by Sophie Duffy
A set of stamps.
A Beano.
A Monkees single, Daydream Believer.
A lock of glorious messy hair.
That Blue Peter annual.
A school photograph. Our class, squashed together, some of us cross-legged on the playground floor, others on benches, sitting or standing depending on size: Miss Mothball, Mandy Denning, Christopher Bennett, Lucas, in his bobble hat. All the other children whose names I can half-remember or who I’ve completely forgotten. Children who could now be dentists or tax collectors or traffic wardens. Who could even be dead, like Lucas… And there, above my Thing Two, is a little fat girl called Philippa, not looking at the camera at all, but looking down at her best friend in all the world.
And here are the things I put in at the last moment, my booty from the outside loo: one of Andy’s whiskers, a gold button, some shells from the beach, plus a lock of my own frizzy hair that has baffled hairdressers from here to London.
And now. At the bottom, in a plastic wallet, is another photograph I don’t remember ever seeing, though there is something vaguely familiar in the faces that stare out at me down through the years. A Polaroid photograph. A plumpish, big-boned woman, maybe in her forties for she has crow’s feet and slightly matronly hair, wearing what was known as a bed jacket, sitting on a chair with a baby, a bonny newborn, in her arms. The background is institutional… a hospital… you can make out a metal bed to one side… Who are these people? Why are they in Lucas’ Time Capsule?
I flip the photo over and there in beautiful schoolgirl handwriting are the words that one day I was meant to read. Elizabeth and Philippa, August 6th 1965, St Thomas’, London.
That is me, as a baby, one week old, the first time I’ve seen me so small. Maybe it is wishful thinking, but I am pretty sure I can make out you, Lucy, in there. And at last I get to see my grandmother, who died so long ago. She got to hold me after all, just as Sheila is holding her new granddaughter in the deckchair. Maybe she was sick in the hospital when I was being born. A death and a birth. They often go hand in hand… But how did this picture get in here?
Images beat about in my head: Helena coming into an empty dining room. Bare boards and dust. A forgotten marble. That’s where my Laura Ashley blouse got to. Helena’s slender hands as she gave me the tin. The Secret Project. She knew all about it. She must’ve slipped the photograph into the box before I buried it. All those years ago… Why didn’t she just give me the photo? Why bury it in the garden?
We sit quietly out here in the yard, listening to the shop bell in the background, the low hum of chatter floating through the back door, Karen’s gossip, the pip-pip-pip of the new modern till. A seagull freewheels overhead, ever hopeful for scraps, then vanishes, leaving an almost reverential hush. As if this is a moment of revelation. And surely it is, for Bob has disappeared briefly inside and reappeared with a battered old letter. A faded blue Basildon Bond envelope that he places in my hand.
“I rescued it from the tin when we dug it up, you know, Lugsy and I.” He gestures at the hole in the ground. “After you fainted, Wink and I sorted through everything as we could see they wouldn’t last forever. Just as well really – we didn’t imagine we’d have to wait this long.” He nods over at you, attempting a joke that doesn’t seem at all appropriate right now.
“Go on.”
“So we saw this photograph which Wink put in the plastic cover. But it’s the letter that tells the whole of it. The bigger picture, as it were. And I’ve kept it inside because if it got ruined you might never find out. What Helena wanted you to know, once you had a child of your own. So you’d understand. She wanted you to be a mother when you read this, that’s why she buried it. That’s why Wink and I rescued it.”
“And did you read it?”
Bob blushes. “I’m afraid so, yes.”
Nothing, not even Bob’s build-up, prepares me for what I read, as I sit on the deckchair, the box in my lap, the letter in my hand. The longest letter Helena has ever written me.
Dear Philippa,
By now you should be a mother. You should have seen the photograph of you as a baby sitting on Elizabeth’s lap. And now is the time for you to know the story behind this photograph. The truth.
Picture it: Elizabeth, wife to a judge, mother to Helena, is diagnosed with breast cancer. It is 1964 and her chances of survival are not good. She is forty-two, a woman who should be in her prime. She feels she has done nothing with her life, other than support her husband and entertain on his behalf. Her daughter, Helena, has been packed off to boarding school in Wales so Elizabeth doesn’t even have the satisfaction of being a proper mother to her. And now she is facing a death sentence, each second ticking by reminding her that she has not even begun to live.
Now go back a few years. Helena is eight-years-old and the judge has decided to book a fortnight’s holiday for the three of them in Torquay. Maybe he is thinking for once of his wife and daughter – on the other hand, it could be his golfing handicap. They stay in the Palace Hotel, where there is a young waiter who happens to take a shine to mother and daughter who frequently dine alone. He has no family of his own and he enjoys chatting with intelligent, witty Elizabeth and giving extra dollops of ice cream to pretty, bright Helena. On their last evening, after Helena has been put to bed and her husband retired to the hotel bar for the duration, Elizabeth has a stroll around the Palace grounds and who should she bump into but the young waiter, having a sneaky cigarette. He shouldn’t be out there but something made him seek the fresh air, other than the opportunity for an undetected smoke. They pass the next two hours deep in conversation and though they are from different worlds, different generations even, they find they can talk about nothing and everything. Elizabeth remembers what it is like to be young and for that reason, the next day before they leave the hotel for the final time, she slips a piece of paper into the waiter’s hand. On the paper is written her address and telephone and the instructions that if he ever finds himself in London he must look them up. She doesn’t suppose for one minute he will, but the gesture seemed romantic to her and she was only too happy to go along with this whim for once.
Nine years later, that is exactly what he does. He calls the number and Elizabeth answers straight away as if she knew it would be him. She has recently received the bad news and is wondering how she will get through the next few months, worried about leaving Helena alone with the judge, she can be so moody, he so hot-tempered. When the young man suggests a trip to the cinema, she can’t help but laugh. Such a youthful thing to do. And so romantic. So she finds herself saying yes, and that is how they end up going to the pictures watching a matinee showing of Goldfinger. He meets her outside with a single red rose. She hardly recognises him, he is well and truly a man now, about thirty, and not in his waiter’s uniform, but in a smart, dapper suit. They enjoy themselves so much, slipping back into their once familiar ways, that they agree to go again the next afternoon. And the next. By the fourth showing, they know all the words, all the hammed up orchestral manoeuvres, and their relationship has passed from friendship to something altogether different so that they find themselves booking into a quiet, exclusive hotel in the West End where one afternoon of passion results in Elizabeth falling pregnant, despite the new-fangled coil that she has fitted to ward off this very thing happening on the rare occasions she and the judge share the marriage bed. She is filled up with cancer; the last thing she wants is a baby. The waiter goes back to Torquay without ever knowing about the baby or the cancer, promising he will be back in a few months. Unfortunately it takes him rather longer than that as he has a nasty case of shingles and when he does eventually return, he phones the house in Dulwich only to be informed that regrettably the judge’s wife has passed away. What he isn’t told is that she refused what treatment might have prolonged her life in order to save her unborn child.
Elizabeth took a brave, possibly stupid decision and told the judge of her indiscretion and the consequent pregnancy. The judge, rather than ma
king a song and dance about it and divorcing his dying wife, which wouldn’t go down well in society, arranged a private adoption, though it would be a miracle if Elizabeth lasted long enough for the baby to be born at full term. But there was something about her resolution that made the judge prepare for the eventuality.
When the time came, the judge was unable to confine his wife at home as she was too ill. He booked her into a private room at St Thomas’ hospital where a strict sister was up to speed and utterly professional (if a little sergeant-majorly). On July 29th 1965, Elizabeth gave birth to a baby girl who she named Philippa. She was born clutching the coil that had failed Elizabeth but that was a symbol of the miracle that she was. It had been agreed between the parties concerned that Elizabeth would nurse her baby for ten days – that was the only demand she made and the judge in a rare moment of weakness agreed. After that, Philippa would be handed over to her new life. Her new identity.
But before that happened, when she – you – were a few days old, against my father’s orders, I snuck into the hospital and I met my baby sister – well, technically half-sister. You had this frizzy hair and big eyes that seemed to look at amazement at everything around you. But at the last minute, I couldn’t let you go. So I told my mother – our mother – that I would bring you up as my own. I would take you away to a place where no-one would ever find us. Elizabeth agreed – what mother wouldn’t want to keep her two daughters together? – and, before any papers were signed, she instructed her solicitor from her hospital bed – and what would turn out to be her death bed – to set up a trust fund that would pay an income into my account every month until you turned eighteen.
So, Philippa, it was all arranged. A few days later, when you were a week old, I came to the hospital for normal visiting hours to see you both. The last time she held you, our mother, she was smoothing your hair. I took a photo on a Polaroid borrowed from a happy father down the corridor before she kissed you goodbye and handed you over to a nurse for feeding. Then she kissed me goodbye, whispering thank you, and slipped her ring onto my finger before going to the loo as agreed. I took her place in the chair. When you were brought back, winded and pink, I cradled you in my arms, telling the young nurse that I would watch you until Elizabeth returned. I asked if it would be possible for a cup of tea, I was parched due to the hot weather. She promptly disappeared. I wrapped you up in a yellow shawl smuggled in with me in my Harrods bag which I had also stuffed full with nappies and baby cream from Elizabeth’s bedside locker. All my other worldly goods were squeezed into my vanity case which I’d kept out of sight under the bed. Then as if Fate had arranged it, a man in a pinstripe suit wandered, lost, into the wrong room. I asked him if he would be a gentleman and help me out, knowing we’d have a less suspicious exit with a man in charge. I smiled sweetly and he said of course and carried my bag while I held you close. We walked out of that hospital, you in my arms, into the hot August sunshine. The start of our new life.
That is the truth behind the photograph. The rest you must ask Bob. I pray he is still there to tell you.
Your loving sister,
Helena.
Helena’s words float before me and I wonder if my mind is playing tricks. Did I really just read that? Bob has sunk into the third deckchair, his head back, his eyes closed so I can almost believe he is sleeping.
Helena is my sister.
I take a closer look at the photograph, at my real mother, Elizabeth. I can see her hair that has been brushed back into a bun but what I didn’t spot before was the frizzy tendrils that had escaped. I see her big, wide shoulders and, even though she is sitting down, I know her legs are long. I see the ring on one of her fingers. It is hard to make it out but I know it is the one I wear on my own finger. The one Bob gave to me on my sixteenth birthday, left behind by Helena.
Helena is my sister.
Why did she want to take me on? She was too young. She couldn’t cope. She should’ve let me go. And why did my real mother agree to it? She must’ve known exactly what Helena was like. Shoes, lipstick, handbags. Who would she turn to for help?
“Why didn’t Elizabeth just sign those papers?” I ask Bob whose eyes are open now, fixed on the blue sky. A vapour trail. Anywhere but me. “I could’ve had a proper family.”
“She was your family.” Bob swings his eyes to his knees, rubs his chin so I can hear the scratchiness of the whiskers he has yet to shave. “And what is a proper family exactly?” he asks, a little philosophically for my liking.
“I don’t know.” I have to think about this. There must be someone I know who has a proper family. “Cheryl’s!” I say triumphantly, like I’ve banged the buzzer on a television quiz. “Cheryl grew up in a proper family. And look at her. She’s a doctor. I could’ve been a doctor with a family like that.”
“No, you couldn’t,” he says, gently. “You were hopeless at science.”
I remember Nathan and me in the back of Doug’s mini. How he’d lose me with his talk of molecules and genetics. Maybe I should have listened more carefully.
“Can you think of anyone else?”
I couldn’t think of anyone else.
“That’s not the point,” I say, my argument somewhat defeated. “Helena should’ve told me all along. Why pretend?”
“She wanted a new life. She didn’t want anyone to know who you were in case your grandfather came looking. He was a judge. He knew people. He could’ve made her come back to London. Got rid of you. She loved you.”
“Why did you go along with it? You’ve known for years.”
I can see Sheila biting her lip, clutching you – in your own innocent world, unaware of the drama in the yard, eyes closed, fingers twitching. Sheila grips Bob with an expression that says quite clearly and simply: Tell her.
That is when Bob starts crying, right there in the deckchair in the backyard, proper tears, runny nose, the whole works, causing a great big hammer to swoop down from the sky and whack me on the head… Of course! Oh, God… why have I never seen it?
“It’s you,” I say. “You’re the waiter. The man in the dapper suit. You’re the one.”
“Yes,” he says, rummaging for his handkerchief. “I’m sorry.”
“But how… ”
He doesn’t answer my question directly. Instead, in his own roundabout Bob way, he tells me the story he should’ve told me long ago.
“Helena found me,” he says, as if he were a stray cat, a misplaced pair of white gloves. “Your first day of school, do you remember? She’d got a new job as an admin assistant at the Palace. Her first day and it hadn’t gone too well. In fact it was awful – she’d had a nasty encounter with one of the managers. But she did have a moment to make some enquiries, of a woman in the office who’d been there since before time began. She asked about the waiter who’d befriended them all those years before. Elizabeth had told her what had happened in London and Helena could remember me quite clearly, all that extra ice cream. The woman remembered me too. She came in the shop from time to time and told Helena where to find me. So she collected you from school and came on down. The moment that shop bell rang and she appeared, I knew there was something special about her. I offered her a job and she accepted.”
“Did you know who she was?”
“I hadn’t a clue. I never guessed in all the years she lived and worked here. Not for one second.”
“So when did you find out? When you buried Andy?”
“No. Actually it was before then. In Canada.”
“Canada?”
“That day I was in bed sick. She called by while you were out shopping. She told me everything. That I was… you know… I was your father. That she was Elizabeth’s daughter. She said she was sorry she’d never told me. She couldn’t explain why. Who can explain that?”
There was a silence while we both think about this.
“And then, I’m afraid, I made a bit of a fool of myself,” he goes on.
“Oh?”
“You see… something
happened… just the once… one night not so long before Orville came to Torquay… ”
“You and Helena? I had no idea… well, I knew you’d always fancied her but Helena… ”
Bob tries to hide his blushes in his hands.
“Well, she was adamant nothing more would happen. That she wasn’t in a position to take up with me. But it was only in that motel room that she told me why. Her mother. Elizabeth. That she was ashamed. It felt all wrong. Because of Elizabeth. And you. All too messy. The generations mixed up. So she grasped the chance that Orville offered her and she thought she was doing the right thing by you. Leaving you with your father. But she never said. Never told me the truth. That was her biggest failing.”
“But you didn’t make a fool of yourself. She must have gone along with it.”
“No, I mean in the motel room.”
“What did you do exactly?”
“I told her I loved her. That I’d loved her ever since she came in the shop that day, after a job, with you at her side. I loved you both and I wanted us to be a family. I begged her to come back to Torquay. To bring Wes. But after my grand speech all she could say was: ‘I can’t leave Orville.’ I did what I could: I protested, digging a deeper hole for myself. ‘He’ll find someone to look after him,’ I said. ‘He’s tough.’ But she said, ‘No, I mean I can’t leave Orville because I love him.’ That’s what she said. And she killed that small hope I had. That me being your father would be enough to bring her back.”
“So the pills… when we got home… that’s why you needed the pills.”
“I loved her so much. I begged her but she was adamant. She said she could never leave Orville. And nor could Wes. And then I made myself think of Wes. How you and I, we’d seen it for ourselves, that young lad rushing home from school so his dad wouldn’t be alone.”
Yes, I remembered. A boy in a dodgy hat kissing Orville Tupper on the head, making us coffee, sweet and kind.
You begin squealing, insistently, in a way that can’t be ignored.
