Joan
Morphine played strange tricks on her, mixing up the sounds and pictures so that the seagulls’ shrieks became the cries of a child and the shush of waves on the beach a woman’s breath.
Rachel, Penny’s daughter, came in with the baby, already a toddler, and for a moment she saw Penny with a child in her arms. So alike. Mother and daughter. And now three generations in the same house. The child was a boy. Tiny, with caramel skin, crinkly black hair and shiny brown eyes. Complete contrast to Rachel and Penny with their straw-like hair, pale skin, apple cheeks. She wondered how it would be to raise a child so different from yourself. Not to see yourself reflected in the plane of a cheek or the shape of the mouth or the curve of the wrist. Would it be easier, would you allow the child to be more of themselves and less some minor version of you? Would you find yourself in them in other ways: their temperament or gestures, the way they laughed or their footsteps, their talents and dislikes?
When she had first seen her own baby, she had been shocked. A living child. Her very existence was incredible. Unreal. Joan had never been able to see beyond the pregnancy. That was where it all would end, she imagined. But this; this tangible, human creature . . . she had never really bargained for this. Or the appalling slew of emotions that assailed her.
She’s me, she’d thought. And immediately dismissed the bizarre notion, but it lingered like a smell. She could not face the child. Literally. She had to handle her to feed and change her but she avoided looking at her. She did not trust herself to meet those eyes, to gaze at that face. To admit those feelings. The memory brought anxiety and she turned away from it.
It was good that Rachel would be here with Penny in the coming months and what a perfect place for the boy. Room to play, the beach on the doorstep.
Rachel had gone. Joan had slept maybe. She wasn’t sure. There was a tune in her head. A lovely tune, haunting. A bit like Acker Bilk’s ‘Stranger On The Shore’ – the yearning, that opening sequence that went straight to the solar plexus. She listened to it fade. They came like that sometimes, so intense. Unbidden. Usually the tune but sometimes the lyric. ‘Spring Lament’ had been like that. A gift. Maybe a burden. Too close for comfort. It’s May again, blossoms, swaying in the rain again, another year and still I dream. And the bluebells make me blue, wonder where are you? She had written it down and the process had drained her. It became a favourite with the jazz singers; the syncopation and the key changes a challenge for interpretation.
She shifted her weight in the bed and felt pain stirring again. She closed her eyes, hoping to escape into sleep for just a few more minutes.
Pamela
Her stomach went into free fall when she got the message to ring the researcher. She made a coffee and got pen and paper ready before returning the phone.
‘I’m afraid I’ve some sad news,’ the man said. ‘I managed to trace your mother, she was living in Scarborough but I’m afraid she died last year. I’m very sorry.’
They all leave, they all go. Last year. Only last year.
‘I’ve written a summary of what I’ve been able to establish, I’ll fax that to you?’
‘Thank you.’
‘There is something else, Pamela. Joan had a close friend, they shared the house for many years. I’ve had a word with her and she asked me to tell you that she would be very happy if you wanted to get in touch. She has some things, things of Joan’s that she’d like you to have.’
He continued to talk but she couldn’t concentrate. She felt as though someone had thumped her very hard, knocked the stuffing out of her. She managed to remain civil and conclude the call. Then she remained sitting, stunned. The coffee cooling and the room darkening. She sat and let the thoughts shuffle round, slow and painful, and a part of her observed how numb she felt and she wanted to stay like that, not to feel the full impact of the news
A couple of months later, having spoken to Penny on the phone, she made the journey to Scarborough, the seaside town perched on the East Yorkshire coast.
‘Come in. I’ve made soup and sandwiches,’ Penny greeted her. ‘You must have been travelling for hours. The bathroom’s upstairs, first on the right, if you want to freshen up.’
‘I will, thank you. It’s a beautiful house.’ She took in the stripped wooden banisters, the large airy hallway with its abstract rugs and warm terracotta walls.
‘It is, it was in quite a state when Joan bought it, but she completely refurbished it. The kitchen’s through here when you want me.’
‘Thanks.’ She was relieved that Penny had already referred to Joan and so easily. Upstairs she practiced a smile in the mirror. She had butterflies in her stomach. Would she be able to eat?
The kitchen was warm, the savoury smell of soup and the yeasty scent of warm bread made her mouth water.
Penny had set the table for two, a white linen cloth, a small vase with freesias in it. Simple. Beautiful.
‘It’s only vegetable, I didn’t know if you were a vegetarian.’
‘No, but that sounds great.’
She placed the pot on a mat at Pamela’s side with a ladle. ‘Please, help yourself. I’ll get the bread.’
Pamela poured herself a modest serving, relieved at not getting drips on the cloth, and then accepted a warm roll. It was just possible for her to swallow but she remained nervous. She broke the silence. ‘You lived here with Joan?’
‘Yes. She’d always had lodgers, a lot of people from the theatre would come for the summer season. I moved in in ’79. Over twenty years ago now. I had quite a journey to work. I was headmistress at a school in Pickering, that’s about twenty miles from here. But Joan worked from home.’
‘And she wrote songs?’ One of the facts Penny had told her when they had spoken on the phone.
‘Yes. Do you write?’
‘No.’ She smiled and shook her head. ‘I’m not musical, not really. I sang in a choir when I was at school, nothing since.’
‘You’re in management?’
‘Banking.’
‘Is it very pressured?’
‘Can be. But I must be doing something right, they keep promoting me.’
‘Joan was good with money. Shrewd. She was investing and sorting out a pension years before most women even thought about it.’
‘Were they well off – her family?’
‘No, not particularly. She made her money writing, which is nothing short of miraculous, I’m told. But she had a hit very early on and she insisted on a particular clause in the contract, which made her a great deal of money. That’s what I mean about shrewd. That more or less paid for this house. “Walk My Way”, you’ve heard it?’
Pamela frowned.
‘Bit before your time,’ Penny laughed. ‘Nineteen sixty-four. You’d only have been four. But everybody and their brother covered it after that. I’ve got a copy for you. And lots of photographs.’
They finished eating and Penny cleared the bowls away. ‘You’re very like her.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s quite uncanny. Her hair was straight, but apart from that . . .’
They had always told her she took after Peter with her dark hair and blue eyes.
‘Would you like tea or coffee?’
‘Tea, please. Just milk.’
‘Why don’t you go up and I’ll bring this. Have a look round. It’s her study, I thought you’d like to see it. All her things are there. The top of the stairs at the front on the right.’
Pamela escaped gratefully. The soup had been light but she still felt her stomach churning. She could feel the tension in her neck and along her spine, the strain of the unfamiliar, highly charged visit.
The first thing that struck her was the view: a panorama of the bay, right round to the headland and the sea and sky stretching away on a palette of greys and blues. The desk was quite clear. But this was where she would have sat and written.
Pamela looked back out to the water. The sea was choppy, the outlook bleak, elemental. She had sailed not far from here a couple of years ago. They had fought bitter easterly winds and had to tack for several miles. She had never imagined . . .
She turned to the fireplace and examined the objects on it. Driftwood, postcards, a carving of dolphins, a small cowbell, a harmonica. There was nothing of herself in any of this. She felt unsettled.
On the piano there was a collection of snapshots in frames. Nothing formal; no weddings or graduation photos, no airbrushed babies on sheepskin rugs. Penny on the beach, Penny with a younger woman by a palm tree, Penny crouched beside a dog, with a baby. With a jolt she realised that Penny was more than a lodger or companion. Embarrassment made her cheeks burn. Not at the fact of it but at the possibility that she had already said something crass in her ignorance. But how was she to know? On top of everything else it was too much to take in.
Penny brought up the tea and they sat on the sofa by the fireplace. Penny gestured to a pile of albums. ‘There are loads here. Anything you want copies of we can sort that out and most of these should come to you anyway. I’ve all her family’s here. Joan’s parents are both dead and she only had one brother, Tommy. He emigrated to Australia. He took what he wanted after their mother died. They didn't keep in touch, just Christmas cards. I found this one last night. She would have been your age in this.’
Pamela took the small, square, black-and-white photograph. She inhaled sharply – it was like looking at a version of herself, the same-shaped face, the long nose, same shape eyes, even the curve of eyebrows exactly alike. Like sisters. Like mother and daughter. She took a breath. Why couldn’t you wait?
‘And this must have been just after she had you, she moved to London . . .’
On the train home she stared dry-eyed out through her own reflection, replaying fragments of Penny’s narration, her own clumsy questions.
‘When did she tell you about me?’
‘I’d known her for a while. I had just left a very difficult marriage and I’d been talking to her about the whole business of regret. She said there was only one thing she had regretted and that was having a baby and giving it up for adoption.’
‘Which bit did she regret? Having me or giving me up?’ The bitter question appalled her. Penny would think her so rude.
‘I don’t think she could separate the two things,’ she said carefully.
‘Did she say who my father was?’
‘No.’
‘Never?’ Surely she would have said something, let something slip.
Penny shook her head. ‘No. He was married, that’s all she ever told me.’
She would never know, then, it wasn’t fair.
Penny had talked about Joan’s illness. ‘The nurses were wonderful, they made her so comfortable. We put her bed by the window so she could see out. It’s at the front like this room. She loved that view. It’s not a pretty place, it can be wild some nights, but she said it inspired her. I suppose she didn’t write pretty songs really . . .’ Penny had got upset at that point and apologised and wiped her eyes. Pamela thought of Lilian losing Peter.
‘These were hers. I’d like you to have them. And these were her mother’s, heirlooms.’ She had taken the pieces of jewelry.
‘This is the song, “Walk My Way”. I bet you’ll recognise it when you hear it.’
‘She said Marion was just a name she liked. There’s a friend in Germany too, she knew Joan when she first went to London. If you ever want to meet her I can put you in touch . . . Your mother died very suddenly, you said?’
‘Yes. My father too. I was seven when he died . . . It was only when I was clearing out Mum’s house that I found out . . .’
‘Oh, Pamela, it must have been awful.’
‘If I’d known . . .’
Maybe I’d have got here sooner, maybe I’d have heard her sing, found out who my father was, taken her sailing.
‘I may be talking after the event,’ Penny had said, ‘but I think she wrote this one about you, “Spring Lament”.’ A slow, haunting ballad. It’s May again, blossoms, swaying in the rain again, another year and still I dream. And the bluebells make me blue, wonder where are you? I’m not dancing, no romancing, only glancing over my shoulder, another year older and it’s May again . . .
The train entered a tunnel, the clattering got louder and the lights flickered on and off.
Too late now. Never know you, nor him. You should have left a note, something. Whatever you thought of him – a one-night stand, a drunken party . . . still my father. I had a right to know where I come from. Who I am?