CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Do you want to tell me what’s wrong now, darling, or later?” Eve Harrison asked at her daughter’s shoulder. She and Cathy were standing at the French windows in the sitting room of the Harrison’s home in Ipswich watching Frank Harrison and Lynette kicking a ball around.
“They’re having fun,” observed Cathy, wistfully.
“And you, how about you?” Eve Harrison persisted gently, “Is life much fun for you these days?”
Cathy turned to face her mother. “You know it isn’t,” she whispered tearfully.
“I only know what you choose to tell me,” her mother pointed out,” which isn’t a great deal.” She paused then, “Is it Steve?”
Cathy nodded. “But I can’t blame him entirely, it wouldn’t be fair. It’s me, too.” She forced a laugh. “You know how bloody-minded I can be sometimes.”
“Don’t I just!” exclaimed the tall, bespectacled woman beside her but Eve was not laughing and the degree of concern in her mother’s eyes was too much for Cathy to bear.
“Oh, Mum!” Cathy sobbed, burst into tears and fell into her mother’s arms.
Later, over endless cups of tea at the kitchen table, Cathy told her mother about Anne Gates. Eve listened carefully, her pulse racing. Cathy had become practically obsessed with the missing years of her childhood ever since Lynette was born. She understood or thought she did. All the same, Eve could not deny it was painful to hear her only child speculate about her biological parentage.
The circumstances under which she and Frank had first fostered and then adopted Cathy may have been unique, but they had always looked upon her as their natural daughter. After they found her wandering in the street and took her in, she hadn’t spoken one word to either herself or Frank for a whole year. Social Services had agreed to their fostering the child, not least because any attempt to remove her from the house had met with violent tantrums. Once she started to talk, it seemed she would never stop.
Cathy was very subdued for several weeks after the only people she had ever really known as Mum and Dad sat her down and told her how she came to them on the day they had set aside for her eleventh birthday; without a birth certificate, they had to pick a date at random, but doctors had put her age at ten years at the outset so they chose September 11th. It had been on that day, fifteen years earlier that their first child, Stephanie, had been stillborn. There had been complications that necessitated a hysterectomy. Eve had thought she was reconciled to never being a mother…until the day they came across a little girl crying in the street who appeared to have no recollection of how she came to be there or even who she was. Only a charm bracelet on her wrist bearing the letters C-A-T-H-Y had revealed her name.
Eve permitted herself a quiet smile. They were a happy family. (Well, weren’t they?) Cathy may have put them all through the various ups and downs of being a teenager but she was a sensible girl and had blossomed into an attractive young woman. She met Steve Taylor at university, and they married a year after their graduation. Another year later, Lynette was born. In her mind’s eye, Eve could still picture little Cathy on the garden swing, Frank pushing her with much exaggerated huffing and puffing. Frank adored Lynette, they both did.
Eve frowned. How dare this Gates woman come along and threaten to destroy my family? “I think we’ve drunk quite enough tea for one day,” she announced suddenly. “Let’s go into the lounge. A drop of brandy for both of us, I think. But don’t tell your father. You know how he feels about women drinking, let alone during the day!”
Cathy followed her mother into another room at the front of the house. She could hardly believe her mother was suggesting they have a brandy at four o’clock in the afternoon. Her father was teetotal.
Eve steered Cathy to the sofa, and went to fetch the drinks. “So what does Steve think about Anne Gates?” she asked while handing Cathy her glass and sitting down beside her.
Cathy sighed. “You know Steve…any excuse for a quarrel. I think he feels threatened.”
Eve Harrison sipped at her brandy, a welcome heat flooding the parts tea could never reach. “He may have a point for once,” she commented abstractedly.
“How do you mean?”
Eve could not resist a tight smile. Her daughter was never anything less than direct. “It’s supposed to be a family holiday, just you, Steve and Lynette,” she pointed out. “Yet here you are, breaking into it already on the flimsy excuse that a complete stranger is making waves. If you ask me, the Gates woman is a mischief-maker if ever there was one. Oh, I feel sorry for her, of course I do. Who wouldn’t? But it’s not fair on you or Steve, and it’s certainly not fair on Lynette. That child sees more than enough of her parents bickering all the time at home, never mind on holiday too.”
“We’re going back tonight,” said Cathy defensively, “and the Gates woman has a name. It’s Anne. Nor is she a mischief-maker. She’s a very nice person. I like her a lot, and so does Lynette. As for Steve and me…Well, you know the score.”
“I’m not sure that I do. I know he’s cheated on you more than once, but maybe you should ask yourself why?”
“You think I don’t, all the time?” Cathy was angry as well as taken aback. Her mother, always a good listener, was usually more sympathetic.
“He’s a good man, Cathy. You were so in love once before…” Eve faltered.
“Before I drove him away, is that what you were going to say? So it’s my fault my marriage is falling apart, is it? I’m to blame for my husband and the father of my child being unable to resist anything in a skirt, is that what you’re saying? I thought you were on my side.”
“I was going to say, before Lynette was born, and of course I’m on your side, darling, you know I am. It’s just that…”
“What?”
“Oh, let’s have another brandy.” Eve drained her glass.
“Not for me,” Cathy shook her head.
“Not even just a tiny one?” Again, Cathy declined. Eve took no notice, but snatched the glass from her daughter’s hand and crossed, abruptly, to the wine cabinet that stood in a far corner of the room.
“I’m driving later, don’t forget.” Cathy protested.
“Two little brandies won’t hurt,” Eve insisted. “I’ll ply you with gallons of black coffee later if it makes you feel any better. You and Lynette could stay over of course...” She poured herself a generous measure and Cathy a smaller one, paused, and then picked up the bottle.
“I told Steve we’d be back tonight. We should be getting back after supper, but…” She glanced at a clock on the mantel. It was nearly 6.00 pm. “Oh, let him stew. We’ll stay until nine, but not a second longer. Lynette always falls asleep in the car and we are on holiday.” Her mother’s huge smile spoke volumes.
“You were such a happy couple once, you and Steve” Eve remarked, rejoining Cathy on the sofa where she drained her glass, refilled it and placed the bottle on an occasional table.
“So you said, But he doesn’t understand, mum. No one does. That’s why I like Anne. She knows what it’s like to have a dirty great hole in you that you can’t even fill with memories because there aren’t any,’ Cathy told her with feeling, absently accepted the glass, pulled a face after taking a sip and put it down again. What am I doing? I don’t even like brandy.
“Perhaps a counsellor…?”
“How can you say that?” Cathy fumed, “Look how many trick cyclists and bloody counsellors I saw when I was a kid. And what good did it do? None, except make me feel like a freak.”
“Oh, my poor darling…!” Eve wailed, put down her glass and flung her arms wide. On this occasion, however, Cathy did not fall into them.
Eve reached, agitatedly, for her glass. “Let’s be honest, darling. There’s no way this Gates woman can be your biological mother. You were barely ten years old. You couldn’t have made your own way from Brighton to Ipswich and if you were…abducted…why should anyone dump you here, of all places? No, you need to give this woman a wide berth, and concentrate on saving your marriage. You said yourself, this little holiday in Brighton is a make or break affair as far as you and Steve are concerned. You owe it to Lynette to give it your best shot. Steve does, too, of course. Oh, I know he’s been unfaithful, and I’m sure some women could never forgive that. I’m not even sure I could myself. But you have to try, darling, for Lynette’s sake. Tell me you’ll keep trying, darling, please.” Eve pleaded.
Cathy put her head in her hands and covered her ears. How could her mother be so obtuse? She sat up and tried a different tack. “Anne is no threat to anyone. On the contrary, she might even help me save my marriage if Steve doesn’t go and ruin everything. Can’t you see? I need someone like her in my life. It doesn’t matter if she thinks I’m her long lost daughter. I know damn well I’m not. All that matters is that I have someone in my life who really understands how it feels to be a half dead person walking.”
“Oh, my poor, poor darling!” cried Eve, horrified by Cathy’s choice of expression.
“Lynette already thinks of her as a second granny,” Cathy persisted doggedly. “I just need you to be okay about that.”
“Never mind me, what about Steve?”
“Fuck Steve” Her mother’s shocked expression warned Cathy she had gone too far. “Okay, I’m sorry. But you can leave Steve to me. I’ll talk to him and make him understand if it kills me if you’ll…”
“Talk to your father?” Eve had no difficulty finishing Cathy’s sentence for her, having seen it coming from the very start of this tête-à-tête.
“Will you?” Cathy held her breath while her mother appeared to be deliberating. She could tell from the anguished look in her mother’s eyes that she was asking a lot.
Father and daughter were close but he’d always spoiled her rotten and there had never been the intimacy between them that she shared with her mother. Her mother hated talking about the early years but had never avoided the subject whenever Cathy he felt compelled to broach it. Her father, on the other hand, would always change the subject and immediately suggest a treat of some kind, as if a treat might make the truth of the matter disappear. She had always caved in, pretended to be over the moon about whatever he came up with and his face would light up so…
“You want to bring her here, don’t you? You want your father and me to meet this Gates woman?” her mother was saying. Cathy could only nod, not trusting herself to speak. “Frankly, darling, I don’t think he could handle it. He’s not been well and this…Well, it won’t help. You know he’d do anything for you, we both would. But how can you expect me to convince him it’s for the best when I don’t believe it myself? Besides, what on earth do you expect us to say to the woman? It will be a disaster, and no one any the better or wiser for it.”
“You’ll ask him then?” Cathy gave an inaudible sigh of relief. She had won her mother over. That had to count for something…didn’t it?
Eve Harrison nodded unhappily.
“Grandma, grandma, grandpa has got a frog in his throat!” Lynette burst into the room. Her grandfather was close behind, coughing, slightly breathless and looking very flushed.
“I’m fine,” Frank Harrison assured them, and visibly recovered the instant he sank into his favourite an armchair.”
Eve gave her granddaughter a hug, careful to avoid a disapproving look from Frank that had been quick to include the brandy bottle. “Do you want to come and help me lay the table for supper? I could use an extra pair of hands and it looks to me as if you’ve just about tired your poor grandfather out,” stroking the little girl’s hair as she spoke. She much preferred Lynette’s hair hanging loose as it was now. Why Cathy should ever like to see the child to wear it in plaits, she would never know.
“We’ve been playing football, haven’t we granddad?”
“We certainly have,” Frank agreed with a mock grimace, “and you certainly know how to run rings around someone with a ball, young lady!”
Lynette’s face glowed.
“Little girls never played football in my day,” declared Eve, “That was boy’s stuff.”
“Oh, grandma, that is so sexist!”
Everyone laughed except Lynette.
“Come on,” said Eve, “Let’s leave your grandfather to get his breath back while we girls get the tea ready. Or is that too sexist for you?”
Lynette flounced about with an impish grin on her face, unsure why she should be the centre of amused attention, but enjoying it all the same. Flinging her mother and grandfather an adoring smile, she eagerly took her grandmother’s hand and followed her into the kitchen.
Much later, after Cathy and Lynette had driven off and they lay in the same bed they had shared for more than half a century, Eve and Frank listened to the sound of each other’s breathing without saying a word.
It was Frank who broke the unpalatable silence. “So, when are you going to tell me what you and Cathy talked about?”
“Didn’t she tell you?”
“I wouldn’t be asking if she did,” responded Frank testily. “Oh we chatted, yes, and very enjoyable it was too. All the same, I could tell something was bugging her. But you know how she is with me. We only ever seem to skirt round the edges of anything really important.”
“You do, you mean. Your answer to unhappiness is to ignore it and hope it will go away.”
“So why is she unhappy this time?”
“Oh, it’s nothing much,” Eve lied easily enough.
“It must have been something important if it needed a tipple of brandy to wash it down,” was the gruff response.
“Not now Frank. I’ll tell you in the morning.”
“You’ll sleep better if you tell me now, you know you will.” Eve felt too tired to argue and told him all she knew. “A fine mess, I must say,” was Frank Harrison’s immediate response. “Oh, well, it can’t be helped I suppose. I can’t say I like the sound of this Gates woman any more than you do. But if Cathy wants us to meet her, I can’t see how we can wriggle out of it. You know what our Cathy’s like once she gets the bit between her teeth. You never know, this Anne Gates might even turn out to be a blessing in disguise.”
“How can you say that?” Eve sat bolt upright and fixed her spouse with a piercing glare. “She’s an outsider, an intruder. Heaven only knows what she’s up to. Cathy hardly knows her, and already the woman’s manipulating her. I tell you, Frank, I’m scared. You know how vulnerable Cathy is, especially about anything regarding her past. Besides, it’s family business. I don’t want a complete stranger poking her nose in and stirring things up. I’m amazed that you could even consider it.”
“I only want what’s best for Cathy.”
“And I don’t?”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“Oh, I know what you meant. This is just the excuse you’ve been looking for, isn’t it?
“She deserves the truth, Eve. She needs to know who she is. Surely you can see that?”
“She’s our daughter. What more does she need to know?”
“We can’t go on lying to her.”
“We’ve never lied to her.”
“Maybe not, but we haven’t been entirely straight with her either, have we? Trust me, love, you’ve nothing to be scared of.” He tried to put an arm around her but she drew back. Frank tried again to reassure her. “Cathy isn’t going to turn her back on us if we tell her what we know. Like you say, she’s our daughter. Nothing can change that. We both know the Gates woman isn’t Cathy’s real mother, and from what you say, Cathy knows it as well. I dare say the Gates woman knows it, too, in her heart of hearts.”
“So why not leave well alone?” Eve insisted.
“Because if Cathy’s clinging to some fragile hope that this woman might be her biological mother, that only goes to show how desperate she is to fill the terrible gap in her life. It’s her very identity we’re talking about, for crying out loud. You’re her real mother, just like I’m her real father, in every way but biological. Telling her what we know can only bring us closer, you’ll see.”
“No!” Eve was adamant. “Telling her the truth will break her heart.”
“And not telling her won’t?”
Eve flung back the light duvet and scrambled out of the bed. “Call me a selfish cow, but I will not risk losing our Cathy. Besides, what would be the point? What do we really know that can make any real difference? So we have a shoebox with a few pieces of jigsaw in it. It could take a lifetime to put the pieces together. Think of the pain, the heartache. How can you even consider about putting Cathy...or us...through all that again? And for what, just pieces of a jigsaw?” Her voice broke and she began to sob. “No, you stay there. Don’t touch me. Don’t you dare come near me,” she cried as she pushed the duvet back and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. “Pieces of a bloody jigsaw…” She continued to sob uncontrollably.
“Pieces that include her birth certificate,” Frank reminded her gently.
It was too much for Eve, who fled the room and took the stairs two at her time in her haste to reach the brandy bottle waiting downstairs to help ease both her distress. and her conscience.
Frank debated whether or not to follow her, and decided against it. There was no talking to Eve once she started drinking. How they had managed to keep Cathy from finding out her mother was an alcoholic, he was at a loss to explain.
He thought he heard the doorbell ring, glanced at an alarm clock on Eve’s side of the bed and dismissed the idea out of hand. The luminous dial told him it was nearly midnight. He lay back on the pillows, thought he heard the sound again and closed his eyes. A succession of familiar images took him back to a few days before Cathy’s eighteenth birthday celebrations. The same short ring at the bell…
It was Eve who had answered the door then. She was gone so long, he’d felt obliged to investigate and discovered her deep in conversation on the doorstep with an elderly man clutching a walking stick in one hand and a shoebox in the other. “What is it dear?” a younger Frank had asked in all innocence. As soon as Eve turned and he saw the expression on her face, he knew it was serious. He had never seen her look so angry or…frightened.
“This gentleman says he’s Cathy’s grandfather.” She said and his heart sank.
“Well, don’t leave the poor man standing at the door, dear, show him in.” He’d adopted a brisk matter-of-fact tone to hide his dismay.
In the event, it hadn’t turned out to be quite the crisis they imagined. The man apologized profusely for not having made contact years earlier. “I saw her picture on a television News programme and recognized her instantly of course. I had no idea she had even gone missing. Naturally, my immediate instinct was to dive for the telephone. But I never made the call. I couldn’t, you see, I just couldn’t. Her parents, my son and his wife, they had no idea how to look after a child. Both were on drugs. My wife and I did what we could then…” his eyes filled with tears, “my dear wife passed away suddenly. I fear I neglected everything and everyone for far too long after that…”
“But how did she come to be in Ipswich?” Eve asked weakly.
“I’m not sure, to be honest. My daughter-in-law had friends here I believe. She and my son were visiting and somehow they managed to lose Cathy.”
“You don’t just lose a child,” Frank had raged at the man.
“There was an accident. My son was driving while under the influence. Drugs, alcohol…you name it. He and his wife were killed outright. Presumably Cathy was with the friends. How she came to be wandering the streets on her own…heaven only knows. My guess is they didn’t even know what day it was at the time and Cathy just walked out of her own accord. Maybe she went looking for her parents. It must have been so traumatic for the poor child. By the time I realised what had happened…” He paused and fixed them with a look sheer anguish neither of them would ever forget.
“I couldn’t have coped with a child on my own. I knew that,” he’d continued, “so I prayed Cathy would somehow come through it all and manage to have a good life. It’s unforgivable of me, I know. I can’t tell you how ashamed I am. At the same time, I was proven right wasn’t I. Cathy has turned out well. She’s a credit to you both. I sometimes come here, you see, and watch out for her. I used to a lot when I was younger. Less so in latter years…”
“So why now, after all this time...? Why wait until today to ring our bloody doorbell?” Half asleep, Frank fancied he could still hear himself shouting at the poor man all those years ago.
Cathy’s grandfather had taken his time answering the question, and then said very quietly, “I’m dying. I have a few weeks if I’m lucky, days if I’m not.”
Frank opened his eyes.
Downstairs, Eve took another swig from her glass before greeting oblivion with relief.
To be continued. on Monday
