“She probably just didn’t want to wait until it did.”
“She probably wanted to spare you that.” Miss Hill added.
“She wouldn’t have had much longer, maybe a no more than a few months.”
“Months?” For a moment Anya imagined what that time would have been like, looking after her dying mother when she should have been concentrating on her finals. She had hated life with her mother and done what she could to leave her but she had never imagined a life without her. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
The Hills spent time with Anya every day of the ten between her mother’s death and the funeral. They helped her with the administrative paperwork of death, drove her to Registrars and Undertakers, but she was still alone for most of every day and every night. She spent her 20th birthday reading her diaries and trying to think of good times, perhaps the past hadn’t been as bad as she thought.
Anya with Miss Hill and her brother were the only ones at the short service. Now was the time she should have seen her father, whoever he had been, her grandparents, they must exist, she thought there should have been some family. But there was no one, only her, to mourn. They drove back in silence, Dr Hill pulling up outside the house as the neighbours’ front doors shut too quickly.
“Do you want to come in?”
There was an envelope on the mat which Anya picked up as she opened the door into the empty house. She sat with it on her lap as Miss Hill put the kettle on. She knew it was not going to be good news so she handed it to Dr Hill who, as soon as his sister had appeared with the tea, opened the envelope and skimmed over the content. Without comment but with a warning glance at his sister, he began to read aloud.
“Dear Miss Cave, Please accept our condolences on the recent death of your mother Miss Melanie Cave.”
“Miss. She always said she’d been married. Miss is very definite isn’t it?” Anya was not surprised, she had thought for years that her mother calling herself ‘Mrs Cave’ had been a lie.
“It does look like that.” Miss Hill patted Anya’s hand consolingly.
“Miss Cave has been a good tenant…”
Anya interrupted again, suppressing rising panic. “Tenant? This is mum’s house. It’s always been hers.”
“I’m afraid the word ‘tenant’ is unambiguous my dear.” Miss Hill held on to Anya’s hand.
“She let me think it was ours.” Anya said to herself. “I never knew she paid rent.”
Dr Hill continued quickly, nothing in the letter was going to be easy for Anya.
“… of the property 16 Tennyson Street, Birkenhead for nearly 21 years but in view of the fact that we understand you have not yet attained your majority…”
“How pompous! They could simply have said since you are under age. Full of their own self-importance that’s their trouble.”
Dr Hill was aware that the worst news was yet to come and was somewhat irritated by his sister’s interruption. He continued firmly without comment.
“…the property must be left vacant and clean by Friday 11th September.”
“I’ve got to leave? In a month?” Anya did not want to believe what Dr Hill had said and grabbed the letter from his hand. “Where am I supposed to go? What can I do with all my things, all Mum’s things? What do they think I’m going to do?” For two years she had been trying to leave but that had only been for term time. She had never imagined she wouldn’t have a home to return to when she needed one.
“They really are being rather petty.” Miss Hill added to her brother. “Clean! They didn’t have to be so deliberately insulting.”
Anya hadn’t cried, even at the funeral, and she wasn’t going to cry now so she rubbed her eyes fiercely with her fists. “It doesn’t get any better. Listen. ‘We will attend the property on Monday 17th August to determine damage and defects which require rectification.’ How am I supposed to pay for anything that needs doing? They’ll probably pick at everything and want windows done and painted and everything!”
“Don’t worry my dear, we’ll be here to make sure they are fair. You’ve been in this house for over 20 years and they’ve probably not spent a penny on it in all that time so you mustn’t worry.” Miss Hill’s practicality calmed Anya.
“It’s signed D & M Hodge, Landlords.” Anya recognised the name and hoped that these Hodges were nothing to do with the Henrietta Hodge who had made her schooldays so miserable. Anya caught Miss Hill’s eye and realised there was a connection.
“Yes, my dear, Henrietta’s father Donald and her uncle Michael.”
“You knew and you never told me!” Anya felt betrayed. Had Miss Hill known, and never told her, that the father of the girl who had bullied her for years owned the house she had lived in all her life?
“No Anya. I know them, of course, and I know they have something of a rental empire but I had no idea that your home was one of those properties.”
“But Henrietta would have done.”
Miss Hill nodded her head ruefully, “Yes, my dear, she probably would.” They sat drinking tea until she broke the silence. “Let us be practical. You say you have a provisional place in hall for next year?”
Anya nodded.
“I have contacts and I’m sure they will be understanding. We’ll make sure you can go there as soon as you like. You’ll have plenty of time to sort out what to do more permanently when you graduate, things will be a little less raw then. And we will be happy to store any bits and pieces you want to keep until you have a home of your own.”
“And I’ll be here on Monday to argue your case.” Her brother added, nodding assent to all that his sister had promised. We will help you in any way we can.”
“But you must find for yourself the strength to cope with all that life is throwing at you.” Miss Hill’s words reminded Anya of school assemblies but her tone softened as she added “We’ll leave you on your own now, you have a lot to think about and you don’t need us interfering. But we’ll be back on Monday morning and if you need anything in the meantime you will phone won’t you?”
Anya shut the door behind them and leant back against it. The house already felt as if it was not her home. She had three days until Monday morning and in those three days she would clear the house and when the Hodges came they could leave with the key. She wasn’t going to stay a day longer. The next morning she would ring Miss Hill and ask her to get a hall place for Monday. If there was a problem she would hitch around the country until she could move in; nothing would persuade her to stay in the house one single day after Monday.
She walked down to the corner shop and begged for some boxes. All day Saturday she cleaned and cleared and the piles of rubbish in the back yard waiting for the bin men grew. She kept very little. There seemed to be little worth keeping.
She left her mother’s room until last. The bed had been stripped, she wondered who had done that, but the dressing table had not been touched. She swept the brushes and combs and bottles of makeup and cheap scent into a box before tentatively opening a drawer. It was empty. There were no stockings or crumpled underwear as she had expected. She opened the other drawers, they were all empty. She turned to the wardrobe and there were no wire hangers crammed with blouses and skirts. There was just one pink satin hanger and one dress.
But that dress was beautiful. Anya stripped off all her clothes and slipped the pale cream chiffon over her head. Her back was bare, without thinking she straightened it, standing tall, she held her head high and let the folds of the elegant cowl neck fall. She couldn’t remember having ever seen her mother wearing it. It was far too sexy to be a wedding dress even if her mother had ever been married. It was a dress for seduction. She wondered why it was the only thing her mother had left her.
She slipped out of the dress and as she climbed into her own clothes she saw how cheap they were. She sat down on the bed with understanding flooding through her. Martin hadn’t asked her out, she had made no friends at school or at university, because she really w
asn’t ‘one of them’. When they looked at her they saw a cheap working class girl dressed in badly made, cheap, market-stall clothes, on the occasions when they had spoken to her she had replied in her lazy scouse accent.
She looked at the dress hanging on its pink satin hanger and determined to change. ‘That’s what you meant about not fitting in wasn’t it Mum? You wanted me to but didn’t know how to help me?’
It was only when she was closing the door that she noticed the metal trunk under the bed, it was identical to the one she kept her own diaries in. ‘Perhaps, Mum, we were more alike than I thought.’ Anya spoke aloud for no reason other than that it felt right.
She didn’t have to worry about how she could open the box as the key was in the lock. The contents weren’t as well organised as hers but the contents were far more varied. In amongst the jumble of bundles of envelopes of different sizes and colours she saw a small box wrapped in brown paper, tied with string and addressed, in a barely literate scrawl in pencil to Mel Cave, 16 Tennyson Street, Birkenhead, Cheshire, England. As she picked it up and turned it over in her hands Anya saw that the parcel had never been opened. The stamps had been ripped off, Anya wondered why, but she could make out parts of a blurred postmark. 11 ARBA 1955. She pulled at the knot in the string and eventually unpicked it. As she prised off the lid and pulled at the crimpled tissue paper to see what the parcel contained she wondered why her mother had never been sufficiently curious to find out what someone had sent her from ‘ARBA’.
The ring was beautiful. Set in gold the blue stone, which looked like a sapphire, was surrounded by twelve white stones that looked like diamonds. Even if the stones were paste it was beautiful and Anya went to place it on the fourth finger of her left hand. She hesitated and put it instead on her right hand. It fitted perfectly. She held her hand out and admired it. Her mum had never opened the parcel and had never worn the ring, she had never known that she had something that might be valuable and could have been pawned or sold for enough money to have made her life easier or at least bought some luxury that would have made it more bearable.
In the box, folded so small that she nearly missed it, was a piece of paper.
“Dear Mel, I cant send money but this should be worth a bit so sell it or keep it I dont mind which. Sorry Im not there to help. You know why I had to go. Your 21 now. Grown up. I think of you all the time, your loving brother, Vince.”
‘So I have an Uncle Vince.’ Anya thought. ‘Why didn’t Mum ever mention him?’ Maybe she did have some family after all, maybe Vince was still alive, maybe so were her grandmother and grandfather. Maybe she wasn’t alone. She put the ring back in the box where it had been for 15 years, she would decide what to do with it another time.
Anya turned her attention back to the box and picked out a bundle of envelopes held together with rubber bands. Anya hadn’t thought her mother was the type to have kept love letters but when she looked more closely she realised they had never been posted and were all addressed to ‘Mr Vincent Cave’ at a Post Office Box number in Bridgetown Barbados. So that was where ARBA was.
With some trepidation Anya opened the first envelope and unfolded the letter. The nearest thing to a date was the word ‘Monday’ written in the top right hand corner of the single sheet of cheap lined note paper. The letter was signed ‘Mel’. She looked back at ‘Monday’ trying to work out what she could understand from the fact that there was no date. She decided it meant that Mel wrote to her brother Vince very often. Maybe she had even posted some.
“Vince, it’s a girl. I’ve called it Anya because it’s got to have a name and the woman in the bed next to me was reading a book by someone called Anya something. Perhaps it’s too pretty a name for something that should never have existed. I should have got rid of it like you said. But you’d left and I was too scared to do it on my own. I will never forgive you for leaving. Now what can I do? Just put up with everything I suppose. It was alright for you, you could leave. I couldn’t.”
Thoughtfully Anya put the letter back with the others in the rubber band. She wondered why her mother had never posted all these letters, perhaps they were her diaries.
Anya thought of Marion in her flat in the block near the docks. Her mother, Mel, had been in the same position but things would have been a lot worse in 1950. How had she managed? Why hadn’t she ever said anything about it? She had so many questions but it was too late for answers. No wonder her mum had resented her.
There was a bundle of cheaper envelopes with the addresses written in the same handwriting that had been on the small parcel wrapped in brown paper.
“Mel. Im sorry. I just ran when I found out. I didnt know what else to do. It was me nicked the rent box there wasnt much in it but it got me here. Write to me. Tell me how your getting on. Sorry for leaving you when you needed me. Your loving brother, Vincent A Cave.”
“Why couldn’t you have told me the truth Mum?” Anya spoke aloud to the empty house. “What was the problem? Was Vince my Dad? Was your brother my father?” Anya remembered a girl in her form who found out just before her exams that the woman she thought was her mother was really her grandmother because her eldest sister was her mother.
Anya realised she knew nothing about herself and, worse, she had no one to help her find answers. She took the ring out of the box and put it on her finger again. It was the only connection she had with anyone else in the world so she turned it round on her finger and promised herself that one day she would find out what it all meant.
She turned back to the box and pulled out a long narrow brown envelope. She tipped it over and two pieces of folded paper fell out.
She unfolded one and saw it was her birth certificate. She read the carefully written words in ‘Column 1 When and Where Born’ Ninth August 1950, Clatterbridge Hospital. That much she knew. In ‘Column 2 Name if any’ was written ‘Anya’. So far so good. But her eye was drawn to Column 4 Name and Surname of Father. Underneath was written the one stark, stigmatic word ‘Unknown’. ‘Why did she say unknown?’ thought Anya, ‘Whoever it had been she must have known. Then she read ‘Column 5 Name and Maiden Surname of Mother’. There was only one name ‘Melanie Elizabeth Cave’ There was no maiden name. There was just a black dash in ‘Column 6 Rank or Profession of Father’. Here was the proof that her mother had never been married, she didn’t have only the Hodges’ letter to tell her she was illegitimate. Somehow seeing this in black and white made it worse and the bubble of her fantasy that she had a father, somewhere, who would come back to care for her burst.
She turned to the other certificate, her mother’s. The date of birth ‘The 24th day of January 1934’. She would have been just 16 when her daughter was born.
She looked across at the names of her mother’s parents on her mother’s birth certificate, both were there. Father was named as Albert Edward Cave and mother was Elizabeth Ena Cave formerly Goodwin.
‘So these are my grandparents.’ Anya looked at the old fashioned names. Her grandmother had a maiden name so at least they had been married. Why had her mum had nothing to do with them? She knew nothing about Albert and Elizabeth Cave other than their names. They might be alive somewhere. They must have abandoned their pregnant daughter, thrown her out of their house just as Marion’s parents had done. Anya guiltily thought back to those years when she had thought that getting pregnant was the answer to all her problems. How little she had known.
After several minutes staring at the pieces of official paper she had in her hands Anya thought she had the answer. Melanie’s brother made her pregnant. Why else would he have run away? Their parents threw them both out. Melanie, not yet 16, found somewhere to live but Vincent ran away to Barbados leaving his sister to fend for herself. Five years later, filled with guilt, he sent her a ring in a parcel she never opened because she knew who had sent it. These things, Anya knew, happened in families.
She recognised there were gaps in her explanation. How her mother found a home? How had she paid the rent for twen
ty years? Why did she have that beautiful dress? But her theory answered so many other questions. Why there had never been a father around, why her mother hated her, why there was no family at all in their lives.
Since there was no one to tell her that her presumptions were wrong, this was what she believed about herself for many years.
Anya turned to an envelope marked ‘Clatterbridge 1958’. She remembered that week in hospital when she had had her appendix out. She had enjoyed herself though it had hurt a lot. She had been in a ward with lots of older women and they had looked after her well, giving her their ice cream. There were half a dozen forms inside which all seemed to be consent forms. Only one seemed to be saying what the consent was required for. ‘Sterilisation’
She couldn’t decipher much of what was written in very poor handwriting in the notes section but she could pick out the words ‘rape’ and ‘incestuous impregnation’. She was right. Vincent had raped his sister and run away to Barbados. “Oh shit.” She spoke aloud. “Oh Mum.” As she sat with the contents of the silver trunk surrounding her Anya forgave her mother so many things.
It was dark when Anya let herself think about the practical problems that faced her. If she was to leave the house on Monday she would need help and the only person she could think of was Mr Lupton. He had the use of vans and she knew he had connections with various charities from all the notices on the canteen wall. She had to get in touch with him but he wouldn’t be at the laundry late on a Saturday night. She leafed through the phone book thankful that he had an unusual name. He was very sympathetic and said that he would be very happy to collect all the furniture the next day.
She was ready early, standing at the window waiting for the pale blue laundry van to pull up outside. Mr Lupton had said 5 o’clock and he was exactly on time. When she opened the door she was embarrassed when he gave her a fatherly hug and was surprised to see Martin standing by the van.
Highly Unsuitable Girl Page 4
