‘I suppose so. It’s hard, though, the waiting.’
‘Tom Petty,’ I murmured.
‘What?’
‘ “The Waiting Is The Hardest Part.” It’s a song by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers; great band, great lyric.’
‘You can be flippant about everything, can’t you?’
There was an edge to her voice. Neither of us had ever admitted it, but there had always been a certain tension between Mary and me. It went all the way back to my childhood, when Jan and I were kids together, or, more specifically, to our teenage years. It wasn’t that I felt she disliked me, but there was something in the way she looked at me, a wariness that I didn’t understand then, and that hurt me a little. It wasn’t mutual, that’s for sure. For my part, I liked Mary. That frisson had carried on into adulthood; then it altered a bit. After Alex More, Mary’s husband, left her, and after my mother died, when she and my father grew close, I suppose there was a little private resentment on my part. Yet it didn’t overlap the other thing; that was still there, until Prim appeared on the scene.
Mary was pleased. My self-esteem didn’t let me deal with it at the time, but she was pleased that somebody had come between me and Jan.
Her pleasure was short-lived, though, for what was between the two of us was too strong; in fact, it was stronger than either of us understood. In the end we simply accepted it and gave in happily to the inevitable. If Mary had been as happy, it would have made my day, but she wasn’t. It only showed itself to me, though. As far as I knew, Jan never had a clue.
‘A joke? Where’s the joke? I don’t understand that.’
‘You’ve always been flip, Oz. Your first reaction has always been a throwaway line, a pitch for a quick laugh.’
I felt my eyes narrow. ‘Mary, if you think I find anything laughable about my dad lying on that operating slab, you don’t know me in the slightest. But you’ve never really known me, have you?’
‘Now it’s my turn not to understand,’ she shot back. ‘What do you mean?’
I gazed at her, rather coldly, I suspect. ‘Forget it,’ I said. ‘We’re both tired and under great stress, saying things we’d never normally say. Let’s strike everything that’s just been said from the record, okay?’
‘What did you mean, back in the car, about things I should have handled better?’
‘Mary,’ I murmured, ‘I really don’t want to get into this.’
‘What did you mean?’ she hissed.
I took my wallet from my pocket and opened it. I showed her the photo that’s on display there, of Susie and the three kids; the light was good enough for her to see it clearly. Then I slid a finger into the space behind the credit-card slots and drew out another image, of Tom. I’d taken it myself a year earlier, on the day that I’d found him in California, to mark it, but for another reason too.
Before I go any further let me take you back to something I told you in my last confession to you, about the moment in which I saw him for the first time: ‘In an instant, I knew everything: there was no thought process involved, I just knew everything.’ That’s what I said to you then. I’ll bet you thought you knew what I meant; but I’ll bet you also, any odds you like, that you didn’t.
I showed Mary that photograph, and then I showed her another, a snap of another child, taken thirty-five years earlier. The likeness was incredible: they could have been twins.
Her cheeks seemed to collapse into her face as she sucked in her breath; the gasp was so loud I was afraid she’d waken Ellie, but it would take an earthquake to do that.
‘I warned you against this,’ I growled quietly, ‘but you had to insist. So maybe you’ll explain to me why my son, conceived with Primavera and borne by her, should be the living image of my late first wife . . . your daughter. How can that be?’
She shook her head, her mouth set in a tight line.
‘It’s out of the box now, Mary,’ I told her grimly. ‘You can’t put it back.’ I glanced at Ellie, and I feared that there might just be an earthquake in that room if we stayed there. ‘Come on,’ I whispered. ‘Let’s take a walk.’
Conrad was sitting in a chair outside the door; he was wide awake. I said we were going for some fresh air, and asked him to sit with Ellie, in case she wakened and our absence made her think the worst.
We couldn’t actually go outside, in case we bumped into the press, so I simply turned left at the end of the corridor and tried the first door I saw. It was locked, but the second wasn’t, so we stepped inside. When I found the light switch I saw we were in a private office, probably belonging to one of the senior staff.
I took the two photos from my wallet once more, and held them in front of my step-mother until eventually she looked at them again.
‘I’m not kidding myself, am I? Those children are almost mirror images. One of them is Tom, and the other’s Jan at the same age. We’re agreed on that, yes?’ I ground the last word out, brutally. She nodded. ‘So where does that take us, Mary?’
She tried to turn away, but I grabbed her shoulders and held her, so that she had to look at me. ‘Where?’ I asked her again, but she stayed silent. I began to wonder whether she had kept her secret for so long that she was unable to give it voice.
So I did it for her. ‘Unless there’s an ancestral link between the Blackstone and the More family, or the Mores and the Phillipses, that none of us knows about, there are only two possibilities. Either Alex More is my father, or Mac Blackstone is Jan’s.’ Actually, the first of those had never entered my head until then, the moment when I confronted the truth that had been doing my head in since I first clapped eyes on Tom. I didn’t believe it for a second but I found I couldn’t avoid it.
‘Either way,’ I began, then drew a breath to calm me down, for I was in danger of exploding. ‘Either way, one thing’s for sure: Jan was my half-sister, wasn’t she? For me to father a child who’s her double, with someone else . . . there can be no other explanation.’ And then I found myself voicing the last inevitable question: ‘Or are you going to tell me that you didn’t know either?’
The last twist, the one my mind hadn’t let me consider before, threatened to blow a few circuits in my brain. What if neither Mary nor my dad had known? What if Alex More and my mum . . .
Her silence lasted another ten seconds or so. If I’d thought about it, that last question had offered her an escape route, but if she saw it, she didn’t choose to take it. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘I knew. Alex was sterile. Jan had to be Mac’s daughter.’
This is a terrible thing to admit but, although part of me was horrified, the greater part was relieved. I couldn’t have handled the discovery that My Dad wasn’t really.
It didn’t blow away my anger, though: that fell on her, full force. ‘And you kept that from the two of us. You let us . . . Christ, Mary, Jan was pregnant when she died!’
‘Yes, but . . . Oz, I couldn’t.’
‘One more thing: does he know? Does my dad know?’
‘No, I’m sure he doesn’t. It was a one-off: he and Flora had been at a Round Table party in someone’s house. Alex was away at a conference so I babysat for Ellen. There was a lot of drink at those Table dos, and that Flora, for the only time in her life, had a right few too many. She was pregnant with you, but I don’t think she knew it then. Mac brought her home, and carted her straight upstairs. Then he came back down. He’d had quite a few himself, and I’d sipped my way through the best part of a bottle of wine in the course of the evening. He said something about how nice I looked, I said something similar in return, we got close, there was kissing, and then there was more than kissing. We never mentioned it afterwards . . . I don’t know about him, but I was embarrassed, for it was completely untypical behaviour on my part . . . and I think both of us made sure that the same circumstances could never arise again. But I fell pregnant shortly afterwards.’
‘So you must have known from the start.’
‘No!’ Her protest was so spontaneous that I believed
her. ‘I didn’t know about Alex’s condition then, neither did he. I didn’t know anything about peak fertility times either. We weren’t long married and we were trying for a family, trying quite hard if you must know. I admit that when I became pregnant the thought did cross my mind, but I discounted the possibility. Then when Jan was born, she didn’t look a bit like Ellen or you . . . You and Jan were babies at the same time, remember.’
‘Yes, but Ellie and I both looked like our mum when we were infants; it never occurred to me till I saw Tom, but he’s very like my granny Blackstone. So was Jan in the picture I just showed you. When I looked at some older photos, I discovered that they were quite alike as young women too.’
‘Mac’s never noticed that, I promise you; he certainly never mentioned it to me, and I don’t think he’d have been able to keep it to himself if he had noticed it.’
‘When did you find out the truth?’
‘Years later; when Jan was thirteen, I think. Alex and I had been trying in vain for another baby, and finally we went to see a specialist in Edinburgh. He checked us both out, then said he was very sorry but Alex’s sperm count was virtually zero. Alex asked what had brought this on, and the consultant told him he’d always been like that.’
‘Jesus, that was tactful of him.’
‘Indeed. When I challenged him privately, he tried to claim that the case notes didn’t say we already had a child, but he’d examined me pretty carefully so he must have known.’
‘Is that why Alex left you?’
‘Ultimately, yes. He never asked me who Jan’s father was, I never told him, and I’m sure he never guessed. In truth, we barely discussed the matter. We just stumbled on for another four or five years, until he went off with his new love . . . who, ironically, has three children from her first marriage.’
‘You never told us, Mary,’ I repeated quietly, my calmness restored.
‘How could I? Flora was still alive then, and she and your father were blissfully happy. What was I to do? Spill the beans and put that at risk? Make myself the most hated woman in town in the process? I’m sorry, Oz, call me weak, call me a fool, but I kept my mouth shut.’
‘But what about Jan and me, when you saw us together as kids?’
‘When I found out, you were both in your early teens. You behaved like brother and sister, even if you didn’t know you were.’
‘Mary,’ I told her, ‘from the age of . . . fourteen, as I recall . . . Jan and I did not behave exactly as brother and sister should. I’m not saying that she wasn’t a good girl, or that I was a bad boy, because we were pretty responsible by contemporary standards, but like any other kids of that age, there was kissing, like you just put it, there was cuddling, there was touching, there was feeling around. The older we got, the more intimate we got.’
‘I didn’t know that, though. When Jan reached puberty, we had the chat that you’re supposed to have. It embarrassed both of us, for she was very much a tomboy at that stage. I never thought of the two of you like that, honestly. When I found out . . . I was shocked, terrified, even, but by then it was too late.’
‘When did you find out?’
‘I began to worry when I heard a story about you beating up two boys at school, because of something lewd that one of them had said about Jan. Then I found a condom, in its packet, in her room. I didn’t need to ask any questions after that.’
‘Did you talk to Jan about it?’
‘I asked her if she was having sex. I didn’t ask her with whom, but there was only one possibility. It’s the only time we ever had anything close to an argument. She told me very firmly that we should strike a deal: I wouldn’t ask her that question again and she wouldn’t ask me either.’
‘Even then, couldn’t you have told us?’
She reached up and touched my face. ‘And if I had, my dear,’ she murmured, ‘how cruel would that have been? No, I kept it to myself and prayed you’d never find out. And you never would have either, but for Tom.’
‘You realised when you saw him, didn’t you?’
‘How could I not? It was like seeing my own child again. But it didn’t occur to Mac at all, I promise you. He said, “He’s a real wee Blackstone, isn’t he?” but that was all.’
I looked at her. ‘Then, Mary,’ I said, ‘for the love of God, if he comes through tonight, make sure that he never finds out the truth.’
‘I’ll try.’
I couldn’t help it: I felt my eyes harden. ‘Trying isn’t an option. Make bloody certain that he doesn’t.’
9
Maybe I should have blamed my dad. After all, the consequences of his quick, drink-fuelled, adulterous lapse on the living-room shag pile would live with me for the rest of my life. But I couldn’t: I’d found out a couple of years before that he isn’t perfect, just as I know I’m not.
When I thought about it some more, I found I didn’t blame Mary either. The same event had doomed her marriage, which some might see as just, but it had also condemned her to live what must have been a nightmare. Those who see that as right and proper retribution are free, as far as I’m concerned, to go and abuse themselves in some far corner of the planet, for they can have none of the Christian in their soul. (Unlike Mary, who’s always been a Church member, and who’s a true believer. All the more credit to her, I suppose, that she’s come through it as best she could. Eventually . . . not that night, but on one of only two other occasions we’ve ever spoken about the matter . . . she confessed to me that she saw Jan’s death as a divine punishment. I told her that any God who would do a thing like that wasn’t worth an inverted candle, but I don’t think she could bring herself to believe me.)
The surgeon came to see us just before six. It was well daylight outside, and Ellie was awake. Happily, he was smiling when he opened the door. Relief came from my sister and my step-mother in waves, and even from Conrad. I have to confess, for all that I’d convinced myself that Dad would pull through, a tear came to my eye when I saw the confirmation in that big, chunky man’s face. I saw something else there too: pure exhaustion. The procedure had taken six hours from start to finish.
He looked at Mary, then Ellie, and finally at me. ‘Positive news,’ he announced, ‘I’m happy to say. We’ve replaced your father’s failed aortic valve with a metal one, and it seems to be functioning well. He’s in a recovery room just now; I’m going to keep him heavily sedated for a while, and still on the ventilator, but that’s just routine. I’m entirely happy with the way things have gone.’
‘Can we see him?’ Mary asked.
‘From a distance. He’s still under, and in theatre conditions. Once you’ve done that, I recommend that you all go home and get some rest; maybe come back in around twelve hours, if you’d like. Any questions?’
‘How close a call was it, Mr . . .?’ I asked.
‘Blacker,’ he replied, ‘Cedric Blacker. As close as there can be. If there hadn’t been a doctor present when he collapsed, he wouldn’t have made it. He can thank his golfing chum for keeping him alive till the ambulance arrived.’
‘He’ll thank him, don’t you worry. So will we all. I know said doctor. He’s a gin-swilling old sod normally. Thank God he was on the ball yesterday.’
The four of us were gowned up . . . Conrad held back at first, but I insisted that he join us . . . and shown into the recovery room. As soon as I clapped eyes on him, lying on that bed, zonked out on whatever sedative they’d pumped into him, with a pipe in his mouth and umpteen tubes leading into and out of various parts of his body, all my euphoria disappeared. I’d never imagined seeing him so weak, so old, so vulnerable; the sight filled me with all kinds of dread. He wasn’t out of the wood yet. Indeed, looking at him, he seemed to be in the heart of the forest.
The sight of him took me back to my mother’s last illness. It took me back to identifying Jan’s body in a tiny, impersonal room in a Glasgow hospital: Jan, my lover, my wife, my soul-mate . . . my sister.
It took me forward too: I imagined o
ther people on that bed. Susie, Ellen and Prim. I saw all of them lying under that sheet. And I saw myself too; oh, yes, I saw myself, with a row of gowned people staring misty-eyed at me. Not the kids, though: I couldn’t imagine my children in such a situation. What parent can?
Once we had all seen enough . . . most of the time I looked at the monitors, convincing myself that all the peaks were regular and steady . . . and once I had given an update to the small group of diehard journalists who were still standing guard, we took Mr Blacker’s advice and headed home. More specifically, we headed for Dad and Mary’s, in Anstruther, with me at the wheel, Conrad beside me and the girls sleeping in the back . . . my sister could sleep for Britain. I bought a bag of morning rolls, and the four of us had an old-fashioned Scottish breakfast . . . much the same as a full English breakfast, but heavier on the black pudding and with potato scones thrown in. Then Ellen headed back to St Andrews, to Harvey and my nephews, Jonny and Colin, and I headed for the phone to call Susie.
She was as relieved as the rest of us, and she’d had a sleepless night too. Prim was with her: she had called her an hour before, asking anxiously for any news. I was touched that she’d been as scared as the rest of us, but I was struck too by something else, the ease with which she seemed to have fitted back into our circle, in spite of her efforts to wreck me a year earlier. It spoke volumes about something, but at that moment I was too damn tired to figure out what it was.
I slept for the rest of the morning and into the early afternoon; in fact, it took Conrad’s knock at the door to waken me. ‘Time to get ready, Oz,’ he called, ‘if you still want to see your nephews, that is.’ I had agreed with Ellie that we would take Mary’s car and pick her up from St Andrews. Harvey was in court in Edinburgh that day and she would go home with him. I reckoned that Mary would want to be closer to Dad for the next few days, as, indeed, I did, so I had asked Conrad to book three suites in the Caley Hotel.
It’s amazing how much better you look when you’re a super-resilient old bastard and you don’t have a pipe down your throat and a tube up your knob. I’m not saying that Mac the Dentist looked as if he’d be on the golf course any time soon when we saw him at six that evening, but he was several hundred per cent improved on the version we’d seen in the morning.
For The Death Of Me Page 6
