The Loop

by Anabel Donald

  ‘OK, go for it,’ I said.

  ‘Mind if I talk the case over with Grace? What we know, what we need to know?’

  I wasn’t mad on that either, but it could be useful. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Just don’t tell Grace the details Jams told me about having sex with Jacob.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Jams wouldn’t like it. Confidential.’

  Nick shrugged. ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I do.’

  * * * * *

  Eddy’d already bought my drink when I got there. The Churchill is a cavernous, ugly pub, my local. It was nearly empty and it smelt of stale beer and cigarette smoke. It always did. I didn’t usually mind. I was in a lousy temper I realized, as I sat down opposite him. ‘I got you a lager and lime,’ he said, pushing it across to me.

  That’s what I usually drink, when it’s warm. It was warm today, but I didn’t want it.

  I made an effort, took the glass and thanked him. He looked like himself. Broad, beefy, wedged into a loud check suit, with a red face and twinkling piggy eyes. ‘So how’s my sexy Alex?’ he said.

  ‘I’m not sexy and I’m not yours,’ I said, grumpy despite myself.

  ‘Give me the chance and I’ll put that right,’ he said.

  ‘Lay off, Eddy.’

  ‘Pardon me for living.’

  ‘Sorry and all that. I’m a bit edgy today.’

  ‘Got your period, have you?’

  Deep breath. Smile. ‘How’s your prostate, Eddy?’

  ‘All the better for seeing you.’

  I couldn’t dent him. Get on with it. ‘Why are we here?’

  ‘I always like to see you, princess.’

  ‘Me too. But you’re a busy man. So, why wouldn’t you talk about my dad over the phone? Do you know who he is?’

  ‘Not exactly know. D’you want a bit of background?’

  I didn’t. Since starting on the track of my father I’d felt solid ground turn into a trapdoor, leaving me dangling over darkness. But I’d made a deal with Barty, so I gritted my teeth and nodded.

  ‘A while back when you were just a nipper I was worried about your ma. When she first wasn’t herself.’

  ‘When she went off her head, you mean.’

  ‘Come off it, Alex. You don’t have to be tough with your uncle Eddy. It can’t’ve been easy for you, any of it.’

  ‘I coped,’ I said brusquely.

  ‘Yeah, you did later, all credit to you. But I was worried. You were only four then, and the wankers from the Social were taking you into care, and I reckoned then that if you had a dad, he might look after you. So I asked your ma, us two being close and all.’

  ‘I expect you were feeling guilty because you were dicking her.’

  ‘Maybe I was, maybe I wasn’t. I don’t reckon you’ve the right to call me on it, either way. And I won’t let you talk about your ma like that. She deserves some respect. Got it?’

  He folded his short, thick arms across his massive chest and glared at me. It was an intimidating, threatening glare. I’d never seen it before, but I could imagine it in an interrogation room just before he assisted a suspect to the floor.

  I dropped my eyes. ‘Got it,’ I said, and the ground seemed more solid under my feet, though I’d die before I let him know it.

  ‘So your ma told me a bit about herself and him. And she made me promise not to tell anyone.’

  ‘She didn’t mean me.’

  ‘She said, anyone.’

  ‘She’s told me a bit already. I know he was a taxi-driver she met in a pub.’

  Eddy took a long pull at his Newcastle Brown and smacked his lips. ‘She told you that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Bit of a porky,’ he said. ‘To spare your feelings, I reckon.’

  ‘To spare my feelings?’

  ‘Yeah. Nobody likes not being wanted, it stands to reason.’

  ‘Who wasn’t wanted? What are you talking about, Eddy?’

  ‘So what we’re doing now, we’re going over to discuss it with your mother.’

  I laughed. ‘That’s stupid, Eddy. You can’t discuss anything with her. She’s got Alzheimer’s, you know that.’

  ‘But some days she’s better than others. You know that. Three weeks back, when Carol and I visited, she knew us. Only for a few minutes, I grant you, but she knew us all right.’

  Eddy and his wife visited Mum every month. More than I did, maybe. That made me feel guilty too.

  I drank my lager and lime.

  Eddy patted my hand. ‘Listen, love, you’re a brave one and a good one but you’re not thinking straight about this. Why didn’t you ask your mother yourself?’

  ‘Because – because she’s out of it.’

  ‘You don’t want to go behind her back. It’s not the right thing. Come on, let’s give it a go.’

  ‘I’ll see her by myself,’ I said, and pushed my glass away. ‘I hate lager and lime.’

  ‘Me too,’ he said. ‘It’s a whore’s drink, same as port and lemon. I’m going to come with you, princess. Trust your uncle Eddy. You’ve just got your underwear in an uproar because it’s your time of the month.’

  ‘Eddy, watch my lips. I do not have my period,’ I said.

  ‘Good. You’ll let me come with you, then.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  It’s a twenty-minute drive from the semi-posh, semi-rough street near Notting Hill where I live to the redbrick Victorian hospital off the North Circular Road where my mother waits to die.

  When we got there, Eddy took charge. He spoke to the nurses and led the way to the grubby day-room. While we sat waiting for my mother he fished a pound bar of Cadbury’s nut milk chocolate out of his pocket and gave it to me. ‘She’ll like her choccy, anyway,’ he said. ‘Chin up, princess.’

  Five long minutes later my mother shuffled in. She used to be pretty. Now, though she’s only in her forties, she looks old. Her hair, once light brown, is faded and dull. It’s shoulder-length, parted in the middle. It clings to her head in sweaty clumps, because the nurses don’t wash it enough, and when they do they don’t bother to rinse out the shampoo. I could do what some of the other patients’ relatives do, come in and help look after her, wash her hair and rinse it properly. I could, but I’m not going to, and I’m not usually guilty about it.

  She was wearing a knee-length grey wool skirt, overwashed and shrank and bobbled, and a green blouse, too big. I recognized the cardigan: I’d bought it for her last Christmas. It had been a light clear pink, because she liked (likes?) pastels. Now it was sludgy pinko-grey, from the hospital laundry.

  She has a facial twitch, possibly from the drugs they give her for schizophrenia, possibly from the Alzheimer’s. Her shuffle might be from either as well. Her eyes are usually dull, and today they went over Eddy and me without recognition or understanding. She turned to the nurse who’d brought her – a fifty-year-old Jamaican built like the Albert Memorial – in what looked like panic and clutched her arm. ‘That’s all right, my dear, that’s all right,’ said the nurse, pushing her away and into the room.

  I went up, hugged my mother and showed her the chocolate. She followed the chocolate to a chair next to me, and I began to feed it to her, piece by piece.

  I talk to her as if she can understand. I’ve always feared that she might be making more sense inside than ever comes out. ‘I’ve just come back from Chicago,’ I said. ‘I was doing some research on a documentary about legalizing drugs.’

  She mumbled something. She’d tried to cram in more than she could chew and chocolate was oozing out from the corners of her mouth and trickling down her face. I took a Kleenex and leant forward to wipe it for her, still talking. ‘There’s more money about,’ I said. ‘I think the recession is almost over. And my private detective work is building up all the time.’

  She was still mumbling, and now I could hear it. ‘Chicago Chicago,’ she was saying.

  ‘That’s right, Chicago,’ I said.

  ‘Frank,’ she said.

>   ‘Frank?’

  She spat out the rest of the chocolate. ‘Stupid stupid stupid,’ she snarled.

  She’d made a mess on the carpet. It wasn’t a clean carpet. In a State-provided underfunded long-stay mental hospital, what did you expect? I mopped the mess anyway.

  Eddy was making an extraordinary noise, like a bull in torment. Then I realized he was singing. ‘Chicago, Chicago, that toddlin’ town. Chicago, Chicago, I’ll show you around.’

  My mother smiled. ‘Yes yes yes,’ she said. ‘Yes.’ She took the tissues from my hand and began sucking the chocolate mess off them. I let her. She seemed to be enjoying it, and her enjoyment is rare and fragile.

  Eddy didn’t mind: he was well into the song. ‘Bet your bottom dollar you lose the blues . . .’

  My mother joined in – ‘In Chicago, Chicago, my home town!’

  Her voice was better than Eddy’s. High, sweet and on the note.

  ‘Hello, Sukie. You like Frank Sinatra, don’t you?’ said Eddy.

  ‘Yes,’ said my mother. ‘Hello, Eddy, how’s Carol?’

  ‘She’s fine. She sends her love.’ Eddy stood up and took my mother’s sticky hands in his beefy paws. ‘Me and Alex have come to talk to you about something important, Sukie.’

  ‘I forget,’ she said, panicking.

  Eddy’s voice boomed again. ‘The cigarette that bears the lipstick traces – the airline ticket to romantic places . . .’

  My mother joined in and I had to endure two verses and a chorus before Eddy judged she’d calmed down. Still holding her hands, he said, ‘Alex wants to know about her dad.’

  ‘She’s too young,’ my mother said. ‘She’s too young, Eddy. Only a kid.’

  ‘This is Alex,’ said Eddy, gently for him. ‘She’s a big girl now.’

  My mother turned to me, confused. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said.

  ‘It’s hopeless, Eddy,’ I said, hurt by not being recognized. Stupidly hurt, because sometimes she knows me, and anyhow for her probably the less she knows about anything the better.

  ‘Shut it, princess,’ he said. ‘I’m handling this. Listen to me, Susan love, Alex is well grown up now.’

  ‘Is she? Where is she? Who took care of her?’

  ‘You did, love,’ said Eddy. ‘Most of the time. Alex is fine, she’s all grown up and happy. I think I should tell her what you told me.’

  ‘Do you?’ My mother was crying now. I gave her another piece of chocolate and she stuffed it in her mouth.

  ‘I’m going to tell her,’ said Eddy. ‘It’s the right thing.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ More chocolate. Gobble gobble.

  ‘Trust me, Sukie.’

  ‘If you say so, Eddy.’ I wiped her dribbling mouth. ‘Can we sing again?’ she said. ‘Can we sing “My Way”, Eddy?’

  Back in the car, I said, ‘I hate “My Way”.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Eddy. ‘Look how much we’ve got in common, Alex. We both hate lager and lime and “My Way”. Is this the beginning of a beautiful relationship?’

  ‘In your dreams, and get your sweaty hand off my knee,’ I said impatiently. ‘Do you ever stop chasing tail, Eddy?’

  ‘Not since I was fourteen,’ he said smugly. ‘And most of the time I catch it. Can you drive and listen at the same time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I’ll tell you what I know about your dad.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  I sat alone in the Churchill drinking straight lager, looked at the piece of paper Eddy had given me, and thought over what he’d told me.

  I didn’t know what he’d been making such a fuss about. My mother’s story was a very simple one. Very sad too, but then she’d always, to me, been a very sad woman.

  Her parents – still alive, as far as Eddy knew, but he’d last seen them twenty-six years ago – lived in Ealing, a suburb about two miles west of Notting Hill. Her father had been a clerk in the Town Hall then. Her mother was a housewife.

  They were also called Tanner. She hadn’t changed her name. John and Maureen Tanner. My grandparents. I tried it on my tongue – ‘Grandpa John’ – ‘Granny Maureen’ – and laughed. The group at the next table, Irish labourers at a very late lunch break, didn’t even look round. The patrons of the Churchill often talked to themselves.

  My mother had been a normal child, gone to the local Catholic secondary school and been above average academically. That surprised me: unfairly, because come to think of it she’d never been thick, just mentally ill. Then when she was sixteen, she’d got pregnant. By an ultra-Catholic, ultra-married master at her school. He’d blamed her, saying she’d tempted him. My grandparents (who I hadn’t bonded with, at the start, but who I liked less and less the more I thought about it) had also blamed her, and insisted that the baby (me) be given up for adoption. She’d refused, and run away. A Catholic society for unmarried mothers had taken her in until two months after I was born, then found her a council flat in the high-rise block in Fulham where we’d lived, some of the time, when I was growing up.

  Her parents had refused to see her while she kept the baby. My father (Eddy didn’t know his name) had also refused to see me or have anything to do with me.

  I thought about that. How did it make me feel?

  Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not rejected, or deserted, or belittled, although a counsellor would probably have said I was in denial. He’d never known me, after all. The person he’d rejected wasn’t me. What he’d rejected were his responsibilities, and normal human feeling, because for a teacher to blame a sixteen-year-old pupil was absurd, and especially a gentle one like my mother.

  If the story was true. It fitted with what I knew of my mother. She’d have been an attractive girl: slim, bright-eyed, pretty, responsive, loving. And naïve. A born victim. The men she’d lived with while I was growing up had all ripped her off, one way or another No surprise that it had started early.

  I folded up the piece of paper with my grandparents’ name and address. The next step would be to see them, ask about the family, get them to identify my father, if they were still alive, and pay him a visit, if he was still alive. No big emotional scenes: just checking the bloodline for hereditary illnesses.

  Then I’d have to give my answer to Barty. But not yet.

  Back in my empty flat (Nick must still have been over at Grace Macarthy’s) I took off my DMs and lay down on the sofa for a quick kip before I went out to Heathrow to meet Polly’s flight.

  I woke four hours later, in the chilly dusk. I’d well and truly overslept. I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and went downstairs to see if she’d arrived.

  She had.

  ‘Alex, Alex, Alex, oh my God! Isn’t this wonderful, kiss kiss kiss, come on in, I went up to your flat and you were asleep so I didn’t wake you because you must still be jet-lagged, it’s much worse west to east, and I’m not tired because I’ve slept for ages and you’re looking terrific and now we’ll have fun. I can’t believe it’s actually you, it’s not at all the same on the phone, Barty met me, gosh isn’t he nice, you are lucky, and he’s taking us somewhere great for dinner and it’s booked and all fixed up, and now you must help me decide what to wear and see what you’ve got and I can lend you something if you like, oh, Alex, I’m so glad to see you. I could burst!’

  ‘Barty met you?’

  ‘Yes, didn’t you ask him to?’

  ‘I meant to meet you myself. I overslept.’

  ‘He’ll tell you about it at dinner, I expect . . .’

  ‘What time are we having dinner?’

  ‘He’s picking us up at eight, so we’ve got an hour and a half to get ready.’

  I looked round her living-room. It had started out tidy – I’d cleaned it ready for her before I went to America – but now every piece of furniture was covered with clothes. As far as I knew she was only staying three days but it looked as if she’d brought the complete wardrobe for the female lead in a contemporary feature film, and to her own flat, which had plenty of her cl
othes in it already.

  I cleared a chair by dumping its contents onto the floor, and sat down.

  ‘I’ve so much to tell you, so much, oh I must do something with my face I look ancient, it’s something to do with the time-zones and Einstein, it must be, I’ve left myself behind in Hong Kong and this is me a hundred years on . . .’

  I stopped listening, and watched her. She didn’t look old, of course. She looked like a beautiful giraffe. She always does. She’s tall and thin with a small, large-eyed, appealing face and a long neck. She has dark hair, dark eyes, a short torso and endless slender legs. She had the central heating full on and was only wearing a teeshirt, a tiny pair of high-cut knickers and a silver ankle-chain.

  When I spotted the ankle-chain my heart sank. They weren’t currently fashionable, as far as I knew, so it must have been a present. From a man.

  I pointed to the ankle-chain. ‘Are they in again?’

  She blushed. ‘Not specially – not exactly – it was a present.’

  I sighed. ‘Don’t tell me. From a bald, fat, selfish, dull, married man.’

  ‘He’s got plenty of hair,’ she said defensively.

  ‘On his head?’

  ‘Some of it’s on his head.’

  ‘You’ve done it again, haven’t you?’

  She sat down next to me and hugged me impulsively. That’s what the script would have said, Polly sits down next to Alex and hugs her impulsively. It wasn’t so impulsive that it wasn’t studied and graceful, but it wasn’t dishonest either. It made me feel clumsy. I tried to hug her back and our arms got tangled, so I pulled away and said, ‘What is it?’

  ‘Alex, I need to talk to you. We must talk.’

  ‘We would be talking if you weren’t talking about talking. Get on with it, Polly. Cut to the chase.’

  ‘I think I’m going to marry him.’

  An hour later I knew all about Polly’s man. He was thirty-five, a top international banker, tall and handsome and kind and stinking rich. He was fit because he worked out (but not obsessively) he played squash (very well) he was considerate with subordinates and ruthless in business and although he was busy busy busy, he still had time for a full social life. He drank (but not too much), he didn’t smoke (but he didn’t mind smokers), he didn’t use drugs, he had a great sense of humour, and although he’d never been married (he was waiting for the right woman, the right time) he’d had successful long-standing love affairs and he was still friends with his ex-lovers. He had a flat in London and, when they were married he wanted Polly to choose a house in Gloucestershire. And a dog.