A Stranger in the Family

by Robert Barnard

  ‘You seem to have made yourself a very nice job and a lovely family.’

  ‘The job is menial – painting and decorating, specialising in Old Leeds. Scrape off the Artex, paste up the classical shades. As to family, that falls mainly on Pat. I had to marry a strong-minded woman, otherwise I’d have been nothing.’

  ‘I don’t believe that.’

  Micky pushed his plate away, the hamburger three-quarters uneaten. Kit put his knife and fork over the remains of his salad. He could never bear not-quite-ripe continental tomatoes. He sat for some time in thought. Micky left him to his meditations, then finally said: ‘Is there anything else you want to know, Kit?’

  ‘I don’t think so … But it’s really the overall picture I can’t get clear in my head. Was I abducted, and then after a time nobody much cared? Things went on here more or less as before, so maybe my name hardly ever came up.’

  ‘No,’ protested Micky. ‘It wasn’t like that at all. Mum cared enormously. I’m sure you’ve sensed that. Dad certainly less so, but he had a job, and getting ahead, to take his mind off the abduction. What you’re forgetting is, the rest of us were children. The family couldn’t revolve around the one of us that wasn’t there. What would Maria and me have thought if no one asked us what we’d been doing at school that day, or what we wanted to do over the weekend? Dan was too young for that, of course, but he had even more needs than the rest of us.’

  ‘Things had to go on as usual, you mean?’

  ‘Course they did. That’s why it seems like we forgot you, though I’m quite sure we didn’t. And for the older generation you were remembered the whole time – always in their thoughts, as they say on funeral wreaths.’

  ‘In Mother’s thoughts maybe,’ said Kit. ‘You’ve admitted the same couldn’t be said for Dad. I think he was quite happy to forget me.’

  ‘Well, not that exactly, but … yes … he didn’t feel it like Mum did, that I would admit …’ He shifted uneasily in his chair. ‘There’s something I haven’t told you.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘This friend who Dad met by chance in town, when we were on our way to the league game … What he actually said was: “I phoned you last week in Glasgow.” I didn’t know where Glasgow was, or probably how to spell it, but I swear that’s what he said.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Used-Car Salesman

  That evening Kit went round to his mother’s house in Seldon Road. Isla cooked a three course meal – pasta, veal and sauté potatoes and deliciously fattening dessert. The meal landed bang between the Italian and the English, and was not unlike meals his adoptive mother, who worshipped Italy, had cooked during his adolescence. He had been uneasy when he arrived at the house because he was conscious of eyes watching him from neighbouring windows. The meal made him feel more at home. Isla ate early, so as to have the meal done and washed up. Afterwards they sat and watched Jubilee Terrace on the television. The landlord of the Duke of York’s was heading for a disastrous love affair, and Dawn Kerridge was dabbling in sex-for-money.

  ‘I’m not sure I should have let you watch that,’ said Isla, only half joking.

  ‘If I can’t watch Jubilee Terrace, what is there left I can watch?’ asked Kit, laughing. ‘You forget I’m years out of short trousers. I’m twenty-two.’

  Isla sighed.

  ‘How I wish I could have seen you in short trousers, on your first day at school.’

  ‘I don’t remember much about my first day, except that I liked school very much. I remember better a day three weeks later, when they put me up into a higher class because they said I was so bright. I created blue murder.’

  ‘Why? It sounds like a compliment.’

  ‘It was. But I liked Miss Ockham who was form mistress of first year, and I didn’t like Mrs Sullivan who was mistress of second year. And I’d just begun to make friends, and I had to begin the whole process of acclimatisation all over again.’

  ‘You’ve had to do an awful lot of that in your short life,’ said Isla, her feelings easily touched. Kit looked at her with pity in his gaze, but also with the idea of putting her right.

  ‘You sound as if you want to apologise. You don’t have to. In fact you can’t apologise – not for something you had no control over. And I’m not sure that what I did with the Philipsons was that – acclimatisation, I mean. Genevieve was a “second mummy”, so I called her that naturally. I can’t really remember but I imagine that you and all the others here just became less and less vivid in my mind until you were gone from it completely. I should be the one who does the apologising, barring the fact that I was only three at the time.’

  Isla sighed and wiped her eyes.

  ‘Did you like school later on as well?’

  ‘I loved it. And I did well. I expect if I hadn’t done well I wouldn’t have loved it. I’m like that.’

  Isla thought.

  ‘Do you know, you’re the only one of my children who did well at school? Maria was competent, just about in the top half, but she never enjoyed learning, or took much away from the lessons. I think she was just waiting to start life proper. And I suppose you could say the same for Micky, and poor Dan.’

  ‘Why “poor Dan”? He gives the impression of being very much in control.’ Kit described this as an impression because he didn’t think it was anything more substantial.

  ‘But I wouldn’t call football “life proper”, would you?’ said Isla. ‘And Micky tells me Dan’s not good enough ever to do really well.’

  ‘He’s still a teenager. He’ll grow up some time. He’ll have to. And perhaps that will be better than earning massive sums for just kicking a ball around.’

  ‘I don’t think Dan will feel like that. And these days you don’t have to grow up, even when reality is staring you in the face. You can take drugs, fritter your life away and die early. You know all about that, I expect, coming from Glasgow. I just hope Dan will be able to take disappointment if that’s what he’s going to get in his footballing life. Then he can make a real choice, do some work, make a good life for himself.’

  Kit didn’t feel confident of that, so he just nodded. For a few minutes there was a companionable silence, and then Isla said: ‘You’ve been to see your father, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I have.’ There was another silence, less companionable, then he asked: ‘Does that upset you?’

  ‘No … Well, yes. But I knew that’s what you’d want to do – would have to, just to say you’d seen him. How was he?’

  Kit told her the truth, not necessarily what she wanted to hear.

  ‘Not too bad – quite OK physically. I’m not sure I could make a judgement about the mental side. I didn’t understand him – didn’t get him.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Isla looked worried.

  ‘I didn’t know whether he was playing with me: for example, whether he had really forgotten that he’d ever had a son called Peter.’

  ‘Is that what he tried to say? What a cruel way of playing with you! But I expect that’s what it was: just a sort of game. Sadistic. You know he never thought you’d be found. He said Sicilian gangsters knew what they were doing. I thought it was a horrible way of putting it.’

  ‘I don’t know if it was true.’

  ‘Frank said that you had probably been killed during the kidnap, or when they were escaping from the island.’

  ‘The kidnap was very peaceful. Quite subtle, really. I was just led away. Strange that I remember that. No Sicilian gangsters to get the ransom money and then deliver my corpse.’

  ‘Oh don’t!’

  ‘If my father was playing with me in pretending not to know who I was and what I wanted, then that really was cruelty. Why would he want to be cruel to his own child? Did he hate me? How could he hate a child of three? Is he like that?’

  ‘No … I’m sure it’s not that … He just hates to be disappointed – he looks on the dark side because he says things usually do turn out worse than people hope.’

&nbs
p; ‘Hmmm. I got the impression he was enjoying himself.’

  ‘Maybe. It’s possible. He used to go in for this black humour, which I can’t see is humour at all. And people don’t like it. His clients didn’t.’

  ‘He says he only took boring cases, so that may have meant he had mostly boring clients.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think that was true. He was earning a bomb by the time we separated. Lots of work in other parts of the country. People came to him for his special knowledge – whatever it was. I could never make head nor tail of it when he tried to explain it, which he didn’t like doing … So your dad wasn’t as funny in the head as Micky makes out?’

  ‘It may have been a good day for him. The staff there seemed used to his ways. It’s a good home.’

  ‘Oh, he’d have insisted on that. He likes his comforts, or used to. In the home someone else does the work and he lives like a lord.’

  ‘That’s my impression,’ said Kit, thinking of the staff nurse. ‘Now all I have to do is get him to accept who I am.’

  Isla hesitated before she said: ‘Do be careful. Don’t get too close to your father. It’s a recipe for heartbreak.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Kit. ‘But I’d hate not to try.’

  Isla withdrew at once.

  ‘I’m sorry. Forget what I said. The last thing I’d want is to put you against your father.’

  But you already have, thought Kit. Or tried to.

  ‘I’d just like to know what makes him tick,’ he said.

  ‘Wouldn’t we all?’ said Isla sourly. ‘A sadistic taste for upsetting other people I’d say.’

  ‘Thank you for not putting me against my father,’ said Kit. The two looked at each other, and then burst out laughing. But it was uneasy laughter.

  Later in the evening Isla suggested that he stop the night: she’d had a full-sized bed moved into the old nursery. Kit had intended to accept when this was offered, as it was bound to be before too long, but now he found that he did not want to. The conversation about his father had cast a cloud, though he could not pinpoint why. If anyone knew his father it should be his mother.

  ‘I won’t tonight,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to make a quick trip to Glasgow. It’ll only be a couple of days. At most three. I’ll book out of my hotel here tomorrow morning, then when I come back I’ll stay here.’

  ‘That will be nice,’ said Isla, concealing her disappointment behind a buoyant tone. ‘Where will you stay in Glasgow?’

  Kit’s face expressed his surprise.

  ‘My home, of course. The place where I grew up.’

  ‘I forgot. You’ve still got your … home there.’

  Kit’s decision to go home for a few days was a decision of the moment, but it had been meditated almost since he had arrived in Leeds. He was not by nature a large-city man, but he wanted to go back to Glasgow because he had unfinished business there. Or rather, he had unfinished business all over the place, and probably he would find that all those pieces of business were interconnected. But for the moment he wanted to concentrate on the one question: how did the small boy who was abducted in Sicily land up in Glasgow? The obvious answer was: because in Glasgow there was a middle-aged family wanting a child.

  That by itself did not get him far. What connection was there between the newspaper editor’s family in Glasgow and the gang (Mafia? Camorra? Independent crooks?) who had taken him from his mother? What link was there between Glasgow and Sicily? It was far from obvious.

  When he said goodbye to his mother that night he asked her: ‘Isla, what were you doing when I was kidnapped?’

  ‘What was I—? Oh, I see what you mean. I was fetching you an ice cream from the little van along the road from the hotel. Pineapple. You loved pineapple. Dolce di ananas. There was a queue waiting, not more than six or seven people, mostly parents getting them for their kiddies, so I waited, and the queue went quickly because we all wanted more or less the same thing. I wasn’t away more than five minutes – less than ten anyway. But when I got back – oh God! You must blame me. What was I doing, leaving a child of three on his own like that?’

  ‘Where was I?’

  ‘In the little garden of the hotel. It was called the Hotel Siciliana. Will you ever—?’

  ‘Forgive you? Nothing to forgive. I’ve had a good life, and intend to have more of the same thing for the next fifty or sixty years. Goodnight, Mum. I’ll see you in a day or two, and I’ll bring some things that can stop in the nursery for my visits. I like to think of its being occupied again.’

  And when he kissed her goodnight it was with most of the warmth back in his heart that he had felt for her on the first day.

  The next morning at breakfast Kit was in for a surprise. Breakfast was traditional in the Hutton Hotel in Headingley, and he was just reaching for a piece of toast to round off a gargantuan feast when he was conscious of a tall figure coming and planting itself on the empty table beside him. He looked up and saw a lean figure with an outstretched hand and a sharp purposeful eye.

  ‘You must be Kit. Or Peter.’

  ‘Kit will do. How did you know?’

  ‘You’re the only person under fifty in this room.’

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘Ivor Battersby. Your brother-in-law.’ They shook hands. He was a man in his late forties, obviously capable and certainly making every effort to be friendly and welcoming – or to appear to be. ‘I got your hotel from Isla. I hope that’s all right?’

  ‘Of course it is. I want to get to know the family. And, of course, I want people to contact me if they have anything to tell me that might be helpful.’

  ‘About how you came to be a Glasgow boy instead of a Leeds one? I wish you luck. Whether you’re likely to get any information is another matter, but I hope you do. Look – I’ve got the morning off until twelve o’clock and I can run you to the station when we’re done. I thought we ought to get to know each other, and we can pick up Maria somewhere along the way, or go for a coffee with her back at the house. Is that too boring a prospect?’

  ‘It sounds just what I need to have.’

  So he settled his hotel bill, fetched his packed suitcase from his room, and went with this forceful, slightly brash man to his waiting Mercedes.

  ‘I thought I’d show you some of the suburbs. Either you’ve seen the centre of Leeds over and over or you will do if you keep up the connection with us here, so you need to see some of the outlying places – see more than just Headingley and Kirkstall. The fact that most of my business interests are there is a sort of bonus for me. I can swank and be informative at the same time.’

  ‘Why have you shunned the centre?’ said Kit, clicking in his seat belt.

  ‘Because the centre doesn’t cater any more for the ordinary person’s ordinary needs. Well, Leeds Kirkgate Market does maybe, but otherwise – zilch. You’d think there’d be a butcher’s, wouldn’t you? Town this size? It’s market, or supermarket, or nothing. Fishmonger’s, then? Fish is no longer cheap, but more and more popular. No, it’s market or supermarket or nothing. And so it goes on. And the market becomes less and less market-like year by year, with video shops, DVDs, computers. So you go to the suburbs to get a bargain, to get a specialised service, to do deals in the old style and not get fleeced.’

  They had driven through Horsforth, and now turned into a side street with nothing particular to mark it off.

  ‘See that garage? That’s mine. One of a chain of eight. Each one has a used-car division, with specialised interests: old bangers, environmentally friendly ones, high-mileage-to-the-litre ones, totally reliable and boring ones – you name what you want and we send you to the right branch, or sell it to you sight unseen. They trust us so much that that often happens. It’s the same with the chain of shops we have. Corner shops you might call them, but each one is carefully positioned and each one has a specialisation …’

  Kit settled back into his conducted tour. Truth to tell, he was enjoying it, as listening to a committed enthusiast often is f
ascinating, even if the actual sums quoted and the turnover rehearsed so thoroughly they could be gabbled through were not in themselves gripping. Ivor was a vivid describer and self-publicist, and if Kit tired of the man’s subject matter he could look at the churches and railway stations, the streets of still-grimy houses, the agricultural land stretching into the distance – of no interest to Ivor because it contained too few customers and competitors.

  At eleven o’clock, having dismissed the idea of a drink in a pub, Ivor arranged things so they cruised into the drive of his house – brick with portico, designed with a total misunderstanding of the classical models that the bits were intended to ape.

  ‘Home sweet home,’ said Ivor. ‘Maria will have coffee on the make. It’s her time for it.’

  And she did. She was dressed informally but in the sort of blouse and skirt that said they didn’t come from a mass-market chain. She kissed Kit, sat him down in a chair that embraced and welcomed him, and put before him a plate of cake and biscuits.

  ‘Let’s not talk about garages and shops,’ she said. ‘I get enough of that, particularly as I act as relief or deputy manager in situations of emergency. Tell me about you. What’s happened since we met?’

  So he told them about the slight fluctuations in his relationship with his birth mother, his visit to the police, his talk with Micky, and at last the visit to the nursing home and his birth father.

  ‘So how was Dad?’ asked Maria. ‘Mad as a meat axe?’

  ‘Respect the old,’ said Ivor. ‘I have a vested interest.’

  ‘In any case, he isn’t – or wasn’t on the day I met him – mad, so far as I could see,’ said Kit. ‘But definitely odd. Playful, sadistic, wanting to gain and maintain a position of superiority, of his being in charge. Interest in me there was, even as he denied knowing me or knowing of me, but concern for me in any human way there certainly wasn’t.’