The Many Colours of Us

by Rachel Burton

  We sit like that for what feels like hours but is probably only a moment or two. Just as I think she isn’t going to answer she takes a deep breath in.

  ‘I was always afraid he’d reject you,’ she says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was scared that if I let you get to know him, or I told you where he was he’d reject you like he did me. I thought you’d get to know him again and just as you started trusting him he’d reject you for his paintings or he’d start drinking again.’

  ‘Is that how you felt?’ I ask. ‘That he rejected you for his paintings and for alcohol?’

  ‘When I first met him I had only just arrived here from America. My parents had rejected me, practically disowned me. You remember I told you about that?’

  ‘Vaguely,’ I reply. ‘They didn’t want you to be a model, or move to London.’

  She laughs harshly. ‘They did not. But I did it anyway and I never really spoke to either of them again. When I met Bruce he became everything to me. Him and my agent and Cedric were all I had here. After Bruce left and my agency dropped me, Cedric was all I had.’

  ‘Edwin’s dad?’

  She nods. I wonder again about the nature of that relationship between her and Edwin’s father. But I don’t ask. It’s not really something I want to think about too much. Instead I wait for her to continue.

  ‘Rejection is hard,’ she goes on. ‘It’s part of life and it happens to everyone, I know that now. It’s what makes us stronger. What’s that saying about falling down nine times and getting up ten?’

  ‘Jon Bon Jovi said that didn’t he?’ I say with a smile, but she doesn’t seem to hear me.

  ‘I wanted to protect you from what I went through. I thought if I could stop that happening to you then maybe your life would be happier than mine. It’s why I was so reluctant about you applying to Cambridge. What if you hadn’t got in?’

  ‘I did get in though. And if I hadn’t I’d have dealt with it and gone to Bristol or Durham like everyone else.’

  She looks at me then. ‘Yes you would. You’re stronger than I ever was, Julia. You get that from him I think. From your father.’

  ‘And if I’d got to know him and he’d rejected me I’d have dealt with that as well. But at least we’d all have known and you wouldn’t have had to keep this huge secret my whole life; you wouldn’t have had to make Edwin and Johnny and bloody Marco keep this huge secret. And I wouldn’t have had to find out after my father was dead that he rejected me anyway because of his own cowardice.’

  ‘Who told you that?’ she asks.

  ‘Edwin,’ I reply. ‘But it’s in the letters. Later on, the ones he wrote when I was about sixteen or seventeen. He talks about how he never achieved what he wanted to achieve, how he’d not done enough to make me proud.’

  Mum shakes her head. ‘What fools we both were,’ she says quietly.

  I remember that phrase that Edwin used in Hyde Park, when he was talking about how he hated school, before I knew about what had happened to his brother. ‘The past is the past.’ And it is. There is nothing I can do to change any of this, nothing I can do to bring my father back, to get to know him.

  ‘Mum,’ I say, turning towards her, ‘I love you. I don’t want us to fall out. I don’t want us to end up like you and your parents. We have to get through this.’

  ‘I know,’ she says.

  ‘But we have to be honest with each other. About everything.’

  She nods. ‘So how do you feel about Edwin?’ she asks.

  ‘Maybe we should just be honest about almost everything,’ I reply.

  6th June 1983

  My dearest daughter,

  I am a father, and you are a beautiful perfect little angel.

  I was asleep when I got the telephone call. I think the phone had been ringing a long time before I stumbled out of bed to answer it. Your mother was in labour and was asking for me.

  It was three o’clock in the morning by the time I’d found a cab and made it to the maternity ward and you were forty-five minutes old. You lay in a little Perspex cot, wrapped in a pink blanket. Your mother sat on the side of her bed just looking at you.

  ‘Would you like to hold her?’ she asked. I couldn’t believe it. This was the first time your mother and I had spoken since I found out about the pregnancy and she was not only letting me near you, but letting me hold you.

  You felt so delicate in my arms, so small and vulnerable. And yet, there was a feeling of strength in you, the beat of an undeniable life force. You were here, exactly where you were meant to be, and changing the lives of everyone who knew you.

  ‘What are you going to call her?’ I asked, knowing I had already forfeited my right to any decision in the naming process.

  ‘Julia,’ she said. ‘After my mother.’

  The original Julia Simmonds, your grandmother, died of ovarian cancer in April 1979 – almost six years to the day after your mother arrived in London from New York. She hadn’t spoken to Julia Senior since she left America. She hadn’t gone to the funeral. As far as I know, apart from the telephone conversation to tell her Julia had died, your mother has had no contact with her family in America since.

  They never wanted her to model. They had what they called ‘higher hopes’. She was discovered when she was sixteen, walking through Manhattan in her school uniform, all 5’11” of her. She must have looked breathtaking. It was 1967 and the phenomena that was Twiggy had just hit American shores. I think they thought of Delph as the American Twiggy. Within six months she was signed with an agency and had quit school. Her parents were devastated, their dreams of Ivy League universities shattered.

  She was offered a major contract in 1973. It meant moving to London and she jumped at the chance. She once told me she’d been dreaming of London since she was ten years old.

  I met her in Kensington Market two months after she crossed the pond. She was obsessed with that market: the people, the clothes, the atmosphere. She was living in The Royal Garden Hotel opposite the market. I had just graduated and was working on a second-hand shoe stall. Well, we all have to start somewhere – Freddie Mercury used to work the stall next to me you know. She looked stunning in the shortest skirt and highest boots I’d ever seen. I looked like the impoverished urchin I was, slightly grubby, unshaven and smelling of turps as usual.

  To this day I can’t remember how we ended up together. It was like a dream.

  By the end of 1973 Philadelphia Simmonds was as famous as the man who used to work that market stall next to me.

  As I put you back into your little Perspex cot tonight you gripped my index finger so tightly and opened your mouth into a little toothless, gummy yawn. I loved you from that moment. It was also the moment your mother started crying and asked me to leave.

  When I got back to my flat tonight I found myself writing this letter. I don’t know if you’ll ever read this. Even if I ever send it there is no guarantee your mother will let you read it. But I need to get this down. I want you to understand that everything that happened between your mother and me is because we are flawed and fickle human beings and none of it is your fault. And I want you to understand, because I have a feeling that she will never talk about it, how much your mother gave up.

  We spent ten years breaking up and getting back together but nobody except our closest friends knew about us. Philadelphia Simmonds was the press’s darling and she could never be seen with someone as ordinary, as troubled or as plebeian as me.

  She had other lovers; we both did. Except, my darling daughter, my other lovers are whisky and vodka. There, your mother will never let you read this letter now. I’m an alcoholic but I only admitted that to myself six months ago, when your mother told me she was pregnant.

  We split up late last year for what we both assumed was the very last time. We were toxic with each other and we were both old enough now to know it couldn’t go on. Three months later she told me she was pregnant.

&nb
sp; She lost everything when she chose to have you. Make-up companies dropped her; cover shoots with various magazines were cancelled without warning. Pregnant models aren’t very popular. Pregnant unmarried models even less so.

  We had the worst fight of our relationship that night she told me she was expecting you. She wanted to have you more than anything – I’d never seen her so determined – and when I refused to do the decent thing and marry her, she said she was going to have you anyway.

  I thought I was doing the right thing when I walked away. I’m a penniless addict masquerading as an artist. What kind of husband or father would I have made? But after holding you tonight, realising how much your mother had given up, realising that primal unconditional love between parent and child, I think I’ve made a terrible mistake.

  I hope it’s not too late for me. For us, my precious darling daughter.

  I love you.

  Your Father

  Chapter 17

  ‘Come shopping with me,’ my mother says over breakfast a few days later.

  ‘Haven’t got time. I have to meet Edwin at the studio this afternoon.’

  ‘That’s this afternoon,’ Mum says. ‘We can buy you something nice to wear to meet him.’

  ‘Mum, we’re going to a dirty old studio to talk about knocking walls down. I don’t need a new outfit for that. Besides I’ve got plenty of clothes.’ I turn back to reading the paper.

  ‘Come on,’ she insists. ‘It’s years since we’ve been shopping together.’

  I look up from the newspaper and realise suddenly that this is her idea of an olive branch. In my mother’s world retail therapy solves everything and to invite me to go with her is a huge step for her, even though it might not seem like it. She is trying to make amends and although a quick whip around Selfridges isn’t going to make up for lying to me for thirty years, I appreciate the gesture.

  I feel as though we’ve come to a gentle understanding, if not a full reconciliation. Full reconciliations take time. But today that reconciliation doesn’t seem as impossible as it did even a few days ago.

  Two hours later we’re sitting in a café, my mother quietly frustrated with me that I haven’t found anything I want to wear.

  ‘What’s wrong with the clothes that I wear every day?’ I ask.

  ‘Nothing,’ she says, rather wistfully as her index finger strokes the boat neckline of the emerald jersey three-quarter length tunic, hand stitched by yours truly, that I’m wearing. ‘Your clothes are all exquisite. I only wish I had half your eye for a pattern. I’m afraid I became too used to being told what to wear.’

  ‘I love making my own clothes,’ I explain. ‘I love wearing stuff I’ve put the work into, stuff that I know is completely original. Does that make sense?’

  ‘Of course it does,’ she says. ‘I used to love wearing clothes that I knew the designer had created just for me.’ She pauses for a moment and I hope I haven’t brought up bad memories, but suddenly she grins like a Cheshire cat.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘You know you should do this for a living,’ she says.

  ‘Edwin said something similar,’ I reply.

  ‘Did he now? Well he’s right. He has quite an eye for clothes himself, don’t you think?’

  I look at my coffee so she can’t see the look on my face. He does, after all, look excellent in a suit.

  ‘You make beautiful clothes, Julia,’ she goes on. ‘People would pay good money for them, especially if they were one-offs or very small runs. You could have a website, maybe even a little shop.’

  I stare at her and know she’s right. If she’d said this at any other time or in any other place I’m not sure I’d have taken her seriously, but that seed of an idea first planted by Edwin in the Thai restaurant back in June, that seed that popped its head above the earth on the Kings Cross to Cambridge train, suddenly starts to grow into something real. Something I can really see myself doing.

  We start talking about a line of clothes for the following spring, planning a website, thinking about a marketing strategy.

  ‘Are we mad?’ I ask. ‘I have absolutely no training. Am I really going to cut it in the world of high fashion?’

  ‘This isn’t high fashion we’re talking about, Julia,’ she replies rolling her eyes. ‘Believe me when I tell you that is not a world you want to venture into. We’re talking about handmade one-offs at affordable prices. Can you do that?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. But…’

  ‘But me no buts.’ My mother can still be formidable when she wants to be. ‘The wonder of the internet allows talented women to really get out there and find their niche market. You just need to send a few choice items out to some top fashion bloggers, like that woman who makes the satchels did. You need to get some press releases done, get on Etsy.

  First Skype and now fashion bloggers and Etsy. Who has my mother become?

  We spend so long talking about clothes and websites and shop fittings that I suddenly realise I’m going to be late meeting Edwin.

  ‘It’s going to be strange seeing that horrible old studio turned into something nice,’ Mum says suddenly.

  ‘When did he first get it?’ I ask. ‘The studio?’

  ‘He took that on long before anyone had ever heard of him. He had it before he met me. He took out a long lease on it. He wanted somewhere he could paint uninterrupted. Him and Frank and a few of their other artist friends used it. Bruce was the only one who ever made it, though, as far as I know.’

  ‘How could he afford it back then?’

  ‘He rented it at first. They all begged, borrowed and stole to get the rent together every month but they managed it somehow – usually when Frank had a good day on the horses.’ She smiles sadly. ‘Eventually, once he started to make some real money, he bought it, before he even had anywhere proper to live.’

  ‘I have to get going, Mum,’ I say. ‘Are you going to be all right?’ I don’t like to think of her sitting here on her own reminiscing.

  ‘Oh of course,’ she says, pulling herself together. ‘I should be getting back too.’

  ‘I’ll see you later then?’

  ‘Yes. And, Julia?’

  I turn around to look at her.

  ‘Make sure you tell Edwin to put some decent insulation and heating into that damn place. It used to be so cold. So incredibly cold!’

  I don’t ask her to elaborate on how she knows.

  Chapter 18

  On the tube on the way to the studio I pull out my notebook and start doodling a few clothes designs. After my conversation with Mum in the café, I can’t wait to get back to my sewing machine and see what I can produce. I feel fired up with excitement about the possibility of designing clothes for a living and feel as though that spark was ignited by finding out who my father was. After the conversation with my mother earlier it’s burning brighter than ever.

  I remember something my father wrote in one of his letters, the letters that I still carry around with me wherever I go, about how, when he did the twelve-step programme, he had to learn to let go of control. I’m starting to see that we have no control over what happens to us in our lives, but we can control our reactions to what happens. I owe it to myself and to my father’s memory to do something and not to put everything on the back burner like I have with so many things before.

  I remember how he wrote about throwing himself into his art after he got sober, after my mother still wouldn’t let him see me, and I’m starting to think that’s the answer. After everything that has happened, all the secrets I’ve found out, after talking to Alec and Pen, I need something to throw myself into. I think my sewing and this Art Salon will be just right.

  I’m so lost in these thoughts still, as I wait for Edwin outside the studio, that I don’t notice that he’s twenty minutes late.

  ‘I’m so sorry for being late again,’ he says.

  ‘You do too much,’ I say, noticing how tired he looks.
/>   ‘I tried to ring,’ he says, ignoring me. ‘But your phone was off again.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I hate phones. I know not answering the phone is a luxury you don’t have. I’ll try to answer it more often.’

  He smiles. ‘You don’t have to do that. And for the record I hate phones too.’

  He gestures towards the door of my father’s studio. I follow him as he unlocks it and we step inside. It’s even hotter in here than it is outside and I find it hard to believe it ever gets as cold as my mother claims.

  ‘I only phone you because, well, I like…’ He swallows. ‘I like spending time with you.’

  ‘I like spending time with you too,’ I reply, threading my arm through his.

  ‘Right, well shall we work out what we’re going to do about this studio then?’

  In this moment everything feels just fine. Standing here with Edwin in my father’s studio, I feel as though I’ve known him for ever but, despite what he remembers from childhood, the truth is he popped suddenly into my life a few short weeks ago, and he could disappear just as easily. I really don’t like the thought of that and I need to stop pushing him away.

  I feel something melt inside me, that sense of disappointment that has followed me around since I finished university, that has stopped me enjoying things, stopped me taking risks, stopped me splitting up from Alec years ago. It’s finally breaking down. Like Johnny said, this could be the brand new start I need.

  ‘So, the seventeenth of September,’ I say, looking around me. ‘Can we really do that?’

  ‘Are you sure you want to?’ he asks. ‘I mean, seriously. I don’t want to push you into something you don’t want to do.’

  I think about my father, how he threw himself into his work to try to change his life around. It’s as good a plan as any other.

  ‘I’m absolutely sure,’ I reply.

  ‘Good, because I lodged the planning permission this morning.’