying. ‘What?’

I hadn’t realised how much I had loved Aunty until that moment. I had been so preoccupied with myself and my own little family, that I had failed to notice her continued decline, had ignored the way she had looked when Geoff had picked her up to go and stay with Marion just a few days ago.

‘She knew she was never going to come home again,’ I cried bitterly to Colin later that night. ‘I saw her looking around, like she was trying to fix it all in her head, take it with her: her chair in the corner, the old photos on the wall, her precious garden . . . all of her memories . . . and all I could think about was that I wished she would hurry up and go so she wouldn’t wake Sam up as she left!’

Colin held me close and tried to comfort me but it was no good. I pulled away and curled up on the bed in a tight ball. Aunty was gone and I was inconsolable. I had never once told her that I loved her.

I cried myself quietly to sleep that night, and dreamed of an old lady with a mischievous smile and a sparkle in her blue eyes, who swore more than she should, had a fiery temper, threw teapots, liked a drop of brandy, sang and danced, loved her garden and our children who sometimes played in it, but most of all a woman who gave up her own life so that she could keep us all together and safe. She had been loyal to Mum to the end, never betraying her secrets.

They say that you go through stages of grief. At first comes the overwhelming desolation, then the next stage: anger.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said through tightly drawn lips. ‘Why didn’t the doctor resuscitate her?’

Me, Margaret and Marion had met up at Mum’s to help arrange the funeral, and had taken the children for a walk to Goodmayes Park.

It was worse for Marion. Aunty had been staying with her when she was taken ill.

‘She knew she was dying,’ she explained. ‘She just kept saying, “Let me go, let me go.” She was ready; she knew it was her time.’

The three of us watched the children run towards the lake where the swans were gliding across the sparkling water. How could the sun shine so brightly amid so much grief? Aunty loved the park, and she would sometimes walk through there on her way home from Mass on Sundays. For all the swearing she had been a devout woman, never missing a service.

I turned away and called to the children, ‘Don’t go too near the water.’

‘Do you remember Aunty telling us that a swan would break your arm if you went near its babies?’ Marion asked smiling.

It felt strange to be walking in the park that had been such a big part of our childhood. The memories of happier visits crowded in. The cricket matches we had all played, the races we had run.

We stopped to admire the beds of flowers, and then Marion said, ‘All she had was her old rosary beads and a little miraculous medal that she always pinned to her vest.’

‘Oh poor Aunty,’ Margaret said starting to cry again.

‘The ambulance man gave them to me. He shouldn’t really have taken her from my house, you know, she was already dead, but when he realised that Cathy and David were upstairs asleep he took pity on us, I suppose.

‘Mum must be upset,’ I said, to reassure myself as much as anything. ‘Aunty has been part of her life for so long. I mean, I know they argued, but I think they loved each other, don’t you?’

‘I think Mum finds it hard to feel sadness; in fact I think she finds it hard to show love,’ said Marion.

‘But she must realise what Aunty gave up because of her?’ I said. ‘That must mean something?’

‘Of course it must!’ Margaret added with conviction.

‘Well, I suppose she loved Aunty in her own way, but she didn’t exactly show it did she?’

‘I don’t know, I never really thought about it,’ I admitted.