This Much is True: How far will a mother go to protect her shocking secret?

by Jane Sanderson

  Annie sighed. At the time, she’d been able to see Michael’s point of view. Now, though, while she still had a strong memory of his fury, she found she could no longer understand how he could have been so livid with two sweet, warm, pudgy blonde boys who were, after all, his only nephews. They hadn’t been back to England since. Blake was nine now, and Riley nearly seven. They beamed at her from a silver frame on the mantelpiece, two little strangers, her grandsons.

  She picked up a new lead for Finn, a sack of kibble and, from the greengrocer’s, a bunch of bananas for Michael. Then she pointed the car at Barnsley and headed into the town centre, although before she called at Fletcher’s Bakery she had to visit Vince at Glebe Hall. Had to. That made it sound as if she didn’t want to, which wasn’t true because she liked the nurses, who were a merry bunch and always seemed pleased to see her. There weren’t any visiting restrictions; you could pop in whenever you liked. Annie only wished she could go without actually sitting with Vince.

  The home was a council-run, no-frills establishment and he’d had a long, dull residency here. It was a converted Victorian mansion, a relic from Barnsley’s prosperous past, built from great blocks of soot-blackened stone. Vince’s room faced a busy main road and buses and lorries lumbered past his window all day long so that there was never any peace. Residents at the back looked out over a small garden where blue tits and a woodpecker came for the peanuts and suet balls. Once, a year or so ago, a room with a view had come free and Annie had suggested to Vince that he move.

  ‘What do you think?’ she had said, being pleasant, being considerate. ‘A nice room on the other side, Vince? You can watch the birds.’ Her husband had seemed to be considering the question, but then had said in a querulous voice, ‘She only went out for a loaf,’ so Annie had dropped it, left him where he was. Birds, buses; it was all the same to Vince anyway.

  At the back of the home there was a visitors’ car park, which wasn’t quite big enough for its purpose, and Annie’s heart beat a little faster as she turned into it. She did so hate having to reverse into a bay that was squeezed on both sides by other vehicles. She felt, on these occasions, that she was taking her driving test all over again, but today there was a welcoming row of three unoccupied spaces so she sailed gaily into the middle one with the blithe spirit of a woman whose day was getting better and better, admittedly from a very poor start.

  ‘Now then, Finn, I shan’t be long,’ she said. She turned to look at him and he panted stoically. She let down the rear windows a crack, then got out of the car and locked it manually, so that the alarm wouldn’t go off if Finn shifted or barked. Then she unlocked it again, put the key back in the ignition, and let the windows down further. She didn’t know how much air a big dog like Finn could use up in a small hatchback; she didn’t want him to run out of oxygen, didn’t want to find him dead, or gasping for life like a goldfish on a carpet. She locked the door again and trotted across the car park, but then the insidious, insistent thought took hold that now the windows were wide enough open for someone cunning to slide in an arm and unlock the car to steal Finn, so back she went. The dog watched her comings and goings with detached calm; he was well used to her rituals, and had no expectations of early release. He knew the score. In fact he was settling down for a comfortable snooze even as she opened the car door one more time, engaged the ignition, and closed the windows an inch and a half. He was shutting his eyes even as she thoroughly tested the gap, trying – and, crucially, failing – to insert her own hand through the opening.

  ‘Righty ho,’ she said, finally satisfied. She knocked on the window and Finn opened his eyes.

  ‘See you later, alligator,’ she said.

  ‘Morning-Mrs-Doyle-or-is-it-afternoon-already-with-the-way-time-flies-nothing-would-surprise-me.’

  It was the Irish nurse, Moira. Annie said, ‘You’re all right, Moira, there’s five more minutes of morning,’ and they both laughed. Moira was as short as Annie, but probably forty years younger. Her hair, cut in a sharp bob, was a glorious shade of auburn that made Annie feel wistful about her own colourless curls. Also Moira had the sort of luscious hourglass figure that the Ancient Greeks might have gone to war over and Renaissance artists would have queued up to paint.

  ‘How is he today?’ Annie asked, dutifully.

  ‘He’s awake, but he’s grumpy,’ Moira said. ‘Threw his cornflakes at the wall.’

  Annie blushed for her husband.

  ‘I hope it hasn’t marked the wallpaper,’ she said.

  Moira winked. ‘Why do you think it’s vinyl? Sure, there’s not a surface in this place that can’t be wiped clean.’

  ‘Well anyway,’ Annie said.

  It was embarrassing. He was like a toddler. When Andrew was eighteen months he’d scribbled on the kitchen wall with a red crayon and there’d been nobody crosser about it at the time than Vince, and now look! Flinging food and crockery at the walls in a tantrum. He wore a nappy, too.

  ‘I’ll bring some tea through,’ Moira said.

  ‘I promise I won’t throw it at you,’ Annie said, and Moira howled. The sound of her laughter followed Annie all the way down the corridor and into Vince’s room where the door was propped open with a rubber wedge. He was slumped in a faux-leather wing chair, caving in on himself like a deflating lilo. The television was on and a man in pressed jeans and a checked shirt was explaining the importance of varying the contents of your compost bin, but he was talking to himself. Vince’s eyes were open, but there was nobody home.

  Annie touched him on the shoulder. ‘Vince,’ she said. ‘It’s me.’

  He turned his head and looked at her.

  ‘Who are you?’ he said. He hadn’t really known Annie for five years or more, except for the occasions when he remembered how much he disliked her.

  ‘Here we go again,’ she said. ‘I’m the tooth fairy.’

  Solemnly he held out a hand and said, ‘Pleased to meet you,’ and Annie immediately felt unkind, in spite of everything.

  ‘No, Vince, I’m Annie. Annie Doyle. Annabelle Platt as was. Your wife.’

  He curled his top lip and turned his empty gaze back to the television set, like a blind man following the sound of voices. How are the mighty fallen. Annie had this thought even now, so many years into his deterioration. When she’d met him he’d been the talk of the town, cock of the walk, but he’d singled her out and taken her dancing, even though she was the least likely girl to catch his roving eye. Oh, he was handsome back then! She almost forgot to breathe, the first time he spoke to her; she had thought him magnificent. But Annie looked at him now – bony white ankles poking out of drab pyjama bottoms, hands curled like big dried leaves in his lap, mouth encrusted with dried spittle, a smell of Sudocrem and urine – and tried to call to mind Vincent Doyle, because this wasn’t him. The Vince she’d married smelled of Brylcreem and Old Spice, and when he walked into the Locarno dance hall, heads turned.

  ‘This isn’t very interesting,’ she said, pointing at the television. ‘It’s gardening. You never liked it, even when you had your own.’

  He looked at her again.

  ‘It’s a poor do,’ he said.

  ‘It is.’

  She picked up the remote control from the arm of his chair.

  ‘Now then, I think it’s this one.’ She pressed a button, and the screen changed to a menu of inexplicable options. AV1, AV2, TV, S-Video, Component.

  ‘No then, not that one.’ She had another stab at it, this time choosing an upward-pointing arrow. Auto Programme, Manual Programme, Favourites, the screen said.

  ‘Oh pot it,’ Annie said, and pressed what looked to her like an off button but in fact it took them to the cockpit of a Lancaster bomber, in black and white. Vince sat up and leaned forwards. He watched with a sort of baffled interest, as if some long-buried memory had partly emerged through the thick fog of his mind, though not quite fully enough to be understood.

  ‘I know him,’ he said, pointing at Richard Todd. ‘I used to
work with him at the National Provincial.’

  For a while Annie and Vince watched the film together in silence. The bombers flew with steady certainty and purpose through German gunfire towards the dam.

  ‘Oh I like these old films.’ This was Moira, bearing a tray with a mug of tea for Annie and a beaker for Vince. ‘Those were the days, ey, Mrs Doyle? When men were men and women were grateful.’

  ‘Before your time,’ Annie said.

  ‘And yours, surely,’ said Moira, with a wink.

  Annie hadn’t drawn her eyes away from the screen. She looked at Guy Gibson with his leather helmet and steady hands, issuing brisk, tinny orders through his pilot’s mask, and she felt English to the core and proud of it: a member of the same, splendid club. ‘They filmed this not far from here, Moira,’ she said, hoping the nurse might stay. ‘I think it was the Derwent Valley.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Moira handed Annie her tea, glanced at the television. The thrum of the bombers blended with the traffic noise outside Vince’s window. Guy Gibson was flying straight at the dam, valiant in a hail of enemy fire. ‘This is fine, I can see everything,’ he said brightly to his co-pilot. ‘Stand by to pull me under the seat if I get hit.’

  ‘They’re bombing that dam, Vince,’ Annie said.

  ‘No they aren’t,’ he said, as if she was a fool.

  Annie looked at him, then back at the screen. There was something so familiar about all this: his disparaging tone, the television set, the old film, their armchairs side by side. If it wasn’t for the way he looked and smelled, they could have been in their first front room, in Coventry.

  ‘I’ve brought you your tea, Vince,’ Moira said, in the loud voice she used for the demented residents of Glebe Hall. ‘If you’re planning to throw it, wait until I’m out of the room.’

  ‘Thank you, Moira,’ Vince said, in a precious moment of clarity and appropriate behaviour. He took his tea then pointed at Annie.

  ‘This is the tooth fairy,’ he said.

  4

  Annie Platt wasn’t born at home in a tangle of old towels like so many of her contemporaries in their small mining town, but at the Pinder Oaks Maternity Home in Barnsley. She was the first child of Harold and Lillian Platt, who had a car and a detached house with a garden front and back on Hawshaw Lane in Hoyland. Harold was a bank manager, not a miner, and Lillian was the vivacious, highly strung youngest daughter of a prosperous Sheffield cutler. They had only a middling income and not a scrap of illustrious lineage but in the modest context of Hoyland, Harold and Lillian passed for quality.

  Their Annie was actually an Annabelle and she was the only one in Hoyland, although something about her – even in early infancy – encouraged the use of the diminutive. She was going to be the first of four children, two girls and two boys, but the other three never arrived, which was a deep regret to Lillian, who liked a crowd, and a puzzle to Harold, who hadn’t pictured himself presiding over such a small gathering at mealtimes: hadn’t imagined either that he would have no son on whom he could imprint his own narrow version of the world.

  Before this disappointment though, they had their firstborn. Harold drove Lillian home from Pinder Oaks and Annie lay across Lillian’s lap, tightly swaddled in a white crocheted blanket. Every time Lillian glanced down on that five-mile journey, the baby was staring up at her, unblinking and expressionless. Lillian didn’t take to her. She had a too-round face, as round as a tea plate, small navy blue eyes and a squashed nose with round nostrils that resembled a piglet’s snout. Lillian was worried that her daughter wouldn’t be pretty. She wondered, too, if she had the right baby.

  ‘This is definitely ours, is it?’ she said to Harold as he drove. ‘I mean to say, how would we know? We just took what we were given.’ Harold, a careful driver, wouldn’t take his eyes off the road. ‘Well it’s ours now,’ was all he said.

  At home, baby Annie hardly ever cried, which should have been a blessing except that when the time came for smiling, she hardly ever smiled either. To Lillian’s surprise, she found Annie neither lovable nor unlovable. The baby inspired no strong feelings either way. Oh well, thought Lillian, she’s all right in her own way and anyway there’ll be others. But by Annie’s fifth birthday, she was still Lillian and Harold’s one and only child, and Lillian was wishing she’d paid her more attention, because it was difficult, after five years of indifference, to suddenly find a fresh footing. Lillian tried, nonetheless. She became jollier around her daughter, playful even. She suggested they build a den from the clothes horse and the weekly wash, but it took hardly any time at all to accomplish and then, when they sat inside it, squashed together in their tent of damp woollen drawers and cotton sheets, Lillian couldn’t think what to say to the child. Annie sat on, impassively cocooned, long after Lillian had given up and crawled out. Another time, Lillian took Annie outside in the snow and showed her how a snowman was made, expecting her to join in, but Annie only watched, studying her mother’s actions with the anxious concentration of a child who, while not especially bright, was certainly willing to learn. Lillian all of a sudden lost patience. She stopped pushing the snowman’s body – which anyway was going wrong, turning oblong and picking up mud – and said, ‘You just don’t know how to have fun, Annie Platt,’ then marched indoors to put the kettle on and warm her hands. Annie stood on, alone and solemn in the snow, uncertain how to proceed. Watching her from the kitchen window, Lillian wondered again if her own baby had gone home from the maternity hospital with another woman five years ago. She wondered if somewhere, not very far from here, there was a little girl with angel features and a lively sense of mischief, running rings around a plodding woman with a porcine nose and an inability to see a joke.

  In 1950, when Annie was nine, the family moved to Coventry where Harold was to be manager of the National Provincial Bank. This change in their circumstances was disastrous for Lillian, who felt she’d been transplanted from her native soil into new and adverse growing conditions. Harold brushed off her protestations with firm reassurances that soon the new house, a detached 1920s villa with views on the leafy Kenilworth side of the city, would feel as much like home as the old one. Houses, to Harold, were like cars; it was nothing but a treat to buy a new one. This one had a dining room with panelling; he was certain such a house didn’t exist in Hoyland.

  ‘But I don’t know a soul,’ Lillian wailed, sitting in bed as he dressed for another working day. She watched him, suddenly loathing the prissy way he tied a double Windsor knot then tugged at his collar and cuffs until everything was just so. ‘I liked Hawshaw Lane and that’s where I want to live.’

  ‘Remember, Lillian, that you didn’t like Hawshaw Lane when we moved there. In fact,’ he paused his activity and looked directly at her tragic reflection in the oval wall mirror, ‘you said you didn’t know a soul.’ Harold smiled, pleased with himself.

  ‘I didn’t, but now I do, and I don’t want to start all over again. I’m lonely.’ She sounded petulant, but she felt her sorrow very deeply. She felt, too, that Harold was an unfeeling monster, by the standards of her own heightened sensibilities. His stolid face registered no sympathy, not a scrap.

  ‘You’ve Annie for company, after school,’ he said, which to Lillian only underlined how little he understood. ‘And you can have a daily char. Put an advertisement in the Evening Telegraph.’

  ‘You’re a brute, Harold. You have less feeling than a clod of earth.’ She threw herself sideways across the bed and buried her face in a cushion, spoiling the velvet with her tears. Harold turned. Histrionics made him uncomfortable. Ungovernable emotion was a sign of spinelessness, and even after eleven years with Lillian, he hadn’t altered his view on this matter. Backbone was generally what was required in any given situation.

  ‘Lillian,’ he said, sternly now because he wished to end the scene, ‘there’s many a woman would swap places with you.’

  ‘Find me one then, and arrange it,’ she said, so Harold left her to stew and on his way out passed Anni
e sitting on the wooden stairs which curved down in an ostentatious sweep to the hallway. She pressed herself against the posts to make room for him and he stopped and looked down at her pale, round face. She hadn’t fussed at all when they’d flitted from Hoyland. She’d got on with it, made the best of things. It was the only trait that Harold valued about his daughter, this silent acceptance of her lot. Unsmilingly they regarded each other.