Messy, Wonderful Us

by Catherine Isaac

  I take a sip of tea. ‘They never had a break?’

  She blinks once, her expression steadfastly blank, before she picks up her handbag and begins rustling inside, for what I’m not sure. ‘Why are you asking this, Allie?’ The words come out in a half-laugh.

  I think about lying. I think about continuing this discussion in this same low-key, conversational manner, as if these are issues about which I’m mildly intrigued at most. I think, in the words of the letter, about not rocking the boat. But this isn’t something I can just forget.

  ‘Grandma, I need to ask you something.’ My words are clear and deliberate, but my heart is fluttering in my chest like a trapped skylark. ‘Or at least, tell you about something that I found. Something for which I need an explanation.’

  She swallows slowly. ‘Go on.’

  ‘On Sunday, I went into your bedroom. I wasn’t snooping about deliberately. I’d wanted to buy you a jacket for your birthday, only I didn’t know your dress size, so Granddad suggested I go and find something in your chest of drawers to check it.’

  The faint glow that had bloomed on her cheeks when she came in from the cold seems to drain from her face.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say quickly. ‘I didn’t mean to intrude, but I found something that I just can’t explain.’

  Her jaw seems to grind slightly, but she refuses to fill the silence.

  ‘It was a newspaper cutting and a letter. They were in your bottom drawer, under the lining paper. The cutting showed a picture of my mum with someone who looked . . . well, he looked like he was her boyfriend. It was taken nine months before I was born. And the letter was from someone called Vittoria McCourt. The mother of the boy in the picture.’

  Her eyes dart to the table and she fixes them on the grooves in the wood.

  ‘I read the letter and I don’t understand some of the things that it says. Because it gives the impression, the strong impression, that . . .’ My voice trails off and I wonder if I can actually say this out loud. ‘Grandma, is that boy in the picture – Stefano McCourt – is he . . .’

  ‘Is he what?’ Her features have hardened into silent, stubborn shock.

  ‘My father?’ The two words come out in a croak and the tiniest, loaded hesitation follows.

  ‘What?’ she asks, incredulously.

  ‘Is he my father?’ I repeat.

  ‘Absolutely not. You’ve got it completely wrong.’

  I wait for her to continue but she says nothing. Instead, her eyes blaze with some undefinable emotion and I can’t decide whether it’s fear or fury.

  ‘Okay. Well, that’s a relief,’ I say, steadying my voice. ‘But can you explain it to me?’

  She scrapes back her chair and walks away to one of the drawers, which she starts busily rearranging with her back to me. ‘There’s nothing to explain.’

  ‘But, Grandma, there is. What’s the letter all about? Who was the boy in the picture? I need to know. I’ve got a right to know.’

  She spins around furiously. ‘A right? Don’t talk to me about rights. I suppose you think you had a right to go through my private things?’

  ‘I never meant to snoop, I swear. But, Grandma, you’re changing the subject. Who’s the boy?’

  Her jaw clamps together as she fixes her eyes on me. ‘He’s nobody.’

  ‘He clearly isn’t.’

  ‘No, Allie. Listen to me, lady. You’re putting two and two together and making five.’

  ‘Then . . . tell me the truth,’ I blurt out.

  Panic seems to race in her eyes. ‘The truth is simple – there’s nothing to it. So please just forget this nonsense. Stop jumping to ludicrous conclusions and, for God’s sake, give it a rest with these questions.’

  ‘How . . . how can I, Grandma?’

  ‘You can. You must. I don’t have anything to do with the McCourts any longer and, whatever you think you read or saw in that picture, you got it wrong. Your father is your father. Joe. Nobody else.’

  ‘But my mum and that Stefano boy were obviously together in the photo,’ I argue. ‘They look like they’re in love, Grandma.’

  ‘Of course they weren’t in love! This is ridiculous.’

  I sit silently for a moment. But I just can’t leave this. ‘Has Granddad seen the contents of that envelope?’

  Her lungs seem to inflate with air, her eyes widening. ‘Do not say a word about this to him, or anyone in this family. Especially Joe. I’m not saying this for my sake. I’m saying it for his.’

  I press my spine into the back of the chair, feeling winded. When she next speaks, her voice is lower, calmer. Somehow it has twice the impact. ‘I mean it,’ she warns. ‘Do not mention this again, to me or anyone else. I’ll never forgive you if you do.’

  Chapter 6

  There is only one day I spent with my mother that I recall in any kind of detail and that’s when she married my father. Every second of it feels so vivid, part of me thinks that my imagination must’ve filled in the gaps, because no six-year-old could remember all those details. The memory fixated me as I grew older. I’d day-dream about it as I gazed through the mottled windows at school, replaying conversations as sleep enveloped me each night.

  ‘You make a very pretty bridesmaid, Allie,’ Grandma Peggy told me, as she fixed a pale, yellow rose in my hair and straightened my dress. I was a tomboy when I was little, the kind of kid whose eyes lit up at the sight of an unclimbed tree and who asked for an electric guitar for Christmas after seeing The Bangles on Top of the Pops. But I couldn’t deny it. That dress was awesome – the colour of sunshine with a bow that bloomed out of the small of my back. I’d even been allowed to wear it with my jelly shoes, which I’d been surprised about. I’d seemed to be getting away with a lot lately.

  ‘Let me just fix a safety pin into the back,’ Grandma said. ‘It’s a little big for you.’

  ‘Why didn’t we find one in the right size?’

  ‘If we’d had more time we would.’

  Time. A child’s perception of it tends to be distorted. Weeks feel like months, months like lifetimes. Even so, I remember thinking that this whole thing was definitely sudden. When my friend Sally had been a bridesmaid, she’d gone on about it for two school terms, telling us about endless dress fittings and trips to the shops to find the perfect pair of patterned tights. But Mummy and Daddy had only told me about this a week earlier.

  ‘Come on, missy. Let’s go and see if Daddy’s ready.’

  Grandma took my hand and led me to the living room, where Daddy was standing in a posh grey suit and looking out the window. When he turned around, the first thing I noticed was that the flower on his lapel wasn’t straight. The second thing was that his eyes were puffy and red. His face broke into a huge smile.

  ‘You look like a princess!’ he said and, although I’d have preferred to look like Suzannah Hoffs, I graciously replied: ‘So do you.’

  He laughed. ‘I hope not.’

  ‘I mean Prince Charming.’

  ‘Oh good. That’s more the look I was going for. So, are you ready to go and be a bridesmaid?’

  ‘YES!’ I replied. ‘Are we going in a special car?’

  ‘Well, no. We’re going in my car,’ he replied.

  ‘Oh. Are we going to throw confetti when we get outside?’

  ‘Hmm. Probably not.’

  ‘Are we going to have a disco afterwards?’

  ‘Mummy’s not well enough for that, sweetheart.’

  None of this sounded anything like the wedding Sally went to. ‘She will be able to walk down the aisle of the church with me behind though, won’t she?’

  He glanced at Grandma Peggy then knelt down in front of me and took my hand. ‘No, Allie. She’s going to still be in hospital, sweetheart. She’s too poorly to go to a church.’

  ‘There is going to be a priest though. Father Daniel will be present,’ Grandma Peggy said.

  ‘Oh. Okay.’ I felt bad for even admitting this to myself but I was disappointed. Her room in the hospit
al was horrible, full of machines and beeping things. I had no idea how they were going to fit all the guests in.

  When we arrived, it became apparent that there were, in fact, no guests. None of their friends were there – and they had loads. There was just Mummy and she was asleep. And although the nurses were all beaming and fussing around with flowers and she was wearing a wedding dress, she didn’t look as beautiful as brides were meant to. She didn’t even look as beautiful as she had only months earlier, with thick eyelashes that I’d ask her to flutter against my cheek and lips so full that it took me ages when she let me put lipstick on her.

  The grown-ups talked about her having aggressive ovarian cancer. They said she’d become ill so quickly that one of her lungs had collapsed. None of that sounded good and the watermelon that seemed to have grown in her belly looked even less good. She had a hosepipe that went up her nose and she was connected to a machine by her finger. It wouldn’t shut up. It was like our house alarm when the battery had run out and Daddy would run around looking for a spare and getting cross when he couldn’t find one. The dress didn’t fit right at all. It was too big, except for across her tummy, where it stretched violently.

  Before the ceremony, Grandma Peggy took me to the toilet even though I didn’t really need it, like they made me do when we had a long journey ahead of us. I recall washing my hands, when all of a sudden, quite unexpectedly, a rush of sadness tore up my neck. The room seemed to close in on me and heat shot to my face as I looked down at the sink to see Grandma turning off the tap. The water stopped but my tears splashed onto the enamel in its place.

  Grandma Peggy turned me gently by the shoulders and took me in her arms, hugging me softly at first, then so tight it felt as though she would squeeze the breath out of me. ‘Please don’t cry, Allie,’ she whispered frantically, stroking my hair. ‘Please, please don’t cry.’

  She wiped my sticky red cheeks with a tissue and I tried to uncrumple my forehead. ‘I can’t help it.’

  Her face contorted with despair as she nodded and said: ‘Allie, this is going to be very hard for you. But for your mummy’s sake, we have to stay strong. All of us. We’ve got to do everything we can to let her have one happy day. If she sees you crying . . . I don’t think she could bear it. So no tears, sweetie. Please.’

  The ceremony was short. All the nurses clapped when the man in a suit said Daddy could kiss his bride. Then Grandma handed Mummy a piece of paper, words she’d said earlier and asked her to write down. But she didn’t really need it, because when she delivered her speech, she didn’t move her eyes from Daddy.

  ‘You’ve spent the last few weeks tearing yourself apart about the unfairness of this, as have I. But today isn’t a day for dwelling on that. Today is when I want you to know what you mean to me.’

  Her voice was quiet but, for all her pain, full of strength. ‘When we met, other girls dated boys who broke their heart and took them for granted. By sheer dumb luck, I got the boy who took me to watch Flashdance, when really he wanted to see Scarface. The boy who once waited an hour in the rain to pick me up after my Saturday job ran late. The boy whose sweetness and generosity shone through in everything he did. And still does. You taught me that real love is not about the passion of new attraction. It is about seeing each other stripped bare, in our ugly moments as well as our beautiful ones, and still feeling certain that you are better together.

  ‘We started out together as teenagers and, sooner than we’d both imagined, you had to become a father. Others wouldn’t have stepped up to the mark. But you did. My devoted friend and boyfriend became the man who made sandcastles with the lovely little girl who’d come into our lives. The man who introduced her to Winnie the Pooh and Peter Pan. The man who would rush into her room and hold her hand when she had a nightmare, stroking her hair until she fell back to sleep. The man who showed her how to catch a ball and spent hours trying to teach her to swim, finally coaxing her in after she’d been terrified. All of that made you the best daddy any of us could’ve asked for.

  ‘There are still times when I look at the two of you together and feel like my heart will burst because I love you so much. So, today, I refuse to dwell on the unfairness of it all. I’m going to dwell on what a privilege it is to love you. And how proud I am to call myself your wife.’

  Daddy couldn’t really talk then. He just leaned in and mumbled: ‘I love you too.’

  Afterwards, I went over to give Mummy a cuddle, when something occurred to me about the bump on her tummy.

  ‘Is that a baby in there?’

  ‘No, sweetheart, it’s not a baby. My tummy’s like that because I’m poorly. That’s what the doctors have told us.’

  I narrowed my eyes. ‘Doctors don’t know everything. That’s what Grandma Peggy says to Daddy.’

  ‘In this case, the doctors are right. I’m very sick.’

  I patted her hand because she looked terribly worried. ‘It’s okay, Mum. You don’t need to be upset. You’ll get better. I’m going to get you some of my pink medicine.’

  She hesitated. ‘I’m not going to get better, Allie. This isn’t like when you had a sore throat.’

  My mouth suddenly felt dry.

  ‘Are you going to die?’

  The beginning of a smile appeared at her lips and she said softly: ‘Yes, sweetheart. I am.’

  It felt like my chest was on fire. My face ached and something pulsed behind my eyes. But even as I felt the weak grip of her fingers around my hand, I was absolutely determined I was not going to let her down. And I didn’t. I did not cry.

  Chapter 7

  There are four students around the table in my office, all first years. Winning a place on an oversubscribed course like this involves not just hard work but a high degree of intelligence, so you might think that a reasonable excuse for failing to submit a final piece of coursework was not beyond any of them.

  ‘My girlfriend found out she was pregnant.’

  Lewis Hornby announces this news in a manner that seems very matter-of-fact, leans back onto the windowsill that overlooks the Georgian university quadrangle, and awaits my response.

  ‘Shit.’ Jennie Hamilton, a mature student of twenty-eight, has beaten me to it, proving that, as well as rockabilly hair and a fine collection of Doc Martens, she also has a better grasp than Lewis on the significance of impending fatherhood.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he reassures her. ‘It was a false alarm.’

  She raises her eyebrows briefly. ‘Nice one.’

  ‘Yeah. Turns out it’s someone else’s.’

  From the way he returns my gaze, I must look perplexed at this exchange. ‘Sorry but . . . how does your girlfriend being pregnant – but not with your baby – prevent you from submitting your lab report?’

  He straightens his back. ‘Well, it’s been very stressful.’

  The other two students, Liam O’Callaghan and Anja Pollit, turn to me, eager to see how I’ll respond. But I catch a glimpse of the clock and realise that it’s gone five. Although ordinarily I’d stay behind long past this, Ed and I have decided to make the most of the recent spate of good weather to meet for a run in the park after work.

  ‘All right, Lewis. You can have an extension until Monday, but make sure it’s in my inbox before then, okay?’ I turn to the others. ‘So any final questions before your exams?’

  They shake their heads, murmuring that there are none. I hope this is a promising sign, but part of me thinks that some of them look a little too relaxed. Certainly more relaxed than I ever was in their shoes; not nervous, as such, but there was never any room for complacency. I close my A4 notepad.

  ‘Well, good luck, you lot. You know where I am if you need me.’

  Anja hangs back as the others begin to filter through the door.

  ‘I just want to say thank you for all your support this term, Allie.’ She removes a box of Roses chocolates from her bag and hands them to me self-consciously.

  Anja was suffering from severe anxiety at the start
of the year. She’d skipped lectures and, after seeking help from the student counselling service, a support plan was set up to help her find her feet on the course.

  I’ve spent every Thursday evening for the past month with her, going over the work she’d missed. It genuinely wasn’t a big deal. She’s immensely bright, if a little intense, so there was no way I was going to let her fall so far behind that she’d have to withdraw from the course entirely. But she never seems to stop thanking me for it.

  ‘Anja, you really didn’t need to.’

  Her expression softens and I realise she looks emotional. ‘I mean it, Allie. I don’t know where I would’ve ended up without you. Thank you.’ A film of liquid begins to form on her eyes. ‘I realise I’ve never really told you what happened. I’m sure you must have wondered.’

  ‘No, no,’ I say, and she blinks, surprised. ‘Sorry. I just meant that you don’t need to share that kind of detail with me. That stuff is private. You’re better off talking to a friend. But I want you to know that I’m here for you, to help you with anything regarding your work. Any time of day or night.’ This is the nicest way I can think of to say that heart to hearts are really not my thing.

  She sniffs. ‘Thank you, Allie.’

  ‘Any time at all,’ I smile, gently guiding her towards the door.

  *

  I would never describe myself as a keen runner, but I am keen on the fact that running means I can eat cheesecake and not have hips the size of a small caravan. Consequently, I try to get out with my old school friend Ruth, who’s slightly slower than me, a few times a week.

  We usually choose a circuit in Sefton Park, not far from where I live. I enjoy the ease of the wide, flat pavement that ribbons around its irregular perimeter, shaded by gnarled horse chestnut branches. Occasionally, we venture inside where, as well as an expanse of green space, waterfalls, caves and lakes, there is a wealth of features that were clearly designed to tickle Victorian fancies: a bandstand, Eros fountain and the Palm House, a three-tier domed conservatory that houses a collection of oversized botanicals.