by Jane Davis
'Stuff and nonsense!' Nana reprimanded her. 'You always were the most awful liar. Had to get your sister to do your dirty work for you so you didn't land yourself in it. Out all night then creeping in at the crack of dawn. "Of course I haven't seen your earrings? What, these? I got them down the market." And who was it who broke my favourite vase? "The next-door neighbour's cat must have got in through the window." Very talented cat. Handy with a dustpan and brush, it was. Managed to sweep all the pieces into a neat pile behind the door. I've heard it all before. Thinks I was born yesterday, this one. Well, let me tell you, I'm not nearly as daft as you think I am.'
I was beginning to suspect she was right.
'Seen your father?' Nana asked me over dinner and I almost choked.
'For goodness' sake, Mum!' Aunty Faye scolded her.
'Dad's . . .' I faltered. It still sounded too harsh to say that my dad was dead. But there was also the added confusion that the person that I had always thought of as my dad was not related to me at all. My real dad was very much alive. In fact, here I was with my mother and my grandmother. It was only my grandmother who didn't need to change seats in the new arrangement. I wondered if this was as good an opportunity as any to talk to my aunt, while the two of them were there.
'Oh, not that one,' Nana interrupted. 'Your other father. The one who always wears a suit. What is it we have to call him? Your godfather, isn't it?'
'Uncle Pete,' Aunty Faye patronized, rolling her eyes in my direction as if to say, 'Here we go again,' but I looked at Nana more closely. What did she know?
'Peter Churcher.' She nodded. 'He was our paper boy, you know. Funny thing. He kept on delivering the dailies years after we stopped using the newsagent he worked for. They overcharged your father once and that was that as far as he was concerned. Peter still turned up every day right on time. We didn't pay him a penny. Why do you think that was, Faye?' She waved a fork in my aunt's direction, who returned her look with narrowed eyes. 'Nothing much wrong with my memory, is there, sweetheart? Ah, the stories I could tell given half the chance. Do you know, seeing the two of you sitting there together, you could be mother and daughter.'
'Can't you see how tactless you're being, Mum?' Aunty Faye snapped, standing up to clear the plates away, although no one had finished. On her way back to the table, she touched my shoulder. It felt unfamiliar and cold. 'It's too early to be making comments like that. We're all still very fragile.'
Maybe that was it, I thought. Maybe she was waiting for the right moment to talk to me.
'Too early for you, perhaps,' Nana said. 'Some of us may want to talk about it. Some of us may be dying for the chance to talk about it!' She turned to me. 'Can you imagine having to stay in a place where you're not allowed to talk about your own daughter? Where you are treated as if you're mad because one minute you're up and the next you're down. And, yes, I admit it: I can remember what happened thirty years ago far more clearly than I can remember what happened five minutes ago. Sometimes I get a little lost in the past and I'm not sure how to find my way back. And there are times when I'd prefer not to find my way back at all.' I found myself nodding at her. She twisted around to face my aunt, leaning on the back of the chair with one elbow, raising her voice more than was strictly necessary. 'It's called grief, Faye. It's called mourning. I can't just switch it on and off to suit you. Maybe you should try it. You've usually got such a lot to say for yourself.' She nudged me as if she had said something very clever.
'Do you want me to say something, Mum?' Aunty Faye turned back, looking pale and world-weary, straining to keep her voice low and even. 'What would you like me to start with? You see, you have the advantage over me here. I can't pull out a photograph album and say, "Look. That's how I remember my sister. On her first day at school. In the first dress she made for herself. On her wedding day." Because – and I'm not blaming anyone for this, don't get me wrong – because I had to see her afterwards. And that is the image that will stay with me for ever. So while you might want to sit around and have a nice, cosy chat, forgive me if I'm not quite ready for that. I'm still stuck in that nightmare. I'm not even ready for tears yet, let alone talking.' It was a dignified speech and she sat down at the end of it.
I felt that I should say something. 'I'm sorry that you had to go through that.'
'Sorry?' she snapped. 'Don't be sorry. I was glad that they asked me. Who do you think I would have preferred to have done it? You?' she challenged me, not expecting a response. Every time that I began to feel some empathy with her, to make a connection of sorts, she batted it neatly away and we were back to square one. 'You?' She turned to Nana, who looked pale at the thought. 'Peter, perhaps? It would have finished him off. No. It was much better this way. But if you think that I can forget about it just like that, well . . .' She shook her head.
'Good!' Nana proclaimed, bringing her hands down on the table. 'Good! We're talking at last. As a family.'
'No!' Aunty Faye was still speaking softly, but despairingly, knowing that the point she was making had not sunk in. 'Aren't you listening? I'm not ready to talk yet. And I don't think I should have to apologize for the way that I need to deal with this. You get to be up and down. Can I just please be allowed to be quiet?'
'But what about Andrea, all on her own here?' Nana asked. 'Who's going to look after her if we all just hide ourselves away?'
'I'm fine. I have people to talk to,' I insisted. I suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of responsibility for the two of them. Nana, who thought that she could make everything all right with words, and Aunty Faye, who wanted to shut herself away but couldn't. 'Anyway, I'm such awful company that I think I'm better off on my own half the time.'
'Like mother, like daughter.' Nana stroked my face. 'I'm always here for you, dear. Any time you need me.'
'Yes, well, I think it's time we left Andrea in peace now.' Aunty Faye took Nana's elbow, looking around for her handbag.
'Your bag's in the other room,' I remembered and went to look for it. On my return I heard hushed voices.
'Enjoying yourself, are you?' my aunt asked sharply.
'Oh, I was just getting warmed up,' Nana replied, and then noticed me. 'Ah, there you are, dear. Well, it appears that somebody believes it's way past my bedtime.'
'Love you, Nana. Fantastic rhubarb crumble,' I said as I hugged her.
'There's life in the old girl yet.' She was pleased. 'Next time, I'll make us a roast dinner. I bet you haven't had one of those for a while.'
'And you, Aunty Faye.' I embraced her and felt her stiffen, her arms pinned to her sides. She wasn't even ready to hug me. How could I redraw the family tree with Faye Albury as my mother? She didn't feel like my mother. I was aware of her resistance. She was fighting it with every bone in her body. It was not part of who she was and it was clearly not who she wanted to be.
Part Seven
Peter's Story
Chapter Thirty-three
Be careful what you wish for. You fall in love with a would-be rock star, you get a rock star, if you're lucky. You try and turn him into a stay-at-home husband, you end up with one unhappy man. Laura's mistake was that she underestimated Tom. He was someone who kept his promises. A man of his word – and a far better person than I could ever hope to be.
When the band's next single didn't chart, Tom knew that he had to make some decisions to save his marriage. Those changes were not necessarily what Laura expected. If she thought that Tom would be able to slip neatly into a nine-to-five routine, she was mistaken. He was a person who threw himself into whatever he did, even if it wasn't what he had wanted to do in the first place. He didn't see himself as a plumber or a decorator or even a mechanic. He decided to study engineering. There was no doubt that he had the aptitude for it. This meant that he worked during the daytime, putting his practical skills to good use and making ends meet. At night, he went back to school. And in the early hours, he sang Andrea to sleep when she woke, and wrote his essays. He found a satisfaction in it that didn't qu
ite live up to playing the guitar, but offered him some small compensation.
All of this meant two things. Firstly, the Fellowses did not have to be beholden to Mrs Albury, although Laura had been prepared to accept the olive branch that had been begrudgingly offered. And secondly, I was still needed. There were never more than a couple of days that went by before I heard from Laura wanting a chat or needing a small favour. She accepted Tom's absences more gracefully than she had done when he was away with the band. She seemed surer that he was working hard for their future. I doubted that Tom could ever be more driven than he had been fronting the Spearheads, but I was impressed with his humility in accepting that things had come to an end and his commitment to his family. I didn't once hear him moan or say 'if only'. But I missed him. While Laura had time for old friends and her extended family, Tom had emergencies or lectures or study to attend to. Even if he was in when I called round, he barely had time to grab a bite to eat for himself, let alone stop for a chat. I had reached a point in my career where I was relatively comfortable without having to burn the candle at both ends. Tom was burning the midnight oil. I have to say, it impressed his mother-in-law no end. Her good-for-nothing son-in-law was fast becoming someone she was proud to boast about in the queue at the post office when she went to collect her widow's pension. Mrs Fellows, on the other hand, had always been proud of her son, and was not quite so thrilled to see him worked to the bone. Tom had always been lean, but he began to look drawn and his legendary cheekbones became even more pronounced. He tried to laugh away her concerns, but to keep her happy, he often popped round and let her make him a fry-up in his lunch break.
'You're wasting away,' she would mourn. 'Just look at you.'
'Well, now's your chance to change all that.' He would rub his hands together. 'What have you got for me?'
There was nothing she liked more than to watch her son eat a home-cooked meal. Ironically, when I joined them occasionally (it was the best time to catch Tom), I can't recall ever seeing her eat. She was the kind of mother who wasn't happy unless your belly was full, but would go without herself. I enjoyed eating at her kitchen table, the lack of formality and the flow of easy conversation between them. It was nothing like the kind of relationship I had had with my parents and it was everything that I felt a family should be.
She often embarrassed me with questions about whether or not I had a young lady and if marriage was on the cards.
'Pete can't get involved with a woman,' Tom would say to shut her up. 'The only reason I'm still married is because he's my stunt double.'
'You're a true friend,' Mrs Fellows would declare, but she had even less of a clue than Tom did. He was far closer to the truth than he could have thought possible.
Tom had been aware that I was in love with Laura from the very beginning. He had even recognized that it had been a possibility that Laura would prefer the so-called sensible option to a man who couldn't offer her financial security. What he was not very good at, and where I had always excelled, was reading Laura Albury. Laura, as she had always acknowledged, was not very good at being on her own. Rule number one. Neglect her, even with the best of intentions, and she withered. Pamper her and she glowed. Nothing had happened deliberately. Nothing had been planned. At least not the first time. But Laura had found herself feeling neglected and she had turned to me for attention, and the love and respect that I felt for Tom was no match for the depth of feeling that I had for her. Just as Mrs Albury had predicted, we crossed the sacred line between friendship and love, and once crossed there seemed to be no way of returning. I had expected Laura to say that it was a mistake and that it could never happen again, but she didn't and it did.
While Tom was working so hard for the future of his family, we spent lunchtimes and afternoons and evenings in each other's arms. The only rule was that their house was out of bounds. They were not snatched moments. The snatched moments were the times that Laura spent with Tom. But they were stolen moments. Stolen from another lifetime where, if things had been different, there would have been no Tom Fellows and it would have only been the two of us.
In the time that we shared, there was an unspoken rule that we would not make plans for the future, but Laura talked about the past and the 'what ifs'.
'What do you think would have happened between us if Tom hadn't come along?' She would ask as we lay facing each other.
'The nineteen-year-old you wouldn't have been interested in the twenty-year-old me. She was looking for someone a bit more adventurous.'
'The twenty-five-year-old me would have been interested in the twenty-six-year-old you.'
'But then there would be no Andrea.'
'True. But there might have been a little Pete.'
Laura definitely saw our time together as an escape from her reality. She said that she didn't have to think about being a housewife or a mother or a daughter or a sister when we were together. What she liked the most about our relationship was that she could be herself. We had known each other for so long that there was nothing that we needed to hide – even that faraway look that told me she was thinking about Tom, or the occasional guilty tears. It was all part of the deal. Forgive me for sparing you more detail than that, but my memories are precious and they are private. I think that we have already established that I am hardly a gentleman, but I would like to remain gentlemanly in some things at least.
Tom often joked that there were three of us in his marriage. Sometimes I thought he knew that it was more than just a joke. But nobody wants their nose rubbed in it.
Chapter Thirty-four
'Laura wants another baby,' Tom told me over a beer at the pub closest to their flat. When you have to create extra hours in the day from nothing, not a moment is wasted in walking elsewhere. We were sitting in a dark, smoky corner, away from the regulars who had congregated noisily around the bar.
'Really?' Having narrowly prevented myself from choking, I found it difficult to think of any other response. My mind was racing.
He nodded. 'Doesn't want Andrea to be an only child. Thinks I might spoil her.'
'Never did us any harm,' I joked. 'Not that I remember being spoilt.'
'Too right.'
We sat in silence for a while. Was it possible that Tom had sensed there was something going on and that this was his way of warning me off?
'It's not good timing,' he went on. 'My course is coming to an end, but I'll be on an apprentice's salary, up against all the youngsters who don't have families to support and can work for a pittance. It's going to be a lean couple of years. We're not out of the woods yet, by any means.'
'What does she say about that?'
'She says we'll manage. People do. But there's something else.'
'What's that, then?' I had seen many a guilty man look innocent with ease, but I didn't know if I was capable of hiding my feelings.
Tom looked at his glass, holding it with both hands. 'I'm not sure we can have another child. We've still got the issue of the mumps to get over.'
'But what about Andrea? They were wrong about her.'
'Andrea was our miracle. We've already seen the doctors. Let's just say I had one sprinter who was ahead of the pack. Very little chance of that happening again.'
I had no idea that there had been time for sex and talk of babies and doctors' appointments in their marriage. This was all news to me and I felt that I had been betrayed, even though I knew it was illogical.
'What about adoption?'
'That's just it.' He shook his head. 'I think I could love any child, but Laura says that she wants one of her own. No. This time the doctors say that our only hope is this new treatment called IVF. Have you heard of it?'
'Louise Brown, the miracle baby.' I took a sip. 'I read about it in the papers but I have to say I thought that it was a one-off.'
'No, they want to develop the idea so that they can treat couples. They're actually looking for volunteers, believe it or not. I'm not at all keen. I don't want Laura to be used a
s a guinea pig. I'm not even sure I agree with the idea of it. But she's willing to try anything.'
I had to be honest. I couldn't understand how a woman who already had one child of her own could be desperate for another.
'So what now?' I asked.
'I want her to be happy, I really do. But as soon as she has one thing she wants, she's on to the next. I can't keep up. I'm working flat out as it is. Plus, I don't want to see her hurt if it doesn't work out. God only knows, I know what it's like to feel that sort of disappointment. We've got one beautiful girl and I'm grateful for that, to be honest. For a bloke who never thought he'd be a father, to have one child is a bonus.'
'Laura's always known her own mind.'
'And she's used to getting what she wants, I know. Did you find life tough as an only child?'
'I found being a child tough in general. But it had more to do with the atmosphere at home. What about you?'
'It's always just been me and my mum. And that was how I liked it. We've always got on like a house on fire. No complaints there.'
'Whereas you might feel differently if you had a battleaxe for a mother.'
'To the lovely Mrs Albury.' Tom raised his glass in a toast. 'Ah, she's not so bad. I do believe I'm finally growing on her. She even stuck up for me the other day when Laura complained that we never eat dinner together. She said that she was lucky to have a man who works so hard for his family. I was so surprised I could have kissed her.'
'I've never asked you about your dad—'
'There's nothing to tell.' He cut me short. 'He didn't want me and I never needed him.'
'Do you know if he's still alive?'
'He's always been dead to me.'
'Fair enough.'
The bell rang for last orders and Tom checked his watch.
'Time, gentlemen!' the barman yelled and Tom downed the dregs of his pint.
'Saved by the bell. Time for the nightshift.' He grabbed his jacket. 'Same time next week?'