Different Genes

by Claire Baldry

  “I can’t get up. My legs don’t work.” Ruby’s face changed to a more positive expression, “You are Louise, I know you are Louise. You still have that lovely blonde hair, but I bet it’s out of a bottle these days. How old are you?” The words fell out of Ruby’s mouth without pausing for breath.

  “I’m sixty-one.”

  “And you are still beautiful. Is this your young man?”

  Simon gave Ruby his hand, “Yes, Ruby. My name is Simon.”

  He moved two chairs, so they could form a small circle. Ruby rang a bell. “They’ll come quickly today, because you’re here. A carer appeared.

  “Tea for three please. And cake… you want cake?” Louise nodded. “Cake, as well, please. Some of the residents here have lost their marbles, but I’ve still got mine, and I won’t be treated like an idiot. So… this is wonderful. I have always wanted to know what happened to you, and just to look at you. And here you are, tall and beautiful with a fine young man. I want to know everything that you have been doing.”

  Louise and Simon suddenly realised that Ruby was as hungry for information as they were. Simon interrupted, “Ruby, before Louise gives you her life story, we really need some information. How did Louise’s mother die, and what happened to her grandma?”

  Ruby went pale, “You don’t know? No one told you?”

  “I don’t know anything, Ruby, about my life before the age of three.”

  “You’ll need more than tea. I should have ordered you a stiff drink.”

  The tea arrived, and Ruby became diverted. She insisted on pouring it into the cups for everyone with her trembling hand. “This is Louise,” she said to the carer. She is my cousin’s granddaughter. Simon whispered to Louise, “We might need several days.”

  “I hope you are feeling strong,” said Ruby “You are in for a shock.”

  “Just tell me,” Louise instructed Ruby.

  “Your mother was fifteen…”

  “Patricia?” interrupted Louise.

  “Yes, Patricia. She was fifteen and on her way home from school, from art club. She was very good at art, like her mother.” Simon squeezed Louise’s hand.

  “It was dark, late October. The clocks had gone back. Patricia was attacked and raped in a Rochester churchyard. She slowly recovered, but three months later your mother discovered she was pregnant.”

  Louise gasped.

  “Are you alright?” asked Simon, “It’s a lot to take in.”

  Louise was trembling, “I’m fine.”

  Ruby continued “You have to remember that this was the fifties. Babies born out of wedlock were considered shameful. Rape or no rape, your mother’s pregnancy was kept a secret.”

  “Did they catch the man who raped her?”

  “No, he was never caught.”

  “So my real father, the rapist, never knew about me. I think I am pleased that he didn’t know.”

  “Your mother, Patricia, was sent to the convent in Chatham to give birth. She was there for five weeks. Cathy, your grandma, was not allowed to visit Patricia at the convent. You were to be adopted.”

  “What happened?”

  “Patricia died in childbirth. I remember that there was a link to the attack, a possible brain haemorrhage. Cathy wasn’t told for three days. Those nuns were monsters, even worse than my prison officers here. When Cathy found out, she went to the convent and demanded to take you home.” Louise noticed that Simon was taking notes.

  “Cathy was a wealthy widow, so I used to go and stay to keep her company. I was just a poor cousin. Donald, your uncle, would have been your grandpa, but he died in the war. He was a pilot. I lived in Dartford with my seven younger brothers and sisters. Then Cathy invited me to stay from time to time and help with the baby… with you. We visited Patricia’s grave one time, but we were never allowed in again.”

  Louise noticed that Ruby was looking tired. “Shall we come back tomorrow, Ruby? You can tell me the rest then.”

  “Lovely. Can you bring me a bottle of whisky and some decent biscuits?”

  “We certainly can, Ruby,” Simon chuckled.

  “And tomorrow, you must tell me everything about yourself.”

  “Ruby, can I ask you one more question before I go?”

  “Of course.”

  “What happened to my grandmother, to Nana?”

  “Nana, oh yes, you called her ‘Nana’. She began to lose her marbles, like most of this lot in here. I was away when they took you to the children’s home. I wanted to keep you, but with seven brothers and sisters, it wasn’t an option.”

  Ruby’s eyes were closing.

  “One final question,” said Simon “What sort of biscuits?”

  “Bourbons,” Ruby replied, and she drifted off to sleep.

  Simon drove Louise back to the hotel. They stayed silent until they reached their room. Simon stood in the window and looked at Louise. She was staring into space.

  “Speak to me, Lou”

  “I am the daughter of a rapist.”

  “You are, and you have just met your first blood relation who is alive, and she is quite delightful.”

  “She is, isn’t she? Can we be sure she is a blood relative?”

  “Yes, I’ve been working it out from what she said. Her father must have been your grandfather’s much younger and, apparently much poorer, brother. She was born a Makepiece… as you were. And your grandfather was a WW2 Pilot. What’s one rapist amongst all that glory?”

  “You are amazing, Simon, you have made me feel better already… ‘my young man’.” Louise giggled, “I think we should add some flowers to the whisky and the bourbons.”

  They rested in the hotel and then walked into the town centre for an evening meal. As they sat eating, Louise would blurt out sudden thoughts.

  “I keep wondering how Patricia was treated by the nuns.”

  “You can’t change the past, Louise. You should only worry about what you can change. Cathy would have been so proud of you… of your paintings.”

  “I should paint something for Ruby. So many unanswered questions! The dark, I must ask about my fear of the dark!”

  “Write down your questions, Lou. Your mind must be overflowing, but don’t expect to get answers to everything. Why did you say you were pleased that the attacker, the rapist never knew about you?”

  “Because it somehow makes him anonymous. I don’t want to have to think about him or try to understand him. I can just forget he existed.”

  They walked back to the hotel, hand in hand. Louise expected a disturbed night, but her sleep was dreamless.

  Their trip to the care home the following afternoon was far more relaxed. They had wandered into Northampton town centre in the morning and bought two bottles of malt whisky, five large packets of bourbons and a bouquet of flowers.

  “Do you think Ruby is allowed alcohol?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “No, not really, but let’s put the bottles in a bag, just in case.”

  Ruby was waiting for them with tea already set out on a tray. Simon suspected that she kept her carers well under control. Ruby told Louise how she had been rescued from the darkness in the house in Penhurst Crescent by a young police constable. Louise told Ruby about Joan and Peter, her teaching career, her painting, and how she had met Simon. Ruby explained that she had married well, was now widowed, and was sometimes visited by her children and grandchildren. The conversation was joyful.

  “More blood relatives,” murmured Simon. He had a book full of notes of names of people and places which he would piece together when they returned home.

  At exactly the same time as the day before, Ruby began to drift into a sleep, and Louise and Simon crept away. They asked the carer to inform Ruby that they would visit again in a few weeks’ time. />
  Simon turned to Louise in the car park, “Louise Makepiece, Windsor, Watson, and all your component parts, you are an impressive woman from an impressive family.”

  “With an even more impressive young man.”

  Thirty-Four

  Moving On

  Louise’s nightmares diminished after her visit to Northampton, but her need for a nightlight continued. Simon searched accessible police records but could find nothing there about Patricia’s rape or Louise’s transfer to the children’s home. He did, however, discover a short newspaper article in the archives of the Rochester News about an attack on a young girl in 1954 in the local graveyard. At some time in the future, he would ask Louise if she wanted to pay a visit to the graveyard in Rochester, maybe in a few years’ time. He contacted Rochester Grammar and obtained a whole school photo from 1954. They couldn’t be sure which of the teenage faces in the lines of gymslips was Patricia, but Louise liked to scrutinise the photo and guess who her mother was. They made two more whisky laden visits to the Care Home in Northampton, before Ruby died. On the second visit Ruby suddenly remembered the name of the home in Kent in which Cathy was installed. Simon wrote it down.

  Louise and Simon began to look at properties together. They had sufficient funds from Joan’s estate and from the sale of Simon’s business to make the purchase, so there was no pressure to sell Louise’s flat or Simon’s house in a hurry. Louise was, however, disappointed when the occasional nightmare began to return. She would also worry constantly that Simon would leave her. She would find herself in tears when she thought about it. She didn’t want to expose more of her insecurities, so, unbeknown to Simon, Louise paid for some more sessions with a counsellor. She would disappear for over an hour every Wednesday afternoon and tell Simon she was going shopping.

  “Why are you here, Louise?” asked the counsellor.

  “Because I need to rationalise events from my past. I get nightmares. And I have met a wonderful man. I am frightened he will leave me. Things are going so well. We are buying a house together and we haven’t even had a major argument.”

  Over several sessions, Louise told the counsellor about everything that had happened.

  “So, if you did have an argument, would your relationship suffer?”

  “I very much doubt it.”

  Ironically, it was the counselling which actually caused their first major dispute. Simon began to get suspicious about Louise’s disappearance every Wednesday. He had noticed that she drove to her destination when they were in Battle, but she left on foot when in Robertsbridge. One day, he followed her at a distance as she walked down the High Street. He watched her knock on the door of a private house and emerge forty minutes later. That evening he confronted her.

  He had allowed the anxiety to build up inside himself, and it was turning to anger.

  “Where did you go this afternoon, Louise?”

  She missed the signs of anger, and gave a flippant response.

  “Clothes shopping, did you want to come with me?”

  “Show me what you bought then.”

  It was a challenge, not a question.

  Louise began to feel nervous.

  “I didn’t buy anything. I just looked.”

  Simon raised his voice.

  “You didn’t buy anything, because you didn’t go shopping. I watched you go into a house on the High Street.”

  “You followed me!”

  “What were you doing, Louise?”

  “You don’t own me, Simon. I have a right to some privacy.”

  “That’s what Julie said, when she was having an affair.”

  Louise just glared at Simon, “For god’s sake Simon, I’m the one who’s supposed to be insecure!”

  “What were you doing, Louise?”

  She felt under attack. She wanted to escape. She walked into the bedroom to get away from him. He poured himself a drink, and tried to calm down. Louise sat in silence for several minutes, before returning to the studio.

  “Did you really think I was having an affair?”

  “You lied to me. You weren’t shopping.”

  Louise found herself shaking and fumbled through her handbag. She found the small white card with the counsellor’s name and contact details. She put it on the table in front of Simon. He picked up the card.

  “I’ve been having weekly counselling sessions. I thought it might help with the nightmares.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

  “I didn’t want to admit I needed help. I wanted you to think I was coping.”

  She began to feel tearful.

  Simon was overwhelmed with contrition. His anger disappeared far more quickly than it had started, “Louise, darling, you are coping brilliantly. But you’ve been through so much. You are bound to have some symptoms of anxiety. I think counselling is an excellent idea. I just wish you had told me.”

  “Did you really think I was being unfaithful to you?”

  Simon looked ashamed, “I did wonder.”

  “You’re not being rational Simon. I am devoted to you. We’re trying to buy a house together. In any case I wouldn’t have the energy!”

  “I’m sorry, but you did lie to me.”

  She stroked his hair.

  “You mean like you lied to me, when you paid that first visit to Karen and Michael. Try to trust me. I trust you. Perhaps you should have the counselling.”

  Louise spoke softly to diffuse any remaining anger, “I won’t deceive you again. I promise.”

  They clung to each other pleased to have survived the argument.

  Simon suddenly returned to playfulness, “No energy for an affair? Am I really such a stud that I wear you out?”

  “It has been known, but I rather like it.”

  The following week Louise’s counsellor asked, “What are Simon’s faults?”

  “He’s very single minded. Once he is focussed on a project, he is like a juggernaut lorry,” Louise didn’t want to talk about their argument.

  “And if you ask him, does he slow down?”

  “Always.”

  “Louise, I’m not supposed to give advice, but in your case, I am going to make an exception. You have been through so much that I think you can’t accept when things are finally going well. Just enjoy your new life.”

  “And the nightmares?”

  “They are lodged very deep in your past. You may have to accept them as a permanent part of your existence.”

  “I think I knew that really.”

  Louise decided she had no more need of counselling.

  Simon successfully searched for ‘Three Trees’ home in Kent, which Ruby had mentioned. He wrote to the home to see if they had details of a Catherine Makepiece. They confirmed the date of Catherine’s death, and invited Simon and Louise to visit. They travelled to Kent for a half day in the summer of 2017. It was now a local day centre for people with learning difficulties with attached sheltered accommodation. However, it had kept the name ‘Three Trees’. Louise and Simon were shown into the day room by the supervisor. Three carers were sitting with the clients helping them to put together the pieces of a jigsaw and to construct simple models with boxes and glue. Louise found herself looking at a large painting on the wall. She walked over to it.

  “It’s good, isn’t it?” said the supervisor. “When we took over ten years ago, most of the furnishings and pictures from the Care Home were destroyed, but we really liked this one, and it clearly shows the three trees in the front of the house, after which the building was named.”

  Louise examined the painting and called to Simon.

  “Look.”

  In the bottom right hand corner of the painting were written the words ‘Catherine Makepiece’.

  “That’s my grandma’s name.”<
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  “How amazing! Would you like a cup of tea?” asked the supervisor.

  “You do realise that we are now only a Day Centre. ‘Three Trees Care Home’ closed over ten years ago. I’m pretty sure all the detailed records of former residents were destroyed. We only have the register of former residents with their full names and dates of birth and death. It’s very unlikely that we will have any new information for you.”

  “What about the staff?”

  “Most of the staff left, when the was home closed.”

  Louise sighed, “Well at least I’ve seen the picture.”

  “It’s very well painted, isn’t it. We find that people with memory loss often retain quite complex skills well into their condition. Do you like painting?”

  Simon interrupted. “Louise could have painted that picture. Her style is very similar.”

  “Well feel free to stay and finish your tea.” Louise sensed that they were being moved on.

  “I’ll just have a word with Andrea. I believe she was a cleaner here in the Care Home Days. She works in our kitchen now.” Andrea came out and spoke to them.

  “I don’t remember your Nan, but I do know a lady who used to work here as a carer, when it was a care home. If you give me your Nanny’s name, I’ll ask her if she remembers anything. Let me have your phone number. If I discover anything, I’ll contact you.”

  Louise and Simon thanked Andrea, and left.

  “I wondered if you wanted the painting,” said Simon.

  “I did think about it, but it belongs at ‘Three Trees’, doesn’t it? I found that visit quite hard work.”

  Simon agreed, “It was hard work. They had a job to do, and weren’t really interested in us. Do you think Andrea will ring us?”

  “I very much doubt it.”

  Andrea did not ring. However, three days later they received an unexpected call from a lady named Martha.

  “Is that Louise Makepiece?”

  “I was known by the name of Louise Makepiece until I was three.”

  “My name is Martha. Andrea gave me your number. I used to work at ‘Three Trees’ Care Home. I knew your grandmother.”