by Maria Goodin
“All right, sweetheart?” someone drawls in my ear.
I turn around to find the drunken bass guitarist swigging from a bottle of beer and staring at me in a way that makes me pray he doesn’t turn out to be my father.
“What d’ya think, then?” he asks, gesturing to the pile of instruments that have been discarded on the floor. “Good, eh? I played the bass guitar.”
“Yes, I know,” I say, forcing a smile. “I saw.”
“It’s the hardest part,” he boasts, swaying slightly, “because there are so many strings and…and notes and stuff.”
“It was very good,” I lie. “Actually, I was wondering if you could help me.”
In the background, a slot machine suddenly toots its winning tune, and loud cheering accompanies the clatter of coins falling down its shoot. Music starts up on a sound system.
“What?” he says, leaning toward me and cupping his ear. The smell of stale alcohol in my face makes me want to retch.
“I said I was wondering if you could help me,” I shout. “I’m trying to find out if any of you once knew my mother.”
The bass guitarist takes an unsteady step back and eyes me warily.
“Is this about child support?”
“No. I found this flier in my mother’s house,” I say, pulling the crumpled paper out of my pocket and showing him, “and it has this address on the back. See? And I understand from Tony the landlord that you once lived at that address. And I need to know why my mother had your address written down and—”
“Wizz!” the bass guitarist suddenly shouts excitedly over his shoulder. “Come here!”
Wizz, who is struggling to get his arm inside the wrong sleeve of his leather jacket, chucks the jacket on top of a speaker, picks up his beer bottle, and weaves a very wonky line over in our direction.
“Look at this!” grins the bass guitarist, waving the flier at him. “This is, like, really old! From when we were old!”
“Young,” I say, correcting him.
“From when we were young!”
Wizz examines the flier closely with bloodshot eyes. His face is scrawny, his stubble shot through with gray. He might once have been good-looking, but twenty-odd years of living the rock-and-roll lifestyle have definitely taken their toll.
“It’s hers!” exclaims the bass guitarist, pointing at me with a straight arm, even though I’m right in front of him.
“Hey, Rocket!” Wizz shouts over at the keyboard player. “Look what Beasty has found!”
Rocket, a chubby man with a receding hairline and an earring who has been helping a group of people celebrate their win at the slot machine, shuffles over.
“Wow,” says Rocket, taking the flier, “that’s old!”
“It’s hers!” exclaims Beasty again, pointing at me.
“It’s my mother’s,” I explain to them all. “It was inside an old suitcase of hers. I came here because I’m trying to find out if any of you ever knew my mother.”
Wizz and Rocket immediately look worried.
“It’s nothing to do with child support,” I say, and immediately they relax. “I just need to know why my mother has your old address. That was your address, wasn’t it?”
They all stare at the flier. “No, that’s not our address,” says Wizz, shaking his head. “That’s the address of a pub.”
“That’s the address of this pub,” says Beasty, “the one you’re standing in.”
“No, on the other side,” I say impatiently, taking the flier and turning it over. “Fifteen Gray’s Inn Road.”
“Oh, there. Yes, we lived there.” Rocket nods.
“Did we?” asks Beasty.
“Yeah. You remember. That place we had when we were just starting out. The place with mold on the walls and the hole in the bath.”
Beasty shakes his head, looking confused. “That could be anywhere,” he says. “That could be where I live now.”
“The place where you broke a door by driving a motorbike through it. The one where Wizz set fire to his own pants and I had to spray him with lemonade to put him out. The place where Bomber threw a TV set out the window and it nearly killed a tramp.”
Beasty continues shaking his head.
“The place where we used to watch that girl getting undressed in the window opposite,” says Wizz.
“Oh, that place!” says Beasty, his face lighting up. “I remember that place!”
They all laugh and slap each other playfully, and I no longer know what I hope to achieve this evening, but it definitely isn’t to discover that one of them is my real father.
“Apparently there were two girls who lived with you for a while,” I say, trying to make myself heard now that they are all laughing about their wild past.
“Oh, there were lots of girls!” Wizz says with a grin, attempting a drunken wink, and they all start laughing again.
“Those were the days!”
“Do you remember the twins?”
“Oh, the twins! Suzy and Sarah.”
“How could anyone forget them.”
“Now, that’s why you join a band!”
“One of the girls had a baby,” I say over the laughter.
They all stop laughing and look at each other.
“Really?” asks Beasty. “When?”
“Wasn’t me,” says Wizz.
“Wasn’t me,” says Rocket.
“Which one was it?” asks Beasty. “Suzy or Sarah?”
“No,” I say with a sigh, shaking my head and wishing they were all a lot more sober. “There was a baby who lived with you at the time. That’s what Tony said. Two girls lived with you, and one of them had a baby.”
“Oh!” says Rocket. “Yes. There was a baby.”
“I don’t remember a baby,” says Wizz. “I remember a cat. I think we had a cat.”
“What did it look like?” asks Beasty.
“It was ginger and white…”
“Not the cat, the baby!”
“What do you mean, what diz it look like?” says Rocket, slurring his words. “It looked like a baby. It was very small.”
“All babies are small.”
“No, but it was really small. You remember. Too small. That’s what I remember about it. She thought there was something wong…wrong with it.”
“Who did?”
“The mum. What was her name again?”
Too small? My heart starts pounding in my chest as I wait for them to tell me the name. It couldn’t be. Could it?
“I remember!” Wizz suddenly cries. “Little baby. Cried a lot. Ahh, she was a cute little thing. You remember, Beasty.”
“No, I don’t. Are you sure? Why would a baby have been living with us? Are you sure you weren’t hallucinating? Because you did used to hallucinate a lot, when you were, you know…”
Wizz hiccups loudly. “No, we both remember it, don’t we, Rocket? You must remember, Beasty!”
“What was her name?” I ask impatiently.
“It was small, Beasty,” insists Wizz, leaning heavily on Beasty’s shoulder, “and noisy. I used to sing to it, but I don’t think it liked it much.”
“But what was the name?” I almost shout.
“The mum or the baby?” asks Rocket.
“Either.”
“No idea. Hey, what was the name?” he asks, tugging on Wizz’s T-shirt.
“Oh, now zat’s a diffcul…difficult question,” says Wizz, wagging a finger at me, “and you should ask someone who hasn’t drunk so much.”
“Was it Val?” I ask, my heart in my mouth.
They all shake their heads.
“Val. No. Not Val,” says Rocket. “That wouldn’t suit a little baby.”
“Babies are called things like…like Emily and Lucy,” drawls Wizz.
“And
Thomas,” adds Beasty.
Wizz slaps Beasty heartily on the back. “Thomas is an ess…excellent name for a baby.”
“Thank you, mate,” says Beasty, slapping him back.
“No, not the baby,” I insist, “the mother. Was the mother’s name Val?”
“Gwennie!” Beasty suddenly shouts. “The girl was Gwennie!”
“No, no, no, no,” says Rocket, “not Gwennie. Gwennie was Bomber’s girl.”
“His wife!” shouts Wizz, raising his bottle in the air as if celebrating the couple’s union.
“Yes, later she became his wive…wife,” confirms Rocket, “but at the time she lived with us she was just his girl. It was her best mate who also lived with us; she was the one who had the baby.”
“Val?” I ask again hopefully. “Was she called Val?”
They all shake their heads.
“No, not Val…”
“Valerie!” shouts Rocket.
“Valerie!” Wizz and Beasty agree loudly, nodding their heads.
“Oh, the lovely Valerie!”
“Beautiful Valerie!”
“Valerie with the baby! The little pink baby!”
My heart is suddenly beating so fast in my chest that I can barely breathe.
“And the baby,” I say, not even attempting to mask the urgency in my voice now. “Was the baby called Meg?”
“Meg!” they all shout at once.
“Little baby Meg!”
“Little Meggy!”
“That’s me!” I suddenly shout excitedly. “I’m Meg. I’m the baby! Valerie’s my mother!”
They all stop shouting and look me up and down, confused.
“You look vevy…very different,” says Rocket.
“I’m older now!” I am so overcome with emotion that I don’t even care how ridiculous this comment is. This is it! I’ve done it! I’ve found a link to my mother’s past. To my past!
“You’re the baby?” asks Wizz.
“Yes! I have no idea why I was living with you, but I have this flier with your address on it,” I say, snatching the flier from Rocket and waving it at them. “And this is the year of my birth, and my mother is called Valerie, and I’m Meg, and—”
Before I can even finish my sentence, Wizz throws his arms around me.
“Meg!” he yells in my ear. “Little baby Meggy!”
“Little Meggy!” the other two shout, joining in. “Baby Meg!”
I am squashed in a three-sided hug that smells of beer, cigarettes, and body odor, my mind whirring. What does all of this mean? Why were we living with these people? How did my mother know them? Who was my mother’s friend Gwennie?
They all step back and examine me with wonder, as if they never knew a baby could grow up and turn into an adult.
“Ahh, little baby Meggy,” drones Wizz, patting me clumsily on the head.
“How’s Valerie?”
“How old are you now?”
“Why did you leave us? You should have stayed and lizzed…lived with us forever.”
They pat me and stroke my hair, squeeze my cheeks, and ask me several questions all at once.
“How did you know my mother?” I ask, desperate to get to the bottom of all this.
“She lived with us,” declares Rocket.
“Yes, but why? How did she—did we—end up living with you?”
They all look thoughtful.
“She came with her friend Gwennie,” says Beasty. “I think they just, sort of, turned up one day.”
“I do remember she didn’t stay that long,” says Wizz, pointing a finger in the air to indicate a thought. “It didn’t really work, I don’t think, having a baby there.”
“She came to us,” says Rocket, swaying slightly, “because she was thrown out of her home.”
The others nod their heads in agreement, recalling this piece of information.
“Sad, sad,” mutters Rocket.
Thrown out of her home? My mother was never thrown out of her home. My heart sinks as I begin to wonder whether we really are all talking about the same person.
“They didn’t like the fact she’d had a baby, did they?” asks Wizz, turning to the other two.
Rocket and Beasty mutter confirmations of this, hazy memories coming back to them, while I rub my forehead, wondering what they are talking about. Perhaps it’s the drink. Perhaps they’re confusing her with someone else. My grandparents loved me. They helped raise me. For the first six months of my life, we lived as one big, warm extended family.
“So Valerie followed us here from Cambridge,” Wizz continues. “I don’t think she had anywhere else to go.”
“You’re from Cambridge?” I ask.
They all nod. Perhaps they are talking about the right person after all. They must be. But my grandparents never threw us out.
Did they?
“Where did we go after we left?” I ask. “My mother and I?”
“That’s what I was asking you,” drawls Wizz, leaning on me and grinning. “Where did you go? You left us.”
“You should have stayed!” says Beasty, stroking my face. “You should have stayed forever and we would have raised you.”
“We should all move back in together!” says Rocket, his face lighting up.
The three of them raise their bottles in the air and clink glasses to celebrate this fantastic idea, excitedly discussing the logistics of this new arrangement.
“What else can you tell me?” I ask, trying to keep them on track. “What else do you know about my mother?”
They all shake their heads and shrug.
“She had long hair,” offers Beasty.
“We didn’t really know her that well,” says Wizz. “She only stayed a few weeks.”
“And it was a very long time ago,” says Beasty.
“And we’re all quite drunk,” adds Rocket.
“What about Gwennie?” I ask. “You said she was my mother’s friend. Do you know what happened to her?”
They all shake their heads.
“Haven’t seen her in years,” says Wizz.
“You said she married someone…”
“Bomber,” says Rocket. “Our drummer.”
My mouth drops as I struggle to process this information. Hot Stuff? My mother used to be best friends with Hot Stuff!
“Your drummer? You mean the tall man who just left with—”
“No, no, no,” says Rocket, “that’s Wonky. That’s not the drummer we had when we started. Bomber was our original drummer. He later married Gwennie. But it didn’t last long.”
I rack my brain trying to work out where to go from here.
“I think I need to get in touch with Gwennie,” I tell them.
“Yes, we do need to find Gwennie,” agrees Rocket, “so we can tell her we’re all moving back in together!”
They all cheer and clink beer bottles again.
“Okay,” I say, thinking it might just be easier to go along with this ridiculous idea. “So how do we find her?”
Rocket and Beasty look thoughtful, and then Beasty raises a finger in the air, having come up with the solution.
“We could call—”
“Bomber!” shouts Wizz into his cell phone before Beasty can even finish his sentence. “How are you? Guess what! We’re all moving back in together! Me and you and Beasty and Gwennie and—”
“Bomber, guess what?” yells Rocket, grabbing the phone out of Wizz’s hand. “We have a surprise for you! It’s the baby! Here she is!”
He holds the phone out to me, and I take it hesitantly.
“Hello?”
“Who’s that?” a tired voice asks. He sounds like he has just been woken up.
“My name’s Meg May,” I say, placing my hand over my free ear to block out the noise
of the band drunkenly discussing our new communal living arrangements. “My mother is Valerie May. We lived with you for a short while on Gray’s Inn Road when I was a baby. My mother was friends with your ex-wife, Gwennie.”
There’s silence at the end of the line before the voice says, “Yes, I remember. Gosh. That was a long time ago. Wow. How are you?”
“I’m…I’m fine,” I fumble, slightly taken aback by his sensible tone and smart accent. From the sleep in his voice, I suddenly realize it must be very late and Bomber has clearly left the rock-and-roll lifestyle well behind him. “I’m sorry about this, Bomber. We’re not really all moving back in together—”
He laughs quietly. “Too right we’re not. And, please, it’s Timothy. People don’t really want a lawyer called Bomber. It gives the wrong impression. Anyway, I really should learn not to answer the phone on a Friday night. I expect they’re all slaughtered, aren’t they?”
I glance at the three men hugging each other and singing something about being reunited forever.
“They are a little drunk, yes.”
I take the phone over to the corner of the pub so that I can hear better. “I know this must all seem very strange, but I’m trying to get hold of Gwennie.”
“Ok-ay,” he says slowly, as if thinking this through. “Has your mother decided to get back in touch with her?”
“Erm…sort of.”
“Gosh. That will be a surprise for Gwennie. She was absolutely devastated when your mother broke off contact with her, although she understood Val’s reasons.”
I don’t say anything, wondering what on earth he can mean.
“To be honest,” he continues, “I was always grateful your mother did what she did. Your father was…well, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you. Sorry, your stepfather, I mean.”
“My stepfather?”
“Yes. Robert.”
“Robert?”
There is a long pause, during which time we listen to the remaining members of Chlorine singing. I only realize I have been holding my breath when I start running out of air.
“Was my mother married?” I ask, shocked.
“Gosh, I’m sorry,” Timothy says hesitantly. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said…I just…I thought you would know. I mean, I thought you would remember.”