by Janet Pywell
The taxi drops me in the Angel. I pull my collar around my neck. I have always been alone – there has only ever been me. My birth mother didn’t want me – her career came first. My birth father lied about me. My adopted mother resented me and my adopted father would have sold me for beer money.
I don’t need any of them. I will move on to my new life. I want to prove Josephine Lavelle is a liar.
I don’t need a mother.
I only want one thing. It belongs to me and I will protect it. The Concert is mine.
My step is resolute and determined. I follow the directions in my hand and it takes me twenty minutes to locate the home of Nurse Angela Morris. It’s the address that the investigator discovered and Josephine kept it in the folder. The house is at the end of a terrace set back from the others beside a narrow alley. Steep steps with a collection of hibernating clematis, empty baskets dangling from iron hooks and tired hydrangeas that haven’t yet been pruned lead to a blue front door.
In the summer I imagine it to be colourful and warm but today it’s frosty and full of decay. There is a light glowing in the window so I knock and wait.
An old lady opens the door. Her left side seems distorted and her arm hangs limply. She wears a floral patterned dress and a lopsided grin but she isn’t smiling, she stares at me frowning in confusion.
‘Angela Morris? My name is Mikky Dos Santos. You may remember me as Michaella McGreevy?’
‘Michaella McGreevy,’ she slurs although she is not drunk. ‘What’s taken you so long? You’d better come in.’
I’m trying to detect a trace of familiarity, some recognition or a sign that I may know who she is but she is a stranger to me. She is also older than I thought and I’m disappointed. She must have been over forty when I was born. Will she remember the details?
Illness has been unkind to her. She walks with difficulty holding onto furniture and leaves me alone in the cramped lounge while she disappears into a galley kitchen at the back where I guess the smell of cooked cabbage originates. I gag before taking a tissue from my bag.
The room is squashed and airless with dark and heavy furniture. Tiny paned windows are cut into squares and a table lamp casts a yellow glow across an open book on the arm of the chair – it’s a well-known thriller – and on the floor a stack of celebrity magazines are ringed and stained from damp glasses and crusts of dried food.
Angela Morris returns with two crystal glasses filled with ice. The gin is rough on my throat and there’s very little tonic.
‘It is barely eleven o’clock.’ I cough. The stuffed armchair nearest to the window looks the cleanest so I sit down opposite her.
‘Drink it. You’ll need it. Cheers!’ She smacks her crooked lips and when she sits our knees are almost touching.
‘I had a stroke,’ she says slowly and deliberately. ‘So be patient with me. I was pleased when that nice man came, you know, the private investigator – Joe? That’s why I gave him the postcard and the letter. I didn’t know what else to do after I read about her last August. You know, when she was shot. I thought she would die. I saw it on the news. It was on the television and I thought, I’m the only one who knows the truth.’
‘She almost died,’ I say.
‘I would like to have met her again.’
‘Perhaps you might.’
‘Does she know you’re here?’
‘Yes,’ I lie.
‘I was pleased when he said she wanted to trace you.’ Angela Morris speaks in small measured sentences. ‘You were a pretty little baby, curly black hair and deep blue eyes. I held you in my arms. You were a quiet little girl. Very contented.’ Her distorted mouth changes into a grimace as she attempts a smile and I imagine this woman holding me – thirty years ago.
‘And, you knew I was going to be adopted?’ I prompt.
‘Dr McGreevy told me. He had all the paperwork arranged. He said your mother – Josephine – agreed but I spoke to her and I could see she was poorly. She was in labour for over fifteen hours. I pleaded with her to have a caesarean but she wouldn’t. She said it was God’s way of punishing her and that it was his revenge but then it was too late. Michael insisted – Doctor McGreevy – insisted. He said she wasn’t in a fit state to argue with him. I felt so sorry for her. She was so ill. But he wouldn’t let me near her after that. He insisted on looking after her himself.’
‘Why did he do that?’
‘She was very distressed. There was a time when I thought she wouldn’t let you go.’
‘She held me?’
‘Yes.’
‘She doesn’t remember. She says it’s like a dream. As if it all happened to someone else…’
‘Oh, it was her all right. She didn’t stop crying. There’s no mistake about that. She wasn’t happy. She didn’t want to let you go. She kept saying she’d changed her mind but Michael was determined. He could be very persuasive.’
‘But it was illegal.’
‘Doctors often arranged adoptions like that. I don’t think they would get away with it now… Everything’s changed. It’s more regulated’
‘My adopted parents registered me as their child. It’s their names on my birth certificate. I would never have known.’
‘I think it happened a lot – especially in Ireland. It was Michael’s idea.’
‘That’s awful. There could be more children – children like me?’
‘Probably.’
‘But there’s no way for them of ever knowing the truth?’
‘Michael didn’t always follow the rules. He was unconventional like that.’
‘Unconventional isn’t what I would call it. Besides, he was the doctor and you were the nurse. Why don’t you refer to him as Doctor McGreevy?’
‘Josephine wasn’t the only woman to have an affair with him. Once she became famous and travelled around Europe he was all on his own. He was lonely. He came to London a few times and we kept in touch. He wanted to make sure that there were no questions asked and I think he wanted to keep me sweet and make sure I didn’t tell anyone.’
‘So you had an affair with him?’ I sip my drink and gaze at this woman, struggling to understand the complexity of their relationship.
‘Only for a few months, I was never an attractive woman. I was a nurse from a poor family and I was flattered by his attention. He could be very charming and amusing and he made me laugh. But he only loved her. I don’t think he ever got over her leaving. He listened to her music all the time.’
I am thinking of this old woman with my father. A man called Michael.
‘I was much younger then,’ she says, as if reading my mind. ‘And I was older than Josephine. His wife had only died a year or so before. He was very handsome and fit for a man in his early sixties. He flew to England regularly and he often went to where she was singing. He followed her around for many years.’
‘I don’t think she knows that.’
‘She had her career. It’s what he wanted. What they both wanted.’
‘And you kept their secret. Why?’
‘He paid me and I retired early. I never worried about money.’
I sip the gin for reassurance. ‘Did you know the couple who adopted me?’
‘They worked in a hotel in London and Michael said they were just married. Alisha and Paco – they agreed to take you to Spain.’ Her lopsided face tilts to look at me with her good eye. ‘Were they good to you?’
I shake my head. ‘My mother was very jealous and when my father paid me any attention she became angry and violent.’
‘Where are they now?’
‘Mama died when I was fourteen. She was drunk and she wrapped a motorbike around a tree. My father spent most of his life playing cards and he would steal money from my piggybank to pay for his cannabis.’
She shakes her head and sips her gin. ‘What a waste.’
‘Why didn’t you contact Josephine?’ I ask. ‘Why didn’t you get in touch with her and tell her that I was a girl. Why did you let her
believe I was a boy?’
‘Michael only died last year. He would have been furious with me. He would have stopped my income.’
‘He still pays you?’
‘He did. Until the day he died. He kept his promise.’
‘She thought she had given birth to a boy,’ I insist. ‘How could she think that?’
‘Michael insisted that I should never tell the truth to anyone. He said it was to protect you both but he was the one with the secret. It was to protect him too.’
‘But you knew?’
‘That he was your father? Yes.’
‘And you knew Josephine was married to his son?’
‘It didn’t take me long to find out. Then when Josephine was so ill, she was delirious and she told me it was a secret but then afterwards years later he admitted it.’
‘Once I was adopted and gone and out of the way.’
‘Yes.’
‘He doesn’t strike me as being the kindest man in the world,’ I say.
‘He was–’
‘Not to me.’
‘He thought you would have a better life. That you would be better cared for–’
‘To give me away to strangers – to hippies – to live abroad?’
‘They weren’t strangers.’
‘He knew them?’
‘Alisha was his cousin’s daughter from the west coast of Ireland. She had a botched abortion the year before and couldn’t have children so Michael forged the papers at the hospital so that she could register you as her baby. She was named as your natural mother that way there would never be any evidence to say that anyone else was your birth mother and Josephine would be safe forever from scandal.’
‘Why did they send the letter and postcard to you?’
‘I asked her to let me know that they had arrived safely in Spain and that you were all right – you were such a helpless little thing – just a tiny baby and I imagined that like any mother Josephine would, one day, want to find her child. She would want to know the truth and I was right. She went searching for you as soon as Michael died.’
I sit silently absorbing the information about my life. Then she says: ‘What happened to your face and your wrist?’
I raise my bandaged hand to the graze on my cheek. ‘I slipped on the pavement.’
‘And what about that ugly scar on the back of your hand.’
‘Alisha did that.’ And I tell her then what my adopted mother was really like and the night that she sliced a meat knife through my skin without a flicker of a conscience.
The taxi takes me straight to Heathrow. I have a holdall with everything I need and I will disappear forever. My shoulders ache with the burden of past lies and the people around me: Javier in hospital, Josephine in my flat and Nurse Angela Morris begging me to stay in touch.
I don’t want any of them.
I only want the Vermeer.
I check my mobile and there is a missed call from Josephine and another from Javier. At the check–in desk I think only of the painting. I will spend my life travelling, taking photographs and picking up interesting commissions and jobs. I have spent years repairing paintings and artefacts and I will easily be able to restore it back to its original condition, once I am alone and safe.
I call Javier as I am boarding. He is in the hospital and Oscar is with him having returned yesterday from his business trip. He tells me Javier is still sleeping and I tell him where I am going but not to tell Josephine.
When I am on the plane I check my voicemail. She has phoned me. ‘Where are you, Mikky? I hope you are okay. Call me as soon as you get this message – please.’
She can wait. I lean my head back, close my eyes and I am asleep before the plane is in the sky. When I wake my neck aches, my mouth is dry and my wrist throbs. I drink coffee, eat a sandwich and take two painkillers and when the plane flies over the west of the island I am reminded of the steep cliffs and the scenic villages of Deia and Valdemossa. The plane tilts its wings and a surge of excitement fills me with nostalgia. I think of the numerous tranquil bays, beautiful coves, turquoise sea and memories of barbecues and summer evenings with Javier and Carmen. It’s more than eight years since I visited Mallorca. It was the summer after I finished University and our History of Art lecturer Dolores, invited several students here for a holiday. She was retiring from teaching and buying an art gallery in a beautiful village on the north of the island. But I wasn’t a stranger here. My parents had brought me the first time when I was twelve. We had lived in Colonia de Sant Pere, a small village on the north east of the island, created by survivors of the bubonic plague who fled the neighbouring village of Arta in 1820.
Along this rocky coastline I had snorkelled and dived pretending to look for hidden treasure from lost Spanish galleons. With its small white sandy beach and little fishing harbour I lived like a street urchin running amongst the boats and along the quay while Mama spent a summer working as a waitress and Papa sold his catch to the small restaurants.
It was an idyllic time and I had been devastated at the end of the season when it was time to move on. Tourists left the island in winter and so, like the masses, we packed our camper van and headed south to the peninsula to find work for the winter.
Now as I disembark with only hand luggage, it is late afternoon and outside the air is fresh and cool. Had it only been this morning when I sat with Josephine and listened to the window screen wipers thudding in the taxi to Islington? The memory pales and fades against the bright sunlight and blue sky, even the air smells more optimistic and my fears lift and my concerns are pushed away. I open the window in the rented cheeky red Fiat 500 and drive toward the north of the island. Once I am past the ring roads of Palma the road stretches ahead of me and I am liberated. Fields of straw and hay stretch between stonewalls, sheep and goats graze peacefully and on the hillside windmills with unmoving sails stand as beacons – a testament to the farmers of the past – now simple decorations in the present.
I am home.
But my mind is occupied like a kaleidoscope of vivid images of past events that I cannot escape. Was Mrs Green murdered? There had been no suggestion of it in the autopsy or doctor’s report. Mrs Green had been ill and I knew she couldn’t live forever but I miss her. Although she had been a stranger I had respected her. She had been closer to me than a good friend and certainly my own grandmother – who according to Josephine had no knowledge of my existence and lived happily in Florida.
There is no investigation into Mrs Green’s death and I consider the reliability of Annie’s accusations and Roy’s involvement.
Where is Max? Had Roy taken him away from his own mother?
In front of me the lorry brakes and I react instinctively jerking the steering wheel hard right. I skid and steady the car – dangerously close and I’m left shaking. My bandaged wrist hurts and I curse in pain. I must focus. My only consolation is that if I were to die now, no one might ever discover the Vermeer and that makes me laugh aloud and I sing at the top of my voice, My Hero tapping the melodic rhythm happily against the dashboard.
The picturesque village of Arta is filled with bars, restaurants and art and craft galleries. The hilltop fortress and chapel of Santuari de Sant Salvador is a steep walk from the town centre but in the main cobbled street tourists are browsing and sitting in outdoor cafes. It’s still relatively undeveloped and an attraction for artists, cyclists and ramblers.
I park in a back street and walk around to the front entrance, half way up the old pedestrian cobbled street, opposite a crowded tapas bar and beside an expensive boutique. I peer inside at prestigious gallery; perfect lighting, pine wood floors, whitewashed walls and natural light flooding in through crevices, niches and large skylights from the roof.
The owner is concentrating on bubble wrapping a painting for a Japanese tourist. She doesn’t look up so I explore the gallery and admire the artwork on the walls.
The ground floor opens into three smaller separate rooms; a counter with prints an
d books then an exhibition by local artists and in the third section there are three massive paintings by my fellow student and Javier’s ex muse, Carmen Muñoz. I recognise a semi-nude of a plump and voluptuous model that once hung in my bedroom.
There’s another painting of the same reclining figure reading a book but the third painting is a large abstract called Life in a confused form. Carmen painted something similar when we were at University just after she and Javier separated.
The walls leading up the stone staircase are covered in an assortment of copies: Van Gogh, Rembrandt and Warhol but on the second floor are numerous landscape oil paintings, many with bulbous clouds, windmills, churches and monasteries by a variety of Spanish artists. The most popular paintings of the island are by Blanca Nieves – Snow White – has a whole section dedicated to her work and as I stand there two tourists select three prints and carry them downstairs to the till.
But it is not until I climb to the top floor that I am surprised to see my own canvases prominently displayed alongside two other biblical artists. Each painting fills me with nostalgia and I’m overwhelmed at seeing my work on display; there are eleven paintings in total. One of each disciple’s face revealing their traumatic expression taken in a split moment of time, a quick snapshot, revealing their complex reaction to the crucifixion of Christ. The attic windows cast biblical rays of light on the intricacy of their emotions, the anguish in their eyes and their outstretched hands beseeching the Lord as life ebbs from the Saviour on the cross. They are paintings filled with emotion: fear and love, regret, denial, betrayal; a millisecond in time, as fast as a paintbrush; a quick flash of a blade like the knife that disfigured my hand narrowly missing my face.
Each dark painting has only a glimmer of light, a small flicker of hope that divides the canvas: light and dark, good and evil, heaven and earth, chaos and calm.
It’s years since I saw them, in my last year at University when Dolores was looking for paintings to open her gallery. I had not thought them worthy enough but she had insisted and now I’m flattered they still hang in here. I don’t know how long I spend gazing at them, each canvas the size of a television screen and I wonder why she has kept them for so long.