Of all the moments in my life, this was the one I was made for. I was going home, going back not to a place I remembered but to something new. Something that everybody else had that I couldn’t imagine. My pain and oddness would soon disappear. I needed to scream, but instead sat rocking on the stool, gulping my wine and ordering another, feeling the song throughout.
At five fifty-five, a car pulled up outside and parked at the edge of the dock, and a woman with bright blonde hair got out. I knew it was who I was waiting for despite our completely different hair colour.
I ran to the door of the bar and stood watching her walk towards me. She was smiling, I was smiling, and I could see me around the age of ten in her face and in her smile. She was petite like me, maybe in her late forties, well dressed and pretty with blue eyes. She spoke before she got to me.
‘Hello, I’m your auntie Carol, Kerry.’
I burst into tears.
‘All right?’
‘You look like me when I was ten,’ I blurted.
She laughed a little and hugged me. ‘You all right now?’
I felt awkward in the hug, but kept it up way past what felt natural.
‘Now listen, Kerry, I know this is hard for you but your mum doesn’t have much time. It’s not easy for her to get away, you see.’
‘What do you mean?’ I stood back from her, taking her in more, now that the initial shock had subsided.
‘Well, she hasn’t told her husband and her family about you.’ She shrugged her shoulders.
‘Never told them?’ I found this so hard to believe.
‘Complicated stuff, eh?’ She smiled warmly again and rubbed my arm reassuringly, as I started to cry again. I was shocked by my crying and had not expected to be this way. Nor had I expected my auntie Carol to be so friendly and light.
‘She’s dead shocked, you see, so you have to think about that when you meet her. This is what she’s been afraid of for years.’
‘That’s fine, that’s OK, I know, I just want to meet her.’
‘Well, I’m going to take you to her now.’
We left the pub for some reason and walked back to her car. She told me we were driving to another pub nearby. I went along with their high-security pub plans without questioning them, but felt them unnecessary.
There was little conversation on my part in the car. I watched her ankles move off and on the pedals; her ankles were shaped like mine. She and my mum occupied the same womb in my grandmother. That’s all I kept thinking as she drove. She attempted to make humdrum small talk, which I was unable to take part in.
‘What do you think of Brisbane, then?’ She turned to me smiling, searching my face and hair. ‘I daren’t ask about your face, it looks nasty. You haven’t been in a scrape with someone, have you?’ she joked.
‘White-water rafting accident.’
‘Where are you from?’
‘Scotland. Edinburgh.’
‘How long have you been here, then? And how the devil did you find us?’
‘It’s a long story, a lot to do with coincidences.’
‘There’s loads of us out here.’ She laughed, and kept looking round at me.
‘How come?’
‘Well, we are a big family. I mean, there were ten of us, and there’s four of us out here.’
I shook my head in disbelief.
‘It’s mind-boggling, isn’t it?’ She was so smiley and warm and normal.
‘Are you my auntie?’ I said for about the tenth time.
‘Are you my niece?’ she said back, which I loved.
We didn’t drive far, just a bit along the riverside in the other direction until we reached a car park. There was a car waiting outside another bar called The Shore. There were two women in it. One hid her face with her hand.
My auntie Carol ushered me out of the car with her hand on my shoulder and into the bar, straight upstairs. She thanked the bar lady on the way up as if she knew her.
‘Can I get you something?’ she asked, going into her handbag.
‘White wine, please.’
‘Go on then, you sit down, I’ll bring them over.’
I sat down in the corner, my back to the wall, looking out.
‘You all right?’ She brought over the drinks and put them on the table.
‘I’m nervous.’ I gulped my wine.
‘Well, course you are, pet. You’re going to be, aren’t you? I think we all are.’
Footsteps climbed the stairs. I heard two sets, one of them surely my mother’s. Two dark-haired petite women shuffled into the room. I didn’t know which one to look at. I fixed more on the one behind the one with glasses. Everything became slow and odd and not at all how I imagined. There was no running over and hugging, no shouting or cheering, no ending music; instead, the woman with glasses arranged stools round my table and ushered the shorter, silent woman to sit opposite. She was reluctant until the woman with her pushed her down onto the stool. It seemed ages before anybody spoke. I was breathing as though I’d just finished running.
‘Hello, Kerry,’ said the woman with glasses. ‘I’m your auntie Deb and this is your mum.’
My mum looked ashen. I stretched out my hand but she refused it, instead shaking her head. Auntie Carol brought drinks back from the bar for my mum and her sister.
Auntie Carol said, ‘Double brandy,’ as she put it down.
I looked at my mum but she didn’t look at me; instead she rummaged in her handbag, then brought out cigarettes. I noted my mother’s brand was menthol. Once she lit up and took a drag, she fixed on me, putting her mouth to the side and chewing on it. I watched her mouth smoke and her eyes dart around. She and I had the same shape to our faces, and the same mouth, although she had smoker’s lines. She had freckles and a tan; her face was quite lined for her age and her eyes were beautiful, like mine. She wore a gold bracelet, a watch and a wedding ring. I watched her hands – her nails were bitten down. She wore a frosted lipstick that, like me, she had freshly applied. Her hair was fairly short and highlighted; I wondered if we had a tendency to grey early in our family.
‘Go on, say something,’ said auntie Deb to Madeline Thomson, my mother. But she refused.
‘It’s all right,’ I said, smoking. I felt strong again. I could see she was terrified and I didn’t want to scare her away. I wanted to show her that I could be calm and controlled in a crisis.
‘Your mum hasn’t been well, you know, so she’s pretty worn out, and the shock of this is a bit much at the moment,’ said her sister Deb.
My mum flicked her ash into our shared ashtray. ‘I mean, am I never going to be able to forget this? Is this never going to leave me alone?’
Those were the first words my mother spoke to me. They had little effect on me; I was too carried away by the excitement of seeing who made me, a face like mine, for the first time. I used to draw pictures when I was young, in primary school, of my face with different hairstyles, and sometimes like a man with beard and moustache, trying out different ways to make me look, but here was the face that made me. She drank half her brandy down and did not smile once, despite my constant smile.
‘We’ll leave you to it,’ said Auntie Carol, moving away to another table with Deb.
‘No need,’ my mother said firmly. My aunties moved away all the same.
‘Is it brandy that you like, then?’ It was a dumb thing to say but I was just trying to find a way to talk to her.
‘It is, yeah.’ Everything she said was an attempt to close down our talk. She seemed to have no interest in me and how I felt, she seemed to have no curiosity – but I knew that would change in time. The sisters kept away from us and talked among themselves, keeping an eye on us all the time.
‘I call it D-day,’ she said, dragging hard. She smoked like a bitter person. She sounded pretty Australian with a slight hint of Englishness in her vowels. Her voice was a heavy smoker’s voice and quite husky.
‘Sorry?’
‘That’s what I’ve always c
alled today. D-day.’ She stubbed out her cigarette for much longer than she needed to. I was looking at her like I was in love. Even her harsh words were beautiful to me.
‘When I heard the call on the radio, I said to Carol, that’s bloody D-day. I’ve always said the day you found me would be my D-day.’ She finished off her drink and lit up another cigarette. I reached for mine; she pushed hers towards me, offering them up. I thanked her and took one, excited to be smoking my mother’s cigarettes.
‘So.’ She paused to inhale, and she seemed calmer. ‘How did you manage to find me then?’
‘It’s such a weird and long story.’
The aunties were silent, listening to everything that was said between us.
‘First of all I went to Register House when I was eighteen, so I had your name and address at the time of my birth, then I went to Newcastle and asked around in your street.’
‘So, someone shopped me?’ She looked angry again, increasing her drag rate.
‘A neighbour said you went to Australia and married an Australian soldier called Duffy, and the rest was my own detective work and pretty much fate.’ I smoked, waiting to see what she’d make of my story.
‘I bet I know who told you.’ She looked over at the sisters, and they both nodded.
‘Do you believe in fate, Madeline?’ This was the first time I’d used her name.
‘There’s certainly something else going on out there, there has to be.’
Auntie Deb asked us if we wanted another drink, we both said yes. I became aware of how limited my time with her was tonight, so I tried asking the essential, must-know questions.
‘What are my relatives like? I mean ancestors, what do they do?’
‘Just ordinary people – builders, electricians. Just workers.’
‘What about my real father?’
‘I haven’t seen Robert since before you were born. We were both very young.’
‘Did you love him?’ I wanted to know the circumstances under which I was conceived.
‘At the time, I suppose I thought I did, but like I said, we were young.’
‘What does he look like?’
‘He was very good-looking, what you would call a catch. Dark like you. You look like your father, I thought that as soon as I saw you. I got a shock.’
‘What else about him?’
‘He loved Bobby Darin, I remember that, and he was always very well turned out.’
The aunties came back with the drinks.
‘Look, I understand, I know they made you give me away, I know that’s what they did in those days.’ I felt myself turning into this understanding, kind, selfless person. I didn’t recognise myself, but I wanted to be nice. I felt sorry for her; she was as fucked up as I was.
‘If you knew how they treated us in the home, made us feel like we were so dirty. And we felt grateful that we were given a place to go and have our babies, and glad that our babies were going to a good home. It was just what happened, you had no choice if you had no money, and we were poor, everyone was.’
‘What about your family now? Have you got children?’
‘Two boys and a girl. Andrew is twenty-three, Calum is twenty and Linda is eighteen.’
I felt a little depressed momentarily as I calculated my half-brother’s birth at being the year after mine or even less.
‘So you got married quickly after me.’
‘After what I’d been through, I just wanted someone to come and take me away. I was lucky, he was my saviour at the time, he really was.’
‘What does he do? Is your married name Duffy, then?’
‘No, it’s not, but I can’t tell you anything about them, OK? Not my married name or anything else, OK?’
‘OK, that’s OK.’ It annoyed me slightly, her telling me this, but I could find out anything I really needed to. ‘What happened to my father, then?’
‘He went off to sea.’ She looked down. ‘He was in the merchant navy. He said he would come back and get me and the baby, he wrote to me in the home saying that he’d be back but …’ She shook her head and downed half her new drink.
‘Did he see me, then?’ I hoped he hadn’t; it would make me feel better about him leaving us.
‘No, he left before you were born. He came back on leave to see me when I was in the home, brought a big lovely bunch of flowers and told me that he was going home to tell his mother that he was marrying me and that everything would be all right, and that he’d come straight back when he could. He didn’t show. You were born, and I got a letter from his mother saying that he was marrying someone else.’ She stubbed out her cigarette firmly again. When she looked up she had tears in her eyes. ‘If you knew what it felt like, to lie to everyone, to have to write back home saying that I was happy and had a job and all that crap.’
I looked down now.
‘All the time, I was lying to everyone, ’cause I was sitting writing letters from a bloody home, waiting to give my baby away.’
There was a pause and then she said, ‘Is there anything else you want to ask me?’
My mind raced to think of more questions and categories, so that on leaving I would feel no regret about missing stuff out I wanted to know.
Then she said, ‘What do you do, then?’
‘Just selling paintings door to door. Just a traveller’s job for now.’
‘So have you been to college?’
This was a family-type question that pleased me. ‘No. I was going to go to art college but I messed things up at school. I’ve had a messed-up life, wasted things, I have lots of regrets already.’ I laughed a little.
‘Life is full of regrets; I learnt that at a young age, too. That was one of the things they said to us, about our babies going to good homes.’ She became quite animated. ‘They said the baby would have more chances and opportunities than if it stayed with us. That it would have a nice home and probably go to college, and get a good job.’
I didn’t know what to say. I felt like I’d disappointed absolutely everybody in my entire orbit, including myself, with the college failure. But I’d fucked up school in the first place because I couldn’t concentrate because I was so unhappy – which was probably linked to feeling weird and adopted.
‘Are you staying here, then?’ she asked.
‘Don’t know, haven’t decided yet. But I will have to leave soon I suppose. I’ve got a six-month visa.’
‘I just want to forget this. I had no choice, you know.’
‘Yeah, I know. Why did you come to Australia, then, what about your family back home?’ I knew really but I wanted to hear it from her.
‘A fresh start. Nobody knew me. When I met my husband he was in the army in Ireland, and he told me about this place that was warm and sunny, and where the houses were big and new and there was plenty of work, and it would only cost us ten pounds to go there. So I wasn’t going to say no, was I?’
‘No, suppose not.’
‘I’ve got my two sisters here, and one brother. My mam and dad came out but they’re both dead now, and the rest of the family come over and visit.’
‘Do you ever go back over there?’ I hoped she would say yes.
‘Been over three times for weddings and funerals, but it’s expensive to fly back and forth, so we only do it when we really have to.’
I wondered if having to see me again would be one of these occasions.
‘You’ve got a lovely mouth,’ she said, thawing slightly. Her comment knocked me out; I read it as love.
‘Have I?’
‘It’s a nice shape.’
‘Thanks.’
My mother ordered another brandy and I had some more wine.
‘What were my grandparents like?’
‘Your grandfather was in the army, he was a hard man and a drinker. He gave us a hell of a life, but then his life was pretty grim when he was a boy so … I lost my mam just three years past. There were ten of us so we never had any money.’
‘Fuck, ten? So I’
ve got millions of relatives?’
‘I suppose you have.’
‘That’s weird, you know?’ I imagined a formal photograph pose with loads of people who looked like me.
‘I can’t stay long, you know, I have to get back before my husband gets home from work.’
‘Does he know about this?’ I said this, instead of me.
‘No, he doesn’t. I’ve kept it from him all this time.’
‘What does he do?’
‘Electrician.’
‘What do you do?’
‘Just a housewife.’ She gulped her third drink with more urgency than the first two.
‘They were bastards in that place, what they did to us, how they made us feel. There were some women who walked up and left before they had the babies, just had enough and decided to keep them, and when they got up to leave we would shout things out to them and clap and stuff, but they were the brave ones. I wasn’t, I was too afraid to be brave, I admit that. My father would have killed me, he would have absolutely killed me if he’d known I was pregnant.’
‘What, you didn’t tell him?’
‘No. I said that I was working as a nurse. So was our Carol, she’s older than me and was further ahead in the nursing, and she knew of this place in Scotland, in Dundee, where you could go and have the baby, so I told Mam and Dad that I got a job there and I went away. Those bloody letters saying how much fun I was having and how good the job was!’ Her eyes grew watery; she sucked on her menthol.
I felt nothing at this point. This was the story of the making and the leaving of me, but I knew nobody in the picture.
She got a handkerchief from her bag and blew her nose but there were no tears, except from the aunties who were both sniffling at the other table.
‘What was my birth like? What time? What did I look like?’
‘It was a beautiful bright sunny afternoon when you were born, it was half past four in the afternoon, and the birth was straightforward.’
The term ‘straightforward’ was hard to hear.
‘They told us we were doing the best for our babies, you know, and that’s what we believed. They said that you were going to a good home with a caravan that you could go on your holidays in. Was that true?’
I could have said a whole lot more at that point but, like her, I chose to focus on the caravan.
The Naked Drinking Club Page 34