Finding Secrets

by Westwood, Lauren

  ‘I suppose she was. Though… I never really thought of her as my mother.’ She frowns. ‘Frank Bolton got married shortly after the war ended. To me, his wife, Mabel, was my mum, though she didn’t give birth to me.’

  ‘I know the feeling,’ I say.

  Mrs Fairchild fidgets uncomfortably on the bench but doesn’t answer.

  ‘Can you tell me everything you remember about your birth mother?’ I say. ‘It might help me find out more about the locket.’

  ‘I don’t remember much.’ Her eyes glaze over as she lapses into memory. ‘I was very young when she died in the bombings. Four, maybe. Or five.’

  ‘What was she like?’ I say softly.

  ‘I remember a kitchen,’ she says, staring into the distance. ‘The wallpaper was yellow with stripes. Green stripes. She was standing at the stove. I tiptoed in behind her. She’d left the bird on the table. I was so excited because she’d never let me touch it or any of her special things that she kept under her bed. The bird was fragile and precious – I don’t remember her telling me that, but I knew it. The chain clanked on the table as I picked it up. She jolted at the noise, and turned and screamed. The hot water in the pan flew towards me.’

  ‘How awful.’

  ‘She said something – I don’t know the words now, but back then I understood. She thought that the bad people had found her.’

  ‘Who were they?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She inclines her head.

  ‘What happened next?’ I coax.

  ‘I screamed, and she realised it was me. She dipped my burned arm into a tub of cold water so that it wouldn’t scar. She was scolding me, and fussing over me, and crying all at the same time. She wrapped a strip of tea towel around my hand, here.’ She traces a blue vein in her wrist. ‘But I was still scared. Because I loved her. She was…’ she closes her eyes, searching deep in her mind for the word, ‘…Mamochka.’

  I reach out and take her hand. Her eyes remain closed, but she doesn’t pull away.

  ‘Mamochka was always afraid,’ she continues. ‘That much I remember very clearly. Always looking over her shoulder – jumping at shadows. We lived in a basement, I think. Next to the yellow kitchen. She didn’t like to leave. Sometimes she had to go out to the shops, or up to the street for deliveries. She hated that.’

  ‘But you don’t know why she was afraid?’

  ‘No I don’t.’ Her eyes open suddenly and she withdraws her hand. ‘As I said, I was very young. I remember the sirens – to me it sounded like the screech of a giant, flying dragon. We had to huddle in the dark – the wine cellar or under the kitchen table. I couldn’t look at books or play with my doll. I was supposed to go to sleep, but how could I? All that racket above us – outside. The house shaking and shuddering. Night after night. I wanted to make Mamochka proud by being brave, but really, I was scared.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ The words sound hollow and impotent. ‘It must have been such a terrible time – terrible in a way that people of my generation can’t even imagine.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true.’

  ‘And what about the locket? Where did your mother get it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She looks momentarily confused. ‘All I knew was that it was a pretty, shiny thing. She had a wooden box of pretty things under her bed that I wasn’t supposed to know about. But I loved the bird best. I wanted to play with it, but she wouldn’t let me. She’d slap my hand if I tried. Then later – not long before she died – the tune stopped playing. She told me it was broken, and that I should forget about it.’

  ‘Did you ever see a small gold key?’ I say, hoping to encourage her.

  ‘No – I don’t think so. Unless the box under her bed had a key? I don’t remember much of anything. Just impressions. The only thing that’s real to me from that time is the bird – I remember the bird. And Mamochka singing. I didn’t – remember it, that is – until you opened the locket and the bird sang that song.’ She begins to hum, but doesn’t sing the foreign words. ‘That’s when it all started to come back – the yellow kitchen, being afraid of the screeching dragon, the sting as the hot water hit my skin. I guess…’ her lip quivers, ‘I blocked it out. The way people do.’

  ‘Yes. That’s common, I think.’

  She sighs again. ‘There was another kitchen,’ she says. ‘With a big woman who talked funny. She had a lot of cats. I don’t know who she was, to be honest. All I remember is that her kitchen was very brown. The wallpaper, the furniture, the floor. And there was a clock that looked like Mamochka’s box. I remember, the bread tasted like sawdust and the beans were very runny. I didn’t like them. But I didn’t want to say.’

  ‘And Mamochka wasn’t there?’

  ‘She was dead.’ She turns away and wipes a tear from her eye. ‘When I was in the brown kitchen, Mamochka was dead.’

  I remain silent, hoping she’ll tell me more.

  ‘I cried – I remember that. I sat at the table in the brown kitchen and cried. I’d lost it you see. I’d lost the bird.’ She stares at the wall. ‘I know I had it. There in the snow, I had it. But then, it was gone.’

  ‘Did someone take it?’

  She ignores my question. ‘I remembered what Mamochka said with her last breath. She told me to keep it safe. She meant the bird, I suppose…’ She presses a hand to her temple like the memory hurts. ‘Oh, I don’t know! It was so long ago.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I say gently.

  ‘Then the people came – a man and a woman. I suppose the big woman must have called them. They took me away in a big black car to the orphanage. It was so cold, and I missed those runny beans on toast.’ She shudders. ‘And the bird – most of all, I missed the bird.’

  When she finally looks up, her eyes are bloodshot and haunted. Sixty years later, and the memories are still raw for her. And maybe for someone else, too? Could that explain why, someone is haunting her with the past? Though nothing in her story gives me even the slightest clue as to what she could be blamed for.

  ‘And then what happened?’ I gently urge her to continue.

  ‘It was horrible there,’ she says. ‘I don’t want to think about it. There were so many of us – all sleeping in tiny camp beds. It was freezing. There was no coal – no heat. And the food – well, you couldn’t really call it food. I’ve no idea how long I was there – days? Weeks maybe? And then miraculously…’ her face blooms, ‘he was there – Frank Bolton. Someone pushed me down on the playground outside. I skinned my knee and I was crying. I ran to the matron’s office. A man was there. He had light hair and a nice smile – he looked very jolly. For a second, I thought he was Father Christmas. He winked at me and held his hands behind his back. “Pick one,” he said. So I did.’ She giggles like a girl. ‘The first hand was empty. I felt so sad. But then, he told me to try again. I picked the other hand. And just like that, he held out the bird.’

  ‘But how did he get it?’

  ‘He said, “This belongs to you, right?” He winked again. I was crying and laughing, all at the same time. He knelt down and took me in his arms. He smelled like chicory coffee and carbolic soap. So – safe.’ She smiles angelically. ‘He put the bird around my neck and said that everything would be all right. That I’d never have to worry about anything again. And you know what? It was true. He gave me a good life – a happy life.’

  ‘I’m so glad.’

  Wiping her eyes, she stands up, and walks towards the tall wrought-iron gate. I can see how upset she is, and I hate that I’m making things worse with my questions. But she was the one who set me on the trail of the locket. She’s the reason I’m doing this.

  ‘Why you?’ I say before I can stop myself.

  She stops walking. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I mean, I’m sure you were an adorable five-year-old,’ I say, ‘but there were thousands of orphaned children. And Frank Bolton had a wife and later on, two sons. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t have children of his own. Why did he adopt you?’

 
She stands absolutely still, staring straight ahead at her exit route. Slowly, she turns to face me. ‘Maybe the question you need to ask is: why you? Why would I put you, Alex Hart, manager of Mallow Court, on to the trail of the jewelled bird?’

  Since I’ve been the one asking all the questions, she’s caught me off guard. ‘I don’t know,’ I say truthfully.

  ‘Look at me, Alex.’ Her blue eyes are wide and earnest. ‘Look very hard. I promised that I wouldn’t tell you directly, but now…’ her body begins to tremble and a fresh line of tears snakes down her cheek, ‘… now you deserve to know.’

  I stare at the old woman – my employer, but also my friend –– standing in her beloved garden, where I know she’s happiest of any place on earth. The last three years rewind themselves in my head – from the day the letter seeking a manager ended up on my advisor’s desk, to our first meeting, to all the conversations we’ve had, the laughs we’ve shared, the problems big and small that we’ve tackled together – the daily intertwining of our lives here at Mallow Court. The breath leaves my chest like I’ve been flattened by a very large bus. Too late, I raise my hands in crash position, as if to somehow ward off the shock.

  ‘You’re my… my…’

  - Chapter 18 -

  ‘Your grandmother,’ she finishes, her eyes shiny with tears. ‘The mother of your real mother. My Robin…’

  My mouth makes a wide ‘O’ but no sound comes out.

  ‘Yes, Alex, it’s true.’ She takes a tentative step towards me, dabbing her eyes with a tissue. ‘I wanted to tell you before – so many times. But I couldn’t. So I decided the best way would be to give you the bird – the only thing I have left of my mother. I knew you’d ask questions about it and want to discover the truth about my family – our family. Because family is so important. I guess I never really understood that until I lost my daughter – your mother.’

  She reaches out her hand. I take it, feeling the warmth as her blood courses through her veins. My blood.

  ‘Tell me,’ I whisper hoarsely.

  She stares up at the passing clouds, marshalling her strength. ‘Robin was a free spirit,’ she says. ‘Practically from the minute she was born. She was a sickly baby so I worried about her – which she resented. We never really saw eye to eye on much of anything.’ She sighs. ‘She was a modern girl. Whereas, I was very traditional. I mean…’ she lets go of my hand and gestures around her, ‘…we lived here.’

  I stagger over to the bench and collapse onto it, clutching the arm for dear life.

  ‘When she turned seventeen, she couldn’t wait to leave home. I gritted my teeth and let her enrol on an art course in London. I thought that would be enough.’ She shakes her head. ‘But it was just the tip of the iceberg. She fell in with a “bad crowd” – at least that’s what George and I thought of them. It was like the 60s all over again, but without the innocence. They had the long beads and flowing hair, and the drugs too. But they were anti-this and anti-that. Protesting, travelling around. She certainly wasn’t studying art.’

  I stare at a bee buzzing in white roses, trying to take in what she’s saying.

  ‘Next thing I knew, the postmarks on her letters came from America. She’d become a groupie following after some band – the Grateful Dead. She told me not to contact her – that she and her friends were founding a commune. Live a pure life in a peaceful, classless society. They were going to sever all contact with “warmongers” in the outside world.’ She shakes her head. ‘My first instinct was to get on a plane and go find her. She was only eighteen. But George persuaded me not to. He thought I was too protective – that we needed to let her “sow her wild oats” and whatnot.’ She sighs. ‘Afterwards, there was a part of me that hated him for that.’

  ‘She… died?’

  ‘Yes.’ She bows her head. ‘She died because she didn’t have any proper medical attention when giving birth. She had an internal haemorrhage. As a child she used to get tired and bruise easily. But I had no idea that having a baby would… you know…’

  ‘I killed her.’ The words escape my mouth and echo around the hidden garden, screaming into the cracks in the paving stones, poisoning the air, the trees, the flowers, every molecule of beauty around me. ‘I killed my mum.’

  ‘No, dearest Alex.’ Mrs Fairchild sits down on the bench – at the other end, giving me space. ‘It’s not true. It was a dreadful mistake made by others – by Robin, by my husband, by me.’ She shudders. ‘She should have been in hospital, not in that horrible… place. But hindsight is 20-20, of course.’

  I put my head in my hands.

  ‘And your dad feels it most keenly of all.’

  ‘Dad?’ Anger boils up inside me. ‘So he has known the whole time.’

  She lays a hand on my shoulders. ‘Please, Alex. I don’t want to drive a wedge between you and him. Not now of all times when the whole family has to stick together.’

  ‘So he’s the reason I wasn’t told?’

  ‘He made it clear that it was his place to tell you or not – not mine. I respected that. But maybe we were all wrong, I don’t know.’

  ‘Maybe you were wrong?’ I stand up, my hand shaking with the urge to rip out a rose bush by the roots and dash it onto the path. I settle for standing up and kicking the stone wall behind me. Hard. The sting in my toe feels good. ‘How do you think I’ve felt all these years, not knowing? When the answer was right in front of me all the time.’

  ‘He and Carol were doing what they thought was best for you.’ Her voice holds a pleading note. ‘He didn’t want you to blame yourself for her death. He also wanted to make sure you had a loving family – him, and your mum, their parents, your aunts and uncles. You didn’t need the burden of being different.’

  ‘It sounds like his misguided socialist mumbo-jumbo.’ Every vein and artery in my body is sizzling with anger – at Dad – at the lies I’ve been told and the truth that’s been withheld until now. I close my eyes and try to picture a calm, peaceful place. But the first thing that comes to mind is a ‘family’ trip to the seaside when I was eight, building a sandcastle with Mum while Dad did tai-chi about twenty feet away. I open my eyes. The woman in front of me looks suddenly much older than I’ve ever seen her before. Good old, sunny, friendly Mrs Fairchild. A woman I’m proud to know and proud to be… working for. Despair racks my body.

  ‘And this job? That was all a sham too, wasn’t it? It wasn’t a manager that you wanted, was it? It was me.’

  ‘Is that so wrong?’ Her face is stricken. ‘I was heartbroken when I lost my daughter – and I never wanted to lose you, Alex. But at the time, I agreed to stay out of life, like your dad wanted, and he agreed to keep me informed about you. We spoke on the phone sometimes, and he sent me the occasional photo of you. You have the same eyes as my Robin.’ She gulps. ‘And later, when you were at Oxford – I was so proud. When I learned you were at sixes and sevens with your young man, I guess I was once bitten, twice shy – I worried that maybe you’d go off to Argentina after him, and who knows what would happen then.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have done that.’

  ‘And I did need a manager for the estate.’ She spreads her hands. ‘All I did was make sure my letter ended up on the right desk at your university department.’ She smiles sadly.

  ‘So why now?’ I say, ‘Why keep silent for so long, and now spill the beans?’

  ‘Your dad called me – told me you’d been asking questions. It was the same day I received the second diary entry. And then, there was the “uninvited guest”. I don’t know what it all means, but there’s trouble brewing – I can feel it. I told him that enough was enough. That you had a right to know the truth.’ She bites her lip. ‘And as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew I should have done it years ago.’

  I slump back down on the bench, my heart ripping in two. All the questions. All the lies. And yet, does it matter? This woman next to me is my blood relative. My grandmother. She’s told me the truth – finally, belatedly.
She’s given me that – and so much more along the way.

  I lean over and put my arms around her. She moves closer to me, not speaking. I appreciate the silence. There are too many chattering ghosts, too many screaming questions. Too many accusations, recriminations, and confessions. And all the while, the bees fly from flower to flower, a bird pecks at the cracks in the path, leaves rustle as a squirrel jumps from a tree and runs along the top of the wall. Life, in other words, goes on.

  Mrs Fairchild rests her head against mine. A common pulse beats, cementing the connection between us. Her blood is in my veins, my blood in hers. Right now, for this one unexpected moment, all the rest of it doesn’t matter.

  - Chapter 19 -

  She leaves me there – we both know I need some time alone. A whirlpool of emotions is threatening to pull me under. There’s joy in finding a connection with a person I already feel strongly for, and sorrow at what Mrs Fairchild – my grandmother – has suffered over the years hiding her pain behind a sunny smile. And then there’s the revelations that I’ve received. All this time, I’d thought I would gain something by learning the truth, but instead, I feel like I’ve lost myself. It’s almost worse because of the half-truths; the little titbits of information I’ve been drip-fed over the years – the fact that ‘Rainbow’ was my dad’s new age soulmate, the fact that they couldn’t be bothered with things as patriarchal as surnames, and the fact that my mother died ‘shortly after my birth’. And I can only surmise that I was told these things to sate my curiosity just enough so that I didn’t go asking a lot of questions.

  It’s infuriating and wrong – and there’s only one person who’s responsible for it.

  Which is why, after stewing in my juices in the rose garden for a good long while, I ask Edith to take over for the afternoon. I jump in my car and drive as fast as I dare to Abbots Langley, and the pebble-dashed semi that in another lifetime I called home.

  Unfortunately, I arrive at a bad time. I pull into the road and have to park five houses away because all the nearer spaces are taken. Then I see two women in sleeveless tops and cotton yoga pants rushing around the side of the house carrying rolled up mats. It’s Dad’s late afternoon Hatha yoga class. And I’m just in time.