by Sophie Duffy
‘You sound like an advert for Alpha.’
I don’t really expect him to laugh at my little joke because he never does laugh at anything I say, unless it’s not intended to be funny. But I don’t expect him to cry. Him and Dad in one day.
‘Martin?’
He keeps on crying, his shoulders shaking, his eyes wet, no sound apart from phlegmy sniffing. I hand him a hanky from up my sleeve, assuring him of its cleanliness. He blows his nose (must boil on my return). Feel bad about my thoughts. This is my brother. Crying. Because he’s been told our dad is not his dad. Which means he’s not technically my whole brother. Which would usually thrill me but I feel myself well up and a fog of confusion wrap itself around us. But one thing is clear. I will be Vicky the Comforter.
So I reach out. I put my arms around my big brother and I hug him.
It is a very strange sensation. Unnatural and awkward at first but after a few seconds, his shoulders stop moving. I don’t know whether they are tensing up because he is embarrassed or whether my arms have had a soothing effect on him. But I carry on regardless until Martin stops me.
‘Vick, you’re choking me.’
I let him go, move apart, trying not to feel slighted. But he smiles at me, a lopsided smile, and rubs his beard.
‘Are you alright?’
‘My tooth hurts. Despite all the whisky. People keep hitting me in the face for some reason. Pot Noodles and fists.’
‘Funny that,’ I smile back. I can’t help it.
‘I’m going to have a bath.’
‘Good idea,’ I say. ‘You stink.’
He smiles again. And then he pats my hand.
It is late. Very late. I am sitting by the dying fire, sipping Horlicks, going over my phone call to Steve where I gave him the latest news, which, as ever, he took without blanching. The day’s revelation banged about my head but he said these things were more common than one could ever imagine. We’re not always who we think we are. I didn’t want to get into all this over the phone so I asked him about the kids. He had nothing to report other than they are fine; Imo’s had her bottle and gone off happily. It is only when he mentioned her name and I pictured her with a bottle that I realised: no let-down, no tightening, no leakages, no pain. Was this it? Had we done it?
And now, sitting by the fire, I know that whatever the achievement, it is just one battle won. For there is still a war brewing ahead. Karolina. Steve never mentioned her name, so I didn’t either. If there was any worrying news I didn’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear it. Not here. Not now. All I want is Horlicks. A dying fire. Bed.
Martin went to bed long ago. Never came back downstairs after his bath. I put the Scrabble away, made myself a fish paste sandwich and watched some costume drama. Bonnets and petticoats. Then sat here in the quiet, pondering all that has happened to me. Why is it I never do anything? Why is it always done to me? I am feeling rather sorry for myself when Dad shuffles in, cuff-fiddling.
‘Has he gone up then?’
‘I think so.’
‘Is he upset?’
‘What do you reckon, Dad? You dropped a rather large bombshell on him, didn’t you?’
‘I never meant for him to know. Me and your mum, we agreed. Best that way.’
‘Best that way as long as you didn’t let it slip.’
‘I know. Me and my big mouth. But I got this urge. To spill the beans. I couldn’t help myself. I’ve been lying in bed going over and over it. Do you think I should wake him and have a chat? Check he’s alright?’
‘I should let him sleep on it, Dad. He’s most probably done in. Maybe in the morning.’
‘Things always look better in the morning, eh?’
I smile in agreement though I don’t go along with that assumption. Your problems are still there when you wake up. Following you around. Pestering you. ‘So, Dad.’ I take a deep breath. Hold it. Let it go. ‘Want to talk about it?’
Chapter Thirty-Two
The story according to Dad:
We were the best of friends. Went to school together. Left school together. Soon as we could. Fourteen we were. Jack got an apprenticeship with an engineer. He had a brain but hated school, wanted to earn. And me? All I’d ever wanted was to get my hands dirty, roll around in the mud, see what Mother Nature had to offer. I knew there was more than bombsites and grey streets. There was a whole other world out there. Ever since that visit to Kew as a young lad with my gran, pointing out all the trees. She knew all the names, some of the Latin. It was exotic, colourful. That’s what I wanted: colour.
And then when I got older, and Gran had passed on and I was earning some money, working for old man Lewis down at the parks, I’d go out on a Friday with my mates Charlie and Jack up in town sometimes, or down the pub. But best of all we liked the pictures, the Odeon, and that’s where I met your mother, queuing up outside, on her own. I was impressed with that. She didn’t look lonely or awkward. She looked self-contained like she was all she needed. She looked like something off the films, not Hollywood, one of them British films. Black and white. Serious. Kitchen sink. She had her hair swept up in a kind of bun thing but it was a bit messy, strands of hair falling over her face. I thought about going up to speak to her but, well, Jack cut right in and talked to her first. And that was that. Or so I thought. They started going steady and a few months later they were engaged. There was a party at her mum and dad’s and we were invited, Charlie and I. I tried to say congratulations as I turned up on her doorstep. She answered the door and I’d planned to kiss her on the cheek but I grabbed her by the hand instead and gave it a shake. What a fool. If Jack had been me he’d have managed the kiss. He was so easy-going, so relaxed, everyone loved him. And there he was in their front room, his best suit, looking like a king, smiling and blonde and fresh-faced. And then there was this announcement, your Granddad Tom chinking his bottle of stout with a spoon. A wedding. Two weeks time. Lewisham Register Office, followed by a buffet at the house. But your grandma didn’t look too pleased. She never said a word. Never said anything to Jack. I caught her looking daggers at him. Couldn’t work out what he’d done to upset her. He never upset anyone. Though he’d upset me that day, outside the pictures, talking to your mum before I got up the nerve.
But it never happened, the wedding. Within a week Jack was dead. One of those freak accidents. There’d been a delivery at the workshop. A truck. It crushed him against a wall. Horrible. Makes you shiver to think of it. His life gone, just like that. And so instead of a wedding there was a funeral. Your mum looked pale and fragile as a snowdrop, standing there in the winter sun, throwing a red rose onto his coffin, her hand shaking. It fluttered to her stomach. I don’t think anyone noticed, except for your gran. And then I twigged. Jack had left a baby. That was what the rush had been about. Not just the rush of love. But the rush of time. Getting in quick so there was no tongue-wagging.
The tongue-wagging followed. That day, by the graveside, seeing her small hand flutter to her belly, I knew I would do my best to take care of her. And soon, she was my girl. It’s what Jack would’ve wanted. He knew about the baby, was pleased about it. Wanted to do the right thing. And that’s what I wanted. To do the right thing. Take care of her. And the baby. Martin.
When he was born, we’d walk the streets together, your mum pushing the pram and me linking arms with her. Men didn’t push prams then but I would’ve. I’d have done anything. We could see people muttering, but they never said it to our faces. This happened all the time, our predicament. It was part of life. A man would step in where another had left, for whatever reasons. That’s what I did: I stepped in. Not out of a sense of duty, though maybe there was something of that. But I loved your mum, had done since that first day, outside the pictures.
And I loved Martin, from the first time I held him in my arms, wrapped up in a blue woolly blanket, a smattering of blonde fuzzy hair, pumpkin face, chubby legs that you wanted to squeeze. He was my son.
Dad tells me this over the
fading embers, a blanket on his knee, scrunched uncomfortably on the pouffe, me at his feet, the pair of us trying to keep warm.
‘You need to tell Martin what you’ve just told me. In the morning. Promise me, Dad?’
‘You sound like your mother,’ he says. ‘Always wanting what’s best for him.’
‘Isn’t that what you want too?’
He nods. ‘It’s what any father wants for his son.’
I get up then, exhaustion getting the better of me. ‘Time for bed, Dad.’ I reach out my hand to help him up but he waves it away.
‘Let me sit here a while longer. You go on up. I’ll be fine. I can get myself to bed.’
I stoop down to kiss his cheek and leave him, too tired to worry enough to argue with him.
I’m sunk in the deepest of dreams when I am shaken awake, my brain immediately kick-started into anxiety. Dad? Steve? Kids?
‘Martin?’
‘Ssh, Vick. Don’t wake the old codger.’
I pull myself up to get a grip on the situation. ‘What is it, Martin? What’s happened?’
‘Have you forgotten Dad’s little revelation?’
‘No, no, of course not.’
‘I couldn’t sleep.’
‘No, of course not.’
‘It’s not the sort of information you have to process every day.’
I shake my head in sympathy but then I see something odd. His face. ‘Martin, you’ve shaved off your beard.’
He rubs his new pink skin. ‘It was getting too itchy. I had to get rid of it.’
‘You look much better.’
‘My skin’s going to kick off though. I forgot my moisturiser. Have you got any?’
I lean over and retrieve my handbag from the floor and dig out some Nivea. He grabs it off me, a cream-junkie, and helps himself, liberally. Then he flops down on the bed like he’s lost his bones. I don’t ever remember him sitting on my bed, even as a child. He steered clear of my room; it was beneath him. Sindy dolls and posters of Starsky and Hutch. Lilac woodchip and flowery curtains. His room was a homage to masculinity. A dart board on the back of the door. Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath posters covering the black – yes, black – walls. A drum kit. A rugby ball. Dirty socks on the floor. A smell hanging in the air. I gave it a wide berth but sometimes Mum made me go in and wake him up. Sometimes, rarely, she handed me a pile of ironing to take in and leave on his bed with the orange grungy sheets. It was creepy in there and I darted in and out like a member of the SAS.
This is all a bit weird.
But seeing him smooth skinned takes me back there like it wasn’t all those years ago. Like it’s a Sunday night before school and he’s up late doing his homework and I’m polishing everyone’s shoes.
‘You need to talk to Dad in the morning. Son to father.’
I’m contemplating the wisdom of that phrase when there’s a knock on the door and it slowly opens to reveal Dad, in his dressing gown, clutching a tray of Horlicks balanced on his cast, and the dregs of the whisky bottle. He shuffles in and half-drops the tray on the bed. The three mugs stand in a pool of frothy liquid.
‘We need to talk,’ Dad says. And there is no way I can escape, trapped as I am in the bed with both Martin and Dad sat on it.
And so Dad begins again on his story.
Thoughts for the Day: Steve likes to quote Kierkegaard at me: Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. Maybe that’s true. But I’ve learnt to my cost that the past is a dangerous place. I’ve dwelled on Mum’s death. Like Thomas, it shouldn’t have happened. She still had time to go, a life ahead, but it was taken from her when she wasn’t looking. I’ve given no thought to how she was before Martin and I arrived, before our arguments, our personalities, came into her life. No wonder she disappeared so often into her own world. She must’ve needed that to survive. The way I need to clean and scrub and hoover and iron and...
March 15th 1978
Mum and Dad are up the allotment. I am a latchkey kid. Martin is in his bedroom with Heidi. He is not allowed to go in his bedroom with Heidi, especially with the door locked. He told me to keep my mouth shut or he will cut my fingers off. Even Martin wouldn’t do that to me but he had a bad look in his eye so I won’t risk it.
I want Heidi to come out and watch telly with me because she talks to me about what’s going on instead of shouting at the screen like Martin. He is better behaved when he is with Heidi. When she has gone he becomes a caveman again.
Chapter Thirty-Three: Monday 17th March
I arrive back home at noon to a chilled-out house, Imo propped up with cushions in front of CBeebies, Olivia squatting companionably next to her baby sister doing a floor puzzle of Maisie the Mouse, Jeremy and Rachel in the garden with Jessica, armed with Bob’s camcorder, Steve at the kitchen table reading one of his hefty theological books, making notes with exclamation marks and much underlining.
My family, this family, greet me like the prodigal mum, but soon return to their tasks, getting on with stuff as if I’d just been down the shops. It feels like an age to me that I’ve been away, though it’s only been twenty-four hours. It’s good to be home with them, going about ordinary tasks, the washing up, picking up stray items of clothing, but I keep hankering after Worthing, being back with Dad and Martin who are still holed up together, talking things through.
We got up early, the three of us, considering the very late night. Over breakfast, at the cleared table in the kitchen, we sat together, what was left of my family, my first family, Mum’s place emptier than ever, not being there to tell her version of events of how Martin came to be on this earth. Then I left them, to come home.
I empty the bins and put on a wash.
I am gathering the children for lunch when I realise that Jeremy is absent. They came in from the garden, the three of them, whispering and behaving oddly, something to do with their project, the film they’re making. Then, when Tamarine called Jessica back home, Jeremy must’ve slipped away somewhere. Probably back outside in the shed. His shelter and refuge. So it’s back over the steeping stones, through the drizzle that has decided to cling to Penge today.
‘Jeremy?’ I knock on the door, wondering how Martin will break his news, if he will do it soon or if, like Dad, he’ll wait for it to slip out in its own time.
‘Hang on a sec, Auntie Vicky.’ He sounds breathless.
‘Lunch is ready.’
‘Alright, I’ll be there in a minute.’
I decide against going into the shed and hop back inside. In the two minutes of my absence everyone, including Martin, is sitting at the table, helping themselves to bread and cheese. They seem quite self-sufficient all of a sudden, like they know they can manage without me. Which is ridiculous. They’re only eating bread and cheese. Who’d know how to clean a toilet around here? Apart from Olivia.
‘You’re back,’ I say to Martin. Profound as ever.
‘So it seems.’ He heaps the Branston on a slab of Cheddar.
‘How’s Dad?’
‘With Pat.’
‘Oh yeah, Vick,’ says Steve, smacking his forehead, before I have time to consider Dad with Pat. Her tattoos and his green fingers.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. It’s just I forgot to say.’ He looks shifty, like Rachel when she’s not done her homework. ‘Mum and Dad are coming tomorrow for a few days. They want to take the kids out seeing as it’s the holidays.’ He smiles, the relief of confession. ‘And they have eggs. Lots of eggs.’
If Martin weren’t here I might tell Steve how I feel about eggs, but Martin most definitely is here, eating his way through my food and breathing my air so that all the sympathy of yesterday is sucked straight back into me, cleaned up like a Dyson. So I keep quiet about the descent of the in-laws. I don’t want to be mean to Steve in front of Martin. Won’t give him the satisfaction. And, to be honest, I don’t really care. Dorota and Roland are the least of my worries. Let them take the kids out. Let them eat eggs. Then may
be Steve and I can get to the bottom of all this Karolina nonsense.
‘Have you heard from the Polish psycho?’ Martin says, picking up on some heavy vibes. He looks from Steve to me and back to his sarney.
Steve says it’s all gone quiet on the western front and I am about to change the subject before Olivia asks who the Polish psycho is when the door goes. We all stop eating, like in one of those bad dramas, but there’s no need to worry. It’s not the Polish psycho or Desmond; it’s Roland and Dorota, all bouncy and full of the joys of Penge.
Great.
‘Surprise! We come early!’ Dorota beams at us, expecting a standing ovation, a round of applause at the very least. Imo obliges, banging her high chair with her beaker. Dorota spots the beaker, her green-lidded eyes sharp as a young girl’s and with all the tact of youth asks, ‘So, tell, me, Vicky. How are your breasts?’
Martin snorts but, try as I might, my foot will not reach him under the table. If I didn’t feel sorry for him at the moment I would gladly aim the jar of Branston at his newly-shaven face.
‘Martin,’ Dorota says, fluttering her mascara-matted lashes at him. ‘You look so young without your beard. Like a teenager.’ She giggles. ‘And with those strong muscles you can help Roland carry the luggage. I have lots of Easter surprises for the kids. And who knows, if you behave... ?’ She winks at him. It is unbearable.
I collect up the plates and plunge them in the sink.
But I am thankful later for the early appearance of my parents-in-law because they take the girls and Jeremy off to the park, wrapped up like rolls of lagging, in jumpers, coats, hats, scarves and gloves despite the hint of spring in the air – Dorota doesn’t take any chances with London weather because it can jump on you from nowhere. I watch them leave, from the window. Jessica, as usual, appears from next door and trails them up the road, camcorder in hand, aiming it at anything that takes her interest, including Dorota’s big bottom.
