This Holey Life

by Sophie Duffy

  ‘No. That’s the weird thing.’ He shakes his head. ‘She’s made a complaint about me.’

  You.

  ‘You? What do you mean, “a complaint”? Was the church hall not warm enough or something?’

  ‘She told Desmond I... made inappropriate advances.’ He says this like it’s something he’s read in the paper. Something one of his parishioners has told him.

  We sit there in silence for a moment. The train trundles up the track and I wish I was on it, going clubbing in town, going for a night walk along the Thames, watching the lights of London reflected in those dark waters. I wish I wasn’t here. I wish this wasn’t happening.

  Steve doesn’t ask if I believe what Desmond has said to be true. He and I, we go back too far, we know each other too well to question this. I know she is lying. Without any doubt whatsoever. She. Is. A. Liar. And I know Desmond is phenomenally stupid to be phoning at this time of night and worrying us. For I am worried. Not about the integrity of my husband but for the repercussions of what Karolina has said. The lies she is telling. The story she is weaving.

  He stares ahead, trying to piece together the events of the evening, trying to get his brain working. ‘She left her purse in the church hall. We were all outside in the car park, saying goodbyes, going home. She said she had to go back in to look for it, the purse. So I unlocked the door to let her in, switching on the light. I waited with Martin, chatting through some stuff. He has some interesting theories. Then he said she’s been a long time. Nearly everyone had gone by now. It was getting cold. So I went in after her, to see if I could help. She was at the other end of the hall, reading a leaflet. I asked her if she’d found it. She said: ‘Found what?’ I said: ‘Your purse.’ She said: ‘Yes, I have my purse,’ and she patted her coat pocket. Then we left the hall. Martin was getting in his Saab and he offered her a lift. She accepted. I said goodnight to them, got in my car and drove home.’

  ‘So you were alone with her.’

  ‘Only briefly. Just a couple of minutes, not even that, and the hall door was open, there were people in the car park. Martin was still in the car park. I didn’t think for one minute I was putting myself at risk.’

  I feel sick. I have taken my eye off the ball. Shelley warned me about her. But that was Shelley. And then Amanda, here, in my kitchen, warning me of this. She had a feeling. I had a feeling and I never spoke to Steve about it. I never said a word because I dismissed it. Stupid, stupid idiot. I dismissed it. I forgot about it. I thought Amanda was being overly dramatic. I thought Shelley was being her usual gossipy, big-mouthed, fascist self. ‘I should have warned you. Amanda told me she had worries about... well, she was a bit vague about what exactly. Suspicions. And Shelley. She said Karolina was a man-eater. I should have told you.’

  Steve says nothing so I don’t know if he agrees or not. I don’t even know if he has heard me. He has on his thinking head. That distracted look that tells me he is deep in contemplation, processing all sorts of stuff that would never even occur to me. Surely no-one will believe this? Surely she’s got a screw loose. And I remember the packet of pills and wonder... I should have listened to people. Amanda. Shelley. Myself. I should’ve known she’d pull a stunt like this. But I thought she was actually possibly maybe becoming my friend.

  ‘She planned it.’

  Steve shakes his head again, like he’s trying to clear it of bad thoughts. ‘No, Vick. No. I don’t think so. She’s just messed up.’ He puts his head in his hands, exhales, then looks up at me and takes my hand again. The hand that is always there, ready. It is cold. I expect him to thank me for believing absolutely in him. I do not expect this: ‘Poor Karolina,’ he says, simply. ‘She needs help.’

  I could scream. I do scream. And then when I have stopped screaming, I can hear Imo scream.

  March 9th 1978

  When I got back from Guides tonight (hurray! I don’t have to be a Brownie anymore) Heidi was around watching Top of the Pops. I peered round the door and they were snogging. Gross. Martin had his hand on one of her enormous wotsits. I felt a bit funny so I went to find Mum. There was a note on the kitchen table. Mum and Dad had gone to the cinema. Anniversary treat. I made myself some cheese on toast, learnt my spellings and polished the brass.

  Chapter Thirty-One: Sunday 16th March HOLY WEEK Palm Sunday

  We have lived under a cloud this week, a cloud spitting rain on our family, threatening to split open and pour its dark, wet contents over us. I think of the wise man and the foolish man and wonder if our life is built on rock or sand. What is going to happen to us? Will Desmond sort it out? Will the Bishop be called in? Will Steve be believed, his word against hers? Will he be suspended? Lose his job? Go back to being a plumber? And will this be what I have longed for?

  As my family sits it out at home, having a quiet, low profile day off, and as people sit in church, unaware of what is happening, with their palm crosses, remembering and celebrating Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, I crawl across the level crossing into Worthing to meet Dad and Martin, my other family, for a pub lunch. No celebration. No hope of better things to come. No sense of destiny about to be fulfilled. But with a heavy heart and hammering headache.

  Go, Steve said. Get away. Stop fretting. It’ll be fine.

  And I felt guilty, leaving him to it with all the kids, Imo, the bottle, the fallout from Karolina’s revelations.

  Martin’s going to love this.

  Martin takes me by surprise. He hands me a large glass of red wine despite my protests and makes me drink it, saying I should stay overnight and have a break. Of course my first thought is Imo’s nighttime feed. And the fact I have no clean knickers or toothbrush. But there is the milk I expressed in the fridge. Just in case. Maybe this is just in case. Maybe a night in Worthing would do me good. Bizarrely. With Dad. And Martin. And that’s my second strange thought: that I’d quite like to spend time with them.

  Meanwhile there’s a carvery to be gathered and eaten. A glass of wine to be drunk. No washing up.

  Late. Dad’s front room. A cup of tea and the remains of crumpets and jam on a tray by the fire. A black and white film. Violins and ladies in box hats. Dad snoring on the dust-free dustbowl. Martin battering away on his laptop in the armchair. Me, on the pouffe, with Mum’s tin on my lap, going through the contents.

  ‘Have you still got your old tin?’ asks Martin, cutting in on my reverie.

  ‘Have you?’ I have learnt this technique from Steve, turning a question back on the questioner.

  Martin falls for it. ‘I have actually. It’s in the attic somewhere. I hope Claudia hasn’t chucked it out. No. She won’t have. She doesn’t know how to get down the loft ladder. Not with her nails.’

  I find myself smiling.

  He stops battering, puts the laptop on the coffee table and stretches. ‘So... what’s in Mum’s tin? Any secrets we should know about?’

  I hold up some of the items which he takes off me to inspect: Mum’s birth certificate, marriage certificate, a christening card from some long-forgotten godmother of mine who failed at her job. Some photos. Martin and me on our bikes in the back garden. Martin’s Chopper, his pride and joy. My three wheeler.

  ‘I loved that bike,’ says Martin, wistful, examining the photo closely. ‘I can still remember the sound the bell made. The way the pedals felt when I was going uphill.’ He sits back and holds the photo for a moment and I catch a glimpse of nostalgia that I thought I would never see in my scientific, rational, logical brother. All over a bike.

  Then I dig out the photo of Dad and Uncle Jack and hand it to him. ‘Do you remember this one?’

  ‘Never seen it before,’ he says.

  ‘You’ve probably forgotten.’

  ‘No. I’ve definitely never seen it. I remember the name, not the face.’ He straightens his arm, to get a better look (someone needs to go to Specsavers). ‘It’s not exactly expertly taken. You can hardly see his face; he’s squinting into the sun. Must’ve been one of Mum’s. Sh
e was a lousy photographer, always lopping off heads, if she even remembered to open the shutter.’

  We laugh at this, kindly, remembering our ditsy mother, the one who always had a smile for us, a kind word, if she actually noticed us coming into the room. She was so often in a dream, somewhere else. Knitting wonky socks. Sowing seeds for Dad.

  We look at Dad, dozing on the dustbowl. Hard to imagine how he carries on without her. But he does. And he’s made room for Pat in this life, back-filling the space left by Mum. People say men move on quicker than women; they can’t survive on their own. Maybe that’s true... and what about Steve? If I pegged out here and now on the freshly hoovered carpet, would he find someone else? Would Amanda have to beat off crowds of needy women rampaging after their widowed priest? Would Karolina step in?

  Some men can’t wait around forever.

  Karolina.

  The echo of her name, her words, rattles around my head, makes me feel nauseous. I can taste the strawberry jam at the back of my throat. The tin feels heavy on my lap and I pass it over to Martin.

  ‘You alright?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Want to talk about it?’

  Want to talk about it?

  I have never heard Martin utter that particular collection of words in that particular order and somehow this makes me start babbling. I tell him everything that has happened over the past week. The accusation. The suspicions. The uncertainty. He doesn’t snort. He doesn’t comment. He doesn’t once say ‘Vicky-Love’. He just listens.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ he says, after a few minutes silence when I believe I have finally found a way of pulling the rug from under his big fat feet. ‘It’ll get sorted.’

  Profound words from Professor Martin Bumface.

  ‘Shame about Uncle Jack,’ he says, re-examining the photo. ‘He would’ve been company for Dad in his old age.’

  It’s then that we notice Dad’s eyes are open. He has this odd expression, hurt mixed in with something darker... He sits up and reaches out to Martin who hands over the photograph wordlessly, a boy returning something he shouldn’t have. And I remember the look on Dad’s face, up in his bedroom, when Rachel held the same photo in her cold hand.

  ‘I don’t know why your soppy mother kept that old picture. It’s years old.’ He stares at it, the first time in a long time, and I wonder if he might actually lob it on the fire.

  ‘He was your friend, wasn’t he, Dad.’ My voice sounds patronising even to my ears, like I’m talking to Rachel about Jessica.

  ‘Yes, he was,’ he mutters.

  And to our horror Dad starts crying. I’ve never seen him cry like this and it snatches the breath out of me, swirls it round the room and shoves it back in so I feel sicker than ever.

  ‘Dad?’ I go and sit next to him, take his hand in mine. It feels smaller than it should, the skin tissue-soft. I hold it gently, no hand-patting. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘She wouldn’t want you to know. But maybe you should know.’ He brushes me away, the way he always does, and takes out a grubby hanky before comprehensively filling it with the contents of his nose. This calms him down a bit.

  But not me. ‘You’re ill, aren’t you, Dad? The anaemia... ’ I want Martin to help me out but he is staring at the fire, like a soothsayer or something, trying to work out what is going on around here.

  ‘I’m not ill.’ Dad is firm, dismissing his neurotic daughter. ‘I wasn’t eating properly. My blood’s fine. Pat’s sorted me out, got me back on the veg. She’s got an allotment.’

  ‘Pat?’

  ‘You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, Vicky-Love. Didn’t Jesus say that?’

  ‘I don’t know, Dad, I’m not an expert. So you’re alright?’

  ‘A bit doddery, that’s all. Getting old, aren’t I?’

  I don’t answer this. It seems rude. But the relief makes me light-headed – it’s not cancer! – and I breathe deep, from the stomach.

  Martin is up on his feet, pacing, giving up on the psychic properties of the fire, which is fizzling out. I should get up and add another log but I don’t want to break the moment.

  ‘Sit down, son,’ Dad says. ‘You’re making me nervous.’

  ‘She wouldn’t want us to know what?’ Martin slumps onto the pouffe, stares Dad outright. ‘It is Mum you’re talking about, right?’

  Dad caves in, quickly, as if he’s been waiting for this moment. This is it. His time to tell us something. ‘It’s your Uncle Jack.’

  ‘Is he still alive?’ I ask, flailing around for ideas, recent relief so quickly usurped by confusion.

  Dad shakes his head, almost smug. ‘He’s dead as a wotsit.’

  ‘What then?’ Martin fires at him. ‘What did you want to say?’

  Dad sniffs, pulls at his cuffs, studies his knees, looks up slowly at Martin. Then he goes for it. ‘Hesyourfatheryourrealfathernotme.’ One breath so he can get it out quick, before he changes his mind and pulls the words back into him. Because he knows that once they are out, the words, things will be different round here.

  He’s your father your real father not me.

  I say nothing. Martin says nothing. His eyes are blank. His face empty. And then he laughs. A dry laugh that swamps the room, sucking everything in its path so that’s all there is: his laugh.

  When at last it fades, he gets up and leaves us. Leaves the room behind with all the unspoken questions and explanations. Walks quietly down the hall and out of the house.

  We listen to the door click.

  ‘That shut him up,’ Dad says. ‘Thought he’d never give it a rest.’

  That’s when I decide I’d better go after my brother.

  He’s your father. Your real father. Not me.

  I’m pretty sure where he’ll be. So I wrap up well, despite the mild spring day because it’s flat, windy Worthing and knowing Martin, he’ll be on the seafront. I walk through Marine Gardens, past the bowling greens and the old-fashioned cafe, reminiscent of an earlier era, of women in hats and men in flannel trousers. A time when you addressed your parents’ friends by their formal names. Or, if they were better known, by Auntie or Uncle.

  Uncle Jack.

  Was Dad making some kind of joke back there? Did he really mean that Uncle Jack was Martin’s father? Which means... Mum and Uncle Jack? Our mother, the daydreamer, in whose eyes you sometimes glimpsed other lives. Other possibilities.

  Other men?

  Uncle Jack?

  Over the road and onto the prom, past the beach huts – a quick check in the shelter – and then onto the shingle. Tide out and a vast stretch of grey beach beyond the pebbles, the waves reticent and far off. The fresh smell of seaside. Vestiges of burnt wood. Gulls dive-bombing, squealing, in search of chips.

  I trudge along the sand, firm under my sensible-Vicky shoes, Marks and Spencer’s, wide-fitting to allow for bunion growth, and it’s not long before I spot him: a tall, substantial figure lobbing stones into the retreating tide, aimlessly, aimless.

  I decide to join him, first retreating up the shingle to retrieve a fistful of stones, shoving them in my jacket pockets. When I catch up, I offer him a pile and chuck one myself for all I’m worth, till my shoulder hurts. It disappears into the water, without a sound, the merest splash.

  ‘Call that a throw?’ He has a go himself, stretching his arm right back, like it’s serious, a competition. Which, of course, it is. There’s nothing I can beat him at. After several minutes of exertion, he turns away from the sea and starts striding away along the tide line, kicking at random bits of wood so I have to jog to keep up. Eventually I go for it, in between gulps of cold air: ‘You alright? Want to talk about it?’ I realise I have never uttered these words to him in that order either, and we both laugh, both of us dry, but because we are out in the open, the sea and the sky stretched before us, there’s more freedom, more emotion.

  ‘Is he winding me up?’ Martin stops, pinning me to the sand with a look, a possibility.

  I consid
er this. I wouldn’t put it past Dad. He can have a cruel streak to him. Maybe he’s losing the plot. But my gut instinct is that this is the truth. And the photo backs me up. Though you can’t see Uncle Jack’s face there is something about the presence. I always thought that Martin took after Dad, with that presence, going in a room and holding court. But the two of them together, friends captured in time, you can see something hanging around Jack. An aura or something. I don’t of course say this to Martin, whose aura has always cast a shadow over me. Stunted Vicky. ‘I reckon he’s telling the truth.’

  ‘Right.’ He grabs another stone off me, grappling in my pocket the way he used to hunt out my Hubba-Bubba and he throws the stone so hard it almost hits a gull, but the crafty thing gets away and perches on a groyne, its small, pebbly eye fixed on my brother. ‘Let’s get some chips,’ Martin says, surveying the bird. ‘I’m starving.’

  Much later, after chips, after miles of walking in the gathering dusk, after I’ve been to Boots and BHS and got my toothbrush and a packet of knickers and tights, after I’ve called home and cleared it with a curious Steve, we get back to find Dad in the kitchen with Pat. I say hello politely – Martin lingering in the hall – and leave them to their scrambled egg on toast, while we set ourselves up in the front room, Martin constructing the mother of all fires, me getting out the Scrabble and a bottle of Teacher’s. It’s going to be a long night.

  Martin thrashes me, trebling my score, making me feel like I’ve never read a book in my life. It’s been a while (must go to library).

  The fire is dying down and the whisky bottle much depleted by the time Pat puts her head round the door. ‘I’m off,’ she says. ‘Your dad’s tucked up in bed, should be fine till morning.’ She disappears, clattering into the night.

  How much does Pat know? Has Dad told her? Is she colluding in all this, keeping Dad out of the firing range? Not that Martin’s fired anything, apart from those pebbles on the beach and the towering inferno in the grate. Nothing at Dad. He’s said nothing to Dad.

  Then Martin says something, in vino veritas. ‘Do you ever wonder what it’s all about?’