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

by Jane Sanderson

  ‘Well well well,’ he said. ‘Out of the mouths of babes.’ He looked at Andrew, then back at the photographs. ‘Uncanny resemblance.’ Annie remained oddly passive; she let the scene unfold, explaining nothing. Her life story was unravelling, and yet they still didn’t know the half of it. She felt no panic, only a kind of relief, which she believed was due to the fact that Vince, her arch-persecutor, was incapable of speech. She looked at him, prone on the bed, his eyes open but somehow also closed, and she wondered if he could hear them all. Part of her hoped that he could, if it added to his suffering.

  Moira and the doctor had taken a step back towards the door, aware that the small room was suddenly charged with an uncomfortable tension.

  ‘I’ll be in the quiet room, Mrs Doyle, when you feel ready,’ the doctor said, and left with unprofessional haste, all but running through the door to freedom. However, Moira lingered; she felt invested in Vincent Doyle, and in Annie, his dutiful wife. She felt entitled, now, to witness this drama, although she held herself on the very edge of the action, hoping not to be noticed. The little boys, bored by the peculiar behaviour of the adults, were squirming around on their bellies under Vince’s bed, and no one told them to come out.

  Andrew stood and Annie noticed for the first time that he’d been holding Vince’s hand, his fingers laced through his father’s. He always did have more love to give, she thought, and he never did have to suffer the very worst of Vince. Bailey moved to be beside him, and Andrew encircled her waist with his other arm.

  ‘Andy?’ she said. ‘What’s happening here?’

  He was shaking, and he didn’t answer, but Michael did.

  ‘I put it to the jury, your honour,’ he said, ‘that this young woman is, in fact, the defendant’s mother.’ He grinned the wolfish grin that he’d inherited from his father, and brandished the photographs triumphantly in Andrew’s direction. ‘I bloody well knew you were a cuckoo in the nest.’

  Finally Annie was goaded into speech. ‘That is quite enough!’ she said, and her voice, which so often quailed and quaked in the face of conflict, was almost authoritative – enough, at any rate, to command the attention of the room. The children, believing themselves to be the objects of her sudden fury, slid out from under the bed and stared up at her from the floor, round-eyed. But she was glaring at their Uncle Michael, not at them.

  ‘You’ve a nasty streak in you, Michael Doyle, but I will NOT allow you to taunt your brother,’ she said steadily.

  ‘Half-brother,’ Michael ventured, although he mumbled like a sulky teenager and looked at the floor.

  Annie seemed to growl, a low, threatening rumble of warning. She kept her eyes on Michael as if she couldn’t trust him to behave, but then glanced at her daughter-in-law.

  ‘Bailey, please take the children out of the room,’ she said. ‘I need to talk to my boys.’

  ‘Sure thing, Annie.’ Bailey clicked her fingers at Blake and Riley, who immediately began to haul themselves out of the room and into the corridor, sliding with ridiculous effort across the tiles like giant caterpillars. Bailey kissed Andrew on the cheek. She looked wary and worried, uncertain what any of this meant for her husband, but as she passed Annie, she paused briefly and touched her softly on the arm, an instinctive gesture of warmth and support, and Annie thought how lucky Andrew was, how lucky they all were, to have Bailey. She wondered why she hadn’t seen this sooner.

  So there they were: Mother, Father, Michael and Andrew, reunited. How long had it been since they were all in one room together? Fifteen years? Twenty? She had striven all her adult life to appear ordinary, Annie thought now, striven to present a normal face to the world. But the Doyles had never been able to cleave together, never managed to pull off, with any conviction, a united family front. Always there were betrayals and lies, divisions and sides being taken, small skirmishes, seismic battles, lengthy silences. Even so, they were and always would be bound together, the four of them. She wouldn’t include Martha, and make it five.

  Annie looked at her boys. Andrew sat, his head in his hands. Michael stood, his back to everyone, his arms folded. Vince, on his way out of this life and onto the next, dominated the room. His breathing had altered, so that although no one was speaking yet, the silence was filled by the rattle and wheeze of his inward and outward breaths. His cheeks had hollowed, and his eyes lay deep in their sockets: flesh returning to bone. He should be dead, thought Annie; he was supposed to have died years ago. He’d been in this home for too long, swearing like a navvy and soiling his bed. He wasn’t even in his forties when he was diagnosed with dementia. Not even forty! Annie wouldn’t have believed it possible if she hadn’t seen his decline with her own eyes. Oh yes, and he was nasty to be with in those early days of the illness, though goodness knows he’d been nasty enough in the first place. Pick’s disease, the consultant had called it. When he told her what to expect – a loss of interest in people, a loss of empathy and personal warmth, a tendency towards tactless or inappropriate remarks – Annie had wanted to laugh because he’d just described the husband she already knew. But in fact Vince did alter as the years passed; he did worsen. It was just that he didn’t die, and she’d been banking on that because the doctor had told her he wouldn’t last ten years. Well, she wished the same doctor could see her now, thirty-odd years later, still dancing to Vince’s tune.

  She felt ready to speak now and she cleared her throat. Andrew looked up, Michael turned, and Annie launched into the same story she’d told Josie, although it benefitted from the earlier rehearsal; there were no tears this time and, thinking only to spare Andrew any pain, she cast a rosy light over the whole tale, so that it seemed as if the arrival of baby Robert was the result of a perfectly harmonious arrangement between a husband and wife. The pill was thoroughly sugared but still, she felt that by and large the truth was out. When she stopped speaking she allowed herself a private moment of self-congratulation, but then Michael laughed and Andrew looked at her suspiciously.

  ‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘You’re saying you knew I was coming? You were expecting me, like a sort of surrogacy arrangement?’

  Annie hadn’t entirely meant to suggest this, but it seemed like a helpful interpretation. ‘Well, yes! Yes, you might say that,’ she said, with hideous brightness.

  ‘Who called me Andrew then?’

  ‘Well, I’d always liked it,’ Annie said, ‘and it suited you better than Robert.’

  ‘Did it?’ Andrew said.

  ‘Well I thought so. We both thought so, me and your dad.’

  ‘So you just changed my name?’

  ‘You were only a baby – you didn’t know what you were called.’

  ‘Still though, Mum, jeez.’ Andrew ran his hands through his hair, his brow furrowed as he tried to puzzle out exactly what was being said.

  ‘Oh, Andrew, the main thing is that your arrival was like … like … oh, all our Christmases come at once.’

  ‘I’ve never liked Christmas,’ Michael said.

  Andrew gave a grim laugh, and Annie said, ‘No, Michael, we were all excited, all three of us.’

  ‘I bet I wasn’t. In fact I’d swear to it.’

  ‘Oh, you can’t possibly remember,’ Annie said crossly, flapping her hand at him like she would at a wasp.

  ‘Educated guess,’ he said.

  ‘No, no.’ Annie screwed up her brow, pretending to think back, to remember. ‘No, you were definitely pleased to have a little brother.’

  This was plainly ridiculous, but she soldiered on.

  ‘And in due course, when he was old enough to understand, Andrew was very happy to have a big brother.’ She smiled at Andrew and added, ‘You were such a lovely baby, such a beautiful little boy.’ Michael scowled. He simply couldn’t help himself.

  ‘But Mum, what about Martha?’ Andrew said.

  ‘Oh, she was nothing, just a girl.’ With a sharp little toss of her head, Annie tried to imply that more than enough time had been spent on Martha already.

&nb
sp; ‘But did she keep in touch?’

  ‘Of course not!’ Annie seemed startled at the very idea. ‘No,’ she said again, less excitably. ‘It wouldn’t have been appropriate.’

  ‘But if she was happy to give me away, if it was all amicably agreed, might she have, I don’t know, followed my progress or something?’

  ‘Well she might have, but she didn’t.’

  ‘Did you forbid it?’

  Annie looked hurt. ‘Why would you accuse me of that?’ she said.

  ‘I’m just trying to understand. Was Dad in touch with her?’

  ‘Oh dear no,’ said Annie, a little wildly now. ‘He just moved on to the next conquest.’

  ‘Well, this Martha girl obviously meant something to him, Mum. There’s this box, and he’s been mentioning her, hasn’t he?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘Are there papers? Am I adopted or what?’

  ‘Andrew,’ Annie said, ‘you’re like a dog with a bone.’

  He stared at her, astonished.

  ‘I’m just trying to understand,’ he said again, but with less hope.

  ‘Let me explain,’ Michael said. ‘You started out with one mother, but ended up with another.’ He was grinning, as if all of this was a huge joke, and indeed he did find it amusing. He glanced across at Vince, who had been temporarily overlooked by them all as he laboured through each and every breath. ‘Nicely done, Father,’ Michael said. ‘One last well-aimed hand grenade before you pop your clogs.’

  Annie ignored Michael entirely. She went to Andrew and took his beloved face in her hands. ‘You completed our family,’ she said, and this much, at least, was true. She held his gaze, so he could see how she’d loved him then, and loved him still.

  Michael yawned and said, ‘Touching cameo,’ and then behind them, in his bed, Vince stole the show by taking a last, laboured, rattling breath, then ceasing to live. They knew he’d gone from the sudden utter silence.

  ‘Oh,’ Annie said, looking across at him. ‘Well. That’s that.’

  ‘We should call the doctor,’ Andrew said, moving to his father’s side.

  ‘Rather late for that,’ Michael muttered.

  The three of them stood there, at the end of Vince’s bed, and bowed their heads. There was little outward sorrow at his passing and even Andrew, who had less reason to dislike him than Annie or Michael, remained dry-eyed. Instead, by their mutual silence, they acknowledged a kind of regret that, at this closing of a long, long chapter in their lives, there was barely a single happy memory of him between them.

  22

  The first letter came about eighteen months after Andrew’s arrival, when he was two years old and utterly adorable, Annie’s darling, her daily delight. The postman had dropped a flimsy envelope onto the doormat, and when Annie picked it up she saw the address written in blue ink in an unfamiliar hand. She opened it and her eyes immediately sought the sender before she read the contents. Martha Hancock. Her rounded, loopy handwriting was barely contained by the narrow lines of the notepaper. Annie carried the letter through to the kitchen and sat down. She felt nauseous and filled with pounding fear, like a soldier about to face his first sortie in enemy territory. Martha wrote in a strange, direct, informal style and her opening salvo eschewed all niceties and cut to the chase with two brutal sentences.

  Mrs Doyle, I got a letter from Vincent to say he longs to see me and he’ll bring Robert back to me whenever I want him to. You can keep your husband, but I think I’ll have my baby.

  Annie recoiled as if from a physical attack, as if Martha had walked into the kitchen and slapped her, and she gasped for air, drowning in distress, clutching the edge of the table for support. Of all the betrayals in her life, there had been no greater one than this: that Vince should give her Andrew to love as her very own, yet promise him back to Martha Hancock as a lure, a bait, in pursuit of his own wicked ends. It was as if the child was nothing more than a library book: a borrowed object, overdue for return.

  Burn it, Annie thought, her heart hammering. Destroy it in the range. She twisted the notepaper into a tight skein and held it at arm’s length, as if it were already on fire, but after a moment she placed it back on the table, flattened it out with the palm of her hand and made herself read on.

  I’ll come to Coventry to get him. I don’t want to see Vincent, and I don’t want him to know where I live. He wrote to me care of Father Patrick, my old parish priest, and that was the only thing he could do because he has no idea where to find me, so in case you’re thinking Vincent and me are still in touch, we are not.

  Annie stopped again and looked up. Andrew had come into the room pulling a wooden duck on a string. It quacked as it rolled along, and Andrew mimicked the sound, the two of them in unison as they did a circuit of the kitchen. She was immediately and gratefully fortified by the solidity of him; his sturdy presence made Martha’s letter seem somehow less real and certainly less threatening. He plonked himself down on his bottom, and picked up the duck, taking an exploratory bite of its beak, then he looked at Annie, and released the duck from his mouth to beam at her.

  ‘Mumma,’ he said, holding out the toy. ‘Quack quack.’

  ‘It’s a duck, sweetheart,’ Annie said. ‘Duck.’

  ‘Quack,’ Andrew said.

  Annie read on, feeling calmer.

  We had a bad start, me and the baby. Robert was born in mortal sin according to my mam, and she said I’d shamed her and shamed God by falling pregnant out of wedlock. She threw me out and Vincent took me in.

  I’ll bet he did, thought Annie.

  But even though I sinned I don’t think a child can be sinful and I think Mam will come round in time and also you already have your own boy, Mrs Doyle, Vincent told me that.

  ‘Two boys,’ Annie said, aloud. ‘I have two boys, Michael and Andrew.’ She thought of the girl’s mother and her Catholic wrath; she thought of incense and eternal damnation, and she shuddered.

  When Robert was born, I tried to look after him but I didn’t know how to love him, so I left him with Vincent because I knew he would keep him safe.

  Ha! thought Annie: safe my eye. All Vince had done was run straight back here. The only person Vince looked after was himself.

  Now I want him back. My mam doesn’t know yet so I won’t give you my address and don’t tell Vincent I have written. I will write to you again to arrange things.

  Martha Hancock

  That was it. Annie stared at the letter for a few moments. No, she thought, I won’t tell Vince you’ve written. Sending love letters to a schoolgirl care of a Catholic priest – she was ashamed of him, and for him. But if Martha Hancock thought she could write to her, Annie, and demand she hand over Andrew, she could think again. She looked at him now, pottering about on the floor, rolling the duck through the chair legs in a state of simple, happy absorption.

  ‘Andrew,’ she said, and he immediately looked up at her. ‘Come here, pet,’ she said, and held out her arms. He came, and she pulled him up onto her lap and kissed his cheeks and smelled his sweet, milky skin. He squirmed and laughed as if this was just another game, but her arms held him tight and even as she made him squeal, blowing raspberries into the folds of his chubby neck, she made a silent, solemn vow to never, ever let him go. He was her own boy, her very own. Then she let him slide to the floor again so that she could stand up and open the door of the Rayburn, and watch its red-hot coals turn Martha’s letter to ash.

  After this the letters came sporadically: three, perhaps four, over a period of about a year, and then they stopped altogether. By some small mercy, and because he was so often away, all of them arrived when Vince was absent and Annie destroyed them in the fire, every one unopened. She did this to protect herself from further agony, but it came, instead, at the price of perpetual anxiety because she gained no further insight into Martha Hancock’s intentions, no understanding of her determination. Annie tried to believe that she could discourage the girl simply by ignoring her. She tried to believe
that a girl of – what, eighteen years old? Nineteen? Certainly no older – would be quickly distracted and diverted from her purpose. And yet, and yet … the girl’s voice in that first letter had lodged itself at the very heart of Annie’s insecurities. The pages were gone, but she could remember them almost word for word, and the Martha Hancock of that letter – gauche, blunt, forthright – gave no indication of feebleness, no suggestion she might simply give up the chase. So although Annie told herself one thing, she reluctantly believed another, and the first time the young woman appeared on the street in front of her, Annie felt no surprise, only recognition. In fact, she’d never seen this girl before, never even seen a photograph, but nevertheless she knew this could only be Martha. Something in the girl’s steady grey-eyed gaze, the defiant tilt of her chin, the curve of her lips. She looked like Andrew.

  Annie had him by the hand. They were walking to the primary school, to collect Michael. It was early March, but there was frost in the air, and although the sun hung low in a bright sky, there wasn’t a scrap of warmth to be had from it. The child was wrapped under layers of wool: hat, scarf, coat, mittens. He was trotting along beside Annie, blowing puffs of smoke from his mouth, trying to make a doughnut in the air, the way his daddy did with cigarette smoke. He was curious when they came to a halt. He smiled up at the lady, and she smiled back at him, then turned to Annie.

  ‘Mrs Doyle, you’re very rude,’ Martha said. ‘You haven’t answered even one of my letters.’

  Her tone was sardonic, and it made her sound a lot like Vince: that, and the Geordie lilt. Annie tightened her hold on Andrew’s hand. She didn’t answer at once, but stalled for time and boldly considered the girl’s appearance, looking her up and down: cheap kitten heels and a tightly belted navy gabardine coat, short in the cuffs, worn on the collar. Annie concentrated her mind on these imperfections, to stop herself from seeing the terrible youth and beauty of Martha’s face.