In Her Mothers' Shoes

by Felicity Price

Father: Peter Raymond Williams, Tram Worker

  Dated this 30th day of June, 1951

  DSS

  There was an official stamp on the bottom right corner and the initials DSS – Department of Social Security.

  Kate let it drop on the bed next to the other papers and rubbed her forehead with her hand. She had to sit down. She found a space on David’s side of the bed and fingered her original birth certificate – such a small and insubstantial piece of paper to be carrying such significance.

  It had taken sixty years for it to come to light.

  Even though Rose had been prepared to pass on the names on the certificate to Kate when she’d asked twenty years ago, she had kept her word to the Government department.

  From the time Rose and George had promised that Stipendiary Magistrate not to tell, they had kept the Adoption Order and her birth certificate locked away in the far reaches of a bank vault where nobody would ever see them, not even the person whose arrival into the world the birth certificate announced.

  Kate stared at the small scrap of paper. She had arrived, she thought. This is me.

  Chapter 5.

  Christchurch. 2011

  There is an email from Shakespeare in my inbox.

  I click on it. The other emails can wait. Shakespeare@paradise.net.nz has news.

  ‘It’s for aspirational purposes, you understand,’ my brother Rick explained when I asked him why he chose such a pseudonym online. ‘I’m sure if the Bard were alive today, he’d have been a huge fan of all that technology can offer.’

  I still smile when his emails arrive, and not just because of the tagline. I still find it hard to believe– a new brother and sister, a new family I only met a few months ago yet feel like I’ve known all my life.

  Rick’s email is reporting on his search through birth and marriage records for my birth father – a search I would have had to travel to Wellington to make.

  ‘I’ve just had an email from Shakespeare,’ I call out to David, who is changing out of his work clothes in our bedroom across the hallway.

  ‘So how’s your new bro?’ David appears at the door to the spare room where we share a computer and a desk in jumbled disorder.

  I look up from my laptop and smile. ‘Rick’s been to the Wellington library. He says he’s got writer’s block and decided to go sleuthing to see if he could find out anything about my father. He said it might give him an idea for a play.’

  David grins. ‘Much Ado About Nothing perhaps.’

  ‘More like Love’s Labours Lost.’ Turning back to the screen, I show him the email. ‘He’s scrolled through the Wellington papers and found the birth records of my father. Now I know he’s for real.’

  ‘What? Did you think he was a fabrication? What would that make you? A changeling?’ David’s eyes are smiling at the joke.

  ‘Sometimes I wonder.’ Taking my hands off the keyboard for a moment, I look up at David. ‘Of course he must have existed, or I wouldn’t be here. It’s just that, with tracking down my birth mother and her family, my birth father was pushed into the background. I never gave him much thought once I knew Liz’s story. He seemed like the bad guy who ran off on her. But since I’ve met the rest of Liz’s family, I’m curious to solve the other mystery – my birth father.’

  ‘I often wondered if you would do that. No matter what he was like once, he’s probably quite different now. Could be even more brothers and sisters for you to find.’

  ‘Could be.’ I look up at him. ‘Can you handle any more family?’

  ‘Can you?’ He grins and a questioning eyebrow shoots up.

  ‘Good question.’ I open two pdf attachments and settle on the first, which lists births. ‘Here it is. Peter Raymond Williams. Born July the twenty-first in 1928 in Wellington. That means if he’s still alive, he’d be eighty-three. I wonder if he is.’ Further down the page, there’s a scanned marriage record. ‘In February 1953 he married Margaret Jean Symonds. That means he got married the same year as my birth mother. How about that? A couple of years after they created me, they’d each moved on enough to marry someone else.’

  ‘No looking back. Can’t say I blame them.’ David studies the screen. ‘Rick is doing a great job of sleuthing for you. You’re very lucky.’

  I flick up and down the page, studying the lines of names. ‘He says he loves doing this sort of thing. It’s like a detective story.’

  ‘I can understand how he feels. It’s just like a detective story.’

  ‘Not so much a who-dunnit as a “where-is-he-now”?’

  ‘And is your birth father still alive?’ David asks, stepping back from the desk.

  Returning to Rick’s email, I scroll down the screen. ‘Rick doesn’t know. The cemetery records for Wellington haven’t got him listed as deceased, but of course he might have left town long ago and be alive and well anywhere.’

  ‘What about the electoral rolls?’

  The second attachment is a scan of several photocopied pages. I scroll down to W. ‘Yes, there he is.’ As I stop to read, David leans over my shoulder. ‘He was listed as a tramways worker until 1958 and after that it looks like he became a grocer at the top end of Willis Street somewhere. That’s all we know.’

  ‘It’s a pretty good start. Rick should have been an historian.’

  ‘It’s a pity Dad isn’t still around,’ I say, ‘he was passionate about history – especially family history. He would have known just where to look to see if Peter’s still alive.’

  ‘I’m not sure he’d want to find a second father for you. It might make him feel a bit redundant.’

  ‘It’s funny, you know, I’ve left it so long to even begin looking for him. But I’d be sad if he wasn’t around any more, if I’d left it too late.’

  David goes to the doorway then turns back to me for a moment. ‘You’d better get a move-on then.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I’ll get dinner soon. James is already asking when it’s going to be ready.’

  ‘You should tell him to get it himself. Sitting about all day studying, he needs to get off his chuff. It’s not as if he can’t cook - he’s great when he puts his mind to it.’

  ‘He’s inherently lazy like me. It’s in the genes.’

  ‘Nonsense. He’s been learning by example. Genes are all about what your arse looks like, not whether you have the energy to get off it or not.’

  David pats his bum and disappears.

  Turning back to the keyboard, I Google my birth father’s name. Rick’s already done that, but I might be able to do better, using some of the investigative journalism tricks David’s taught me on the Companies Office website and the online databases accessed through the library. Soon, I have a company file with a list of directors and one of them is Peter Raymond Williams. It’s a grocery importing and wholesaling company, which makes sense. If my father was a grocer, he could well have gone into grocery supplies. Tracking back through the company records, I see he could be comparatively elderly, which would fit; he was a founding director and the company has been around a long time. There is a real possibility it could be him – there can’t be too many Wellington tramways men from the 1950s with the same name, surely?

  The company directory lists the directors’ addresses. His is in Miramar.

  I Google-Map his house, but there are no photos along his street so I click on the satellite button and find him on Google Earth. I can’t help but smile to myself at the ease with which such sleuthing can be done now. Not all that long ago, I’d have to spend hours at the Companies Office then take a trip to Wellington and drive up and down his street for the same view I’m looking at in my own home now: a big single storey house with an orange-tiled roof perched high on a hill overlooking the sea. A steep cliff below the house drops down to a winding road and a rocky shoreline. He must have a spectacular view of the harbour, almost out to the heads to the south and all the way over to Eastbourne to the north. I move the arrow to see further along his street; his hous
e is surrounded by equally sizeable homes, many with decks hanging out over bush-clad sections all facing out to sea.

  I can just picture him in there with his wife, tall and slim, her greying hair cut short, spiked up on top of her head, dangling silver earrings, her flowing multi-coloured tunic hanging over black straight-leg pants, striding into the living room in black, low-heeled sandals, bringing plunger coffee and shortbread at ten. My father will be sitting at the window, his business papers on his knee, ignoring the work he should be doing, staring out the window at the ferry steaming by. His hair thick and white, his face lined and weather-beaten, he’ll have a far-away look in his eye, thinking of . . .

  Not of me, that’s for sure.

  On the nearby bookshelves will be framed photographs of sons and daughters in school uniform, at university graduation perhaps, grandchildren at the beach, playing sport, family gatherings at Christmas.

  The Google-Earth cliff-top house is comforting to visit; it makes me feel at home.

  But it isn’t my home. I close the page to rid myself of the image. There are other emails waiting to be read.

  I click on one from my daughter Amelia: ‘Got a promotion today after a good performance review. More money! Well, not that much, but every bit will help pay for the car to get its warrant. I’m going to be in charge of the customer relationship web campaign. Will look good on the CV next year in the UK.’ The rest is about all the stuff she’s selling on TradeMe to save money for the big OE and how her boyfriend is getting on studying for his Chartered Financial Analyst exams.

  The remaining emails can wait, I decide. Returning to the one from Rick, I read it again and click back to the Companies Office website. Is there a phone number for my father? I scroll through the company’s information. There is a global email address: admin@capitalimports.co.nz. Perhaps if I try various iterations of Peter’s name, an email might get through:

  From: felicity.price@xtra.co.nz

  Sent: Tuesday, November 15 2011. 5:30 p.m.

  To: Peter.Williams@capitalimports; peter_williams@capitalimports.co.nz;

  pwilliams@capitalimports.co.nz; williamsp@capitalimports.co.nz

  Subject: Missing Pieces.

  Dear Peter,

  I was watching a programme on Prime TV called Missing Pieces about people searching for lost family. It has prompted me to write to you as it is possible you are the missing piece in my life.

  On the other hand, I may have the wrong person and if so, I apologise for disturbing you.

  I was born on March 17, 1951. My mother was Lizzie Hamilton.

  I have led a fruitful and largely happy life and, if you are my birth father, I would like to thank you for giving my life to me. If you would be amenable to meeting me, I would like that very much and would welcome an email in return.

  Yours sincerely

  Felicity Price

  ~ ~ ~

  I add my mobile phone number at the end, read it through several times then, before I change my mind, press ‘send’.

  Beyond the laptop, a silver-framed photo of my mother and father on their sixtieth wedding anniversary makes me feel like I’m cheating on them. What would they think? Mum was keen for me to meet my brother and sister and the extended family beyond them but she died before it happened. She never knew the joy it brought, which I regret – because she would have revelled in that joy vicariously and taken it as her own.

  She was wary of me meeting up with my birth mother, though, and I suspect she would feel the same about my birth father. What about Dad? What would he think? Dad would never be drawn on any of it, not with me anyway. His comments to James suggest he wouldn’t be worried.

  But Mum and Dad aren’t around any more and some part of me, some stray piece of DNA looking for a home, still wants to find my birth father.

  A deep-throated low-revving engine rumble and a split second later, another aftershock. For a few seconds, the house judders, the window rattles, my desk jolts away and back again. It ends with a slow roll. The light swings but doesn’t flicker.

  ‘Four point three,’ David yells from the kitchen.

  ‘No, a shallow four,’ James calls out from the lounge.

  They’ll find out on Geonet in a few minutes.

  It’s a measure of how accepting we are now of this seismic swarm that, instead of rushing for the doorway, we wager with each other over the magnitude – with increasing accuracy.

  It’s a measure of how accepting I am of my new family – and they of me – that my brother and I join forces to track down the man who lured our mother into the Karori Pavilion almost exactly sixty years ago.

  Unsettled by the aftershock, I stand up and go into the hall where there’s a line of family photos – Stewart family, Davidson family, Hamilton family. I beam from their midst, the ugly duckling in some, the swan in others. Where do I belong? Where do I fit in?

  It no longer matters. What matters is that, for a while, I have stood in the shoes of both my mothers and come to understand them a little better.

  ~ ~ ~

  Rick’s not an effusive sort of guy. He saves his most expressive moments for the stage. I travel to Wellington for one of our increasingly frequent meetings – in Christchurch and in Wellington. When he introduces me to the bandmaster of his big band, I am expecting his usual reticence.

  I’m listening to them play at the Front Room nightclub, enveloped with the crowd in the big brassy sound of multiple saxes, trumpets, trombones, amped up keyboards and guitar, when suddenly the encore is over and Rick is at my table looking for a drink.

  ‘It’s my shout,’ I say, ‘the least I can do after being so well entertained.’ I call the waiter over and order a beer.

  He’s telling me about the band leader, how he writes most of the music, how people ask for his tunes by name, when the man himself comes over.

  ‘This is my older sister, Felicity.’ Rick is standing up, beaming.

  ‘I didn’t know you had two sisters,’ says the band leader.

  I stand up too, shake his hand, congratulate him.

  ‘Aha, that’s because Felicity arrived fully formed as a sister just a few months ago.’

  So of course we have to explain it. Then Rick says, ‘It was like we’ve always known each other, like we grew up together.’

  The band leader is clearly impressed: he perches at our table and studies me. ‘Can she play the trombone?’ he asks then laughs.

  ‘The flute actually,’ Rick says.

  ‘You want to audition?’

  ‘You’re joking, right?’ I laugh and shake my head. ‘I haven’t played for years. I’ll leave it to the experts.’

  Then Rick says, ‘She’s a writer like me too. And now my sister Jessie has the sister she always wanted instead of a bossy brother like me.’

  I hug him.

  ‘Not that Felicity isn’t bossy at times,’ he says punching me on the arm and grinning. ‘She’s one of us now.’ He looks at me, still grinning. ‘You are, you know – you fit right in with our lot. You have from the moment we met.’

  Kate sat back in her chair and ran that round in her head a few times. It sounded good. Penny had said something like that too.

  ~ ~ ~

  I’m sitting in the Addington Coffee Company waiting for a friend to arrive. This place has become the city’s business hub since the earthquakes. Some days, like today, you’re lucky to find a seat let alone a table to yourself. I’ve taken a table outside, trading off the chill easterly against the early summer sunshine.

  My mobile rings.

  ‘Is that Felicity Price?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is Peter Williams.’

  Suddenly my heart shoots up into my throat and starts banging against my chin. That name. It’s him!

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I was delighted to get your letter.’ Everything stands still. The coffee stops swirling in its cup, the crowded café goes quiet. ‘You sound a lovely person and I would like to think I could be your father,
but I’m afraid I was born just ten years before you were, so I’m sorry it can’t be me.’

  My heart starts beating again. The coffee swirls. The noise in the café is intense.

  I collect myself back together, tell him I’m sorry too and thank him for calling.

  ‘Good luck with your search,’ and he’s gone.

  Author’s Note

  My most heartfelt thanks to members of my two families – my husband and children, both of my mothers, my new brothers and sister and their families, my aunt and cousins and other members of my new extended family – who have both allowed and supported me in my quest to tell this story, no matter how painful or difficult it has been to revive memories that have lain buried for many, many years.