by Peter Hey
‘No. She won’t be back from her cruise for another week.’
Alan nodded his understanding. ‘But you haven’t been contacted by Cyn’s neighbour? I mean, she hasn’t magically remembered Cyn’s email address and got in touch?’
‘No,’ repeated Jane evenly. ‘I’m still just waiting for Cyn to get back. I’ll give her a few days and then chase up. That’s the plan.’
‘Fine. Good. That makes sense.’ Alan picked up his mug and cradled it in his hands. ‘So, yes, the DNA. Please, reveal all.’
‘Okay,’ said Jane, trying not to look self-satisfied. ‘I won’t bother you with the technical details – unless you want to know – but it turns out you’re half Italian.’
‘Italian? I’m not sure my mother ever went to Italy in her life.’
‘Sorry, your bloodline’s half Italian. But the man I believe to be your father, his family emigrated to the States in the early 1900s. So he was actually Italian American, born in Texas. His father, your grandfather, was killed in the Second World War, fighting in the US Army. Your father was also a soldier, winning a medal in Korea. When he came back, he ended up working in one of the Havana hotel casinos. Perhaps the less said about that, the better. You know, the mob and stuff? It’s not clear how involved he might have been.’
Alan frowned suspiciously and Jane continued.
‘I’ve been in touch with a family researcher in Arizona. She’s a distantish relation of yours, by marriage at least. She spoke to your father’s uncle years and years ago, before he died. He confirmed your father was still in Cuba in 1960, at the time you would have been conceived.’
‘But how can you be certain he… he knew my mother? Cuba’s a big island, Jane.’
‘You share significant amounts of DNA with more than one person who would share DNA with him.’ Jane winced apologetically. ‘That’s a convoluted way of saying we have strong genetic evidence, but it’s not definite. But we know your mother worked in the same hotel as your father, and there’s something else…’
Jane had laid her phone on the coffee table in front of her. She picked it up, tapped it a few times and then turned the screen towards Alan.
‘This,’ she explained, ‘is a picture of Joe Kelly. Alan, the first time we met you said your mother, towards the end, told you you’d been staring at a picture of your father all your life. Look at the photograph on the bookshelf behind you. She didn’t mean Che Guevara. Look at the man in the background.’
Alan twisted round. After a few seconds he turned back, his face unreadable.
‘What happened to him?’ he asked. ‘I assume he’s long dead by now?’
‘He was shot and killed before you were born. I’m sorry.’
‘But the picture was taken after they’d won. The war was over. That’s why they’re all smoking fat cigars.’
‘They’d beaten Batista.’ Jane glanced sideways as she assembled an explanation. ‘But there were different factions. There always are. They’d come together to defeat the existing regime, but not everyone was loyal to Castro. At least one new president was appointed, but it became clear that Fidel wanted to pull all the strings. He soon made himself prime minister, and one of his right-hand men, Camilo Cienfuegos, was put in charge of the army. Things started being nationalised with minimal compensation. Elections were promised but never happened. It wasn’t what everyone wanted.’
‘So what did this Joe Kelly, my supposed father, do exactly?’
‘The White House was nervous about having a communist state so close to home and was funding various groups through the CIA. It all came to a head with the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, of course, but Joe Kelly was killed before that. Castro had fought a guerrilla war from a mountain range in southern Cuba. Some of those who came to oppose him, those who hadn’t run off to America, tried to mount a similar campaign in the Escambray Mountains. They’re more in the centre of the island but the same sort of terrain.’
‘And that’s where my father died?’
Jane nodded. ‘When I went on holiday to Cuba a few years ago, one of the places we stayed was a town called Trinidad, close to those mountains. There was a small museum whose name translated as the National Museum of the Struggle against Bandits. Everything was in Spanish and it was hard to follow. All I really remember were some nasty torture implements the so-called bandits were supposed to have used…’ Jane raised her hand to apologise for drifting off the subject. ‘The point is, the bandits were counterrevolutionaries. Your father had joined them. Apparently, he was captured by Castro’s soldiers and summarily shot.’
Alan sat silently as he digested what he was being told.
‘There’s something else,’ said Jane after a short pause. ‘Joe Kelly told his American family that he’d got married in Cuba after the revolution. He didn’t say who to. I can only think it was to your mother.’
‘So I may not be a bastard after all,’ chuckled Alan, though his tone quickly returned to seriousness. ‘But I guess the bandit thing explains why she came home. And, also, why she didn’t talk about my father. She absolutely loved Castro and his whole socialist fairyland. She can’t possibly have agreed with what my father was doing. Maybe she was lucky they let her out, though. Guilt by association and all that. Unless...’
‘Unless what?’ prompted Jane.
‘She wouldn’t be the first woman to betray her husband, if that’s what he was. Maybe she shopped him. Sold him out. You have to understand – politics were more important to my mother than just about everything. They were certainly more important than…’
Alan lifted his coffee to his mouth and drank slowly. There was a bitterness in his eyes that suggested Jane shouldn’t press him to finish the sentence. But all her instincts told her the missing word was ‘me’. Jane carried her own scars. Contrary to what she had once thought, Alan’s seemed to run parallel but, perhaps, much deeper.
Back
For some time, there had been an inkblot trail of black mould behind the taps where the bath met the wall. No amount of bleach would hide the evidence, and Jane had decided to be brave and sort it out properly. A fifty-something plumber on YouTube made the job look easy, so Jane bought a gun of silicone sealant from her local hardware store. She vaguely recalled Dave describing it as ‘evil stuff’ but assumed he had just been making excuses. Now both her hands were covered with a sticky film of white gunk, and she was surrounded by scrunched-up kitchen towel, evidence of wiping away the gloopy mess of her previous failures.
And then her phone started ringing. She thought about quickly rinsing her hands but realised the whole point of this devilish goo was that it was supposed to be waterproof. She pulled off another sheet of paper towel with her teeth and used it to carefully lift the handset. The number wasn’t one of her normal contacts, but she stroked the screen with her nose and managed to answer the call.
‘Hello, Jane Madden speaking,’ she said, her prickly impatience only partially disguised.
‘Sorry, did you say that was Jane?’
The voice was that of a well-spoken, elderly woman. Jane immediately softened. ‘Yes, that’s right. How may I help?’
‘Jane, dear, my name’s Cynthia Fairburn.’
‘Cyn!’ Jane realised she was being overfamiliar and instantly corrected herself. ‘Sorry, Mrs Fairburn. Thank you for calling.’
‘Please call me Cynthia, dear. You can call me Cyn if you like. I don’t get called that very often now I’m a respectable old lady. Go on, call me Cyn. Make me feel young again.’
‘Thank you, Cyn. You must only just have got back from your cruise. Did you have a good time?’
‘Wonderful. I’m as brown as a berry and about the same shape too. The food was to die for. I always put on a few pounds. But at my age, what does it matter? Tom, my late husband, loved me just the way I am.’
‘Well, thanks for ringing so promptly.’ Jane was wiping her free hand on her jeans as she spoke. ‘I wasn’t expecting a call for a day or two.’
‘I hate unpacking, all that getting back to normality. I had a cup of tea with Sue next door, and she gave me your letter and told me you’d been round. Talking to you seemed a much more exciting prospect than doing the washing.’
‘So you remember Pat Shaw from your days working together in London?’
‘Of course! We were very close for a long time. She was like my big sister. Looked after me. Anyone tried it on, Pat would soon sort them out.’
‘Did you keep in touch?’ Jane thought she knew the answer already but decided she ought to to ask.
‘No, sadly not. But I was thinking about her very recently. We drifted apart because I left to get married and have kids. And also… Tom was in British Rail management. He was the enemy as far as Pat was concerned. She was a lovely woman, but once she got going on politics… Uncompromising is probably an understatement. I was sorry to hear she’d died.’
‘Yes, it was last year. She’d been ill for a while. Dementia. Very sad.’
Cyn sighed. ‘Of course, she was quite a few years older than me. It comes to us all in the end, though hopefully not the dementia. I’d like to go out on a ship’s deckchair with a G&T in my hand.’
‘Well, not for a long while yet, I’m sure,’ replied Jane. ‘Pat’s son, Alan, would love to meet you, I know.’
‘And I’d love to meet him. Again. He won’t remember, but his grandmother brought him to London when he was very, very young and I saw him then. Just briefly. He was a gorgeous-looking little boy, as I recall. Pat’s eyes were blue, but his were very dark. His hair was almost black, and he had lovely olive skin.’
‘That would be his Italian blood,’ said Jane.
‘I thought his father was American.’
Jane stopped wiping her hand. ‘So, you knew about his father? We’ve only just worked out who we think he was. Pat never told Alan.’
Cyn hesitated before replying. ‘I was sworn to secrecy, but I guess that’s lapsed now. It was naughty of Pat not telling Alan, but I know she had her reasons. And what she said to me was limited. He was an American soldier who got involved in the Castro revolution thing. And then something happened. She wouldn’t say what, but she had to leave in a hurry. I know he was killed. She used to say the one place in the world she wanted to be was Cuba, but she could never, ever go back.’
‘Did she say why?’
‘No. She said it was best I didn’t know. One of my cruises stopped off in Havana, just for a day. We did a guided tour in one of those lovely old cars. I remember thinking it wouldn’t have changed much from when Pat was there. Some of it is very poor and run down. Maybe it always was. Capitalism is creeping back, of course. They need that tourist dollar. Do you know if Pat ever did go back? On holiday, I mean. It’s so easy now.’
‘Not that I’m aware of, no.’
‘That’s sad.’
‘Cyn, I know Alan would love to meet you. As I said in my letter, he has something of his mother’s that she wanted you to have. It’s a piece of jewellery. I think it’s quite nice, but it’s the thought more than anything.’
‘Yes, it would be lovely to have something to remember her by. He’s welcome to come and see me. Would he be happy coming all this way?’
Something made Jane suggest an alternative. ‘I wondered if we could meet... well, wherever’s easy for you, but in a café or something. You don’t want strangers crowding into your house. I mean, this is all very genuine, but I’d like to meet you too.’
‘Maybe you’re right. Sue said a horrible man came round a few days after you. Very pushy. Said he had something to my advantage – or words to that effect – and needed to get in touch with me urgently. Big man he was, apparently. But then everyone’s big to Sue. Whatever he was selling, he was making lots of money doing it. Drove off in a big, black Jaguar. He tried to sweet-talk her, treat her like a silly, stupid old woman. And that’s one thing Sue isn’t. He wasn’t happy, sounded like he turned a bit nasty, but she sent him off with a flea in his ear.’
Jane’s mind flicked back to the car she had seen near her house a few weeks previously, ‘Even the white bits were black,’ echoing in her memory. Her father was a big man, a very big man. Could he have been following her around? But why would he have any interest in Cyn? Jane dismissed the thought. She was the silly, stupid woman here. There must be thousands of black Jags on Britain’s roads.
‘There are lots of unpleasant people about,’ she said. ‘So, do you have a suggestion where we should meet?’
‘Well, one of my favourite days out is to the docks in Gloucester. I can get a direct train there. It should be nearer to where you are as well?’
‘It’s just off the M5, isn’t it? Sounds fine. It’s good for me, and it should be a pretty simple drive from where Alan lives. I think he said he had a car. He’s certainly got a garage.’
Caribbean Sea, October 1960
The cabin was cramped and stark, with a single hard bunk running along one wall. Light was coming from a small porthole, locked shut with heavy clamps of discoloured brass. The air outside might have been fresh with salt and sea breeze, but here, below decks, Pat felt like she was sweltering in a windless Havana backstreet at the height of summer. Some of the same smells were there, but they were dominated by the greasy aroma of diesel oil, almost thick enough to taste. In the city, one could always hear voices and laughter, but the only sound now was the incessant throb of engines churning through the waves. The boat lurched unexpectedly and Pat felt nauseous. She wanted to cry. She’d had enough of being sick these last months. She looked down at the clothes where they clung to her body with sweat. The bulge at her waist was exaggerated and inescapable. She’d had such hope for her unborn child. How had it gone so wrong?
There was a knock on the door. Pat ignored it and closed her eyes.
Another knock. More insistent.
‘Ma’am, may I come in, please?’
Pat still refused to respond.
‘I’m going to assume you’re decent. I’m coming in.’
The door opened and an overweight man in his forties walked in. He had tightly curled dark hair and was wearing a thin necktie and a short-sleeved white shirt with yellowed armpits.
‘Jeez, it’s hot in here,’ he said. He reached up to his neck and undid his top button, simultaneously loosening the tie.
‘I had noticed,’ said Pat testily.
‘You’ve got the luxury accommodation. I’m in with the crew. Swear the lot of them are ridden with pox, bunch of Limey bastards.’ He paused. ‘Forgive my language,’ he added, the apology sounding resentfully insincere.
‘It’s your fault we’re here,’ snapped Pat. ‘What do you want?’
‘How about some gratitude to start off with. I’ve just saved your ass. Nearly got myself killed doing it.’
‘I would have been fine. It would have worked out. You’ve, you’ve… I don’t know what you’ve done.’ Pat closed her eyes again as if she could shut out the events of the last 24 hours.
‘They’d have put you up against a wall and shot you!’ he shouted. ‘At the very least, locked you up and thrown away the keys.’
‘I’m pregnant!’
‘These people don’t care. The revolution, the ideology, is more important than anything. Anyone.’
Pat glared back. ‘You’re wrong. You Americans don’t understand. You’re the ones who can’t see past their ideology. The ideology of capitalism and greed and money.’
‘Well, it’s good old US dollars that got on you on this boat. It ain’t the Queen Mary, but the captain’s taking a big risk. And he wasn’t about to do it for nothing.’
‘I didn’t want to leave Cuba.’
The American wiped a hand across his brow. ‘Okay, maybe they wouldn’t have shot you in your condition. But they’d have stuck you in some festering jail. And when you’d had the baby… All bets are off. You’d just disappear and your kid would be brainwashed into being one of them. You don’t know what they’re like.’
‘I do
know what they’re like! Castro’s trying to build a new society. A better society. But people are trying to stop him. You Americans are trying to stop him. He’s only doing what he has to.’
‘Like stealing other people’s property – US-owned sugar plantations, refineries, land, banks. The damn phone company. He’s laughing at us.’
‘He had to nationalise the oil refineries. They refused to process Russian oil. Then you stopped buying our sugar, so we had to sell even more to the Soviet Union. You’re pushing us towards them.’
The American waved his arm dismissively. ‘We all saw Castro getting chummy with Khrushchev at the UN in New York. One minute your beloved leader is borrowing money from the reds. The next minute Cuba is an airfield for Soviet nuclear bombers, 100 short miles from US soil. We’re in the middle of a war. Cold could turn hot any time.’ He pointed backwards over his shoulder with his thumb. ‘And that damn stupid island will be the spark. Your husband got it. Late, but he got it.’
Pat’s head dropped. ‘I don’t know what Joe got. I shouldn’t have made that trip to marry him. I thought I could talk him round, for the sake of our baby. I thought he cared, underneath all that tough-guy stuff. He risked his life for a friend of mine once. I thought Joe cared about... I don’t know... justice, fairness. But listening to him talk… Maybe he just liked shooting people.’ She looked up. ‘Do you like shooting people?’
The overweight American gave her a hard, angry stare before replying. ‘It was them or me. They’d come to take you away. The fat one shouldn’t have pulled his gun. I had to think on my feet. I was told to get you out, put you on this boat and then get back to the embassy. This hasn’t gone well for me, you know. I’m not supposed to be on this stinking rust bucket.’
‘But why? I’m a British citizen. Why did you care about me?’
‘Because I was told we look after our own. Joe Kelly was on the payroll. Me, I never liked the guy. I’ve seen his file – you really don’t know what sort of man you married. He was up to his old tricks. That’s why they killed him on the spot.
