The History of Us

by Jonathan Harvey

  Once I’d returned to London, I stopped going to school (Aunty Gina was none the wiser, and her handwriting proved very easy to forge where an absence note was concerned) and made it my duty to track down my father.

  ‘Father’.

  When actually, nothing could have been farther from the truth.

  God, I’m clever.

  I know it was rather ungodly of me to be missing school, but I reckoned that even Jesus would think finding a bond with my dad would be a worthwhile thing.

  The City Lit turned out to be located down a side street near Drury Lane in Covent Garden. For the majority of my first morning’s searching I hung around outside the New London Theatre, where Cats was showing.

  An ironclad smash! one of the adverts said.

  I was trying to work up the courage to go round the corner to the actual college. For once, though, my nerve was failing me. My mind was full of what-ifs. What if he doesn’t know anything about me? What if he doesn’t want to know me? What if he turns out to be a knobhead?

  What if that man walking past me now was him?

  It made no sense to just go up to a man and scare him by saying, ‘Hello, I believe I am your son.’

  But what would I say instead?

  I didn’t know.

  But I knew I had to meet him.

  The only security at the City Lit that day was a middle-aged woman with a Sixties beehive, sitting knitting at what looked like a picnic table as you walked in. She looked rather taken aback when I said I was here to see Mark Reynolds. After all, what would a thirteen-year-old schoolboy be doing seeking out a politics lecturer? But when I added I was a friend of the family, she happily directed me to his office and returned to her knitting needles.

  My first glimpse of Mark was as he was coming out of his office, as I was approaching. He was everything I’d feared he might be. He had a look of Paul Weller, and was suitably dressed like a mod, even though that was far from hip at the time. He had a pretty, pale, almost feminine face, slender hips, very generous of lip, and sideburns that fell in front of his ears like spaniel’s ears. These days you might regard him as a hipster.

  I had no idea what I was going to say. But what I said was something like . . .

  I’m sorry to bother you, Mr Reynolds, but I thought you might be able to help me.

  Oh yes, and I added a faint Liverpool accent for good measure. To make him feel at home. Even though mine had been zapped out of me at an early age.

  We don’t do politics at my school and it’s what I want to do for a living. I’m looking for a private tutor. I can’t pay coz my mum’s ill with cancer but . . . I’d be an eager student and . . . well, I’ve heard from people back in Liverpool that you’re the best. The best. I’d only need an hour of your time every now and again, but . . .

  He practically screamed I’LL DO IT. There and then.

  Men, eh?

  I had appealed to his vanity. He had not thought it at all odd that so young a boy was seeking his company. He was happy to be seen with me in public.

  Not sure that would have been quite so easy today.

  Not only did Mark take it upon himself to educate me about politics, but he decided to educate me about the finer things in life. We met in bohemian cafes in Soho, tea rooms at the Criterion, subterranean drinking dens below Leicester Square. And in these places, one thing became obvious. Mark Reynolds LOVED the sound of his own voice.

  I had to say so little. I’d sit there pretending to take notes while he hit the coffee and spouted forth his ideologies about everything from Churchill to Thatcher to Blair to social housing to . . . you name it, he loved talking about it. And he never really asked my opinion, he just seemed to think I was going to learn everything by osmosis.

  One day he asked how my mum was. I got flustered, and said she was feeling a lot better. And wanted to meet him. Why didn’t we all have supper on New Year’s Eve?

  He’d never fall for that, surely.

  But fall for it he did.

  And then . . . the rest, as they say, is history.

  Maybe I’ve been saying some of this aloud. My therapist is pointing out, ‘But this was a very long time ago, Billy.’

  ‘Fifteen years,’ I agree.

  And she encourages me to reflect on my feelings for Jocelyn now. I hear myself saying, ‘Mixed emotions, really.’

  I hear myself milking it. ‘I mean, she was so horrible to so many people. But at the end of the day, she was my mum.’

  One thing I appear to have been very good at is erasing people from my life. Once I knew that Mark was not my father and that I wasn’t going to find some sort of happy-ever-after with him and my so-called mum, it was no problem whatsoever to wipe her from my mind and from my life. She’d never been that integral to it to begin with. Why did she have to be a part of it now?

  She was easy enough to blank out. I just avoided the magazine she wrote for every time I went to a newsagent’s. Oh, it caught my eye, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t exactly my first choice for reading anyway. And then I noticed it was no longer being stocked in the shops, which was when I discovered that it had stopped being published. And from then on she was even easier to ignore, as she was no longer making any noises anywhere that might grab my attention.

  If there was one good thing to come out of the ill-fated night at the pizza restaurant, it was this. I appreciated that I was self-sufficient enough to need neither a father nor a mother. I was thirteen. My future was my destiny, not theirs. Ruby had cared for me, and now Aunty Gina. In many ways, their presence had been a blessing. Imagine if Jocelyn had taken me to London with her and tried to raise me while she was posing topless, or singing those dire songs, or being caught having sex on planes, or writing her sex advice column. I was far better off without her.

  And as the years went by and I matured into a young man rather than a boy, I realized that the anger I had felt towards Jocelyn I had taken out on girls and women, and that really was not acceptable. The church said that Jesus would forgive me. Well, good on him – so I threw myself into my churchgoing with such a vengeance that word got back to Liverpool, and even Ruby became proud of me.

  I had pangs, now and again, about how I had treated that girl at school. But surely I was acting out towards her all the anger I felt about my mum? That’s certainly what my pastor felt. He also said, if I asked for forgiveness from the Lord, then forgiveness would be mine. If I promised to Him that I would never again be so horrible to a woman, then everything would be OK. I promised, and I meant it. But something still gnawed away at me, because somewhere in Liverpool was a girl who I had scared with my threatening campaign of intimidation and my freak-show behaviour. I carried the shame and guilt around with me for a long time.

  Eventually my pastor advised me to write a letter to Briony, apologizing for my threatening behaviour. It was difficult to do, but I did it. He also warned me not to expect anything in return. But he said that the act of writing it would ‘lift my soul’. It didn’t, and the subsequent silence compounded my negativity. She had received the letter, but didn’t forgive me, or else she would have replied. I had sought forgiveness from God and got it. I had sought forgiveness from my victim, and not got it. I withdrew into myself for the longest time.

  The upside of this was, it enabled me to be industrious at school and sixth-form college. It was like I had come full circle. I had turned into the little boy I’d been before I’d discovered what I discovered that time in the sweet shop. If my world had turned upside down that day, then it felt like it had been righted now.

  Back to square one.

  The boy who wouldn’t say boo to a goose.

  Yes sir, no sir, three bags full, sir. That was me.

  And then – something bizarre happened. As if my life hadn’t been a succession of bizarre occurrences already.

  I was in the college canteen. I often went in before the start of the college day, as the powers that be at sixth form were a lot less frugal than Aunty Gina an
d therefore didn’t mind having a few radiators on every now and again to keep out the chill. I would sip my cheap coffee and scour the day’s newspapers that they left hanging around for us to read.

  A headline in the Express caught my eye. It was about the premiership footballer Isaiah Jacob. He had been involved in a drunk driving incident, and had crashed into three cars on the M6. The press were baying for his blood, of course. The most horrific detail about the case was that three members of the same family had been killed in one of the cars he had crashed into. They were named as the Adlington family from Liverpool. Gerry, 42, wife Monica, 40, and their eighteen-year-old daughter Briony, who had been driving.

  There was a picture of them.

  It was her.

  I should’ve cried. Of course I should have cried. This was a tragic story. A whole family from where I grew up, obliterated in the blink of an eye.

  But I didn’t. Instead, I felt as if a weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

  Yes, something terrible had happened to her. But it meant that she was no longer suffering because of anything that I had done to her.

  Yes, OK, that sounds twisted. And of course I told those closest to me in the canteen how sad the story was, and how I’d known her at school, and – OK, so I lied, and that’s bad – she’d been my date for the school disco. And outwardly I was the model of decorum and sadness and mourning and shock, and . . .

  But deep down inside, I was punching the air. I felt elated. I no longer had to feel guilty. Isaiah Jacob had put paid to that. He had done something infinitely worse to her. He had killed her. What’s a little rape threat compared to that, huh?

  Hand that man a medal.

  Actually, no. Don’t hand him a medal. That would be crass and insensitive, cruel.

  But I had prayed to God, and my prayers had been answered. Briony’s suffering was now over.

  I finally felt like a free man. I finally felt like I could face the future and not be shackled by the errors of the past. I had promised God I would be good and behave, and not be mean to people, and he had listened, and now it was up to me to keep my side of the bargain.

  ‘Billy? Billy, you’re not saying anything,’ my therapist says.

  Oh, FUCK OFF, BITCH.

  Oh dear. Naughty me. Naughty Billy.

  Tut tut tut.

  ‘I find it very difficult to talk about Jocelyn,’ I say as a get-out. Well, partly a get-out. It’s true. I do.

  And so I turned over a new leaf with renewed vigour. The model teenager becoming the model man. The model Christian. The model student. The model everything. Everyone’s friend. Everyone’s favourite neighbour. And I kept on with that, and it would have lasted forever. It would. Jocelyn had disappeared off the face of the earth, seemingly, so her face wasn’t on newsstands to taunt me.

  And then, many years later, I heard of this thing called Twitter. And I took a look at it.

  It wasn’t for me. I thought no more about it.

  But as the years advanced, it seemed to gain in importance.

  And soon the papers were talking about the new Queen of Mean, and how she had made her presence felt through her non-stop tweeting.

  Jocelyn was back.

  How much longer could I keep up my act?

  KATHLEEN AND ADAM

  2005

  From: Kathleen O’Hara (kathleenohara1970@hotmail.co.uk)

  Sent: 13 June 2005

  To: Adam Ferguson (adam@kenzimanagement.com)

  Subject: HOWDY

  Dear Adam

  Howdy!

  Long time no speak. Think I’m pretty much in the doghouse with you as I’ve not heard from you in so long. Fair do’s. Listen, I don’t want to take up much of your time but I wondered if you had an email address or phone number or even postal address for Jocelyn? I owe her a massive apology and would like to get in touch. Any thoughts where she might be? Hope you are well. Love to your mum. K xxxxx

  P.S. Remember the Loft Club?!

  From: Adam Ferguson (adam@kenzimanagement.com)

  Sent: 15 June 2005

  To: Kathleen O’Hara (kathleenohara1970@hotmail.co.uk)

  Subject: Re: HOWDY

  Dear Kathleen

  Thanks for your email. I have checked with Jocelyn and I think it’s safe to say she’d rather you didn’t get in touch. (Polite version) I’m sure you can understand.

  Best wishes

  Adam

  Adam Ferguson

  Agent

  Kenzi Management

  From: Kathleen O’Hara (kathleenohara1970@hotmail.co.uk)

  Sent: 15 June 2005

  To: Adam Ferguson (adam@kenzimanagement.com)

  Subject: Re: Re: HOWDY

  Dear Adam

  Ah OK, so we won’t mention the Loft Club.

  I sense from the tone of your email that you too are unhappy with me. I’ll be honest with you. I’m not in a very good place right now and I’m going through a lot of shit. But it’s all self-inflicted so this isn’t an email requiring pity or sympathy, but I guess it’s truth time.

  I may have upset you. I may have hurt you. Or you may just be siding with Jocelyn. In either case I wouldn’t know. And why wouldn’t I know? Because the last few years have gone by in a blur of alcohol. I’m not passing the buck. No-one made me pour that much alcohol down my neck, no one had a gun to my head. I did it. Me.

  Anyway. I am writing this from a rehab clinic place in the Derbyshire hillside. It’s pretty outside, but pretty bleak inside. Funny, that.

  Adam, whatever I have done to hurt you in the past, can I just say I am so, so sorry. Part of acknowledging we have a problem here is to try and make amends to those we have hurt through our addiction in the past. I tried to reach out to Jocelyn, not even thinking I might have hurt you, bizarrely. I now appreciate that this was blinkered of me and God, Adam, I’m a knobhead.

  Listen, if you don’t want to get back to me it’s fine. Honestly. I’ve fucked everyone else off in my life, you will be part of a very long list. But I do love you. And I am sorry.

  Your friend

  Kathleen xx

  From: Adam Ferguson (adam@kenzimanagement.com)

  Sent: 15 June 2005

  To: Kathleen O’Hara (kathleenohara1970@hotmail.co.uk)

  Subject: Re: Re: Re: HOWDY

  Oh Kath, I am so so sorry to hear this. I’m sorry if my last email was a bit abrupt and cunty but I just didn’t know what to say if I’m honest. I felt a bit caught between a rock and a hard place really. Yes, I am still mates with Jocelyn, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. She was all over the place after what happened between you and Leon, and it brought us closer I guess. For the first time she kind of let her guard down and wasn’t the big hard-faced piece she’d always been. But I also grew closer to Leon and now I work for him. I am a hair and make-up agent like him – well, trying to be. So my life and relationships and work are all a bit intertwined at the moment – I even feel a bit guilty writing to you, like I’m going behind their backs and fraternizing with the enemy. I think that’s how they’d see it anyway. But you’re having a hard time and I can’t pretend that doesn’t get to me. How bad is it? How are work coping with you having time off?

  All I’d say to you is this – and yes, as a former founder member of the Loft Club – just don’t be too hard on yourself. Yes, you fucked up with Leon and that’s kind of inexcusable – you couldn’t have been pissed off your head the whole time you were seeing him. But . . . and it’s a big but. Just remember what a shitty start you had in life. I know you’re not one for massive navel-gazing and feeling sorry for yourself, but Jesus, girl, cut yourself some slack. You were brought up by your nan, God rest her soul, after your mam pissed off to Australia with some fancy piece. Your dad was in and out of prison. YOU HAD A SCHNOZZLE THAT BIG EVERY TIME YOU CROSSED THE ROAD THERE WAS AN ECLIPSE. (!!!) (And I know you’ve taken care of that.) In the big scheme of things, you have a lot to feel sorry for yourself about. Not that you do. And maybe the hurt fro
m all that, and your nan dying, maybe that all led to you being in the place you are today.

  Oh God, Kath, there’s a million things I could say to you right now but I have to go to dinner with one of my clients. Get me! But stay strong and speak soon.

  A xxxx

  Adam Ferguson

  Agent

  Kenzi Management

  From: Kathleen O’Hara (kathleenohara1970@hotmail.co.uk)

  Sent: 16 June 2005

  To: Adam Ferguson (adam@kenzimanagement.com)

  Subject: Hoorah!

  Oh Adam, you don’t know how relieved I am that you’re being so nice to me. I really don’t deserve it, but it is very much appreciated. Your description of my (former) nose made me actually spit out my toast. We are allowed toast here. As long as it’s not got vodka spread all over it.

  Argh, you ask me how work are coping. They’re not. That’s part of the reason I’m in here. I lost my job. They booted me off when I got pissed on a flight and had a row with my purser. Well, I say row, I actually called her a ‘fat fucking rice queen’. I have no recollection, but by the time we hit Heathrow my P45 was waiting for me on the runway. I have also since had the phrase ‘rice queen’ explained to me. I’d heard a few of the gay boys at work using it on a trip to Thailand and I just thought it was a general insult for someone who likes carbs. I know better now.

  Well, that was a pretty big wake-up call, obviously. And with no money coming in I lost my flat and, listen to this, ended up moving in with my dad back in fucking Liverpool. Well, that was pretty disastrous as you can imagine, and I just woke up one morning and thought, ‘Enough is enough.’ Well. Admittedly I woke up in hospital after having my stomach pumped. I wouldn’t mind, but I’d only gone out the day before to a kid’s third birthday party.

  I know. The shame.

  I got a stern talking to from an A and E doctor and the hospital referred me here, and hey presto. Apparently I’m an alkie. Who knew? (Answer: everyone.)