My Real Children

by Jo Walton

  “But you’re staying here, Mum, and these people are going to look after you.”

  “Nonsense! We’ve just been visiting them, and now it’s time to go. I couldn’t be expected to stay here!” She wept and raged at last, when nobody would agree that it must be a mistake. Pat was shaking when she got back into the car.

  “How did it go?” Bee asked when she arrived home.

  “Terrible,” Pat said. The girls were planting bulbs along the fence and Philip was asleep on a blanket. “It was all fine until she understood she had to stay, and then she was sure it was a mistake. It must be like a nightmare, being that confused.”

  Bee put her arms around her. “Would it be better having her here after all?”

  “No, I think it’s the right thing. But it was so awful.”

  “We’ll all go and see her tomorrow,” Bee said. “We won’t just abandon her there.”

  “No,” Pat agreed.

  “And now I’ll put the kettle on. We thought we’d have a picnic tea. The girls have been working hard getting it ready. Come on, wash your hands, girls, it’s time for tea.”

  The girls raced each other indoors. Close in age, they were often taken for twins. Both of them had Michael’s dark hair but were otherwise very different. Flossie was long legged and stalky. “A rower, like her mother,” Bee said. Jinny was shorter and more solid, with a square face and a turned-up nose like Bee’s. They both chattered in Italian as fluently as English, much more fluently than their mothers. Pat had worried about their starting school, about their different surnames and absent fathers. All the children had Michael written down as their father on their birth certificates, as the alternative was to say the father was unknown, which sounded awful. But although they saw Michael for a weekend every month or so and they knew he was their father, it was far from a usual situation. Pat was afraid the presence of two mothers and the absence of a father would be a social embarrassment to them in school. She needn’t have worried, at least not immediately, as the girls loved school and nobody seemed to have bothered them about their unusual family.

  The girls continued in the village school, and Pat’s mother continued in the home in Trumpington. Pat got into the habit of visiting her mother with the whole family on a Sunday afternoon and taking her mother out to lunch in Cambridge on a Thursday. They had two cars now, the big Hillman and a sporty Mini. Her mother often wept and raged when she left, and often asked to go home. She generally recognized Pat, and sometimes the others. She frequently asked Pat where her father was, and even more frequently asked her who was the father of the children.

  They went to Italy in the summer of 1969, just after the fuss of the European space launch. “We’ll get to the moon yet,” Bee said.

  “To Italy, Mamma!” Flossie corrected her. To the children Bee was Mamma and Pat was Mum.

  “Italy, Italy!” Philip chorused.

  On the ferry, as the children ran up and down chasing seagulls and dodging in and out of the legs of other passengers, Bee took Pat’s hand. “You’re very quiet.”

  “I keep feeling as if I’m abandoning my mother in the home. I tell myself she won’t know the difference, or won’t remember, and I want to go so much, even aside from needing to go to write a new book, but I feel guilty.”

  “She really won’t know. Put her behind you for the summer and enjoy the moment, or you’ll just be wracked with guilt and then you’ll have left her for nothing.”

  The sea-wind ruffled through Pat’s short hair and blew a strand of Bee’s longer hair into her mouth. “You’re right,” she said. “Let’s catch up with the kids before they have to be fished out!”

  Her mother did cast a shadow over that summer. Pat kept seeing old Italian women, with wrinkled faces and black clothes. They were old but vital, alive. She had always been aware of them since her first trip to Italy as protectors against predatory men. Now she wondered how old they were and whether they lived with their families. Surely there must be old demented women in homes in Italy, but she didn’t see them. She found them in paintings—Saint Elizabeth, and anonymous Renaissance Italian women in crowds. She took the girls to the Uffizi this year and began to talk to them about art and the men who had made the art. Jinny loved the colors and the shapes, and Flossie loved the stories.

  Several days were wasted in getting papers allowing her to own the house in Florence she had owned now for more than ten years. “It’s just stupid paperwork, there’s more and more of it,” the official said. “Since you are a European citizen there is no problem, but you need the permit.”

  Michael came to visit at the beginning of August. She went with him up to Como and Lake Garda, taking photographs for the new book. “Don’t you ever get tired of Italy?” he asked.

  “No, I never do. Come to that, I never get tired of Florence.”

  “I was taking photographs for a new guide somebody’s doing of Greece. I thought you should have done it, you’d have done it better.”

  “Greece didn’t have a Renaissance,” Pat said.

  In Florence, when the children were in bed, the three of them discussed whether Pat and Bee wanted more children, and concluded that three was enough. Bee was about to be forty, the age Pat had been when Philip was born, and the oldest age she felt it was safe to have a baby.

  “As long as you don’t feel—” Pat said.

  “I don’t. I don’t at all. I feel that three is enough,” Bee said, firmly. “As for you, it’s time you found a nice wife and got married,” she said to Michael.

  “What would I ever tell her about this?” he asked. “A nice Jewish girl like my parents want me to marry would be shocked. Besides, there’s no hurry, and I’m travelling so much at the moment. I keep getting guidebooks, and Sunday supplement travel work. I’m in demand, but only because I can pack up and go anywhere without warning. A wife wouldn’t like that.”

  Reading the English papers, Pat was surprised to find her old pupil Pamela Corey was becoming famous as part of the Second Impressionist movement.

  On their return to Cambridge she resumed her routine with her mother, who didn’t seem to have missed her or even noticed her absence. “It makes me wonder why I do it,” she said to Bee. “She’s so often hostile and accusing.”

  Bee’s father died suddenly of a heart attack in November. They all went up to Westmorland for the funeral. They discussed it on the drive up, and Bee offered her mother a home with them if she wanted it. She refused, saying she was comfortable where she was, with Bee’s brother Donald and his wife and children close by in the village. Bee’s parents had never really approved of Pat, or of the children.

  “It’s easier, but I always thought I’d end up looking after them,” Bee said, as they drove home past the drystone walls and sheep-dotted fells. “It’s such a difficult thing.”

  “You’ll miss your father,” Pat said.

  “I will. He was so proud of me, Cambridge, and the Fellowship and everything. He had a copy of my book on his bedside table—not that he could have made head or tail of plant viruses, but there it was.”

  “I still miss my father,” Pat said. “I wish I could have known him when I was grown up.”

  “Yes, so do I.” Bee glanced from the road to Pat’s face. “It’s sad you never had that. I had those extra years with my Dad. That’s something to be thankful for.”

  They stopped for the night in Lancaster, staying in the King’s Head, an old coaching house hotel on the edge of the city. Pat told Bee about Stan and Flo and the night she had spent in Barrow-in-Furness. “They are the ones who got me started in birding.”

  “And she was called Flo?”

  “Yes, like hundreds of girls of her generation called after Florence Nightingale, I suppose.”

  “They were so desperate for strong female role models,” Bee said. “Were you thinking of her at all when you named Flossie?”

  “Not really,” Pat confessed. “Neither Nightingale nor Flo in Barrow. Flossie is called after Firenze direct
ly.”

  The next morning they made an early start and drove out of town early, past the new ugly yellow-brick and plate-glass university, and on south towards home.

  18

  Divorce: Tricia 1972

  She didn’t see or hear from Mark for a week. In the end she phoned him at work, which was the suggestion of Barbara from the consciousness raising group. “I’m glad you’ve finally got rid of him, he sounds like a real slimeball, but you have to get the financial details and everything sorted out. He can’t leave you with young children and walk away. Here’s my solicitor’s number. You need a proper lawyer for a divorce.”

  At first Tricia’s heart sank at the thought of divorce. What had it all been for? And Mark was a Catholic, divorce didn’t exist for him. They could get divorced and he’d still regard himself as married to her. But she wouldn’t need to. She could be free of Mark. She called the university and asked the switchboard to put her through to Mark.

  “Mark Anston,” he answered, his voice precise and bored as ever.

  “It’s Tricia. You probably need some things from the house. And we should talk about what we’re going to do.”

  “This is a bad time,” he said. She wondered who was there. Students? Colleagues? Would he have told them?

  “Do you want to come around this evening?” she asked.

  “Not this evening, I have an engagement. Tomorrow evening, about six?”

  “I’ll be here,” she said, although the next day was Tuesday and she had her Morecambe Preservation meeting after school, which would mean hurrying back afterwards, and no time to visit her mother, still in hospital, until later.

  He was late, of course. After thinking about it for most of the previous evening, Tricia had decided not to prepare a meal for him. On Tuesdays after her meeting she usually picked up Chinese take-away for herself and the children, and she did that. They had just finished eating when she heard him let himself in. Helen cleared the boxes and forks off the table without being asked and Tricia went down the stairs to greet him.

  “Where are the children?” Mark asked.

  “Just finishing their dinner, in the kitchen,” Tricia said. Mark walked up the stairs and into the kitchen. Helen looked away from him. George frowned. Only Cathy looked glad to see her father.

  “How are you all?” Mark asked.

  Tricia could hardly believe how artificial he sounded.

  “Fine,” Helen answered for all of them. “Where have you been?”

  Mark flashed a look of irritation at Tricia, as if he expected her to have dealt with this. “Your mother and I are considering a separation,” he said, as if it had been her idea.

  “A divorce,” Tricia said.

  George stood up from the table. “I don’t want to listen to this.”

  “I think it would be best if you all went to your rooms while we talk about it,” Mark said. The two younger ones left.

  “Do you know Gran fell and I had to get her to hospital?” Helen asked as she followed them towards the door.

  “No, I didn’t know. Is she all right?”

  “She is, no thanks to you,” Helen said, stopping and turning in the doorway. “I didn’t know where you were. Where were you?”

  Mark stood open-mouthed.

  “With some floozy, I gather,” Helen went on, stressing the word. “Which is rich, considering what you’ve said to me about my morality. I never went off with anyone and left an old lady alone or somebody else to take care of my responsibilities. That’s what I consider immoral. Just so you know.” She left, closing the door gently behind her.

  Tricia stared after her for a moment before turning to Mark.

  “You’re turning the children against me!” he stormed.

  “I haven’t said anything about you to them other than that you had some work to take care of,” Tricia said. “Mark, I do think we should be able to discuss this like sensible adults.”

  “You’ve never been a sensible adult.”

  Tricia sat down, everything she had planned to say taken away by that. “What, then?” she asked.

  “I need some clothes and some books,” he said. “I’m living in an apartment on campus.”

  “Not with her?”

  “Who?”

  “Oh come on, you already admitted it! Look, I agree that our marriage is over, but there are some things we need to sort out. Support for George and Cathy until they’re eighteen.” Barb had told her she would be entitled to money too, but she thought now she was teaching full time she could live on what she earned.

  “I thought you could sell the house and buy a smaller one, and the difference would support you all. This house has appreciated quite a bit in the last six years.” Mark’s tone was even now.

  “Sell this house!” Tricia was appalled. “I love this house. And we couldn’t have one that was much smaller—we wouldn’t all fit in.”

  Mark walked over to the door and opened it. “I’m going to get my things, and then I’m going back to campus.”

  “You’ll be hearing from my solicitor,” Tricia said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t have a solicitor.”

  “I do now,” Tricia said.

  She called the solicitor the next morning and made an appointment for after work that day. The solicitor’s office was on Castle Hill, and the solicitor herself, L. Montrose, was a woman, well groomed and younger than Tricia. “What are your grounds for a divorce?”

  “He has another woman. And he has left me.”

  “Do you have proof?” Miss Montrose turned a pencil in her fingers. “If he’s an unreasonable person it’s necessary to have proof of adultery. Otherwise you have to wait for two years’ separation, or five if he contests that.”

  “What would be proof?” Tricia asked, thinking of stained sheets.

  “Hotel bills,” the solicitor said, surprising Tricia. “Photographs. Private detectives can get that kind of thing, and it might be worth your while using one.” She gave Tricia a card. “If that doesn’t work then it’s desertion, but that’s slow, especially if he won’t agree. I take it you want money?”

  “I have two children under eighteen—they’re fifteen and thirteen. I want support for them until they’re finished in education. He talked about making me sell the house. I don’t want to. But I don’t know how much the mortgage is.”

  “It’ll be in his name? I can find out. You’ve been married how long?”

  “Since 1949. Twenty-three years.” Almost a quarter century. An immense span of time. “My oldest son is twenty-two.” She would have to tell Doug. Her liberation from Mark had come too late for him. “I just want everything settled.”

  She called the private detective and asked him to follow Mark and send the proof to Miss Montrose. George wanted to know where his father was and why they were separating. Doug, when she told him, wanted to know why she hadn’t divorced his father years ago. Helen too was on her mother’s side. Cathy was the only one who seemed to miss Mark. The house seemed to breathe more easily without him. She visited her mother every day, and Helen often came with her.

  Two weeks later, on a perfect May day when the trees were bursting with new green leaves, she went to see Miss Montrose by appointment.

  “I heard from your detective,” Miss Montrose said, as if it hadn’t been her own idea. She seemed even more sophisticated this time, in a gray suit with lace collar and cuffs. “You may be shocked by these photographs.” She slid them across the desk.

  At first Tricia wasn’t shocked at all. The first was of Mark and a younger man, walking along the sea front in Morecambe. The second was the younger man’s hand on Mark’s arm. The third was of the two of them going into the Metropole hotel. Then there was a bill, for one double room, in Mark’s name.

  “Homosexuality is no longer illegal,” Miss Montrose said crisply, as Tricia shuffled through the photographs again. “And these alone might not have been enough to secure a conviction when it was. They will, however, will ser
ve adequately as proof of adultery for a divorce court, assuming you want to proceed.”

  “Why didn’t he tell me?” Tricia asked. “He never—all those years! I’ve always—and he’s always been so intolerant. Back at Oxford, even.”

  “Sometimes men feel they have to repress their urges,” Miss Montrose said. “I’m very sympathetic, of course, but moving on, I shall send him a letter asking for a financial declaration preparatory to divorce.”

  She didn’t sound the slightest bit sympathetic. Tricia agreed to the financial declaration and signed what Miss Montrose wanted her to sign.

  She walked home through Blade Street and along the canal, pondering the enigma of Mark. He must have known. Why had he married her? Of course, because he wanted children. And because he must have thought, perhaps he still believed, that his natural impulses were evil and wrong. She thought of all those horrible nights with a glass of wine, all that thrusting that seemed so difficult for both of them. Would he apologize to his male friend, afterwards? She felt sorry for him. She hadn’t imagined that she could feel that, but she did. She was shocked—not shocked that he had a male partner; she had friends here and in Woking who were homosexual. She was shocked that he had pretended for so long and that she hadn’t guessed, and that he hadn’t told her even when she confronted him and accused him of having another woman. It was his lack of trust that hurt her the most. The whole thing had been a lie and a sham, even his letters. Twenty-three years of her life gone to a pretense of a marriage.

  She stopped by the canal bridge and looked down at the mallards. Most of the ducks were followed by rows of brown-fluffed ducklings. There were the children, of course. She couldn’t imagine a world without them. The children were real, were the justification of what she and Mark had done together. But she still felt outrage pushing against her chest. She leaned on the railings and snarled down at the innocent ducklings, bobbing for weed in the water. It was the Pathetic fallacy, of course. How could there be sunshine and ducklings when her whole marriage had been a lie? There should have been torrents of rain, with which Lancaster could generally oblige in any month. She laughed at herself and started to walk again.