by Judy Astley
‘Why don’t we collect this lot later and go and have some lunch?’ Kitty suggested. Madeleine nodded, her face still sullen, and followed her out of the store into the sharp sunlight. The paved walkway swarmed with people and Madeleine moved gawkily, weaving about to avoid contact with strange bodies. ‘It’s like they know there’s something in me and they’re trying to crash into me,’ she grumbled. Kitty took her arm and steered her to the edge of the buildings where it was calmer. ‘I hate crowds,’ Madeleine growled and Kitty was reminded of the sight of her hurling the stone at Lily’s cat. Out here she might lash out with a foot, viciously trip up a careless stranger who’d dawdled too close. She didn’t know this girl at all. This, on the relevant bits of paper, was her own daughter and there’d only been those few baby days of shared history together.
‘Let’s go in here and you can cool down a bit.’ Kitty led Madeleine round past the post office and into the cathedral.
‘Oh God, we’re not going to pray are we? Is that your thing?’ Madeleine slumped down into a chair on the back row and slipped her shoes off. The nail polish on her toes was now the bright candy pink of old-fashioned seaside rock: Lily’s toenails were the same shade. Kitty had heard them giggling and gossiping up in their room and imagined them with their feet up, painting each other’s nails and being careless with the liquid. There were often drops of it on Lily’s duvet covers, impossible to wash off. When Madeleine had gone (as she surely would) Kitty would think of her when she did the laundry and saw this colour.
‘I’m not particularly religious actually,’ Kitty volunteered. ‘Blind allegiance to one faith or another seems to cause an awful lot of the world’s troubles.’
‘That’s just the formal trappings of religion you’re talking about though,’ Madeleine said. ‘If there’s a God he or she can’t be held responsible for the stupid dumb superstition rituals we all set up. I just believe in nature. You can see nature’s for real, stuff growing and that. Glyn must know what I’m talking about, communing with all those vegetables.’
‘Tell me about your life.’ The words that had been waiting came out before Kitty could stop them. She’d been so careful, not asking, just waiting for little fragments of information to escape from Madeleine. The girl wasn’t particularly secretive, just not desperately forthcoming, as if she’d made herself comfortable with a lifetime of quietness. Really she only ever seemed properly relaxed when she was with Lily. Perhaps Lily had found it easy, natural, to say ‘Tell me about your life.’ and been just as easily and naturally told.
‘There’s not that much to tell.’ Kitty kept very still. ‘No really, there isn’t,’ Madeleine went on as if she’d felt disappointment transmitted on the cool musty cathedral air. A woman at the end of their row was busy, clattering about as she topped up the supply of votive candles and wafted wax-scented air towards them. Kitty wished she’d go and bustle somewhere else – this should be just her and Madeleine. ‘I’ve had an ordinary, quite nice time. I know it’s not much to go on – I really can’t tell you that being adopted meant I never quite “fitted” or that I was always looking for something else, if that’s what you want to hear. I’ve lived in Brighton most of my life in a house where soft furnishings have far too much importance.’ She laughed, the bright sound echoing. An old man a few rows in front of them turned and glared. ‘Mum likes squishy beige carpets and everyone had to take their shoes off at the front door. She had, still has, a special little rack for visitors’ shoes. Like a mosque. Trouble is she also likes sewing, curtains and cushion covers and stuff so there’s always pins hidden in the pile. I was always treading on them.’
‘Were you . . . this might sound mad,’ Kitty hesitated. ‘Were you a My Little Pony girl, or a Flower Fairies one or, I suppose you were too old for Cabbage Patch dolls . . . ?’
‘I was technical Lego and before that, Tiny Tears. Does that help?’
‘Yes it does. It all does. What about school?’
‘Glyn asked that. I should have written up a CV for you. I’ve got nine GCSEs, all good grades, three A levels, English, Art and Media Studies and the degree from Warwick University.’ She said it as if ticking off a check-list. She wasn’t volunteering whether she was the kind of student who’d sat up all night smoking spliffs or playing poker or if she’d worked diligently and occasionally stopped to sip camomile tea. Maybe later, if there was a later, these things would emerge, make a detailed picture.
‘Boyfriends?’ Kitty held her breath though the question was light enough, or perhaps would have been if there wasn’t the small matter of this pregnancy. There had to come a moment when Madeleine just clammed up and said no more. Each question risked that moment, though this wasn’t it. There was too much to know. It was impossible to think of a definitive list of what to ask that could give even the slightest overview of another person’s childhood.
‘Virginity lost at a friend’s house at seventeen. His parents were supposed to be away but they came back and caught us – we were sure it was on purpose. They told my mother I was a slag and Mum . . .’ Kitty waited. Madeleine swallowed and looked down at her hands, fiddling with a loose button on the awful cream jacket. ‘Mum sort of agreed. She said I’d end up bringing trouble home like . . . well . . .’
‘Like me?’
Madeleine laughed again. ‘Yeah, like you.’ She patted her stomach. ‘And now I’m going to, so she wasn’t wrong was she?’
‘You know, you should tell her about your baby. She’ll want to know. I’d want to know if it was Lily.’ Sensible though this sounded, it was hard for Kitty to say. Selfishly, greedily, she’d cherished this so-important piece of knowledge that Madeleine’s mother just didn’t have.
Madeleine shrugged. ‘I do phone her sometimes, so she knows I’m OK. Just not lately, that’s all. She likes me being independent. She says that’s when you know you’ve got it right as a parent, when your kids don’t need you.’ Kitty wondered if it had been meant quite as literally as Madeleine seemed to be interpreting.
‘Yes but, well she’ll have to know, won’t she, if you’re keeping it.’
‘Of course I’m keeping it!’ Madeleine stood up and started pacing. ‘I’ll tell her soon. When I tell, her about you.’ Kitty didn’t push it. She was in no hurry to share Madeleine with anyone – not after twenty-four missed years. It was down to Madeleine now.
As they were leaving Kitty went to the rack of candles, put a pound in the box and thought of her father as she lit the tiny flame. He’d missed out, so had her mother, on this first grandchild. For the first time, she actually felt quite sorry for her parents – in their eyes they’d only been doing their best for her.
George Moorfield was in the cathedral doorway as the two of them were leaving. His shaggy lion-head and broad shoulders were silhouetted against the stark light of the day outside, making him look like a square-shaped door-guarding ogre that had to be sidled past carefully to get out to safety. It reminded Kitty of when she was small, feeling trapped inside the church after the end of every Sunday service, gasping to escape into the fresh air while her father lorded it in the porch, hand-shaking and small-talking with the congregation. ‘You can’t just rush out ahead of everyone else, we have to wait,’ her mother used to tell her, gripping her upper arm tight to pull her back into the front pew when she’d fidgeted to leave the second the final blessing was over. Life and light could be glimpsed outside, inside was only an atmosphere of stale petty sins and a gloomy sense of unforgiveness. They had to be the last to leave and Kitty used to fight waves of panic that a devil-spirit was lurking in the empty church, waiting for her mother to slip through the door ahead of her so that it could trap her, pin down her limbs and lift her up to drown her in the font.
‘I’ve just been in here for a look-see. Great windows,’ George said as they came out. ‘I saw you sitting there and thought I’d wait for you, see if you fancied lunch.’ Kitty looked at Madeleine, trying to read her expression. George’s suggestion seemed like a good one
, something light and cheering after that life-probing session in the cathedral.
‘OK. Can we go to a pub?’ Madeleine sounded eager. ‘When you’re pregnant you spend half your time avoiding the smell of fags and booze and the rest of the time craving it. Today I’m on craving.’
The pub was as perfectly smoky, aromatic and paint-peeled as Madeleine could have wanted. It wasn’t a venue for pastel-cardiganed tourists in search of a children’s room, chintzy decor or fancy pasta-strewn menu. After they’d ordered ploughman’s lunches all round, George and Madeleine made for a corner table next to a guffawing sprawl of men in paint-spattered overalls facing a collection of empty glasses. Kitty followed, pleased that Madeleine was now looking more animated. She was probably hungry, Kitty thought, sliding along the bench seat next to George. Madeleine sipped her lager and stared at the men on the next table as if memorizing them for something later, a piece of writing or a painting maybe. It crossed Kitty’s mind, as she was hit by another sign that she didn’t really know her, that the girl might just have a weakness for tough-muscled builders.
‘So what’s it like then, meeting your real mother for the first time?’ George asked. Kitty laughed, delighted at his lack of reserve. It seemed such a blessed relief after Glyn’s put-out pussyfooting and Rita’s fake-witchy know-it-all irritating smiles of conspiracy.
‘It’s all right.’ Madeleine sounded positive rather than cautious but then added, ‘It’s, like, well like finding there’s one extra person in the world you can take advantage of.’
‘And is that what you’re doing?’ George’s eyes were full of amusement. Kitty felt like kicking him under the table, warning him not to take the piss – his glass was still more or less full, but might instantly be more or less emptied onto his head if Madeleine thought there was genuine mockery in him.
Madeleine grinned at him. ‘Yeah, course I am. I’m still at the house aren’t I, contributing nothing? Kitty’s just bought a million lovely things for this baby, all with no guarantees that I’ll be anywhere near her when it wears them, and I’m taking up more than my proper share of Lily’s room.’ Her eyes narrowed and she gave him a hard look. ‘I don’t expect to read about this in your next steamy-slimy book.’
‘I’m a better writer than that.’ He leaned forward with his arms on the table, looking intensely into her face. ‘If I do use any of this there’s no way you’ll recognize it.’
‘OK, I believe you,’ Madeleine conceded. ‘And anyway I probably won’t buy it.’
The arrival of the food coincided with the departure of the men next to them. The waitress skipped nimbly round the shuffling figures pushing their way out from behind the table. A couple of empty glasses tumbled silently to the carpet and George leaned down to pick them up, getting his hand trodden on by a big boot for his trouble.
‘Watch it.’ Madeleine pushed the culprit roughly aside with her foot.
‘Sorry love, didn’t mean to injure your old dad.’
‘He’s not . . . oh what the hell. You OK George?’
‘Sure.’ He rubbed his hand. ‘Lucky I only type with three fingers.’
‘He thought you were my dad. Bloody nerve.’
Kitty pictured Ben-at-eighteen, swiftly followed by Ben-as-now, and wondered if he’d sorted out things with Rose. The bar was now silent, the men had clattered and chattered their way out of the door leaving a heavy peace.
‘Yeah. I’m glad I’m not.’ George chuckled and grinned at Madeleine. ‘Begs the question though, doesn’t it?’ The two of them looked at each other intently for a few moments then, smiling as if they’d just discovered their own private joke, they both turned and stared at Kitty, questions in their eyes.
‘What?’ she demanded, a chunky piece of cheese and pickle halfway to her mouth.
‘So you’re my mother, right . . .’ Madeleine said, and George joined in. ‘And on the basis that it takes two to foxtrot . . .’
‘Exactly. That still leaves me with a father to find, doesn’t it?’
Chapter Twelve
‘So. Have you got anything to tell me?’ Julia Taggart’s voice was terrier-fierce as if whatever it was Kitty was due to report she already knew quite well, and was simply looking for an opportunity to be snappy and sarcastic about being the last in the queue for news.
‘Give me a clue, Julia. Something to tell you as in . . . ?’ Kitty balanced the phone between her ear and her shoulder while she scrubbed potatoes under the sink tap. It amused her that Julia, who lived and worked among the ever-chaotic variations of the busy metropolis, should be expecting to hear of scintillating scandals from the remote tail-end of the country.
‘As in the Rose and dead-Antonia’s-Tom situation of course! What else would I mean?’
Kitty glanced across at Madeleine sitting at the table with Lily, the two of them being incredibly slow about removing skins from tomatoes. Madeleine seemed to do everything at half-speed, taking hours about getting up in the mornings, unloading the dishwasher plate by careful plate. She only sped up in the company of George, cutting in and finishing his sentences as if her mind worked the same way as his, but faster. He didn’t appear to mind, which was surprising considering his entire life was to do with finding the right words.
Madeleine and Lily were solemnly agreeing about the futility of maths, an opinion that Lily didn’t need any encouragement about. Madeleine’s arrival was another little news bulletin that had yet to be communicated to Julia. Kitty told her, ‘But I don’t know anything about Rose and Tom, except that Glyn saw her down here in some garden centre doing what she called research and I haven’t heard from Ben for at least a week. I assumed he’d got himself sorted out, or that they’d kissed and made up.’
‘Huh!’ Julia snorted like a small child imitating a pig. It wasn’t a pretty sound. Kitty transferred the phone to her other shoulder while Julia continued, ‘You only thought that because he’s taken to calling me instead of you. He was on for an hour last night, can you believe.’ Julia, thriving on other people’s confidences, could hardly have minded. Kitty could hear her rustling about, all her briskness diverted for a few seconds into the noisy lighting of a cigarette. ‘And what’s more, he kept going on about you and all that “what might have been” stuff. I got terribly bored, I mean he must be on another planet, though he was rather pathetically gooey-eyed over you that night you were up here . . . but there was a decent episode of The Bill so I watched that while he rambled.’ Kitty could just imagine it, Julia elegantly draped on her pale green sofa with her feet up on the little Victorian stool embroidered with faded foxgloves (shoes off in case of scuff marks), channel-surfing while Ben imagined he was getting her full attention. She laughed, the picture so much resembled the way she too had ‘listened’ to Ben.
‘What’s funny?’ Julia was still prickly.
‘Sorry Julia, nothing’s funny really, just the thought of your attention being so neatly divided like that. Quite a skill. You could have just hung up though, pretended your phone gave out.’ That was a tease. Kitty scattered rosemary and garlic over the potatoes in the earthenware dish and put them in the oven. Julia would never hang up a phone while more information might be forthcoming. Ben would have had to repeat himself twelve times before she realized he’d run out of fresh words.
‘Anyway,’ Kitty was getting a crick in her neck and now needed both hands to prepare the chicken properly, ‘Julia, it’s not really any of our business is it?’
There was another ‘Huh!’ followed by a rather crowing, ‘Well you might think that now, but wait till he turns up on your doorstep looking for the precious Rose.’
‘Is it likely? Why doesn’t he just go to where Rose actually is?’
‘Absolutely it’s likely – Rose has been a bit vague about her actual whereabouts and keeps switching her mobile off, telling him she can’t get a signal on your side of the Tamar. He said he might try you. Of course that might just be an excuse to see you . . .’
So that was why Julia had p
honed: to see if he’d arrived. Kitty looked across at Madeleine again and thought about her deceptively throwaway question about finding her father. She blamed George, geeing her up in the pub like that. The question had managed to drift away unanswered, Kitty getting out of it with something vague about it all being so long ago. George had cut in too, reminiscing about long-lost girlfriends from his youth, and his own missed opportunities for being a family man, and neither he nor Madeleine seemed seriously to expect her to come up with an instant father. A scene came to mind: herself, Ben and Madeleine in a row out on the sea wall, arranged in some sort of parody of a family photo. Madeleine had lined up all the skinned tomatoes into a neat triangle as if she was about to start a snooker match with them. Lily flicked at them with her finger and sent them rolling across the table top towards the edge. The two of them giggled and made a clumsy grab for the tomatoes, squashing one flat and sending juice and pips spurting over the floor.
‘Lily stop it! Bring them over here,’ Kitty hissed at her. Madeleine pulled a face and smirked at Lily.
‘Sorry if it’s a bad time.’ Julia didn’t sound at all sorry and then said, ‘By the way, did anything ever come of that trip to the adoption people? Any news? Or is that something else I’m not going to hear about?’
‘Oh Julia, don’t sound so disgruntled.’ Kitty laughed out loud at her. ‘And actually, I was going to ring you about that but . . .’ From across the room Madeleine, sensing that she might be the topic, was staring at her with startlingly blue intensity. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow Julia. Must go now and do things to the supper. Bye.’
‘Were you talking about me?’ Madeleine stalked across the room looking accusing and reached over to the sink to get a cloth. She waited close to Kitty, the cloth juggled from one of her hands to the other as if she might feel the need to hurl it at someone.
‘No. I wasn’t. That was one of my oldest friends, talking about another of my oldest friends.’
