The Very Picture of You

by Isabel Wolff

  Mum sighed. ‘They lived in Jersey and didn’t come to the mainland very often. They weren’t really … involved.’

  ‘Even though they had a grandchild?’ She nodded. ‘How mean – not to make more of an effort.’

  ‘It was mean,’ Mum agreed feelingly.

  ‘But we could have gone there – did we?’

  ‘No … as I say, it was hard for me to take time off.’

  ‘I see. So I didn’t do very well on the grandparental front, did I?’

  My mother nodded regretfully. ‘That’s true. You only had my mother, my father having died two years before you were born. He was called Gabriel, as you know, and so I named you after him.’

  ‘And … remind me how you met my father.’

  At first I thought Mum wasn’t going to answer; then she lowered her pen. ‘We met in 1973,’ she said quietly. ‘I’d been with the company for two years and he came to a special fund-raising performance of Cinderella. I was the Winter Fairy and wore a costume that hung with “icicles”.’

  ‘How lovely.’ I imagined them tinkling as she danced. ‘So was my father interested in ballet?’

  ‘Not particularly; he’d come along … with some other people. There was a cast party afterwards, to which some members of the audience were invited; your father and I were introduced – and we … just …’

  ‘Fell in love?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mum answered quietly. ‘So you were what, twenty-three?’

  ‘I was. And he was twenty-nine. ‘And was he artistic too?’

  My mother’s face tightened. ‘Yes. He did a lot of painting and drawing, so I imagine … that’s where you get it. Now,’ she said briskly. ‘We need to write the invitations for Nate’s relations.’ The conversation about my father was clearly over. Mum pushed back her chair. ‘I’ve got their addresses on a separate list – if I can remember where I put it. Oh, I know …’ She stood up and went to the dresser then opened a drawer. ‘It’s in here.’ She pulled the list out, then studied it. ‘There’s quite a gang of them coming. Nate’s organising their accommodation – Chloë told me that he’s paying for quite a lot of it too – he’s terribly generous.’ Mum returned to the table. ‘Thank God she’s made such a good choice. And she knows she has, because she keeps telling me how lucky she is. Yesterday I was on the phone to her and she suddenly reeled off a list of all his great qualities. It was very touching.’

  ‘That’s just what she did with me, last week.’

  Mum smiled. ‘Good. It’s such a relief to see her so happy – and don’t worry, Ella.’ Mum laid her hand on mine. ‘I know that you’ll find someone just as wonderful.’ I already have, I thought with a pang. Mum lifted her glasses on to her nose again then peered at my pile of finished cards. ‘What letter are you up to?’

  ‘G.’ I wrote an invitation for Chloë’s godmother, Ruth Grant, and I was about to address the envelope when I put my pen down, unable to bear it any longer. ‘Mum … Can I tell you something?’ My heart began to race.

  She reached for another invitation. ‘Of course you can,’ she said absently. ‘Tell me anything you like, darling.’

  ‘Because there’s something that I have to …’ My voice trailed away.

  Mum looked at me – her agate blue eyes magnified through the lenses of her spectacles. ‘What is it?’ She blinked, then took the glasses off and let them dangle against her thin sternum. ‘Has something happened,

  Ella?’

  ‘Yes. Something has.’

  She looked alarmed. ‘You’re not in any trouble, are you?’

  ‘No. But I have this … dilemma.’

  ‘Dilemma?’ she echoed. ‘What dilemma?’ I didn’t answer. ‘Ella …’ Mum put down her pen. ‘Would you please tell me what this is about?’

  ‘All right …’ I took a deep breath. ‘I’ve heard from my father.’

  My mother’s cheeks instantly coloured, as though all the blood in her body had rushed to her face. ‘When?’ she whispered. I told her, then explained how the contact had come about. She inhaled sharply, snatching the air through her nose. ‘I was appalled when I saw that piece in The Times.’

  ‘I know you were, because you didn’t say anything about it. I did ask the journalist to change it, but he refused.’

  ‘I immediately worried that, were your father to come across it, he’d recognise you – and he has done. So …’ She drew in her breath. ‘What did he say?’

  I’d already decided not to tell my mother that he was coming to London.

  I shrugged. ‘He just wrote that he’d like to be in touch. He said there are things he wants to explain.’

  Mum’s face spasmed with anger. ‘There’s nothing to explain! You and I both know what happened, Ella.’ She blinked rapidly. ‘He deserted us when I was twenty-eight and you were almost five – a little girl. A little girl who adored him! He was heartless.’

  ‘Well … if it’s any comfort, he said that he feels very guilty. He wants to make amends.’

  My mother’s eyes were round with contemptuous wonderment. ‘It’s too late to make “amends”. He made his choice – to abandon us and start a new life with, with …’ She seemed unable to utter the name of the woman for whom my father had left her. ‘He has no right to get in touch now.’ Mum picked up her pen as though that concluded the conversation.

  I could hear the low hum of the fridge.

  ‘Of course he has that right,’ I protested quietly. ‘He’s my father.’

  My mother’s face flashed with renewed fury. ‘He isn’t your father, Ella. He chose not to be.’ She nodded towards the garden. ‘There’s your father.’

  I glanced through the French windows at Roy, in the far distance, his foot on the spade. ‘Roy is my father,’ I agreed. ‘And he’s been a wonderful one. But the man who brought me into the world, and who was my father, at least for the first five years of my life …’ I felt my throat constrict. ‘That man now wants to be in touch.’

  Mum looked at me warily, her bird-like chest rising and falling. ‘So … what are you going to do?’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t know. I feel torn, because a part of me does want to see him.’

  She blinked. ‘What do you mean – see him?’

  ‘I mean, see him … one day,’ I faltered. ‘If I do get in touch with him.’

  Mum stared at me. ‘And … have you replied?’

  ‘No. I’ve been in turmoil about it – so I’ve done nothing.’

  ‘Good.’ She laid down her pen. ‘Because I don’t want you to reply.’

  ‘But it isn’t up to you, Mum – it’s me he’s contacted.’ She flinched. ‘But I felt that I had to discuss it with you – however painful that discussion might be – before coming to any decision.’

  My mother looked away. When she returned her gaze to me, her pale-blue eyes shone with unshed tears. ‘Don’t answer him, Ella. I beg you not to.’

  ‘But it was all so long ago! Why are you still bitter about him?’

  ‘Because of what he did.’

  ‘Okay, so he left you.’ I threw up my hands. ‘People get left every day, but they try and move on – you moved on: you’ve had a good life with Roy. So why can’t you get over what happened with my father?’

  ‘Because I … just … can’t. I have my reasons. Please, Ella – let it lie.’ She bit her lip. ‘No good will come of it.’

  I’d caught the note of warning in her voice. ‘What do you mean?’ Mum didn’t answer. ‘What are you trying to say?’

  She shifted on her chair. ‘Only that … if you do contact him, it could cause a lot of unhappiness. He’s decided to get in touch – no doubt because he’s getting older now, and wants to be forgiven. But we don’t have to forgive him, do we?’

  ‘I can if I want to!’

  Mum’s eyes flickered with pain, then she picked up her pen. ‘We must get on with the invitations.’ Her voice had been calm, but as she took another card out of the box I saw that her hand was trembling.


  ‘Mum,’ I said, more gently now. ‘The invitations can wait. Because now that we’re talking about my father, there are other things I want to ask you.’

  She started to write. ‘What things?’ she said irritably. She was pressing on the pen so hard that her fingertips had gone red.

  ‘Well … I’ve been having a lot of memories from that time – memories that must have been triggered by my father’s contact.’

  My mother’s hand stopped. ‘So that’s why you asked me about the holiday in Anglesey.’

  ‘Yes. In fact, he e-mailed me a photo of him and me standing on a beach. He’s holding my hand …’

  My mother exhaled. ‘Which is how you knew about the blue-and-white striped dress.’

  ‘Yes. I was wearing it in the photo – otherwise I wouldn’t have remembered it. But there are lots of things I do remember, and one particular memory is very confused. I’ve been trying to work it out, but I can’t.’

  Mum was looking at me warily. ‘And what memory’s that?’

  ‘It’s of you and him. You’re walking along, with me in between you, holding your hands. It’s a very clear, sunny day, and you’re both swinging me up in the air, going one, two, three, wheee. And you’re wearing this white skirt with big red flowers on it.’ My mother flinched. ‘But the reason I’m confused is because I would have been too young to remember it, because you can only swing children up like that when they’re no more than two or three – yet I can recall it, vividly.’

  Don’t let go now …

  My mother’s already fair complexion had gone paler still.

  Okay – let’s do a big one.

  ‘Why do I remember that, Mum?’

  More, Daddy! More! More!

  ‘All right,’ she answered at last. ‘I’ll tell you. Then perhaps you’ll understand why I feel as I do.’ Mum laid her pen down, then clasped her hands in front of her. ‘What you’re remembering,’ she began softly, ‘is the day that I saw your father with his … with … his …

  Frances.’

  This, then, was the ‘traumatic’ encounter. So I had been there.

  ‘She lived in Alderley Edge, a few miles to the south of Manchester, in a very nice house. She had money,’ Mum added bitterly.

  ‘What was our flat like?’

  ‘Very ordinary – it was part of a red-brick house on Moss Side, but it was convenient for the University Theatre, where the company was then based. And in September 1979, when you were almost five …’ So, well past the stage of being swung in the air, I reflected. ‘It was a Saturday afternoon,’ Mum went on. ‘I’d been waiting for your father to arrive.’ She swallowed. ‘He’d had to go in to the office that morning. We were due to go for a picnic with him after lunch – the weather was wonderfully clear and sunny – but by three o’clock he still hadn’t turned up, and I had to be on stage that night – I was dancing Giselle – so there wasn’t much time. I guessed that he must be with her, and I was … angry and hurt.’ Mum looked at me beseechingly. ‘He’d done this to me so many times and I couldn’t stand just waiting for him, feeling wounded and disappointed. So I decided to go and find him.’

  ‘In order to do what? Confront him?’

  She exhaled wearily. ‘I didn’t know what I was going to do. There was a football match on – we could hear the roars from Old Trafford. I told you that we were going for a ride in the car, so I put you in the back and we drove to Alderley Edge.’

  ‘How did you know where she lived?’

  ‘I just … did. Women are good at finding these things out, Ella. So I went past … the house.’ Mum stared straight ahead. ‘There was your father’s blue car, in the drive.’ So he wasn’t even discreet about it, I reflected dismally. ‘I parked about fifty feet away then sat there, sick with misery.’

  My heart contracted with pity. ‘How horrible for you, Mum.’

  She closed her eyes for a moment. ‘It was … hell. You were chatting away in the back, asking me what we were doing – but I couldn’t explain. I then decided that there was nothing that I could do – we’d simply have to go home. And I was about to start the car again when you suddenly said that you were hungry. There was a newsagent’s a few yards behind, so we got out of the car and went in, and I bought you some chocolate. But as we were walking back to the car I looked up and, in the distance, I saw your father walking along with her, and …’ My mother swallowed. ‘With her and …’

  Ready, sweetie? One, two, three … ‘And what, Mum?’ U-u-u-u-p she goes!

  Mum’s face was perfectly still – like a frozen waterfall. ‘And this little girl,’ she answered softly. ‘She was holding their hands. She was about three.’

  More Daddy! More!

  ‘They were swinging her up in the air and they were all laughing.’ Mum paused. ‘And then I understood …’

  I tried to speak, but my mouth had gone dry. ‘So …’ My heart was banging in my chest. ‘You’re saying that my father had a child with his mistress? And that he’d never told you?’

  ‘Never.’

  So this was why the encounter had been ‘traumatic’. ‘What a shock,’ I breathed.

  ‘It was more than a shock. It hit me like a blow from a hammer.’ Mum was still staring ahead. ‘They hadn’t spotted us, but by now I was in a panic, not knowing what to do. I decided that we had to leave before we were seen, so I hurried towards the car, but you were trying to pull me in the opposite direction. I told you to come with me, but you refused. Then you turned and called out, “Daddy! Daddy!” He glanced up. And when he saw us, he looked so …’

  I saw my father’s face, his mouth an ‘o’. ‘Startled …’ I whispered.

  ‘Yes. He also looked ashamed and confused. I tried to hold you, but you wrenched your hand free and you ran towards him. I called you to come back, but you wouldn’t stop. I had no choice but to follow you and so …’ She blinked again. ‘There I was, face to face with him, and her, and this … little girl.’

  ‘A little girl,’ I echoed, still trying to take it in.

  Mum nodded. ‘He’d concealed her existence from me. I knew about the … relationship.’ I thought of the hotel bill that Mum had found in my father’s pocket, and the love letter. ‘But I tolerated it,’ Mum went on bleakly, ‘because I believed that it would end.’ She exhaled. ‘But I had no idea that Frances had had …’ Mum looked at me in bewilderment. ‘It didn’t seem possible.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because … John had told me that she was unable to have children – and she was ten years older than he was.’

  ‘Really?’ I adjusted my mental image of the woman who’d so beguiled my father.

  ‘So for her to have a child was the last thing I expected. She would have been forty-two when that baby was born.’

  ‘But … I still don’t understand why you stayed with him. There he was, having this long affair – an affair you knew all about, such that you even discussed with him your fears that the other woman might get pregnant? How horrible!’

  Mum looked stricken. ‘It was horrible – it was awful!’

  ‘Then why didn’t you divorce him? You were young – and beautiful. You could have found someone else. Why didn’t you leave him, Mum?’

  Her blue-grey eyes were shimmering, like melted ice. ‘Because I loved him,’ she answered softly. ‘I didn’t want to leave him.’ She drew in her breath, slowly, as if in physical pain. ‘But … there we all were. And Frances looked at me with utter hatred.’

  ‘But … why should she hate you?’

  Mum gave a helpless shrug. ‘She just … did. Then you said, “What are you doing, Daddy? Are you helping this lady?” Then Frances gave you this penetrating stare that I’ve never forgotten.’

  ‘The skirt,’ I said quietly. ‘The white skirt with the big red flowers. It was hers, wasn’t it? Not yours. She was wearing it.’

  Mum nodded. ‘Then she picked up the little girl and carried her inside. John looked at me furiously, then he told me that he’d never forgi
ve me.’

  ‘But – this all sounds the wrong way round – you were the wounded party.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mum said hotly. ‘I was!’ She banged her hand down on the edge of the table. ‘I was the wounded party!’ Her chin dimpled as she struggled not to cry. ‘But I suppose he was confused and ashamed – his double life had been exposed.’ She blinked away a tear. ‘But as I walked away with you, I felt as though my whole world was sliding off a cliff. Because there was a child, and I knew that this would change my life for ever.’

  ‘But … you’re telling me that I had a sister.’ I stared at my mother. ‘What was her name?’

  ‘Lydia,’ she answered after a moment.

  ‘Lydia,’ I echoed blankly. ‘And you’ve never told me?’ Mum didn’t respond. I glanced into the garden. ‘Is Roy aware of this?’

  She shook her head. ‘I knew that he’d only tell you – or make me tell you. And I didn’t want you to know.’

  ‘But …’ I felt anger and indignation rise up, like magma. ‘What if I’d wanted to meet Lydia – or get to know her?’

  A muscle at the corner of Mum’s mouth twitched. ‘That’s precisely what I wanted to avoid, because if you had done then we’d have to have had contact with John again, which was the last thing I wanted.’ Her hands were curled into fists. ‘I was determined to preserve the integrity and stability of my family.’

  ‘So you hid my sister’s existence from me – all these years? How could you? How could you do that, Mum?’

  She gave me a blinkless stare. ‘It surely must have occurred to you, Ella, that your father might have had other children?’

  ‘Well … of course,’ I answered faintly. ‘I guessed that he’d probably had another family, in Australia – but that’s an abstract thought. You’re telling me that he had a child here, in the UK, just a few miles from where we lived – a child who was only two years younger than me – a child I’d actually met – and might have known?’

  Mum smiled bitterly. ‘Oh, that would have been cosy. The daughters of the wife and mistress being playmates? Would you want that, Ella, if you were ever in the situation that I was suddenly in?’