They held each other at arm’s length, looking each other over. He was tall. Much taller than her. Her eyes were level with the knot of his tie. A strange tie: black with a pattern of tiny white crosses. As he released her, a thin gold cross on a long chain slipped from behind the tie. He saw her eyes flick to it and smiled. An apologetic smile.
“Yeah.” He grimaced. “It’s Reverend Bill Willis—I didn’t tell you because it puts some people off.”
“Oh no!” Michael smiled as he reached forward to shake his hand. “I married a vicar’s daughter!”
They all laughed, the ice broken.
“Just look at you . . .” Bill shook his head as he gazed at Louisa. “I can’t tell you how . . .” His eyes were brimming. “And Eva? How is she?”
Louisa and Michael exchanged glances.
“We’ll catch up on everything when we get back, shall we?” Michael reached for Bill’s suitcase. “Tom and Rhiannon are desperate to meet you: they’ll be counting the minutes!”
Louisa could feel the adrenaline pumping as she climbed into the back of the car. It was so wonderful to have him sitting here beside her. But she dreaded having to tell him that her mother wouldn’t see him. How would he take it? She told herself that as a man of religion, he should be forgiving. Was that too much to expect?
She frowned as she fastened her seat belt. His revelation about being a reverend perplexed her. He had told her he worked in a hospital. Why had he told an out-and-out lie?
“I’m sorry if I misled you,” he said, as if reading her mind, “but I wasn’t lying. I’m a chaplain at Harper University Hospital.”
She was relieved by this explanation and felt her body relax a little. Still, she was intimidated by the cross, which glinted in the sun as he fastened his seat belt. She had so looked forward to this day, and the days that lay ahead, visualizing the long chats they would have, filling each other in on all the missing years. But how could she open up to a minister of religion? He wasn’t going to approve of Michael when he found out he’d had to get a divorce before he could marry her. She felt her heart sink. He wasn’t going to approve of her either.
Bill produced a wallet full of photographs and began passing them to her to look at as Michael pulled away from the airport. She studied them gratefully. They could talk about his family instead of hers on the long journey home. The photos were mainly of her aunt Martha and her cousins, Marvin and Leroy. Louisa was struck by the resemblance between Martha and Rhiannon. She said as much to Bill, who beamed and produced another photo of his sister as a child. Louisa gasped. It was like looking at Rhiannon’s twin.
She told him how worried she’d been about her daughter starting school, and how people had assumed her children had different fathers. She didn’t explain that Michael wasn’t their dad. She needed time to think how she was going to break that to him.
Bill gave her a look of such sadness she thought he was going to break down. “I thought about that a lot, you know, after you were born,” he said. “I worried so much about how people would treat you, being half-black and half-white.” He pursed his lips. “Do you remember I told you on the telephone about the time I was based in England after the war, when I came looking for you in Wolverhampton?”
She nodded.
“It was 1955—eleven years since the last time I was in Britain—and boy, what a difference. You should have seen the faces when I came cruising along the street. They looked at me as if I was something they’d stepped in. I realized then things had gotten as bad as back home in Louisiana. And I thought of you growing up in that place, going to school and all, and I said to myself, I did wrong letting her stay: she would have been better off in Chicago.”
Louisa’s eyes filled with tears. She could hardly bear to think of him searching for her, driving around the streets on the other side of town with no idea she was sitting in a classroom just five miles away.
“It was okay until I was ten years old,” she said, swallowing her tears. “It sounds crazy, I know, but I actually grew up thinking I was white.”
She told him about the move from Devil’s Bridge to Wolverhampton, of the shock of being refused service in the corner shop. Slowly, hesitantly, she began to tell him about the shame she had felt about her color and the lengths she had gone to, to make herself white. But each word was carefully chosen. This was an edited version of her life.
He had pulled a large white handkerchief from his pocket, and she noticed he was blowing his nose a lot. She realized he was hiding too, not wanting her to see him cry.
When they got to Michael’s, the atmosphere lifted. Gina was waiting there with Tom and Rhiannon, who jumped on Bill the minute he got out of the car. Having only ever known one granddad, the children were incredibly excited to acquire another—especially Rhiannon, who made him roll up his sleeve so that they could compare arms, proudly announcing they were the same color.
After lunch Michael went to show Bill the studio while Louisa washed up. They were gone a long time, and when she’d finished tidying up, she slumped into a chair, overwhelmed by an inexplicable feeling of depression. Bill and Michael seemed to be getting along so well. And he was obviously smitten by the children. She felt like the odd one out, and she wanted to cry at the unfairness of it. This was supposed to have been her big day. She knew her feelings were utterly childish, but she couldn’t seem to shake them off. When Michael slipped into the kitchen, he found her sobbing into a tissue.
“I feel so stupid!” she sniffed, her shoulders shaking as he hugged her to him. “It was so exciting when I first saw him: when he showed me those photos, it was like the missing pieces of a jigsaw falling into place. But I can’t talk to him, Michael! I’m not sure he even likes me!”
“Of course he does!” Michael shook his head. “You saw his face at the airport—he looked like he’d just scooped the jackpot!”
“B . . . but . . . he . . . doesn’t know anything about me.” She sobbed. “And when he does, he’ll be ashamed of me—I know he will!”
Michael held her shoulders, fixing her with his eyes. “He will not be ashamed of you! How can you say that? What on earth have you got to be ashamed about?”
“My whole life,” she mumbled. “How can I ever explain about Ray? About Trefor? About you, even?”
“Listen, Lou, he may be a reverend, but he’s not some prude. You should have seen him in the studio! I played a couple of Stones numbers, and he was on his feet, dancing with the kids. He’s really into the music, you know.” He squeezed her shoulders. “And anyone who appreciates my playing can’t be all bad!”
She gave him a wan smile.
“I think you’re being too hard on yourself and on him,” he went on. “It’s bound to be an anticlimax at first, isn’t it? You’ve built him up so much in your head. You’ve got to give him a chance—give yourselves time to get to know each other.”
Later that afternoon Michael took the children back to the farmhouse. Bill was going to be sleeping at Michael’s place—to keep him well away from Eva and Eddie. The idea was that Louisa would stay behind at the barn so that she could spend some time alone with him. But as she waved the others off, she was overtaken by a feeling of dread. She didn’t know how she was going to get through the hours that lay ahead.
“Michael sure is a nice guy,” Bill said as the Jeep disappeared up the track. “You been together long?” He smiled as her face tensed. “The kids don’t call him Dad, do they? And they told me he was taking them home.”
“Sorry.” She plaited her fingers, eyes fixed on her hands. “I should have been straight with you. Michael’s my second husband. My first husband committed suicide ten years ago because of . . .” She took a breath. “Because of something in my past he found out about.” She paused, expecting an interrogation. But Bill said nothing. She looked up. His face was unreadable.
“I met Michael when I started looking for you.” She hesitated again. “He was . . . he’s divorced. We have separate homes because the f
arm is really Tom’s—or will be in a few years’ time when he turns eighteen. He . . . it’s complicated.” She held her breath, watching his face. A look of sadness clouded his eyes.
“That must have been hard on you, losing your first husband so young.” He reached out and took her hand. “How did you manage, with the kids?”
Instead of replying, she burst into tears. Tears of relief that he wasn’t judging her and tears of pain as the pent-up memories came flooding back. “I’m so afraid of telling you about my life,” she sobbed. “I so wanted you to like me! To love me! But if you knew the truth . . .”
“You tell me just as much or as little as you want to,” he whispered. “It won’t make any difference to the way I feel about you: you’re my daughter!” He hugged her to him, and she felt his own tears against her skin. “But I’ll tell you something else, Louisa: when you hear about my life, I don’t guess anything you’ve done will seem so bad.”
The light was fading, but she was too wrapped up in what he was telling her to think of switching on the lights.
“I was thirty-two when I left the army. I realized it was about time I settled down. Didn’t have much idea what I was gonna do, so I went back to New Orleans. Ended up waiting tables in a restaurant downtown. It wasn’t long after that I hooked up with Cora-Mae.” He shrugged. “Got hitched too quick. She wanted kids right away; I didn’t.” A frown creased his forehead. “Never felt I had a right to. It tore me apart, thinking I’d done just what my daddy did to me.”
Louisa nodded slowly. “Michael’s mum told me that you and Martha had lost contact with your dad.”
“I was three years old when he walked out on us. Martha was no more than a baby. Never set eyes on him again. I don’t even know if he’s dead or alive.”
She saw the haunted expression in his eyes and wondered if he had dreamed of his father the way she had dreamed of him.
“It hurt real bad, growing up with no daddy.” He tapped his chest. “I never would let on, though. Kept it all inside. But all the time Cora-Mae was talking about babies, I felt like yelling at her. In the end I told her about you. I said, ‘Look, Cora-Mae, somewhere, on some street thousands of miles away, a little piece of me is walking around. A little girl who wouldn’t know me if she passed right by me. How can I go having another one till I’ve found the one I already have?’” He shook his head. “It got so she was sick of hearing it. We used to fight all the time.” A wry smile turned up the corners of his mouth. “Sure seems strange that it’s her I have to thank for you finding me!”
Louisa smiled back. “She’s a grandmother now—did you know?”
“Is she?” He folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. “I’m glad. She deserved better.”
Louisa watched his eyes cloud over again. Why did he have such a low opinion of himself? Surely it wasn’t all due to being an absent father?
“What happened when you got to Detroit?” she asked.
He huffed out a laugh. “Not much, first off. Me and Martha thought we were headed for the promised land. I was sick of the way black folks were treated in the South. I suppose traveling like I did with the army made me realize I didn’t have to put up with that kind of stuff—that not everyone had us down as the scum of the earth.” He paused, examining the veins on the backs of his hands. “It didn’t make much difference when we arrived, though. Still couldn’t get anything better than waiting tables. But at least I was serving black folks alongside the whites.” He looked at her, his eyes twinkling. “Sounds crazy, I know, but I used to do this little act, where me and one of the waitresses would break into a dance routine in between serving the food. And one night this black guy—real flash—comes in the restaurant and calls me over. Says he manages a band and needs someone to teach them how to move. Turns out to be Berry Gordy—you heard of him?”
“The Berry Gordy?” Louisa gasped. “From Tamla-Motown?”
“Uh-huh.” Bill smiled, but his eyes had lost their shine. “It was nineteen fifty-nine, and he was just starting out. It was great for me—he was always signing new acts, mostly young kids straight off the streets. I was one of a bunch of people working out the routines, teaching them how to dress, how to hold themselves, that kind of thing.”
Louisa’s eyes widened. “So you must have known loads of really famous people?”
“Yeah, I did meet a few.” He dropped his eyes, studying the backs of his hands again.
“Come on—tell me!”
“Well, there was the Four Tops—I knew them pretty well, the Supremes, and Smokey Robinson . . .” He shrugged.
“Wow! You must have had an amazing time!”
“Well, yes, I guess so.” The tone of his voice suggested otherwise. “The problem was it all went to my head. It was the kind of job where girls would be coming on to me all the time—not because they saw me as anything special, you understand: they thought I could get them a break.” He let out a breath. “It was pretty hard to resist. I’m sure not proud of how I was back then. And the whole thing just backfired on me, which served me right.”
“What happened?”
“Well, I was getting invited to all these parties and one of the girls I met turned me onto drugs. I started smoking pot, then a couple weeks later I got into cocaine.”
She stared at him, fumbling for the right words. “Is that what you meant when you said your life had been bad?”
He nodded. “I lost everything, Lou. Lost my job at Hitsville, lost my apartment. Martha tried to help me, but I froze her out. By the end of sixty-five I was sleeping on the streets. I got a job washing dishes, but soon as I got paid, I’d be after my next fix. Only food I had was leftovers from the kitchen.” He gave her a crooked smile. “You think I look rough now, you should have seen me back then!”
“But you kicked the drugs?”
“Only because I was forced to. I got caught trying to steal a pair of shoes from Walmart. They put me in a rehab program, and while I was there I . . .” He hesitated, shaking his head. “I suppose you could call it a vision.” His eyes flickered from side to side as he stared at the wall. “I don’t know if it was withdrawal from the drugs or what, but I saw this evil-looking man with flames licking around him right there on the grass in front of me. And then I heard a voice. You have a choice, Bill. Me or the devil. That’s what I heard.”
Louisa didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t been to church since she was ten years old. She glanced at him awkwardly. “Is that why . . . you became a minister?”
He nodded. “It probably sounds strange to you—it does to most folks—but to me it was very real. And powerful. I’d tried so many times before to kick the drugs—I’d been living on the streets close on five years—but when I woke up the next morning, that crazy urge had gone away.”
“So how long have you been working at the hospital?”
“Coming up on four years.”
She looked at him, wondering how best to say what she was dying to know. “And since you . . . got back on your feet, you haven’t . . . you know, met anyone?”
“No ma’am!” He smiled. “I don’t drink, I don’t do drugs, and I don’t . . .” He arched his eyebrows.
“Oh!” She looked at her feet, embarrassed at what she’d made him almost say.
“Reckon I’m bad news, far as ladies go.” He grunted a laugh. “I got a dog for company now. He ain’t complained about me yet!”
Louisa laughed. But the inward delight she took in his resolution to stay single made her feel guilty. “Do you really think you’ll never meet anyone else?”
“I doubt it.” His eyes took on a wistful look. She wondered if he was thinking of her mother. Was that the real reason he would never marry again?
“There’s something I have to ask you,” she began. “Do you still have feelings for . . .” She paused, unable to say it.
“For your mama?” He drew his lips into a tight circle. “I thought that was coming.” He blew out a breath. “It’s been so many years, but
yes, I still have wonderful memories of the time we spent together. Truth is I never met a woman like her, before or since.”
Louisa’s stomach lurched. This was what she’d been dreading. “It means a lot to me that you cared so much for her,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper. “The trouble is, though, I don’t think she can bear the idea of seeing you again.”
There was a moment of silence. Then he said, “Well, I guess I can understand that. Sure is a pity, though. I would have liked to see her again.” He looked straight at her, catching the fear in her eyes. “For old times’ sake, you understand. Nothing more. I would have liked to meet your other dad too. I’d like the chance to shake him by the hand, tell him what a good job he did, raising you.”
Louisa blinked back tears, wondering how Eddie would react to that. She had told him Bill was coming, reassuring him that he would be kept well away from the farm. She hadn’t known what to do about telling her mother. She knew it would be unfair to expect Tom and Rhiannon to keep quiet about it. In the end Eddie had offered to tell Eva after she and Michael had left for the airport.
Louisa bit her lip. It was almost as if Eddie was on Bill’s side. How could he be so understanding? She wondered if he had any idea that David’s death had been directly linked to Bill’s actions, wondered if her mother had ever told him the real reason for her visit to Aberystwyth that fateful day.
As if he’d read her mind, Bill took her hand in his. “I don’t expect him to want to see me any more than your mother does. But I’d be grateful if you could pass on what I just said.”
She nodded. “You don’t mind me not calling you Dad, do you? It’s just that it takes a bit of getting used to . . .”
“Of course I don’t!”
“My . . . my other dad, well, he’s never blamed you for what happened. But Mam . . .” she trailed off with a shrug.
“I guess she hasn’t forgiven me for messing up her life?”
Louisa shook her head. “But it’s not what you think. She doesn’t blame you for me being born, anyway. It’s what happened afterwards that really turned her against you.”
The Color of Secrets Page 34
