Weekend in Paris

by Robyn Sisman

  “All right,” Molly said, casually hitching her bag onto her shoulder, as her heart knocked at her ribs. Perhaps she had misjudged him? She walked beside him in silence to the café, scuffing leaves, thinking, This is my father. I am walking with my father in the park. Je me promène dans le parc avec mon père.

  “Would you like something to eat? To drink?” he asked, as they reached the entrance, gesturing with the empty glass. “Hot chocolate? Tea? Cake? We could go inside, if you like.”

  Molly shook her head. “I’d rather walk in the sunshine.”

  He smiled agreement. “Me, too.”

  They took a broad path that led toward a large greenhouse in the distance. Molly felt the excitement wind tight inside her as she waited for him to speak.

  “It was the summer of Princess Diana’s wedding,” he began, “Lady Di, as she was then. I was twenty-three, and had finally come to the end of my five years of medical training. A group of us used to fool around with comedy, and that year we took a show up to the Edinburgh Festival. We were pretty awful, I expect, but we had a great time. There were always parties to go to, and other people’s shows to see, and such a buzz in the city that one felt on a permanent high. Plus, on my very first day, I met a beautiful girl with long blonde hair and the most gorgeous laugh, who was doing the sets for one of the other shows at our venue. We bonded over an enormous cut-out of Mrs. Thatcher that refused to stay upright. Frankie had a staple gun. I thought she was marvelous.”

  “Frankie?” Molly wrinkled her nose.

  “That’s what I called your mother. Frankie and Johnnie.” He sighed. “Golden days. We were madly in love for about three weeks. When the festival was over, we sneaked off to Skye for a few days, lying to our parents that there was lots of clearing up to do. My mother was particularly furious because I was about to go off to work in America, and she’d organized various farewell dos, which she had to cancel.” He grinned happily. Molly glimpsed how he must have appeared twenty-two years ago—eager, boyish, good-looking even.

  “Anyway, finally we had to say good-bye. We talked about her coming to visit me in California. When I first got there I wrote to her practically every day, and rushed to my pigeon-hole every morning, looking for her letters. But my new life was so exciting. I wrote less often, and so did she. Then her letters stopped altogether.” He glanced at Molly, and she could tell that this was difficult for him. “I won’t pretend to you that I was heartbroken. My life had moved on. I was meeting new people, my work was interesting, I was even learning to surf—sort of. Then Frankie sent me this rather odd letter, only a few weeks before Christmas, saying that she was thinking of coming to California for the holiday, and what was I doing?” An embarrassed look came over his face. He fiddled with the hair above his ear. “This doesn’t sound too good, but the truth is that a rather attractive girl called Kristal had invited me to spend Christmas at her family’s ski lodge at Lake Tahoe. It didn’t occur to me that there might be any urgent reason why Frankie wanted to see me. So I wrote back saying I was a bit tied up at Christmas, but if she was keen why didn’t she come out at Easter?” He paused, and dug his hands into his pockets. “I never heard from her again.”

  By common consent they turned into the path that ran alongside the greenhouse. An orange tree sailed past them in midair. Molly saw that men on small forklift trucks were transporting them inside, pot and all, to keep them safe over the winter.

  “I stayed in America for three years,” he continued, “and then came back to take up a job at a hospital in Birmingham. After California, it was a grim life. I was working or on call practically all the time, and I didn’t know anyone. I remembered that Frankie’s home was in Shropshire, not too far away. Perhaps I still felt a bit guilty about the Christmas thing. Anyway, I trawled through my old address book for her number. Her mother answered the phone, and told me Frankie had recently moved away. She was quite cagey, wouldn’t say exactly where, or what Frankie was doing, but she obviously sussed pretty quickly who I was and suggested I come to see her. Well, I say ‘suggested,’ but something in her voice made me think it was urgent.”

  “And you went? You mean you actually met Granny?” Molly turned to him eagerly. His story was beginning to take fire in her heart. This point of contact between her beloved grandmother and unknown father seemed supremely important.

  “Oh, yes. In some ways I got to know Catherine extremely well. She was a lovely woman, and very kind to me. But . . . I’m sorry to ask, is she still alive?”

  Molly shook her head. “She died when I was fifteen.”

  “Ah. That explains a lot. I’m sorry.”

  “I always thought she must know about you. Tell me. Please.”

  And so, digging his hands deeper into his pockets and tipping his head back in the way she now realized was characteristic, he told her about driving out of Birmingham, one harsh winter Sunday, and arriving an hour late for lunch, having lost his way in the folds of brown moorland hills, with the beginnings of a blizzard dusting them with white. In Catherine’s cottage a fire burned comfortably, with some hairy dog—“Brando,” Molly reminded him, “because he had pouchy cheeks like Marlon Brando in The Godfather ”—okay, with Brando lolling beside the flames and the smell of roast lamb wafting from the kitchen. Mrs. Clearwater—Catherine—had settled him in an armchair with an enormous sherry, insisting that she was so thankful he was late because it had given her the chance to find out who the murderer was in her library book. Molly hugged her elbows as she listened to him evoke, with such affection and poignant humor, the woman she had loved. Over lunch, he went on, they had conversed normally about normal topics, then taken their coffee back to the fire to talk. “What I am going to say,” she’d announced, “I tell you now in confidence. I want you to give me your word that you will not abuse that confidence.” Impressed by her solemnity, he had promised.

  “And that’s when I found out that I had a daughter, Molly Catherine, aged two and a half.” He stopped on the path for a moment, and turned to smile at her. “You.”

  “Wh-what did you think?”

  “At first I didn’t know what to think. I was shocked, confused, amazed. I was very lucky that your grandmother was such a wise and generous-hearted woman. She didn’t condemn me, or tell me what to do, or insist I cough up money—nothing like that. She just told me to go away and sort out what I felt, although I think I knew straight away. I can remember driving back to the hospital on the dark, slushy roads, with my windscreen wipers going like crazy and white dots of snow swirling in the headlights, thinking, I’m a father, I’m a father! Catherine had given me a photograph. I remember pulling it out when I stopped at a service station, and just staring in astonishment.”

  “A photo? Of me, you mean?”

  “Yes. Would you like to see it?” His hand was already travelling to his breast pocket.

  “You’ve got it here? ”

  “I keep it with me always. Look, let’s go and sit down on that bench, so you can look properly.”

  They sat side by side on the smooth wood, surrounded by flowerbeds gaudy with petunias. He flipped open his wallet and drew out a small, square photo with a thin white margin round the edge and corners worn to papery softness. As he handed it to her, their fingers touched. Molly was acutely conscious of the physical intimacy, of the masculine solidity of his shoulder so close to her own. It felt strange, but not unpleasant.

  The photo showed a small girl in pink dungarees and a pink-and-yellow-striped T-shirt, hands stuck into her pockets, blonde head tipped confidently to the camera with a cheeky I-am-me-and-I-am-marvelous smile. Molly knew the photo from the album at home. But seeing it again in these strange circumstances, knowing it had been carried around for years and years by a man she’d not known until now, raised goosebumps down her back.

  “The weekend after I’d been to see Catherine,” he continued, “I went home and told the whole story to my mother, and asked her what I should do. She was pretty surprised, naturally, bu
t she also asked if I was sure the baby was mine. Well, of course, I couldn’t be sure, though I couldn’t imagine anyone lying about such a thing, especially Frankie. But I showed my mother that photo. God! I can remember it so well—leaning against the fridge while she found her glasses, watching her hold the photo under the light for what seemed like hours. Finally, she looked up at me and said, ‘I don’t know what you can do about it, darling, but those are definitely the Griffin eyebrows.’ ”

  Molly’s eyes flew to his face. Recognition punched her in the stomach. Wonderingly, she touched a finger to one of her eyebrows, tracing the long, swooping line that tipped upward like a swift’s wing, so distinctive that people often commented on them—the same line she could see repeated more emphatically on his face, the same line that was faintly but unmistakably duplicated on the face of the child in the photograph.

  They stared at each other, rapt as lovers, awed by the potency of this tiny proof of genetic inheritance.

  “Yours are rather more kempt than mine,” he said at last, “but she was right, wasn’t she? I’m afraid I’ve been staring at your eyebrows for the past hour or so.”

  Molly nodded slowly. This really was her father. She was his daughter. And at least two other people, her grandmother and his mother—another, brand-new grandmother—had known this for a fact. With every passing moment her dark secret was rising into the light. It was thrilling, frightening, disorienting. She bent her head again to the photograph, moved by the sight of the absurdly short legs and wide, innocent face of the child she had once been, wondering how he could have closed his heart to that tiny figure.

  “So what did you do?” she asked at length.

  “I rang your grandmother and asked if I could see you, or at least have some kind of contact with you—whatever Frankie thought was appropriate. Oh, and I sent her some kind of toy and asked if she could smuggle it through to you for Christmas.”

  “A toy?” Molly looked up.

  “I know, I know.” He winced, mistaking her sharpened interest for contempt. “It was a pathetic gesture. Selfish. Sentimental. I just needed to do something, to make it real for myself.”

  “But what was the toy? Do you remember?”

  “Oh, yes. In fact, Catherine told me you seemed very keen on your ‘special present from Father Christmas.’ I realize now it was a rather odd animal to choose. Children generally prefer the obvious things—teddies, rabbits, tigers. But I wasn’t thinking of you so much as myself, and I was determined to find something unusual that might impress itself on your memory.”

  “Like—” Molly could hardly bring herself to say the word—“Like a . . . badger?”

  “Yes!” He looked delighted. “You can remember it, then?”

  Molly nodded. Her chest felt so tight she couldn’t speak. Bertie! He had given her Bertie, her companion for all these years, all those nights when she had lain in bed pouring her secrets into his ear, feeling his fur against her lips, wondering and wondering about her father. “He’s a ‘him,’ not an ‘it,’ ” she said. “He’s called Bertie. I still have him, though I know I’m supposed to be much too old for . . .” She turned her face away. I didn’t want a badger, I wanted you! But she couldn’t say the cruel words aloud. “Here, you’d better have this back.” She thrust the photograph into his hands.

  He looked at it unhappily. “Oh, Molly, I’m so sorry.”

  “Why didn’t anyone tell me?” she burst out.

  He reached into his wallet again and drew out a letter. “I don’t usually carry this about, but I brought it to the conference, hoping I’d meet you. It’s from your grandmother. You’d better read it yourself.”

  Molly took the folded sheets and opened them up. It was a shock to see the pale gray paper her grandmother had always favored and her familiar neat writing in faded blue ink. She saw from the date that the letter had been written almost nineteen years ago.

  Dear Jonathan,

  I’ve seen Fran and had a long talk with her. She was very angry to hear that I told you about Molly, but I can cope with that. I’m sure it’s right that you should know the truth.

  But I’m afraid that Fran is insistent that there should be no contact between you and Molly. As you know, Fran is a very proud, independent person. She took a brave decision in having Molly, and has coped marvelously with all the hard work a baby entails. Even you, I suspect, an overworked junior doctor, cannot quite imagine what it is like to raise a child alone, to be on call every day and be woken up every night, without remission.

  As a result, Fran now feels that Molly is her child, and hers alone. She did not ask you for help, and doesn’t want it now. Molly is happy and well balanced, and Fran cannot see the point of introducing a stranger into her life, especially one who is so busy and could only see Molly irregularly. She bears you no grudge, but she begs you to leave her and Molly to get on with their own lives.

  I don’t agree with Fran’s decision. I feel the time may come when Molly needs to know who you are. But Molly is her child, and I must respect her wishes.

  I’m sorry, Jonathan. I sense that you are not the sort of young man to shirk his responsibilities, but for the time being, at least, you must keep out of the picture completely. Rest assured that I will let you know if you are needed, and please feel free to contact me. I will be glad to tell you of Molly’s progress, on the understanding that you do not try to seek her out. Content yourself with the knowledge that she is a happy little thing, with a loving mother who will do everything possible for her.

  All the best,

  Catherine Clearwater

  Molly was still trying to take in what she had read when he spoke again. “I always had the feeling that your grandmother intended to tell you one day who I was, or tell me where I could find you. I got very wound up around the time of your eighteenth birthday, and again on your twenty-first. But, of course, I heard nothing, and now I know why. Once you turned twenty-one, I reckoned that I was free to try to find you. Not all children want anything to do with their real parents—quite a number of adopted children definitely don’t. I knew I had to be careful. I had just started to search, and suddenly I found you, in a place I would never have thought of looking.”

  Molly read through the letter again, her jaw tightening with resentment. “Happy and well balanced . . . no point in introducing a stranger into her life . . .” No point? How dared her mother decide for her? How did she know what it was like to see other children hoisted on their fathers’ shoulders, to watch Abi’s dad slip her a fiver with a wink and a whispered “Don’t tell Mum,” never to have the glare of her mother’s attention deflected by a third person? It could have been so different. She could have been different. Now it was too late.

  She refolded the letter, pressed it briefly to her cheek, remembering her grandmother with love, then handed it back to him. She stood up abruptly. “Let’s walk.”

  Taken by surprise, he stowed the treasures away again and was still sliding the wallet into his inner breast pocket when he caught up with her. “Don’t be too hard on your mother,” he said. “She meant it for the best, and she’s done a great job. Just look at you.”

  “Oh, yeah, just look at me.” Molly thumped her boots down on the gravel.

  “Has something upset you?” he asked gently. “Before meeting me, I mean. You said something earlier about a horrible day. Anything I can help with? I’d like to, if I can.”

  Molly felt her throat tighten with misery. “It’s just . . . I’m not fit for anything. I don’t understand anything. Other people seem to waltz through life, knowing exactly what to do and why they’re doing it, and I keep making stupid, stupid mistakes. I mucked up my university, I mucked up my job. Even this weekend, I’ve made a total idiot of myself.”

  “Not with me, you haven’t. I can’t imagine another girl I’d be happier to discover was my daughter.”

  “What do you know?” Molly stopped and glared at him. “You haven’t been around for twenty-one years. Well, let me
tell you, I’m a freak. I’m a goody-goody. Everybody says so. Mum’s brought me up to be that way, and every time I try to do something different, to do something on my own for a change . . .”

  She jerked her head in frustration and stomped to the edge of the path, arms folded, scowling into the blurred greenery. Yet another statue glowed in the dappled sunlight, this time of a young girl offering herself, with roses, to a libertine painter. Molly’s gaze focused on the details of her very low-cut dress and swelling breasts, her round face, the tiny feet emerging from a puffed-out eighteenth-century skirt. “There you go. That’s me.” She pointed contemptuously. “That’s the daughter you’ve been so keen to meet.”

  “She’s certainly very pretty,” he ventured cautiously. “I’m not so sure about him. Does he deserve her, do you think?”

  Molly stepped closer to the statue and rubbed at the lichen on the girl’s foot. “I don’t know,” she muttered.

  He moved to stand beside her. “Why don’t you tell me what’s happened?” he said softly. “Tell your old dad.”

  Molly opened her mouth to rebel at his use of the name he had no right to, but instead she found herself telling him about Fabrice. “I didn’t mean to betray him,” she finished. “I thought I was helping. But he was so angry, so contemptuous. Somehow he made me feel like a prig and a slut at the same time. I don’t know which is worse.”