Fresh Flesh

by Stella Duffy

  Lillian frowned, “I’ve been talking to Patrick about my time in that place.”

  “I know, and I am sorry if this brings back awful memories for you; it’s just that we really don’t have much else to go on. We think she was called Sara Fisher, at least that’s the name Leyton gave for her. And Chris is black, but not that dark-skinned, so all we can assume is that one of the parents, either Sara Fisher or the baby’s father, was probably black. Chris doesn’t want to ask his adoptive mother about it; he doesn’t want her to think she wasn’t enough for him.”

  “That’s nice of him.”

  “Yeah, but difficult for me.”

  Lillian leant forward in her chair, toying with a piece of bread, dipped it into the plate of olive oil on the table. “I wonder if I should do this at home?” Then she smiled, “Not a lot of call for fancy bread in the B&B trade.”

  “No, but it’s interesting that your son went into catering too, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, I suppose it is.” Lillian sighed, brought a shaking hand to her mouth, “Look, there was a girl. A couple of years after Patrick … was born.” Lillian shook her head, tried again, “It’s just that – you see, I did want this, want my child. To have him back. But for so long now, I’d thought he was gone. You understand? And I’m not unhappy, believe me, far from it, but I just … I remember every minute of his birth. Every single minute. It’s never left me. And neither has the pain of losing him. And it’s very hard to adjust, even though this has always been what I thought I wanted. So I’m just not sure …”

  “You’re doing the right thing telling me about her?”

  Lillian held her shaking hands together and nodded.

  “But Lillian, I already have this woman’s name. I’m not asking you to tell anyone else’s secrets. And, as you say, it may be hard, but at least you do have Patrick back. This could be her chance to know about Chris. And if she was lied to, like you were, then I do think she has the right to know the truth. Don’t you?”

  “Yes … no. I’m not sure. The truth doesn’t solve everything, you know.”

  “Maybe not, but I think she has the right to decide that for herself.”

  Lillian sat there for awhile, just staring at the linen tablecloth. When she started to speak she was so quiet that at first Saz wasn’t sure if she was meant to listen. But she did.

  “Sara was older than I was. She came to the place a couple of years after me. She was already very far gone when she came in, maybe eight months. She was in her twenties, I think, not a child like I’d been anyway. But she was so strong, knew what she wanted all right. Of course that didn’t last long. See, she’d had an affair with this black chap, she wanted to have the baby, didn’t mind what they were saying. I thought she was amazing, so brave. She wanted to keep it. Really wanted to. I know you think it’s strange now, but it was very hard then, quite different, and we weren’t living in London, you know. Her family wouldn’t have it. Bad enough she wasn’t married, they could just about bear that, let her move back home, stay with them. But then she thought she ought to tell them, prepare them for the baby. And that was it, the last straw. Her father brought her into the hospital the next day.”

  “He had her committed? Because she was carrying a black baby?”

  “An illegitimate child, a black child, in 1962, and the baby’s father not even in the country. Oh yes. It only took her father and two doctors to sign the forms.”

  “Lees and Keane?”

  Lillian nodded assent, “Probably those two, I imagine so. You have to understand, it was very different then. Things have changed so fast – they were able to say I was crazy because I was young and I’d run away and I was pregnant. So, of course, it was even easier for them to say the same about her. But Sara wasn’t like me, she fought them, screamed the place down.” Lillian smiled at the memory, “She was magnificent. Threatened them with all sorts. I think she would have done it too, taken them to court, made a fuss, if she’d had the chance.”

  “What happened?”

  Lillian shook her head, “Same as me, love. They told her she’d lost the baby. Told her it was her own fault for fighting so much. And then she didn’t fight any more. She learned to stay quiet. Her parents took her home not long after it was all over. I’m sorry, I can’t tell you what happened to her after that.”

  Saz left Lillian with her thoughts, aware that she’d been digging deep in someone else’s pain, and yet certain she was doing the right thing. Almost certain. She went to the kitchen to talk to Patrick. He wouldn’t be happy that she’d upset Lillian again and he’d be even less happy when he realized she was once more trying to get him to talk to the police. But, having seen Sukie that morning and after hearing Lillian’s latest story, she was even more certain that Lees and Georgina and whoever else was involved should be brought to some sort of justice, and that it would take more than just her own word to do so.

  Patrick did his best to get on with the last of the lunch covers, not especially interested in Saz, despite her newfound evidence against Lees.

  “No, I don’t care, you can take those other people’s adoption certificates or whatever they are to the police, do what you want. But not mine. Lillian is more than disturbed enough. And you don’t seem to have helped any today either.”

  He pushed her out of the way and screamed at a few of his staff to underline the strength of his fury, practically ignoring her until Saz reluctantly shouted over the whirr of beaters and chopping knives and clattering plates that she believed she had a name for Chris’s mother – another woman Lees had cheated of a child, according to Lillian – and what’s more she had proof Georgina Leyton was Lees’ own child. From his affair with Sukie Planchet.

  A cry of “He sold his own baby? Jesus fucking Christ!” rang singing from the hot mouth of the crowded kitchen into the subdued atmosphere of the dining room. Suddenly Patrick Sweeney’s carefully reduced sauce was the last thing his late lunch customers were interested in.

  Saz knew they had no way of telling if Lees had actually sold Georgina to the Leytons or merely handed her over – as a gesture of goodwill, perhaps. She was, however, relieved that the extremely non-paternal nature of his act gave her a chance to wake Patrick from the trance of his culinary creativity. No sauce was competition for news of that ilk. Patrick handed over the precious substance to a terrified underling who looked as if he was about to wet himself with the weight of responsibility placed upon him. Then Patrick hurried Saz into the glass hole that was his tiny, messy office.

  Almost an hour of argument followed. Saz wanted to go with Patrick to the police, take Lees’ details, the stolen documents – she was willing to admit the breaking and entering even – just to get him there with her and hand it all over. Patrick refused point-blank to even think about something that might involve Lillian further. He’d spent every spare hour with his birth mother in the past few days. They talked on the phone when he couldn’t be with her. She’d been spending time with Katy and the children. And, as Saz could see for herself, Lillian was still really very fragile. It was proving to be a huge adjustment, clearly much more difficult than either of them had imagined in the first day or so in Cornwall. It was all he’d been able to do to persuade her to get in a temporary housekeeper for the B&B and stay with them in London for a couple of weeks. Lillian did want to get to know Patrick and yet she was quite obviously terrified, guilt-ridden, heart-broken, and also delighted, all at once.

  And Patrick was starting to discover that she could be as stubborn as he was, that underneath the carefully manufactured ease and calm, there was someone just as forceful as himself. Saz tried to say that it was to get justice for Lillian that they needed to take this on. Patrick countered that Lillian didn’t want justice, she wanted peace. A peace she hadn’t been allowed since she first discovered she was pregnant. And that was all she wanted. After her latest conversation with Lillian, Saz could hardly disagree. Patrick went on to say that this was one relationship he intended to take care
of for all he was worth. And no, not even her friends, the police-dykes, would do as an alternative. If Lillian wanted to keep this quiet, for the time being or for ever, that was what he was going to do.

  “Saz, I’m as fucked off about all this as you are. But none of what happened was Lillian’s fault, and there’s no way I’m going to let you allow her to be hurt any further.” He did though, volunteer that there was one thing he was more than prepared to do, “I’ll come with you to see Lees.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can beat shit out of him.”

  It wasn’t quite the offer Saz was hoping for. “Look, Patrick, I understand you’re furious with him.”

  “Furious is a very thin word for how I feel,” Patrick’s head whipped round to look out at the work in the kitchen. He wrenched the door open: “William!” The sous-chef spun round, terrified, “If that sauce doesn’t get the constant attention of your tiny, fucked-up, dope-addled mind, you’re out of here in two fucking minutes, got it?”

  The young man nodded his head, long golden dreadlocks trembling in the harsh fluorescent light. Patrick slammed the door again.

  Saz stretched her arms out behind her, trying to reach some life into her tired back and neck. The latest display of Patrick’s temper had made her mind up for her, “No, Patrick, I don’t want you to go to Lees. I want to do this properly. For once. Molly’s right – I’m always bloody charging in without anything to back me up. This time’s different. I don’t need to risk anything, we’ve got all the proof we need. Or at least all the proof needed to start a proper investigation. It’s just …”

  “What?” Patrick’s tone wasn’t that of one about to be persuaded.

  “I wish you would agree with me.”

  “Well, I’m not going to. I’m not going to put my mother’s delicate grasp of sanity in any jeopardy at all. No fucking way.”

  “OK. Then I’m going to the cops myself. I’m not going any further with this alone.”

  “You don’t have to. I told you. I’ll kill the cunt myself.”

  “Don’t be stupid. You’ve got every right to feel aggrieved and bitter and God knows what else. But it’s pointless. Sure, you might hurt him, but what good would that do anyway?”

  “It’d make me feel a fuck of a lot better.”

  “Right. And then what? He breaks your mother’s heart—”

  “Ruins her fucking life.”

  “Yeah, and you beat shit out of an old man. Brilliant. He’s seventy-nine, for God’s sake, wake up. Frankly, I think that confronted with him, even your bitterness wouldn’t let you hurt a man old enough to be your father.”

  Patrick was silent for a moment, shook his head. When he looked up again, Saz was scared by what she saw. “You’re wrong, Saz. And ‘old enough to be my father’ doesn’t wash with me. Not any more. I didn’t know it was possible to feel like this. Not again, not after Marina died.” He dropped his arms by his sides, no words for the extremity of emotion, “Just to feel too fucking much. So yeah, go ahead. Run off and tell your girlfriends my story. Go tell the cops all about it. Do what you want. Because I’ve held Lillian sobbing in my arms the past two nights, held her from when she wakes after the recurring nightmare where she buries the baby that isn’t dead, hears it screaming from inside the coffin that’s buried too fucking deep for her to ever dig up. You go and sort everything out, Saz. Because believe me, if you don’t, I will.”

  Patrick turned on his heel and walked back into the kitchen, shaking out his arms and shoulders as if shaking off the image of his mother’s pain. Saz stood for a couple of minutes, watched him barking out furious orders, deftly slicing into a bloody lamb carcass, then she left. Through the back door. She didn’t want to see Lillian crying either.

  Saz got home to a message to call Gary. She was hoping for some good news about Chris’ mother – anything to make her day seem slightly less wasted. She didn’t get it. Gary had found a Sara Fisher. He’d also managed to dig up a reference to her having been in the same institution at the same time as Lillian, and she would have been the right age to be the woman Lillian said she remembered. Assuming the certificate Saz had found in Georgina’s office was authentic – and there was no reason to assume otherwise – there was every likelihood that the Sara Fisher Gary had found details about was Chris’s mother. The young woman had hanged herself a month after she returned to her parents’ home.

  FORTY-THREE

  There had been a time when Sara was bright and exciting. When people had expected so much both for her and from her. The clever one, the forceful one, the ever-so-bright one. But, of course in the end, she had been too clever. In the first place they had tolerated her intensity, her excess of charm, believed it was part of the package. How could they have a daughter so admirable without just a few tiny flaws? And really, an excess of intelligent energy was hardly something to complain about – especially when others had so much more to deal with. And Sara was easy to tolerate; even when she went too far she was prettier and brighter and cleverer than the rest, could always charm her way back into their good books, knew exactly who to be in order to reclaim the place of perfect one.

  She was the only child, finally born after years of disappointment to desperate parents. Later, the father would blame the mother for loving her too much. He said the long wait for a baby made her want the child beyond what was normal even for a mother, that she allowed the little girl to get away with so much more than was right. Later, the mother would blame the father, saying he’d always been too hard on Sara, expected far too much from the girl, demanding from her both the intelligent vigour of a boy-child and the sweet compliance of a girl. Demanding and receiving. They were both right. They were both wrong.

  Sara was the much-wanted baby of eager parents, a princess daughter who could do no wrong. Her mother and father were good, God-fearing people and she feared God with them. They were honest and hard-working and, because they expected no less from her, she worked harder still. They were intelligent people who would have done so much more with their lives if only they had had the chance. They offered her their own missed opportunities and, as expected, she did better with her life. Sara’s parents’ relationship was strong and passionate, even late in life, long after most couples settle to sweet affection and calm pleasantries. And from them Sara learnt desire.

  She worked hard, studied harder and played hardest of all. When she left her parents’ house to go to London, she left with their blessing but none of their sensible fears. She simply did not know how to be afraid; they had bred strength and she believed absolutely in the path they had mapped out for her. The obedience that rewarded affection. The hard work that led to the successful career. The open soul that understood desire to be part of love. Happy, too, to accept the repercussions of desire. It did not occur to her that the parents who had taught her to reach out to the world, could ever disapprove of what the world then gave her to bring home.

  It had not been a conventional relationship. It was a fling, a dalliance, a brief but extremely enjoyable time – on her part as much as his. There was nothing she wanted nor expected from him – neither marriage nor responsibility. Her parents had made a wonderful daughter; they had not made a conventional one. When, after a while, the passion had burned away for both of them, she easily accepted his decision to move on. A month later, she found she was pregnant, and Sara realized that it was not, after all, the man that she really wanted. She had been trained to be a woman of the new world, but even more so she had been bred to fulfil the destinies of the old. She was her parents’ child. The years of their own disappointed yearning, all that time when the only focus of their desire had been the perfect baby, finally found its culmination in her. Though she had not understood it until the day she discovered she was pregnant, from that moment on, Sara realized it was the baby that she wanted. And all that she wanted.

  Sara had not been abandoned or cheated or deceived. She had been loved – and then left – in complete mutual understandi
ng and agreement. And, as it turned out, he had given her all she wanted anyway – without her even needing to ask for it. So she did not contact him about the child, she had no wish to trap the man, no need to lure him back. From her mother and father she had inherited the desire to parent, but not an attendant desire to couple. And, because she could not see beyond her own happiness, she quite naturally expected them to be happy for her – which they were at first. A little disappointed, but eventually accepting. And because they were so accepting she told them the second secret and again waited for their eventual support.

  Sara told her story and waited for their reaction. She waited a long while. And when the answer finally came from a place of bitter silence, she did not know how to respond. She could not understand their fury. Would not understand that the people who had been her perfect progenitors could also be unloving, uncomprehending. They had never before wanted anything but the best for her and she knew that this child was only that. It was beyond her comprehension to believe that they would carry out their threat. And so she stayed with them a day too long and then it was too late.

  After the baby was born, after she was told the baby had died, Sara finally appeared to give in. Became the good girl after the months of fighting and unpleasantness. Her parents were disappointed, but also relieved; if Sara was no longer the bright and exciting girl, the shining star they had loved so well, nor was she the rebellious changeling-daughter who would not listen to reason either. Sara was behaving herself. Sara was biding her time. And when they let her go she returned to the home of the loving parents, and spent a few quiet weeks.

  On a dull Tuesday afternoon Sara wrote a letter to the dead baby’s father. She sent it to Samuel Lees asking him to forward it to the man – after all, Lees was the only one who had ever listened to her through all that painful time, the only one who had allowed her licence to grieve for her lost child. She saw him as an ally in a small way, she trusted him. Sara placed the letter in the post-box at the end of her street and returned to her parents’ empty house. They were out doing the weekly shopping, special purchase of tinned peaches with thick cream to cheer up the unhappy girl waiting at home. As her mother and father caught the return bus in the High Street, Sara hanged herself in the pretty pink bedroom in which she had so long, and so willingly, played out the role of dutiful daughter.