by David Thorne
‘He’s out of danger, yes,’ I say. ‘I thought she had left me. Voluntarily. I never knew that it was not her choice.’
‘And so here you are ready to make everything all right.’ Penny speaks with the lurching imprecision of somebody who is not used to drinking. She sits back in her chair and shakes her head in frustration. She is in her late-fifties with the immaculate, starched blonde nest of hair I associate with country-living, Range Rovers, children at good schools and church on a Sunday morning. Her fingernails are immaculate; I notice them as she sits forward again and reaches for the wine bottle. She could be a politician’s wife, about to disgrace him.
‘I am here to find her,’ I say. ‘That’s all. It’s thirty-seven years too late to make everything all right.’
Mr Latimer apparently likes this answer; he nods his head at his plate as he chews his steak. I am surprised by how spry and alert he is, despite his age. He must be in his eighties, his wife too.
‘You understand,’ he says, ‘that Marcela became very dear to us. Very dear indeed.’
‘I understand,’ I say. ‘But I cannot help that she is my mother.’
Penny blows out her cheeks petulantly as if she is a child who has been told she can’t go to a party. But Mr Latimer points a knife at her with a liver-spotted hand, waves it admonishingly. ‘Penelope. Mr Connell has a right, whatever you may think. He has come this far. We owe it to him to hear him out.’
I’d left Nurse Abbotts savouring the remains of her coffee, sighing happily to herself, lost contentedly in a past that was, apart from perhaps an over-dependence on caffeine, entirely blameless. I headed back for the hotel under a persistent drizzle; I did not have a coat or umbrella and by the time I had found a taxi I was soaked. It was early afternoon but already cars had headlights on, beams reflecting off slick black roads in the grey light as if autumn was giving us a sneak preview of the misery to come, dousing our summery optimism in its pearly gloom. For the second time I looked through Manchester’s phone book, but this time my task was more difficult; while there had been only four Conneelys there were over forty Latimers, and none of them had the initial P. I had asked for the hotel’s directory and I smiled at the girl at reception as I tore the page out; she raised an eyebrow but did not say anything. I took it upstairs to my hotel room, stretched out on the bed and called the first number. A man answered.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello, I’m trying to get in touch with a Penelope Latimer.’
‘Don’t know anyone called Penelope, pal. Who are you?’
‘A friend.’
‘Yeah? Good luck.’ He hung up and I reflected on the suspicion I had heard in his voice. The malicious, sinister caller infiltrating our homes and insinuating himself into our lives is a media bogeyman feared by all; I was going to need to use some finesse. But fear is a useful emotion to exploit, and I am better used than many to intimidation.
‘Hello?’
‘Good evening. My name is DCI Travis, and I’m trying to contact a Penelope Latimer as a matter of some urgency. We believe her identity is being used as part of a money-laundering operation.’
I reached thirty-one of the forty numbers, and drew a blank with each; people were concerned that their identities and bank accounts were at risk, but none admitted to being related to a Penelope Latimer and I believed them. Why would they have any reason to lie? I lay back on my hotel bed and looked at the ceiling, projecting the story Nurse Abbotts had told me on to its blank whiteness. She had described the young woman who lost her baby all those years ago as a ‘girl’, unmarried; a wealthy girl gone off the rails? Anything could have happened since, she might have married and changed her family name, might have married, divorced, remarried, widowed. Which left me with nothing but a first name, Penelope; not the most common first name, but not nearly enough to track her down. I felt as if I had arrived at a train platform only to see my train pulling away without me; no matter how far I travelled, the spectre of my mother remained out of reach.
I called Gabe to tell him what I had found, reassure him that I was alive and that I had not caused anybody any significant harm. But his phone rang and rang and even my closest friend felt impossibly distant; I was in Manchester and I was making a fool of myself. I wondered where he was, how he was doing, if he needed somebody to speak to. But Gabe was Gabe and he would be all right, or not, on his own terms. There was nothing I could do. Next I called the hospital where my father was; he was comfortable, the nurse told me, though I have never known my father to be comfortable in his whole life. I hung up, looked at the phone in my hand; I realised that there was not a single other person in the world I could call at this time, who I could ask for reassurance, who I could share my doubts with. I lay back and tried to sleep and pulled a pillow tight, hoping it would offer some solace against the mocking darkness.
The next day, I went back to the hospital’s reception, the red-brick building crouched underneath a bleak grey sky that seemed lower than it should be, making me keep my head down, my shoulders hunched. Maggie was sitting behind the desk reading a garish magazine printed on cheap, thin paper, a headline proclaiming that ‘I Married My Own Brother’, her hair pinned up and little curls escaping past her ears giving her the innocent air of a benevolent pixie. The reception area was empty, last night’s victims of drunken misdemeanours bandaged up and sent home, all evidence washed away by the hospital’s imported workforce, blood, vomit, imperceptible tears. Maggie looked up at me and beamed, put her magazine away.
‘I was just thinking about you. You find her?’
‘Not exactly. Maybe.’
‘She remembered your mum? Nurse Abbotts?’
‘Yeah. She remembered her.’
Maggie leaned forward, blue eyes wide. ‘Told you. So go on. What happened?’
‘She was a cleaner here, Nurse Abbotts recognised her from the photo. Said she was a good person.’
‘Don’t tell me she’s dead.’ Maggie put a hand to her mouth and looked at me with guileless horror. ‘Don’t say she’s dead.’
‘I don’t know. Nurse Abbotts couldn’t say. She told me, she said my mother helped look after a young girl who lost her baby, here in the hospital, and the girl’s family took her in.’
‘Oh my God,’ said Maggie. ‘So amazing.’
‘Yeah. Only I need to find that young girl, and I’ve only got her name from back then.’
‘You Google her?’
‘Yeah. Unless she’s a sixteen-year-old gymnast from Jericho, Texas, I can’t find her. But you could.’
*
It took Maggie thirty seconds to call up the medical records of Penelope Frazier, née Latimer. She wasted even less time worrying about the morality of what she was doing, or wondering whether I was perhaps a predatory sadist with a sinister agenda, rather than a lost child. She wrote Penelope Frazier’s most recent telephone number on a piece of paper, scribbled ‘Good luck!’ underneath, the dot of the exclamation mark a small circle with a smiley face inside.
Back at my hotel I picked up the telephone as if it was a crab which could pinch. I dialled the number, hesitating at the final digit, knowing that this was as close as I would ever get to finding my mother. I heard a ringing tone, broken by a brisk, strident woman’s voice. I imagined her standing in a large tiled hall, fresh from delivering orders to a coterie of servants.
‘Penelope Frazier.’
‘Mrs Frazier? My name is Daniel Connell.’
‘No, I’m sorry but I don’t have the time…’
‘Please, I’m not selling anything.’
‘But of course you are. And I am extremely busy…’
‘I am trying to trace my mother. Marcela Cosma.’
This silenced Penelope Frazier, a feat which I suspected was not straightforward. I heard nothing and I wondered whether she had hung up, feared that she was no longer there.
‘Mrs Frazier?’
‘Marcela?’
‘Yes. I believe that she is my mother.’
Another silence, this time longer, but I could hear Penelope breathing. I pictured her holding the receiver tightly, trying to process the information delivered by this disembodied voice.
‘She doesn’t have a child.’
‘I’m sure she must have told you about me.’
‘She told me her child was dead.’
‘I’m not.’
‘This is… You cannot just call me up. Out of the blue, this is not the way to do things.’
‘How would you prefer I do things?’ I asked, a hint of impatience. I wondered whether I had disturbed her from a game of bridge and could feel the tidal wash of resentment flow through me.
‘Why are you calling me?’
‘I traced my mother through the hospital. A Nurse Abbotts, she remembered you.’
‘My God.’ She said this petulantly, as if I had told her that not only did she need to change her worn tyres, but that her exhaust needed replacing too and that it wasn’t going to be cheap. ‘How dare you dig around in my past, Mr…?’
‘Connell. It’s my past too.’
‘So you say,’ Mrs Frazier replied snappily; already she was rallying, marshalling her thoughts after my surprise attack. ‘If you are indeed who you say you are.’
‘Why would I lie?’
Penelope didn’t say anything, just emitted a sarcastic snort as if the answer to that question was beneath her answering. I liked her less and less.
‘Tell me, Mrs Frazier. Is Marcela Cosma rich?’
‘No.’
‘Is she famous? Influential?’
‘No.’ Again the petulance.
‘So then why, if you’ll excuse me, the fuck else would I be calling you, if I wasn’t her son?’ But I did not reach the end of the sentence before I heard the dialling tone in my ear and I worried that, once again, the legacy of my father’s temper had closed one more door on me.
‘My father was connected with the local underworld,’ I say. Mr Latimer raises his eyebrows in polite interest. Mrs Latimer is busy skewering a skittish new potato, and Penny is exhaling loudly and looking at the ceiling. ‘He would do odd jobs for criminals, hang around their circle. He wasn’t very successful, but it’s what he wanted to be.’
‘In Essex,’ says Mr Latimer.
‘In Essex,’ I say. ‘One man, Vincent Halliday, used to run girls. A pimp, I suppose he was, though that was only one of his sidelines. Anyway, he was put away for twelve months for attacking another man. While he was inside, my father started a relationship with my mother. With Marcela.’
‘Who was one of his girls,’ says Mrs Latimer, the statement sounding odd coming from the mouth of an elderly matriarch with cut-glass consonants.
‘Yes. And by the time he got out, it was too late. My mother was nearly ready to give birth. Halliday had no choice but to wait until I was born.’
‘This is… horrible,’ says Penny. ‘I won’t listen.’
To his credit, Mr Latimer ignores Penny. ‘I suppose the question is, why should we believe your story?’ he says. He looks apologetic. ‘One can’t take chances.’
‘He has her eyes,’ says Mrs Latimer, again surprising me. ‘Oh, he’s her son.’ A quick look across at Penny. ‘I’m sorry, dear, but he is.’
‘You know how much pain you’ve caused her?’ Penny asks.
‘Penny,’ says Mr Latimer. ‘Mr Connell can hardly be blamed for that.’
‘And now here he is, and what? Dad? It’s not that bloody simple.’
Mr Latimer nods, acknowledging Penny. He holds up a palm to her and his attention mollifies her for the moment. He looks back to me.
‘Mr Connell, this issue… It is not quite as clear-cut as it seems. Not from your perspective, I grant you. If you are Marcela’s son, then of course you naturally wish to see her. The question is not, will she want to see you? The question, I suppose, is more, ought she to?’
After Penelope had hung up on me I had tried to call her back immediately, and had listened to the ringing tone ten, twelve, twenty times. I had tried again, and again, taken a shower, tried again. I was angry with myself for losing my temper, for letting her prim outrage get under my skin. I left my hotel room and sat at the bar, asked the boy behind it for a vodka and tonic. He had acne and when he reached up to the optic his hand was shaking and I didn’t know whether it was because it was his first day or if it was the expression on my face, the way I had ordered my drink. I tried smiling at him when he put my drink down on the bar but he did not want to meet my eyes. I drank and wondered what my next move should be.
I could track Penelope down without a problem, make her tell me where my mother was or, if she was dead, at least where she was buried. But I had had a vision of a gentle, poignant reunion; I wanted to leave the nasty baggage of my violent past behind me, not taint my mother, or her memory, with what I had become in her absence. I wanted to do it right.
I finished my drink, headed back to my room, decided to give Penelope one last try. The phone was picked up on its second ring by a well-spoken man with a suspicious tone.
‘The Frazier residence.’
‘Hello. My name is Daniel Connell.’
‘Ah yes. Mr Connell. I am Penelope’s father.’
I could imagine the drama; Penelope demanding her father come over to deal with all these beastly phone calls, right now. I needed to tread gently.
‘I’m looking for my mother.’
‘Penelope told me. Marcela.’
‘Yes.’
The man did not say anything for some moments, as if he was thinking. ‘Mr Connell, may I ask you a question?’
‘’Course.’
‘Are you sure you wish to find Marcela?’
It seemed an odd question but it was asked without malice; if anything there was something tender, solicitous in his tone to which I could not take offence.
‘I’m sure. I need to know. What happened to her. About her life.’
The man sighed, paused again, two, three, five seconds. ‘You have given this a lot of thought.’ A statement, not a question.
‘A lot.’
‘Very well. Do you have a pen?’
I picked up a pencil from the desk in my room. ‘Yes.’ He gave me details of a restaurant, told me that he would be happy to meet me there the following evening, seven o’clock. He wished me a good day and put the phone down and I sat there looking at the address and tried to tell myself that I was, without a doubt, doing the right thing.
‘For a mother to lose her child is a terrible tragedy,’ Mr Latimer says. He has stopped eating, laid his knife and fork together on his plate. ‘For a mother to lose her child, only to find him again, could be an even greater one.’
‘Really?’ I ask. ‘I think you’ll need to explain that statement.’
Mr Latimer takes his napkin from his lap and folds it carefully, keeping me waiting. I imagine giving him a quick slap on the top of his head, wonder whether that might hurry things along. But when he looks at me I can see nothing but compassion in his eyes; perhaps I am being uncharitable, judging him too harshly.
‘Mr Connell, please, we only want what is best. And of course we have no right to stop you from seeing Marcela. We would not dream of it.’
Penny lets out a snort and for the first time Mr Latimer loses his composure; he rounds on her, holds up a finger.
‘Penelope, for pity’s sake, stop acting like a bloody prima donna’, he says. ‘Mr Connell hasn’t come all this way to listen to you sulk.’ Penny’s mouth stays open, but she does not reply. Clearly even in his eighties Mr Latimer wears the trousers.
‘Excuse my daughter,’ Mr Latimer says. ‘I hope you can understand that in many ways Marcela has been like a second mother to her. She has lived with us for twenty years. Oh.’ He puts his fingers to his eyes, rubs them, pauses for a long while before he trusts himself to speak again. ‘Goodness, this is difficult, is it not?’
There is something about his unconcealed distress, his lack of affectation, which in
stinctively makes me revise my opinion of him; more, makes me sure that he has not just mine but everybody’s best interests at heart. Mrs Latimer leans over to rub him gently on the back. Penny looks shamefaced.
‘I just—’ begins Mr Latimer, but I cut him off.
‘Mr Latimer,’ I say as gently as I can. ‘I am no gold digger. I’m not looking for a hand out. All I want is to know, to have some idea…’ To my horror I can feel tears coming to my eyes; I am not Mr Latimer and I cannot let them be witnessed in public. I stop, collect myself. ‘I do not wish to cause my mother any pain. However you would like to manage this situation, I will willingly go along with it.’
Mr Latimer nods, but now it is Mrs Latimer’s turn. She places her napkin on the table. ‘Mr Connell, Marcela has always believed that she lost an angel. It is quite apparent to me that you have not led the easiest of lives… I wonder…’ She is struggling to find the words, a way to sweeten the medicine, but presses ahead regardless. ‘Will, can, your turning up like this, out of the blue, bring her happiness?’ She pauses. ‘Peace?’
‘I’m not dead,’ I say. ‘I have a house, a business, friends. My life is not an irredeemable failure.’ I smile at her – reassuringly I hope. ‘That’s got to be better than nothing. Right?’
To her credit, Mrs Latimer smiles back, bows her head. Mr Latimer sits up, places the fingers of both his hands flat on the edge of the white tablecloth.
‘Well, it’s decided then,’ he says. ‘Thank goodness for that.’
28
THE LATIMERS HAVE built a fully equipped medical suite in a first-floor room at the back of their house, a large brick-and-timber building constructed in the thirties with leaded windows and two chimneys emerging from a charmingly shingled roof. The house is set back from a quiet road behind tall evergreens, exactly as I imagined, and as I stepped out of the car on to the gravel I could almost smell, underneath the freshly mown grass and jasmine that grew over the porch, the peace and complacency of the place; it was as unfamiliar to me as a foreign country.
