by Ann Cleeves
He turned sharply.
“I think you might be waiting for me. I’m Grace.”
He looked down at her. She stared back and waited coolly for his reaction. She wouldn’t be surprised if he was disappointed, if he was hoping for someone like Melanie. He stepped back a little. He was wearing spectacles and seemed to be finding it hard to focus on her. He smiled.
“Yes,” he said. His voice was so loud and clear that people nearby turned around to look. “Yes, of course. I can see you are.”
“Can you?”
“Oh yes. You look so like your mother.”
It was a long time since anyone had mentioned her mother. Psychologists and doctors in the assessment centre had asked about her occasionally, but they spoke tentatively, carefully. This was normal, almost joyous.
“Do I?” “Of course you do. Hasn’t anyone told you before?” “No,” she said.
“Well, you don’t look much like me, do you?”
That was certainly true. He was dark with a long, narrow face the shape of a horse’s. His eyebrows, which were starting to turn grey, met over the top of his nose. Grace had been told that was a sign of madness. She hadn’t believed it at the time but now she started to wonder. Not that it mattered.
“Well then,” he cried. “What should we do? Will anyone miss you if you don’t go straight back?”
She shook her head. Frank and Maureen had enough to worry about getting the boys under police curfew back in time. There weren’t any other rules.
“We have supper at about seven,” she said. “I should be home by then.”
That wasn’t quite true. Supper was a flexible meal usually eaten on trays in front of the television. Anyone not around was served later from the microwave. What she meant was that Charlie usually ate at seven and if she wasn’t there nobody thought to feed him.
“So we’ve got hours.” He tucked her hand in his arm and marched her down the wide noisy street towards the centre of town.
He seemed to know exactly where he was headed for and she thought perhaps he was taking her to his home. In the square the market was starting to pack up for the day. She came here often on Saturdays to buy cheap veg for Maureen and the stall holder called out to her, “You all right, pet?”
Perhaps she thought it odd for her to be walking along, arm in arm, with a middle-aged man.
“Fine,” she said. She would have liked to tell her that this was her father, but by then they had moved on, across the road, down the alley by Boots and towards the harbour where the big ships carrying timber from Scandinavia docked. He stopped outside a row of houses and at first she thought this was where he lived, then she realized it was a restaurant. The door had a sign saying closed but when her father pushed it, it opened. He seemed to know the owner, who was lazily polishing glasses, because although the restaurant was obviously shut he was waved good-humouredly to a table by the bar.
He said, “Any chance of coffee?” And when the barman nodded he added, “And ice cream? You’d like some ice cream, wouldn’t you, Grace?”
She answered that she would, though really she would have preferred coffee too.
The coffee came in a very small cup made of thick white china. There were three scoops of ice cream -strawberry, chocolate and vanilla in a white china dish.
“Now,” he said, ‘ don’t you tell me what you’ve been up to?” He replaced the cup in its saucer and it rattled slightly. She realized then that he was nervous. He had probably been building himself up to this meeting too. The jolly good humour outside the school was an act, like Charlie bouncing playfully around a stranger he wasn’t sure of.
So she took his question seriously and talked to him as she would to the social worker on one of her monthly visits, about school and how well she did in the maths test, and how difficult she found French and about the trip to the Hancock Museum in Newcastle. At first he listened intently but after a while his attention wandered. In the end he interrupted, “I expect you’re wondering why I haven’t looked you up before.”
“Nan wouldn’t tell me where you were.”
“You mustn’t blame her.”
“Is she still there?”
“Oh, she’s still in the caravan. They’re trying to persuade her to move into a home before the winter. She’s an embarrassment. She’ll go in the end but she likes to make them sweat.”
“Them?”
“Social workers, housing officials, people who know best. My bloody family, as if it had anything to do with them.” “But I thought she was your family.”
“What do you mean?” “I thought she was your mother.”
He threw back his head and gave a loud laugh like a vixen barking.
“Nan? No, of course not.” Then realizing that Grace was blushing at her mistake he added gently, “Next best thing though. She looked after me when I was little.” He looked at her across the tablecloth. “Don’t you know anything? Didn’t they tell you?”
“They gave me a photograph. You standing outside a house. Lots of rubbish.”
“I remember that one!” He seemed delighted. “That was the summer they let me stay on the estate. Before your mother rescued me.”
“From what?” She took the statement literally and was imagining robbers, pirates, hostage takers.
“From myself, of course.” He rubbed his hands and laughed. “From myself.”
“It didn’t look much like an estate. The photograph.”
She was thinking of the estate where she was living with Frank and Maureen, the neat cul-de-sacs of Barrett homes which housed other foster parents. This time he seemed to understand.
“Estate’s another name for the land attached to a big house,” he said.
“In this case Holme Park, Langholme.” He looked at her. “Have you heard of it?”
She shook her head.
“You’ve not met Robert then. Or Mother.”
“I’ve only ever met Nan.”
“So that’s how they played it.” He seemed shocked, but at the same time almost pleased. Grace thought it was like when someone you can’t stand lives up to your worst expectations, so you can say, “See, that’s what they’re like. I told you all along.”
“Who’s Robert?” “My brother.” He paused. “My elder brother.”
“Where do you live?”
For the first time he was evasive. “Nowhere special,” he said.
“Nowhere like Holme Park. And nowhere I could take a child.”
“I don’t want you to take me. I just want to know.”
“No point, until I’m settled.”
He stood up and she followed him to the door. It was only five o’clock and she expected him to take her somewhere else. He did, after all, talk about their having hours to spend together but outside the restaurant he shook her hand awkwardly.
“Can you make your own way home?” he asked.
She said she could.
“I’ll be in touch,” he said and walked away quickly, not stopping to look back.
Chapter Twenty-Three.
After waiting for four weeks without any word from her father Grace decided to take matters into her own hands. She knew that it was often necessary to force people to do the right thing. Some of the lads in Laurel Close would never attend school unless Frank took them there and watched them go in. Something about her father reminded her of a certain type of bad boy, the reckless ones who took drugs or set fire to buildings just for kicks.
At breakfast she told Maureen she’d be late home from school because she was going to a meeting of the Natural History Society. Maureen was hunched over the bench in the kitchen, spreading margarine on sliced bread to make packed lunches, as if, she often said, she didn’t have enough of that to do at work all day. She turned briefly.
“That’s all right, pet. I know we can trust you.”
At that Grace felt a pang of guilt because Maureen would inevitably find out that she had been lying. She’d feel hurt because Grace hadn’t talk
ed to her first.
At midday, instead of queuing up to eat her sandwiches in the school hall she slipped out to the telephone box on the main road. There was a pay phone outside the sixth form common room but she was nervous to go there. The sixth formers, wearing their own clothes, talking in confident voices about music and parties, were more intimidating than the teachers.
The main road was noisy. She dialled the number she had copied from the list stuck next to the phone at home, but could hardly hear the tone. A motherly voice answered. “Hello. Social Services. Area Six.”
“Could I speak to Miss. Thorne, please.”
The social worker still called herself Miss. Thorne, though Grace thought she’d married the year before. A ring had appeared and she had been mellower since, more inclined to listen. “Who’s speaking?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t hear.”
“Who’s speaking?” the motherly voice yelled.
“Grace Fulwell.” It seemed very strange to be shouting her own name at the top of her voice.
Miss. Thorne came onto the phone almost immediately.
“Grace? Is anything wrong?”
“No.”
“Why aren’t you at school?”
“It’s lunchtime.”
“How can I help you?”
“I want to make an appointment to see you. Will you be in the office?
Today. About four thirty.”
“I can be if it’s important. But what’s it all about?” Grace could hear panic in her voice, even with a lorry rumbling past. “I thought you were settled with Maureen and Frank.”
Grace didn’t answer. She banged back the receiver, hoping it would sound as if the money had run out.
She had been to the social services office before but only after some crisis, to hang around while Miss. Thorne tried to find another foster family to take her in. She had to look up the address in the phone book. It was a tall house in a tree-lined terraced street, close to the park. All the houses had been turned into offices. Grace passed solicitors, insurance agents and two firms of dentists on her way.
On previous occasions she sat by Miss. Thorne’s desk in the large open plan office on the top floor, but today she was taken into one of the interview rooms. It had a low coffee table and three easy chairs covered in orange vinyl. A no smoking sign was prominently displayed on the wall but Grace could see cigarette burns on the nylon carpet.
Miss. Thorne was nervous. Despite being a social worker, Grace had come to the conclusion that she didn’t like the unexpected. And if Grace had fallen out with Frank and Maureen she’d probably come to the end of the line where foster parents were concerned.
“Well, Grace?” she said. “Why the mystery?”
“It’s about my father.”
“Yes?”
“I do have a right to know him, don’t I?” She had learnt a lot by listening to other foster children.
Miss. Thorne hesitated. “Where appropriate,” she said.
“What does that mean?”
“It’s in the guidelines. Foster children should keep in touch with their natural parents, where appropriate.”
“Why isn’t it appropriate for me?”
Miss. Thorne seemed thrown by the question. Perhaps she thought Grace hadn’t heard the word before, wouldn’t understand it.
“Miss. Thorne?”
“Look.” Her voice was persuasive and Grace was immediately suspicious.
She looked at the woman, sitting beside her on the orange vinyl chair.
Her legs were folded at the knee like a man’s. She was wearing the same sort of clothes knee-length skirts and shapeless cardigans as when Grace first met her. She reached out and patted Grace’s hand. Grace made an effort not to flinch.
“Look, we’ve known each other a long time and I’m not your teacher.
Isn’t it about time you called me Antonia?” Grace continued staring. She knew she was being fobbed off with this chumminess, but she was intrigued by the exotic name. “Antonia? Is that really what you’re called?”
The woman nodded encouragingly, but Grace was determined not to be distracted again. She raised her voice and said firmly, “Tell me about my father.”
Quite suddenly the social worker gave up her resistance. She caved in.
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything. From the beginning. Why wasn’t he at home when my mother died?”
“Because he’d already left your mother to live with another woman.”
It seemed to Grace that she took a spiteful pleasure in the words, that she was really saying. So, you really want to know, do you? Let’s see if you can handle it.
“Is that why she killed herself?”
Miss. Thorne nodded. “She left a note saying she couldn’t live without him.”
Grace thought of the man who’d sat opposite her in the shadowy restaurant drinking coffee. She felt proud that her father could be the cause of such romantic passion. It didn’t surprise her that she hadn’t been enough to keep her mother alive.
“You mustn’t blame him,” Miss. Thorne said, in such a way that Grace knew that secretly she hoped Grace would. But blame was the last thing on Grace’s mind. She was after facts, information.
“Is he still living with the woman?”
“No. They separated soon after your mother’s death.”
“Why have you never let me see him?”
“It was never a matter of that. Of not letting!”
“What then? Not appropriate, you said. What did that mean?”
“For a long time we didn’t know where he was. Your mother’s death upset him. He travelled.”
“Where?”
“He worked as a diver for oil companies. I understand he was in Central America and the Middle East. We learnt that much from his family. They didn’t know any more.”
“Family?”
This was a potent word and Grace was jerked back to the present. She’d been imagining her father swimming through a clear blue ocean. Foster children were always talking about families. Even Maureen’s bad boys had brothers in the nick or aunties who came occasionally to take them to Mcdonald’s. Grace had always been left out.
“Your father’s brother and his mother, your grandmother. They live in a village in the country.”
“Langholme?” She had remembered all the facts passed on to her during that meeting in the restaurant. “I guessed from something Nan said.”
Grace picked some of Charlie’s hairs from her pleated school skirt.
“Why didn’t you tell me my family lived in Holme Park? You could have told me that.”
“We didn’t want to raise expectations which couldn’t be met.” Grace wasn’t sure what that meant but ignored it. She had a more important question.
“Why didn’t I ever see them, my gran and uncle? You took me to meet Nan.”
“They didn’t want to see you. Nan did.” As soon as the words were spoken Miss. Thorne seemed to regret them. Perhaps even for her, even provoked by this stubborn and demanding child, they were too hurtful.
But Grace considered the idea seriously.
“They didn’t know me,” she said at last.
“They felt you were your father’s responsibility,” Miss. Thorne said more gently. “They never found it easy to get on with your father.” Grace understood. “Oh,” she said. “They didn’t want to be lumbered.”
They looked at each other and shared a rare smile of understanding.
“Is my father still abroad?” She turned away as she asked the question, casually. Of course she knew he wasn’t abroad, but it would be a betrayal to let on to Miss. Thorne. Besides, it was a sort of test, to see whether or not she was lying.
“No. He came back a while ago.”
“Where does he live? With his family?”
“Different sorts of places. With friends. In hostels. He moves around a lot. He’s found it hard to settle.”
“Why?”
“Pe
rhaps because he’s an unsettled sort of person.”
“Like me.”
“In a way.”
Grace rubbed her finger and thumb together, releasing dog hairs which floated to the floor.
“I want to see him.”
“That might be possible. But he has problems.”
“Problem’ was a euphemism much used by Maureen and Frank. Gary was a glue sniffer. Matthew took smack. Both had problems.
“Does he take drugs?”
“Not in the sense you mean.”
“What sense?”
“He’s probably an alcoholic. Do you understand that?”
“Of course.” Gary’s mam was an alcoholic and Grace added, “It doesn’t stop Gary seeing his mam.” “I’ve said it might be possible.”
“When?”
“When I’ve talked to him again. And to Maureen and Frank.”
“Again?” “I have been trying to arrange it,” Miss. Thorne said defensively. “Your father isn’t always an easy person to deal with. He has his own way of doing things. I didn’t want to build up your hopes only to have him disappear again!
“I understand,” Grace said. “Thanks.” And she did feel grateful.
She’d never expected Miss. Thorne to make any effort on her part.
“And you mustn’t expect too much,” Miss. Thorne went on. “He wouldn’t, for example, be able to have you to live with him.”
“That’s all right.”
She was perfectly happy with Maureen and Frank.
And Charlie would miss her. She didn’t want a change in her circumstances, just to know her father, to see him occasionally. To find out more about her family.
It took three weeks for Miss. Thorne to arrange a meeting between Grace and her father but Grace was patient. She was enjoying school and concentrated on her work. In Biology they gave chloroform to fruit flies so they remained still long enough for the pupils to count the vestigial wings. Grace was fascinated. The girl sitting next to her was heavy-handed with the chloroform but returned the dead flies to the jar, hoping no one would notice.
Grace knew the social worker’s promise hadn’t been forgotten because at home Maureen and Frank discussed her father. They were very impressed that Edmund Fulwell’s family lived at Holme Park. Apparently it had come as news to them too. Perhaps the social worker had remembered Dave’s awkwardness, his feeling that Grace was in some way different, and thought she’d be better accepted if her wealthy connections weren’t known.