The Many Colours of Us

by Rachel Burton

  I’m paying attention now. My mother hadn’t owned the house since I was ten? My father owned it? And she never thought to tell me? Because, of course, she’d ‘forgotten’ who my father was.

  ‘From that point on my father became Mr Baldwin’s lawyer too. Mr Baldwin set up his will not long after buying the house. In it he has left everything to you.’

  ‘Everything?’ I ask, not sure what everything entails.

  ‘A trust has been put to one side for your mother but otherwise, yes, everything. The house in Campden Hill Road, Bruce’s flat in Notting Hill, his studio in East London and, of course, his entire estate. Basically,’ he concludes, bringing the palms of his hands together, ‘you’re a very rich woman.’

  I stand up and Edwin looks up at me. His eyes are very blue.

  ‘I think I need to go now,’ I say. I feel as though the wood panelling is going to close in on me if I don’t get out soon.

  He stands up quickly, opening the door and ushering me through.

  ‘I completely understand this must come as a huge shock to you,’ he says as he leads me back down to reception. ‘There is still a lot we need to go through but perhaps you should go home and talk to your mother. We can meet tomorrow or later in the week if you prefer?’

  ‘Um…later in the week maybe,’ I reply.

  ‘Muriel will fix an appointment,’ he says, turning to the grey-haired woman at the reception desk. ‘How am I fixed for Friday?’ he asks her.

  She books an appointment and Edwin Jones turns back to me, shakes my hand.

  ‘Until Friday,’ he says.

  Chapter 2

  ‘Mum, it’s me,’ I call as I let myself into my mother’s house on Campden Hill Road. Actually no. It’s my house now. I shake my head, unable to take it in.

  No reply.

  ‘Mum,’ I shout up the stairs. Still nothing. I check the rooms of the ground floor and head down into the basement kitchen.

  The note sits in the middle of the kitchen island. The island that is used for nothing other than making and drinking coffee or gin and tonic, depending on the time of day. I have never seen my mother cook.

  Darling girl, had to pop to Manhattan for a few days. Enjoy yourself and see you another time, Love Mom xxx

  Forty years in England and she still insists on spelling like an American. And who the hell ‘pops’ to Manhattan. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that she’s avoiding me now Edwin has told me everything he knows.

  My relationship with my mother has been fractious for years, mainly due to her refusal to tell me who my father is. But despite this, every few months the umbilical pull back to West London is too strong to resist. I have long since lost count of the number of times I’ve made the journey from Cambridge to Kensington; train to Kings Cross, the fast one if I can get my times right and then the Circle line going west and south, looping through Baker Street and Bayswater, stations I’ve travelled through for half of my life but never got out at, until my stop, High Street Kensington.

  There are probably quicker ways, but I love the Circle line. It was the first tube I ever remember travelling on and the first I ever travelled on alone. It’s as much my home as the streets of Kensington above and there’s something about its circuitous nature that appeals to me. There is no end of the line here, just a sensation of going around and around until you find what you are looking for. I’m probably the only person in London who has warm feelings about the Circle line. Most people find it as useful as a chocolate teapot.

  I’ve never had a proper conversation with my mother about her life before I was born. When I was a little, her past had been something that seemed glamorous and mysterious, that I was too young to understand. All her old headshots and magazine covers were kept in pink filing boxes at the bottom of the wardrobe in the smallest bedroom at the top of the house that my mother ostentatiously refers to as her office. As a child, I used to go through these boxes in secret, looking in awe at pictures of my mother advertising make-up, modelling on the catwalk, arriving at parties. I never heard any stories about those times, even when I pushed and pushed to be told. My mother just smiled sadly and changed the subject.

  These days, of course, it only takes a simple internet search to realise how famous Philadelphia Simmonds was and how quickly she had fallen from grace. In the early 80s nobody was interested in a model with a child. If there wasn’t a husband, then there wasn’t a six-page magazine spread either.

  My mother went from being one of the most famous faces on the planet to has-been in one fell swoop and all by the time she was my age.

  No amount of internet searching or scouring old newspapers and library records has ever given anything away about who my father was. God knows I’ve searched enough over the years.

  My earliest memory is from 1986, my third birthday. It’s summer, twilight, but still warm. I’m wearing a sundress with red dots and I’m barefoot. We are in the garden and there are dozens of people everywhere, inside and out. Philadelphia Simmonds’s parties were legendary, perhaps less so in the 80s than they had been in the 70s but infamous nonetheless.

  The air is thick with smoke and laughter and music, so much wonderful music. There is a song playing that I really love and I ask for it to be played again and again while a man with long dark hair and a beard that tickles my cheek spins me round and round. Whenever I think about it I can still smell the faint aroma of spice and turps that surrounded him. He tells me the song is called Penny Lane and I tell him I like the bit about the fire engine best.

  And then the memory disappears. I can’t work out what happened to the man with the beard or who he was. Whenever I’ve asked my mother about it she claims she doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

  Part of me has always liked to daydream that the Penny Lane guy was my dad and that he had to go away on some secret mission, or something equally romantic. Suddenly today I’m wondering if he was, in fact, my father. If that guy with the long hair and beard was Bruce Baldwin circa 1986. I know absolutely nothing about Bruce Baldwin – I didn’t even recognise the name when my mother first mentioned him, but as Pen said, I’m an absolute philistine when it comes to art. I know that picture of the melting clocks was by Salvador Dalí, but that really is the limit of my knowledge.

  If the guy from my third birthday is Bruce Baldwin I’m sure Google Images could let me know quickly. But right now I don’t want to find out, because if that isn’t him then the only thing I’ve held on to from childhood will be a lie.

  The practical side of motherhood did not always come easily to Philadelphia Simmonds. While she was always there for kisses, cuddles and games, it was often her long-suffering personal assistant Johnny who was there for the big moments in my life. It was Johnny who bought my first school uniform, who took me to school on my first day, who was there when I opened my GCSE and A Level results. It was Johnny who met me off the train at Kings Cross when I came back from my interview at Cambridge University. He stood on the platform in his little pebble glasses and his perfectly pressed handmade suit bearing a huge bunch of flowers and a big grin. He was the nearest thing I had to a father, even if he did get paid to do it.

  So, as I sit down at the kitchen island, my mother’s note in front of me, and pull my phone out of my handbag, it’s Johnny I ring first.

  He picks up on the second ring.

  ‘Hello, sweet girl, I was expecting your call. How are you?’

  ‘Did you know?’ I ask, even though he must have done.

  Johnny pauses for long enough for me to realise he knows exactly what’s going on and is now trying to work out where his loyalties lie. ‘You’ve been to see Edwin then,’ he says. It doesn’t sound like a question.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I demand.

  ‘I think you already know the answer to that.’

  I don’t know what to say and I really don’t want to take my anger out on Johnny, who was just doing his job.

  ‘
Julia,’ he says, interrupting my thoughts.

  ‘How long have you known?’ I ask.

  ‘I’ve always known. I couldn’t tell you; I promised your mother I wouldn’t tell you.’

  ‘And she left it to her lawyer to tell me?’

  ‘Well, to be honest, I wasn’t happy about that. I begged her not to go to New York. I begged her to tell you herself.’

  I know as well as anyone that if my mother has her mind set on something wild horses aren’t going to change it.

  ‘Do you want me to come over?’ he asks.

  I sigh. ‘No. I think I need a bit of time alone to get my head around all this. And apparently there’s a lot of legal stuff to go through.’

  ‘You take all the time you need,’ he replies. ‘You know where I am if you need me.’ He always has been way too understanding with both me and Mum.

  ‘And, Johnny,’ I say before he hangs up, ‘tell Mum to come home.’

  I sit in the kitchen with my phone in my hand – wondering what to do with myself to avoid thinking about what I found out this morning – when it suddenly starts ringing. Alec’s name flashes up on the screen.

  ‘Hey, you,’ I answer.

  ‘Julia, where are you?’ Alec, my boyfriend of the last decade is an academic at Cambridge University and muddles through life in a sort of hurried bemusement. He clearly wasn’t listening last night when I told him where I’d be today.

  ‘In London – I told you. I had to see that solicitor.’

  ‘But your phone has been off all morning. I need to talk to you. When are you coming home?’

  I hadn’t really thought that far ahead. I’d been expecting Mum to be here and had taken a few days off work to see her. I’m sure I told Alec this yesterday, but after ten years together he still doesn’t listen.

  ‘I don’t…’ I begin, but Alec butts in as usual.

  ‘Look I’m free tomorrow evening. Have dinner with me, will you?’

  I pause, thinking. Now my mother is across the Atlantic, I don’t have to be anywhere in particular until my next meeting at Jones & Cartwright at the end of the week. I may as well go back to Cambridge. Back home.

  ‘Julia,’ he says impatiently.

  ‘Yes, sorry! Tomorrow’s fine. Shall I meet you at the college?’

  ‘Yes, about eight. See you then.’ And he rings off.

  It isn’t until he’s gone that I realise he didn’t even ask me what the solicitor wanted.

  6th June 1986

  My dearest daughter,

  Today I held you in my arms for the first time since the day you were born three years ago. You didn’t know who I was and something tells me it will be a long time before you do, but it was a joy to be with you on your special day.

  I don’t know much about children – I haven’t ever had the chance to learn – and I don’t know how much you will remember about today, but I will carry it with me for the rest of my life.

  Today marks sixty days of sobriety for me, which is the longest stretch in a long, long time. I think that’s why your mother let me see you. I’m staying clean this time, my darling girl, just for you and the hope that if I do, I will get to see you more and more.

  There were so many people at the party that I’m sure you won’t remember me. All your mother’s friends were there. I can’t keep up any more with who lives at the house and who doesn’t. I only had eyes for you anyway.

  Do you remember dancing with me? Perhaps you do, perhaps you don’t. You said my beard tickled. We danced to Penny Lane by the Beatles; you asked for it to be played three times. You loved the bit about the fire engine.

  You fell asleep before the sun set, exhausted from the excitement, the presents, the music and too much sugar. Somebody, probably Johnny, carried you to bed and the party went on late into the night. It may have gone on until dawn for all I know. Once you were no longer there I wasn’t interested in the temptations of a Campden Hill Road party, not like I used to be.

  I tried to talk to Delph. I tried to ask her to let me see you. I asked if I could take you out sometime, just to the park or something. I said I would never tell you who I was but she was adamant. There was nothing I could do.

  But I will always love you.

  Happy Birthday, Princess.

  I hope we will see each other again soon.

  Your Father

  Chapter 3

  ‘You couldn’t make it up!’ Graeme exclaims in astonishment, as he reaches over for another cupcake. I’m sitting opposite him and Pen, my two best friends, trying to tell them about Edwin Jones’s news.

  ‘And it’s a damn sight better than that elephant’s foot,’ Pen interjects.

  Pen and I have been friends for years. We live together in Cambridge and Graeme often comes along for the ride. We all used to work in this café together. I was still a student at the time and am several years younger than both of them. I met Pen the summer before my final year at university. I hadn’t wanted to go back to London that summer; I couldn’t face three months living with my mother, and Pen was looking to rent out the spare bedroom of the house she’d recently inherited from her grandmother.

  The café was always looking for new waiting staff, even clumsy hopeless ones like me, so the job came with the room. After I graduated I moved into Pen’s house and the waitressing job full-time. I don’t think she realises how grateful I am to her. She helped me find some independence when I needed it most.

  Pen and Graeme run the place these days, whereas I have moved on to the headier heights of paralegal work at one of the big law firms in the centre of Cambridge. I’ve worked my way up from office junior over the last eight years. After university I’d been intending to go to law school and working at the office was supposed to give me some experience. I hadn’t intended to stay there for eight years.

  When I worked here the café was one of those ‘Olde Worlde’ tearooms that historic cities love so much. You know the type: scones and cream and white lacy aprons. It had been there for as long as anyone could remember. Just after I left the owner died and the café was bought out by an American, who turned it into a 1950s’ diner, complete with neon signage, old-fashioned jukeboxes, and huge milkshakes.

  Cambridge is divided into people who love it and people who think it’s the worst thing to have happened to the city in 800 years. There was so much correspondence about it in the local paper when it first opened that the editor had to call an end to any more letters on the subject. I’m mostly glad I don’t have to work here any more; I’m far too tall for the vintage uniforms.

  Creamadelica, as it’s now called, has become one of the busiest cafés in town over the last few years and the three of us are squeezed into one of the hot-pink, faux-leather booths during a lull in service.

  ‘All my life I’ve wondered who my father was and now it turns out he’s dead and everyone has heard of him but me.’

  ‘Had you really never heard of Bruce Baldwin?’ Graeme asks.

  I shake my head. Somehow this famous Turner-prize-winning artist has passed me by. I wonder how this has happened. It seems Bruce Baldwin was famous enough that even people who weren’t that into art have heard of him, like that guy who pickled a cow when I was a kid. Sometimes I feel as though so much has passed me by.

  I realise Graeme is waxing lyrical about my father. Turns out he’s something of an art buff.

  ‘He held one final exhibition last autumn. He knew he was dying by then I suppose, so he had this big installation at the Tate Modern. Do you really not remember me talking about it, Julia?’

  I shake my head again. Graeme talks a lot about a lot of different things. It’s mostly impossible to keep up with him. I notice Pen is staring out of the window; she finds it hard to keep up with him too.

  ‘I went along because rumour had it that it was his last exhibition. God, it was just wonderful. He left all his work to the Tate, right?’

  I realise he’s asking me a question.
‘Everything that isn’t privately owned, yes,’ I reply, trying to remember what Edwin had told me. ‘It’s all in my name now, which is rather mind-boggling, but it lives at the Tate.’

  Graeme nods and carries on and I realise that he’s quite passionate about Bruce Baldwin’s work. Pen and I exchange a glance. Who knew?

  ‘He’d created these huge, larger than life abstract paintings of kids on their own. Not lost or anything, just ignored or lonely. It was incredibly haunting. He called it…’ He stops mid-flow, which is very unlike him.

  ‘What?’ I say, realising they are both looking at me and my untouched cupcake.

  His voice is quieter now, less animated. ‘It was called Lost Daughters.’

  I feel like the air has been knocked out of me. I can hear Pen and Graeme talking but it’s as though they are under water. I haven’t had any time to think about any of this. When I’d got back to Cambridge at lunchtime I’d hardly had time to unpack my bag before meeting up with Pen and Graeme at the café.

  I keep feeling waves of grief and anger and confusion, most of them directed at my mother, some of them at Johnny. And every now and then there’s another feeling, like the very beginnings of butterflies, whenever I let my mind drift back to Edwin Jones.

  ‘Julia,’ Pen is trying to get my attention. ‘I’ve got to get back to work. Are you going to be OK?’

  ‘Yes…’ I force a smile ‘…of course. I should get going myself I guess. I’m meant to be having dinner with Alec tonight.’

  Pen smiles at me vaguely. I have a feeling she’s not really listening.

  As I get up to leave Graeme squeezes my hand. ‘You know where we are if you need us?’

  I nod.

  ‘And, Julia?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I eat your cupcake?’

  *