by Emma Davies
The local primary school had a good relationship with the library and Lucy worked hard to support them. She regularly visited the school and helped with literacy projects, but this half-term would be the library’s first time hosting an event for parents on behalf of the school. The head teacher had thought that holding a session for parents on the new phonics tests away from the school environment might be beneficial and Lucy had to agree. Things were always so much more relaxed during the school holidays, and even if the turnout was a little down with people being away, she hoped that those who did come would find it useful. Today’s mission was to create some fun information boards that she could use to publicise the event.
She picked up the pair of scissors and began to cut out shapes from the paper in front of her, frowning in concentration. It didn’t occur to her that Oscar might be watching until he spoke.
‘Would you like some help?’ he asked. ‘I’m not so good with anything technical these days, but cutting out I can manage.’
‘Are you sure you don’t mind? It’s a bit mind-numbing, I’m afraid.’
‘As is yesterday’s newspaper, unfortunately, so it would be a welcome release.’
Lucy smiled and handed over her scissors. ‘I’ll just go and fetch another pair.’
She returned to the table carrying a big pot of pencils as well. ‘There’s colouring-in too, if you want to go really wild.’
Oscar eyed the ice-cream container full of colours. ‘I’m not sure I can handle the responsibility, but I’ll have a go.’
‘Good man.’
They worked silently for several minutes before Oscar held up a picture in front of him. ‘So, I have a boat, a snail, and now a duck. Are we doing letters of the alphabet?’
Lucy looked up in surprise. ‘That’s very good,’ she said, ‘and very close. Actually, they’re letter sounds.’ She pointed at the boat. ‘That’s an oa sound… as in b-oa-t. This one’s an ai sound as in snail and the duck is actually for the sound of the qu letters in the word quack.’
Oscar looked bemused. ‘Is that what they teach children these days?’
‘A bit different from when you learned to read, I bet,’ replied Lucy. ‘Different from when I learned, too. It’s called phonics. The words are learned by the sound the letters make.’
‘And does it work?’ Oscar stared at the pictures in front of him.
Lucy grinned. ‘I have absolutely no idea,’ she said. ‘But it’s supposed to!’
‘Another government initiative, no doubt. When I taught my children to read they just learned by repetition, there was no other way.’
‘Did you have a large family, Oscar?’
He laughed. ‘You could say that,’ he replied. ‘Anywhere between nineteen to twenty-five of the little darlings.’
Lucy’s eyes widened. ‘Oh gosh, you were a teacher? I never knew that!’ she exclaimed.
‘I was the head, actually, but I still had my own class and taught them all day, every day. Though I don’t suppose we had quite so much paperwork back then.’
‘But where did you teach?’
‘Right here,’ smiled Oscar. ‘In the town, at St Michael’s.’
Lucy sat forward in her seat, never imagining for one minute that this was how their conversation would go. ‘But then you must know loads of folk who come in here. Blimey, I bet you taught half of them.’
‘A fair few, yes. A lot have moved on of course, families do, but there’s still some around… and now they have children of their own.’
‘That must be so weird… Rather nice though too, I’d imagine.’
Oscar put down the picture he was still holding. ‘Mostly,’ he said. ‘Some families are hard to forget, but sadly not always for the right reasons. It can be… painful sometimes to see history repeating itself.’
Oscar was staring out towards the door, and Lucy longed to turn around to see what he was looking at.
‘There’s that young lad Callum for a start, the one that comes to the book club. On the face of it he seems nice enough, but he’s a prime example. One of five kids, all of them wasting their lives. Not a single drop of initiative or aspiration between then. Quite content to while away their days, drinking and smoking, one dead-end job to another, or no job at all, which is often the case. I taught his dad, and every one of his four siblings; they were all the same.’
Lucy looked up, surprised. Callum had never appeared that way to her, and she was astonished to hear Oscar talk in such a fashion.
‘Some folks just don’t deserve to be parents,’ he finished.
Lucy looked back down at the paper and scissors she was holding. She didn’t feel she could quite meet Oscar’s eye, even though his voice was level and calm despite his cutting words. She knew how grumpy elderly people could be – too quick to judge the youth of today, always willing to think the worst – but Oscar was usually such a cheery soul, and seeing him now, in his dapper waistcoat and brightly coloured tie, it just didn’t make any sense.
‘Still, I bet you’re proud as anything of your own children?’
The minute the words left her mouth she regretted them. Oscar flinched and she saw the shadow of grief cross his face once again. She’d put her foot in it. He looked so distraught part of her wished she had kept to safer subjects, but she couldn’t help but feel that it would do Oscar some good to talk about how he was feeling. She’d only asked the question to see if she could get him to open up about his family.
Oscar sipped at his tea and then carefully put down his cup.
‘Forgive me, Lucy,’ he said. ‘I’ve become an old man, rather set in my ways and thoughts, I’m afraid; I spoke without thinking. I’m sure Callum’s a fine young man.’
Lucy blushed slightly, she hadn’t intended her comment to be a rebuke either.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—’
‘Everyone must live their lives how they see fit of course; that is after all what makes us all so wonderfully different from one another. I really mustn’t let my own bitterness be my judge in such matters.’ He smiled at Lucy. ‘And now you must think me awfully opinionated.’
‘You shouldn’t apologise, Oscar. Having opinions is important. Look at me: I’m only in my early twenties, what have I got to be opinionated about? I haven’t lived enough of a life yet to know what really matters and what doesn’t. Mind you, I’m pretty certain it’s not who gets kicked out of I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!’ She waved the scissors in her hands. ‘Besides, you’ve a good many more years under your belt than me – I think a degree of bitterness is entirely normal.’
He looked at her over the top of his cup. ‘Perhaps,’ he replied. ‘Although I suspect you’re just being kind now.’ He sucked in a breath. ‘Normal it might be, but bitterness is still a very destructive emotion. It can suck out all the joy from things if you let it, and I think it’s caused me to be far harsher than necessary on occasion; young Callum and his family are prime examples.’ He stared out towards the door once more.
Lucy followed the line of his sight this time, turning back to Oscar with a quizzical expression on her face. ‘I’ve never once thought of you as a bitter person,’ she said. ‘So, however you feel, you hide it well.’ She could feel Oscar’s indecision hovering in the air between them. He gave a soft sigh.
‘Are you really sure you’ve got time to listen to an old man’s tales?’ he asked.
She flashed him a quick smile, picking up another sheet of paper. ‘I absolutely have,’ she replied. ‘In any case, I’m working, so where’s the harm?’
Oscar followed suit, picking up his own scissors once more. The smile on his face was hard to read. ‘Are you sitting comfortably?’
A momentary flicker of unease ran through Lucy as she wondered whether her resolve to try and get Oscar to talk was a sensible idea, but she had already brought them to this point and there was no going back now.
He fingered the signet ring on his left hand. He wore no wedding ring, but she had seen him t
ouch it several times already during the course of their conversation, as if to reassure himself that it was still there. She wondered whether his wife had given it to him.
‘You asked me a few moments ago whether I had a large family and I’m afraid I rather evaded your question, choosing instead to tell you about my school family…’
Lucy gave a slight nod of encouragement.
‘It was an important part of my life, and one which, despite my somewhat rash comments, I’m enormously proud of. No substitute for your own family of course, but, perhaps they came close, in their own way…’
He closed his eyes and swallowed, before taking a deep breath and lifting his head to look Lucy directly in the eye. ‘I was a father, once,’ he said, ‘for a very brief moment of time. I didn’t even know our child had been born until afterwards, which is odd, isn’t it?’ He wasn’t expecting an answer. ‘You’d think you’d just know something as important as that, wouldn’t you? That your very soul would feel itself expanding into that of another. But there was nothing. It was some weeks after the birth by the time I was told, but by then of course I was a father no more. Our daughter had been given away.’
Lucy’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oscar, I’m so sorry! I never meant—’
The soft expression returned to his eyes. ‘I know, Lucy, you would never pry… and perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned it now. It’s not something I speak of often, but… today just felt like the right time.’ He smiled at her. ‘You’re a good listener,’ he added.
Lucy shook her head. ‘No, I should never have pressed you. The last thing I wanted to do was upset you.’
‘We are fools to ourselves far too often,’ said Oscar. ‘I’ve carried the weight of this around with me my whole life, and it’s only now that Mary has gone that I can see I should have spoken of it before. I thought by never speaking of it that it would grow small and powerless, but instead it’s risen to become the monster that lurks under the bed, the stuff of nightmares. I should be thanking you for giving me the space to share it.’
Lucy shook her head again, blinking rapidly. ‘No, I’ve made it worse. I can see it on your face.’
To her amazement, Oscar grinned at her. ‘That, my dear, is old age, and try as I might these saggy old features will not rearrange themselves any other way.’
‘Now you’re just trying to make me feel better,’ she retorted.
‘As are you,’ he replied.
The air around them settled as they smiled at one another. Lucy didn’t think she had ever met anyone quite like Oscar before.
‘I met my Mary when we were both just sixteen years old, did I tell you? She carried a vanilla cupcake across the village hall to give to me and I thought I’d never seen anyone so beautiful – like a blue-eyed angel, she was.’ Oscar smiled at the memory. ‘She always laughed afterwards that it was simply because it was Christmastime and everything looked so pretty at the dance, but it wasn’t that. My mother used to help with the refreshments at all the village hall events so I’d been dragged to enough of them to know that no-one like Mary had ever walked in there before. Sixteen I might have been, naïve and inexperienced, but my heart knew when it was taken; my head had no say in the matter at all.’
‘So, you must have been together—’
‘Just over sixty years, all told.’
‘A whole lifetime…’
‘And I never regretted one second of it, not even when our baby was taken from us. They wanted to tear us apart of course, but if anything it brought us closer. I loved my Mary so much – love her still, in fact. If I have any regrets at all it’s that we never got to share that love with our child. But it was not to be, and so we created a life of our own together, just the two of us.’
Lucy pushed the scissors to one side and reached out a hand towards him. ‘What happened?’ she asked gently.
A cloud passed across his face for an instant. ‘Our parents,’ he said. ‘People who thought they knew better. People who could never understand that we could love and look after a child at such a young age. Of course we didn’t mean for it to happen, but people didn’t talk about sex much in those days, and Mary and I loved one another; we never considered what we were doing was wrong.’
‘Oh Oscar, it wasn’t wrong.’
He met her eye. ‘No, it wasn’t, but in those days it was considered a sin. When Mary fell pregnant I wanted to marry her, but instead she was taken away from me to a place where her condition wouldn’t cast shame on the family. We had no say in the matter, and although I fought against it, there was nothing I could do. We weren’t even allowed contact and when Mary finally returned home the baby had already been adopted.’
‘But your parents thought they were doing their best for you?’
Oscar nodded. ‘No doubt,’ he said. ‘But we married anyway, soon after, against their wishes of course, and, unsurprisingly, were left pretty much on our own.’ His mouth settled into a grim line. ‘It was better that way.’
Lucy didn’t know what to say. The contrast between Oscar’s early years and her own was stark. Her parents had never been anything but supportive; even when she made the sudden decision to give up a career in teaching they had talked things through with her rationally. They might not have understood her choice – Lucy wasn’t sure she did herself – but they still allowed her to make up her own mind. Lucy was never in any doubt that she was loved and looked after. She couldn’t imagine what Oscar and Mary must have gone through in their lives; living with the constant ghost of what might have been, knowing that there was always something missing. Now that was something she definitely did understand, never quite feeling whole or fulfilled.
‘But didn’t you ever try and find your daughter?’ she blurted out, regretting her words the minute she had said them. She doubted very much whether she would ever have had the strength to do something like that.
Oscar twisted his ring as he thought how best to reply. ‘We did, from time to time… in the early days, at least. But then we thought how our little girl would feel. She would be settled – with good people, they had promised us that – and to her of course her parents were just her parents, the people who brought her up. How could we upturn all that and cause her so much distress? We agreed to put it behind us and trust that our daughter was loved and cared for. It was all we could do.’
‘And the potential pain in finding out was harder than the pain of letting her go?’
‘Something like that.’ Oscar smiled sadly, his face drawn by his emotions.
It was fear, that much Lucy recognised. The fear of the unknown, of opening Pandora’s box and never knowing what you were letting yourself in for. There was truth in that old saying, Let sleeping dogs lie, and if she wasn’t careful she was in very grave danger of waking Oscar’s up; she couldn’t do that to him, not after all these years of putting it to rest.
She dragged a smile onto her face. ‘You’re right, I’m sure she’s had a wonderful life. As have you, don’t you forget.’
Oscar visibly straightened. ‘I have,’ he said, a little of the old twinkle coming back. ‘And much to look forward to… After all, not many people get to sit and cut out pictures of boats with charming young ladies, do they? I consider myself very lucky indeed.’
Chapter Eight
Still reeling from her conversation with Oscar, it was half past three before Lucy really began to take in anything around her. It was only the sight of Hattie coming into the library with her daughter that snapped her out of the daze she’d been in for the past few hours. With Oscar’s help, Lucy had long since finished cutting out the shapes she needed for her display. She had even gone so far as to pin them to the board, adding a heading and the posters she had already made, but it wasn’t until she heard Poppy’s chattering voice and saw her hand in hand with her mum that Lucy took a step back and really looked at what she had been doing.
She sighed, and started to take down the pinned shapes. The display was a mess; she would have to start agai
n. She collected the pieces of paper together and stared at the empty board. Perhaps today was not the right time; Oscar’s story had clearly affected her more than she thought. She looked across at Hattie, now sitting on the little sofa in the children’s section, her daughter on her knee. Did she really have the nerve to interfere all over again?
Time was against her on this one; if what she had planned was going to happen at all, she only had a few days left to make things work. It was a simple question and Hattie would either say yes or no. If she didn’t speak to her now, she might not get another chance before next week, and by then it would be too late. She looked at the poster in her hand, realising that it would give her just the excuse she needed. Her legs had already carried her halfway towards the children’s section before she realised she had even made up her mind.
Hattie looked up with a smile, and then back down at her daughter. ‘Poppy, this is the lady who looks after all the books. Would you like to say hello? Her name’s Lucy.’
Lucy dropped down to her haunches so that she was roughly the same height as the little girl.
‘Hi, Poppy,’ she said. There was a shy smile in reply. ‘What are you reading?’
Poppy pulled the book from her mum’s lap, closing it so that Lucy could see the front.
‘Hairy Maclary!’ she exclaimed.
Lucy grinned at the sight of the scruffy black dog on the cover. It was a popular series of books.
‘They’re reading one at school,’ Hattie added, ‘and I noticed you had them here.’
Poppy slipped off her mum’s lap and sat cross-legged on the carpet, the book on her lap. Lucy took her opportunity and handed Hattie one of the posters.
‘I wondered if this might be of any interest to you,’ she said. ‘I’m sure it’s something you’ll be coming up against soon.’ She waited a moment while Hattie read the details of the phonics course. ‘We’re holding a session here during half-term, and the children can all come along. There’ll be activities for them so that mums and dads can hopefully listen more or less uninterrupted.’
