The Other Child (28 page)

The flat was very small and rather sparsely decorated. Even without ever having had much money, we had lived better than this. There were two rooms and a small additional chamber. They all faced out the back onto another house, which was so close that you could stretch your arm out the window and touch its walls. Although the late afternoon sun was still shining outside, there was no sign of it here. It could just as well have been an overcast November day instead of the sunny first day of September.

The first room was used as a living room and kitchen. The second room was Mum and Harold's bedroom. The little chamber – as I had guessed – was to be my room. A bed and a narrow wardrobe fitted inside, and that was all. I could barely turn around in there.

‘And where am I to do my homework?' I asked angrily.

‘At the kitchen table,' my mother replied, trying to present an aura of carefree cheer, which came across as completely fake. ‘You've got room, and no one will bother you!'

I really had to compose myself, else I would have burst into tears. Everything was so much worse than I had imagined. Not that I was spoilt. On the Beckett farm the bedrooms were small and dark, the house was rundown, and my bedroom – if I am to be honest – was only marginally bigger than the small room here. But on beautiful days the sun flooded in through all the windows and you had a view out over an endless expanse of meadows until they blurred into the sky on the horizon. From one of the top rooms you could see the sea behind a gap in the hills. I had the feeling of an almost limitless freedom. Here, on the other hand, I felt I was being buried alive, walled into a prison.

‘I'm at the docks all day,' said Harold, which I took to be an attempt to make me feel better. ‘And your mum isn't home either, because unfortunately she still goes to clean for people, even though there's no need for her to. So the whole flat is yours.'

‘We can use the money I bring in,' said Mum.

‘We'd get by without it too,' replied Harold.

I had the feeling I was listening to a long-established argument. Obviously Mum's cleaning was a hot potato.

Things would get tricky,' she said.

I began to ask myself why she had married this Mr Kane. He was not good-looking, and he obviously did not have money. What, for God's sake, was his attraction for my mother? I thought she was a pretty woman. She could have caught a better fish than this swollen fatty. My dead father might have been a drunkard, and completely unreliable, but he was a good-looking man. I remember that as a child I was often proud to walk around town with him and see the looks that women threw him. That would never happen with Harold.

Had Mum been that desperate?

Of course, now I can understand her better. By today's standards, my mother, in her mid-thirties, was still a young woman. Back then she was over the hill. She was a widow, had a child and no money. She did not want to stay alone for the rest of her life, but men were not exactly running to her door, given her situation. In addition, most men her age were at the front and not exactly in a position to come courting. Mum had always been a very pragmatic person. She had seen Harold Kane as a real and possibly last chance for herself, and she had grasped it. Now she was determined to make the best of it. The only problem was that I was supposed to play along, but I was set against it.

For dinner we had potatoes and meat. The meat was so stringy that you had to keep plucking bits from between your teeth, while I found the potatoes tasteless. Mum noticed that I was not enjoying the meal.

‘I'm sure the food was better in the country,' she said. For the first time since she had fetched me against my will from Staintondale she sounded a little apologetic. ‘Here in town the war has brought shortages.'

I did not reply. What could I have said? Not just the food – everything was better in the country. Evening came. Around this time I would normally have run down to the bay and met Chad. We would have hugged. I would have felt his heartbeat next to mine. We would have told each other about our day, and then I would have had to listen to one of his angry monologues about the call-up he longed for …

I pushed my plate away. Thinking of Chad was too much for me. I could not eat another mouthful.

I saw too that Harold did not eat much. He more than made up for it in beer consumption. More than could be good for him. His ballooning body was probably more a result of the alcohol than the – to be generous – average cooking skills of my mother. Another drinker! At the time I did not think about psychology, otherwise I would have seen the fatal pattern in my mother's life. Her father had been an alcoholic, her first husband too, and now her second husband. She obviously had a soft spot for drunks, and was unable to break this downward spiral. I did not understand that she too was a prisoner of herself. In disbelief I simply asked myself again and again: Why? Why? Why Harold Kane?

After the meal I went straight to bed. I did not even help to clear the table and do the washing up. They allowed for my tiredness after such a stressful day and did not object. However, as I got undressed in the claustrophobic narrowness of my room, I heard Harold complain to Mum in the next room: ‘She can't stand me! I noticed straight away!'

‘She's got a lot to get used to today,' replied Mum. ‘She's grown very close to the Beckett family. Now she feels uprooted. She's rejecting everything she finds here. Don't take it personally.'

‘I think it was a mistake to bring her here against her will,' said Harold. I froze, full of hope that the two of them might come to see that—

Mum dashed my dreams immediately. ‘No,' she said resolutely. ‘It wasn't a mistake. It was high time. She was about to become completely integrated into their family. I should have stepped in much earlier.'

‘It was your idea to send her away to the country!'

‘You know how it was. Bombs were raining down night after night. I didn't want to lose my girl. But now I don't want to lose her in another way. Don't you understand? By her seeing another woman as her mother!'

‘We're doing all we can so she won't be your only child,' said Harold, and in spite of my youth and inexperience I could not help noticing that his tone had changed. ‘Perhaps we should try again now, what do you think?'

‘I have to clean the kitchen. And Fiona's not asleep yet. She might come in any moment.'

‘Rubbish. She's dead tired. We won't hear a peep out of her tonight.'

‘Harold … stop it … I'm really afraid that Fiona—Stop!'

A chair fell over. I heard Mum giggle. Horrified, I held my breath. They weren't going to … right now …

The sounds which soon reached my ear were unambiguous. It was just after dinner and my mother and Harold Kane were doing it in the kitchen and could not care less that I could hear everything, absolutely everything.

It was unbearable. Quite unbearable.

I did not continue undressing but crept into bed as I was, in my stockings and the flowery summer dress Emma had sewn for me. The bed linen smelt musty. I buried my face in the pillow and clamped my hands over my ears – anything to stop me hearing the disgusting goings-on in the next room. I had kept my feelings under control for the whole of this horrible, long day. I could not any longer.

I cried. I cried the hottest, most violent tears of my whole life.

9

I really did not make life easy for my mother and Harold in the following weeks and months. My anger that they had brought me to London against my will did not dissipate. On the contrary, it became even stronger. Autumn came, and with it fog and the early nights. My mood sank to an all-time low.

Harold avoided me and I him – as much as that was possible in the tiny flat. He was indeed away at the docks (where he was a foreman, after all) just about all day long, and when he came home he would pretty quickly get drunk. Then he would fall asleep on the wobbly little sofa in the kitchen. He snored and stank of alcohol. Every time I had to pass him I shivered.

‘He's a
drunk
, Mum,' I said to my mother once. ‘How could you marry a
drunk?'

‘All men drink,' claimed my mother, and from her perspective and experience that must have seemed like the truth.

I shook my head. ‘No! Arvid Beckett for example …'

Saying that touched a raw nerve. ‘Just stop talking about the Becketts!' she snapped. ‘They can do no wrong in your eyes! They're normal people like you and me and Harold!'

‘They don't drink,' I insisted.

‘Then they've got other vices. Everyone has a vice. Believe me!'

She might or might not have been right. I could not judge. In any case, Harold's alcoholism and the sight of his bloated face disgusted me so much that all my life I have had something against alcohol and never touched the stuff. I hate it. I cannot even stand having a bottle of a
digestif
in the house.

I went to school, conscientiously did all my homework and spent my spare time writing endless letters to Chad. I described my bleak routine, the miserable atmosphere in bombed-out London, the dark flat and the scarcity of food. In my letters Harold was a real monster. Chad must have thought my mother had married a fat, stupid and constantly drunk ogre. I hoped Chad would console me, but he seldom replied. He let me know that he did not like to write letters and that there was a lot to do on the farm, but that he missed me and often thought of me. I had to be satisfied with that. He was a man, after all. They all seemed to find it hard to express their feelings on paper.

At the end of November I received a letter from him, in which as usual he moaned about having to sit out the war on a sheep farm instead of fighting for England. ‘The Germans' luck is changing,' he wrote. ‘They can be beaten, and I want to be there!' At the end of his letter he mentioned that his mother was seriously ill again. ‘A cough, fever and she looks terrible. The cold, damp weather is no good for her, but we don't have the money for her to have some time in the south, and the times are not favourable. The Channel Islands would not be bad, but Hitler's gang is there. Anyway, how would we manage here without her?'

I had to think of Nobody briefly. Who was taking care of him, if Emma had to stay in bed for weeks? Maybe they would finally put him in a home. It would be best for everyone.

There was a special surprise for me at Christmas. After we had exchanged presents in the morning (I received mainly practical things like a scarf, hat and gloves), Mum revealed that I was to have a little sibling in July.

‘A baby brother,' Harold added. He was sitting on the sofa, and in honour of the special day had drunk his first whisky at nine in the morning.

‘We don't know yet,' Mum replied.

‘I know it,' insisted Harold. ‘It'll be a boy. You'll see!'

‘So – are you happy?' Mum asked me.

‘In July,' I said slowly. ‘So it might have the same birthday as me.' That was all I needed: for Harold's son, who would no doubt take after his father, to dispute my birthday with me.

‘Definitely not,' thought Mum. The doctor said early July. Maybe even late June. You won't get in each other's way.' Her eyes were shining and her face had a soft expression. She really was happy to be having a child with this red-faced alcoholic!

I thought of something else. ‘There's no room for another person here! It'll be far too crowded!' Perhaps, I hoped, they would finally see the need to send me back to Staintondale.

Mum did not think of that. ‘The first year the baby will sleep in the room with Harold and me. And then we'll see. Maybe we'll find a slightly larger flat.'

‘Of course we will,' intoned Harold. I would have liked to ask him how he was going to pay the higher rent, seeing as he so consistently spent most of his wage on alcohol, but I bit my tongue. It was Christmas. I did not want to spoil the day for all of us.

We need not have worried about the date of birth or the question of space, as it all ended dramatically earlier.

In late February Mum had a bad fall on the icy street in front of our house. She dragged herself upstairs to our flat, her face contorted in pain. Once there she sank onto the sofa and whimpered softly to herself. I made her a cup of tea, but she only had a few sips.

‘It hurts so much, Fiona,' she whispered. ‘It hurts so much!'

‘Mum, we should call a doctor.'

She shook her head. ‘No. He would just scare me. I just have to lie here and rest for a bit. Everything will be all right.'

In fact her pains got visibly worse. She was moaning loudly and pressing her hands to her stomach. I was starting to be very worried. Apart from the odd cold, my mother was never sick. I only knew her as an active, healthy person. Now her face was yellowy white, her lips were bloodless and she was writhing back and forth. With great effort she stood up, to walk a few steps, in the hope the cramps would relax. I saw a large red stain on the light-coloured sofa.

‘Mum, you're bleeding,' I said, shocked.

She stared at the stain. ‘I know. But … that happens … that doesn't mean anything …'

‘Just let me fetch a doctor!' I pleaded.

Although she could barely stand on her feet, she snapped back, ‘No! On no condition! Do what I say!'

‘Why not, Mum? I …'

She pressed her lips together, then gasped, ‘No!', before shuffling back to the sofa and arduously sitting back down again. I was at my wits' end.

I just did not understand why she was so set against seeing a doctor. She was in pain, and was losing blood … Did she seriously believe these pains would simply vanish into thin air? I was too young to know that my mother was suffering from shock. She was losing her child and knew it unconsciously but she was fighting the realisation with all her strength. She wanted at any cost to give Harold the son he deeply wished for, and she had taken long enough to fall pregnant. Her mother's instincts were also running away with her. She clung to the unborn child, tried to protect herself and her little one from the objective and no doubt devastating diagnosis of a doctor. She refused to face reality, putting her own life in danger. I stood there helplessly, intimidated by her sharp tone into not going for help.