The Mother's Secret

by Clare Swatman

  I nodded, although I had no idea where it was, as my heart fluttered around in my chest like an out-of-control wasp. Suddenly Ray lurched towards me as the bus came to a halt, and his face was inches from mine. He pulled back immediately, looking awkward, but I’d caught a sniff of his warm, musky smell, and I breathed it in deeply, trying to keep the memory of his scent in my mind.

  ‘Right, this is my stop.’ He stood, towering above me, his dark eyes boring into my skin. Then he turned and left without glancing back, and strode off down the street. And as I watched him disappear round the corner and into the gates of the factory, I smiled. I knew, without a doubt, that I’d get to that pub on Saturday night, whatever it took.

  The music was loud as I walked through the doors of the Crown with my friend Angie. I lifted my head and tried to look as though I was used to being in places like this, and hoped the make-up I’d applied at the bus stop was enough to make me look at least eighteen.

  We made our way to the bar and ordered a vodka and orange each. The barman didn’t even give us a second glance as he poured the drinks, and I gripped my glass tightly and took a big gulp to hide my shaking hands.

  ‘Is that him?’ Angie pointed at the stage and I turned and looked and there he was. Ray. He was standing under a spotlight and the muscles of his arms looked taut and lean as he strummed his guitar. His skin glistened with a light layer of sweat and his face was deep in concentration.

  ‘Yes. Yes, that’s him.’ I stood, transfixed, and watched him for a few moments. Then the song came to an end and I joined in with the applause as he said his thank yous and made his way from the stage towards the bar. And then he was there, right in front of me, and I stood frozen to the spot.

  ‘You came!’ He looked genuinely pleased to see me and I felt myself go hot all over underneath the too-high collar of my shirt. I rubbed my hand over my neck.

  ‘I did.’ We stood and looked at each other for a moment, then he looked away and turned towards Angie. ‘And who is this?’

  ‘Oh, sorry. This – er, this is Angie. My friend.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Angie,’ he said, and flashed her a smile as warm as the sun. She grinned back.

  ‘So, would you like a drink?’

  ‘No, we’ve got one. Thank you.’

  We waited while he bought himself a beer and a glass of something brown, it looked like whisky. He tipped his head back and drank it down in one, wiped his hand across his mouth and then took a sip of his pint. ‘So, we’ve played a bit already, but we’ll be back on again later. Are you going to stay?’

  I nodded mutely. This was all so strange and grown-up for me. I couldn’t believe I was actually here. Mum would kill me if she found out but at that moment, standing next to this man, I couldn’t have cared less. I’d have run away with him, right there and then, if he’d asked me.

  He didn’t, of course.

  As we chatted I found myself relaxing at last. There was something I needed to know, though, so I took a deep breath and asked him.

  ‘So—’ I paused, unsure how to word it. ‘Are you single?’ I blurted it out in the end, it seemed the easiest way. My face felt hot at my forwardness, so unlike me.

  He didn’t even flinch, though. I supposed he must have been used to it. Or just expected it. He shook his head slowly, a slight smile on his face. ‘No. No, I’m not.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Are you disappointed to hear that?’

  ‘I—’ I didn’t know how to answer. Disappointed was not the word I’d have used. Devastated. Heartbroken. Crushed. They were all more appropriate words. I’d hoped he would say that yes, he was single, of course I had. But I’d also hoped that if he wasn’t single, he’d like me enough to lie about it, and at least say that he was. Or that it didn’t matter. Because I didn’t care about some other woman, some vague thought of a woman who might be waiting for him at home, someone I didn’t know and didn’t ever want to know. I just wanted him.

  Unfortunately, it seemed he did care about this other woman, and now I didn’t know what to say.

  I put my drink down. ‘I think I’d better get home.’ My voice wobbled but I didn’t think he noticed.

  He grabbed my arm gently. ‘Don’t. Stay a bit longer. It would be nice to get to know you better.’

  ‘But – but you’re with someone.’

  He shrugged. ‘Doesn’t mean I can’t talk to you, does it? I like talking to people. Doesn’t mean I have to run off with you.’ He smiled and I tried to smile back but it was weak with disappointment. I’d had such high hopes for this evening and now they’d been crushed with just a few words.

  And yet I knew I’d still stay. I’d take whatever I could get.

  ‘OK.’ My voice cracked and I coughed to clear my throat.

  And I tried really hard that night. I stayed and we talked and I tried to sound more grown up than I felt among all these older men. But when Ray finally went back on stage to finish his set I turned to Angie.

  ‘Can we go?’

  ‘Oh come on, you can’t drag me all the way here and then leave this early.’ She checked her watch. ‘It’s only 9.30. Let’s stay a bit longer.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Come on, Kim. He might not be interested in you, but we’re here now. We might as well enjoy ourselves.’

  I nodded miserably. ‘OK.’

  I hardly heard the next few songs, I felt so torn apart. But I danced and put on a brave face and waved my arms to the music anyway. I didn’t know what it was about this man that had made me feel this way, but I felt as though he’d ripped out a piece of my heart and that I’d never get it back.

  I was desperate for the night to end so I could go home and sob into my pillow, try and get over the rejection. And so I knocked back drink after drink until everything in the pub started to look a little hazy. Ray’s set finished and I hoped he’d come back and talk to me again, give me the chance to get to know him a bit better, so I could try and get him to see how much he liked me. But this time, as he came off stage he walked in the opposite direction without even glancing my way. I watched as he strode across the pub and into the arms of another woman – a young, pretty woman with a halo of blonde hair round her face – who he kissed passionately. She smiled happily as he circled his arms round her tiny waist and left them there, resting his chin on her head. She looked up at him then and he looked down at her with such love in his eyes I thought my heart was going to break.

  I turned to Angie, tugged her sleeve.

  ‘I need to go.’

  ‘Oh come on, just a bit longer.’

  I shook my head. ‘No. You stay. I’m going home.’ And I stood, stumbling out of the pub and home to nurse my broken heart, leaving Angie, Ray and the tiny blonde woman far behind me, as though physical distance could help mend a broken heart.

  It didn’t work, of course. Over the next few days, weeks, months, Ray was on my mind all the time. He was all I thought about, all day and late into the night as I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep. I was like a lovesick puppy.

  I knew Mum was getting fed up with me.

  ‘What’s wrong with you, mooning around the place all the time?’ she asked. But I couldn’t tell her, she’d never understand; she’d tell me to pull myself together, that she’d never let herself be distracted by a man, that I needed to grow up. She’d only ever loved Dad, and when she fell pregnant and he’d left her she’d hardened her heart, closed it up to protect herself. So no, I definitely couldn’t talk to her.

  ‘Nothing’s wrong, I’m fine.’

  She might not have believed me but she couldn’t prove any different, so she left it.

  To my shame, though, I started following Ray around to every concert he played in every pub around Norwich. Well, as many as I could get to, anyway. I told Mum I was out with friends or working late, and she just put my new-found love of going out down to my new job at the typing pool, to having made new friends.

  It didn’t matter to me wh
ether I had someone to go with. Sometimes I’d spend the entire evening standing at the front, by the stage, watching Ray as he played his bass guitar, lost in the music. Other times I hung around the edge or at the back, sipping a drink. I wanted Ray to notice me, but I didn’t want him to think I was stalking him, so I tried to hang back a bit, sometimes.

  I knew she’d seen me though, Ray’s woman. One night she must have noticed me watching them because she caught my eye, whispered something to Ray, who looked towards me, then turned back and shrugged.

  I knew I should feel ashamed, that I was making a fool of myself. But I just couldn’t help myself. I needed to see him. I’d never been like this about anyone before, and I didn’t know how to handle it. It was like a drug. And so I kept going back for more.

  I noticed other things too. I noticed Ray started wearing a wedding ring, and then later I noticed his woman looked fatter than usual. She stopped coming to see him very often, and it occurred to me she was pregnant. It was like a dagger to my heart but something made me keep going back anyway. Ray barely even spoke to me any more, hardly even glanced in my direction. But it still made no difference. I kept thinking, ‘Maybe one day he’ll leave her and want me.’

  Tragic, I realize now, looking back.

  Then one day I was at a pub waiting for the band to come on stage. I was with Angie, who still agreed to come along with me sometimes, maybe hoping she’d be able to chat up another member of the band, when I saw Ray’s wife arrive, holding a toddler’s hand. I glanced at my watch. It was still quite early, only seven o’clock, and I saw Ray’s face light up with love as he spotted them across the pub. As I watched from the corner of the bar I felt tears prick my eyes. All I wanted was for him to look at me like that. Only, I finally realized, he never would.

  It was time to stop doing this. To stop torturing myself with the hope that I could ever be with him. I vowed this was the last time.

  I stayed at the bar that evening, though, long after his wife and daughter had left, nursing vodka and orange after vodka and orange. The pub started to tip on its side a little.

  I needed some air. I wobbled as I climbed down from my stool, and gripped the bar for support. I walked slowly outside to the car park, where the cold hit me like a hammer between the eyes and I stumbled, almost falling over.

  ‘Oops, careful.’ An arm had reached out to catch me and I looked up to see the man attached to it.

  ‘Thanks,’ I slurred. I looked at him again. ‘Wait, don’t I know you?’

  He nodded, his closely shaved head shining like a snooker ball in the fluorescent streetlights. ‘We went to school together. Barry.’ He stuck his other arm out and I shook his hand, and without thinking I pulled him closer to me and kissed him full on the lips. They tasted of beer and cigarettes and slightly unclean teeth, but I didn’t care. I needed to forget about Ray who didn’t want me and find someone who did, and Barry seemed to, responding hungrily, so I dragged him across the car park towards the bins. Barry had always been keen on me, I remembered now, so I knew he wouldn’t refuse. And so when he pinned my back against the wall of the pub I made it clear I was up for it and we had cheap, sordid sex, right there and then. It was my first time and it hurt quite a lot, but the pain – and the shame of what I was doing – was numbed by the alcohol, and as he ground against me in the dark I tried to imagine it was Ray and not Barry inside me. When he came I could hardly bear to look him in the eye.

  I felt bad for him because it wasn’t him I’d needed, it was just someone, to stop me caring about the man inside the pub who didn’t want me. I regretted it immediately, but as I pulled my knickers up and he kissed me on the lips I pulled away.

  ‘Thanks. I’m going home.’

  ‘Aren’t you coming back inside with me?’

  He tried to grab my hand, kiss me again, but I couldn’t stand him near me and I snatched my hand away, clutched my handbag to my stomach and almost ran away, stumbling along the road to the bus stop, tears pouring down my face. I didn’t look back to see whether he was following as the cars flowed past me, almost blinding me with their headlights.

  In the weeks that followed I tried to block out what had happened that night. It seemed to be the only way of coping with it. I decided if I didn’t think about it, maybe it had never happened. I stopped stalking Ray too, and stayed at home most evenings getting under Mum’s feet. She didn’t ask why I was suddenly at home all the time. I don’t think she really wanted to know the answer.

  Then one day, in June 1979, I realized something.

  I’d missed my period. I tried not to think about it too much, but when my next one didn’t arrive either, I knew.

  The doctor confirmed it.

  I was pregnant.

  I’d almost blocked out the fumble I’d had that night, hazy with alcohol, behind the pub bins. It wasn’t my proudest moment, and I’d thought I could file it away somewhere, pretend it had never happened.

  But now there was this very clear evidence that it had happened, and I didn’t know what to do about it.

  I wondered if I could hide it. If I wore baggy clothes, stopped going out, maybe I could get away with it and not have to tell anyone, at least, not for a long time. I quit my job, deciding it was important to focus on growing the baby inside me. It didn’t matter that its father was someone I’d rather forget about. I loved this baby straight away, and I knew I had to keep it.

  But soon it became too hard to hide it, and I knew I had to tell my mother. I was scared. She might have been only small, but when she was angry she was a terrifying bundle of fury.

  ‘I’ve got something to tell you, Mum. You might want to sit down.’

  ‘I most certainly don’t want to sit down.’ She folded her arms and stared at me as my face flushed. ‘What have you done, young lady? What sort of trouble have you got yourself into?’ She stopped and glanced at my belly, where my hand was resting on the small mound, and then her face went white and she did sit down, almost collapsing into the plastic chair next to her.

  ‘Oh no. You’ve not gone and got yourself up the duff, have you?’

  I gave a small, tight nod.

  ‘Oh, you silly, silly girl.’ She put her head in her hands and shook it slowly, staring at the tabletop. Then she looked back up at me.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘It – it was just this boy. Barry. We met at the pub and we – well, it was only the once, Mum, but, well . . . I made a mistake. I’m sorry.’

  ‘A mistake?’ she spat. ‘I should say you’ve made a mistake. A very, very big one.’ She shook her head again.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ It came out as a whisper.

  ‘It’s a bit late for that, isn’t it?’ She glanced back at my belly and then up at me. ‘So. How far gone are you?’

  ‘Four months. I’m due in November sometime.’

  ‘Four months.’

  I nodded and waited for her to say something else.

  ‘So are you staying here or are you going off with this – Barry?’

  ‘I was hoping I could stay here, with you. That you’d help me, you know, a bit.’

  ‘So he’s having nothing to do with it, I take it?’

  ‘I – I haven’t told him yet.’

  ‘Well, you’d better. Even if he wants nothing to do with it he needs to know.’

  I nodded miserably. She was right, but I was dreading it.

  ‘So, will you help me?’

  Finally she nodded and when she spoke again her voice was softer. ‘Of course I will. But you do realize how bloody stupid you’ve been, don’t you?’

  I nodded, the tears threatening to escape. ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right. It’s all a bit late for sorries now, anyway.’ She held her arms out. ‘Come here, you daft thing.’ And, gratefully, I walked into her arms and we held each other for a few minutes. Relief flooded through me as the tears finally came. Everything was going to be all right.

  Mum threatened to go and find Barry and ‘give
him a piece of her mind’, but I managed to stop her – mainly by refusing to tell her where he lived – and, apart from that, the next few months passed by pretty smoothly. I slowly stopped thinking about Ray as much, and, although I sometimes wished I could go to the pub and see him again, I knew I had to stay away. There was no point. He was married and had a child. And besides, if he didn’t want me before, he was never going to want me now, like this.

  I went to see Barry once, alone. I knocked on his door and when he opened it I felt sick at telling him the news. But, as I expected, he wasn’t interested.

  ‘It’s fine. I don’t need your help anyway. I just thought you should know.’ I ignored the look of disgust on his face and, as I walked away and back home, my head held high, I felt nothing but relief. I could do this on my own. We’d be all right. I didn’t need anyone else.

  The months passed and my belly grew, and I got ready for the baby’s arrival. I found myself getting excited, imagining pushing it down the road in its pram. I knew I’d feel so proud, despite everything. I bought a cot and set it up next to my own bed. I bought nappies and formula milk and Babygros and a teddy bear. I was ready.

  Then one day I was reading the paper when a story caught my eye.

  LOCAL MAN KILLED

  It wasn’t the words so much as the photo next to it that caught my attention and I cried out in horror. It was Ray. I read the story quickly, desperate for the details, desperate to find that I’d misunderstood, that it wasn’t Ray who had died.

  But it was, and as I got to the end of the story I thought I was going to be sick.

  I hadn’t meant much to him – I hadn’t meant anything, really. But he’d meant a lot to me. He was the reason I’d got pregnant, in a way. I was trying to make him jealous, to take my mind off the fact he never wanted me.

  And now he was dead.

  I felt stupid, grieving for someone I hardly knew, and of course that meant there wasn’t anyone I could talk to about it. I just had to smother the pain and get on with it. And I did a good job, up to a point. I considered for one stupid moment going to his funeral, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t see his wife and I didn’t want her to see me either. So I stayed away, though it was hard.