One Day in May

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘I must go to him,’ I whispered, stumbling to my feet, but my knees were like a rag-doll’s. Hal came across and pulled up a stool beside me.

  ‘Wait. Wait a bit, until you’re composed. He’s known for over a year. A bit longer won’t make any difference.’

  Over a year my son had been living with the knowledge. Why hadn’t he said? Railed at me, accused me of treachery, yelled in my face about betrayal – left me, even? Suddenly I went cold. A year ago he’d been expelled from his London day school for smoking and drinking, and eventually, albeit unintentionally, setting fire to his common room. A very unsettled mind in this profound and intense boy, the child psychologist’s report had read. A troubled child, his headmaster had said, of this model pupil: this previously straight-A student. Is everything all right at home, Mrs Carrington? And I’d thought it was. Hadn’t known. Why hadn’t he said?

  ‘Why didn’t he say?’ My voice, from somewhere small and remote.

  Hal shrugged. ‘You’d kept it a secret from him for fourteen years. Why shouldn’t he keep it secret from you? Actually, I think he was so angry he thought he’d exact some revenge. But then, more recently, as we talked – at length – I hope he understood a bit more. I think he was just very sad, Hattie.’

  Many things struck me about this: Hal and Seffy knew each other well. Had investigated DNA together, had talked at length. Jesus. All this had existed, perhaps been staring at me, whilst I’d been carrying on with my world. The whole of last year was not the way I’d perceived it at all. But ‘very sad’ pierced me most. My boy. The person I loved most in the world. I thought of all the times I’d almost told him, but had lost my nerve: times when I’d sat on the side of my bed, screwing up my courage, hands tightly clasped, knees together, while he was downstairs watching Sky. How I’d reached for my box, in the cupboard, to take it down and show him: talk to him. But had always bottled it. Thought – tomorrow, I’ll do it tomorrow. Or next holidays, when he’s home. And then, the moment had passed. And the box had gone back in the wardrobe. But ridiculously, because I’d almost done it, I felt that was better than not having tried. Told myself I’d passed some sort of honesty test.

  Always, always, you see, I’d shrunk from his reaction. Knew his shock and horror at my not telling him earlier, when he was young, would be too much for me to bear. That I’d shrivel in his eyes. Yet I’d already shrivelled. Had been quite desiccated for over a year now. I remembered questioning his appalling behaviour last summer. Remembered his rudeness, coldness: ‘How could you behave like that, Seffy?’ I’d put it all down to teenage hormones. That day he’d thrown the vase across the kitchen, smashed the window. I’d put that down to stress from having been expelled. But he’d known.

  ‘I think a bit of him was still hoping you’d tell him. That you were maybe waiting until he was sixteen.’

  I seized this like a lifebelt. Sixteen. Would I? No. No, the unattractive truth was – I thought I’d got away with it. To my shame, I knew I wouldn’t have told him. Was too cowardly. Loved him too much: no, correction, loved his love too much, which, I now realized, I had been without for some time. He’d withheld it. How hurt he must have been to do that. I doubled up on my stool and pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes. It seemed to me some old wound in my chest had started bleeding.

  ‘Once I’d started down that road of deception,’ I whispered into my fists, ‘I couldn’t stop. Everyone thought he was adopted. Everyone had believed my story. It was like a rolling stone, gathering more and more moss and becoming enormous. And at the point when I really thought I might tell him, could tell him, a couple of years after Dom died, Letty published the diaries.’

  ‘And you didn’t want to tarnish Dominic’s memory.’

  I jerked upright. ‘How could I suddenly appear with Dominic Forbes’s lovechild? Have the nation turn its eyes on us? At a time when everyone was remembering him again, going all misty-eyed. And how much worse would that have been for Seffy, too? Dominic was a huge political figure – huger still for being blown up by terrorists – a national hero. I couldn’t let the tabloids loose on us, on my son. They’d have had a field day.’

  ‘Yes, I did tell Seffy that. Said you were protecting him. I’ve explained that.’

  ‘Oh – have you, Hal?’ I reached out – seized his arm. ‘You’ve explained why I did it?’

  ‘As much as I could, yes. I’ve always batted for you, Hattie. Always will.’

  It hung there in the air: his love for me. A constant reminder. Reproach, even. My hand came back to my lap.

  ‘But Seffy didn’t see it like that. He only saw you protecting Dominic. And yourself.’

  ‘No, never myself,’ I said fiercely, fists clenched. ‘I couldn’t have cared less what they said about me, wrote about me. But Dom—’

  ‘You loved very much. And his memory. Seffy would say more than him. A greater love.’

  I hung my head. ‘Not true,’ I whispered. ‘No one ever more than Seffy. But with each passing day it became so much harder. So impossible to do a U-turn once I’d told him he was adopted.’

  ‘So why did you do that?’ I swung round at the voice. Seffy was standing in the doorway behind us, white-faced.

  ‘Oh, Seffy.’ I got up and stumbled towards him. He backed away, hands up, stopping the traffic. His eyes were hard and narrow. Impenetrable.

  ‘No, Mum, I want to know. Why did you?’

  ‘Darling, look—’

  ‘Just tell me.’

  My breathing was very erratic now and I wondered if I’d faint. I groped for my stool behind me. Sat down. I knew this was very important. The truth. I gave myself a moment.

  ‘Because that was the lie I’d told since you were born. That I’d adopted you in Croatia. That was what everyone thought – Granny, Grandpa, Laura, all my friends. And I knew, when you were about six, that should have been the moment to tell everyone. Let them know I was about to tell you the truth, that there was something they should know. But I lost my nerve. Found myself telling you what they all thought, instead.’

  ‘That you’d adopted me. You denied you’d even given birth to me. Thanks, Hattie.’

  I gazed at him in horror.

  ‘Well, I’ve called you Mum for fifteen years. Maybe now I’ll call you Hattie, when in fact you’re my mother.’

  There was a warped logic to this, I couldn’t deny.

  ‘Every day I thought I’d tell you,’ I whispered. ‘I swear to God, Seffy, not a day went by when I didn’t consider it. I thought I’d tell you when you were ten, then eleven. Thought you’d be old enough to understand why I’d done it. But as time went by, I knew you’d understand less. I’d done such a terrible thing, and it was getting bigger with every passing moment.’

  ‘It defines me, Mum.’ Seffy’s voice trembled. His face was ashen. ‘Knowing who my parents are. It defines everyone. It’s so basic, so fundamental. You denied me that.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ Hal said quietly. I’d forgotten he was there.

  ‘No, stay, please,’ said Seffy. ‘I don’t want to be alone with her.’

  The wound in my chest erupted and gushed through my insides, flooding me. I felt my frame crumple as I hid my face in my hands.

  ‘Seffy,’ began Hal, ‘you have no idea how much interest you would have attracted. Will still attract, if you—’

  ‘Come out of the closet?’ Seffy turned on him. ‘Why shouldn’t I – of course I will! Today’s papers are tomorrow’s fish-and-chip wrappings; why should prurient press interest be more important than me knowing who I am?’ His eyes were blazing. ‘Knowing I have a real mother, a dead father, a sister in Cassie – who was horrified, incidentally—’

  ‘You told her.’ My hands fell from my face.

  ‘Of course I told her. I got to know her, gradually, then we talked for hours in the woods at the dance.’

  Which was why he hadn’t made it back to the coach on time. They weren’t snogging at all. Were talking about being brother and sister. About sh
aring the same father.

  ‘Seffy, I’m so sorry.’ My voice came from somewhere very distant. Very dark. ‘And I’m sorry that that is so inadequate.’ My stomach had turned to ashes long ago. The silence ached between us.

  ‘It’s a start,’ said my son, at length. ‘Any sort of apology is a start.’

  Oh, thank God. A tiny shard of light. He turned away, though, seeing the hope in my eyes.

  ‘And talking has helped. To Hal. To Cassie. I hated you, Mum, more than you can ever imagine, a year ago. But listening to Hal, and more recently Cassie, who could see…’ He hesitated. ‘Well, she could sort of see, although she didn’t condone it, how it had happened.’

  I exhaled through barely parted lips. Oh, bless you, Cassie. Sweet, sensitive Cassie. I dug my nails into the palms of my hands. Don’t speak. Don’t hope.

  ‘Or at least, she could see how hard it was, once you’d started down a path, to turn back. To say – hang on, every one, actually, he’s mine.’ I couldn’t look up. Meet his eye. His voice continued in my ears. ‘And the odd thing was… I always felt you were my mother. Never felt adopted. But maybe all adopted children feel like that, is how I explained it to myself.’

  ‘I love you so much, Seffy,’ I said in a low, quavering voice, raising my head. Daring to look. ‘So much.’

  ‘I know.’

  This much he did know, whatever I’d done.

  ‘But that whole Bosnia bollocks…’ he said savagely.

  I bowed my head. ‘I know.’

  ‘That whole elaborate lie.’

  ‘It had to be elaborate.’

  ‘Putting maps on my bedroom wall, taking me there when I was little. Swimming out into the sea and showing me the mountains where my supposed father fought for his country.’ His eyes were like ice now, or fire. Both.

  ‘You were so fascinated,’ I whispered in shame. ‘So consumed by it all, at nine, or ten—’

  ‘Ten,’ he corrected viciously.

  ‘Begged me to take you there to see. What could I do? Deny you that? And it wasn’t a complete lie. Don’t forget I was pregnant there with you, had you there. To some extent your roots were there. You were born there.’

  ‘But my father wasn’t a fucking guerrilla, was he?’

  ‘No. No, but… the awful thing was, Seffy, I came to believe the lie myself, almost. Because I wished your conception had been otherwise, I found myself going along with it.’

  ‘Taking me to the village, trying to find the house—’

  ‘With my heart in my throat. Hating myself. Wondering how I could be doing it. But knowing, in some odd, misshapen way, it was out of love for you. Protecting you. So who’s child am I? you’d have asked. Oh, a married man’s, a politician I once worked for, who had a wife and child already. Your trusting little ten-year-old face.’

  ‘No, you were ashamed of me knowing that about you. Ashamed of yourself.’

  ‘That’s true,’ I gulped.

  ‘And Dominic was dead by then, anyway,’ he said obstinately.

  ‘Yes, he was.’ I dug deep. Shut my eyes for courage. Spoke slowly. Carefully. ‘But what I feared most of all, Seffy, was your censure. Your face. Your eyes. The shock. Then the recoil. That is what I have cowered from all these years. That’s why I couldn’t do it.’

  The air felt charged between us. I think because it was the truth, and Seffy recognized it. At length he spoke. Unsteadily, though.

  ‘And did you think you’d ever tell me?’

  I dug deep again. ‘I know you’d like me to say yes,’ my voice wavered, ‘and that it would help both of us if I could. But I have to tell you, Seffy, your mother is a coward through and through. I was ashamed of myself, and I knew you’d be ashamed of me.’

  ‘Plenty of people have affairs.’

  ‘I didn’t have a love affair with your father. It didn’t last months, weeks, even.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Just once.’

  ‘Only once?’

  ‘Yes, one day. One day in May.’

  They waited for me. Seffy and Hal. I shut my eyes. That one day could change so many people’s lives.

  ‘I wasn’t even a mistress. Didn’t have that distinction.’

  ‘So how…?’

  I took a huge intake of breath to steady myself. ‘It was the day of the reshuffle. Dominic, your father—’

  ‘Dominic will do,’ Seffy said harshly.

  ‘He’d gone to see the Prime Minister. To find out which job he’d secured – if anything – in the cabinet. It was a very big deal. I waited, I remember, at the window across from Parliament Square. I remember tension gripping my body, remember the huge love I had for him, the hope, his anxious face as he’d gone. He came back elated. He’d done it. Got it. Got Foreign Secretary. He embraced me, swung me round. Kissed me. We were so happy and that felt so good.’ I bent my head.

  ‘So – what, you went in his office?’ Seffy’s voice. ‘In broad daylight?’

  I swallowed. ‘We locked the door. Pulled the blinds.’

  The shock, in Laura’s kitchen, was palpable.

  ‘D’ you see now?’ I said, looking up. ‘You want the truth, Seffy, but what if it’s not palatable? What if your mother’s a – a—’ I broke off again, gulped air.

  ‘But you loved him?’ he said abruptly.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ I blinked, astonished. ‘With all my heart.’ Hal turned away at this, but Seffy didn’t.

  ‘So, no,’ I said sadly. ‘In answer to your question, I don’t know if I ever would have told you.’

  ‘Not even if I’d gone out with Cassie?’ His eyes challenged mine.

  I nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, that… would have driven me.’

  ‘Which was why Seffy was not so very displeased with creating that illusion,’ Hal observed quietly.

  ‘Forcing my hand,’ I said numbly.

  ‘Yes.’

  No one spoke. Silence flooded the room. It roared in our ears as we all digested the past: how it had caught up with the future. How the past always catches up, eventually.

  ‘Tell us about Bosnia,’ said Hal, eventually, and that ‘us’ caught me. Yes, we were us, now. The three of us. Why should that disconcert me? I wanted to ask how often Seffy had seen him. Just that once in London? Or more regularly? Time would tell. Right now, it was my turn.

  ‘I went out there, to Split, not knowing I was pregnant. It didn’t occur to me, so much else had happened. But I knew I had to get away. Letty had come up to London to congratulate Dom, had come into the office and no, she hadn’t found us. An hour or so earlier she would have done, but she walked in just as I’d leaned over his desk to kiss him goodbye.’ I remembered her face as she’d stood there in her black and white dress, eight months pregnant.

  ‘So I went away. And because Kit was there, Bosnia seemed like a very good idea. I wanted… a difficult place. Not an easy, sunny beach. I wanted to prove to myself that I wasn’t a thoroughly unpleasant person.’ I remembered Hal’s note on my bed. I swallowed. Went on: ‘So I went to join Kit. And it was grim, of course it was grim. It was a war zone, and people were in far direr straits than me. That, at least, helped. I felt I was doing some good, even if it was minuscule. And then after a few months, I realized I was pregnant.’ I breathed out shakily. ‘And I was horrified. And if you want the whole truth, Seffy, if you want it warts and all, full disclosure, I thought – well, if I work my cotton socks off, heave heavy boxes into lorries, drive across mountains until I’m too tired to see, negotiate rocky paths in trucks with no suspension and bounce about savagely enough, well, then maybe I’ll lose it.’ I looked up. ‘I was very young. Pregnant with a married man’s baby.’

  Seffy acknowledged this, I could see. He nodded.

  ‘But you clung on in there. You were persistent. You weren’t going anywhere.’

  ‘But didn’t it show? People must have known. What about Kit?’

  ‘I hid it for as long as I could – baggy tops, that sort of thing – and of course people didn�
�t know me, didn’t really know my size. But yes, it did eventually. But by then Kit had gone away. He left almost as soon as I arrived. I was in Croatia, on the coast, and he was right in the middle of the country, in Sarajevo, incarcerated in the siege. We had no contact with each other for five months. By the time we saw one another again, you’d been born.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In Dubrovnik.’

  He waited. The big empty house waited too. Ticked on. I licked my lips. ‘The place… I went to find with you, the little house in the village, in the foothills, that was where I’d lived when I’d worked at the depot. With a family called the Mastlovas. Refugees themselves. The daughter, Ibby, and I were pregnant together.’

  ‘They knew you were?’

  ‘Oh, yes. In time. And that was our bond, mine and Ibby’s. We talked about it a lot, with our limited language. She was due just a few weeks before me. And very happy about it.’ A sudden, vivid picture of the pair of us sitting together in the dusty front yard, stomachs swollen, children playing, chickens pecking in the dirt, Ibby knitting a tiny shawl. She’d tried to make me as happy as she was about my unborn child. I remembered her passing me the needles with a laugh, telling me to knit on, then getting up to go back into the house to start supper: but my eyes had filled; one hand on my huge bump, tears spilling, a ball of creamy wool tumbling off my lap, unravelling on the ground.

  I cleared my throat. ‘When Ibby went into labour they all went to the hospital – the whole family – and the car was blown up by a shell. By the time I got there, she’d delivered her baby, but died from her wounds. Perhaps it was the shock, but I went into premature labour. Her baby only survived a few hours, but mine was born – you were born – soon after.’