Not What it Seems

by Pamela Fudge

  ‘I am so sorry,’ I said. ‘Please forgive me, Alice. I think I’m only just beginning to realise that my other family is a subject that I’m far too touch about, and a subject that I’ve ignored for far too long.’

  ‘Why don’t you both come and sit down and let’s talk about this?’ Ron suggested. ‘I kow I’m a complete stranger to you all, but I think I can see where you’re coming from and I can talk about families parting from a different point of view.’

  I sat, and Alice went to make the tea. The dishwasher hummed in the background.

  ‘You’re very angry with them for leaving you, aren’t you?’ Ron asked gently and I nodded.

  ‘You stayed in England because...?’

  ‘I was already engaged to Kevin when they decided to go. They stayed just long enough to see me safely married and then they were gone. My sister was younger so she went with them.’

  As we spoke Alice was going about the business of making tea so quietly that it would have been easy to forget she was there. Eventually she came and joined us, carrying the tray.

  ‘Were you always this angry with them for leaving?’

  While I was thinking of an answer, Ron took the cup that Alice passed to him and, adding several spoonfuls of sugar from the bowl she also offered, he stirred briskly.

  He smiled his thanks at her, saying, ‘You make tea like my dad always did – good and strong. I’ve missed that.’ Then he turned back to me.

  ‘Well, no, not really,’ I admitted eventually. ‘In the early days I was happy in my marriage, busy with the children, and we kept in touch – mostly by letter because computers weren’t as common then, and telephone calls were expensive.’

  ‘And then he – Kevin – left,’ Alice prompted. I noted the use of his name and knew it was because she didn’t think of Kevin as her father; in fact she probably didn’t think of him at all, and hadn’t done for years. That was because Owen had willingly taken the role of surrogate father for all three of my children ad had more that earned the right to the title. ‘Just up and left all of us out of the blue.’

  I nodded. ‘I’ve never felt so alone and frightened and although my parents could sympathise, they were far too far away to be of any practical or emotional help. By then my sister married and had children and, to me, my parents seemed totally wrapped up in the grandchildren they had on the doorstep. They appeared to have little interest in me or mine, or even in how I was managing, and that really hurt.’

  ‘What is it you think they could or should have done?’ Ron questioned gently.

  ‘Anything would have been nice,’ I felt a tear beging to trickle down my face. Alice took my hand and held it tightly, looking as if she might cry, too. ‘But they did nothing. I was so afraid, had no idea how I was going to manage. I needed to know they cared. You’ve come all this way to be with your Dad when he needs you.’

  ‘But I couldn’t have done that in the early days. For one thing I wouldn’t have been able to afford the trip; we had a young family and I was still establishing my business. To my regret, I didn’t even make it for my mum’s funeral, for reasons I won’t even go into, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t want to be here. I’m sure if you speak to your family they would tell you that they still feel as guilty as I do – but we make our decisions for better or worse and then we have to live with them. In other words sacrifices have had to be made for the better life we moved to Australia to find.’

  ‘I haven’t been seeing things from their point of view, I suppose, ‘I found myself admitting, ‘only from my own.’

  ‘Maybe you needed someone to be angry at, and the parents who left you behind were an easy target?’ Ron suggested gently. ‘I would just say that just because they’re not here, it doesn’t mean they don’t love you and miss you. I adore my dad and I miss him every day.’

  ‘But at least you’ve kept in touch,’ I reminded him. ‘After all this time, is there any real point in me trying to rebuild very ancient bridges?’

  ‘Well, like my dad, your parents are getting older, and there will come a time when it will be too late to find out the answer to that question because the chance will be gone. I can see Dad’s accident as my wakeup call and perhaps you should see your family’s Christmas present to you as yours. A phone call wouldn’t hurt, would it?’

  It seemed as if we’d been sitting there for ages, but when everyone came crowding back in to say their goodbyes I realised it had been no time at all. It had just been long enough for the children to pack up the paraphernalia of university lives in readiness for their various journeys, and for Ron to point out some cold hard facts and to make me begin to see things from a perspective apart from my own.

  Many hugs and promises from the children to keep in touch later the house was quiet. Even Ron had returned next door, but still Alice remained working quietly alongside me to get the house back to some semblance of the neat normality I was used to now that I was living my life alone.

  We stripped beds, collected towels and picked up forgotten items with very little being said. I knew she wanted to talk about something – possibly her relationship with Jake or mine with my parents – but I though it wise to leave it up to her to decide when.

  ‘I thought I would walk Gizmo before I go with Ron to visit Arthur,’ I said, as time passed with nothing of any substance being revealed. ‘Would you like to come? I usually go to the park.’

  ‘I’d like that.’

  We walked side by side, and I glanced at Alice’s face more than once in an effort to gauge what was going on behind that very beautiful exterior. Alice had always been the most complicated of the children, prone to moods and to distance herself.

  Arthur had been right about her being the eldest, and of an age to be more aware of what was happening when my marriage failed. I was always conscious that she’d probably taken Kevin’s defection very much to heart – and perhaps taken it personally, too, even blaming herself despite my efforts to persuade her otherwise. Telling her that though Kevin no longer loved me he still loved her had obviously been a non-starter when he had so completely washed his hands of the family he had created. It had taken Owen years of patience to gain her trust completely.

  Belatedly, I could see that our recent separation and the packing up of the family home must have rocked her confidence all over again – despite our assurances that nothing else had changed, and the fact that she had always known that, one day, it would happen. Perhaps not as grown up as she would have us believe, Alice was obviously more fragile that she chose to appear and the prickly exterior was merely a shield to protect her.

  ‘How do you know when you love someone?’ she asked so suddenly and after such a long silence that I actually jumped, being deep in thought myself at that point. ‘I mean really love them.’

  ‘What kind of love are we talking about?’ I managed, bending to let Gizmo on his lead now that we were safely inside the park gates. ‘Because there is more than one kind of love and you will love lots of people, in lots of different ways, in your lifetime.’

  ‘Did you love Kevin?’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ I answered without hesitation, ‘and I still believe he loved me – at least in the beginning.’

  ‘But he let you.’

  ‘Love can change, and his obviously did. Perhaps he had difficulty accepting the responsibility as our family grew, because a family brings with it a lot of responsibility, as I’m sure you know only too well in your line of work. Perhaps he found he wasn’t ready for that. He isn’t the first man to walk away, and he won’t be the last. I imagine the only way he could cope with his own actions, once he had made that decision, was to cut all ties. It’s the only explanation I can think of.

  ‘The only way I could cope with what he’d done was to imagine he had died.’ I said it bluntly, almost harshly, and realising probably for the first time how true it was, ‘Because although I could accept that he’d left me – as I’ve said, feelings do change and we don’t always have control over
that – I couldn’t accept him turning his back on his three young children. Of course, in the end, it truly was his loss and no necessarily ours, because we’ve all had a pretty good life so far, haven’t we?’

  Alice nodded enthusiastically, tucked her hand in the crook of my arm, gave it a squeeze and really smiled. I didn’t think I could remember a time when it wasn’t me instigating touching and hugs when it came to Alice; it felt very good indeed.

  ‘What about Owen, Mum? Do you love him at all?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said instantly and without thought. ‘What’s not to love? He’s the loveliest man in the world, but if you’re going to ask if I am in love with him, the answer is no, Alice, and it always has been.’

  ‘Stuart?’

  ‘Too soon to say – but I am attracted to him.’ I almost added: sometimes, but I realised that would just complicate what should be a simple answer and this was really about Alice, not about me.

  ‘I think,’ she said slowly, carefully looking ahead and not at me, ‘that I do love Jake, but I’m pretty sure now that I’, not in love with him – or really attracted to him either. There’s no fizz of excitement when I see him; there never has been and I feel there should be. I feel that something important is missing. I enjoy his company but I don’t crave it. In fact, I think I feel about him the way you’ve explained that you feel about Owen, but I have no idea how to tell him that when he’s expecting so much more.’

  I thought about the rows, the icy atmosphere between them lately, and the hurt look in Jake’s eyes when Alice snapped at him yet again, and I almost pointed out that he might have already realised.

  ‘Why don’t you tell him what you’ve just told me?’ I suggested tentatively in the end, ‘And I’m sure I don’t need to ask you to pleased do it kindly. Use Owen and me as an example, if you like. Growing up together has probably confused the issue because the two of you have always been the closest out of the five of you. Perhaps you just felt safe being with him, you know, after all the changes there have been lately.’

  ‘Maybe, I certainly don’t ever want to lose Jake as a friend.’

  ‘Be sure to tell him that, then.’ I called Gizmo, put him back on the lead, and we headed for home.

  Alice was silent for a while, then she stopped right there in the middle of the pavement and gave me a hug. ‘Thanks, Mum,’ she said, ‘for everything. I think I can accept now how much you deserve your own life. I promise to stop harassing you about anyone you want to date or about how you choose to deal with your parents.’

  It felt as if I had been through an emotional wringer, what with one thing and the other, and visiting Arthur with Ron brought some much needed light relief into the day. I think his delight in seeing his son was enough to lift the spirits of everyone in the ward, it certainly lifted mine, and I was so impressed that Arthur never, not even for a minute, allowed Ron to feel guilty for his long-ago decision to leave his home country for pastures new. I had know from the moment I’d met Arthur that I could probably learn a lot from him, but I’d never realised quite how much until then.

  Ron insisted on buying fish and chips for us both on the way home from the hospital, and we ended up sharing the traditional meal at my dining room table, chatting easily and making plans for Arthur’s imminent discharge from hospital. After he’d left I sat in a silence that seemed foreign after the bustle of Christmas as I contemplated my next move. It had grown late, but, calculating that it was already well into next day in Australia, I reached first for the pretty address book that held all the telephone number of family and friends, then I reached for the phone.

  As the telephone began to ring in another country the receiver almost slipped from a hand that had quickly become slick with perspiration. The longer it rang the more relieved I felt as realisation dawned that there was nobody at home to take my call and I could leave this until another time.

  I had even begun to take the instrument from my ear to disconnect the call, when a voice, disconcertingly familiar, said, ‘Hello.’

  ‘Dad,’ I said, it’s me. It’s –‘

  ‘Evie,’ he said, and we both burst into tears.

  Chapter Twenty

  In the end the conversation I had dreaded, avoided and insisted I had no interest in for so long was not at all how I had imagined it would be. There were no recriminations on either side, just a willingness to forgive and forget whatever grudges we had been harbouring and to become a family again, despite the distance. It was as if a weight I had been refusing to acknowledge I had been carrying for so long had been lifted from my shoulders as the warm words of my parents made it easy to imagine I was enveloped in the loving arms I suddenly remembered so well.

  Alice was the first one I spoke to on the following morning, eager to share the news that I’d telephone Australia and that all was well with me and my parents, and that they we4re keen to hear from their grandchildren in England, too. I put aside the guilty knowledge that my behaviour had been instrumental in curtailing that contact as well, because the children had obviously followed my lead and shown no interest in the only grandparents they had.

  It was time to look forward and not back, as I told Alice, and I was so pleased that I had rung her to share my news because, besides showing her pleasure for me, she was able to tell me that she’d had a long and very honest talk with Jake the previous evening. He had accepted with equanimity everything that she had said, and seemed relieved, she said, to return their relationship to what it had always been. Perhaps they had both realised they weren’t couple material. I knew only too well that it would be all too easy to mistake friendship for love and I was glad all over again that Owen and I had been careful not to make that error of judgement.

  I was ready when Stuart called for me that evening. He was all smiles and quite back to his usual charming self. The good looks that had first attracted me to him were accentuated by the black shirt and jeans he wore with a soft leather jacket the same colour.

  ‘Evie.’ He held me at arm’s length, taking in my own black-clad figure in a silk shirt and slim fitting jeans worn with a honey-coloured suede jacket and matching boots. ‘You look good enough to eat,’ he said approvingly, then he drew me close and kissed me until I was breathless and it was far to easy for me to forget his ill-humour of the previous day.

  He held the car door open and helped me into the vehicle as if I was very precious to him, then chatted easily as he drove, telling me about his day and the place he had chosen to take me for a meal and hoping that I was going to like it.

  There was nothing not to like in the long, low white-washed building with its charming thatched roof, beamed ceilings and log fires. It had probably started life as a simple country pub and morphed over time into a very popular restaurant, judging by the fact that the only empty table in the place was the one we were shown to.

  ‘This is how I intended us to be,’ he confessed as we waited for the first course to arrive, ‘when I first asked you out.’

  ‘Us?’ I questioned with a smile. ‘Isn’t it still a bit soon for there to be an “us”?’

  ‘Not for me.’ He reached across the table and took my hand in his, and I felt my stomach flip at the warm look in his eyes.

  ‘We haven’t actually seen that much of each other so far,’ I reminded him gently, when the waiter had taken his time placing seafood starters in front of us and had then left.

  ‘Well, that wasn’t for want of trying on my part,’ he reminded me, ‘especially once we actually reached Christmas and I could have put work behind me for a while.’

  ‘I know.’ I shrugged easily. ‘But it’s not a great timeof the year to be thinking about romance whe you have a family – especially this year, with all the changes that the house moves brought. I think it must have made everyone feel a bit insecure.’ I shook out my napkin, turned my attention to the starter and tucked in with enjoyment.

  ‘Especially me.’

  I looked up and straight at him, smiled carefully and took
a sip of my wine, before I said, Yes, I noticed you were a bit touchy. What on earth was that all about?’

  ‘Just that you seemed to have time for just about everyone in your life apart from me, and I was starting to take it personally.’

  ‘Well, Arthur’s accident wasn’t planned and neither was your reaction to finding Owen in my house when you called for me the following morning but, thanks to Alice, we did see each other on Boxing Day evening.

  ‘I don’t recall inviting you to join us for breakfast yesterday, but I’m sorry you felt unwelcome. I did say the children would be going back to university and work and I wanted to spend time with them before they left.’ I said this calmly and then carried on eating, refusing to let that he was saying get to me. ‘You can have me all to yourself now, if that’s what you want.’

  The first course dishes were removed and the main course was brought almost immediately. I picked up my knife and fork, determined to enjoy the lamb shank and creamy mashed potato.

  ‘Until the next holiday,’ Stuart sounded gloomy.

  ‘But, Stuart, you always knew I had five children. It was hardly kept a secret from you.’

  ‘That’s it, though, isn’t it?’ he said triumphantly. ‘You don’t have five children – you the mother of three.’

  I still kept my attention on my meal, though the enjoyment was definitely beginning to pall, and my voice was steady as I replied, keeping my tone firm, ‘To all intents and purposes, Stuart, I am the mother of five, and that will never change.’

  ‘OK,’ he agreed, obviously knowing when he was beaten and making an obvious effort to accept it, ‘but it’s not just the children, is it? There’s Arthur, and now his son, and Owen is forever on the scene. I practically trip over the guy every time I come to your house. I mean, I thought that was all over between you two.’

  ‘That?’ Even I could hear the hard note that had crept into my tone.

  ‘You know.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m afraid I don’t know.’ I could feel myself becoming very, very annoyed.