Messy, Wonderful Us
Page 24
But I can’t answer, because everything is not all right. Everything is so far from all right that I am still hoping I’ve misunderstood. I must have done because my interpretation of Grandma Peggy’s words is simply impossible.
‘I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of it.’ I have a dozen or more questions all fighting for space in my head, but what it all comes down to is this: ‘Stefano McCourt was . . . is your son?’
After a moment of hesitation, she replies. ‘Yes.’
The impossible implications of this rise up my chest and spill out of my mouth. ‘Then that makes him Mum’s brother.’
‘Half-brother. Yes.’
The sky seems to swell and undulate as I try to form my words. ‘Then how can he have been her boyfriend? That’s . . . sick.’
‘Allie, they had no idea,’ she interrupts. ‘None at all. How could they have known? Stefano only knew he’d been adopted and that his mother had given him up. But when his parents moved back to Liverpool, as far as they were concerned I’d just been some forgotten, anonymous girl from a mother and baby home. They thought I was long gone.’
‘What did you do?’
She gathers her thoughts before beginning to fill me in. ‘I was in shock that day. I mean, here was my lost boy. The boy I’d loved with every bone in my body, but I’d been convinced I’d never see again. And he had been standing in my kitchen, looking at me with those same eyes that had looked at me when he was a tiny baby. I wanted to reach out and hold him. I wanted to tell him, it’s me. I’m your mum. And I love you.’
‘But . . . that wasn’t what I meant, Grandma. I mean, once you’d discovered he was your son, you must also have realised that he was having a relationship with his sister?’
‘Well, slow down,’ she says firmly. ‘It depends what you call a relationship.’
‘You said he was her boyfriend,’ I argue. ‘She dumped Dad for him. I’d say that was a relationship.’
‘Let me tell you what I know, Allie,’ she says, her voice trembling. ‘As I stood at the door, watching them walk away from the house I felt . . . probably like you do now. Knowing all the pieces fit together but not wanting to accept it. I kept telling myself there must’ve been some other explanation. I must have got it wrong. I didn’t know what to do. So I let them go off to the cinema and I sat in the living room and for a while I just looked out of the window, hoping to try and work it all out. Then your granddad came home.’
‘Had he known you’d had a son, before you’d met him?’
‘He’d been the one person I’d told, soon after we met in Paris. He never judged, he just loved me for being me. I told him what had happened and we agreed that our only option was to find out what exactly was going on – to find the man and woman who’d raised him. His adoptive parents.’
‘How did you do that?’
‘When they returned from the cinema, your grandfather offered to drive Christo . . . Stefano home. Or rather, he insisted on it. Your mother was mortified, as teenagers are wont to be, but that’s how we found out where they lived.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘The next day was a Saturday and Stefano’s birthday. Christine had arranged to see him at lunchtime, to go to the new bistro they’d talked about. As soon as she went out, Gerald and I drove to the house he’d been to the night before. I was . . . I was scared and angry.’
‘Angry?’
‘They’d moved to a nice house in Aigburth, less than ten miles away from the mother and baby home. What were they thinking coming back so close?’
‘Did you ask her that? Stefano’s adoptive mum, I mean.’
‘That and dozens more questions. She and I had a lot to discuss.’
Chapter 58
The woman at the doorway of 47 Bamford Avenue wore a cashmere cardigan and slim capri pants, with neatly cut glossy hair that she pushed behind her right ear. A pair of reading glasses dangled on two fingers of one hand and a subtle shade of lipstick accentuated her pretty mouth.
Peggy noticed all of these things in the moments after she’d opened the door. But then she started speaking and the only thing she noticed after that was the horror reflected in the amber flecks of Vittoria’s eyes.
‘My name is Peggy Culpepper, nee Smith,’ she’d managed, sounding much calmer than she felt. ‘I was a resident at Nightingale House in 1963. I was forced to give away my baby, against my will. And I . . . I believe that that baby is Stefano.’
Vittoria’s knees slackened. She considered slamming shut the door, but thought better of it. ‘You . . . you should come in.’
A tall sash window cast a hazy light on the elegant bookshelf that dominated one wall of the living room. An intricately woven rug sat on a wooden floor with chevrons polished to the colour of honey, while a set of papers were stacked up next to the pale sofa where Vittoria had been working.
Peggy’s eyes were drawn to the mantelpiece where a clutch of family pictures jostled for space. There was one of Vittoria on a pebble beach with Christopher, when he couldn’t have been more than two. He was wearing a funny little hat and his chubby legs poked out of a sweet pair of trunks. Along from that was a photo of the entire family: Vittoria, her husband and Christopher, who looked about thirteen by then, his features growing into a half-man, with glowering teenage eyes that gave the impression he hadn’t wanted to be pictured. In the most recent photograph Christopher was wearing cricket whites, holding up a trophy. That sat next to another taken at a party, in which Christopher’s arm was draped affectionately round Vittoria’s waist.
Everywhere Peggy looked, she found evidence of a close and well-educated family, who’d worked hard to make this house comfortable and homely. She’d told herself for years that all that really mattered was that her son was happy and loved; that was all she’d ever wanted for him.
Yet, looking around this room, she realised she’d been kidding herself. Now, all she could think about was how this woman – a respectable, probably very nice person – had taken something away from Peggy without ever realising she’d done it.
It was this woman who’d got to cheer while Christopher took his first steps as a baby. She’d got to hold his hand as he started school and run alongside as he’d ridden a bike without stabilisers, or watched proudly when he scored runs for his cricket team. It was she who’d got to bake his birthday cakes, to sew labels on his school clothes. She’d got to teach him to fly a kite, build sandcastles on the beach and read him a bedtime story every night.
They were small things, really. Nothing monumental. But, together, they felt like a hundred pieces of Peggy’s broken heart.
‘Excuse all the papers, I’m self-employed,’ Vittoria said awkwardly, gathering up her admin. ‘I’ve been working as a translator since we came back to the UK.’
Peggy realised that she may have lost the ability to speak. ‘Please, take a seat,’ Vittoria added. ‘Can I get you something to drink?’
Peggy shook her head and gripped her bag as she perched on the sofa. ‘I’m sorry I turned up out of the blue,’ she said, the slightest crack in her voice. ‘I . . . I didn’t really have a choice.’
The sinews in Vittoria’s neck tightened and Peggy pulled herself together.
‘The first thing we probably need to establish is whether what I think happened is true,’ Peggy continued, swallowing her nerves. ‘So, I will tell you my story – what happened after my son was born. Perhaps we can work it out from there.’
She told Vittoria how she was twenty-two in 1963 and became pregnant to a man she’d known only briefly. She told how her parents took her to Nightingale House and how she gave birth alone in the nearest hospital, before returning for six short weeks. Then she told – or at least tried to explain – how she agreed to sign the papers to have him adopted, even though that was the last thing she wanted. And how even at the very end, as she sat in the waiting room, she was hoping for a miracle, something that would keep her baby with her. But then it was too late.
‘They said at the adoption agency that the baby’s mother hadn’t wanted him. They told us she was from London and that we’d never see her again.’
Vittoria would never have returned to Liverpool – no matter how sick Michael’s mother was, or how exciting his job offer – if she’d thought there would be the slimmest possibility of this meeting ever taking place.
‘They lied to us,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so very sorry for everything you went through.’
‘You weren’t to know,’ Peggy mumbled, instantly cursing this ludicrous statement. You weren’t to know. That was what you said if you forgot your umbrella when it rained, or tried to make a cake when the eggs were off.
But she couldn’t think of the right thing to say, so she said the thing that she’d always told herself she would if she ever found Christopher and discovered that he was safe and well looked after.
‘Thank you.’ She tried to mean it, but as her voice began to crack, Vittoria’s head snapped up in shock.
‘What for?’
‘For . . .’ Peggy looked up at the pictures again, ‘for doing such a wonderful job in bringing him up.’
Despite the twist in her stomach, she owed her son’s adoptive mother that much. Vittoria fought a surge of tears behind her eyes, sniffing them away.
‘How on earth did you find us?’ she asked. ‘What made you come looking?’
Which brought them to the crux of the matter. Peggy drew a deep breath. ‘I didn’t. I have a seventeen-year-old daughter. Yesterday she brought home her new boyfriend.’ Vittoria’s hands shot up to her mouth. She already knew the rest.
‘It was . . .’ she nearly said Christopher, but stopped herself. ‘It was Stefano.’
Chapter 59
Allie
The jagged shock in Grandma Peggy’s voice has eased but there are still so many unanswered questions.
‘How did you tell my mum . . . and Stefano?’
‘We agreed to do it separately, that evening. Gerald and I would tell Christine. Vittoria and her husband Michael would tell Stefano. It was . . . not a good moment,’ she says with striking understatement. ‘Your mother refused to believe us at first. She accused me of lying and stormed out of the house. I was out of my mind with worry. But Vittoria phoned up soon afterwards and said she’d turned up there. We agreed to give them an hour by themselves. To say their goodbyes.’
I’m conscious of her breathing, the distress that resonates in her words. I’ve literally never heard my Grandma Peggy like this before. ‘By the time your grandfather and I pulled the car up outside the house, your mother was there waiting on the step. She ran towards us and, when she got in the car, put her head in her hands and wept. I glanced up into the bedroom window and there was Stefano. The face of my baby, all grown up. I couldn’t look away from those eyes . . . that hair, still as dark as it had been when he was six weeks old.’
‘Oh, Grandma.’
‘It was the last time I saw him. Vittoria and Michael . . . they said that that was the only way. They were determined. They told us they were worried about Christine and Stefano wanting to be together, but I think . . . no, I’m sure, they wanted to keep him away from me too.’
‘Did they move back to Italy straight away?’
‘Very soon afterwards. I got the impression Vittoria had never wanted to be in the UK in the first place and this must’ve been a good argument to move home. I tried writing to Stefano a few times, I couldn’t not. I told him that I loved him, that he was my flesh and blood, that I’d do anything to see him again. I only got one response, the letter you read from Vittoria. As you could see, I was told in no uncertain terms to leave him alone.’
‘Did you?’
‘What else could I have done? To persist would’ve made him hate me. I wrote to Vittoria again and promised I’d never be in touch again. I only broke that promise once, when Christine died. She was his half-sister, after all. I thought he ought to know. He wrote to me to thank me for informing him, to say he was sorry for my loss, but that was it. That letter was in the drawer too, but I don’t think you found that one.’
I become aware of Ed next to me, his expression filled with concern. ‘Okay?’ he mouths. I nod and turn away as my eyes blur on the gently lapping water, my head rushing with questions.
‘So . . . when Stefano returned to Italy, Mum got back together with Dad? Just like that?’ I ask incredulously.
‘Not just like that, no. Your mum was very upset about what had happened. And I don’t only mean about her and Stefano. I mean about the fact that she’d thrown away what she had with Joe. She barely emerged from her room for a week. She wouldn’t go to school, refused to see any of her friends. She was angry with me too for not telling her that she had a half-brother.’
‘Why hadn’t you?’
‘Because I was ashamed. I am ashamed. Not about the fact that I had him, but about the fact that I let them take him away. I’ll never forgive myself.’
‘But you had no choice, Grandma,’ I say, but she doesn’t respond. All I can hear is the silence of the phone line. ‘So . . . what happened next with Mum and Dad? How did they get back together? I mean, she’d rejected him, hadn’t she?’
‘She wouldn’t have been the first person to make a mistake, Allie. To be dazzled by someone new when the person they love was right there in front of them. But I’ll give you one thing: she was very lucky that he agreed to get back with her.’
Chapter 60
In the days afterwards, disbelief hung in the air like dust beaten out of a carpet. Peggy’s head was swollen with thoughts of her son’s face, so close to her as he stood in her own kitchen that she could’ve reached out and touched it. Initially, when she’d think of him – and she was always thinking about him – she could conjure up a vivid image, picturing in detail the curl of his hair, or the movement of his lips when he spoke. But soon those details began to blur and fade, and the harder she tried to grasp for them, the more elusive they became.
Christine, meanwhile, had barely emerged from her bedroom after her departure from 47 Bamford Avenue, despite Peggy’s attempts to talk about what had happened, or indeed about anything. Each time she knocked on her daughter’s door to ask if she had any laundry, or to say dinner was ready, she’d mumble a response that made it clear she wasn’t coming out any time soon. In the end, it was Gerald who coaxed her downstairs, with the promise of tomato soup, Cheers on the television and some gentle words about which Peggy never knew the exact nature.
It was the height of midsummer, nearly 9 p.m., and with the last drop of sun still firing up the sky, when Peggy felt a touch on her shoulder. The extra light of the last week or so had made the shrubbery burst into an exuberant display and she’d been staking out the foxgloves at the time. When she turned around and saw her daughter, it was clear that there was one thing she needed above everything else. Peggy wrapped her arms around Christine and felt the tension in her shoulders melt away.
‘I’m sorry I’ve been wallowing, Mum. I can’t imagine what you must be going through. To have not seen your own baby for all these years.’ She shook her head. ‘What complete bastards. The people that made you give him away, I mean.’
Despite the language, Peggy couldn’t disagree.
The three of them watched television together, before Gerald disappeared to the pub for a game of crib, leaving the two women alone. It was during the long talk that followed when Peggy realised what was eating her daughter up more than anything else.
Whenever Christine had been hurt or lost before, Joe had been there for her. As m
uch as Peggy knew that her maternal brand of tea and sympathy helped, it came down to something bigger than her need for a shoulder to cry on. It was gone midnight when Peggy suggested it was time to turn in for the night. There was a chill in the air as her daughter stood to head upstairs and, with the shadow of despair in her eyes, got to the nub of the matter, what Joe had really meant to her. ‘I think I’ve lost the love of my life, Mum.’
The question was, what was she going to do about it?
*
Christine had never been a reticent kind of person. She could be forthright to the point of stridence and often gave the impression that she wasn’t afraid of anything. Yet, the more desperate she felt about trying to patch things up with Joe, the more worried she became. Sometimes she could convince herself she was being irrational, that the worst that could happen was that she’d make a fool of herself. Except that wasn’t the worst, was it?
She’d always believed that you had to be honest to build bridges. But the truth was so unpalatable. The truth was, those powerful, confusing feelings she’d had were for a man who turned out to be her half-brother. Her flesh and blood. It was a repulsive thought, but one she could neither change nor deny. The idea of confessing all this to Joe was something she could hardly contemplate.
Peggy watched twice as her daughter marched out of the house, in a cloud of Body Shop perfume and hope, before reappearing fifteen minutes later. She’d hovered at the end of his street, then lost her nerve. She tried writing him a letter, but she’d never been good with words. How could she say this terrible secret out loud, or write it down in black and white?
Another week had passed when Peggy woke early on a Saturday morning to the sound of a small commotion in Christine’s bedroom. She wiped sleep from her eyes and blearily wandered in to find her daughter stacking her collection of records into three cardboard boxes.