by Ali Mercer
Maybe this was what it was like for Dad; maybe this was exactly what he’d been seeking out all those times – this mix of a rush and being out of it.
The soft light of the electric chandeliers, the blue shade of Mum’s dress, the pile of taken-apart prawns on my plate, with their insect-like folded legs and little jelly eyes and pink translucent shells… it was all an adventure, so much brighter and more glamorous than my life had been up to that point, and at the same time it seemed like a dream, as if it could all vanish in an instant.
Mark looked very pleased with himself, and more so as the evening went on. The proud father-to-be. Everything was going his way, wasn’t it? Mum was looking at him adoringly, and Ellie was thrilled, and even I was being less objectionable than usual. The new softer, sweeter, slightly drunker, more daughterly me.
At the end of the meal Mum asked for a herbal tea and I had a decaffeinated coffee, which was probably not a very French choice – France so far was all about things being the strongest possible version of themselves, the reddest wine, the crustiest bread, the bluest sea and sky, nothing pale or weak or wishy-washy like the colours and flavours back home. But so what if the French waiter thought I was unsophisticated and bland and English? I didn’t want anything that was going to wake me up. I was up for a big long sleep, and not having to think about anything for a bit.
My coffee came with a little round chocolate wrapped in green foil, and I gave it to Ellie, who hadn’t ordered anything.
‘You two get along pretty well, don’t you?’ Mark said.
‘Well, I wouldn’t go that far,’ I said as Ellie peeled the foil off the chocolate and popped it in her mouth.
She ate it slowly and thoughtfully, then delivered her verdict: ‘You’re probably not the worst big sister it’s possible to have.’
‘It would help if we didn’t share a room,’ I said.
‘Well, we should be able to do something about that,’ Mark said. ‘But really, I’d say you cope with it pretty well. I mean, it’s not as if you’re at each other’s throats.’
‘You sound like you expect siblings not to get on,’ I said to Mark.
‘Well, they don’t always, do they? From what I can tell.’ He glanced at Mum. ‘Your mother’s a case in point.’
‘Amanda and I are just very different,’ Mum said.
She’d fallen out with our aunt Amanda after Grandma’s funeral, but didn’t like to talk about it. Perhaps that was what prompted Ellie to pipe up and ask Mark, ‘Do you have a brother or sister?’
‘No. I don’t have any relatives. Apart from my mother.’
Ellie’s face took on that strange look she had sometimes, like someone gazing at weather that none of the rest of us could see. In the olden days they’d said that people who weren’t quite right in the head were touched. That was how Ellie looked: touched.
She said, out of the blue, ‘They hurt her.’
There was silence round the table. Mark stared first at Ellie, then at Mum, who raised her hands in a gesture of hopelessness. He cleared his throat. ‘Ellie, nobody hurt my mother. Nobody would dare.’
I said, ‘When are we going to meet her?’
‘Soon, I hope,’ Mark said. He attempted a smile; it came across as lukewarm. ‘She’s already heard a lot about you all.’
I said, ‘Does she know you’re getting married?’
‘Not yet,’ Mum told us. ‘Like I said, we wanted to tell you girls first.’
The waiter arrived with the Armagnac Mark had ordered, a large dose of thick amber fluid in a large balloon-shaped glass. I could smell it from where I was sitting. A memory came to me of Dad holding a tumbler of the same stuff in one of the flats he’d lived in, at Christmas-time. He’d held it up so that I could see the thin streaks of clear fluid, like water but thicker, clinging to the sides of the glass.
They call them tears, he’d said. The tears of the Armagnac.
He’d said it admiringly, as you might if you were talking about someone or something you were in awe of. It was as if the Armagnac was a person, and a powerful one – one of those terrifying rulers from the olden days, fond of feasting and also of abruptly ordering executions, then regretting his actions when it was too late.
‘I’ve never tasted Armagnac,’ I said to Mark.
‘You probably wouldn’t like it. You’re a bit too young for it,’ he said.
‘I suppose.’
He regarded me as if I’d asked for a favour and he wasn’t sure whether or not to grant it. Then he reached across and picked out a sugar cube from the pot the waiter had brought with my coffee. He dunked it into the Armagnac and then held it out to me.
‘The French called this faire un canard,’ he said. ‘Which means “to make a duck”. I’ve no idea why.’
I took it and popped it in my mouth. It was like nothing else I’d ever tasted: so strong, so sweet, so… wrong.
Wrong or not, I sucked it and crunched it and swallowed it all down.
Part of me wanted to say, What do you think you’re doing? Don’t you know I’m the daughter of an alcoholic? Hasn’t it occurred to you that I might be the teensiest bit susceptible?
But then, I hadn’t even hesitated about taking it, and I knew as well as anybody where too many canards might lead. Perhaps it was a fitting tribute. See, Dad, I’m not betraying you. This is my way of remembering.
* * *
When we had finished Mum yawned and stretched and said, ‘How lovely that we can just walk away and leave somebody else to do the tidying up, and go off to bed.’
‘I don’t want to go to bed,’ I objected. ‘It’s much too early. You’re forgetting the time difference.’
Mum checked her watch. ‘It’s not that early. Ellie would usually be asleep by now.’
‘Yes, but Ellie’s eleven. I don’t normally go to bed at the same time as her, so why should I have to when we’re on holiday? It’s not like I’m going to wake her up when I go in. Unless she has a nightmare, she can snore her way through pretty much anything.’
Ellie frowned. ‘That’s mean.’
‘Yeah, and it’s also true. Look – there’s a bar here, right? What if Ellie goes to bed, and the rest of us go for a drink? Just one drink. That wouldn’t hurt, would it?’
A look passed between Mum and Mark – a look I couldn’t quite read.
‘OK,’ Mum said. ‘I’ll take Ellie up to bed, and you can go to the bar with Mark and I’ll come down and join you once Ellie’s settled. You’d better have a mocktail, though, something non-alcoholic.’
I shrugged. I didn’t want anyone thinking that I’d only wanted to go to the bar so I could have another drink, as if the canard had whetted my appetite, as if I was already on the slippery downward slope to turning out like Dad. It wasn’t true, anyway. I just wanted to have some fun, for once. Was that such a crime? I was on holiday, in France, and it wasn’t as if my everyday life back home was full of adventures and treats, so why shouldn’t I make the most of it?
‘A mocktail would be fine,’ I said.
‘All right, fine,’ Mark said. ‘We’ll go to the bar, have a nightcap.’
The waiter arrived to start clearing our table, and Mum and Mark exchanged unreadable glances again.
‘Come on then, Ellie, let’s get you to bed. It’s been a long day,’ Mum said.
She leaned forward to kiss Mark – on the cheek, not the mouth – a quick, darting kiss, accompanied by a tight squeeze of his arm.
‘I won’t be long,’ she told him, getting to her feet. ‘You can order me a mocktail, too.’
Mark said he would, and Ellie reluctantly stood too and went off with Mum. Just before they reached the exit she glanced back over her shoulder at us; she looked resigned and resentful and fearful all at the same time.
And then they were gone, and it was just me and Mark sitting at a suddenly empty table.
It might have felt awkward if the wine and the canard hadn’t taken the edge off everything. As it was, I felt able to say
something close to what was on my mind.
‘I hope we’re going to manage to find something to say to each other till Mum gets back.’
He looked startled. ‘I should think we’ll manage.’
We stood at exactly the same time and made our way out of the restaurant together.
* * *
The bar was flashy and busy – lots of purple velvet plush, black lacquered furniture and mirrors. There was a piano player in a dinner suit playing a baby grand on a raised dais in one corner – soft, old-fashioned jazz, cheerful and melancholy at the same time. Everybody else looked right at home and elegant and expensive, like they spent their whole lives lounging round in places like this, sipping from frosted glasses and laughing idly at nothing in particular.
I couldn’t see anywhere to sit. If I’d been on my own I would have walked right out again. But Mark spotted an empty booth near the piano and homed in on it. As I followed him I was aware of people lazily, appraisingly turning towards me. The piano player – some old man, or old-ish, anyway – raised his head and gave me an ironic smile as I went by.
Maybe this was what all bars were like – people eyeing each other up, checking out newcomers like kids at a recreation ground keeping tabs on who was coming in. Not even with any serious intention, more the way you would scroll past images on a screen, to keep yourself entertained and pass the time.
Or maybe this was just what French bars were like. I didn’t have a lot to compare it to. I’d been to the Dog and Duck down the end of our road for a lemonade and salt and vinegar crisps, but that was about it.
We sat down and I studied the drinks menu and picked out mocktails for me and Mum. Then Mark went off to the bar to order them and I stretched and exhaled and tried to relax and look around a little.
The piano player came to the end of something and ran his hands over the keyboard with a little flourish. How great it would feel, to be able to do that – to be so confident, for your hands to work away as if you didn’t even have to think about what you were doing. Then he looked up and caught my eye.
He wasn’t as ancient as I’d thought at first. Maybe it was hard for him to gauge how old I was, too. It didn’t seem as though he realised I was only sixteen and barely legal – though most of my peers had been busy flouting the laws around what you could and couldn’t do at certain ages since they were at least fourteen.
I was the first to look away, but he’d made such an impression on me that even when I was just looking down at the table it was like I was still taking him in.
He had dark eyes and dark hair, turning silver at the temples, and he was playing that piano like he was doing the rest of us a favour, not like he was being paid to do it. I was pretty sure men like that didn’t exist in England. An English piano player would have been pale and hungry-looking and harassed, as if he was waiting for someone to come over and ask him to play ‘Chopsticks’.
My reflection in the mirror on the other side of the wall looked flushed and slightly dishevelled. But not bad, not bad at all. The lighting in the bar emphasised my cheekbones: if I tilted my head there were deep shadows underneath them. It brightened my hair and eyes, too – I looked blonder than usual, and bluer-eyed. It was like me with a filter on. A filter composed of the Grand Hotel and crevettes and Armagnac and being hundreds of miles south of home.
The piano player started his next tune. He caught my eye again and slowly, deliberately bowed his head, as if in tribute.
Mark reappeared with our drinks on a tray, and set them down on the table. I raised my glass to him and said, ‘Here’s to the new arrival.’
He looked delighted. ‘Yes! To new beginnings.’
We clinked glasses. I said, ‘Is that Armagnac again?’
‘It is.’
‘With the tears.’
‘Yes, with the tears.’
The piano kept playing – light and fast, rising and falling, soft on the harmonies but with a strong touch on the melody. Mark swallowed a couple of mouthfuls of Armagnac and set down his glass, and I sipped my cocktail. He said, ‘Is it good?’
‘Yeah, it is. It’s delicious. Thank you.’
He beamed. ‘Good. You’re welcome. What do you think of France so far?’
‘Oh, it’s amazing.’ Was it really me, enthusing like that? With Mark? He looked as surprised as I was. ‘The hotel’s gorgeous. It’s quite a treat.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ he said. ‘I wanted to take you all somewhere special.’
‘That’s nice of you, but you know what, you don’t have to bribe me and Ellie into liking you. If you’re good to Mum and the new baby and halfway decent to us, I should think we’ll manage to accept you.’
‘I hope so,’ he said. ‘It matters to me what you think. Probably more than you realise.’
‘I do realise,’ I said slowly. ‘What I don’t really understand is why.’
He pulled a face and pressed his lips together, as if he wanted to speak and couldn’t let himself. It was uncomfortable to look at him. The music rose to a climax and ebbed away, and I turned away from Mark and caught sight of my reflection in the mirror again and saw him there beside me.
Two fair-haired, blue-eyed, not bad-looking people.
From the piano player’s perspective… what would we look like?
That was when I saw it. And then I turned to Mark and said it.
‘You’re my father. Aren’t you?’
He gazed at me. I couldn’t hear the piano music any more. It was if no one else was there at all.
‘You have no idea how hard this has been for me,’ he said. ‘I wanted to tell you before. I wasn’t sure how you’d react.’
He let out a half-suppressed sob and put his head in his hands.
I couldn’t move. I was incapable of reassuring or comforting him. It wasn’t just the music and the people around us in the bar who had vanished. It was everything I thought I’d known, everything I’d believed about myself.
Because if Dad wasn’t really my dad – if that had been a lie all along – what else might be untrue?
After what seemed like a long time Mark raised his head and looked at me again. His eyes were slightly wet, but he wasn’t crying. Neither was I. Should we have cried, or hugged? I still couldn’t move.
‘I’m not meant to tell you,’ he said. ‘Your mother wanted us to sit down and talk about it all together. She’ll be furious with me.’
‘Well, you didn’t tell me. I guessed.’
Why hadn’t I realised before? Why hadn’t I guessed the minute I met him? But then, it would never have occurred to me that Mum would lie to me for so long about something so important. Or that Dad would.
‘Does Dad know?’
Mark winced. He opened his mouth as if he was about to protest, then thought better of it.
‘Sean does know. Yes.’
‘And he knew all along?’
‘Yes. He knew all along.’
‘So what happened? You were married when you met Mum… and then when she got pregnant, I guess you didn’t want to know?’
‘She didn’t tell me,’ Mark said. ‘I didn’t find out till much later.’
‘You’re not Ellie’s dad, are you?’
‘No.’
‘Well, that explains a lot.’
He frowned. ‘Explains what?’
‘Why you’re not really that interested in her.’
‘That’s not fair. I’ve made every effort with Ellie.’
‘Hardly. You’ve made a token effort. And Mum’s probably had to remind you to do that.’
Suddenly he looked more angry than wounded. ‘You shouldn’t speak to me like that.’
‘You don’t have any right to tell me what to do.’
‘I’m your father.’
I shook my head. ‘As far as I’m concerned, you’re just someone who showed up out of the blue.’
A shadow fell across the table: Mum, back from saying goodnight to Ellie. She said, ‘What’s going on?’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘Mark’s worried you’ll be angry with him, so just for the record, he didn’t tell me. I guessed.’
Mum looked from me to Mark and back to me again. She looked so horrified I almost felt sorry for her.
‘Ava, I was just trying to do what I thought was best at the time,’ she said. ‘I never would have wanted to hurt you. You girls are the most important thing in the world to me. You know that.’
‘Yeah? Well, you’ve got a funny way of showing it.’
And with that I got up and walked away from them both.
She did get up to follow me, but only once I was already nearly at the door. I turned the handle and let myself out, and found myself in the hotel corridor, suddenly completely alone.
Eleven
Jenny
When I got out of the bar I couldn’t see her anywhere.
She couldn’t possibly have gone far…
Why hadn’t I been quicker off the mark?
Stop. Think. I had to get this right.
This was sensible Ava, with her sound instinct for self-preservation. Who’d never had a boyfriend, or smoked, or got drunk on cider and been sick, or got up to any of the other foolish things I had done myself when I was around her age.
Ava, who didn’t take risks.
She’d had a shock. A terrible shock. But she was still the same girl.
I hurried off up the stairs to the corridor where our rooms were, and caught sight of her with her keycard in her hand just as she was about to let herself in.
‘Ava! Thank goodness. I thought you might have taken off somewhere.’
She hadn’t gone out to wander round the streets, or walk in the moonlight by the beach. She wasn’t about to fall victim to muggers or worse. This was Ava, and she’d responded to the news that Mark was her father by leaving the bar and going off to bed. In spite of the furious coldness of the look she was giving me, I could have cried with relief.
‘I don’t want to talk,’ she said warningly.
