by Rachel Hore
Twenty minutes passed before I remembered poor Zac waiting downstairs. ‘Goodbye, Dad. I’ll come tomorrow.’ When I kissed him, his forehead felt cool and dry against my lips.
Zac was deep in a fat paperback book when I spotted him across the crowded café, oblivious to the admiring glances of two young nurses at the next table.
‘Like another coffee, Zac?’
He stuffed the book into a sagging pocket of his jacket. ‘I’ll fetch them,’ he said, getting up.
I watched him weave his way between the tables to the counter, a graceful lean figure with his own private brooding air. His hair needs cutting, I thought maternally, and a new jacket wouldn’t be out of place.
‘What were you reading?’ I asked when he returned with coffee and a couple of Danish pastries.
‘Trollope,’ he said.
‘Anthony or Joanna?’
He smiled, eased the book out of his jacket and passed it to me. It was a volume of The Pallisers. I opened it and an envelope he was using as a bookmark slid out and would have fallen to the floor. His hand collided with mine to catch it and our heads bumped together.
‘Sorry,’ he said, picking up the envelope. ‘Are you all right?’ But it was he who looked wounded.
‘I’m fine. What’s the matter?’ I whispered. ‘Tell me.’
After a moment he sighed and passed me the envelope. I turned it over. It was inscribed to a Miss Olivia Donaldson in Melbourne, Australia, but the address was struck through, with not known, return to sender scribbled above.
‘Olivia’s my daughter,’ Zac said, his voice dull.
‘Your daughter? Zac, I had no idea…’
‘That’s surprised you then.’ He caught my eye and tried to smile, but his eyes were sad.
I sighed. ‘You are a dark horse. For goodness sake, Zac, why haven’t you told me anything about it before?’
‘Subject’s never come up.’
‘No, I suppose not.’ It showed how little we communicated. ‘How old is she?’
‘She’ll be twelve. This was a card for her birthday.’
Zac had a girl of twelve called Olivia. A pretty name, a name I’d have chosen for a daughter. Now I remembered his gentleness with Amber. He’d be a good, caring father.
‘I haven’t seen her since she was three months old.’
‘Oh, Zac…’
‘I’ve sent her a card every year but I’ve never heard back till now. And then this.’
We both stared at the envelope.
‘I don’t even know how long ago they moved.’ He looked miserable.
I passed him back the card. ‘How can you bear it, not seeing her?’
‘Most of the time, to be honest, I try not to think about it. But I like to acknowledge her birthday. No idea if her mother ever shows her the cards. I’ve never had any response. That’s the worst thing–not knowing if Olivia even knows about me.’
‘Wouldn’t her mother have told her?’ It was hard finding the right questions to ask. We were too used to keeping our private lives at a respectful distance.
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. We were once so close, Shona and me, but by the end she cut herself off. I couldn’t say any more what she would or wouldn’t do. She’d changed, Fran.’ He sat, locked in his own thoughts, a faraway expression on his face. I picked at my pastry. Zac hadn’t touched his. Finally he said, hesitantly, ‘I was telling your dad upstairs, you know. About the card. I expect that sounds stupid.’
‘No. No, it doesn’t.’ I was rather moved by this. A thought came to me. ‘Did he know all about Olivia?’
‘Yes. It was he who helped after I lost her.’
‘Is this when you were rock bottom?’
‘Yes. He gave me the job. After Shona took Olivia and went back to Australia I got a bit desperate. Had nowhere to live and no proper work. Your dad rescued me, Fran.’
Twelve years ago. I’d started college. I remember coming back to visit Dad one day and seeing with a shock the notice he’d put in the window advertising for an assistant. Not long afterwards I’d called in to find Dad was out. There was only this quiet, sad-looking young man working in the shop.
‘I remember meeting you for the first time,’ I told him. ‘You hardly said a word to me.’
‘No.’ He smiled. ‘You looked like a scared rabbit yourself.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Did.’
In truth I probably had seemed nervous. I’d found Zac surly–rude, even. And I was appalled when Dad told me Zac was sleeping in the spare room.
‘It was the surprise, that’s all. And Dad had given you a room in the flat. It was odd after there being the two of us for so long. I know I’d moved out. It took some getting used to, that’s all.’
‘I wasn’t there long. It’s funny, I’ve been thinking, I was like Amber at the time. Had nowhere to go. When I told your dad everything that had happened he said I could stay with him until I got myself sorted out. So I did.’
‘Where had you been living before?’
‘It’s a long story, as they say. And this isn’t the place.’
I looked around. The café was getting crowded. The young nurses had gone but a middle-aged couple had taken their seats. Other people with trays were roaming around looking for free tables. A vast, weary-looking woman with a clutch of dark-eyed children indicated one of the spare chairs at our table and asked in broken English, ‘OK to sit here?’
‘Sure,’ Zac said. We piled up our crockery to make room for them. Then he picked up his book and whispered, ‘Shall we go?’
When we got outside he asked, ‘Are you busy now? We could walk along to the South Bank, get a proper drink.’
‘Good idea.’ I hadn’t anything planned that evening and was curious to learn more about Zac’s story.
It was early evening and still surprisingly sunny, though a cold breeze blew up from the river. We bought a couple of beers at the National Film Theatre bar and found stools by the window, where we could see the cruisers on the river. On the esplanade, a young juggler performed some pathetic antics.
‘Even I could do better than that,’ said Zac, sipping his beer, and I smiled. He brought out his wallet and extracted a piece of card which he passed to me. It was a colour photograph, somewhat faded, of a fair-haired baby in a sunhat.
‘Olivia?’ I asked. He nodded and I saw the flash of pride in his eyes. She was pretty, this baby, a smile lighting up her face.
‘She’s gorgeous, Zac,’ I said, and I meant it.
‘It was her first birthday. Shona sent me it from Australia. That was the last time I heard from her.’
I passed the photograph back to him and watched as he returned it to the wallet.
‘You and Shona,’ I probed carefully, hoping I wasn’t intruding, ‘were you…married or anything?’
He shook his head. ‘No. Though I asked her once.’
‘Is she Australian by birth? Is that where you met?’
He laughed. ‘I’ve never been further than France. She’s from Melbourne and we met in Glasgow when we were both twenty. I’d been in work a couple of years then, got an apprenticeship at a stained-glass workshop up there. Shona was a barmaid in a pub I used to go to. Supporting herself through university. She was so pretty and bubbly, easy to talk to.’ I imagined her drawing Zac out of himself. He must have been even shyer in those days.
‘Don’t know what she saw in me.’ His face was suddenly alive with the memory of her. I remembered the two nurses trying to catch his attention in the hospital café and I could see. With his dark eyes, that white skin, shadowy beard and his brooding presence, many women would find Zac attractive. I suppose I hadn’t noticed before, but then Zac had never made any effort to make me notice. He became aware of me staring and I said hastily, ‘So you got together?’
‘Yes. I told you about my mam having passed away? She had started to get sick then, was having lots of hospital tests, and it turned out Shona’s dad was ill, too, so we sort of helped
each other, her and me. Our worries were a bond between us. We understood what the other was going through, you see. I didn’t get on too well with my dad and I had no brothers or sisters. It was great having someone to talk to.’
I thought about my own father. How difficult it could be, coming to terms with a parent’s illness. Zac took a long draught of his beer. Outside, the juggler had given up and was packing to go home.
‘We were together most of her last year at uni,’ he went on. ‘She was the first really serious girlfriend I’d had and I fell for her completely. When she talked about moving to London I couldn’t accept it. Mam’s motor neurone disease had been diagnosed by then and I needed Shona so much. Looking back, I should have recognised the signs, let her go. She was restless, wanted to move on. But I thought there was a future for us.’
‘What about her father?’
‘He had heart problems, poor guy, but he’d just had an operation, seemed better, so she didn’t feel she had to rush off home. She badly wanted to live in London for a bit, for the experience of it. In the end I jacked in my job and went with her. Felt bad about leaving my mam, but I told myself I’d go back and see her often. I didn’t think about what might happen long-term–whether Shona would go back to Australia and what I’d do then. You just live for the moment when you’re young, don’t you?’
I nodded. I’d been doing precisely that for years. Living for the moment, not knowing what else to hope for. And now time seemed precious. Time with Dad, time to think about my own future. I mused about this as Zac went up to the bar for more drinks.
When he came back I prompted, ‘You were saying you moved to London.’
‘Yes. We found a small flat in Cricklewood. Shona got a job in a travel agency somewhere off Oxford Street, but I didn’t have any luck. I hadn’t finished my apprenticeship, you see, and it was the early 1980s. There was a recession, so people were being laid off rather than taken on. It was difficult. And Shona and me, it started to fall apart. I was still crazy about her, but I could tell she wasn’t so keen. She hated me hanging round the house all day. Didn’t think I did enough to help. I probably didn’t, but my mam had done everything at home. I didn’t notice whether the bin was full or whether the washing-up was done. I thought she was fussing.’
I laughed. ‘Remind me not to come and live with you then.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m fully housetrained now. Anyway, what happened next was, Shona announced she was pregnant. I was stunned. We hadn’t planned it, you see. Once I’d picked myself up off the floor I was quite pleased. I thought it meant Shona and I would stay together. But it didn’t turn out like that.’
‘Did she want the baby?’
‘Yes. Her dad had had another heart-attack and she was worrying about whether she would go home. The baby decided her. So in the end you could say that Olivia didn’t keep us together–she pulled us apart. Shona left when Olivia was three months old. I’d got a job in a local supermarket, and one day when I came in from work, it was to find they’d gone.’
‘Without telling you?’ I was appalled.
‘She’d left a note with her address in Melbourne but asked me not to follow her. She couldn’t face telling me what she was doing, she said, because she’d be too upset. She’d be too upset.’ His fist was clenched and I saw in his face that even now, twelve years later, the pain of that day had never left him.
‘What on earth did you do?’ I whispered. ‘I’d have gone crazy.’
‘I think I must have done. The next few months are a blur. I missed them so much, Fran–Shona and Olivia. And then I wasn’t earning enough to pay the rent and had trouble with my benefits, and the landlord’s patience ran out.’
‘Why didn’t you go back to Glasgow?’
‘I nearly did, but by now Mam was dead–she died a few weeks before Olivia was born. I knew Dad wouldn’t want me living at home, and anyway, I hadn’t seen him since the funeral. My job in Glasgow would have been filled and it would have been like admitting failure to go back to do nothing.
‘Looking back now, I can see I was grieving–for Mam and for Shona and Olivia, and I couldn’t cope with it all, couldn’t concentrate on anything. I made mistakes on the till in the supermarket, then couldn’t be bothered to turn up at all. Finally, the landlord locked me out of the flat with virtually nothing. That night, I went to the Sally Army hostel in Westminster. The next morning, I decided I’d give London one more week, then I’d ring Dad and ask him to send me the train fare home. It was the day after that when I saw the ad on the door of Minster Glass. Your father offered me the job on the spot.’
‘That’s amazing,’ I said quietly. No wonder he was so loyal to Dad.
‘For a while he let me kip in the flat, but I could see he didn’t take to having a lodger. A customer heard I was looking for somewhere. She had a friend in Lambeth who wanted to sublet her flat while she went to live in Spain. I grabbed at it. The area’s a bit rundown but the flat’s been perfect for me.’
‘And you haven’t seen Olivia or Shona since?’
‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘I wrote to tell Shona my new address and after a couple of weeks I had a long letter back saying all the things she should have said to my face. That she was sorry but she knew it wasn’t going to work out and there was no point in us seeing each other any more. Her dad’s latest operation had been successful, but he was still very unwell. They were going to stay in Melbourne and she said again, I shouldn’t come to find her. The only other time I’ve heard from her was when Olivia was one. That’s when Shona sent me the photograph.’
He eased it out of his wallet again and we looked at it together. ‘Shona wrote that Olivia looked like she did at that age. No trace of me, then.’ He sounded bitter.
I stared down at this little lost angel. Of course, Olivia wouldn’t look like this any more–eleven years had passed–and yet the photo of this gorgeous little girl represented something eternal. Loss. The faded nature of the print distanced her further in place and time, like one of those children lost to us on earth who never grow up, but exist in some happy limbo of our imaginations, out of our reach.
As I passed the photo back to Zac his expression was lifeless.
‘Have you never tried to see her?’
‘No. I was broke, though if Shona hadn’t been so definite that I shouldn’t go, I’d have got the money from somewhere. But she didn’t want me to come. I kept having bad dreams about turning up on her doorstep like a mad person and Shona’s family chasing me away. I have my pride.’
‘You shouldn’t allow pride to get in the way of you seeing your daughter, Zac,’ I said stoutly.
He thought for a moment. ‘Maybe not, but it’s hard to go where I’m not wanted. And Shona may be married now. That could be awkward, me turning up and eyeballing another bloke.’
‘Do you still…love her, Zac?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know how I’d feel though, if I saw her again. Not that there’s much question of that. I don’t know where they are.’
‘It should be possible to track them down.’ I felt angry on his behalf. I didn’t see why Zac shouldn’t be allowed to see his daughter. ‘Did you never write to Shona and actually demand to see Olivia? Surely you have legal rights.’
‘I don’t think I do. It’s probably easier for everybody, this way.’ He sounded defeated and that made me sad. As he drank the last of his beer, I noted his strong fingers around the bottle were scarred, the nails cut short. And yet I’d seen them handle fragile shards of sparkling glass, paint delicate details of lips and eyes and flower petals, could imagine him holding the hand of a small child.
Chapter 18
And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it!
Genesis XXVIII. 12.
I slept fitfully that night, haunted by dreams of a lost child. I remember the first drear lightening of the sky and, next, the ring
ing phone dragging me out of a deep sleep to bright sunlight. I saw with horror that it was ten o’clock.
‘I’m so sorry about cancelling Wednesday,’ Jo’s voice said, when I picked up the phone. ‘I wondered if you were free today? I thought I’d be busy this weekend, but my arrangements fell through. Then when I rang Mum this morning, thinking I’d go down there for lunch, she said I couldn’t, that they were going out!’
I had to laugh at Jo’s indignant tone. I had vaguely thought of spending my Sunday sorting through more Minster Glass papers until it was time to go to the hospital, but now I heard myself say, ‘I haven’t been to the Tate for years. Would you like to do that?’ I had a hankering to see my beloved King Cophetua painting once more.
‘That’s a great idea,’ she said. ‘How was Friday, by the way, with Ben?’
‘Interesting,’ I replied, explaining about going back to his flat. ‘There was another couple there. Michael, from the choir, and a violinist called Nina.’
‘But you liked him?’ she pursued.
‘Yes,’ I told her, adding firmly, ‘but he’s just a friend.’
I felt such relief to see that King Cophetua was hanging in its usual place. I’d have felt indignant if they’d lent it out to some exhibition. We gazed at Burne-Jones’s lovely beggar maid, regal, untouchable, the King worshipping unheeded at her feet, and I puzzled again why my father hadn’t been able to bear the poster hanging in my room.
Jo was more attracted to The Golden Stairs, an enigmatic painting of eighteen lovely women descending a gold staircase. ‘They’re like enchanted spirits in a dream,’ she said with a sigh.
‘Burne-Jones only used one model for the bodies,’ I said. ‘Isn’t that funny? She was an Italian named Antonia Caiva.’ Many of the faces though were of different women Burne-Jones knew. ‘It’s as though he’s raising them to the status of angels, isn’t it? Look, this one at the top is Burne-Jones’s daughter Margaret, whom he adored. Here is Frances Graham, whom he was devoted to at the time, and this is May Morris, William Morris’s daughter, with whom Ruskin and George Bernard Shaw and Stanley Baldwin all fell in love.’