She didn’t look much like the Hapsburg princess she’d dreamed of.
She didn’t look all that confident.
She didn’t look much like Kate. But then, she was nearly twenty years older.
Who did she look like? There was a vague familiarity. Kate couldn’t quite put her finger on it; maybe she’d met her somewhere, somehow, before.
The woman looked around. Kate stood up and waved then hurried forward.
‘Thank you for coming.’ She’d rehearsed what she was going to say; that wasn’t it. It just slipped out, responding to the fear in her eyes. Was it fear? If not, it was close. She tried to make herself more relaxed and welcoming, less nervous, less apprehensive.
‘Look at you,’ her mother said. ‘You look just like my sister.’
They embraced. It felt odd, artificial. This was her mother. Yet she didn’t feel like flesh and blood. She was a stranger. They were both strangers.
‘Do I?’ Kate forced a laugh. ‘I’ve never looked like anyone before.’
They sat at the table, awkward, uncomfortable.
‘I’m so glad you said you’d meet me,’ Kate said. ‘I wasn’t sure if you would.’
‘To be honest, I wasn’t sure either.’ Her mother pushed her glasses on top of her head – just like Kate did – and studied her. ‘I’d buried you so deep in my past, I didn’t know if I could face it again.’
‘I’m glad you did.’ Was she glad? She didn’t think so. Not yet. ‘I was going to say “Mother” but it doesn’t seem right, somehow. What should I call you?’
‘Just call me Liz.’
‘Okay Liz.’ She laughed nervously and tried to think what to say next. ‘Did you have trouble finding a park?’
‘Oh, no. I don’t drive. I never have. I caught the bus.’
‘You don’t drive? That’s unusual.’
‘I tried once. My husband Steven tried to teach me. But I was hopeless. I haven’t driven since.’
Kate was just about to say that Mum drove and she was seventy, but stopped herself just in time. ‘I couldn’t survive if I didn’t drive,’ she said instead. There was a moment’s pause. ‘I don’t know where to begin.’ She smiled nervously. ‘There’s so much I want to ask you.
A waitress hovered behind.
‘Shall we order first?’ Liz picked up the menu. ‘I’ll have a quick look.’
Kate looked for something light. ‘I think I’ll have the pumpkin soup, please,’ Kate said to the waitress. ‘And a glass of lime and soda.’
Liz put the menu down and looked relieved. ‘That sounds good. I’ll have the same.’
As soon as the waitress had departed, Kate started on her list of questions.
She learned that she had a whole new family – well, half a family, on her mother’s side – a new aunt and uncle, a brother and sister, a niece and lots of cousins, all completely oblivious to her existence. She learned that there were artists in the family, writers, poets even; according to her mother she was related, somewhat distantly, to the poet John Masefield and his cousin the playwright Christopher Fry. She learned that she had every chance of living to a ripe old age, that there was no history of heart attacks or blood pressure, or diabetes, or asthma, that the women in the family who weren’t struck down by cancer lived to a ripe old age.
‘Cancer?’
‘Yes, there’s a lot of cancer, I’m afraid,’ Liz said. ‘Your grandmother died of cancer, and my sister Jilly died of leukaemia when she was just eight years old. I’ve only got one sister now, Penny. She’s quite a bit younger. You’d like her.’
Kate didn’t know what to say. She’d never thought of getting cancer, never had a skin check or a mammogram. Maybe she should? Or maybe the cancer genes had been overridden by her father.
‘What about my father? Do you know if he had any health issues?’
Liz pursed her lips. ‘No. I don’t know anything about his background. He was a tram conductor and he seemed healthy enough; he was a runner, very fit. That’s all I know.’
Kate didn’t like to probe. There was a steely fix to her mother’s eye that discouraged further discussion. She already knew his name from the information Mum had produced. If she wanted to know more, she’d have to find him herself.
Her mother started fiddling with a locket around her neck. Oval-shaped, silver, with a finely detailed pattern etched on its face, the locket seemed to act some form of stress relieving distraction for Liz.
‘That’s a pretty necklace,’ Kate said, hoping to draw her out.
‘It was my grandmother’s,’ was all she would say.
Their lunch arrived and the subject changed ever so subtly from the past to the present. Liz asked about Kate’s family.
‘I’ve brought photos.’ She pulled out an envelope and flipped a series of family photos onto the table, picking up the one on the top.
‘That’s Amelia. She’s four and at pre-school. And James is just nine months. He’s home with his grandmother today.’ She knew that was stretching the truth, but didn’t want to admit to having him in day-care while she worked part-time. Her mother might not approve.
Liz smiled. ‘They’re lovely.’ She held the photo closer then picked up the next one on the pile, of David and the kids. ‘But I can’t see any resemblance to my daughter Jessie or her wee girl Emily. I think they look more like their father, like David.’ She turned the photo round so Kate could see. ‘Don’t you think?’
‘They do.’ It was true, everybody said Amelia was the spitting image of her father. But James looked different, more like her.
‘Have you got any photos of your grandchildren?’
Liz produced several photos from her bag. ‘I brought these to show you. This is Jessie with baby Emily – she’s getting on for two now. She was born in London when I was over there.’
‘Did you go over to be with Jessie at the birth?’
‘Yes.’ Liz hesitated as if she was about to say something else, but didn’t.
‘Your first time in London?’
‘Yes.’ She toyed with her soup spoon. ‘But I was glad to get home. I didn’t like it much.’
That was a surprise. Kate couldn’t imagine anyone not liking London.
‘And you said you had a son?’
‘Yes, Richard. I’ve got a photo of him somewhere. Let’s see. I hope I didn’t forget to bring it.’ She delved in her handbag. ‘It’s of Richard with his wife Kim. It should be here somewhere. They got married just before Christmas. Lovely wedding. Jessie couldn’t come back for it, not with a new baby, but she’s promised to come back to New Zealand later this year.’ Liz looked pleased. ‘I love having my family around me.’
Kate didn’t seem to be included in that. It was perfectly understandable, she told herself, especially when you’ve just met your mother for the first time. You couldn’t expect her to embrace you into the family just like that.
All her life she’d felt an outsider, not belonging to her adoptive family, no matter how nice they were, she never felt she was one of them; but she didn’t belong to Liz’s family either – they didn’t even know she existed.
She’d wanted to say about the baby, Emily, that she looked just like Amelia at that age, but it was as if Liz didn’t want to know, as if she were denying any possibility of genetic similarity.
‘Ah, here it is.’ Liz produced the photo from a side pocket in her bag.
Kate couldn’t believe it. ‘That’s Rick!’
‘Yes, Richard.
‘Oh God!’
‘What? Do you know him?’ Liz was looking alarmed.
In that instant, Kate realised she couldn’t admit to having met Liz’s son before, to knowing who he was. Liz was so fearful of her family finding out about her shameful secret, she’d be horrified to discover her son Richard had already come face to face with the secret personified.
‘No. He just looked familiar, that’s all.’ He did too. She’d seen it in him when they’d met. Something she recognised, something
about his laugh. She’d thought it was because he’d been on television, because he was familiar to the thousands of people who’d seen him in their living rooms every night on Gloss. Now the puzzle was solved: his familiar laugh was an echo of her own.
She should have realised Rick was Liz’s son. Not at the time she met him – she didn’t know her birth mother’s name then. But she’d discovered Liz’s married name a month later, in March last year, during the search at the births, deaths and marriages registry. The surname Davidson and Rick’s home town of Wellington, both should have been a give-away. How ironic! All this time she’d been trying to trace her mother and her brother had already been introduced to her, been interviewed by her, without her knowing.
She hadn’t seen him since that time she’d interviewed him, when she’d gone to the opening night of his play A Trap for Young Players. But he’d been on a high, celebrating with the rest of the cast; she’d only said a few congratulatory words before he was lost in the opening night crowd around the theatre bar.
The review had been guardedly positive, which was quite something for the theatre critic. She remembered the gist of it: ‘this well-known television actor has made a credible transition to the stage’, he’d said, adding somewhat sniffily that Rick had written the play himself, as if that ought to be held against him, while praising its theatricality. Kate had seen Rick’s name mentioned since then in television roles, and had heard his play had been picked up by another theatre in Auckland. She wondered if his mother had seen it when it premiered in Wellington before coming down to Christchurch.
‘What did you say Rick, er Richard, does?’
‘He’s an actor. He was on television you know, in Gloss.’
‘Yes, I remember. Did he act on the stage too?’
‘Yes, I think so, but I’ve never seen him. I don’t like going into town and the theatre – I don’t like crowds. But he was good in Gloss.’
Liz took the photo out of Kate’s hand and passed over another. ‘Here’s Richard and Kim again with all of us at Christmas.’
They went through more photographs, tracing back the years to when Liz was a teenager.
‘This is me when I got my first job.’ She held out a black-and-white photo of a young woman in a long winter coat, low-heeled brogues and a smile so direct and confident Kate hardly recognised her. But she did recognise the teeth, the overbite and the chin, pointed slightly – Dad called it elfin. And the way the wavy hair refused to be tamed into a fringe.
‘I’ve got a photo of me at that age too,’ she said and flicked through her pile until she found the one of her taken in her mother’s back garden, standing on the lawn in a psychedelic mini-dress.
‘You do look nice.’ Liz held it next to the photo of herself. ‘But I don’t see the resemblance.’ She picked out another photo of a girl in a school uniform. ‘That was just before I had you. When I was sent down to Christchurch.’
Kate took it and saw the same familiar features that Liz didn’t – or didn’t want to – see. ‘Was that a difficult time?’ She knew it was a redundant question, but she didn’t know what else to say.
‘Mostly it was. I was very homesick. And lonely.’
‘What about when I was born?’
‘Even lonelier. I wasn’t allowed to hold you. You were taken straight from me.’ She lowered her eyes and seemed transfixed with the sugar bowl, picking up the spoon and playing with it, swishing the sugar from side to side then spooning it up, holding the spoon aloft and letting a few grains trickle back into the bowl.
Kate felt suspended, like the spoon. Another grain fell, like sand in an egg-timer, measuring the gap in the faltering conversation.
Liz had said in her letter that she’d not been allowed to hold her daughter. But hearing it out loud somehow made it very real. She looked across the table at her; Liz was showing no emotion, just a slight quiver of the lip and flutter of the eyelids gave her away. You couldn’t read her eyes; she was still staring at the sugar bowl, even though she’d put the spoon back inside it. Kate reached out and touched her mother’s hand and felt a slight recoil, or was it a tremor? ‘I can’t imagine how that must have been.’
Liz didn’t reply.
There was a brief moment then when Kate thought she might be able to make a connection, to break through her mother’s reserve and shyness. But her mother’s hand lay motionless on the table. She waited a moment longer, in case Liz turned her palm upwards and grasped her hand, until it became embarrassing. She withdrew her hand and returned to her soup. Suddenly it was unappetising. She didn’t want any more. Putting down her spoon, wiping her mouth with the paper napkin, she tried to think of something to say, to cover the awkwardness of the moment.
‘My daughter starts school in July,’ was all she could think of.
Liz smiled. ‘I remember when it was your fifth birthday wondering how you would like going to school.’ She looked out the window. ‘I thought about you on all your birthdays. I tried sending you a card once. I got in touch with the hospital where you were born. But of course, they wouldn’t tell me anything.’
Kate knew just how that felt. She smiled back. ‘I used to think about you a lot too. Wonder what you were like.’
Liz laughed. ‘I’m afraid I’m not very interesting. I’ve not done very much at all. Not like you.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true. Tell me what you do.’
Liz recounted her life through her husband’s and her children’s lives, and Kate learned more about the likes and dislikes of Steven Davidson than she really wanted to know. She learned about her sister Jessie, who’d worked in an art gallery in London ‘right up to the birth of her baby’ and who’d switched to managing a fitness centre part-time now her second baby was one. She learned more about brother Richard – more than he’d told her himself. Liz was proud of his role on Gloss but didn’t say anything about him writing plays. Maybe he hadn’t told her? Maybe she didn’t want to know? But she added that he played saxophone in a big band at a night club at weekends and grew hydroponic salad greens in his back yard, selling them at a weekend market. Kate wondered why he’d kept that to himself at the interview. She would very much like to ask him.
‘Do you think I’ll be able to meet him? Or Jessie when she comes back?’
‘Heavens no, not yet.’ Liz looked aghast. ‘I’m not ready to tell them yet. One day, maybe. But I couldn’t now.’
Kate was annoyed. What was it about her that her mother was ashamed of? What harm would it do for them to know? ‘Why is that?’ she said.
‘I haven’t been well, you know. The doctor says it’s depression. He’s put me on medication, but I still don’t feel right. Getting a letter from you, well …’ She tailed off.
Was she trying to lay the blame for her depression on Kate? Had the letter, the first contact from her firstborn in thirty-six years, reawakened the shame and the anxiety she’d buried all that time? It was entirely possible. Kate should have realised that her mother would be shocked, possibly seriously upset, getting her letter. Her mother’s depression was more than likely Kate’s fault.
They talked some more, but she could tell that the meeting was as good as over. Kate paid the bill for two – ‘It’s the least I can do,’ she said out of guilt – and they swapped photographs, picking the ones of when they were teenagers. Kate studied it one more time before putting it in her Filofax: the image of a mother that looked just like her at that age but refused to acknowledge it.
Just as she was going, her mother called her back. She was picking at the strap of her handbag, looking anxious. ‘I really don’t want my kids to know,’ she said. ‘It would be too much for me now. I just ask you to wait a while. One day I’ll tell them. Okay?’
Kate hesitated. She wasn’t sure she could agree to this.
‘Will you promise me not to tell them?’
Kate thought for a moment. Now that she’d met her mother, she realised that the key to finding her identity, to knowing if she fitted
in with her mother’s family, lay with her siblings.
‘Please Kate.’
Liz was fiddling with her locket again, twisting the fine silver chain with such an intensity Kate feared it might break.
She nodded, reluctantly. ‘I won’t tell them.’
She would wait.
~ ~ ~
Kate had booked a late flight home, leaving plenty of time for whatever the meeting might have led to. If her mother had suggested seeing her brother or coming home with her, she’d been ready. But now, as she watched her mother’s sagging navy shoulders depart down the footpath towards the bus stop, she was relieved there’d been no other family involved. Relieved and disappointed. The way things had gone, a family reunion was out of the question.
In Her Mothers' Shoes Page 28