Half-truths & White Lies

by Jane Davis

  'You should own a copy of the recordings of Tom Fellows. I don't expect you've ever heard him playing before. If there was any justice in this world, he would have been up there with the best of them.'

  'Have you got any photos of him rehearsing in the garage?' It was there that I thought people might have been relaxed enough to let down their guards. I spent the afternoon trawling through face after face before Uncle Pete mentioned to me, 'Of course, I was never at their recordings or any of the gigs when they went on tour. I was always working.'

  'They went on tour?' That broadened the search considerably.

  'When you were very young. You and your mother stayed with me so I could help out. You probably don't remember. Faye would be able to tell you more about it. The band sometimes stayed with her in London in the early days.'

  'Do you know where she lived?'

  'Small place. Can't remember the name, but I do remember that it was the last stop on the Tube. I went there once myself, but that was years ago.'

  I could almost hear my mother saying, You're a cross between my absolute two favourite people, so that makes you my number-one girl.

  Was it possible that my father had had an affair with my aunt? I remembered the photographs from the album when my parents were so obviously in love, and my aunt's distress that there were no photos of her. But how could the same person who was attracted to my mother also have been attracted to her sister, even if it was only for one night? 'Chalk and cheese,' my father used to say, shaking his head in disbelief. 'Who'd have thought that two sisters could be so different.' Having said that, the Faye in the photographs was not the Aunty Faye I knew. She wasn't even the Faye I remembered as a child. She was someone you would notice in a crowd as they were watching you. Someone that you wouldn't forget easily. Not obviously beautiful, but interesting. Edgy. Dangerous-looking.

  'Did my aunt ever go out with anyone in the band?' I asked.

  'Faye?' He frowned, as if it was possible that I might have been talking about someone else.

  'She looks like the girlfriend of a rock star. Or maybe even one herself.'

  'I loved the contrast between your mother and Faye.' He didn't take the bait, or maybe he ignored it, but instead enthused about a photograph he had found of the two of them. 'They were completely different ends of the spectrum. Looking at Faye in these shots, you'd never believe that she was this shy little girl who wouldn't say boo to a goose.'

  'I was born seven months after my parents' wedding,' I mused, trying to pull him back to my direction.

  'Between you and me, you were a bit of a surprise. Your parents actually thought that your father couldn't have children. Your mother had no idea she was pregnant when she got married. I don't want you to go thinking that your parents were marched up the aisle. Completely the opposite, in fact. I think your grandparents would have done anything they could to stop it.'

  'Really?'

  'They thought that Tom was completely unsuitable.'

  'What was wrong with him?'

  'He was dangerous, had long hair, no job to speak of. I probably shouldn't tell you this, but your parents were blamed when your grandfather had the heart attack that killed him. The wedding almost didn't happen at all.'

  'See! That's the problem with living with Nana. They never talked about things like that with her there.'

  'I expect that there was quite a lot they didn't talk about. It took your grandmother years to get over it. And quite a while for her to get used to Tom. She was a tyrant in those days.'

  'Nana?'

  'I've found myself in her bad books once or twice and I can tell you that I wouldn't have wished her on my worst enemy. She was quite a force of nature.'

  I was reassured by what Uncle Pete told me. That their best friend had been around when my mother was pregnant pushed the nagging doubts to the back of my mind.

  'Now, has that answered all your questions for today? Do you think I can have that tea you promised me hours ago?'

  'Yes. That's it – unless you can tell me why I can't trace my birth at the local register office. I don't seem to exist on paper.'

  He nodded. 'That would depend on where your birth was registered. You see, you weren't actually born here. I didn't meet you until you were two weeks old.'

  I was greatly relieved to hear this. 'Then I've been asking the wrong questions!'

  'So that's what this is all about. You don't think that you're Laura's daughter?' Suddenly, Uncle Pete looked a little off colour and put out an arm to steady himself. 'Must have got up too quickly,' he explained, when I asked if he was feeling unwell.

  Later, before he left, he put a hand on both of my shoulders and said, 'When you were a little girl, I would look at you sometimes and feel as if I was looking at a mirror image of myself. Have you ever felt like that before?' I could feel his hands shaking.

  'Are you sure you're feeling better?' I asked, embarrassed by his sudden intensity. I put my own hands up to steady his and removed them from my shoulders at the same time.

  'I'll take that as a no, then.' He looked half relieved, but his gaze was still fixed on my face and his expression was a question mark.

  'Sometimes I look in the mirror and I don't even recognize myself any more.'

  'I thought that was my age.' He laughed. 'That shouldn't be happening to you for a few years yet.' Then he was suddenly serious. 'It will get easier. Give it time.'

  Left alone, I took the record and wandered upstairs to my parents' bedroom, their domain. Even half cleared of their possessions, it was the place where I felt closest to them. I sat at the dressing table in front of the three-sided mirror and turned the side mirrors inwards so that I could see an infinite number of reflections of myself. As a child, I had perfected the art of staring at the main mirror. Sometimes when I did this, a tiny detail in one of the side mirrors would jump out at me. Uncle Pete's question had touched a raw nerve somewhere. Something I couldn't quite put a finger on. I looked for some evidence that I was my mother's daughter. Having spent the afternoon studying photographs, I had a very clear image of what she had looked like at my age. But the faces that looked back at me in profile were not my mother's. They were not my father's. Suddenly, it was very clear to me what Lydia would find on her visit to London. There was no doubt in my mind that I was an Albury – but I was certainly not a Fellows. It was equally clear that Uncle Pete had just arrived at exactly the same conclusion, and his reaction had been one of shock. No wonder my aunt had tried to put me off researching our family history! My father – if I could still call him that – had been right to suggest that a tree was not the most accurate way of illustrating our family, but I now realized that wasn't only due to his absent father. Our story was obviously far too complicated for that.

  Part Five

  Peter's Story

  Chapter Twenty-six

  As much as I had been hurt by their lack of contact while they were away, Laura and Tom made it difficult to be angry with them. They turned up at my new house unannounced with the baby, a bottle of wine and stories of their travels and their momentous return.

  Tom did a fine impression of Mrs Albury, declaring, 'I will not, under any circumstances, allow a grandchild of mine to grow up in a flat above a fish-and-chip shop.'

  'And the thing is,' Laura explained, 'that was her idea of how to offer us a roof over our heads. She thought she was being nice.'

  'It just happened to sound like a declaration of war.' Tom snorted. 'She seems to think that I'm completely incapable of supporting a family.'

  'So what did you say?' I asked.

  Laura smiled, trying to stop herself from laughing. 'It was a classic.'

  'I said "I couldn't agree with you more, Mrs Albury." ' Tom shook his head as he remembered his own cheek. 'That's why we're moving to the flat next door above the launderette.'

  It was true. They were swapping a flat with one bedroom for a flat with two, but the rent was going to be the same. The landlord had been impressed with Tom's
handiwork in the smaller flat, and he had a few odd jobs in mind for the new one. In fact, he was fairly confident that he could pass some work in Tom's direction at some of his other properties.

  'You should have seen her face.' Laura laughed until the tears ran down her cheeks, but I noticed how drawn she looked despite the few extra post-baby pounds, which were exaggerated by the dress she was wearing. There was something different about her, but I supposed at the time that giving birth was a life-changing event.

  'Still, this place looks nice enough.' Tom looked around him. 'It's a good size. You must have a spare room or two going to waste.'

  'I've got a few jobs that need doing if you're offering.'

  Everything about the baby's face and hands was scrunched, protesting that she had been quite happy where she was before she had been disturbed. I hadn't seen too many babies up close before, but I stroked her hand and she grasped mine.

  'She's got a strong grip,' I said.

  Laura looked at me large-eyed as if she was desperate for my approval, but when she turned back to the baby, I saw a side of her that I had not seen before.

  'You're going to make a fantastic mother,' I told her.

  'I hope so.' She was shy in her new role, not yet confident.

  Tom slapped me on the back. 'So, when are you available for babysitting?'

  'I'm glad to see you didn't have any problems . . . what with the mumps and all.'

  'No,' said Tom. 'Apparently everything is in perfect working order. Just needed to find the right woman.'

  'Well, what do the doctors know?'

  'Precisely.'

  'So, what news of the band?'

  'First practice for five months next week.' He rubbed his hands together. 'Minus one drummer, the traitor. You coming? Might even have to go and wet the baby's head afterwards.' Laura looked questioningly at him. 'If I can get a late pass.' He looked at her winningly with his palms pressed together as if in prayer.

  'Oh, go. Go! I've got to get used to being the one without a social life. This' – she nodded to the bundle in her arms – 'is what I wanted, after all.'

  'Yes!' Tom mouthed silently, triumphant, behind her, punching the air with a fist.

  My eyes passed from one to the other, watching the interaction with the baby. Laura was quieter than usual while Tom carried on more or less as he always had, talking about his engineering work at the recording studio and how he now understood what his album could sound like. But when the baby cried, it was Laura's expression that changed to one of panic, and it was Tom who swooped mid-flow to throw Andrea over his shoulder as naturally as he would a guitar. He sang a few lines of a song that I hadn't heard before that clearly had 'Andrea' in the lyrics, while walking and patting her back in time. The noise stopped almost immediately and Laura visibly relaxed.

  'That's Andrea's song.' Laura yawned. 'Excuse me! We had a bad night last night. Change of scenery and meeting the grandmothers must have done it.'

  'Still working on the chorus. I'll nail it tonight.'

  Glad as I was to have them back, it was clear that I would have to change to fit into Laura and Tom's new world. I was only partly right. Laura had thought that having a baby would be the way to tame Tom, but it wasn't to be that easy. Tom was a natural with Andrea from the start. He understood how babies worked without reading manuals on the subject, while Laura was forever consulting medical dictionaries or rushing to the doctor. Although it was occasionally hand to mouth, he had no problem earning enough money to support them, running the band and getting up in the middle of the night with Andrea. He had more energy than the rest of us put together. Keeping irregular hours had prepared him for life with a baby. We nine-to-fivers were used to our eight hours' sleep, but Tom had always grabbed a few hours whenever he could, wherever he could. In his mind, there was no reason to change because nothing needed fixing. He had the best of every possible world.

  'Ideally,' he confided, 'we would have liked a little more time on our own before Andrea came along, but we made the decision to start trying straight away in case it took a while.'

  Of course, he had no idea that Laura had been trying long beforehand.

  'Having a baby makes things a bit more difficult – but not impossible,' he explained. 'Everything just needs a bit more planning.'

  But the things that he wanted were still not necessarily the things that they wanted. The big issues were still looming.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Things settled down into a routine and for a while Laura and Tom were happy – and I was happy for them. It gave all of us the chance to be real friends again and, in a way, Laura and I were closer than we had been for years.

  'I can't get out much,' Laura claimed. 'Having a baby is a much lonelier business than I thought it would be.'

  'Well then, I'll just have to come round to see you more often.'

  I made sure I dropped in on her regularly and I was always impressed by what I saw. Although she didn't plan to go back to work, spurred on by Tom's resourcefulness she built up a small stream of income by doing dress alterations at home and the occasional more ambitious dressmaking project. When she needed a break, or if she had a deadline to meet, Tom took Andrea to his mother's or on his rounds, where he found no shortage of volunteers to watch her while he fixed dripping pipes and leaking cisterns. Andrea even came to band practice, where the hangers-on would keep an eye on her while she slept, or dance her on their knees when she woke. She was not necessarily a beautiful child, but one whose face was completely transformed when she smiled, so adults loved to entertain and amuse her. As a photographer, I got to know that face as well as I do my own. The only people in the arrangement who didn't get to see as much of each other as they would have liked were Laura and Tom, but hadn't that always been the case?

  The band's new drummer was quite a find and gave the music an added dimension that it had lacked. After a few weeks back in rehearsals, Tom knew that he had a song on his hands that was a single.

  'This is the one, boys,' he said with certainty.

  Rather than take the band on tour, he called his friends in London and managed to negotiate some free time at the recording studio where he had worked. The Spearheads were away for two nights, sleeping on the floor of Faye's flat. Tom returned with a grin on his face and a tape in his pocket, which he planned to take to record companies in person.

  Laura voiced her concerns to me privately. 'I only hope he's not building himself up for a disappointment.'

  I shook my head. 'This is the song that's going to make it happen.'

  'Do you think so?' she asked, with a smile that made me know that she too believed this was the one. We were all trying to hold back our enthusiasm.

  Things moved slowly until a copy of the tape made its way to John Peel, who was known for his support of new bands and played it on Radio 1 a few nights in a row, albeit late at night when few people were listening. The few people who did hear it phoned in and wanted to know where they could get hold of it. Then the phone started ringing. For the first time, Tom had managers and record companies chasing him. Tom was firm that he wanted to stay in control in terms of management.

  'I want you to be the band's solicitor,' he told me. There was no asking involved.

  'I'm afraid I don't know the first thing about media law,' I explained. 'You need a specialist.'

  'What I need is someone I can trust,' he said, 'and if that means you're working outside your area of expertise, so be it.'

  'Tom, as a friend . . .' I protested, but he insisted.

  'As a friend, I know that you'll do the best job that you can. And that will do just fine. Don't say no. I need you.'

  How could I have refused? We shook hands on it.

  The contract terms on offer were shoddy, there was no doubt about that. I was against them signing.

  'I'll take the responsibility,' Tom said. 'We've got to get the single out there while people are interested. We'll do the best we can with what's available and renegoti
ate once we've started selling records.'

  'You're the boss.' I passed the contract to him and he signed. Even Tom the family man was less focused on money than he should have been.

  On 1 December 1977, the Spearheads' first single was released up against some pretty stiff competition for the all-important Christmas number one. The track had been ready in the autumn, but delays, as we soon learned, were commonplace. Tom was confident that his market was completely different and that sales wouldn't be affected. He wasn't aiming for a Christmas number one. That was the reserve of the novelty songs and Christmas carols. The previous year, Johnny Mathis had charmed everyone over the age of sixty with 'When A Child Is Born'. Nineteen ninety-seven would be the year for Wings with 'Mull of Kintyre'. It even beat Bing Crosby's 'White Christmas' to the top. I loved the sound of bagpipes for weeks one and two. By the time it had been at the top of the charts for nine weeks, I was with Tom. What did it have to do with 1977?

  David Bowie had sung about heroes, Talking Heads had sung about a psycho killer, Iggy Pop had a lust for life, the original disco diva, Donna Summer, shocked with 'I Feel Love', the Bee Gees were 'Staying Alive' and Freddie Mercury announced, 'We Will Rock You'.

  It had been the year of the Queen's Jubilee and the Sex Pistols had reacted with 'God Save the Queen', the year that Star Wars was released, the year that Steve Biko died in custody, and we put the 'Great' back in Great Britain with the launch of HMS Invincible, one of the largest ships ever built. But you would have been forgiven for thinking that the only thing that mattered was the fate of a giraffe called Victor who tore a leg muscle at Margate Zoo.

  The Spearheads' single sold, but not enough to chart. For the first time in all the time that I had known him, Tom was unable to keep up his happy-go-lucky act. This mattered desperately to him and all of his talk about just waiting for the right opportunity must have been echoing in his ears.

  Laura tried to comfort him. 'Maybe the timing wasn't right.'

  The record company were fairly clear what they thought had gone wrong: the Spearheads' lack of live dates.