Dot

by Araminta Hall

  Naturally the person I would have gone to with this theory was Mavis, who has listened diligently to all my father theories over the years. Even a few months ago I might have done, but like I said she’s changed so much recently I knew I wouldn’t get a sympathetic reception. Which is a shame really as it’d explain a lot to both of us; namely why our parents never speak and why both our mums are such freaks.

  After my little revelation I felt so shocked I went downstairs with the intention of confronting my mother and grandmother, who had quite obviously kept all of this a secret from me for ever. But there they were, sitting at our ridiculous dining room table with the shit-brown walls that Gran thinks are sophisticated but are really totally depressing and I felt like someone had punched me.

  ‘Didn’t you hear me calling?’ asked Mum, ladling some foul-smelling stew out of a pot in front of her. Did I mention that she is a completely disastrous cook? Of course she is, because food cooked without emotion is inedible. Who knows, maybe that’s where all the men in our family have gone, into the pot. Maybe we ate them all?

  I didn’t answer but instead went to stand by the fireplace, which has a mantelpiece laden with photos of my mother’s father, all in their individually polished silver frames. Not by either Mum or Gran, I hasten to add, but by Mary who’s cleaned our house twice a week for as long as I can remember. I picked up one of my grandfather bouncing my mother on his knee, a look of pure concentration on his face.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’ asked Gran.

  ‘Just looking,’ I answered, willing one of them to make the connection.

  ‘Come and sit down,’ said Gran, ‘it’s getting cold.’ As if that would make any difference.

  So we sat and they ate and I fumed. ‘I’m going to learn the piano,’ I said finally, forming the idea as the words were leaving my mouth. ‘I’m going to ask Mr Loveridge to teach me.’

  Even my mother seemed to have heard this. ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? Because I want to learn.’

  ‘You’ve never said anything about that before,’ observed Gran.

  ‘Well, no, but I do. Seems silly to waste the opportunity of having a best friend with a piano teacher for a dad, wouldn’t you say?’

  My mother hummed something and my grandmother pushed her stew around her plate.

  ‘It’s quite odd, wouldn’t you say, Mum,’ I tried, ‘how Mavis and I are practically sisters but you and Sandra hardly speak.’

  Mum looked as though she might cry so Gran spoke for her. ‘For goodness’ sake, Dot, why on earth would anyone be friends with a drip like Sandra?’

  It was obvious that the information would have to come from Gerry Loveridge himself and, quite frankly, piano lessons seemed as good a way as any.

  It took Mavis about two weeks to remember to ask him as, like I’ve said already, she seems to have had her personality sucked out of her by aliens or something (you’ll have to take my word for this although I guess you could ask my mum), so that by the time she finally did I was feeling pretty wound up and desperate. The lessons were always disastrous, let me make that very clear. If Gerry is my dad (which I hope to God he isn’t) then he hasn’t passed on his musical talent to me. But we ploughed on for months, all through the winter, past Christmas. Me sitting there sweating, him taking more and more fag breaks and a build-up of tension rushing between us like a catastrophic tsunami. Of course I, like the idiot I am, thought that he was building up the courage to declare his parental claim on me, whilst God only knows what he thought I was building up to. Well, we do know; I’m just trying to make the point that I didn’t get it.

  Gran sighed every time I went for a lesson and even Mum said there were better ways to spend precious study time than learning the piano, which is about the only opinion I’ve ever heard her utter. Mavis got more and more surly with me, so that by the end whenever I turned up she’d just push past me in the horrid huge black jumper she’s taken to wearing every day, like I’d asked her to go out, when I’d have far preferred her to stay in anyway.

  So we wound our sad, pathetic way around to last Monday, when I turned up as usual to squeak my way through scales I should have learnt months ago. Gerry, as he’d asked me to call him, seemed especially nervous; I could certainly smell the smoke on him. Mavis was long gone.

  ‘Do you know what’s wrong with her?’ he asked, rather desperately I felt, as we sat next to each other on the too-small piano teacher’s stool.

  ‘No,’ I answered truthfully, but relieved to hear it wasn’t only me she’d gone off.

  We started on a faulty C scale, but my brain felt like a sieve, totally unable to contain any of the information he was imparting. In the end Gerry sat back and sighed. ‘What are you really doing here, Dot?’ he asked.

  I couldn’t look at his face and so kept my eyes fixed on his hands, which were resting on the white keys. For the first time I noticed that his fingernails are long and filed, which is surely all wrong for a piano teacher. (Not sure why this is relevant, but it feels like it is.)

  ‘I think I know,’ he went on. ‘And I can’t pretend that I’m not flattered, but very surprised, I suppose.’

  To say that my heart was galloping is too much of a cliché, it was more gambolling like a little fawn on a warm spring day, which might not be a cliché but is certainly a very naff metaphor. This is it, I was thinking, oh my God, he’s going to tell me the news I’ve been waiting to hear all my life. He’s going to tell me how hard it’s been, how he’s been watching me all these years, how he couldn’t ever say anything because Mavis and I were born only a month apart and Sandra is obviously very delicate.

  ‘Why don’t we go upstairs,’ he said.

  I followed him up the staircase. He led me into his bedroom, which I did find a bit strange, but thought maybe he had some memento of my birth hidden in a secret place close to his heart.

  The bedroom itself was a bit of an assault on my senses as well, if I’m being honest. As I stood there looking at the sunflowers on the walls and the doilies on the dressing table and the swirling carpet at my feet I was so distracted by the thought of Gerry and Sandra standing in a shop and actually choosing this stuff that I hardly noticed when he started to slip my cardi off my shoulders. I think I even wondered if this was some strange father/daughter ritual that I didn’t know about.

  But then his breath was hot on my neck and he started gyrating against me so I could feel his erection like a rat in his pants. And let me make this very clear: I absolutely know that I could have said no at any time. I remember not making one sound, not even trying to push him off or anything. I didn’t encourage him, but I also didn’t try to stop him. I can’t tell you why I didn’t. The closest I can come to an explanation is, you know that feeling when you are so scared you can’t move (I get it when I’m watching horror films)? Well, I wasn’t scared, but I felt paralysed in the same way. This was a man I’d known all my life, father of my best friend and until a few minutes before presumed father of myself. AND THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT AS WELL. As soon as Gerry started breathing all over me and putting his hand up my skirt and shoving his tongue down my throat I took it that he obviously wasn’t my father. I clearly remember thinking that all of this palaver had been another bloody blind alley, like the stupid TV-watching or bogus photograph and that Gran had been right and if I don’t do as well as expected in my A Levels I can always blame my real dad. I thought about my mother a lot during the actual sex, which I know doesn’t sound right, especially when I’m trying to form a defence against incest, but I don’t mean it like that. I just kept thinking: Look what you’ve driven me to, you mad, stupid woman, are you happy now? Is this what you wanted?

  The sex was over so quickly I’m not sure we could be prosecuted anyway, and it hurt, like someone rubbing sandpaper inside me. I certainly derived no pleasure from it, if that makes it better. Afterwards Gerry seemed amazingly pleased with himself.

  ‘I hope you enjoyed that, Dot,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry it was
a bit quick. But I can’t really get over all this. I mean I had no idea you felt this way.’

  The whole situation could have been funny if it hadn’t really been completely bloody tragic and disgusting. I wanted to get away from him as soon as possible, but I didn’t know what to do or say, so I stayed quiet.

  ‘I take it you’re not really interested in the piano,’ he said. ‘But I’d love it if you still want to come on Mondays. Sandra always goes to Asda on a Monday afternoon. She goes by bus so it takes her hours.’

  ‘Why don’t you drive her?’ I asked, for something to say as much as anything else.

  He looked shocked by this suggestion. ‘I have to work. And anyway she doesn’t do anything else. I think it’s pretty much the only time she leaves the house all week.’

  Life is strange. Probably I don’t need to tell you that as if you’re prosecuting me no doubt you’ve lived a bit. But I’m starting to realise this more and more and it makes me wonder if I do want to grow up and have a relationship and all that stuff. Even when you think you know people you don’t, probably even the person you share a bed with for fifty years could be a stranger. I wondered why people don’t move on more often like my dad. And I wonder why when they do it’s always so devastating.

  I stood up and straightened my clothes. He hadn’t even removed my knickers and there was an odd metallic smell coming from them. I think I said something moronic like, ‘Well, I’d better be going.’

  Gerry stood up as well, zipping his horrid pink penis into his trousers. He followed me downstairs and I willed him not to touch me again in case I was sick.

  ‘So,’ he said at the front door, ‘will I see you next Monday then?’

  The door was open and my exit was clear. ‘Ah, well, probably not.’

  ‘Probably not?’

  ‘It’s all a bit too weird for me, so … But thanks, anyway.’ I really said that.

  ‘You weren’t a virgin, were you?’ asked Gerry, suddenly looking all concerned.

  ‘God, no. No, not at all.’ This, I had decided, would never count and so, by that reckoning, I am still a virgin.

  ‘Oh, right, well – good.’ He laughed lasciviously. ‘I know what all you girls are like nowadays.’

  I left after that and went straight to the Co-op that serves us all even though they’ve known us since we were babies and must be able to work out our ages and bought two WKDs and ten Marlboro Lights. (Della served me if you want to verify this and she remembers everything as she has no life and likes to gossip.) I cut back down past Mavis’s estate to the bluebell wood. I hadn’t been there for years although I know most of our class go there every weekend to smoke and rut like animals. I used to go with Mum when I was little to pick bluebells. I was always struck by how beautiful they are, but also couldn’t believe how short their life was. They’re only here for two weeks, I used to repeat as we walked and picked and she would nod and laugh at me. But now I think two weeks of glory sounds like quite a good deal, especially if you can lie dormant for the rest of the year.

  Of course I’d missed their short slot and the air was putrid. If you haven’t smelt a forest of rotting bluebells then don’t bother, you’re not missing out. And it’s not only the smell, they also look so sad, falling over like dying soldiers. But still I trudged through them because it was the one place I could be sure not to run into Mavis or anyone else I knew.

  I was a bottle of WKD and five fags down when I was hit by the reality of the situation. My mother has never told me who my father is, ergo she is highly unlikely to have told my father about me. Which leads us to one conclusion: Gerry Loveridge is still the most likely candidate for ‘person who supplied half my genes’. And I had just slept with him. I was sick immediately after this thought.

  I stayed in the forest for as long as I could, but in the end I realised that I was going to have to go home. I was almost enjoying the smell coming from between my legs by then, it seemed disgustingly fitting.

  By the time I got home I was hot and angry and went straight upstairs to run myself a bath. I like hot baths, but this one was scalding. I lay in it for ages, watching my skin turn pink and wondering if I might pass out and save everyone the bother of explaining anything to me.

  In the end I had to get out because, really, what else is there ever to do but carry on like you did before? There was no way I was going to tell anyone about what had happened and anyway, I know hardly anyone, which was another thing I realised as I lay simmering in that bath. I wrapped a towel round my body, picked up my clothes filled with my misdemeanour and opened the door. Grandma was sitting in the wicker chair that we have on the landing, looking strangely at me.

  ‘Do you know what time it is?’ she asked pointedly.

  I didn’t but realised it must be past nine-thirty, which is when she takes her bath, at the same time every night, and woe betide anyone who gets in her way. There are two more bathrooms in our house, I’d just like to point out, but for some reason the landing bathroom is Grandma’s. ‘No.’

  ‘It’s my bath time.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I forgot.’

  ‘I don’t ask for much in this house, Dot. I don’t make many demands, when by God I could. But I do take my bath at the same time every night and have done for so long I’m quite surprised you’ve never noticed.’

  ‘Of course I’ve noticed. It was a mistake.’

  ‘A mistake? Oh, so that’s OK then, as you might say.’

  I felt like something was falling through my body, like a lift plummeting through floors. ‘Gran, I’m not feeling great, I’m really not in the mood for this.’

  She stood up at this and for a second I thought she was going to say something important. ‘What are you in the mood for then, Dot, because you don’t seem very well at the moment?’ I tried to detect something caring in her voice but couldn’t. Wasn’t it obvious anyway?

  At that moment Mum came silently up the stairs, surprising both of us. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked.

  ‘Dot decided to have a bath when it’s my bath time and now she’s not in the mood to talk about it.’

  ‘My God,’ I said, ‘why is it such a big deal?’

  ‘It’s not a big deal in itself,’ said Gran. ‘It’s the principle.’

  ‘What principle?’ I shouted.

  ‘Dot, please,’ said Mum and we both looked at her but she didn’t seem inclined to elucidate.

  ‘God,’ I shouted, ‘look at us. What’s wrong with us? There’s a whole world out there you know, getting on with life, having fun.’ Then I stamped upstairs to bed where I cried myself to sleep and woke up this morning in my towel with my hair like a scarecrow’s round my head.

  I got that feeling when you wake up where you feel OK for a minute and then you remember and you want to put your head under the pillow and go back to sleep. I had never been rude to my grandmother before and I couldn’t imagine what was waiting for me downstairs. I lay in bed for a while but then decided that I either had to face them now or later and so I might as well get it over with.

  Mum was in the kitchen washing up when I got down and she looked jittery and nervous when I came in.

  ‘Sorry, for last night,’ I said.

  She turned round at this, letting her soapy hands drip all down her skirt and on to the floor. ‘I do get it you know, Dot,’ she said. ‘I mean, Druith is very small. There was a time I wanted to leave, you know.’

  This was news to me and I wanted to know more. ‘There was? When?’

  She turned back to the sink. ‘It doesn’t matter. I just mean I know it can be frustrating. But you’ll be leaving soon, going off to university. You don’t have to put up with it for much longer.’

  There were, I realised, many unsaid words circling in the air, but I didn’t know how to access them. ‘Is Grandma really angry?’

  ‘She’s under the apple tree.’

  I knew Mum wasn’t going to help any more than that so I went out, walking across the lawn as if I was going to th
e gallows. Gran was in her chair, sipping tea. She watched me approach.

  ‘I’m sorry, Gran. I didn’t mean those things I said last night.’

  She replaced her cup in its saucer and looked up at me. ‘It’s all right, Dot, you don’t have to apologise,’ she said and I was more shocked by this than if she’d shouted. ‘I know it’s hard for you. It’s probably always been hard and I’m sorry.’

  I didn’t know what to say to that and so I smiled and walked away. I walked across the grass and wondered how long we would all go on not saying his name. I wondered if I would reach my mother’s age and my mother my grandmother’s and whether we still wouldn’t have talked about him. I wondered if I’ll make it to university without that knowledge. If I’ll be able to hold down a relationship or a job without the knowledge of half of myself. If you can function in this world without knowing where you come from.

  But, sorry, you’re not interested in any of that. I only mentioned my grandmother because it was such an unusual interlude in our lives, which means she’ll remember it and vouch for the fact that I was behaving very strangely that day. And I was behaving strangely because … well, you know the rest.

  9 … Nothing

  What do you actually do with a day? Physically, that is? There are enough thoughts in any mind to keep it spinning for the whole twenty-four hours, but the body needs something as well. It needs to feel useful or it starts to tell the mind that there’s no point, that it might as well scramble and trip and turn and flip and bounce.