Finding Secrets

by Westwood, Lauren

  I get out of the car and stalk around the side of the house. As I approach the ‘spiritual garden’ at the back, I can hear the calming music – pan pipes and sitars – that Dad plays for the warm-up, and smell the sandalwood incense. It makes me want to throw up.

  My boots crunch through the pebbles of the meandering path. I cross the little bridge with the koi fish underneath, and arrive at the entrance of the outdoor pagoda. Underneath the flat, spreading roof, at least twenty people – mostly women, but also a few men – are lying on their mats doing belly breathing. At the front of the area on a small dais, Dad is lying on his mat. He’s wearing his usual all black yoga kit – tight T-shirt showing off a well-developed abdominal core; ankle-length flared trousers, bare feet. His auburn hair is a little bit too long and curls at the end – something that I know his women yoga students particularly admire. ‘Breathe in,’ he’s saying. ‘Bring the air from your mouth all the way down to the centre of your abdomen.’

  I breathe in deeply. The extra oxygen fuels the anger inside me like bellows to a fire.

  ‘Breathe out. Slowly, shhhhh.’

  I exhale sharply clenching my fists at my side.

  ‘Let the spirit flow through you.’

  I purse my lips. No one notices as I walk over to where the CD player is plugged in. The sitar makes a flowing riff, and a flute takes over the melody.

  ‘Focus on your belly breathing. The tension is leaving your body.’

  ‘No it bloody well isn’t!’ I jerk the cord out of the wall.

  There’s a collective gasp as all heads turn towards me and a few people scooch up onto their elbows. Instead of sitars, the sound of the nearby motorway invades the spiritual garden.

  Dad moves into a lotus position, lacing his hands. We stare at each other for a few seconds. I know that he knows that I know…

  ‘Do we have to do this now, Alexandra?’ He hangs his head.

  ‘I’m afraid so.’ I put my hands on my hips. ‘I’m happy to go into the house if you want. I wouldn’t want your “followers” to learn that you’re a big fraud.’

  ‘Okay.’ Dad drops the ‘spiritual voice’, ‘Shania…’ his eyebrows raise as he looks to a lithesome black woman in the middle of the group, ‘would you mind taking the class?’

  ‘No problem,’ the woman says. But by now, a few people are already sitting up and whispering together.

  Dad gets to his feet. ‘Shall we go for a walk in the garden? I always find it calming.’

  ‘Whatever.’ I follow him along the path.

  We walk a short distance and he pauses on the footbridge. ‘The bamboo is doing well, isn’t it?’ He says. ‘Do you remember when we planted it together?’

  ‘I do. It was ten years ago – I was on spring break. Add that to another eighteen years, and you’ll get my whole life. Which equals the amount of time you’ve been lying to me.’ My breath is angry and shallow. ‘All that time, Dad. You lied to me about my birth mother and my real grandmother – whom you knew about all along.’

  He leans over the railing and looks down at the colourful koi fish. He’s still doing his deep belly breathing, damn him.

  I trot out the trump card. ‘I mean, is that what Buddha would have done?’

  From behind me a sentence drifts into my ear. ‘Didn’t know she was adopted.’ I hadn’t realised that I’d been speaking quite so loud. And while yoga bores me to tears, I hadn’t realised that the class was quite so eager for distractions.

  Dad seems catatonic, so I turn back towards the roofed area. ‘I’m not adopted,’ I snap, looking for the culprit among the acolytes. ‘He’s my real Dad. But he’s been spinning a yarn all these years about some new age hippie fling and that he didn’t know my birth mother’s last name.’ I inhale. ‘He failed to mention that he’s been in regular contact with my maternal grandmother, and didn’t bother to tell me that she even existed.’ I put my hands on my hips.

  Dad lays a hand on my shoulder, startling me. ‘Would it help if I said I’m sorry?’

  ‘It might. Not that that will give me back all those years.’

  A silver-haired woman glares at my dad. ‘How could you do that? She can’t get in touch with her spiritual self if she doesn’t know the truth.’

  A few other people murmur their assent.

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’ Dad spreads his hands, his northern accent coming to the fore. ‘I just wanted her to have a “normal” family – Carol and I, and our relatives. Is that so wrong?’

  ‘She had a right to know,’ another woman says.

  ‘I don’t know,’ someone in the back chimes in. ‘It sounds like he had his reasons.’

  ‘I think children should be told everything and allowed to decide for themselves,’ a grey-haired lady says.

  ‘We did tell her.’ Dad rubs his neck as his tension threatens the peaceful space. ‘She knew that her birth mother died.’

  ‘But not that I killed her!’ I shout. ‘That she died giving birth to me.’

  ‘That’s precisely why we didn’t—’ Dad protests, but he’s cut off by the gaggle of his followers.

  ‘Is there any of that ginkgo tea? The poor child can surely use a cuppa…’

  Dad sits down on his dais; his normally relaxed hand trembles a little like he’s craving a cigarette. I know I am – and I don’t even smoke. Two of the women get up and lead me to a table where there’s a Japanese tea pot and a forest of little Raku cups. Except for one woman rolled up like a pretzel and two men chatting about whether relegated Watford will be promoted again, the others get up and follow suit, chattering and socialising. Class dismissed.

  I take two tea cups and go over to Dad, sitting down beside him. I hand him a cup, and then take a swig of the foul-tasting, bitter liquid.

  ‘I thought I was doing the right thing for you – and for Mum,’ he says.

  ‘Yeah, I know. Mum – you always think she needs protecting. But what about Mrs Fairchild – I mean, Grandma Catherine? Doesn’t she count?’

  ‘She’s your birth grandma,’ he says. ‘She wasn’t a part of our lives any more than your birth mother was. Not really. Not for the important moments – like when you fell off your bicycle and needed stitches; or when you got chickenpox and were off school for a week; or needed cups of cocoa brought when you were studying for your A levels.’

  ‘She might have wanted to be.’

  He shakes his head grimly. ‘Is that what you wanted, then – to go to see her in that big fancy house, and have her buy you expensive toys? Make a fuss over you, treat you like some kind of princess? And then drop you home in her fancy car with the leather seats, so you could return to your tiny house and your tiny bedroom, and beans on toast for your tea?’

  ‘Come on, Dad. This isn’t about a class struggle. It’s about right and wrong. My grandmother lost her daughter. She was grieving. Then you took away her only grandchild. That was wrong.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Dad bows his head. ‘I just thought our lives would all be simpler – less cluttered, and more authentic – without you having to carry all that baggage. We were happy. You were happy… are happy.’

  ‘Authentic! What a load of tosh.’

  Dad shakes his head. ‘I did what I thought was best, Alex…’ his voice has an unusually desperate edge. ‘I’m sorry if it was the wrong thing.’ He reaches out and removes my teacup from my trembling hand. Then, he leans over and folds me in his arms.

  The chatting around the tea area ebbs and a few of his followers make audible sighs, like their spiritual leader has just made a remarkable display of selflessness. Whatever. My tears begin to flow, and are absorbed by the thick organic cotton of his T-shirt.

  ‘I love you, Alex,’ he whispers into my ear. ‘I probably don’t say that enough, but it’s true.’

  ‘Me too, Dad.’ Disentangling myself, I wipe my eyes with a tissue. Despite all Dad’s bluster and mumbo-jumbo, I know that he only meant to do the right thing. His version, anyway. ‘I’ll call you, okay?’

&
nbsp; ‘Yeah.’

  I walk over to the CD player and plug the music back in. The sitar and pan pipes take over where they left off. ‘Sorry to disrupt your class,’ I say to the clump of students gathered around.

  ‘Oh no problem, dear,’ the silver-haired woman says. ‘I’m sure my core muscles will thank you for it tomorrow.’

  - Chapter 20 -

  I feel a little better after busting up the yoga class – there’s nothing like kicking the stones in a spiritual garden to stir things up when you’re feeling low. I return to my car and sit there for a long time, staring at the familiar street, the familiar houses, the setting for my familiar life growing up in a loving, if slightly eccentric middle-class family. Dad’s right, I don’t regret my childhood or my life. It’s my grandmother that I feel for. Whereas I lacked someone I didn’t know existed, she lacked someone that she did.

  And there’s another person that my new-found knowledge is likely to hurt – Mum. I turn on the engine and crawl through rush-hour traffic to that dubious experiment in urban planning, Hemel Hempstead, or, ‘Hemel’ to the locals. It’s already five o’clock by the time I pull into the car park of the building where she works as an accountant for an insurance company. I worry for a second that I will have missed her, but then I catch sight of her ginger updo and the floral rainy day coat from Boden that I bought her for her birthday. She’s chatting and laughing with a friend, and I consider driving off and just letting her get on with her day. Dad can tell her – or not – about what happened.

  But I open the door and get out of the car. Whatever Dad might decide, I’ve decided that she deserves to know.

  ‘Mum,’ I call out, waving my hand. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Alex.’ Her face clouds over. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes, Mum,’ I say. ‘I mean, I’m not ill or anything.’

  ‘Good.’ She lets out a long sigh of relief. I feel guilty then for worrying her by not ringing ahead. Two years ago, Mum had a cancer ‘scare’ when they found a lump on one of her breasts. It turned out to be nothing, thankfully. But ever since then, Mum’s had a strict vegetarian diet (luckily, vegetarian includes chips) and she’s been jumpy whenever either of us get so much as the sniffles.

  ‘Can I talk to you?’ I give her friend a pointed look.

  ‘See you later, Carol,’ the friend says. ‘I’m agile working tomorrow so I won’t be in.’

  ‘Okay.’ Mum smiles. ‘See you next week.’

  The friend walks off.

  ‘Shall we go home?’ Mum suggests. ‘I’ve got a nut roast ready to go in the oven.’

  ‘No thanks, Mum.’ (I’ve always hated nut roast). ‘Is there anything here we can grab?’

  ‘Well,’ she says briskly, ‘there’s the chippy.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll buy.’

  We walk together back out to the main road near the train station. I can smell the chippy miles before we reach it, and my stomach rumbles in anticipation. Mum natters brightly about her work – the cake stall for the summer fete, a new hire in finance (‘so good-looking – and single, I think’), a sari-print top she thought I might like in Fat Face. Although we have very little in common, I’ve always thought of Mum as one of the best people in the whole world. She’s open and honest, and homely, and – in a word – normal. She reads the Daily Mail and Hello! likes cooking but hates ironing, watches Eastenders and Emmerdale, hates herbal (including ginkgo) tea. She prefers step aerobics to yoga, and couldn’t tell a Gothic arch from the Arch de Triomphe. She votes for any candidate she likes the look and sound of, regardless of political party. Looking at Dad and me, it’s easy to believe that she’s not my biological mother.

  ‘So Alex, how’s your job going?’ she says as we stand in line to order (chips and mushy peas for her, a large cod and no chips for me).

  ‘Fine.’ I know she’s gearing up to ask me why I’m really here. I tell her about the increase in tours we’ve had lately and the costume exhibition that’s opening soon.

  ‘It sounds lovely,’ she says wistfully. ‘I must come again soon and visit your gift shop – I love the old rose hand cream you stock.’

  I promise to bring her some next time. We bring our drinks to the table. I note that she almost imperceptibly purses her lips before her next question. ‘And how’s Mrs Fairchild getting on?’

  I take a long sip of my Diet Coke. ‘Not so well.’

  ‘Oh?’ she cocks a well-plucked eyebrow. ‘She’s not ill, I hope.’

  ‘No. Just… you know… family troubles.’

  Mum’s mobile rings. She fumbles for it in her coat pocket. ‘Just a second,’ she says, ‘it’s your dad.’ She presses the button to pick up. ‘Hi Duck,’ Mum says. ‘I’m just having some supper with Alex.’

  I stare at the cars passing outside the window and listen to the loud sizzling of deep-frying fish and chips. I try not to pay attention to their conversation. Mum mostly listens as Dad talks for a long time. She glances up at me a few times, but her face gives nothing away.

  ‘I understand,’ she says finally. ‘Bye.’

  With a sigh, she ends the call. I stare down at the initials carved into the wooden table, all of a sudden wishing that I hadn’t come here; that none of it had ‘gone down’ the way it did.

  ‘You’ve known all along, haven’t you, Mum?’ I say. I wait for the sweeping tide of anger to come over me, as it did when I confronted Dad. But it doesn’t come. Instead, I just feel a strong urge to protect Mum, and wish fervently that I didn’t have to hurt her now.

  ‘You may think that your dad is to blame,’ she says, looking distressed. ‘That he’s the reason we didn’t tell you everything. But that’s not true. He’s not one for secrets and things. It goes against everything he believes in. He did it to protect me.’

  ‘But Mum…’ I sputter. ‘Why? Did you think I wouldn’t love you? Did you think I’d love some dead woman more just because she gave birth to me?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She stares down at her bitten-off nails. ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose that is what I thought.’

  ‘But that’s crazy.’ Our food arrives at the table, but neither of us touch our plates.

  ‘Is it?’ Her blue eyes begin to water. ‘Maybe. But I couldn’t take the risk. You see, Alex, I couldn’t have children of my own. You were everything to me.’

  Tears well up in my eyes.

  ‘I was madly in love with your dad,’ she says. ‘He was so arty and creative, and full of ideas. Then there was the whole Indian thing – the Kama Sutra and all.’

  ‘Too much information.’ I blurt out.

  She blobs a lake of ketchup onto her plate and stabs a chip into it. ‘But the best thing about meeting your father was the fact that he had you. We were a complete package; a ready-made family.’

  ‘Why couldn’t you have children?’ I ask quietly.

  ‘I had an infection when I was a teenager. It made me infertile. Your dad didn’t mind – he had his hands full with a baby, starting up his business – all that. He was open and honest with me about what happened with… your birth mother.’

  ‘That I killed her.’

  ‘No Alex!’ Mum reaches out and grabs my hand. ‘From what I understand, she died of a health condition. Having a baby put too much strain on her and she started bleeding. Haemorrhaging. Your dad and his lot didn’t have a clue. A transfusion might have saved her if she’d been in hospital. But she wasn’t.’

  I swallow back a sob. For my birth mother, I feel a remote kind of sadness – for someone I’ve never met, and never will meet. Whereas Mum’s pain is on display right in front of me.

  I go over to her side of the booth and put my arm around her. The tears begin to flow down her face like droplets of rain on a window.

  ‘We should have told you everything – that you had a grandmother who was alive. But the idea of it made me feel like there was a hole in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t want her around – looking at me and judging me. Knowing I could never be as good as her rich, well-brought up daug
hter. Thinking that I was a rubbish mother not fit to raise her granddaughter.’

  ‘No one could ever think that!’ I say. ‘Not ever. And certainly not her. Mrs Fairchild was sad about losing her daughter, but she would have respected you and Dad, I’m sure of it.’

  She takes a tissue from her pocket and dabs her eyes. ‘I know – and I’m sure you’re right.’ Turning to me, she grabs my hand in earnest. ‘Oh Alex, just tell me – can you ever forgive me for what I did?’ She shudders. ‘The fact is I would do it again in a heartbeat. I love you, Alex. You’re my daughter.’

  ‘And you’re my mum; of course I forgive you – and Dad, for that matter.’ I lean in and rest my head against her cheek. ‘I just wish you would have trusted me, that’s all.’

  ‘Yes,’ she concedes, ‘We should have done. Probably. It’s just that I…’

  ‘…couldn’t take the risk,’ I finish for her.

  ‘Exactly.’

  I kiss her cheek and return to my side of the booth to eat my cod. She plays with her chips in the pool of ketchup, for this one moment her seeming more like the daughter and me the mum. ‘So what happens now?’ I say.

  She takes a sip of her drink. ‘Now you know the truth. I suppose you need some time to take it all in. Then, I’ll be happy to answer any questions you have.’ For the first time, I see a ghost of a smile cross her lips.

  ‘Actually, I’ve got some questions that need answering now. Starting with, what do you know about Catherine Fairchild?’

  ‘Not a lot, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Did you know she was orphaned in the Blitz?’

  Mum shakes her head.

  ‘And adopted by Frank Bolton.’

  ‘Adopted! I never would have guessed. I remember meeting her that first time when you started working at the house and we came to visit you. She’s so proper and well-spoken. She oozes class and good breeding.’