‘What changed? You stayed away from Christian for years, what made you go to him?’ Adam asked.
‘I’d watched him fall in and out of love so many times. Hell, he even cried on my shoulder once or twice over a broken love affair. We became friends. Confidants. I wish I could tell you that there was this big moment in my life, defining, that made me go to him, but it was just an ordinary day. And I thought, it’s time. So I drove to his house.’
‘You found the right exit at last, Dad,’ Adam said, and he swallowed back a lump in his throat.
Bill closed his eyes and nodded, remembering the moment that Christian opened his front door. There was no going back for either of them after that.
‘What age was I?’ Adam asked.
‘Fifteen,’ Bill replied. ‘There was little time between that day and when I went to your mother and told her about Christian. I did try to do the right thing.’
‘It’s driving me mad, Dad. So much about that time is hazy,’ Adam admitted.
‘You spent a lot of time at Pete’s then.’
Adam nodded. He got drunk for the first time around then too. ‘I remember you both shouting at each other. And I remember the day you left. You said you would be back. But that never happened.’ He watched his father’s eyes fill with pain. ‘I remember Mum telling me that you didn’t love either of us any more. That you were never coming back.’
Bill’s eyes flashed with anger. ‘That’s not true. I never left you. Not by choice.’
Adam sighed. He could hear the truth in his father’s words. But he could also remember the look on his mother’s face. It was a look he recognised. His mother was grieving back then. Bill might as well have died when he told her he was leaving her. She never got over it.
‘You said you didn’t want to stay away. That she made you,’ Adam said. The fight was gone from him now.
‘Mary told me that if I didn’t leave Manchester, she would report Christian and me to the university. It was 1982 and although by this time homosexuality had been decriminalised in the UK, it was still rather taboo. She was quite clear that she’d make sure the university knew that we’d started our affair back in 1965, when we first kissed. And back then, it was still illegal to have sex with a man.’
‘That’s twisted.’
‘She was bitter. She was hurt and she was lashing out.’
‘Even so . . .’ Adam replied.
‘Christian and I resigned. We stayed in Manchester at first. I tried to see you. I sent letters, I sent presents . . .’
‘I didn’t get any of them,’ Adam said. ‘As far as I was concerned, one day you just left with no explanation.’
‘I should have just told you. But I thought you were too young to understand.’
‘I would have understood that better than thinking you stopped loving me overnight.’ He and Pete used to skip school so that they could hang around the university, in the hope that Adam would catch a glimpse of Bill. But it was as if his father had vanished off the face of the earth, overnight.
‘The summer after you left, we went to Coleraine. And it got really weird over there,’ Adam said. ‘Every time I’d walk into a room, the adults would all clam up. I knew they were talking about you. I just didn’t realise what they were saying.’
‘I followed you over there,’ Bill said.
Adam looked at him in surprise.
‘When I called at my parents’ house, they wouldn’t let me in,’ Bill said.
‘No way. Why?’
‘My father hissed that no fucking faggot was welcome in the Williams’ house. My mother blessed herself like I was pure evil. Tommy and Hugh, your uncles, gave me a good hiding, just to make sure I understood that people like me were not welcome.’
‘Your family? I can’t believe it.’
‘Mary told them about me. She was angry and wanted to hurt me, and she figured my family was my Achilles heel. In that one move, she made sure that I could never go back home to Coleraine again.’
‘That’s cruel.’
Bill didn’t disagree. ‘Christian was furious and said, no more. We left Ireland and moved to the south of France.’
Adam had no concept of how bad it was for his dad back then. ‘I’m shocked. I really am.’
‘I’ve done a lot of things in my life I’m not proud of, but you need to know one truth: I always loved you. There’s a difference between leaving someone and being pushed away,’ Bill said. ‘I felt I had no choice but to go.’
‘It’s okay, Dad.’ And as Adam said those words, he realised it was. Any anger he’d felt towards his father disappeared. He couldn’t say the same about his mother, though.
‘After you left, Mum changed. It was as if all the light in her got extinguished. She kind of collapsed inside herself. And she got all weird with me. Forever saying I was just like you.’
‘Would that be such a bad thing?’
‘Rachel always said I was like you. A flirt. A charmer.’
‘You come from a long line of Williams flirts,’ Bill told him proudly.
Bill motioned for the waitress to send over two more coffees. Then he asked, ‘Why don’t you see Mary any more? What happened?’
‘Things had been bad for years at home. A steady decline. Looking back on it now, I recognise that she was grieving for the loss of her marriage. Overnight, I seemed to become a disappointment to her. I could see it in her eyes. I stayed away as much as I could, staying at Pete’s most nights. Then, she found out that I was dating two women at the same time. And she flipped. As in went nuts. We had an awful row. And we both said some terrible things.’
‘She’d a temper on her.’ Bill remembered.
‘She went off to find each of them, and told them, publicly, in front of their friends, that I was making a fool of them. It was cruel. I was an idiot, I shouldn’t have cheated in the first place, but they didn’t deserve that humiliation. I had enough of her nagging. I packed my bags that night and I walked away.’
‘Life changed Mary, made her bitter. And it twisted everything up. But she wasn’t always like that. The Mary I choose to remember is the free spirit, painting, laughing, loving, wearing a pretty yellow dress,’ Bill told him.
‘I’d forgotten about that side of her. But it’s so weird, these past couple of months she keeps invading my thoughts. I genuinely had given her no more than a passing thought for years before that.’
Once again, he felt a niggle of shame. He should have tried harder to build a bridge with her, make amends. In nearly ten years, there was only one time that he made any attempt to see her. He told his dad about that.
‘Rachel persuaded me to go see her, after I proposed. I went home, walked up to the front door, with a stupid bunch of flowers in my hand, and my heart in my mouth. I wanted her to meet Rachel. To know her. But Mum had gone, sold up our home and left Didsbury. Imagine that. She didn’t even think to tell me she was leaving.’
Bill didn’t know what to say to that. His head and his heart were heavy with the waste of their family life.
‘Mary and I, we had so many dreams of a life growing old together with children and grandchildren. A life filled with love and craic and laughter. And instead, we both managed to miss out on so much,’ Bill said.
Adam reached over and clasped his father’s hand. ‘You’re here now. That’s what matters.’
Bill nodded and knew one truth. There wasn’t a thing in this world that would ever remove him from his son’s life again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The wetting of the baby’s head and the photograph
The Old Nag’s Head, Didsbury, Manchester
The three friends sat side by side at the bar. Elbows on the counter top, they watched in appreciation as the barman placed three bronzed pints in a line in front of them. Nodding, they reached and picked up their glasses and raised them to their lips, in unison, like a synchronised swim team.
‘To Chloe,’ Adam said, smacking his lips in appreciation.
&nbs
p; ‘To Chloe,’ David and Pete cheered.
They held their pints up in the air and clinked glasses, before downing them in one last long satisfied drink.
Adam nodded at the barman, for three more. Then said, ‘I’ve decided to go back to Belfast next week.’
‘Do you think you’ll stay there?’ David asked.
Adam shrugged. ‘No idea. But I’d like to spend some more time with Dad. It’s as good a place to be as anywhere for a while.’
He’d spent most of his adult life ignoring the history of his parents, of his childhood. But since Rachel’s death, he’d been faced with ghosts from his past. Having Bill back in his life was both welcome and confusing. But they’d cleared the air a lot with their chat. Some time together, just living and enjoying Matthew, would be good for them both.
Pete placed a brown envelope on the bar in front of them.
Three pairs of eyes looked down at the padded envelope.
‘That’s divorce papers, anyhow,’ David said.
‘How did you know that?’ Pete asked, annoyed that David had stolen his big dramatic reveal. He’d planned a joke and everything.
‘One never forgets what divorce papers look like. There’s something about the envelope, official and menacing. A4, about two inches thick. Unmistakable,’ David said.
They looked down for another moment at the envelope that was indeed about two inches thick.
‘Can I assume that I don’t have to knock sense into you? That you’re gonna sign them?’ Adam enquired, taking another drink.
Pete leaned over him to retrieve an ashtray. He pulled it close to him. ‘Can I borrow your lighter, mate?’ He asked the barman, who handed him a box of matches.
‘You fucking numpty,’ Adam said. ‘Jenny is the best thing that ever happened to you. I thought you said she was your ketchup.’
‘I quite agree,’ David said, albeit looking puzzled by the word ketchup. ‘She loves you. And that little baby needs a father. I think it’s quite callous to just walk away—’
Adam scrapped back his bar stool and stood, David following suit. They were both aggrieved and ready to go into battle for their friend Jenny.
Pete ignored them both, just reached in and retrieved a photograph out of the envelope.
He placed that on top and they all leaned in to take a close look.
Jo smiled up at them, leg in the air, doing yoga on the golden sands of a beach in Sydney.
‘She does have remarkable flexibility,’ David said, his eyes locked on her leg which was at a ninety-degree angle to her body.
‘I don’t think I could even get my leg up as far as my elbow,’ Adam said, sitting down to try. ‘Nope. Not even close.’
Pete picked up the photograph, then placed it in the ashtray. He struck a match and lit the corner of it, watching the paper go up in flames. Jo seemed to dance as the picture flitted from side to side, burning black and amber. And then suddenly, she was gone.
All that was left was a sad miniature mountain of black ash.
Adam and David relaxed and drank their pints. Pete and Jenny were back on track.
Pete then unfolded the papers and taking a pen from the envelope, signed them, twice, with a flourish.
‘We’ll need three chasers,’ Adam said to the barman. ‘Your finest Irish whiskey, sir.’
‘More than fifty per cent of marriages end in divorce you know,’ Pete said, holding back the laughter. ‘And then there’s the really unhappy ones!’
David and Adam laughed at his joke.
‘I stole that from Joan Rivers,’ Pete said, delighted with himself.
‘She scares me,’ David said. ‘Awful tongue on her.’
‘Ah but you’ve no sense of humour, mate,’ Pete teased. ‘Anyhow, just to reassure you both, I’ve emailed Jo and told her that Jenny and I are back together.’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ David said and they all picked up their shots and downed them in one.
‘How did she take it?’ Adam asked, wincing as the alcohol burnt the back of his throat.
‘She didn’t answer. But her lawyer called my lawyer and ta da!’ Pete replied, nodding to the now signed papers.
‘You’ve made the right choice. You and Jenny are perfect for each other,’ David said.
‘I said the same, back when they first met,’ Adam told David.
Pete happily sipped his pint. Everything had fallen back into place and it was as if all the worries of the past month had disappeared.
‘How’s little Chloe?’ David asked.
‘Adorable, noisy, gorgeous. Actually, Jenny and I have something we want to ask you,’ Pete said to David.
‘I’m all ears.’
‘We’re looking for the right person to be Chloe’s godparent. We want someone strong and dependable, who won’t let her down. Someone who remains calm in a crisis, for example.’
David felt himself flush in shock at the direction Pete’s conversation was going.
‘We need someone who could be a good role model for Chloe,’ Pete added, then he paused, nudging Adam, before finishing, ‘And for the life of us, we can’t think of a single person!’
Adam spat his pint out, laughing alongside Pete.
David half laughed, not sure what exactly was happening. But disappointment began to creep up his stomach and he took a slug of beer, to try stifle it down.
‘I’m only joking, mate!’ Pete said. ‘Seriously, Jenny and I would be honoured, if you would be Chloe’s godfather. We can’t think of another person more suitable.’
David felt his eyes well up, he was genuinely touched. ‘Au contraire, it would be me that is the one honoured. I can’t think of anything I’d like more.’
Pete shook David’s hand.
‘Hug it out,’ Adam suggested over his pint.
So they laughed, and embraced quickly, pulling apart when they remembered where they were.
‘We’re going to set the date next week,’ Pete said. ‘That way, you and Robyn have loads of notice to keep the weekend free. And Adam, fair warning, you better come back for it too.’
‘I’m beginning to rack up some serious frequent-flyer mileage, all this toing and froing. But you know I wouldn’t miss it,’ Adam said.
‘You’re gonna have to put down some roots again, one of these days,’ Pete said.
‘I know,’ Adam replied. But he wasn’t in any great hurry. Nowhere felt like home to him any more. He assumed when the time was right, he’d know what to do. He had faith in Rachel.
And then, he felt her beside him. He whispered, ‘I’m still waiting for that sign.’
‘Soon,’ she replied. ‘Try and behave tonight.’
And then she was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The lonely artist and the clichéd boss’s embrace with a secretary
Ocean View B&B, Coleraine, Northern Ireland
Bill walked through two large stone pillars, that marked the entrance to Mary’s B&B. The grandiose Victorian house stood proud against the backdrop of the Irish Sea and shell-strewn beach. Its gravel driveway was framed by lush green grass and raised flowerbeds which were crammed with hydrangeas, roses and peonies.
His heartbeat quickened the closer he got to the imposing yellow front door. He’d not seen his ex-wife in twenty-one years. In truth, he had assumed that he’d never see her again.
But something told him that Adam needed his mother. He was damn sure he’d do all he could to make that happen. Once he put his mind to it, it was quite easy to find her. A couple of phone calls and he learned that she’d set up a B&B not far from her hometown.
A shiver ran down his spine as he lifted the large brass knocker on the door. He let it fall and the sound bounced around him. He waited for the door to open, each second feeling like an eternity, as he tried to imagine the scene that would unfold when she saw him. Would she even let him in? He supposed that this might be a wasted journey, but it was one worth trying.
When she opened the door, time fell aw
ay and he was back to another era. Mary hadn’t changed. Her dark hair may now be lined with strands of silver grey, but she still wore it long, tied in a loose ponytail at the back. Her face was without make-up and the years had been kinder to her than him. She could have passed for a woman twenty years younger than she was.
Her smile of welcome, warm and open, faltered, then froze as she recognised the man in front of her. Then it disappeared and a frown appeared.
I’ve done that to her, Bill thought. I’m the maker of frowns.
He watched her face as emotions raced across it, one after the other. She had never been any good at poker.
‘Hello, Mary,’ he said. He’d been practising his opening speech for hours, editing what he would say, making it perfect. With just the right tone and phrasing. And after all that, all he had was hello.
He’d hazard a guess she would have more to say to him. If she allowed him to cross her threshold.
‘We’re full.’ Mary’s voice was firm. She reached up to turn the vacant sign on the porch window. Closed.
‘I don’t need a room,’ Bill said.
‘What do you need then?’ Mary asked.
‘Just to talk,’ Bill replied. ‘Please don’t turn me away.’
She looked at him and then at the door, and for a moment he thought she would slam it in his face. But instead, she turned on her heels and walked back into the house, leaving the door ajar. He took that as his invitation to follow her. It was as good as he was likely to get.
The hallway was painted a bright yellow, like the dress she’d worn on the first day they met. Walls were lined with paintings of the beach and the causeway, both oil paintings and charcoal pencil.
‘These are good. All your work?’ Bill asked.
‘Some are. Some are from guests who have stayed. I run writers’ and artists’ retreats here,’ Mary said.
Bill pointed to a watercolour painting of the house. ‘This one is yours, though.’
Cold Feet: The Lost Years Page 22