Mothers and Daughters

by Fleming, Leah

  8

  Connie

  There was nothing for it but to head upstairs to the staff-room door to break the news to Miss Kent. Connie spun a sad tale about her mother being ill and off work that was partly true, because she had been having a lot of doctor’s appointments lately about her bad back. ‘We can’t make the final payments and I must stay close to home,’ she lied, holding her breath.

  ‘I’m sure we could raise some special funding to tip the balance,’ answered Miss Kent. ‘It’s a pity for you to lose your place, Constance. We know how keen you are.’

  For one second she was tempted to defy everyone but then she remembered the family secret. ‘Thank you, but no. Mama is very independent. I wouldn’t shame her by taking charity.’ She almost convinced herself with all these fibs. ‘It’s just not meant to be this time.’

  ‘Well, I am so sorry and I hope your mother gets well soon. We will refund what we can, of course. There is a waiting list.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Kent,’ Connie bowed her head, shamed. How easy it was to deceive when you were trusted. Now she’d have to make do with reviving the Silkies over the summer hols. They might make some dosh if they learned a few more numbers from the hit parade, or she put some of her own songs to music. Maybe they could get a record made … Girl groups were still popular: the Beverley Sisters, the Kayes and the Vernons Girls …

  The startling revelations about her parentage buzzed round in her head like a demented bee. She and Joy had lived like sisters all their lives, sharing a house, trying to smooth over the rows between their mothers. Now she knew why there was always tension in the air over silly things, like which girl was doing better at school.

  What a to-do there must have been the day they first turned up.

  Now she must keep all this from Joy until Su decided to come clean. Did Rosa know? Had the whole street put two and two together?

  Joy had once told her there was a photo of Uncle Cedric in Su’s dressing-table drawer that puzzled her, for when she pulled it from the frame to see if there was writing on the back, the picture was cut out from a magazine. It had puzzled them both at the time. But now she knew they were half-sisters, and that there was no real Cedric.

  Suddenly Connie felt ashamed to have called Mama such awful names when she’d done her best, as a refugee, to bring them to safety, finding them a safe home and making a new life in a foreign country after such a sad time. Now she’d used her in a big lie to her teacher. She’d let everyone down.

  She couldn’t wait for school to end to rush home and apologise, to make things right between them, but she had lacrosse team practice first.

  It was like the first day of her new life as Konstandina Eleni Papadaki. She rolled the names over her tongue. Yesterday she was plain Connie. Today she was someone quite different. Somewhere in the back of her memory she recalled Mama calling her Dina. Then one day when she went to school she’d become Connie.

  As she stared out of the bus window, she marvelled that nothing outside had changed though she felt so different: grey skies, smoking chimneys, silent mills with broken windows. King Cotton had crashed in the town making many out of work.

  The Winstanleys were the fortunate ones in their tall red brick house standing proud at the top of Division Street on three floors, comfortably off by the standards of most of her school pals. They had a family to protect them and what Mama, Su and Granny had done, she could now see, was done out of love and concern, not spite. How stupid she’d been to be so cruel.

  She leaped off the bus and sped home but there was no one around. Then she saw Auntie Su, standing in the kitchen, ringing her hands.

  ‘Connie, you’re so late!’

  ‘Where’s Mama?’

  ‘She’s had to go into hospital … for some tests. She had another of her bleeds this lunchtime after her shift so they took her straight onto a ward.’

  ‘A bleed? Did she fall?’ asked Connie but Su was shaking her head.

  ‘Not that sort of bleed … a monthly bleed … too many bleeds. You’ve seen how pale and tired she gets.’

  Connie had been so wrapped up in this holiday business, living in her own world, she hardly noticed anyone else, especially her own mother. ‘When can I go and see her?’

  ‘Not tonight, she may go into theatre. Dr Friedmann will bring us news.’

  ‘But I have to see her now … I said some awful things last night …’ Connie broke down and suddenly Joy was with her.

  ‘Uncle Levi will take you in as soon as he can. It’s just an investigation, isn’t it, Mummy?’

  Connie didn’t like the sound of that word. Investigation meant prodding and prying into organs, X-rays, blood samples. Mama was a nurse; she would make a rotten patient. She knew too much. ‘She will be all right, won’t she?’ Her eyes pleaded to Su for some crumbs of comfort. She felt like a three-year-old lost in the street, unsafe, frightened, searching for Mama in the crowd.

  ‘She’s in the best place. I’ve made you some tea … sit down. It’s been a shock, I know.’ Auntie Su fussed but her dark eyes looked worried.

  Connie sat limp, feeling sick, thinking of the lies she’d made up only that morning, never suspecting for a moment that there might be truth waiting to explode over her head. Had her lie caused this funny bleeding? Had she betrayed her mama for the sake of a two-week coach trip to the Continent?

  Oh, please, God, I hope not, she prayed, crossing herself many times. She must buy a candle to light, pray for a quick recovery. Only then would she be forgiven, only then would she feel safe. There was only one thing she wanted to do and that was to sit by Mama’s bedside and tell her what a silly, selfish, stupid daughter she’d been, and how she loved her with all her heart.

  In the nightmare weeks that followed, Connie got to know the inside of Ward 9, gynaecological ward, as if it were her own home. Mama had an emergency hysterectomy and lay prostrate, white-faced, trying to smile at Connie.

  ‘She’s had it all taken away,’ whispered Granny trying to explain the operation, not looking at her while she spoke. ‘There were growths in it … she’ll be better now.’

  Connie wasn’t fooled for a minute. There was more to this than just the operation. She could sense the way the nurses fussed and smiled and fobbed off her own questions. The next day she searched out the medical section of the civic reference library, reading every textbook she could find on the reasons for such an operation. There were the usual words like ‘ovaries’ and ‘fibroids’; biology lessons came in handy but one word kept coming up, over and over again: carcinoma. Any Greek scholar could tell the root of that: Kackinōma … the word no one ever mentioned when a neighbour fell sick, got thin and died.

  The same evening Connie cornered Dr Friedmann in his study. ‘What’s really wrong with Mama?’ she demanded.

  ‘She had a growth and it’s been removed.’

  ‘Was it benign?’ she said, using the only word she dared speak.

  He hesitated but she stared him out. ‘I have to know the truth. Will she get better?’

  ‘Sit down, child,’ motioning her to the little armchair squeezed into the corner. ‘We hope so. There are special treatments in Manchester.’

  ‘Radium treatments, you mean? I know about Marie Curie. How long will it take?’ So it was cancer, but still she daren’t speak the word.

  ‘There’ll be a course of treatment at the Christie. It’s the best in the North of England,’ he replied, taking her hand. But she pulled it away.

  ‘Has the disease spread?’ She’d read up enough to know about metastasis, but she wasn’t sure how to pronounce it.

  ‘A little … but it’s not too late to give her treatments.’

  ‘It’s all my fault,’ Connie cried. ‘I pretended she was ill so I wouldn’t get into trouble at school. I told lies and I brought this on her … ‘Her body was racked with sobs.

  ‘No, you didn’t.’ He shoved a handkerchief in her hand. ‘Your mama has been unwell for some time but kept it t
o herself. Now we have a chance to fight it. Ana must have hope and see smiling faces. She is a tough lady, strong in mind, but her body suffered in the war. It will be a battle but the Olive Oils will battle with her and you will give her strength too. You are her bright star, her golden girl. It is enough that she has you in her life to live for, so no dark thoughts now. Dry your eyes. We must all be strong together.’ There was something in those sad grey eyes that worried her. He was breaking bad news gently. He was doing the best he could, but underneath she sensed his own fears.

  The autumn term began, the holiday girls rolled back from their trip, but Connie had no ears to listen to their tales: who had palled up with who, who had stayed out all night with some American soldiers … What did she care when her whole week was focused on those trips to the hospital to be with Mama?

  There was always a lift: Diana came up from London, Queenie Quigley and Maria brought their van, Levi and Neville chauffered Gran. Nev had passed his driving test and Auntie Su had bought a little Morris Minor that she shared with Dr Friedmann.

  Connie watched all Mama’s beautiful red hair fall out, just a few fuzzy tufts left, her skin tissuey and yellowy silver. She grew thin but everyone tried to keep cheerful and strong.

  Only Dr Friedmann would tell her the truth. ‘It’s not going to be as easy as we’d hoped but no one will give up, Connie.’

  How could she study Ancient Greek and history with this burden on her back, however understanding the teachers were? None of it mattered. All she wanted to do was be with Mama and make her better, clinging on to any sign of hope. Sometimes when she went, Mama was sitting in the chair by the bed but the beautiful silk dressing gown that Su had given her with peacock feathers printed on it, hung off her bony frame. They talked in Greek to be private from the other patients, wrapping the curtains round the bed. Then Mama was tired and needed to rest, and it took many attempts to get her back into bed. Connie cried all the way down the corridor. Why? Why her mama? Why now?

  Rosa and Joy dropped their own plans to include her. They took her dancing, practised their singing routines, but her mind was in only one place: beside Mama’s bed.

  She took herself back to the Greek church to ask Father Nikos to visit, but he was already a regular at Mama’s side. She bought a silver tama with a whole body on it to pin to the icon and pray to the saints for her recovery.

  ‘Find me music, Dina,’ Mama whispered one day. ‘Cretan music.’

  Father Nikos found an old wind-up record player and a scratchy 78 of ancient mantinades. Ana’s face changed when she heard the music and her eyes looked far away.

  ‘You must go back for me, see the island for yourself, say a prayer by my mother’s grave … for my sister, Eleni, light a candle for me … find my cousins near Canea. There will be Papadakis who will remember me. Make it your own. Promise me …’

  ‘We will go together, Mama,’ Connie whispered back. ‘When you are better. Auntie Lee will fix it for us … by train to Italy, by boat. I will take you there.’ There was a faint smile on Mama’s lips.

  ‘You will go … I will be already there … Promise.’

  ‘No, Mama, mazi … together, you and me. My Greek is almost forgotten.’

  ‘You learned it at my breast. It is still there in your heart but you will go one day. It is waiting for you.’ It took all her strength to utter that command.

  Connie couldn’t bear such words and ran out of the cubicle. Auntie Su caught her.

  ‘Don’t worry, she has little pain now. She is going to sleep and not wake up.’

  ‘But I don’t want her to sleep. She is my mama … who will look after me now? How will I live without her?’ Connie sobbed. ‘And I know about you and my dad.’

  ‘Shush! Now is not the time for all that,’ whispered Susan. ‘None of that matters now. You are a Winstanley; we are all family. We look after our own. It is your mama’s wish. Don’t let her see you upset. Go back and say goodbye. It is time for her to rest.’

  But when they tiptoed back through the curtain to say good night, Ana Papadaki was no longer there. She’d slipped away quietly. In her place was a cooling shell, a stranger with vacant eyes staring out towards the window.

  They sat each holding a hand, silent, lost in their own thoughts and memories. Connie couldn’t breathe for panic. She’s gone to Crete and left me behind.

  ‘She was a very good woman,’ Su said, picking some of the bedside flowers and arranging them round her head. ‘Rest in peace, my sister.’

  Connie blinks back the tears, blinks herself back to the blue bench in Chania airport. When will that plane ever land?

  Mothers always get the blame, she sighs. When you lose your mother young, it changes everything. Fifteen was no age to be orphaned, everything taken for granted is suddenly not there. There was so much she didn’t know then about her mama’s early life, her life with Freddie, short though it was. So many unanswered questions that only a mother could give. Life could never be the same and she was different from Joy and Rosa, kind though they all were to her then.

  No prayers, lavish wreaths and anthems at the funeral could make up for that huge loss. It had been like some never-ending dream she sleepwalked through.

  I have felt the loss of you all my life. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye and when I was, you’d gone and I was bereft.

  She thinks about the string shopping bag with leather handles that they took to the market each week to buy vegetables, carrying it between them when it was heavy.

  She lost herself in her studies as Mama would’ve wished, not wanting to finish school to come home to the empty chair. Doing prep in the reference library delayed the moment when she must return to face the hubbub in the Waverley.

  I was told to be brave and cope, and I did, she thinks. There was no grief counselling in those days. You just got on with loss like they did in the war, buried it deep, as if Mama had gone on some long journey and would send a postcard telling of her return.

  The Olive Oils still met for their suppers. Perhaps they drew comfort from each other but she found she resented their gatherings. Neville encouraged her into singing again. Miss Kent pushed her hard to take GCEs and go into the sixth form early. Happy to oblige, it was easier to be lost in a book than face Mama’s absence. Dr Friedmann’s door was always open but she shrank from any intimate discussion. This grief was not for sharing.

  No point in going back to church either. It had let her down big time.

  Music was the solace – any music, the louder the better. Pop, jazz, they drowned out all worries with their raucous beat. It was an escape. It was then she wrote the first draft of Colours of My Love and shoved it in a drawer. There was no music in her head to put the words to back then.

  If she had lived would things have been any different, I wonder?

  Of course they would. I would not be sitting in this airport waiting for someone who may never come.

  9

  Rosa

  Rosa knew the part was hers, the minute that Grimbleton Little Theatre announced in the Mercury that they were doing an updated open-air Romeo and Juliet in the Town Hall Square. West Side Story was all the rage and she’d seen a touring company perform it in Manchester. This one was going to be Teddy Boys versus Rockers.

  ‘I have to be Juliet, Connie.’ Who else but a fresh-faced Italian could carry the passion of the role? Besides, she needed the experience, the exposure and the chance to take a leading role. No one was going to get in her way. She’d been too busy at the dancing school to join the Youth Theatre, but the Mercury had stated it was an open audition.

  Connie nodded half-heartedly, tagging along with her, knowing she herself would be lucky to get in the chorus. Since her mother’s death she’d grown a shell round herself. It was hard to interest her in anything but Rosa thought that being in this production might help.

  Their acting experience was limited to school plays, but Mamma and Rosa both adored Shakespeare and Rosa was word-perfect since it was o
ne of the set texts for GCE English Literature she’d actually managed to swot.

  It was important to look the part for the audition, so that meant catching her long hair up in an Alice band to make her seem young and innocent. She wore her Sunday church summer dress, which was a princess line and not too short. It showed off her lithe little figure.

  Connie and Joy had spent hours getting her ‘in role’ for the big day. When her name was called she sprang onto the stage, forgot her nerves and danced through the lines as if she already was in the ballroom scene.

  ‘I am Rosa Santini,’ she announced into the darkness, and lived out the script, scarcely glancing at the text. Besides, she was madly in love, smitten with lust, and that only added to the intensity of her performance.

  Paul Jerviss had just left the Boys’ Grammar School to go to medical school. They met at one of the end-of-term all-night parties held while someone’s parents were on holiday, parties to which Connie and Joy were invited but never wanted to go. Now he was waiting on tables at Uncle Angelo’s diner bar, while she was washing up.

  He was everything a Paul Newman hero should be: tall, fair with sultry eyes and a slight sneer on his lips; he’d been Head of School and cricket and rugby; his blue denim jeans fitted snugly on his bum like James Dean’s. He smouldered in the direction of any decent-looking girl. Geraldine Keane said he left a tramline of lovebites from the tip to the toe of her torso and in between. But for some reason he was playing hard to get, which infuriated Rosa. Perhaps he didn’t want to tangle with his boss’s niece in case there was some Mafia revenge.

  He’d have been the perfect candidate to practise on to get that knowing passion that came to Juliet once she and Romeo were lovers. If she had to pretend to smoulder with lust then it was time to find out what it was all about. His friend Miles Black was giving her the glad eye, though … Any port in a storm, strictly for the sake of her art.