May
MAY 2. Return to the Danish plot. We’ve caught the tulips at their best, rare at this time of year. There are runs of reds standing straight like soldiers. A naturalising yellow like a large buttercup is almost over. The wild cherry trees are in full blossom with delicate, fragrant flowers. Translucent leaf screens the site like a watercolour, softly blurring the boundaries. We wander round in wonder. The house can wait. Cowslips stand tall in the meadow; I cut them before Henri mows. We mix them with cherry blossom, like dressing a church for a spring wedding. I rub my face along the larch, the new needles soft as a kitten. We sit on the terrace, silver birch stark against the sky. This is the slowest burn of my growing places. It is mostly about trees and bushes, creating space for wild flowers to make a home. Here is land we subtly shift to bring in light, build painterly corners. The espalier pears are all in bloom, waiting for the bees. The apple trees too are covered in bud. For two long Scandinavian days the sun shines, we eat breakfast outside, barbecue sea trout from the bay, walk along the empty beach. There is still a threat of frost in the night. I light morning fires. There are no passing cars or sirens, just a background hum of birds and waves. The supermarket is selling half-price seed like a pusher outside a school. I buy too many packets. We are planting bulbs from the lily of the valley bought for Henri’s birthday bunch. My days are peaceful but my dreams disturbed, I am again surrounded by dangerous men. In my bag there is a DNA kit and train tickets for Liverpool. It is uncertain what they’ll bring. Until then I have poppies to sow and grass to lie in, beautiful escape.
Our days in Denmark start with a pyjama walkabout, sometimes with a coat, fleece, hat and scarf, thick woollen socks. I wander down the lane like this in hope of seeing neighbours’ anemones, stalking feeding deer. Mostly though we patrol the plot’s borders, looking for new life and new blooms, new bud in spring. We watch it fade in winter. It is here we will see the small changes, spot the spread of wild lupin, see how the blackbirds have a nest in the hollowed birch. It is on these walks that we get a feel for the life outside our interventions. I spend hours watching. Time drifts like smoke from the stove.
MAY 5, 7PM. Allotment. Large, lazy wings, a prehistoric profile: I arrive at the allotment to see a grey heron being chased by a crow. It had been in the pond, hunting small frogs. There are hundreds now. The crow harries it off site. The heron doesn’t want the hassle. It is another evening visit after work, soundtracked by birdsong. I have been carrying seed all day in among papers and printouts I need to read. I have made up a mix of American amaranth and an unusual sorrel. I have added Danish lettuce. I’ll mostly crop as cut-and-come-again leaf. A fox appears a few feet away, looks at me unconcerned, a little curious. It’s young, its coat almost fluffy. It trots slowly past and suddenly jumps with puppy surprise as though it’s seen prey. It roots out a pair of leather gardening gloves. Another time a fox stole one of my shoes when I had changed in the rain into wellingtons. I found it later, chewed and abandoned, unsuitable for work. The fox rolls around on the ground. I should perhaps interfere, save the gloves. I move towards it but it grabs one and runs. It is darker now. The woodpecker calls. I leave content, the antidote to office life, old anxieties, even anger – infallible as always.
MAY 8, FRIDAY 5.40PM. Halfway to Liverpool. Trees flash past, toy-town houses, fields, roads, rivers, horses, hopes. I feel uncertain. This trip has been looming for a few weeks now. The accused waiting for trial. The condemned. The upsides are obvious: perhaps a father, a family, though 50 years late. Anxiety has burrowed under my skin like scabies, whispering fear in my ear. I feel like a kid with Christopher. I wish they were all still here: Frank, even Sheila, my brother. I have the DNA kit in the bag beside me, mocking me with my hopeless hopes, for what, for fuck’s sake? It is all long lifetimes away. I am not the editor facing north but almost the same boy as on the train to Paddington meeting another father in another time; or the 33-year-old going to meet his mother. You’d think I’d have a handle on it now.
I change at Crewe. The rain is insistent. I am passed by a carriage load of close-cropped men in too-tight suits; big-hatted, clingy women in clinging dresses, returning from the racetrack. Not long now till kindly Christy O’Toole – this my first and likely last journey unless the kit proves me wrong. I can’t help but hear Sheila’s witching cackle, her last revenge on foolish men.
They are still a mystery to me, her and Ray, relics from another time, belonging in a gothic novel: a raddled Johnny Depp could play me, a busty Joan Collins my mother. I am close now. An emptiness like hunger. Runcorn, Acton Bridge, the fields are waterlogged. My fellow passengers are working on their laptops, reading phones and magazines. Their weekend starts here. This time tomorrow I will be heading south with my swabs in a bag. It is hyper real, a parallel universe, now moments away. Liverpool South for John Lennon airport, Lime Street: he will be waiting at the station, my name on a card like at an airport. Except there is no sign saying Allan Jenkins; no answer on his mobile. He isn’t home. I need to pee but daren’t leave the platform. I wait 20 minutes. I try the taxi rank and the other exits. It is a sprawling Friday evening. People with places to go. There is a neat, elderly man also waiting. I catch his eye, look questioningly. He looks away. How long to wait is long enough? I try his mobile phone another time. I re-call his house. Has something happened? Has he changed his mind? I have to leave. The old man carefully unfolds a piece of paper – Allan Jenkins. He has been waiting on another platform. His timing was confused. I shake his hand. Rain is hammering down. We go to the hotel. We eat in the restaurant. He insists on paying. We drink spirits and talk till late: my story, his story, his brother Frank’s. I want it to be him but DNA hangs over my hopes. The next day we visit Frank’s grave, except Christy doesn’t know where it is. It has been 30 years since he was here: he goes to funerals, not graves. There are thousands of headstones, many with fresh flowers. I call the cemetery helpline: it is Liverpool City Council out-of-hours, the Saturday service. The tape plays looped music, all their operators are busy but my call’s important, it says. No chance they’ll know where Francis O’Toole is buried. We leave.
Sitting in his son Paul’s conservatory, I show them the Barnardo’s records with Frank’s name, occupation, his navy barracks and ship. He reads them quietly. Paul looks me over and says I have the O’Toole eyes. The same pale blue, agrees his wife. I have been scanning for noses, mouths, chins, facial features. I may have missed the eyes. It is always the eyes with everyone. I suspect there are maybe millions of us. There is only one way to be sure. Christy and I swab the inside of our cheeks anti-clockwise for a minute. We label the DNA envelopes carefully.
Paul reads out the Barnardo’s notes: his Uncle Frank’s character is ‘indifferent’. Sheila’s, he reads, is weak. Our pale blue eyes well up. I try hard to hold it in. I had somehow forgotten how poisonous the papers are. Later we meet Christy’s eldest son. He had worked with Frank, he says. Being his nephew and Christy’s son had meant he was accepted easily. They are gentle with me, the Liverpool O’Tooles. I am fragile like cracked china.
Christy and I take a ferry across the Mersey and look at the liver birds; we visit The Beatles’ Cavern and take in the city sights. Too soon I am back on the train heading south. I wonder if I will see him again. He says we will stay in touch whatever the test says. But it’s not possible, I think. Back home, we examine photos of his father and grandfather. It is there in the eyes, says Henri. I blow them big and compare with photos of me. It might be possible. I walk to the post office and place our DNA in the box. It will be a long five to 12 days. The murderous nightmare returns that night, the door in the dream fast shrinking in the frame as I struggle to keep attackers out.
MAY 10, SUNDAY. I am unsettled. My internal world is shifting like disturbed stones in a pharaoh’s tomb. As ever, I head to the garden centre. We are there a long time. I am indecisive like Alzheimer’s. We gather trays of geraniums, poppies; too many for the car. I follow in a taxi. It takes
a lot of flowers to quiet my anxious inner voice. While Henri fixes pots and window boxes, I go to Plot 29. Mary is there. She is looking stronger. Her broad beans are tall and in flower, her wigwams already up. I weed carefully in the sun for a few hours to give the small salad leaves a chance. It is good work: husbanding and nurturing, encouraging baby plants to grow free of being smothered by choking weed. The plot looks full of promise for summer, pea shoots and beans are shyly poking through. I am grateful for this place, for my patient wife who has planted the pots and swept the roof ready for me to cart the rubbish out.
This much I learned about Frank in Liverpool: he passed his exams for grammar school but, with 13 kids, the family couldn’t afford the uniform and books. His eldest daughter was a day off 21 when he died. He never married their mum. He was respected in his telecoms job. He was never late, always early for work. He was to be found at 7.30am, sitting doing the crossword. He liked to drink. His chosen pub was a Yates Lodge, his drink of choice white wine. His brother Christy went to his funeral 31 years ago but has never been back to his grave.
MAY 13, 6.30PM. It has been hot, I have been hopeless, torn between two worlds, neither fully formed. My identity feels fluid, memories bubbling up. They were kind to me in Liverpool, the old man and his sons, but it’s been sucking my breath away. I have spent my life building in love. I believe in sticking and staying. I won’t repeat my mother (or father), I tell myself. Now I am demolishing my security brick by brick, searching for the shaky foundations and sand on which I am built. It is relentless now. I am in the shadowy basement of my life, throwing light into hidden corners and tearing out rotting wood. I turn to the plot for relief. Late sun casts church-window light through the greening trees. I pick about, thin the too-tight rows, potter in peace. There is no one here, just a robin following where I’m watering. Heavy rain is forecast so I figure it is me that needs the life-giving can after can, row after row. We eat my salad with supper. I feel happier for the first time in days.
MAY 14. A note in from the DNA lab. All arrived and all in order. The results may take another two weeks. My heart flips when I see the message in my inbox but I have to wait.
MAY 17, SUNDAY. A sunny afternoon back at the allotment for my repeat prescription. I arrive to a flurry of noise. A duck is being chased by the fox and barely makes it over the gate. A few minutes later it returns, loudly indignant. I am worried for it. It scours the trees and makes a lot of fuss. It flies in repeated circles over the site. The fox may have stolen its eggs or attacked its young. I wish for its sake it would quiet. I dig up the remaining chicory, leaving three tall plants, leaves fanned out like a flamenco dress. The soil is the colour of coffee grounds against the fresh green growth. I rake and even the slope a bit, admire the iris breaking through the grass. It is our only perennial flower, nestled in the bank next to the fast-spiking sorrel. It is delicate, quietly coloured, found at a rare plant sale. Mary is here when Howard arrives. Our three gardeners reunited. We have decided to replace the path and planks on Mary’s end of the plot but leave the shallower end uncovered. I have been liking the way the buttercup has been colonising the bank. We will let it run free, not a time to tame it. There is another explosion of squawking. The fox misses the crazy duck by a couple of feet. Again the bird barely escapes, while the predator hangs by its front legs on the fence.
MAY 19, TUESDAY. My extra month of therapy is over so we decide to continue week by week. I started coming here in the anxious aftermath of reading my Plymouth records and now it seems my search is shuddering to an end. I have no more avenues to explore and no more appetite for pain. Christopher’s grip on me is loosening, or so I tell myself and her. I am still unsure whether he’s hanging on to me or it’s me holding on to him. He is dead. It is finished. No more to be done, just a few more questions to be asked. Maybe I will never be totally free or want to be. Will he always be aged six for me, broken by my mother? Will he always be a kid with his lopsided smile? Will I always be sorry? Now it’s just me and his memory. I want to hold on to his fading. I want always to give him wild flowers and tend his marigolds.
MAY 20, 5.30PM. I am on the bus with Howard on the way to build a bean wigwam. A pregnant woman gets on. I give up my seat. Sitting at the back, I open my phone. There is an email from the DNA lab. My results are ready. For a few moments I imagine waiting. I should prepare, I half-tell myself, and open it at home. I had thought I was free from hope for a father. I’ve been proud to stand alone. But I have broken through to emptiness like an undiscovered cave, with giant ferns and rivers, herds of animals, a million bats. How to miss something you never had – who knew it was possible? Normality is a powerful tug, my desire to pass on simple goodness, not my mother’s toxic blood.
Client Ref: Jenkins
Test Results – Peace of Mind
Dear Allan Jenkins
Enclosed with this letter you will find a copy of your test results. We understand this can be a nervous time and it’s important to take a few moments and breathe gently.
Whether the results are what you had hoped for or not, please take the time to consider how you will move forward rather than reacting to the news which may cause you to say or act in a way that is not your true feeling.
If after receiving the results and considering your options you would still like to talk to someone, then the organisations below may be able to assist – we are also on hand to answer any questions you have.
I open the attachment. There are two pages of matching mathematical equations, solving a theorem: the mystery of me. I skip to the end, the answer.
Relationship Test Certificate Case Reference Number: P024167
Sample No: HID150513_014 Alleged Uncle: Christopher O’Toole
born 06/09/1936
Sample No: HID150513_016 Child: Allan Peter Jenkins
born 15/01/1954
DNA isolation was carried out separately for all samples. Genetic characteristics were determined by PowerPlex 21 PCR Kit (Promega), Investigator HDPlex PCR Kit (Qiagen) and PowerPlex Y23 PCR Kit (Promega). In parallel, positive and negative controls were performed which gave the expected and correct results.
We were requested to find out if Christopher O’Toole is the paternal uncle of Allan Peter Jenkins or not.
Based on the genotyping results, we compared the following two hypotheses.
A: Christopher O’Toole is the paternal uncle of Allan Peter Jenkins. The father of Allan Peter Jenkins is a full sibling of Christopher O’Toole.
B: Christopher O’Toole and Allan Peter Jenkins are unrelated.
Due to multiple exclusions on Y-chromosomal markers, hypothesis A is genetically impossible.
The bus climbs the hill. My stop next. But my legs are cut from under me. Will they wobble? Will I fall? Teasingly close, now snatched away. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck! Sheila slithers in her undead grave, smiles, satisfied. Howard looks to me questioningly. My chatter’s choked. My smile sickly. There is a sister of a friend come to stay at the house. No way to be alone. I need a cat to cuddle, a duvet to hide in, but next best is building a garden structure with hazel poles. The plot feels friendly. We sharpen the ends of Jane Scotter’s sturdier sticks and hang on to push them in. It is near impossible not to grin. We will transplant the beans later but the wigwam is soon up and tied with twine. Howard picks salad. My appetite is shot. My mother. Christopher barely three months old, her third pregnancy, still living at home with her mum and dad and brothers. Breastfeeding and sleeping with Frank, and at least AN Other. My father. I feel confused and conned. I can’t bear to call Christy O’Toole. I need a rest from the rollercoaster.
It has been sitting there for 60 years. In a file on a shelf in Stepney. I should have worn protective armour. The same with the Plymouth records, information gathered like the Stasi, secrets collated. Information so explosive it must be handled with care. I have been working on this bombsite for more than a year now, trying to make it safe. It was always likely go off at any minute, whether from Dudley’s dangerous
thoughts, his bitter whispers or demands for more money. The fiction about Francis O’Toole though was a sophisticated device waiting patiently for me to pass by. Sooner or later luck runs out. I cannot even pretend this was for Christopher, no shelter behind my brother. This was simply me and my missing. A child’s need drowning out any other adult voice. I am back now where I started, square one, minus a fresh injury. I heal quickly like a jump jockey, bones, heart sometimes broken but spirit mostly intact. I am happy with my life, my beautiful wife, the people who love and need me, the work that makes me happy that others seem to appreciate. It is mid to late May in my year of gardening and childhood, my communion with Christopher. The right prayers have been said, the priests have left, now it is just him and me saying goodbye. Like the last time I saw him and told him I loved him. I was his brother. It has always been enough for me, mothers and fathers were for others. I had him, he needed me and so did his memory. I have stood on the precipice and recited his name.
MAY 22. I call Christy O’Toole. I have been sitting on the DNA results for two days now and it has to be done. It’s probably the last time and the thought makes me melancholic. He can’t quite take in the news at first and gets it the wrong way round. I think we were seduced by the romance – him for his long-dead brother, me for a father I’ll never know. He tells me they’ve been planning my next trip. I tell him I’m grateful for his kindness but here it ends. I wish him and his wife and family well. I wish it were different. I wish it were true. It would have been good to have loving in my line. But it’s the Samuel Beckett oblivion ending. We will keep in touch, we say. I will send him a Christmas card.
Plot 29 Page 16
