by Joanna Glen
We looked at each other.
‘I often hope your father turned out a bit like that Lionel Blue. He always seemed so kind. Although he’s gay of course.’
‘I had a friend who was gay,’ I said. ‘He killed himself. He was eighteen.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘What happened?’
‘It’s too awful to talk about,’ I said. ‘So maybe we’ll leave it for another time. We should get back to your story. I think I might be about to arrive on the scene, and I can’t wait to meet myself!’
‘Well,’ she said, biting her lip. ‘This was my first kiss. With your father. But things didn’t stop there …’
‘I worked that out!’ I said. ‘By existing!’
She didn’t laugh.
‘I told my mother I was pregnant,’ she said, ‘and she told me to stay where I was, and she’d come over. She said I mustn’t tell my father – it’d kill him.’
‘How did she take it?’
‘She’d been having an affair with an Englishman, so she seemed pleased that we were in it together.’
‘In what?’
‘Sin, I suppose,’ she said. ‘Safety in numbers.’
‘Are you religious?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Does it matter, do you think?’
‘To me or to God?’
‘Either. Both.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘Were you close to your mother?’
‘We were then. She said I had my whole life in front of me. I was too young to be tied down. She stayed until the birth.’
I have a birth.
‘She covered my eyes and she handed you over to Sister María Soledad. She said it was better not to hold you. Not to look. Not to see your face.’
I felt my eyes smart.
She’d never know how bad it felt to have no baby photo to put on Miss Feast’s display board. My mother never held me, never kissed my scalp. She handed me over without looking at my face – how would you do that to your own child?
‘I was very young and very scared,’ she said. ‘The birth wasn’t easy.’
I found a smile from somewhere, which I arranged onto my mouth, like those plastic lips you can buy in joke shops.
‘My mother went back to Papi in the end,’ she said. ‘She did her duty. But I never felt she was at all kind to my father after that. She was there on sufferance.’
I kept my plastic smile tight on my lips.
‘My mother blamed him for what she’d done wrong, and she was always cross with him. I didn’t trust her with him. So I guess that’s why I stayed. I got the job in the restaurant and lived with them. Eventually she left again.’
‘And you fell in love again?’ I said.
She shook her head.
‘I wonder if you only fall in love once,’ she said.
Oh dear, I thought.
‘I’d done my falling in love,’ she said. ‘With your father.’
I so hoped you didn’t only fall in love once.
But I was pleased that my parents had a love story.
At the start, anyway.
So many love stories don’t have happy endings.
So many things begin well and end badly – that’s what my not-father said, and I’d written it down. But not all things, in my opinion, whatever he thought.
Other things that begin badly, like my life, might end well, in a big flourish of loveliness to make up for the crap start.
‘Have you been happy?’ I said, trying to like her again. ‘In your life?’
‘Not really,’ she said. ‘But I had those thirty-one days.’
Thirty-one days of happiness, and that was it.
I wondered how many days of happiness Cherie had had in her life.
I hoped it wasn’t fewer than thirty-one.
And what about Christine Orson – how many had she had?
And did she have any happy days at all now that Billy was gone?
Can we be happy when the people we love die?
Did happiness fall down from the sky on Blue Mother, or did she make it, herself?
Like Sister Ana?
How do we make happiness?
Is it by loving other people?
Is that how it works?
I’d found my real mother, and yet I still didn’t feel happy like I’d imagined mothered people felt.
We went for a walk along the back of the beach, and we couldn’t find anything to say to each other.
There was rubbish stuck between rocks: sweet packets and ice cream wrappers.
We reached a big wire fence and that was the end of the path.
We walked back, and headed for the bus stop, where we sat on a bench in the burning sun.
‘I’ve suddenly realised,’ I said. ‘I’ve stopped you going to buy your yearly dress for my father.’
My father! How weird and marvellous to say it.
‘This is more important,’ she said, looking down.
‘I wanted to ask you what Sister María Soledad was like,’ I said, also looking down.
‘Very strong,’ she said.
‘What did her face look like?’ I said. ‘I have a photo of her, but with no head.’
It sounded ridiculous, but she didn’t smile.
She said: ‘It’s hard to describe faces.’
‘Could you try?’ I said.
‘She had grey eyes,’ she said.
‘Anything else?’
‘She said that we all need desires that are bigger than our own happiness. She found happiness by living for the people no one else wanted.’
‘I suppose I was a person no one else wanted, and that’s why she wanted me,’ I said. ‘Until she didn’t.’
‘Don’t say that,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘I’ve tried to do my best for them all: Papi, Chris and Liam. But my heart has never been totally in it. My heart’s always been somewhere else.’
Neither of us spoke.
I didn’t dare ask her where exactly her heart had been.
‘Chris wants us to move out to Gibraltar when Papi dies,’ she said.
‘Fantastic,’ I said. ‘You’ll be much nearer me!’
She smiled shyly at me.
‘I was so nervous about meeting you,’ she said. ‘But it’s been nice. Now I’ve just got to keep it a secret.’
Just nice?
‘For now,’ I said. ‘But maybe one day—’
‘Chris and Liam want to buy a bar,’ she interjected. ‘Make it into a football pub.’
‘Great,’ I said, thinking that football pub was one of the least promising of phrases. But not for everyone, wouldn’t Rabbi Lionel Blue say, because he’s unjudgmental?
‘It’s not really my thing,’ she said blankly. ‘But I can do the cooking. And at least the weather’s nice.’
Nice.
‘What’s Gibraltar like?’ I said.
‘Nothing special,’ she said. ‘But it’s the closest I can get to your father.’
She smiled.
‘It’s so odd to talk about him,’ she said. ‘He was a wonderful man.’
‘I’d love to meet him one day,’ I said.
‘I don’t expect either of us will ever see him again.’
‘Don’t say that,’ I said.
The bus arrived.
‘Well, it’s so good to meet you,’ I said. ‘And we must do this again. I’m so happy to come to Tooting.’
We stared at each other, trying to work out how to say goodbye.
‘Love you,’ I said, leaving out the I, like I used to with Michael.
The words hung around my mouth, like flies.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh.’
Chapter 106
It was a relief to get into my yellow van.
I definitely shouldn’t have said love you at the end.
I couldn’t believe she hadn’t looked at my face when I was born.
I couldn’t believe she hadn’t said sorry for th
at.
Had it gone OK or not?
I couldn’t work it out.
At least she’d bought me birthday presents and kept them in a case in the attic.
That was something.
Even if she didn’t love me.
That’s what I told Bridget, sitting under the holm oak amongst the acorns.
‘This was only the start,’ said Bridget. ‘It will take time to get to know each other.’
‘I guess you’re right,’ I said, and we headed back to La Convivencia, where a school party was arriving from Madrid for one of Gabriel’s themed history weeks.
When I’d finished my evening lecture, there were children in the courtyard, all wearing purple caps, spinning hula hoops – round and round – like Bridget and I used to on the bald lawn in Turret Grove.
Carrie was cooking in the kitchen, singing along loudly to the radio.
I told her about Jhazmin.
‘Are you happy, Evs?’ she said, and her face looked shiny and radiant.
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But also not really.’
Then Flight 11 crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Centre.
Carrie turned up the radio.
The second plane crashed into the south tower.
The third plane crashed into the US military headquarters in Washington DC.
The fourth crashed into a field.
Bridget rushed into the kitchen to say that Gerónimo was fine, he’d phoned her from New York, and I felt bad that I hadn’t even thought of him once.
We sat glued to the television, watching people dive headfirst into the pavement.
The teachers spoke in low voices to their purple pupils.
The purple pupils’ parents called and said they loved them.
Bridget, Carrie and I sat up late, wanting to be together.
‘This doesn’t seem that important now,’ said Bridget. ‘But Gerónimo’s told me he doesn’t want children. Like, ever.’
‘How do you feel?’ I said.
‘Confused,’ she said.
‘He’ll probably change his mind,’ said Carrie.
‘Do you think people change their mind at thirty-five?’ said Bridget. ‘He says it’s a deal-breaker.’
‘Do you love him?’ said Carrie.
‘I think so,’ said Bridget.
‘Enough?’ I said.
Bridget said, ‘Maybe.’
We smiled.
But her maybe wasn’t really a smiling matter.
‘This is the wrong time to say it,’ said Carrie. ‘For both of you. But I just can’t keep it in! Perhaps it would be better—’
‘Of course you have to tell us,’ I said.
‘Gabriel proposed to me,’ she said, her face lit with joy. ‘And I said yes.’
I caught Bridget’s face flinching.
‘I wish it wasn’t today,’ said Carrie. ‘It feels like the wrong day to be happy.’
‘Gabriel is my favourite man in the world,’ I said.
I should have said my equal favourite man in the world, but I don’t think we can love our friends’ partners equally.
‘Wouldn’t it be amazing,’ said Carrie, ‘if there could be one day when everyone in the whole world was happy at the same time? I would love that so much.’
‘Or sad at the same time?’ said Bridget. ‘All those people have died. And not everyone is sad about it.’
Chapter 107
A letter arrived from Jhazmin saying that Papi had died of a sudden heart attack soon after their return from holiday; that they really were moving out to Gibraltar; that Chris and Liam were off on a boys’ fishing trip, and she wondered if this would be a good moment for me to come and visit her in Tooting – she was struggling without her father.
Reeling from so much news, I wrote back and said I’d come on my birthday, and then immediately regretted it.
It was strange to be back in London.
It was freezing.
And I was twenty-seven.
So old.
So cold.
I walked from Tooting Bec tube, pulling my scarf over my nose, down the High Road, past the halal butchers and the fabric shops, past stalls of fresh fruit in Tupperware bowls, and up the path of a small terraced house with an overgrown lawn and net curtains and a Sold sign nailed to the fence.
Jhazmin opened the door wearing black trousers and a cream jumper and bobbly beige wool slippers. She looked pale and strained.
She gestured towards the sign and said, ‘We’re moving next month.’
The house smelled shut.
‘This was my father’s chair,’ she said, taking me into a very brown small sitting room. ‘And all his books. I can’t bring myself to throw them away.’
On the low coffee table was a tray with a teapot in a tea cosy, and two cups and saucers, and a loaf-shaped cake, with one candle in it, which had been sliced.
‘Almond cake?’
‘Thank you.’
I ate the slice of almond cake, gagging.
In front of the coffee table was a garish pink suitcase with a heart in the middle.
‘This is yours,’ she said, pointing at it. ‘With all your birthday presents in it, from back when you were one. To twenty-one. And this is for today. Happy birthday!’
I opened up a pale watercolour painting of the Mezquita in a gold frame.
‘Thank you,’ I said, trying to look pleased.
‘I bought it when I was there,’ she said. ‘Do you like it?’
I strained my voice to say, ‘I love it.’
But I didn’t love it.
And this felt bigger than the painting.
I stared at the framed photographs of her father, of balding Chris, of Liam in too-short school trousers, and then I looked through the glass doors at the rockery and the pond and baskets hanging from metal brackets, with trails of dead flowers.
‘Look at your lovely garden!’ I said, for something to say, because it really wasn’t lovely.
She stood up and opened the sliding glass doors, letting in the chill damp air.
In the corner of the garden, there was a clump of dried-up sunflowers, bent over, faces to the ground. I hoped she might mention them.
‘My father liked birds,’ she said. ‘We haven’t got round to filling up the bird nuts since he died.’
A spindly bird table stood, empty.
‘I’m finding it so hard without him.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘He was your grandfather,’ she said in a slightly undecipherable tone of voice.
‘You could have asked me to meet him, and I’d have come like a shot,’ I said.
‘Have you ever thought what it’s been like for me?’ she said. ‘Trying to keep you secret.’
I felt a horrible burst of anger.
‘Have you ever thought what it’s been like for me?’ I said. ‘Not having a mother. Being parented, or actually not parented, by a totally unsuitable couple. Nobody ever telling me the truth.’
We stared at each other.
Then we got in her car, in silence, and we drove down Tooting High Road, so that she could point out Restaurante Hispánico, where she worked, and the mosque where her father had worshipped, and we went back to her house for lunch.
‘Una comida cordobesa,’ she said in Spanish, and we sat at her kitchen table, quietly eating delicious salmorejo soup, followed by pastel cordobés, those flaky pastry pies full of sweet pumpkin.
‘This is what I make at the restaurant. Your father loved my cooking.’
‘It’s amazing, all of it,’ I said.
‘Would you ever try and find him?’ I said.
‘I promised I wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘I promised not to get in the way of his vocation.’
‘What about your vocation?’ I said.
‘Oh, I’m not sure I had one.’
‘I think everyone has one,’ I said. ‘Something that’s just right for them. For me, it’s running the hotel.’
‘I’
m sorry I can’t let you stay longer,’ she said. ‘But I don’t want the neighbours seeing you. And the longer you’re here …’
‘I understand,’ I said.
‘Take the suitcase,’ she said. ‘Happy birthday!’
‘I saw the sunflowers,’ I said on the doorstep. ‘You know, you said in your letter …’
But she was already closing the door on me.
Chapter 108
I got off the bus, dragging the awful pink suitcase and feeling a terrible ache of disappointment inside me for what my real mother wasn’t, and maybe could never be.
I took a deep breath, and walked towards the square.
I rang on the door, heart palpitating.
Nigel answered.
We hugged.
‘Where are Cherie and Jean?’
‘Out for the day,’ he said. ‘They’ve started leaving me on my own.’
I left the case in the hall and sat and watched Tom and Jerry.
Nigel asked if we could go out for pancakes.
The place had hardly changed since my first date with Michael.
When we got back, Cherie and Jean still weren’t home.
I walked around the house, and saw myself everywhere: walking along the hall in my olive-green uniform, talking to the flowers through the shut glass doors, up in the wicker furniture room letting Michael take my clothes off – I didn’t want to think about that.
I went up to the roof terrace and stared at the view, then back downstairs to the hall, where the pink suitcase stood glaring at me.
I opened the case, and there were the presents, each with an envelope, numbered from one to twenty-one. I put them in a line and stared at them. The wrapping paper changed each year, matching itself to my new age, and this moved me, the thought of Jhazmin, in the card shop, or W H Smith, I didn’t know if there was one on Tooting High Road. I pictured her, biting on her lower lip, as she does, trying to choose. I thought of all the people rushing past her, seeing only a woman choosing wrapping paper.
‘Nigel!’ I called. ‘Do you want to come and open some presents?’
Nigel opened a rattle; a squeezy octopus with textured tentacles; a Sooty puppet that he put on his hand; three different dolls; a princess dress; a snow globe; stationery sets; gel pens; a muffler and a scarf and a beret; bangles; different styles of earrings; winter gloves with fur cuffs; a gold necklace with a heart pendant; a sign which told me to follow my dreams, my life on fast-forward, year by year.
