Our Father Who Are Out There...Somewhere

by AJ Taft

  “So, what happened?”

  “He ran off with another woman,” says Aunt Edie, as she tears the cellophane lid off the beef paste. “And it broke her heart, simple as that. She swore she’d never recover and she never did. Like I said, stubborn as stubborn.” Aunt Edie stands up and fiddles with the teapot. “That’s what I told her in the end. She was determined not to get over it and it wasn’t fair, Lil. It wasn’t fair on you, or on anyone around her. I told her she had to move on and that was that. She never spoke to me again. Once she made her mind up about something. Well you know what she’s like, was like.” She sits down heavily in her chair again. “Oh dear, I still can't believe she’s passed over.”

  “What was he like,” Lily asks, “my dad?”

  Aunt Edie spreads a dollop of butter as thick as clotted cream on her bread roll, while she considers the question. “He was handsome,” she says after some time. “But never trust a handsome man, that’s what I always say. Thank the good Lord my Arthur wasn’t anything to look at.” She pauses for thought and to spread a broad smear of salmon paste on her barm cake. “He were carrying on, course, but no one knew a thing about it. He used to play snooker with our Terry and he didn’t have an inkling. And there was your mum, all pregnant, just about to have you. Terrible really.” She takes a large bite out of her creation. “It did for your grandmother,” she adds with her mouth full, “Sent her to an early grave.”

  “I need to find him, Aunt Edie. I need to get some sense of where I’m from. I want to know about my past.”

  Aunt Edie looks her up and down as she chews. She finally swallows. “I have something for you. Your granddad gave it to me for safekeeping when your granny died. I think he knew he wouldn’t last long without her. I didn’t really know what to do with it while your mother was alive. She’d have had my guts for garters if I’d given it to you.” She stands up again. “Mad as a wasp she’d have been. Wait there.”

  A few minutes later Aunt Edie returns carrying a rectangular box. “I don’t know why he wanted you to have this. You see, your granddad never did like David, your dad. Always said he weren’t to be trusted. And turns out he were right, of course. But I think your granny must have wanted you to have it. I think she knew you’d be curious one day.” She hands the box to Lily. “You have a look at it love, while I check on the custard.”

  Lily takes the box. She puts it on the table in front of her and eases off the cardboard lid. Inside she can see a large, cream coloured book, with a sheet of see-through crepe paper laid over the top of it. Lily’s hands start to shake. She slides off the crepe paper and reads the gold lettering on the front, ‘Wedding Album’. She’d often wondered whether her parents were married. She opens the first page:

  In celebration of the marriage of David Winterbottom

  and Miss Pamela Lillian Tattersall

  16th May 1965

  At the Church of our Virgin Mary, Clitheroe

  Lily holds her breath and turns over the page, ready for her first glimpse of her father.

  But the first picture is of the bride, and Lily’s first thought is that Aunt Edie’s given her the wrong wedding album. That wasn’t her mother. Confused, Lily turns back to the front page. Her father’s name was David Winterbottom. She only knew that because she’d ransacked the house eight or so years ago, when her mother had been admitted to hospital for a few days. Lily had found her birth certificate hidden in an old teapot. Remembering a news item she’d seen, about a child whose estranged father had abducted him from school, she’d stashed the birth certificate inside the lining of her school bag just in case. Pathetic really.

  Lily brings her mind back to the page in front of her. Her mum’s name was Pamela. Lily had long suspected Appleyard was neither her maiden, nor her married name. Lily turns the page again. The photograph is of a slim, beautiful bride with long blonde hair, laughing as she runs along a stone path. Slim, like Marilyn Monroe slim. Six men line the way, holding umbrellas up to protect her from the pouring rain. She’s holding her skirts up as the rain bounces on the ground around her. The men are smiling at her, admiring her verve. The rain is torrential; Lily can almost make out the individual drops. She squints at the picture again. The woman laughs back at her, attractive, happy and slim.

  Lily doesn’t recognise any of the men holding the umbrellas. Could one be her father? It’s not even important at this moment. The thought strikes Lily that she never saw her mother laugh. A wave of jealousy sweeps through her body, someone else could make her laugh. She wants to know this woman in the picture. For the first time since her mother died she feels a sense of loss.

  She turns the page and gets her first sighting of the bride and groom. Hands clasped together, gazing into each other’s eyes, grinning inanely. Her mum appears enraptured, lost in love, alive. Her father is tall and slender, and rock star handsome.

  She wants to close the book, but like a scab that shouldn’t be picked, she can’t leave it alone. They look so young and hopeful. All Lily’s life she’s been longing to know her father. It had never once occurred to her that she didn’t know her mother either.

  The bride is wearing a sleek satin dress, no frills or ruffles, beautifully skimmed across the front to emphasize her tucked in waist. Lily compares her to the mental image she has of her mother, fat hanging off her legs like saddlebags. The woman in the photo has long blonde hair scooped up on the top of her head, the occasional strand curling down past her neck. The groom wears black rimmed spectacles and a dark suit. His hair is slightly spiked. Lily wonders what it would have been like to have had these two as parents.

  In the next picture are two people she does recognise. Her grandparents standing either side of the bride and groom. Lily’s father is staring straight at the camera, and Lily notices his deep brown eyes, same as her own. Granny is smiling, with David’s arm loosely around her shoulders. Lily’s grandfather stands straight-backed, not touching his daughter. Lily senses that his smile doesn’t reach his eyes.

  Another photograph shows the groom, her father, with his ushers. She doesn’t recognise any of them. Frustrated, she turns through the pages until she comes to a guest list at the back. Lily’s eyes flick down the list. The wedding was overrun by Winterbottoms.

  The gas fire is on full, despite the autumn sunshine pressing on the windows. Lily tries to open a window, banging against it with the palm of her hand. It doesn’t budge. Aunt Edie appears behind her, carrying two plates. She puts the plates down on the table and fetches a box of tissues from the mantelpiece. “Here pet.”

  Lily takes a tissue and scrunches it up into a ball in her fist. “Do you know, I never saw her laugh?”

  Aunt Edie tuts and shakes her head, “Would you like a Mr Kipling with custard?”

  “I spent my life growing up with someone who wasn’t actually there. Can you imagine what that's like?” Lily’s voice rises by an octave. “Knowing no matter how hard you try, you’re never going to make her happy?”

  “Come on love.” Aunt Edie starts ladling custard. “You need some meat on your bones.”

  “I don’t mind him leaving so much, shit happens, I know that, but it’s like I lost both my parents because of him. Do you know what I mean?”

  Aunt Edie heaves herself up from her chair and comes to Lily’s side. “There, there pet.” She pulls Lily’s head against her ample bosom. “I know. I know. You let it all out.”

  Chapter 5

  It’s dark by the time Lily gets home, and the electric meter has run out of credit. She didn’t notice the drizzle during the forty-five minutes she spent waiting at the bus stop, but she’s soaked to the skin. She lights the gas fire and draws the curtains, before stripping her sodden clothes from her body and wrapping herself in her duvet. Once she’s poured herself a drink, she opens the wedding album but she can hardly make out the people by the glow of the gas fire. The local Spar sells electricity tokens, but Lily hasn’t the energy. When morning pushes through the cracks in the curtains, Lily is asleep
on the floor. The gas fire is still burning.

  Four days pass in a blur, until the silence that shrouds the house is broken by a bell sound like an alarm. It takes Lily a moment to connect the noise to the telephone.

  “Could I speak to Lily Appleyard?” asks a pleasant female voice.

  “Who is it?”

  “I’m calling from Leeds Polytechnic.”

  “She’s not in,” Lily mumbles.

  “Oh, do you know when she’ll be back? Or if she’s planning to return to her course?” Lily leans against the wall for support and closes her eyes. When will Lily be back? For some reason the Whitesnake song, Here I Go Again, starts to play in her head. The woman on the phone coughs politely. Lily wants to say Lily will never be back. Lily no longer exists, but that may lead to awkward questions.

  Lily casts around the room, searching for clues. Her eyes fall on the pile of unopened letters, junk mail and free newspapers that have built up by the front door. On the top of the pile is a copy of the Accrington Weekly News. It’s dated Thursday 20th October. “Next Wednesday?” Lily suggests.

  “Ok,” says the woman cheerfully. “I’ll call back then. Would you just tell her I called? Thank you.”

  Lily doesn’t sleep that night. She lies awake, mulling over the scraps of information she’d been able to glean from Aunt Edie about her father. “I don’t know where he is, could be on the other side of the world for all I know,” Aunt Edie had blustered, fiddling with the plastic place mats. But, she had admitted when pressed, she had heard a rumour he might have moved to Skipton. “I suppose he probably moved in with his fancy woman, leastways that’s what Patsy Smith said in the butchers.” Some eighteen or nineteen years ago. “I think it was Skipton,” she added vaguely. “In Yorkshire.” Like it was the other side of the world.

  As soon as it gets light, Lily pulls on her black canvas trousers and a dark green sweatshirt, which some bloke had once left at her flat after a particularly awful one-night stand, and wanders down to the bus station. She finds the bus that will take her to Skipton and asks the driver to shout to her when it’s time to get off. It’s market day and the stall-holders are out in sheepskin coats. Lily wanders through the cobbled streets, paying particular attention to any white man in his late forties, early fifties. She spots three possibilities in the space of seven minutes, including a man in a black bomber jacket who has a dimple in his cheek, just like Lily’s. She buys a peach and sits down on the steps of the stone cross to eat it.

  As the coldness seeps into her bones, she notices a sign on the building opposite, Public Library. The building is old and built out of sandstone, and Lily pushes through the revolving doors. She stands in the doorway, unsure in what direction to head.

  An elderly librarian wanders over and asks if she needs any help. “I'm looking for someone who used to live here, maybe nineteen years ago.”

  “Have you tried looking in the local paper? We keep every copy there ever was, on microfiche.” Twenty minutes later, Lily is reading her first ever copy of the Craven Herald and Pioneer, ‘The Voice of the Dales since 1853’. As she reads stories about Sheep Day, and whether the public toilets in Coach Street should be cleaned more regularly, she loses track of time. Her head starts to ache and her eyes are sore as she flicks through the 1970s. The Births, Marriages and Deaths columns start to swim before her eyes.

  Abruptly, she stands up, pushing back her chair so hard its legs scrape the wooden floor, causing everyone in the library to raise their heads and stare at her. She runs for the door. On her way through the town centre she sees the bus for Accrington, standing waiting at the bus stop. She runs as fast as she can and manages to throw herself between the closing doors.

  One morning she wakes up on the floor of the living room, fully clothed. The pressure on her bladder is what’s caused her to wake. She tries to stand but her legs are so stiff, she finds it easier to crawl along the carpet into the hall. It’s there that she notices a letter on the doormat, addressed to her. How long it’s been lying there is anybody’s guess. The urgent need to urinate seems to leave her body as she picks up the letter and sits on the bottom stair. The quality of the envelope sets it apart from the mound of junk mail by the door. It’s from the Salvation Army. Lily stares at the envelope, turns it over in her trembling hands, before peeling it open:

  ‘Dear Lily, We have received your letter regarding your father, David Winterbottom and our enquiries regarding his whereabouts are now underway. Please be assured that we will contact you as soon as we have any information. In the meantime, if you could refrain from contacting the office, we would be grateful. We are a charitable organisation and dealing with telephone enquiries can severely limit our resources.

  Signed on behalf of Major Farley-Greystone.’

  Lily reads it four times, her eyes watering at the strain of focussing on the print. She sets it to one side while she eventually remembers to go to the toilet, and then picks it back up again and reads it another three times. She tidies away the empty bottles, stacks them neatly outside the back door, before picking up the phone. A woman answers on the second ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Can I speak to Major Farley-Greystone?”

  “I’m afraid he's not in right now. May I help?”

  “S’complicated.” Lily realises her words are slurred. She wonders whether the two vodkas she had to try to steady her nerves were a good idea. She stands straighter.

  “Oh. It’s only my second week but I can try.”

  “It’s just; I’m trying to find my dad and I’ve had this letter saying that you’ve started, I mean I know I’m not supposed to ring it’s just...” She bites her lip until she can taste blood. “It's just I really need to find him.”

  The woman tuts sympathetically. “When did you last see him?”

  “I’ve never met him, well, not that I remember. He…” Lily thinks quickly and revises the version of events Aunt Edie gave her. “My mum left him, and my Aunt says he was heartbroken, because he loved me so much. And now my mum’s died. And I’m all alone.”

  “Oh, I am sorry.”

  “I’ve been trying to find him myself and I don’t know how to do it. And I really need, I really need somebody to help me.”

  “Well, I’m not really supposed to give out any information.” Lily closes her eyes and doesn’t speak. “How old are you?” the woman asks.

  “Seventeen,” says Lily, shaving a couple of years off. “And the thing is, I’m not very well. The doctors say I shouldn’t be under stress but I’m all alone, I don’t have any money, anywhere to live-”

  “What name is it?”

  “Lily.”

  “I meant your father’s name?”

  “David, David Winterbottom.”

  “Oh.”

  From the tone of the woman’s voice, Lily knows she knows something. “What? Oh please,” she begs. “I can’t take the not knowing.”

  “Well, like I say, I’m not really supposed to say anything but,” Lily can almost sense the woman looking over her shoulder. “Major Farley-Greystone went through your case as part of my induction last week.”

  “And?” Lily holds her breath.

  “All I can say is, I think you’ll be hearing from him soon.”

  “You mean they’ve found him? He's not dead?”

  “He’s not dead.” The woman’s voice is gentle and Lily can tell she’s smiling. “But don’t say I told you so. Ok?”

  “Thank you. Thank you so much.” Lily puts down the phone and lets out a loud screech.

  Sitting in a dazed heap under the windowsill, Lily experiences a new feeling. She has something to go on for. She lifts her head and sees the front room through new eyes. And the thought strikes her that she can’t let her father see the house like this. It must be cleaned and she hasn’t got long. She hurries through to the kitchen to find a pen and some paper and starts to make a list. Furniture polish, bleach, bin liners, cloths, rubber gloves. She chews the end of her pen thoug
htfully and gazes out of the kitchen window. The small back garden is completely overgrown. The rusting springs of an old mattress poke up through the grass. Lily used to have loads of bonfires out there, just to get out of the house. It’s getting dark now. The kitchen clock shows it’s almost five. Not really time to start now. What she needs is a new day, a clean slate to symbolise the new life she’s about to begin. She pours herself another vodka from the bottle on the kitchen table.

  Chapter 6

  The next morning Lily’s first thought is of her father. A smile eats its way across her face and she springs out of bed. She makes herself a slice of toast and a cup of black tea, adding butter and milk to the shopping list as she does so. Then she goes up the steps into the loft and pulls the suitcase of her father’s clothes down the ladders. In her mother’s bedroom, she opens the suitcase and spreads the clothes out carefully on the bed, trying to gain some sense of the man. Lily finds a roll of Sellotape and tries to attach the arms on as best she can, and then hangs whole outfits on coat hangers on the front of the fitted wardrobes. They look like headless scarecrows; some crazy kind of art installation. Lily wants to stuff the trouser legs to give them substance, but the Sellotape is barely holding them together as it is. Downstairs she adds safety pins to the shopping list.

  At lunchtime, as Lily is getting dressed for the shopping trip, the doorbell rings. She almost falls over as she struggles to get her trousers on. It couldn’t be him already, surely? They wouldn’t give him her address without some warning, would they? She jumps down the stairs, her hands shaking as she opens the door. A large man wearing a dark suit and sunglasses stands before her. Lily’s mouth is dry.

  “Pamela Appleyard?” he asks. Lily shakes her head, disappointment floods her body. “Is she in?”

  Lily shakes her head again. “Well, she hasn’t been paying her account. She’s overdue. I’m here to collect the telly.” He shrugs as he pushes past her. Moments later he returns with the giant black box in his arms, its flex curled like a snake on the top. “Have a nice day,” he says, as he strides towards the gate. Lily nods.