by Jane Davis
Chapter Twenty-four
It was the first time that I had left the house other than for the funeral and I had accepted an invitation from Lydia to join her and Kevin for tea.
'Nothing stuffy,' she said, 'just a fish-and-chip supper in front of the telly. You won't even have to talk if you don't want to.'
I had never been inside Lydia's house before and it amused me that it was so familiar and yet so different. It was a little like being Alice in Wonderland. Nothing seemed to fit.
'That just about sums us up, doesn't it, Kevin?' Lydia joked, the cough only a short way behind. 'I always knew we lived in topsy-turvy land.'
The house was littered with Kevin's 'inventions', half-built projects and gadgets for everything you could think of and a lot more besides. Dad would have loved it. In fact, it was right up his street.
'I never even knew I needed my reacher-upper until he made it for me.' Lydia showed me a claw-like contraption for reaching things in the tall kitchen cupboards. 'But I was forever standing on chairs to get things. Then one day I came home and he said, "I've made this for you, Ma," and I thought, Well, he's noticed that all on his own without me asking. He's not as daft as he looks. So now and then I drop hints, "I could do with something to help me get lids off jam jars," or something, and I can almost hear his brain working. A couple of days later, he'll have come up with some gadget or other. Shall we go through?'
We joined Kevin in the front room where he was already in front of the television.
'There you go, love.' Lydia handed him a plate with the fish and chips still in the newspaper on top. 'Nice bit of haddock for you. Want any ketchup with that?'
He unwrapped the parcel as carefully as if he thought that the fish was still alive, sniffed the contents and said, 'Salt and vinegar?'
She beamed at him. 'Just how you like it.'
'Thanks, Ma.'
'What are you watching, love?'
''S'about kids bein' brought up by men who aren't their fathers.'
'Adopted, like?'
'No.' He swallowed a mouthful of chips. 'Where the woman's done the dirty.'
'Oh, I see.' She nudged me. 'I don't mind a bit of scandal.'
'It's not scandal, Ma, it's science!'
'Silly me! I thought it was sex,' she chortled. 'That all right for you, Andrea? You comfortable?'
'Shush, Ma!' Kevin frowned. 'Ah'm watchin'.'
The presenter, a man with glasses, a high forehead and curly hair, was explaining how women are attracted to different men at different times of the month. They had carried out tests by showing pictures of various men to the same women and had asked which they found the most attractive at different times in their cycle. Those who were normally attracted to the bespectacled, artistic or intelligent-looking men for most of the month suddenly found themselves drawn to the square-jawed Adonises when they were ovulating. He concluded that women could detect which men were the most fertile firstly by looks and secondly by the exchange of saliva.
'Ooh, I know exactly what he means,' Lydia told me in a loud whisper. 'Sometimes I feel like De Niro, other days it's Pacino, but then I'm quite partial to the one who did all them Nescafé adverts and all.'
'Anthony Head?' I asked.
'I'm not that bothered what his name is.' She winked. 'I wouldn't even mind if he forgot all about the coffee.'
'Get over you!' Kevin laughed with her.
I was envious of their obvious affection for each other, feeling so alone in the world. 'Do you ever wonder about your parents?' I asked him.
He looked at Lydia, who nodded at him to go ahead.
'What for?' He dismissed the idea.
'I just thought that you might have wanted to know who they were.'
'That's my ma sitting next to you,' he said, and turned back to the television. We watched for a few minutes and I assumed that he had finished. Lydia looked approvingly at him. Then he went on: 'What's important is the person who tucks you in at night.'
'That's right, love,' Lydia said. 'But you did ask a lot of questions in your teens, didn't you? And we looked into it for you. And that nice lady said you should think about it and that you could make up your mind if you wanted to know when you were eighteen.'
'And did you?' I asked.
Kevin shrugged. 'Thought about it,'
'But you didn't take it any further?'
'Like I say, that's my ma sat over there.'
'We've got his birth certificate in an envelope upstairs, but we've never opened it, have we?'
Kevin shook his head. 'Nope.'
'And we had your da with us until you were twelve, didn't we?' Lydia prompted. 'We miss him, don't we?'
'Yup,' Kevin said with an intake of breath.
'Every day, we miss him.'
'I don't think I've ever seen my birth certificate,' I said with sudden realization.
'Not found it clearing out all that stuff?' Lydia asked. 'You'll have to get yourself a copy. You might need it for all the legal stuff at some point.'
'Maybe I will.' But my thoughts were on that other child and what his birth certificate might say.
'You finished with those?' Kevin asked, eyeing my chips.
'Help yourself.' I offered him my plate. 'I'm full.'
'Put them on the newspaper for him, there's a love,' said Lydia, dipping a chip into some tomato ketchup. 'That's how you like them, isn't it?'
Later in the kitchen, Lydia insisted that I sat down while she washed up and made a brew. 'What do you think of that, then? Licence for every woman in the country to throw themselves at some weightlifter and say, "I just can't help myself. It's science." I think they were after the weightlifters all along, but settled for the blokes with the money, then as soon as they had a drink or two inside them . . . wallop.'
'I don't know. I'd settle for one bloke, forget the two.'
'Been a while, has it?' she asked, laughing at my shocked face. 'It's all right, I'm not your mother.'
I joined her. 'You?'
'About fifteen years, I'd say. So don't you go feeling sorry for yourself! I'm glad you asked him that question, you know.'
I raised my eyebrows at her. 'Have you talked about it?'
'Not for a long time.' She looked content. 'It was nice to hear Kevin say it to someone else. That I'm his mum and that what went before doesn't matter. You know, every day, there's something that makes me thank my lucky stars that we found each other, but that was quite something.'
'I thought for one minute I'd put my foot in it.'
'Oh, no,' she said happily, 'not one bit, love. You ready for that tea now?'
Chapter Twenty-five
The visit to Lydia sparked an interest in me that I hadn't felt for a long time and I decided that I would piece together my family tree in earnest. The only problem was that with my parents and Grandma Fellows gone, and Nana teetering on the brink of reality, I had no one to ask about our family history other than my aunt. She was unusually short with me when I approached her.
'You can count us all on the fingers of both hands. You're wasting your time.'
'But what about Dad's father? There might be a story there.'
'He left when Tom was very young. Your dad didn't want to know who his own father was. If he's still alive – and I very much doubt it – Tom obviously never wanted him to meet you. So I would leave whatever story there might be well and truly buried if I were you.'
'Did you know your grandparents?'
'A little.'
'Is there anything you can tell me about them?'
'They were old,' she said sarcastically.
I decided to consult the local register office. Not knowing where to start, I found that I had to ask for assistance, already feeling wobbly. The clerk found a volume covering the five-year period from 1975 to 1980.
'I'm sorry,' he told me after helping me to search under the year of my birth. 'There's nothing under your name for that date.'
'Are you sure?' I could already feel that my eyes
were brimming with tears and I blinked to try and keep them back.
'Absolutely sure.'
'There must be a mistake. Could you please check again?' I tried to brush a tear away with a quick swipe of the back of my hand while he was looking down the columns to humour me.
'Are you all right, miss?'
'I'm fine. I'm just in a bit of a . . .' I was desperately avoiding his gaze. 'Is there a . . . ?'
'Shall I get you a tissue?' he offered.
I nodded and he disappeared. I checked the next page of columns and the page after that, then turned a number of pages in frustration as much as anything else. It was only when I reached the entries for 1980 that I wondered if there would be an entry for my stillborn brother. As I had no idea of his name, I focused on the column for the mother's name. And there it was in black and white. Laura Fellows gave birth to Derek James Fellows on 25 July 1980. Only one detail was missing: the father's name. Unusual for a married lady.
'Here we are.' I looked up guiltily from the register to find that the clerk was holding a box of tissues. 'I see you've had another look. Found anything?'
I shook my head. 'Where do I go from here?' I asked.
'You need to try the Family Records Centre if your birth wasn't registered here. That's where the records from all of the local offices are held. I'll write the details down for you, but it would mean a trip down to London.'
I could feel tears welling up again and was glad of the tissues on offer. A trip to London was out of the question. A walk into town had been as much as I could handle.
'If you need the ladies,' he confided in me, 'there's a washroom down there on the right. It says "Staff Only" on the door, but that's just to stop people walking in off the street.'
I tried to smile vaguely in his direction before stumbling off in the direction that he had indicated. Once inside the safety of a cubicle, I sat and allowed myself the luxury of a few sobs before I made myself take deep breaths and blew my nose. I would have liked to have found the clerk and apologized, explaining that my parents had recently been killed in a car crash and that although I had thought I was ready to face the world again, it was too soon. Aware of the effort that would be involved in saying those few short words aloud and accepting the pity that would follow, I decided to leave him with the opinion that women are hormonally imbalanced, emotional wrecks.
In need of comfort and unable to face an empty house, I called on Lydia who prescribed a sit-down and a cuppa, her solution to most of the world's problems. 'You'd better come on through.' She busied me into the kitchen, mentioning as she passed the front room, 'Andrea's here, Kevin.' She chattered away as she boiled the kettle and assembled the tea-making equipment with all the seriousness that my father used to employ when cleaning shoes. Then, after placing the pot on the table, topping it with a padded tea cosy and arranging cups and saucers, she sat with her forearms on the table and her hands clasped together.
'Your turn.' She nodded with a smile. 'I'm all ears.'
I told her about my trip to the local register office, my dismay at having failed to trace my own records and my discovery about my brother. I also told her that I would have to put my search on hold as I couldn't face a trip to London.
She looked thoughtful, 'Well, I just might be able to help you out there. Won't be till next month, mind, but I'm due a visit to see a dear old cousin of mine who lives in Surrey. I go every year and we always treat ourselves to a trip up to town to see a show. I've always liked a good musical and, with the best will in the world, we don't get a good musical round here, do we? I'm sure I could persuade her to tag along. You give me those details and I'll sort it.'
'Will they let you if you're not family?'
She smiled. 'You fill in a form giving a reason. I'll write "family research". I just won't say whose family I'm researching.'
I was so grateful that I almost burst into tears again. She put one of her large arms around me and hugged me to her. 'Ah, you see! There's always a solution. But don't you go thanking me yet. You don't know what news I'll have for you. Families have this knack of throwing up a few surprises.'
'Mind if I have a word with Kevin?' I asked. 'I want to ask what he thinks about something.'
'You go right ahead, love. He's in the front room putting his feet up. I'll finish my tea. I haven't sat down once all morning.'
'Hello, Kevin,' I announced myself and perched on an armchair. He was slouched on the sofa, his shoulders hunched up and his feet on the coffee table in front of him. 'I hope you don't mind, but I thought you might be able to give me some advice.'
'All right,' he said, uncertain, his eyes still focused on the television.
'I've started to look into my family history and I've found out enough to know that there's going to be a couple of surprises in there. It looks like I might have been adopted too. What do you think I should do?'
'What do you want to do?' He answered me with a question, only his mouth moving.
'I don't know. Why do you think you never looked at your birth certificate?'
'Ah already know who Ahm.'
'Do you mean that you know who you are, or who your birth parents are?'
'Both.'
'Is it important to you who your birth parents are?'
'Yes an' no.'
'Can you tell me why?'
'Yes, because Ah wanted to know they were good people. No, because Ah already had Lydia an' Bill.'
'Don't you want to know why they gave you up?'
'If they hadn't, Ah wouldn't have lived with Lydia an' Bill.'
'Did you wonder why they couldn't take care of you?'
''Course Ah did.'
'Did it make you angry?'
'Sometimes.'
'Have you ever met them?'
'Yes.'
'Spoken to them?'
'Aye.'
'Did they know who you were?'
'No.'
'Did you want to tell them who you are?'
'Nope.'
'Why not?'
'Ah didn't want to change anything. Ah like living with Lydia. Ah couldn't have axed for better parents.'
'What do you think I should do?'
'D'yer think you know the answer already?'
'No. I just have this feeling.'
'Did you have a happy childhood?'
'Yes.'
'Would you have changed anything if you could?'
'No.'
He shrugged and I gathered that our conversation was over. On the one hand, conversation with Kevin could be frustrating, because he only answered exactly what had been asked and volunteered so little. On the other hand, he made things seem so refreshingly simple that I wondered why I spent so many hours fretting over unimportant details.
'Thanks, Kevin.' I stood and took my leave, and wandered into the kitchen, where Lydia was drying up.
'You done out there?' she asked. 'Staying for lunch?'
'I think I'll be off now, if you don't mind.'
'But we'll be seeing you soon. And I'll let you know how I get on.'
Despite Kevin's assurances, I felt that my life was on hold until I had traced my birth details. Although I had nothing concrete to go on, I couldn't stop my mind from churning. I had always been told that I looked like my father and we had been extremely close. I had never looked remotely like my mother. I toyed with the possibility that I might have been my father's child with another woman. A groupie from the band, possibly. That would also explain why I had never been told that I was adopted. And as both my mother and father obviously adored children, I assumed that they would have only given my brother up for adoption if they could not take care of him themselves. Possibly he'd been disabled. Would there have been such a great stigma about this that they would have pretended he was stillborn? Like Kevin, I had enjoyed a very happy childhood and I wouldn't have changed anything for the world. But what was at first a welcome distraction from the other thoughts that plagued me soon grew into an obsession.
I
started to quiz Uncle Pete about the band more and more, especially about the people who hung around with them. As always, he was a reliable source of information and far more willing than my aunt. Even if his memory needed a little jogging, he was usually able to supply photographs. These were particularly useful as he had enjoyed taking shots of people's reaction to the band. He talked about how he had tried to capture the atmosphere at the Spearheads' early gigs. In those days, audiences dressed up just as much as the band and his focus was on the most outrageous, among them Aunty Faye showing a side of her I had never seen before. He told me how bands like Pink Floyd and Genesis, with their original line-ups, and artists like Bowie and Roxy Music had introduced a theatrical side to music. Although the Spearheads weren't influenced by the punk explosion, its impact could be seen in the clothes that the crowd wore, particularly with my aunt's art-school group, who wanted to stand out and to shock.
'Your dad always said that the Spearheads would have done better if punk hadn't happened,' Uncle Pete said. 'Tom thought that their moment was stolen from them. After the Sex Pistols, everyone thought that they would have a go. There was one Sex Pistols gig that was seen by Peter Hook and Morrissey. Without the Sex Pistols we wouldn't have had Joy Division or the Smiths. Plus, there is nothing that affects record sales like the death of an artist. Nineteen seventy-seven was a bad year for music. First we lost Elvis, then Marc Bolan and most of Lynyrd Skynyrd. That reminds me! All this talk and I almost forgot! I thought you might be interested in this.' He handed me a tatty white sleeve with a cut-away circle in the middle. 'I found it when I was clearing up.'
'Is this what I think it is?' I asked, looking at him.
'It's probably a collector's item.'
I pulled the record from the sleeve and held it by the edges as if it was a priceless antique. ' "The Spearheads",' I read. ' "What Were You Thinkin' Of?" and "Sugar Mama".'
'The B side is the cover of a Sonny Boy Williamson track.'
'Can we play it?' I asked.
'One small problem, I'm afraid.' He shrugged apologetically. 'I don't own a record player any more. You're going to need to find someone who still listens to vinyl.'
'I can keep it?'
