The Color of Secrets

by Lindsay Jayne Ashford

  “Does he realize the baby could be . . .”

  “Could be what?”

  “Colored.” Eva pressed her lips together so that all the blood went out of them. “Dark-skinned, anyway. Darker than you.”

  “Darker than me?” Louisa’s voice bounced off the walls of the kitchen. “How could it be darker than me? Ray’s got blond hair and blue eyes!”

  “Yes, but it doesn’t always work like that,” Eva said quietly.

  “What do you mean? How do you know?”

  Eva let out a long breath. Her eyes were fixed on the table. “When I was pregnant with you, I went to see a doctor,” she whispered. “He told me I should put you in a children’s home. He said I’d only be storing up misery for myself if I kept you, because the color would come out for generations and generations.” She reached for her teacup, cradling it in her hands. “He warned me I might have a light-skinned child who could give birth to a . . .” she faltered, staring into the cup. “To a black baby.”

  “So why did you keep me, then?” Louisa’s lips trembled as the words came out.

  “I . . .” Eva’s voice broke away and she jumped up, tea slopping over the rim of the cup and staining the tablecloth. “Just tell Ray, will you?”

  Louisa heard her mother’s footsteps thudding up the stairs. She looked at her father and saw that his face was drained of color. It occurred to her that he had not heard any of this until now.

  “What can I do, Dad?” Her voice sounded small, like a child’s.

  “I don’t know, love.” Eddie sank into the chair Eva had vacated. “Let’s cross one bridge at a time, shall we?”

  When Ray came at six o’clock, he was not alone. His mother and father were standing on the doorstep with him when Louisa answered the door.

  “She looks foreign,” Mrs. Brandon said when Ray introduced them. “Is she English?”

  Ray looked as embarrassed as Louisa felt. “Don’t take any notice of my mum,” he whispered. “She’s a bit shocked, that’s all.”

  “She’s a good little worker, though, Edna!” Ray’s father patted Louisa on the head as he handed her his coat. “If she looks after our Ray half as well as the folks that come to the Odeon, he’ll be a happy man!”

  Louisa showed them into the living room, uncertain how to behave toward her boss now that he was about to become her father-in-law.

  “Your wife’s not at home?” Mr. Brandon said, after being introduced to Eddie.

  “She’s not well,” Eddie glanced up at the ceiling. “Having a nap.”

  “I’m not surprised, with all this upset!” Edna Brandon sank into one of the polythene-swathed armchairs, taking in the newly decorated house and its modern furniture. “Very nice, I’m sure,” she said, raising one eyebrow. “Just moved in, have you?”

  Eddie nodded.

  “Where were you before?”

  “Sycamore Street.”

  The eyebrow went up another half inch. “And your Louisa,” she pronounced the name as if it were an exotic fruit she’d never heard of. “You adopted her, did you?”

  Louisa glanced at Ray. If he was surprised at his mother’s question, he didn’t show it.

  Eddie hesitated, but only for a moment. “Yes, that’s right.”

  “And the parents?”

  “Father’s an American.”

  Louisa saw her father giving Ray’s mother a conspiratorial look. She wondered what he was up to.

  “Oh, I see,” Mrs. Brandon nodded slowly.

  “One of those Hispanics, I suppose?” Mr. Brandon piped up.

  “We don’t know much about him,” Eddie replied. He stood up and went over to the drinks cabinet, exchanging glances with Louisa. “Now, can I get you both a drink?” He beamed at Ray’s parents, “A glass of sherry, Mrs. Brandon? Or would you prefer a Babycham?”

  Louisa and Ray were married at the end of May, four weeks before her eighteenth birthday.

  Wolverhampton Registry Office was gray and unromantic. And the elastic girdle her mother had bought from Beatties underwear department did nothing to stop Louisa’s white satin dress from riding up at the front.

  “Marry in May, rue the day,” Ray’s mother muttered as they stood in front of the registrar. With only a few feet of empty space between them, she must have known Louisa would hear it.

  “You look beautiful, Lou,” Ray said as he kissed her.

  Louisa closed her eyes and kissed him back, hoping rockets would explode and violins strike up in her head. But all she could hear was the wail of a police siren in the street outside. “It’s going to be all right, Ray, isn’t it?” Her lips trembled as she spoke.

  “Yes, sweetheart,” he hugged her to him. “Of course it is!”

  Chapter 27

  AUGUST 1962

  Louisa was terrified. Not of the pain, although that was bad enough. She was scared of the child that was now fighting its way out of her body.

  During the last month of her pregnancy she had had two recurring nightmares. In the first her baby was a miniature version of Trefor. As she reached to pick him up, his tiny hands turned into snakes that wrapped themselves around her throat. In the second dream she gave birth to a child with black skin and no face.

  She found the nightmares equally disturbing, forcing her to confront the very things she had tried her utmost to deny. The awful reality was that she had no idea who her baby’s father was. She and Ray had had sex three times in the two weeks either side of Christmas. That had to make him a more likely contender than Trefor, didn’t it? Besides, she told herself, Trefor was old. He was older than her mother, so he must be at least forty. Men that age didn’t father babies, did they?

  Her mother’s warning that the child might be dark-skinned had eaten away at her. Ray would never believe that a black baby could be his. She hadn’t breathed a word of what Eva had suggested. She was too scared of losing him. She could just imagine his parents’ reaction if they found out their precious son had married a half-caste, as Ray’s dad called one little boy who came to the Saturday morning shows at the Odeon.

  Once, when she and Ray had driven into town with his mother, they had passed a black man and a white woman kissing on a street corner. “Look at that!” Edna Brandon had hissed, her nose in the air. “In broad daylight too! Disgusting, I call it!”

  Louisa had been unable to resist a long look at the couple, realizing that her mother must have done just that with her real father. She suddenly found herself wondering how they had met, what places they had gone to together. And how she had felt about him.

  She had thought about it a lot when she was in bed that night. But she can’t even remember his name, she reminded herself. With a sinking feeling she came to the conclusion that it couldn’t have been anything more than a one-night stand. She had tried to tell herself that it didn’t matter. She had a dad. A better one than many real fathers. But no matter how much she tried to convince herself, it hurt her to think that this nameless, faceless man had cared so little about her mother, had used her without a moment’s thought of the consequences. In fact, she thought, what he had done made him almost as bad as Trefor.

  She was all alone now, in a brightly lit, sparsely furnished hospital side room. The midwife had left her, saying the baby would be ages yet. She gripped the side of the bed as a contraction turned her belly into a tight ball of pain. She wished her mother was with her. Or her dad. Or even Ray. She didn’t understand why women were expected to go through something as frightening as this with only strangers for company.

  As the pain subsided, she thought of the farmhouse in Wales. Of the bedroom her mother had told her she was born in. The thought of Trefor lying in that big iron bed made her feel sick. She cried out as another violent contraction racked her body. “Nurse!” she gasped, trying to slide a leg off the high bed. She thumped her fist on the mattress in a bid to get through the fog of pain. “Help me!”

  As an irritated face appeared around the door, Louisa slithered onto the hard hospital
floor. “Quick, Joyce!” she heard the nurse shout. “I can see the head!”

  Seconds later Louisa heard a strange sound. Like a hungry cat unable to get at its food.

  “It’s a boy!” The midwife’s round, shiny face came into view. She was clutching a bundle in a bloodstained towel. “Let’s get you back on the bed, and then you can hold him.”

  All Louisa could see was a slick of black hair poking out of the towel. As she took her son in her arms, she pulled back the folds to reveal an angry little face with eyes tight shut and a mouth pulled wide with the effort of crying. His nose butted her arm as he burrowed into her skin. She stared at his tiny head, so fragile looking but so strong in its sure, instinctive search for her breast.

  “Oh God,” she said, as she and the midwife exchanged smiles for the first time. “He looks just like me!”

  The midwife laughed. “Don’t sound so surprised! I’ll give you a few minutes, then I’ll come and clean him up. Is your husband about?”

  Louisa nodded. Ray had told her he wasn’t going to leave the hospital, no matter how long she was in labor.

  “I’ll go and tell him the good news. He can come and see you both at visiting time.” She shut the door behind her, and Louisa lay staring at her baby as he tugged at her breast. She felt a rush of euphoria. Relief that he didn’t look like Trefor. Relief that his skin was the same pale brown as her own. But it was more than that. To her amazement she realized that what she felt was love. In an instant she knew why her mother had ignored the advice of the doctor all those years ago. Her mother must have felt the way she did now. Prepared to face anything life might throw at her, whatever the consequences, for the sake of this tiny bundle in her arms.

  When Ray arrived, his face was half-hidden by an enormous bunch of flowers. He stood awkwardly in the doorway, looking from Louisa to the wooden cot, as if he didn’t know which to approach first. Suddenly he darted across the room, pecked her on the cheek and then went straight to the baby, pulling the blanket from his sleeping body.

  “What are you doing, Ray?” She felt a stab of fear.

  “Counting his fingers and toes,” Ray replied without looking up. “It’s all right—they’re all there!”

  She smiled to herself. This wasn’t the way it happened in films. Ray was supposed to give her a big hug, call her darling and tell her how clever and beautiful she was. Then he would gaze adoringly at his baby son and say something profound about their lives being complete. Despite the smile, there were tears in her eyes. Because she knew it was never going to be like it was in the films for her and Ray. It had mattered until today: mattered very much. But now she wasn’t sure it mattered anymore.

  The next day her mother was allowed to come and visit.

  “Dad’ll be along this evening when he’s finished work,” Eva said as she kissed her daughter and made for the cot. “Oh Lou!” Her voice wobbled as she caught sight of her grandson. “He looks just like . . .” She turned away, pulling a handkerchief from her pocket.

  “Like who, Mum?” Louisa raised herself up on her elbow.

  Her mother shook her head and blew her nose. Louisa wondered whose face she had seen. Did the baby remind her of David? It seemed unlikely, given that he had been a fair-skinned blond. Could it be him? Louisa thought. She remembered her nightmare of the faceless baby with black skin.

  “His eyes!” Eva mumbled into her handkerchief. “They’re . . . they’re so . . .” She seemed incapable of finishing the sentence. Shaking her head, she reached out to stroke the baby’s hand.

  Louisa watched her intently. Her son’s eyes were indigo blue, but the midwife had told her they would almost certainly change color during the first year of his life. “Dark brown, I should think,” she’d said. “I’ve brought hundreds of babies into the world and I’m not usually wrong. Very dark brown, I’d say.”

  “They’re so what, Mum? Who does he remind you of?” There, she had asked the question. She held her breath, as if she had just lit the blue touch paper of a firework.

  “He’s just so beautiful, Lou.” Eva turned to her and smiled. That was it: the mask was back in place. There would be no opening up now, no hint of what Louisa so desperately wanted to know. “What are you going to call him?”

  “We can’t decide,” Louisa said. “We’re torn between Thomas and Timothy.”

  “Oh?” Eva looked quickly away, leaning over the baby. “They’re both nice names. I do like Thomas, though. Can I hold him?”

  Louisa nodded, studying her mother as she walked around the room, cradling the child in her arms. She was talking to him. Whispering something so softly, Louisa couldn’t make it out. And suddenly her expression changed to one of such sadness that Louisa felt a lump in her throat. She thought of David: the black-and-white photo of a chubby, smiling little boy clutching a lamb in his arms. Suddenly she understood, for the first time, how the pain of losing a child must be the worst kind of pain imaginable. Was that what was creasing her mother’s face with grief now? Or was it some other buried sorrow that Louisa was never going to be allowed to share?

  Chapter 28

  SEPTEMBER 1967

  Although autumn was just around the corner, the sun blazed down on the orchard at the back of the high Victorian terrace along Oaklands Road. Louisa watched Tom piling apples in a toy wheelbarrow. “Stay under the tree,” she called. “It’s too hot in the sun!” She left her chair in the shade of the building and darted across the grass to adjust his hat. “Don’t want him to get sunstroke,” she said, in answer to Gina’s quizzical look.

  Despite the heat Louisa was wearing a polo neck sweater and slacks. Gina had given up commenting on her summer wardrobe years ago, apparently satisfied with the explanation that Louisa had sensitive skin. If she had asked why Tom was not allowed to play in the sun, Louisa would have told her he had inherited the same problem. They had been friends for thirteen years, but that first big lie lay between them like a slumbering tiger.

  “I don’t know how you managed,” Gina said, “when he was little, I mean—all those stairs!”

  Louisa smiled. It had been hard, bringing up a baby in a second-floor flat. Up and down the narrow staircase with Tom in one arm and a pile of laundry in the other. Baby clothes strung on the line in all weathers because there was nowhere to hang them inside. Once, despairing at ever getting them dry, she had cut up one of her own skirts to pin around his little body. Gina was lucky, she thought. She had married a boy who had been a classmate of theirs. They lived in a brand-new council house with a front and back garden of their own, rather than the communal one Louisa and Ray shared with three sets of neighbors. And now Gina had a baby. A three-month-old girl, who was asleep in her pram under the apple tree.

  “I should have been sensible, like you, shouldn’t I?” Louisa smiled. She couldn’t pretend she wasn’t envious of Gina, but she didn’t regret the way her life had turned out. Tom was her whole world. If things had been different, she wouldn’t have had him, and that was unthinkable.

  Perhaps Gina sensed they were straying onto dangerous ground because she changed the subject. “How’s Tom getting on at school?”

  “Oh, fine. He was a bit clingy the first week, but now he runs into the classroom without even looking back.” She shrugged. “I think I was more upset about it than he was. I don’t know what to do with myself half the time.”

  “I thought perhaps you and Ray might . . . you know.” Gina glanced at the pram.

  “Bit difficult when there’s a five-year-old in the bed!” There was laughter in Louisa’s voice, but she couldn’t look Gina in the eye. She wasn’t lying. Tom did creep into their bed most nights. And she was glad. It had given her a convenient excuse. She and Ray hadn’t made love more than a couple of times in the past year.

  “It’s really hard when you have kids, isn’t it?” Gina shook her head. “My mum and dad have offered to look after Julia for a whole weekend next month so Andy and I can go away together. We’re thinking of Blackpool—you
know—to see the illuminations.” She grinned. “Not that I’m likely to see very much apart from the bedroom ceiling!”

  Louisa smiled back, secretly wondering how Gina could be so keen on sex. It was obvious she and Andy were at it whenever the opportunity arose. Gina had had a couple of other boyfriends before he came on the scene and had always confided all the details of her sex life to Louisa. Andy, she said, was the best lover she had ever had. They had taken great delight in having sex in every room of the new house. They’d even sneaked off to bed when Julia was just two weeks old, seizing their chance while Gina’s mother was pushing her around the block in the pram.

  For Louisa, sex was something to be endured. She knew it made Ray sad that she didn’t enjoy it as much as he seemed to, and she knew he would have liked it more often. He never got home from the cinema before ten thirty in the evenings, and she always made sure she was asleep, or pretending to be. The only consolation, as far as she was concerned, was that on the rare occasions they did wake up alone together, it was always over very quickly. She had timed it once, glancing at her watch on the bedside table while his body pressed against her. Thirty-three seconds. She worked out that during their entire marriage that only added up to about ten minutes in total. Not a bad price to pay for having Tom.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t like Ray. She was very fond of him. He was good with Tom and generous with what little money he had to spare. Always bringing home little presents for them both. She had come to the conclusion that passion was something that only happened in films, not real life, and she might have gone on believing it, had it not been for Gina and Andy.

  She would have liked to confide in Gina, but she feared that would mean having to explain why she had started seeing Ray in the first place. And that was another secret she wouldn’t share with anyone.

  “Perhaps that’s what you and Ray should do.” Gina’s voice cut across her thoughts. “You’ve never had a holiday alone together, have you?”