I ask if there was anything nice about her? She was very friendly with everybody else, he says. I caught her with a bloke under a couple of trees. You get down home, Sheila, I told her. And you clear off, I said to him. They both stood there. She said, you clear off, I am not taking your orders. They didn’t move. I had to get back … Half an hour later, she turned up.
Apparently sometimes she didn’t even know the bloke. Sheila was something I shouldn’t have done. It happened and that’s the way it goes. I am still here.
His friends had tried to talk him out of it: I had a good mate, he says, joined up the same time, tried his damnedest, said you are being very silly, I don’t think you ought to marry her. Give it a bit longer. But who is to say what could have happened worse if I hadn’t married her?
He starts talking about the ‘[Jimmy] Savile business and Rolphy [Harris]’. Half the time, he says, the women and judges are just as bad.
I have some experience, he says. I couldn’t have been more than seven. There was a young lady, I know she was 13, she used to take me to a field and get me to play with her. Later, she went up to work at a gentleman’s house as a maid and got pregnant.
He tells me about a girlfriend. She was oversexed, he says, though they ‘were never together like man and wife’. They always had separate rooms when they went away.
A couple of years ago he got the greatest shock of his life: I had an older sister lived with my grandmother. I always wondered why they called her Betty Jones, he says. When I was 82, my brother told me she was born before mother married.
He tells me that when he was in Plymouth a neighbour asked to adopt me ‘and she meant it. You were a bonny baby’. He is tiring now. I won’t get any more about my mother: why he let her take Christopher away or why she brought him back. I have drawn a blank on my brother, on cruelty and sickness, the crucial stuff. He has locked it away and I don’t have a key. I thank him and call a cab. I mustn’t punish my brain any more, he says, it’s getting near my bedtime.
The taxi pulls out, the summer evening falls. It is all too late, too long ago. So I leave him to his bungalow and his loving daughter who looks after him. Leslie Ray and Lesley. I think I wish him well. It is only when I am close to home I feel I may have been played.
July
JULY 1. The day after Ray. The new DNA result is in. It’s 98.7 per cent sure Tony and I share the same father. I don’t understand it. I don’t know how I feel. The last test said it was impossible, and I am (almost) reconciled to Frank not being my father. I didn’t dare hope, did I? Tony texts to ask if I am OK. I don’t know. It must be a mistake. How can it be? Is this really it? What are the percentage chances that these results are wrong?
I can’t talk to Christy O’Toole. I can’t talk to Tony. I have to check. People’s happiness depends on this. Mine among them. Do I send another sample? See if it matches the one they have? My feelings are suspended. Did Tony somehow mess up the swabs? I would almost rather lose my sense of family than the old man lose his. If Frank is my father, how can I be unrelated to Christy? Their mother is a Mother Teresa, the sacred rock on which the O’Tooles are built. I don’t want to be her undoing. A late, kindly act for a stranger over a letter and Christy’s world could fall apart. He is nearly 80. He has leukaemia. His wife’s had a stroke.
I take a day, head and heart slowly spinning, then I call Kate at the DNA company I used with Christy. I read her the results, ask if they make sense. Is there another way to interpret it? Could they have been corrupted or even engineered? I hate the suspicion. It is as though my happiness has been stolen or at least misplaced. There is no joy in Frank, in finding my father.
Kate says from what I say the test sounds good. She would trust it and she’s an expert. It would take a sophisticated operation to fix it. And why would anyone want to? It is just two men testing where they belonged as boys.
JULY 3. I write to the second lab with questions. Did they test for full sibling or for half? Could one person’s sample have been tested twice, might they have made a mistake? Should I send another? I haven’t spoken to Tony. I don’t know what to say. Texts are too inadequate for something this size.
JULY 6. Three days late, I call him. I apologise for my silence. I tell him I have been too confused. I can’t stop thinking about what it may mean. He says he has felt the same. We talk about Christy and Frank. I say I have written to the lab. I need to know more before I know how to respond. He says he sent three samples, two of his with the one of mine. My hopes softly sink into Devon sand. I ask, why would he do that? He says someone told him to send more. I ask him to call the lab on Monday morning, tell them to recheck he is not 98.7 per cent certain to be related to himself.
JULY 7. The allotment. I need to think. I need peace, blackbird song and soil. I take a spray for blackfly that we keep for flowers on the roof. I can’t stand the life-sucking any more. Now the pole beans are infested and the nasturtiums too. Their tendrils and leaves hang limp. There are large patches of parasites. I spray. I repeat. I spray again. It is not biodynamic.
When I finish, I feel sick from the killing frenzy but the eco liquid wasn’t working. I don’t stay. I don’t sow seed. I feel corrupt. I wish I could rewind but how far back would be enough?
Maybe it’s over, this year of deep digging. For what? Was it for Christopher? Was it for me? What did I learn? I feel infested with life-sucking fear. Anxieties are flooding back. The capped well is leaking, the stink has returned, therapy like eco-liquid too weak to clean it away. Maybe it needs an Agent Orange. Darwinist Dudley Drabble, Pentecostal minister Ray, my mother Sheila, Doctor Barnardo’s, Plymouth ‘care’ workers: a plague on all their houses. It is time to stand on my own again. Fuck ’em. They were unfit for purpose. Sometimes I think Christopher and I would have been better off if left in a box.
Christopher! My deepest regret, my darling, nightmare, beloved brother. I have stood inside this furnace for a year pleading for forgiveness. Now I am granting myself parole.
JULY 15. Wednesday morning, allotment, early. A leaf day. The weekend’s summer storm has washed away my pre-solstice seedlings. The sun rises a degree or two closer towards its wintry shelter now. The blackberries are firming. The dahlias are coming. I carry a change of clothes. I step out of my office shoes and wander round the plot filling in gaps. I sow red and green salad. The French beans are leaping up, released from parasite prison. I sow nasturtiums in the bank and add a few tagetes. My life is nearly back to where it was. A bloodied soldier coming home. There are fresh wounds. I am carrying shrapnel. I have been struck by shade. Whatever it was, it was worth fighting for but I am retiring. Just me and the seed and soil from now. I hope here’s where I’ll stay.
JULY 17. The Liverpool lab says it’s satisfied with the results. I still feel withdrawn. I am confused why I can’t celebrate. What is holding me back? A month ago I wasn’t aware of doubts. I wanted Christy as a father figure. I wanted a connection with blood. Now I am on the threshold, I am unsure I want to go through. Will my new fractured family’s needs leave room for mine? I am daunted by the idea of new brothers and sisters. I will have twelve siblings. It is impossible.
There is a fear, small but stirring, that behind the door lies something secret that hurt me when I was young. In the other areas of my life I have built in safety. I keep my back to the wall. I watch the doors, keep an eye on the windows, see who comes and goes and when. Here, though, I stand naked as a newborn.
I fear a connection to chaos, a loss of control. A runaway car I can’t drive. A hill, no brakes, a wall, a cliff, a thousand-yard drop to rocks. An oblivion I once would have welcomed. A loss of self built from scrap. Tony wants a big brother. I have been that boy before for Christopher and for Lesley. That man for Caron, Susan, Michael and Mandy, my mother’s brood. We will do another test. I am almost ready to turn the key.
JULY 18. The tomatoes are doubling in size every week and showing yellow. The roof terrace is turning too. The roses are taking a rest
before a last late-summer show. The lobelia’s almost over. The days are drawing in. It has been quite a year for the flowers and for me. Occasionally we look a little tired.
Dudley is the only dad I will ever have, though Frank may be my father. Dudley protected me, moulded me, helped shape me to the man I am. I am deeply aware of the debt.
I love him dearly and miss him often; I am looking at nasturtiums in a jar. But, oh, what was he thinking? How could he plot to split up Christopher and I? Was it like a gardener thing? Weeds and the weak to the compost. Stronger plants to shelter and sun. We had been a family. Christopher and I had cleaved together at the children’s home. We’d been conjoined, almost twins.
We came as a pair, like pots. Love doesn’t tear you apart. Doesn’t hack off limbs. I won’t always be angry about it. I wish I wasn’t now. The Plymouth box will be put away. It has been tough to digest the decade of Dudley’s thoughts. I want only to remember Christopher contented on his lap. I wish my dad had hung in longer. We had a contract. I had taken his names. He had made his mark. We would be his sons. He should have picked me up from Battisborough School. It was his job, not a social worker’s.
I get that it was hard to stick with. But he had taken me in, he should have taken me back. He could have seen Christopher thrive, loved his kids. He could have been a granddad. He would have been good at that.
In the end we shouldn’t have grown older. We shouldn’t have grown up. But real life’s not really like that. There is no Never Never Land. No lost boys, no Hook, no Wendy. I was Peter Drabble not Peter Pan.
JULY 19. Driving back from the country, I can’t wait to see the plot. The weather has been hot. It will need me. It is getting overgrown. Howard is not here to crop and pick, and I can’t wait for him any more. I lift potatoes – Pink Fir and Ratte. I cut lettuce and three types of chard. I will carry the onions home. All the high-summer garden crops: potatoes, peas, leaves, with beans coming soon. The squash at the back are starting to spill down the bank with the nasturtiums. I will move corn and sunflowers into empty space. Time to cull calendula, sow chicory, kale, late-summer salad. I need to clear for autumn. The black cat watches as I water. The light drops more obviously early now.
I pan for more memories of Christopher but the seam is mined out. Everyone’s moved on. It’s a ghost town now. I never got drunk with my brother. He never spent the night. I never made him breakfast. We never ate together in restaurants. Never had fish and chips. I will never walk with him again by a river. We will never look out over the sea.
JULY 20. I almost can’t believe I am doing it but I have asked Tony to take another test. He will post his swabs from Liverpool and I’ll send mine from home. They will be put together and tested at the lab. A last spin of the family wheel. Is Frank the father I wasn’t looking for, found when I lost the one I had? Pandora’s box isn’t empty. Hope hasn’t flown, though Nietzsche says: ‘Hope is the worst of evils for it prolongs the torments.’
JULY 21. Up at the allotment at 6am. Wednesday. A work day. It is cool. It is crisp. The light is lower. I am being bitten. I fork up new potatoes, dusted with earth as though by a stylist for my magazine. I clear the peas. I strip the pods. I place food in a bag and hang it in the shed for Howard. The pigeons call of the country. I clear beds for seed. I hoe. I rake. I compost. I sow chicories and chioggia. I collect horseradish leaf for a Ukrainian friend. I water. I wish I could be here all day. It is urgent but it will have to wait. I need to be in the office, I need breakfast, a bath, to wear a suit. There is a posh lunch later. It won’t taste better than picked peas. Later, a call to Plymouth to one of my mother’s brothers, my Uncle Tony. I am wondering whether Terry really was Ray’s gateway to Mum. He would have been 16. Tony tells me he and Terry didn’t know any sailors at the time. He says he can’t remember when Ray appeared. Tony lived with Sheila while Ray was away at sea. She used to cook his lunch to take to work. He tells me about Sheila coming home from hospital the day Caron was born. She went straight out, he says, to Union Street. Not one for rest or maternal instincts. She was a one, my mum.
JULY 22. Time to call my Uncle Terry to talk about Ray. Whether they were friends before he met my mother. It is not how he remembers it, he says. He thought Ray met Sheila in a dancehall next to the navy barracks, just before rock ’n’ roll. Terry was courting Barbara. I can hear her quietly correcting his memories. In those days, they say, there was the Embassy Hall, the Labour Club and St Johnston Social by Devonport dockyard, where sailors met with local girls. They saw Ray there a couple of times and on the docks. Terry says he and Barbara visited me at Queen’s Gate, a residential children’s home. I was maybe three. Sheila had left by then. I was there on my own, he says. He doesn’t remember where Ray or the other kids were. They took me out for a drive. He had a Ford Eight at the time. We had tea at his mother-in-law’s. I was very blond. They have a photo of me from about that time, he says, they will find it and send me a copy. They have never heard of Francis O’Toole. Sheila had a lot of secrets, kept them to herself, they say. I thank them for their kindness. I would have been glad of the day out, I think.
JULY 24, FRIDAY AFTERNOON. There is an email in my inbox. The DNA results are in but I can’t make the password work. I panic. Do I really remember it? Is it a sign? I call the lab. The word is confirmed in lower case. I open it. I want it or at least I think I do.
There it is. Confirmed. I have found my father. The hypothesis that Tony O’Toole is my half sibling: 98.72 per cent probable. There is quiet release. Relief. Understanding will be slow but the secret is exposed to sunlight. There is an ending. I think it is happy. A new seedling to protect. Tony took my hand while I stood blinking. His faith strong, mine myopic. Nearly Allan O’Toole, father Francis. The birth certificate is no longer blank. I don’t know what it will mean to have eight sisters, four brothers. Too much to take in but there is time. First will be photos, names, more information. Tony says he will send them in the post.
I go home, then to the allotment. It is bucketing torrential rain. I clear overgrown summer leaves. I want to be ready for winter. I return twice over the weekend. I empty Mary’s sacks of weeds. I watch the pigeons feast. I prepare new beds. I move plants around. I spray stinking comfrey tea. The replanted corn will need it, the summer squash, too. I cut courgettes, and flowers for the table. The green woodpecker calls. There is just the plot, my plants, my memories. I will nurture them.
JULY 29, EVENING. Christy calls. Tony’s youngest sister Bernadette had asked to come round. She wouldn’t tell him what was up on the phone so ‘a bang had gone off in his head’. He knew it was about me. He knew it was the test. He didn’t understand how the new result could be. I tell him I hadn’t called because I wasn’t sure what to say. I tell him I’d had the test double-checked, then we’d done another with my swab sent direct from London. There was due diligence. It seemed it was sure Frank was my father, or at least 98.72 per cent. He says he wished he was my uncle. I say I wanted it too. He’s now going to do another test, he says. He wants to know if Frank is his brother. I tell him I am sorry to be the cause of this mess. DNA was supposed to bring certainty, answer questions, not ask more. I can’t celebrate finding my father yet. Somewhere I am still unsure.
August
AUGUST 16. I take a call from Tony: the family has a theory involving an unmarried aunt. Perhaps she had a child, maybe Christy or Frank, who had been taken in by their mum. Their mother’s reputation stays intact, maybe more saintly than before.
AUGUST 18. My sister Susan posts a picture on Facebook: my brothers Christopher and Allan, it says. It is from the day we met our mother. I am skinny in my early thirties and corduroy but it is Christopher I can’t stop looking at. He looks happy, standing tall. There is a big grin on his ginger-bearded face (I didn’t remember the beard, how it suits him, only later with his military moustache). Dog tags hang around his neck. This is the brother I have forgotten, the one obliterated by the boy and the dying man. Here he is reunited with his mo
ther at last. He belongs in a way I never will.
My smile is my photograph face, my slightly nervous mask. His is wide open and trusting. This is what he has waited for. He had been with Sheila until he was six. I didn’t have the same history. We had been interrupted.
This is a good time for him. It is the only photo from the middle years. He had finally found his family, ready to be wrapped again in her bosom. The warm milk of belonging, her mothering love. I will add it to my memories. The moment when his future shone.
September
SEPTEMBER 5. The allotment salad is seeding, beautiful, semi wild. I am overwhelmed with beans now Howard is away. The Swiss chard and chicory are set for late autumn. I weed around to give them air. I pull beetroot as big as a baby’s head. The sunflowers will bloom soon. I will leave them for birds to feed.
The pigeons have decimated the Tuscan kale. Mary’s tomatoes are blighted. I carry their corpses to the wheelie bin. Summer is nearly over. The plot colours are cooling. The red salads are rusted like old tractors. I pull the tallest and strongest, and lay them in the cold frame for seed for summer. It has been quite a year.
SEPTEMBER 6. I walk on the outside on pavements. Old-school good manners, I told myself before I wondered where it came from. I sit on the left side of buses. I cannot sit with my back to the front of a train. I walk the same route around Hampstead Heath. Sometimes I reverse it. I am a creature of habit. I need to know what the day has in store. I don’t think anyone taught me to be on the outside when walking. There is a scant memory from a children’s home of walking in twos, I don’t know where or when.
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