Bryn was happier in the wilderness, but when asked would speak fondly of the thrill of rebellion and his various scrapes. As a squatter, he experienced a number of brushes with authority, the one I most remember him reminiscing about being the time when Longhope was raided by the police shortly after it was squatted. They broke the door down and the fifteen or so people staying in the house scattered. Bryn said he was in what was then the communal kitchen that was to become Coral’s living room and kitchenette, and so bolted through the French windows into the garden and up a tree. ‘I was up there for nearly twelve hours, freezing my bollocks off,’ he told me, smiling.
To Bryn, Longhope prompted reflections no more profound than funny anecdotes. He was never one to live in the past, and that was part of his charm. He certainly never mentioned his other lovers, or ‘your father’s girlfriends’ as Stella would darkly refer to them after several drinks. I remember there always being lots of women around, but my memory of the naked redhead in the doorway was the only concrete experience on which I could rely. There were other things I recalled about my time in the commune, of course, but it was and remains hard to distinguish between what had actually happened and what was the result of the legends created by my parents, or the few photographs I had seen. Did I remember the bathroom because I remembered it or because I had seen a picture of it? Were the faces of the residents masks that I had conjured or reflections of the people I had met?
I had always thought I remembered, for instance, playing in the garden. A rug would be put down for us under the lilac tree, and Gabs and I would lie on our backs and look at the sky through the leaves. Someone made a swing, and we pushed each other on it. Stella and Vita sat on deck chairs, watching. They gave us cubes of chopped-up mango, small enough to suck. They tasted of sunshine.
Another memory. Once, as I was being taken to bed, I looked out of the second-floor window below to see three of the grown-ups on the swing all at once, laughing. Another time I was trying to sleep but I couldn’t because the music was so loud. The light from the kitchen glowed from the top of the stairs. When I stood on the threshold, there were people dancing.
Did she describe these things to me or did they leave a lasting imprint?
I knew I remembered the woman in the doorway. Before I returned to Longhope Crescent and my namesake began to sweep through my dreams, that was all I could be certain of, a series of scenes, as though imprinted on a negative. Returning, and meeting Coral, changed that, filling in some of the still-faint blanks. Harmony had picked up a spider that frightened us in the garden, she had held me when I tried to fly and instead fell, played with and tickled me, and, I felt with utmost certainty, loved me. According to Coral, this young woman wasn’t just my father’s lover but had been as much a parent to me as Bryn and Stella. Yet my parents – driven by motives which seemed to hint at mean and exploitative acts on their part – had told me she had died before I came to the world.
It is not that I couldn’t countenance the idea that my parents might be cruel – I had been well aware from a young age how sadness can make a person unkind. Stella’s warm love enveloped me with a depth of feeling I never doubted, but she was also brittle, taking even the mildest of comments as a profound criticism of her very being. In her mind, a minor mistake or upset was not simply a case of human error but a monument to her having failed as a mother, standing in testament to all her flaws and weaknesses. ‘I might as well die,’ she would say, sobbing, during some row or other when I had expressed myself as any teenager does, ‘I’m a useless human being’. It was a tendency towards the dramatic that I also noted in Lucia – that automatic leap towards the worst-case scenario: yourself. And so I would comfort and reassure her and whatever small slight I had made would be forgotten as I swallowed my own grievances and held her to me like a baby.
Where Stella could be sensitive and prone to lashing out, my father Bryn seemed to run on indifference. As one of the calmest people I knew, it was a mystery to me how he had stayed for so long with my mother. He was perpetually unflustered, including by the fact he had a daughter, but again, I knew his love was under there, somewhere. The closest I can come to explaining it is that his affection was expressed in his treating me with respect. I was cocooned in the balmy comfort of his high regard. Even as a small child, he would speak to me as though I had the emotional and intellectual sophistication of another adult.
I was a child of whom grown-up feelings and grown-up conversation topics were expected, a legacy that came from having no siblings. There were other children in the house, of course, but they were to an extent expected to contribute to the commune as an adult would: by shelling broad beans, or pressing tofu, and entertaining them as they curled up on the sofa with their roll-ups and their home brews.
That day in the garden, when I unearthed the cement, was a shock, but confirmed a feeling that had always niggled about that summer, which is that things had gone horribly, awfully wrong and that no one, for reasons of guilt or estrangement or mistrust, would tell me what happened. And trying to remember it was like staring down into a murky garden pond: every now and again, at the corners of the shadow of your own reflection, you catch the shine of a fish scale in the light, and then it’s gone.
I stared at the etching of our name. My thoughts were all white noise, cut through only by Coral’s placing of her hand on my shoulder. Her skin was coarse against mine, like the palm of a girl I had known at school who lived on a farm and whose skin was cracked with criss-crossed lines, except Coral didn’t work at all. But I did, and I needed to be at the pub soon.
‘I think there are some things we need to talk about,’ Coral was saying.
‘Too right,’ I said. Then, ‘I can’t believe Stella.’
‘She had her reasons, though I can’t say I agree with them. Hey, have you got any more beers upstairs? Might as well make the most of the rest of the sunlight while we talk.’
We had barely made a dent. I looked hopelessly at the remaining expanse of garden. It was hard to tell but it appeared to stretch out for over thirty feet. If you laid the house on its side, it would fit comfortably in the space.
‘I don’t think we’re going to have time. I have to go,’ I said. ‘I have work.’
‘Please yourself. Miss Curiosity the one minute, aren’t you, and couldn’t care less the next. Whatever, I’ll amuse myself. Got a ten bag and a BBC4 documentary.’ I tried to laugh. ‘See you tomorrow.’
I ran upstairs. Josh was in his room dozing when I came in. He held his arm out to me, smiling, and tried to pull me down on top of him. ‘I can’t,’ I said.
‘What’s wrong? You look odd. Are you ok?’
‘I just found out that my dad was sleeping with this woman when I was a kid who I thought died before I was born. While he was with my mum. Which sounds weird and eccentric, but actually isn’t all that surprising, except my mum lied to me which is why I thought she was dead, and I don’t know why. Also she has the same name as me.’
And by the way, I added in my head, we all used to live here.
There was a pause. ‘Ok,’ said Josh. ‘But are you all right?’
‘I’m fine,’ I said, in a way that I hoped sounded business-like. ‘I have to go.’ I kissed him, his chest hardening as I reached up to stroke the hair at the nape of his neck. ‘Wait up for me.’
‘I will,’ he said. ‘I wanted to have a chat actually. I’m worried about Lucia. She’s going a bit off the rails.’
I hadn’t seen her, but it did not surprise me. ‘Let’s talk about it later.’
I descended the stairs just as Coral started screaming again. I really should plough through her gruff reticence and talk to her about that, I thought. I’m not proud that I hadn’t, but the truth was that I was frightened to. But mostly I just thought what I always thought, whenever anyone of my parents’ generation started behaving in their typically unfathomable way, like the time I visited my dad at his last place and they broke out the chanting with no forewarning.
Which was, simply: ‘Jesus Christ. These people.’
Spring 1990
I wake to the sound of men’s voices raised over mechanical churning. It is Saturday, and Bryn and Mikey are attempting to lay a patio outside. The little one cut her wrist open on broken glass there last week, and Stella put her foot down. ‘She could have bled to death if we hadn’t found her. We need a proper garden.’
I make my way down to the French doors, feeling clumsy and dreamy. I’m in dire need of a cup of tea. The kitchen is empty, so I walk over to see who is out back. Mikey’s got his shirt off although it’s only March, his brown chest peppered with a constellation of tattoos, his dreadlocks tied back in a stiff ponytail that makes him look goofy and innocent. Bryn is wearing a creased denim shirt covered in paint splatters, his eyes crinkling as he grins at some joke holding a trowel in one hand and using the other to push his hair back from his face. In a flash I realise again how handsome he is, and I stand there watching them unnoticed for a moment, thinking with a rush of love what a pair of daft buggers they are, but how they’d do anything for that little girl.
‘Mony!’ She spots me from the improvised swing and jumps off to toddle towards me. She’s wearing a stripy long-sleeved T-shirt with dungarees that have a dinosaur embroidered on them, and a pair of high-top red booties that she likes to stamp in puddles. I hold out my arms.
‘Watch the concrete!’ Bryn shouts at her, and scoops her up into his arms before she can ruin all his hard work, before turning her upside down by her ankles and swinging her from side to side. Her screams and giggles fill the garden.
‘Help! Mony!’
‘Leave her alone, you ratbag,’ I say, shaking my head, and his eyes meet mine as he puts her down and smiles at me. He’s a kind man, I think, despite everything. A good father, warm. Not like mine.
‘Either of you lads fancy a brew?’ They nod, so I take the girl’s hand and we go inside. ‘Sit yourself at the table, pet,’ I say, ‘and I’ll get you a banana.’
‘Where’s Mama?’
‘Mama’s upstairs sleeping. We’ll see her later. What do you want to do today? We can go to the park if you like.’
She looks up at me with excitement, and I tickle her until she squeals before turning to make the tea. We’ve been out every day this week. The weather has been blustery, the cherry blossom swirling down the street like snow as she runs after it in her duffle coat. I could do this, I think, watching as she jumps from pavement stone to pavement stone. I’m already doing it.
We walk for hours, sometimes. It keeps her out of the house, so Stella can rest. The other kids are at school now, so she has no one to play with in the daytime. And the fresh air helps with the nausea I’m feeling. I know the signs, but I’m not ready to tell.
My little bean, I call it privately, because that’s about how big it is. I wonder whether she’d prefer a brother or a sister, if she’ll react with fierce protectiveness or petulance. She is possessive of me, I think because I am her constant. It’s not like I’m working much, the odd bit of secretarial work. So I’m there almost every day to make FIMO models or paint pictures or read a bit of The Water Babies yet again. I sometimes wonder what I would have been, if I hadn’t come here. A worker in a shop or factory, at most, but in truth eventually it would have been the same: this, but poorer and colder, and more alone.
I’ve told Stel to go to the doctors’ but she keeps saying it’ll pass. And it’s true that it comes in waves; she’ll lie in bed for days and then one morning I’ll come down to start the bairn’s breakfast and Stella will be standing in the hall, just as beautiful and alive as she has always been, doing up the little one’s coat and announcing that they’re off to the Natural History Museum. ‘Thanks for helping,’ she will say.
I’ll tell her soon. Just her, at first. It was a one-off, I will explain. It’s only been once, since the baby was born, and he didn’t half plead. ‘This is the last time,’ I said to him, afterwards. ‘She basically saw us at it.’
‘Ah, kids that age don’t understand what they’re seeing,’ he said. But I pressed the issue, saying that Stella was in a bad way, that this would be no good for her. What are the chances?
You’ll have someone new to play with soon, I think, as we trudge back to the house. But I’ll always love you the same. ‘No one can replace you,’ that’s what I’ll say to her. Besides, Bryn adores her. You can see it all over his face. I know he’ll love our baby too.
The little one is singing as we skip up the path, those senseless tunes that children invent. I join in, my lalalas clashing, which delights her. As I reach into my patchwork bag for the keys on the doorstep, I bend down.
‘Now, pet, we need to be quiet, because your mama might still be sleeping. Can you do that? Can you be quiet for me?’
‘Yes Mony.’
We slip in through the door having removed our coats outside, and I am placing them gently on the hook when I hear raised voices coming from the kitchen.
‘It’s just so conventional,’ Bryn was saying. He didn’t sound angry so much as exasperated. ‘It doesn’t seem like something we would do.’
Stella’s voice was a hiss, the kind that is beyond shouting. ‘I don’t give a shit how conventional it is, or isn’t. It’s for the sake of my sanity.’
‘What about Mony? How will they cope, being separated? You haven’t thought this through. She’s just as much a mother to her as you are.’
There was a charged silence. Little Harmony was looking up at me.
‘Why are they shouting?’
I shush her, taking her sticky hand in mine. ‘They’re just playing, darling,’ I say. ‘They’ll be quiet in a minute. Come, let’s go to the sitting room and read a story, shall we?’ I force a smile and shuffle her in the direction of the sofa, closing the door quietly behind us, feeling as though someone has taken an ice cream scoop to my insides.
Mirror
Antique solid silver hand mirror. Very ornate (Art Nouveau) decoration of flowers, leaves and swirls. 6” long and 3” across. Weight 472 g. Good condition, with only slight staining and tarnishing (please examine photographs carefully). I’ve seen a great many of these as an antiques dealer and this is really something special.
It’s tricky to determine what came next. To an extent the ordering of things as I have presented them is arbitrary, occurring as they did during a period of time that is remembered not as a linear series of events but as a tangle of incidents which, much like the brambles in Coral’s garden, it is necessary to hack away at and untwist. The fact that, that year, we were blessed with endless summer days does not help this process. Each of those months merged into the next, and, like the cursive handwriting you’ve just learnt at school by tracing joined-up letters on a page with a metal nib, they appeared never to lift or break.
Objects are easier. To think of that time is to see, vividly, a glass sitting on the cracked paint of the windowsill – white, but underneath a peppermint green, veined like scales, losing its gloss. It is obvious from looking at it that the night before, or indeed several hours before, in the early drunkenness of the dawn, it contained red wine. The dregs are clotted around the rim in a cherry tint. An unseasonal choice of drink, but one that goes nicely with a smoke, the roachy remnants of which lie in the parched window box, drying up.
There was something thick and lifeless about those summer months, despite the drink and the drugs and the parties that went on all night, the quietly euphoric feeling of Josh’s eyelashes against my cheeks and his fingers in my hair. My memories have the brightness of overexposed film but I felt a heavy pressure that is difficult to describe – like weights placed upon my chest. But of course it was fear; it’s so obvious to me now.
As to what I was afraid of, it’s hard to say. Unlike Lucia, whose room, in the weeks she spent mostly indoors, had become a squalid dump of overflowing ashtrays and dirty pairs of dark silk underwear streaked white as though with the shiny trails of slugs, I had not been attacked or violated. But
it felt a horror of anticipation – something awful was going to happen, and the function of my dread was to prepare me for it. The only solution was to drink more.
Whatever the sequence of events, at some point, I went back to badger Coral. The discovery that my namesake had lived to know me as a child had conjured the momentary hope that she might still be alive. ‘Perhaps I could write to her?’ I said to Coral, one afternoon. I imagined her in a community of hippies somewhere exotic near the sea, receiving my letter and smiling fondly. She would send a photo of how she looked now, her hair faded to a strawberry blonde, her face lined but lovely, her figure lithe from early morning yoga. But Coral shook her head, sadly, and said the dead part was correct, it was just the whens and hows that were not.
She had come to the house from a pit village in County Durham, Coral said, in 1984. The miners had been on strike for over a year, and the residents of Longhope had voted in favour of providing a couple of them with room and board as they marched on parliament that June. Harmony, my namesake, and the sister of a man called Mark, had come with them. She was just seventeen.
‘History repeats itself,’ said Coral. ‘Your da’ always did like the young ones.’
Everyone had been struck by her unusual beauty: her long, auburn hair, the fragility of her thin frame, especially Bryn. It’s often said by those lacking in imagination that certain women look like china dolls, but according to Coral, Harmony truly did. Stella had moved in just a year earlier, and they were newly married. Though Stella had yet to assert her exclusive sexual rights to my father, she had dealt with any potential competition thus far by mocking him for his outdated utopian ideals, and then, in her clandestine way, making the atmosphere in the house as unpleasant as possible until the woman in question moved out. But Harmony was different: she seemed to mesmerise them both.
The Tyranny of Lost Things Page 18