Familiar Rooms in Darkness

by Caro Fraser

  Bella stared at her. There was a world of incomprehension here, clearly.

  Cecile began to cry again, and Bella went to her side, knelt down, and put an arm round her. She had to steel herself to be kind, to contain her own anger. Her voice shook as she spoke. ‘Don’t you understand, Mum? Don’t you know what it is to be told you’re not who you thought you were?’ Cecile lifted her head and looked at Bella. ‘Don’t you have any idea?’

  Cecile dried her eyes with the end of the long scarf that hung loosely at her neck. ‘We would have told you. No – that’s not true. I mean, we were going to. But when Harry and I split up, you were quite little, you see. And it didn’t seem a good thing to undermine what security you had. We were so anxious to make you both feel that we loved you, despite the divorce, and so on. When you were teenagers – well, I came close to telling you. But I didn’t. I don’t know why, but I didn’t. It was never discussed between Harry and myself. By the time you were almost grown up, I was too afraid. You and Charlie could be quite hostile creatures a lot of the time, anyway – you know, all those ups and downs, the fights… I suppose all families have them, but I was so afraid that if I told you, it might drive you away completely. And then… well, there never seemed to be a right time. We’d left it too late. After a while, it didn’t seem to matter any more. You were both who you were, you had grown up into such secure, lovely people… There didn’t seem any need.’ She gazed fearfully at Bella.

  ‘Any need? When we could have gone on throughout our entire lives, believing something that simply wasn’t true?’ Bella rose from where she knelt. She pressed her fists hard against her skull, unable to contain the anger and outrage. ‘You horrible, horrible, selfish woman…’

  ‘No! No, I’m not! I did everything for the best–’

  But Bella was now a human storm of tears and emotion. ‘You lied to us! Isn’t silence a lie? Letting people go through their lives thinking they’re something they’re not – isn’t that a lie? How could you do such a thing? I don’t even know who I am, where I come from! I thought everything began with you and Harry, I thought we were you. What am I? Where the hell am I from?’ She leaned against the sink and wept, while Cecile watched her.

  ‘Oh, darling… I never, ever wanted any pain for anyone–’

  Bella turned round. ‘Don’t say that! What on earth do you think you’ve been storing up all these years?’ She struck her chest with her fist. ‘You let me and Charlie think we’re your children, when we’re not!’

  ‘But you are!’ Cecile’s voice was thin with anguish. ‘Please, please, sit down. Sit down here. Cry all you like. I’m still your mother – you know that. I’ll tell you everything. Sit down.’

  Bella shook her head, but she did as Cecile said. She sat down. She wanted to hear. It took her some moments to control her tears. She took a deep breath. ‘Go on. Tell me. You owe me that much. Tell me.’

  Cecile pressed her trembling lips together, determined not to let herself start crying again. ‘Harry and I were married for eight years before we found out we couldn’t have children. It was something to do with me, something they couldn’t put right. I very badly wanted a family. Very badly. So we decided to adopt. We found out we would have to go through a dreadfully long process, lots of checking and bureaucracy… the prospect was a nightmare. I got very depressed, very anxious…’ Cecile dabbed at her eyes with the end of her scarf, and pushed back strands of loose hair, trying to compose herself. ‘While we were still deciding whether or not to go ahead, Harry must have spoken to George Meacher. I hadn’t seen him since we were married. I never liked him. He was a horrid little drunk, I always thought, always scrounging money from people and saying vile things behind their backs. Anyway, I don’t know what he said, but the next thing I knew, he’d put Harry in touch with a doctor, someone in Deptford, who knew a family…’

  ‘A family?’ Bella stared at Cecile. The shadowy female figure which she had begun to imagine – some young girl in trouble, perhaps – instantly vanished.

  ‘Yes.’ Cecile met Bella’s gaze. ‘The woman had one child already, a boy. They had a lot of debt, a lot of problems. The husband was threatening to leave if they had another baby. He was a drinker, gambled a lot, and the woman was the only wage earner…’

  The man. The woman. My mother and father, thought Bella. How could Cecile tell this story so dispassionately? Maybe to her that was what it had become. Just a story, the ghostly background to the real life she and Harry had given Bella and Charlie. That must be how she saw it.

  ‘We were quite well off back then. Harry was doing very well. The doctor arranged it so that Harry paid for everything – the nursing-home fees, all the expenses, and a few thousand besides. And we got you and Charlie. It wasn’t anything illegal, you know. Just private. A private adoption.’

  ‘Did you meet her – my birth mother?’

  ‘Oh, yes. We met them, we checked the family out very thoroughly. Well, as thoroughly as we could.’

  ‘Was she upset? Was she sorry about what she was doing?’

  ‘Darling, I don’t know. It was something she had decided she had to do. It was very much a business arrangement.’

  A business arrangement. My life, thought Bella. Charlie and me. We have a brother somewhere. I am not who I thought I was. I am… Her own identity suddenly failed her. ‘What was their name?’

  Cecile furrowed her brow in thought. ‘Oh, God, I should know… It was a simple name…’ She closed her eyes. ‘Kinley,’ she said suddenly, opening them. ‘Kinley.’

  Bella sat back slowly in her chair. ‘But our birth certificates… they show our name as Day. How did you –?’

  ‘You were both ours from the first.’ Cecile’s eyes filled with tears again. ‘I told you, it was all done very privately. It wasn’t difficult simply to go to the town hall and register you as our children. Because you were our children, you were and you are…’ Cecile’s voice dissolved into incoherent sobs.

  Bella gazed at her with blank incomprehension. ‘Oh, God, have you any idea what you’ve done, keeping this from us?’

  Cecile looked up, eyes brimming with tears, and shook her head. ‘No, I don’t suppose I have. Please don’t hate me.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with hating you. But I don’t know if I can begin to forgive you…’

  ‘Are you going to tell Charlie?’

  ‘How can you ask that? How can I not?’

  Suddenly the telephone rang, making Cecile jump. She dabbed away her tears and went to answer it. Bella buckled her canvas bag and put on her jacket. Cecile turned and saw she was about to leave. She covered the mouthpiece with her hand.

  ‘Bella… wait. Wait!’

  Bella shook her head. ‘I have to go. You carry on. I’ll call you. I have to go.’

  6

  When Bella showed up for rehearsals the following morning, she felt gritty with lack of sleep, her head aching from an evening spent with too many cigarettes and her own thoughts. The other three cast members were already assembled on stage.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ said Bella, giving everyone quick air kisses. Jeremy put both hands on her shoulders and studied her features. A tall, sad-eyed man in his early fifties, Jeremy had been big in television drama in the eighties and was looking to this play to bring about a revival in his fortunes. He worked tirelessly on his fading good looks, combing his hair carefully to conceal his bald patch, dyeing it discreetly at the temples. He was unremittingly kind and solicitous of the welfare of all his fellow cast members.

  ‘You look washed out, darling. Are you unwell?’ he asked Bella.

  ‘No, I’m fine,’ said Bella, and tried to look bright.

  ‘Come on, let’s get started!’ called Lance, the director. ‘I want to sort out this business in Scene Four with the gun and the bottle. It’s still very wooden. Bruce, Jeremy…’

  Bruce, an improbably handsome young man who had been told too often for his own good that he looked like Rufus Sewell, got up from the chai
r where he had been lounging and prepared to make his entrance. Bella hung her jacket on the back of a chair and picked up a plastic apron from the table. Frank McVeigh, a portly, placid actor in his late fifties, shifted his chair to the side of the stage and carried on reading the sports section of the Daily Telegraph. Frank described himself as a character actor, but in fact he made a career out of playing variations of only one character – that of affable British buffer – which he carried about with him from play to play, and from one television drama to another. Since the death of his wife a year ago, he found it increasingly hard to concentrate and learn his lines, and he harboured a deep fear that his career was beginning to falter. He had been desperately relieved to get this role, much as he loathed Orton. He simply couldn’t afford not to work.

  ‘OK… We’ll take it from the point where Caulfield enters. Just Bruce and Bella. And Bella, put a bit of starchy brightness into it. Look like you want to give Frank a blanket bath.’

  Bella shook out the apron, trying to conjure up a vitality she did not feel. Lance gave a nod, Bruce made his entrance, and Bella, glancing across at him, spoke her line. ‘Who are you? What do you want? I’m frightfully busy.’

  ‘Your husband is outside. He’s going to murder you.’

  ‘You must be mistaken. We celebrate our wooden wedding in a fortnight.’

  Lance interrupted. ‘No, no. Come on, Bella – be snappy with that apron. Brisk, middle class – think Prunella Scales, think Briony Nugent.’

  Thank you, Lance, thought Bella. Mothers, step-mothers, ghosts of mothers, were the last thing she wanted to conjure up. She delivered her line again, and Jeremy entered stage left, gun in hand, looking suitably distraught.

  ‘You’ve strayed from the paths of righteousness. I’m going to kill you!’

  At that moment, Bella’s mobile phone began to warble from the pocket of her jacket hanging on a chair. Lance groaned.

  ‘Sorry, sorry… I forgot to switch it off.’ She answered it anyway.

  ‘Bella, it’s Mummy. I thought you’d be rehearsing. I was going to leave a message.’

  ‘I am. What is it?’

  ‘Please meet me for lunch. I really must talk to you.’

  She hesitated. ‘All right. There’s a pub on the corner near the theatre, The Grapes. I’ll see you there at one.’

  She switched her phone off and hurried back to her mark.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Lance. ‘Right. In you come, Jeremy, gun in hand…’

  Cecile was already in the pub, sitting on her own in a booth, when Bella arrived. She looked very smart in a grey trouser suit, carefully made up, grey hair tied back, sipping a gin and tonic. Bella realized instantly that her mother was trying to retrieve something of the poise and certainty which had fled from her the day before. Her own hollow-eyed scruffiness was a sharp contrast.

  ‘Darling, you look wretched.’ Cecile’s voice was soft with concern.

  ‘Are you surprised? I had the most hellish night. Let me get myself a drink and a sandwich. D’you want anything?’

  Cecile shook her head.

  Bella returned with a mineral water and a cheese sandwich.

  Cecile waited until Bella had sat down, then spoke carefully. ‘I thought, after all the shocks of yesterday, that we should try to deal rationally with what’s happened.’

  Bella recognized this attempt to regain lost moral ground, even if she didn’t entirely sympathize with it. ‘I think it was a bigger shock for me than for you, somehow.’

  ‘It’s all been–’ Cecile sighed, ‘such a mess. My fault, I know.’

  ‘And Harry’s, probably. But there’s no point in finding fault. Things are as they are. Funny, really – I spent a lot of last night wishing I’d never known. Which is what you had intended.’

  ‘No, it was never–’

  ‘The point is, I do know.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Charlie?’

  ‘God, no…’

  ‘Good. I’m glad. I’m frightened to think how badly he may take it. In fact…’

  ‘Don’t. Don’t even think it. He has to know.’

  ‘I know.’ Cecile opened her handbag. ‘I imagine–’ She hesitated, drawing out a piece of paper and laying it on the table. She took a hasty sip of her drink. ‘I imagine you’ll want to try to find her.’

  ‘My birth mother, you mean.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t know. I spent a long time last night trying to make sense of – to work out what I feel. I’m still not sure.’

  Cecile nodded. ‘After you’d gone, I went through all my papers, and I found a few things. I would never have thrown anything away. I suppose I realized there was always a chance… Anyway, these are their names, and the address they were living at in Deptford.’ She pushed the paper towards Bella.

  ‘It was nearly thirty years ago, Mummy. I shouldn’t think they’re still there.’

  ‘No, perhaps not. Anyway, it’s a start. If you do intend to do anything, that is.’

  ‘I won’t know until I’ve spoken to Charlie.’ She ate one of her sandwiches. ‘It did occur to me that perhaps you should be the one to tell him.’

  ‘Bella–’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll tell him. I am his real sister, after all.’ Bella caught her mother’s swift, unhappy glance. ‘You think this can be dealt with rationally. It can’t. I feel such incredible anger towards you, such seething bloody rage –’ She clenched one hand into a fist, then spread the fingers slowly out. ‘I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to get over it. Maybe it’ll stay for ever. I spent all yesterday evening thinking about everything, trying to see things from your point of view. I know you’ve given us the best life possible, that you’ve done so many things for us and we should be very grateful. But I find it so hard to forgive you for not telling us. I don’t think you can begin to understand how entirely it changes the way I feel about myself. All the things I’ve ever accepted about my identity… Little things, being told I take after Grandma…’ She looked strangely at her mother. ‘You’ve even talked about what a difficult time you had when I was born. How could you do that? How could you go around embroidering this – this fantasy?’

  Cecile’s eyes filled with tears. Embarrassed, she kept them fixed on her glass. ‘Because that’s what it was. A fantasy. I wanted to pretend that you were absolutely mine, that I’d given birth to you. It made it seem more real, to hear myself saying things… Anyway, it was true. It happened that way – for your mother.’

  ‘But just saying those things made it impossible for you to tell us the truth, ever! You must have known that.’

  Cecile said nothing.

  ‘I don’t believe the things you said yesterday,’ went on Bella. ‘I don’t think you missed chances, or kept meaning to tell us. You never meant to. You couldn’t have. That was such a mistake. You’ve done damage that may be beyond repair. I don’t know. I only know that things are not going to be the same for a long time.’

  Still Cecile said nothing.

  ‘I have to be going. I’ve some things to do before I get back to rehearsals.’ Bella drank the remains of her mineral water and stood up.

  ‘Don’t leave this.’ Cecile pushed the piece of paper across the table.

  Bella hesitated, then picked it up. She left Cecile sitting alone, staring at her drink.

  That evening, Bella rang Adam. She didn’t want to have to tell him that he’d been right all along, but she had to. He deserved to know. She caught him just as he was about to leave to meet Megan and some friends.

  ‘I thought you might like to be kept up to date. I spoke to my mother.’

  ‘Oh?’

  There was a pause. ‘You were right. George Meacher was right.’

  ‘God. I see. I’m sorry. I mean, I feel like I brought all this about–’

  ‘Don’t. I suppose I should be glad I found out. I don’t think I ever would have, otherwise. At least I know…’ She had intended to remain self-contained, controlled, but
tears began to break up her voice. ‘At least I know… oh God, I don’t know anything! I feel so empty. I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Look, I can come round, if you want to talk about it.’

  She snuffled into a tissue, then said, ‘Would you mind? You’re the only person I can talk to. I haven’t spoken to Charlie yet. God knows how I’m going to manage that…’

  ‘Give me half an hour,’ said Adam.

  He called Megan on her mobile. He could only just hear her voice above the Friday-night roar and babble of the wine bar.

  ‘Sorry, I don’t know if I can make it. Something’s come up.’

  ‘Oh, darling, that’s a shame.’ She had only begun to call him ‘darling’ very recently. He found it hard to get used to. ‘What is it?’

  He hesitated. ‘I’ll tell you when I see you.’

  Adam doubted very much whether he would. So far he hadn’t uttered a word of any of this to Megan. He didn’t entirely trust her discretion. Like all PR people, she was an insatiable gossip.

  ‘Thanks for coming over.’

  Adam followed Bella into her living room and sat down on the sofa. The room smelt of stale smoke.

  ‘Would you like some wine?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  She brought through a bottle of white wine and poured out two glasses, then curled up at the other end of the sofa. Her hair was ragged and uncombed, and her face bare of make-up, dark hollows beneath her eyes.

  ‘When did you speak to your mother?’

  ‘Yesterday.’ Bella picked up her drink. ‘And today. She came over to meet me in my lunch break. I think she was trying to repair the damage done to her dignity the day before, as much as anything else. Yesterday, when I finally got the truth out of her, she just fell apart.’

  ‘Do you blame her?’

  ‘Not really. She’d spent nearly thirty years keeping up a lie. Being found out must have been fairly awful.’

  ‘So what happens now?’