The Color of Secrets (31 page)

“It’s this way.” Quentin led her into a dimly lit bedroom. “Look,” he said, sliding his hand under her chin and tilting her head toward the ceiling. She could see an enormous wheel painted in lots of different colors, with strange symbols marked on it. “You can see it better from here.” He guided her to the bed. “If you lie on your back and look up, you can make out all the signs.”

“Signs?” she said, her own voice strange and distant.

“It’s the zodiac,” he replied, slipping his arm under her shoulders as they lay gazing at the ceiling. “What star sign are you?”

“Er
. . .
Gemini,” she mumbled. The circle seemed to be spinning.

“Well, that’s perfect,” he whispered, his mouth brushing her face. “You’re the same as me. We’re twin souls, Louisa.” His fingers pulled at the halter fastening of her top. The fabric fell away, revealing her naked breasts. She gasped, suddenly aware of what was happening.

“Quentin, no!” she hissed.

“Come on!” He was on top of her now, his fingers pinching her nipples as he thrust his tongue into her mouth.

“Ow! You’re hurting me!” The pain brought her mind into sharp focus. He was fumbling with the zipper of her jeans now, pulling them down. “No!” With a shout she brought up her knee, knocking him sideways off the bed.

“Bitch!” he yelled, a look of confusion on his face. “I thought you wanted it! You were coming on to me!”

“I was
not
!” Her hands shook as she refastened her top.

“Oh, I get it!” Quentin stumbled toward her, tripped on a rug, and lunged at her as he fell onto the bed. “Wrong color, am I?” He gave her a stupid grin.

She stared at him. What the hell did he mean by that?

“I’ve seen that little kid of yours. Daddy a big black man, huh? Screwed you and did a runner? Is that what you like? Big black men? Well, honey, I’ll show you big. Get this!” He started unzipping his trousers. In one quick movement Louisa shoved him off the bed and ran for the door as he lay sprawled on the floor. She tore down the stairs, clinging to the banister rail for fear of losing her balance. Her head was still spinning. No sign of Gina. The front door was open. A couple of people were leaning against the wall next to it, smoking a joint. She dodged past them and ran out into the cool night air.

Stumbling across the pitch-black field, she somehow managed to find her way back to the Land Rover. She fumbled in her pocket for the keys and let herself in, crawling over the seats to the back. There were sacks on the floor and one of Rhiannon’s old jackets. Curling up in a ball, she hugged the coat to her, sobbing as she inhaled its familiar, innocent scent.

In the field outside sheep nibbled at the grass sticking out from under the wheels and foxes called to each other in the still night air. And the Land Rover creaked gently with her sobs, until at last she cried herself to sleep.

Louisa was woken by the sound of someone banging on the window. Gray morning light filtered into the back of the Land Rover. She blinked as she realized where she was. Then her heart thumped against her ribs.
Was it him?

“Lou! You in there?” It was Gina’s voice. Louisa fumbled with the door.

“Oh, thank goodness! I was really worried about you!” Gina’s smile vanished when she caught sight of Louisa’s face. “My God! You look terrible! What the hell happened?”

“Can we just get away from here?” Louisa’s voice was croaky, and her eyes were sore from crying.

Gina nodded. “Not home, though, eh? Don’t want your parents seeing you just yet. How about the Milk Bar in town? I think it’s open on Sundays.”

Louisa glanced down at her clothes. The red shiny top was spattered with drops of Quentin’s lethal punch. And the button on her jeans was gone, a wisp of cotton marking the place where it had been. Her tongue felt thick and dry, and there was a bitter, charred taste in her mouth. “I don’t want anyone to see me like this,” she mumbled.

“We’ll go in the back entrance,” Gina said, “where the toilets are. You can get cleaned up a bit before we go into the café.”

“Okay.” Louisa scrambled out of the back of the vehicle and walked around to the driver’s side, wincing with every movement.

Half an hour later they were nursing steaming mugs of black coffee.

“I thought you liked him.” Gina frowned. “I saw you dancing with him and I thought, well, you know
. . .
”

“I suppose I did fancy him a bit.” Louisa sniffed. “But he was horrible! I mean, we hadn’t even kissed or anything and he was on top of me, pulling my clothes off. Like an animal! Like
. . .
” She bit her lip.

“Like Trefor?”

Louisa squeezed her eyes shut. “It was
. . .
” She shook her head. “I don’t know: like I was seventeen again and he was there, holding me down, hurting me. He was so angry—said I’d been leading him on!” Her eyes snapped open. “What is it with me, Gina? What do I
do
that makes men act like that? Do I
look
easy?”

“Of course you don’t!” Gina rubbed her shoulder. “Listen, it’s him, not you. You were just unlucky. What a bastard—and he seemed so nice!”

“Perhaps he would have been. With you, I mean. I know you fancied him. When he asked me to dance, I looked for you—but you’d gone.”

“I know.” Gina gave a wry smile. “I got off with his mate, Jeremy, instead.”

“The one I saw you kissing on the stairs?”

“Yes.”

“And did you
. . .
you know?”

Gina sucked in a breath. “Do you think I’m terrible?”

The shake of Louisa’s head was so quick that anyone watching would have missed it. She took a gulp of coffee. “Was it
. . .
” she whispered, “was it good?”

Gina stared into the steam spiraling from her mug. “Yes. It was fantastic,” she breathed. “Better than Andy!”

“I
. . .
I’m really pleased for you.” Louisa made herself smile. “Are you going to see him again?”

“I hope so. We haven’t arranged anything definite, but I’ll see him at the market.” A flash of concern crossed her face. “That’s going to be terrible for you, though, isn’t it?”

Louisa shrugged. “Not really. I can handle it. Quentin’s the one who should be embarrassed, not me.” She almost convinced herself, but beneath the bravado she knew it was going to be awful, having to stand just yards away from him week after week, with Rhiannon a tangible reminder of the horrible things he had said.

She wanted to erase the whole sordid episode from her memory, but his words were etched inside her head. Quentin had accused her of doing exactly what her mother must have done. Imagining that seedy one-night stand made her feel physically sick.
No
wonder men treat you like a tart
, Quentin’s voice whispered.
Like mother, like daughter . . .

Chapter 34

On the way to Aberystwyth market the following week Louisa steeled herself. She had decided that the only way to cope was to blank Quentin out, pretend the party had never happened. If he said anything to her, or made any snide remarks about Rhiannon, she would simply ignore him.

When they pulled up in the square and began unloading eggs, she shot a quick glance at Quentin’s stall. To her surprise and relief he wasn’t there. He was still missing the following week and discreet inquiries by Gina revealed that he had left the commune to go traveling in India.

Over the next few weeks Louisa wrestled with the negative thoughts he had stirred up. She told herself that she was
not
like her mother. That Eva had lost control—probably after a few too many drinks—in the same way she might have lost control with Quentin at the party. But she hadn’t. She hadn’t had a one-night stand like her mother had with the American soldier.

She tried to push thoughts of her mother’s casual liaison out of her mind, but every so often Quentin’s words would float up from her subconscious. The assumption he had made about Rhiannon became a nagging worry. What was going to happen when she started school? Would she be teased because of her color? Would she come home wanting to know why her skin was different from Tom’s? Louisa agonized over what, if anything, to say to her daughter. It would be easiest to cross her fingers and say nothing, in the hope that Rhiannon would simply be accepted by the other kids. But her conscience told her this was blind optimism. She could still remember how it had felt, that day in the sweet shop, to be called black. Nearly twenty years and the wound was still raw. She would rather die than let Rhiannon go through something like that. But how was she going to explain it all to a child who was not yet five years old?

In the end it was Tom who forced her to confront the past. He came home one afternoon and announced that his school project was to draw up a family tree. “Mr. Roberts said to go back as far as your great-grandparents,” he said. “And to bring photos if we’ve got any. Have we?”

His request struck her like a punch in the stomach. “Er
. . .
I’m not sure.” She sat down heavily at the kitchen table. Great-grandparents? She didn’t even know the name of his grandfather. She had already told him a white lie to explain why he never saw Ray’s parents. Was she going to lie to him again? “I’ll go and have a word with Nan and Granddad,” she said, trying to sound calm. “I’ll ask them what photos they’ve got. Have a sandwich and we’ll talk about it a bit later, eh?”

“Okay.” Tom shrugged and went to fetch peanut butter from the cupboard.

Half an hour later, when he was out in the barn feeding an orphaned lamb, Louisa told Gina what had happened. “What am I going to tell him?” she groaned.

“The truth, I guess,” Gina said. “Has he never asked questions before? About Rhiannon, I mean?”

“Only once.” Louisa pursed her lips. “He asked why her skin was a darker brown than his and mine.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“I said it was just the way she’d turned out. Like the way some sheep give birth to a white lamb one year and a black lamb the next.”

“Hmm.” Gina smiled. “It seems quite logical when you put it that way.”

“But now I’ve got to spell out what really happened, haven’t I?” Louisa sighed. “I’ve already told him Ray’s parents live in Australia. I can’t lie to him again.”

“Australia?”

“Well, it was either that or tell him they’d died: How else was I supposed to explain why they suddenly disappeared from his life?”

Gina nodded. “Yes, I see what you mean.”

“The thing is,” Louisa went on, “if I tell him Eddie’s not actually his granddad, he’s going to want to know who his real grandfather is. How on earth do I explain why I don’t even know his name?”

Gina shook her head, glancing out at the farmyard where Jonathan, Julia, and Rhiannon were playing tag. “Well, it certainly won’t be easy—but it’s got to come out sometime, Lou. Like I said before, it’s a time bomb. It’s got to go off sooner or later. Better get it over with, I’d say. Tom’s old enough to understand, I think.”

“Old enough to understand that his grandmother had a baby by a man who didn’t hang around long enough to tell her his name?”

“Are you sure that’s what happened?”

“How else do you explain why she can’t remember it?” Louisa grimaced. “You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to work it out, do you? I imagine they met at a dance where it was too noisy to talk properly, nipped outside for a quickie, and then he legged it back to his barracks. End of story.”

“Okay, so your mum says she can’t remember.” Gina frowned. “But that doesn’t mean she
really
can’t, does it?”

“What are you saying?”

“What if she’s just
. . .
well, I don’t know—sort of blotted it out because she finds it too upsetting to think about?”

“Upsetting? You mean
. . .
” Louisa stopped short. It suddenly occurred to her that she might have got it all wrong: that Eva could have been the victim of a rape. It was a horrifying thought, but if it was true, she could no more blame her mother for what happened than she could blame herself for what Trefor had done.

As she turned the idea over, words of Eddie’s drifted into her mind. Words spoken when she had been sitting sobbing on the draining board in the kitchen of the house on Sycamore Street:
It wasn’t quite true, what your aunt said
. . .
when she said he died in the war. We don’t know what happened to him.

“What?” Gina was staring at her.

“Just remembering something my dad said when I was a kid.” There was a faraway look in Louisa’s eyes. “He said my real father didn’t die in the war—how would he have known that?”

“Why don’t you ask him? If your mum won’t talk about it, maybe he will.”

“I couldn’t!” Louisa bit her lip. “It’d really upset him if I dragged all that up again—it was bad enough when I was a kid.”

“But if you explain that it’s for Tom’s sake.” Gina persisted. “He’d do anything for that boy.”

“I know.” Louisa nodded. “But doesn’t that make it emotional blackmail?”

“Of course it doesn’t! If he knows more than he’s let on, he owes it to you to spill the beans. After all, none of it’s your fault, is it?”

Gina volunteered to see to the children’s supper while Louisa went to find Eddie. He was in the top field, mending a fence. She trudged along the track toward him, her heart in her boots. She watched his ready smile dissolve as she explained about Tom’s project.

“You know the last thing I want is to upset you and Mam by bringing it all up again.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “But I don’t know what to tell him.”

Eddie shifted his weight onto a fence post, as if suddenly weary. “I knew it’d all have to come out someday.” He shook his head. “As soon as I set eyes on little Rhiannon, I thought, that’s it: we won’t be able to bury our heads in the sand much longer.” He looked at her. “We should have sat you down and told you properly years ago.”

“But you didn’t.” Louisa bit her lip. She hoped she hadn’t made it sound like an accusation. “Was it because you were so upset about David?”

He nodded. “Partly, I suppose, yes. Your mother’s never really been the same since we lost him. I think she blamed herself.”

Louisa frowned. “Why?”

“She never really explained it exactly.” He paused to wipe a bead of perspiration from his forehead. “She suddenly went very religious. Kept talking about the wages of sin, stuff like that.”

“You mean she blamed David’s death on
. . .
” Louisa faltered. It was like walking on eggshells.

“On the affair? Yes, I think she did.” Eddie was staring at the muddy tracks his boots had made in the grass.

“Affair?” She stared at him. “She had an
affair
?”

“Well, yes.” He gave her a puzzled look. “You knew about that, though, didn’t you? We talked about him that time when you were little
. . .
”

“You told me he was black, and that you didn’t know what had happened to him,” Louisa said, her voice rising. “But you didn’t tell me it was an affair!”

His eyes were uncomprehending. “But what else could it have been?”

“But I
. . .
I
. . .
” she stammered. “When she said she didn’t know his name
. . .
I thought it was
. . .
” She couldn’t say it.

“What?”

“A one-night stand!” she blurted out. “I didn’t know what to think!” Hot tears stung her eyes. “For all I knew she could have been raped!” She buried her face in the coarse fabric of his jacket, and he wrapped his arms around her.

“I’m so sorry, Lou! We should have told you
. . .
I had no idea
. . .
”

“Please,” she whispered, gulping back her tears, “just tell me the truth, Dad. Tell me what really happened.”

“Well, I don’t think I’ll ever know that myself,” he said, stroking her hair. “But I’ll tell you what I do know.” He took a long breath. “His surname was Willis, and she called him Bill.”

“Do you know anything else?”

Eddie shook his head. “Not much. He was in the Quartermaster Corps. He was in France when you were born.”

“And did he know about me?”

“Oh yes.” Eddie cleared his throat, and for a moment she thought he was going to break down. “He knew your mother was pregnant,” he went on. “He’d been trying to arrange for the Red Cross to take you over to the States when you were born.”

Louisa stared at him, incredulous. “He wanted to take me to the States? You mean he and Mum were going to run off together?”

“I don’t know what they were planning, love.” He blinked and looked away. “She thought I was dead, you see. I’d been missing for two years. A prisoner of war
. . .
” He gave a heavy sigh.

“Oh God, Dad—I had no idea
. . .
” It was all so different from the pictures in her head. Her mother had had a serious affair; she had almost certainly been in love with this man. So why had she lied? Why had she pretended she couldn’t remember his name? Louisa glanced at Eddie. There was so much she wanted to ask him, but the strange, distracted look in his eyes made her afraid to push him any further. How could he have kept all this bottled up for so many years?

“I’ll tell you about the time I spent in Burma one day.” He gave her a wry smile, suddenly himself again. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you any more about your
. . .
” he hesitated for a split second, “about your father. That’s all I know. But there is one other person who could probably tell you more.”

“You mean Aunt Dilys?” Louisa had only met her mother’s younger sister twice. It had occurred to her before that the aunt who had moved to Holland after the war might have known her real father, but she had never dared ask.

“No, not her—she was away in the forces when you were born, so I don’t think she’d know much about him. Anyway, you know what she’s like. If you were to start asking her questions, she’d be straight on the phone to your mother.” He gave her a look that she understood instantly. It was the look he always used to convey that whatever they were talking about was to be kept from Eva. “No,” he went on, “there’s someone else. A woman by the name of Cathy Garner. She was very close to your mother during the war. She knew your real dad.”

“Oh!” Louisa’s mouth dropped open. She felt overwhelmed by the thought that the faceless man who had haunted her for almost two decades might suddenly become real.

“Her address is still in your mother’s book,” he went on, “although I don’t know if she’s still in Wolverhampton. We never saw her when we were living there.”

“Why not?” Louisa asked the question automatically. She was only half listening, her mind still reeling with the implications of what Eddie had said.

“She and your mother lost touch. The last time I saw her was at David’s funeral. She carried on sending Christmas and birthday cards for a couple of years after that, but your mother never wrote back.” He shrugged. “She’s probably moved on by now, but it might be worth a try.”

Louisa suddenly felt sick. “I
. . .
I don’t know if I want to.”

Eddie took her arm and began walking back along the track. “It’s up to you, love,” he said gently, “but whatever you decide is fine by me. I want you to understand that.”