All the Days of Our Lives (46 page)

Marek shrugged. ‘Oh, a little bit. Not so bad.’

‘Ah, the world’s workers,’ Sybil said, swinging the door open. ‘Oh, and Marek too. Jolly good.’

They all went thankfully into the dimly lit hall.

‘We’ll just get our things off,’ Katie said. Thank goodness she had Michael to busy herself with.

‘Are you going to give him his tea, or let him stay up with us?’ Sybil asked. ‘It is Friday.’

Katie considered, one foot on the bottom step. Marek was standing back politely to let them go first. ‘Oh – he’s very tired. Maudie’s lot have all got awful colds. I think I’ll get him to bed in case he’s coming down with it too.’

‘Right-oh,’ Sybil was disappearing out to the back. ‘Come down when you’re ready then.’

There was another banging on the knocker.

‘I expect that’s Piotr. Open it, will you, Marek?’ Sybil called. ‘Save my poor old feet.’

Halfway up the stairs, half dragging Michael, Katie heard Marek open the door, then voices. It was not Piotr, but another man. She paused to listen, only just hearing a voice say, ‘I’m sorry to trouble you. I hope I’ve got the right house.’

Dimly, in the recesses of her memory, the voice seemed familiar, while her more conscious mind only detected a stranger.

‘Mrs O’Neill,’ Marek called to her with unusual formality. ‘There is a visitor for you.’

Katie came down again into the dimly lit hall to see a man standing just inside the front door. All she could make out was a pale face, a head of thick hair, perhaps grizzled, dark eyes, a long, dark coat and in his hands a black trilby, which he held, looking very ill at ease.

‘I go . . .’ Marek started to say, but she quickly responded, ‘No – don’t!’ Who was this person? She didn’t want to be alone with him, whoever he was.

‘I . . . The thing is . . .’ The man began, then stopped, capable only of false starts. He seemed in a terrible state. Something about him was familiar and Katie was filled with the oddest sensation, half dread, half trembling. She had wondered if one day Simon would come – would he ever? – to find her, find his son. But this was not Simon Collinge . . .

‘Are you Katie O’Neill?’ the man said at last. She saw him staring hard at Michael, who had also come back down and was standing beside her, holding onto her skirt.

She nodded. ‘Why – who are you?’ She glanced at Marek, who was also looking bewildered.

‘My name . . .’ He stopped, in difficulty, and cleared his throat. ‘My name is Michael O’Neill.’

‘No, it isn’t!’ Katie heard her son pipe up crossly from her side. ‘That’s
my
name!’

The man smiled faintly. ‘Is it now?’ She heard the Irish in his voice. She was finding it hard to breathe.

‘What d’you mean?’ she asked faintly. ‘Who are you? Why are you here?’

‘I think I must be your father,’ he said with an air of humble apology. He was turning the hat round and round in his hands.

Katie heard Marek gasp, or had she gasped herself? She wasn’t sure. Her legs were suddenly so useless that she stepped back and had to sit on the bottom step.

‘Mom?’ Michael sounded panicky. ‘What’s the matter? Who’s the man?’

‘But . . .’ All Katie could say was, ‘No.
No
. You’re dead. You died. She told me.’ She was shaking her head, her whole body beginning to tremble.

‘Is that what she told you? Well, I suppose it was for the best – I might as well have done, I suppose.’ There was a long pause as they stared at each other. ‘You’re mine all right,’ he said. ‘You’re the girl I remember – and look at him.’ He nodded at Michael. ‘He’s the image of you.’

‘Why . . . what . . . ? But you were in bed – you had TB. I saw you. You were sick . . . And then you went to the hospital and you never came back . . .’ She clutched at the wooden banister, needing something to hang on to. ‘I remember it – I swear I do.’

‘It’s true, I was sick at one time – I remember. I had some chest problem, bronchitis or something. And I was in bed. She must have told you . . . Or you got it muddled. But I didn’t die. I’ – he held his hands out helplessly – ‘I left. I had to; she was . . . impossible . . .’

Katie’s mind was spinning. She couldn’t think what to ask about the past. Everything she had believed was exploding into pieces. She felt as if she too might fall apart. Why should she want to know about him? Why ask? But she couldn’t seem to stop staring at him.

‘You’ve been alive all this time?’

‘I’ve been in Coventry, most of the time. But I always knew that I had a little girl in Birmingham somewhere – a lovely little girl . . .’

Pain flared harshly in her. ‘Go away!’ She jumped up, screaming at him. ‘You just go away and leave me alone! Why have you come back now, when you’ve been dead to me all this time? What use are you now, after . . . after everything? Get out – just go away from me!’

The sobs started to break out of her and Michael, terrified by his mother’s emotion, clung to her, crying too. She pulled him close, clinging to him, dimly aware of Marek and that man –
that man –
talking in low voices. She put her face in her hands and sank back down on the step, crying so deeply that she was aware of nothing until a warm presence materialized beside her, and strong arms were round both her and Michael and she was being held tightly and lovingly.

‘It’s OK,’ Marek said, as they perched side by side on the step. ‘It’s OK, he’s gone, he’s gone. No need to worry.’

He let her cry, saying little, just holding her and rocking her slightly until she came back to herself, as if up into the light, and reached into the sleeve of her blouse for her handkerchief. As he released her, she felt him gently kiss the top of her head. She raised her eyes to him. For a moment they looked at each other.

‘Thank you,’ she said, wiping her eyes, but still barely able to stop crying. ‘That was a shock.’

Marek kept his arm round her back and it felt so reassuring. Katie became aware that Sybil was standing close by, drawn from the kitchen by the screams. She said nothing, but her face was full of enquiring sympathy. Michael was quieter now too, watching her.

‘It is true, what he said?’ Marek asked. His sensitive face was close to hers, his eyes full of tenderness.

‘You mean is he really my father? Yes – I think he must be. In some way I knew, as soon as I saw him.’

‘But when did you see him last?’

‘When I was two – or three. Somewhere in between. She told me – my mother . . .’ She wrung her hankie in her hands. ‘He was my dad. He was good to me.’ She began to weep again. ‘And she told me he was dead. That he died of TB . . .’ She turned her face up, bewildered. ‘Why did she do that? Why?’

Sybil considered. ‘The truth was that he left her? Maybe she was too proud to admit it.’

‘And he never came back,’ Katie said, bitterly. ‘Not once, to see me, see how I was. Why has he come now?’

‘Who knows?’ Sybil said. ‘Guilty conscience? My goodness, what a thing – you poor girl.’ She became practical, holding her hand out to Michael. ‘Now, little man, you come along with me and we’ll find you some tea. Mummy will come and join you in a minute.’

Michael took Sybil’s hand with complete trust, and Katie and Marek were left sitting side by side on the stairs. She went to pull herself up, but he held her.

‘One minute, Katie. I spoke to him, this man, when he is leaving. He said to give you some time to think. Then he said, he like to see you. If you like too, he will meet you – next Saturday.’

Katie stared into his face, searching it for help. ‘I don’t know what to do – or feel. What should I do?’

A nerve in Marek’s cheek twitched, as if some pain was being registered.

‘Perhaps you should think for some days. But he is your father. That he is alive is good – no? Perhaps you should meet with him.’

‘Yes,’ she said slowly. She stared ahead of her.

‘Katie?’

‘Umm?’ She looked round, dazed, into that beautiful face.

Marek couldn’t seem to speak, except with his eyes. They drew closer together, and lovingly, gratefully, she allowed herself to be drawn into his arms again and their lips met, both warm and searching.

Of all places, Michael O’Neill had suggested that Katie meet him in Lewis’s that Saturday morning.

By the time she was on the bus into town, leaving Michael with Sybil, she had been through a week of stormy and conflicting emotions. It had been difficult to concentrate at work, and there was scarcely a moment in the day when her father’s sudden presence in her life didn’t batter at her thoughts. At first there was the sheer shock of finding out that he was alive, yet had not seen him from that day to this. Even more bewildering was that nothing in her family was as she had believed. As her thoughts spun round and round, this realization was followed by a rage that took her over to such an extent that it had sometimes forced her from her chair or bed to pace up and down the room.

They lied to me – the pair of them! Just lie after lie!
the voice roared in her head.
He just buggered off, abandoned his wife and child without a word, no help, no money – just turned his back on us without a care!

Yet she felt just as furious with her mother. Vera’s hurt pride at being deserted by her husband had made her concoct all these self-pitying stories –
lies
, call them what they were! And, for her own comfort, she had turned her absent husband into a dead saint. God, what a pair they were!

Some nights Katie actually punched her pillow to let out some of her anger. All those years she had spent trying to keep Vera happy, feeling sorry for her, doing her bidding and bowing to her moods – only to have her reject her own daughter so violently when she had got into trouble herself, had made
one mistake
. . . Once again, the only person who came out of the situation in innocence was Uncle Patrick, who clearly believed his story that his brother was dead and had been sent back to Ireland for burial. Patrick had still been in Africa when Michael ‘died’.

Other emotions would follow the anger. She thought of his remark about her mother. ‘Impossible,’ he had said. Of course Vera
was
impossible, and how strengthening to hear someone else say so. It wasn’t just that Katie had somehow failed as a daughter! Three years he had lived with Vera – was that all it had taken to drive him away? And Katie was filled with curiosity both about exactly what had happened and about him as a man. What was he really like, other than in her mother’s fantasies? But then the anger would axe through her again.
You went off and left me with her!

At times, though, there came other tender feelings. She ransacked her memory, that of her two-year-old self, who held an image of him as kind and loving. Her daddy. These thoughts flooded her with simple longing for all that she had lost or never had. She wanted her daddy – for him to love her.

It had been a tumultuous week. With all this had come the miracle of Marek, another kind of shock, beautiful, warming, that they had spoken their feelings for one another. He had been very kind to her, and considerate, seeing the state she was in. Through the intimate tenderness they shared, she trusted him very deeply already. Yet there were so many gaps in his life and in her knowledge. She did not yet know what had happened to Marek’s family, but she was almost sure that it was he who suffered from the terrible nightmares.

‘One day, I tell you,’ he said, as they sat one evening, perched on the edge of her bed, holding hands as Michael slept. The little lamp was on and the room felt cosy. She looked round at Marek’s thin, sensitive face and even in the gloom could see that mixed with his longing to talk was the fear of it – of facing it all again, and the emotion that went with it. It made her feel very tender towards him.

‘You shouldn’t bottle things up,’ she told him, squeezing his hand, so big and warm. ‘It’ll only make it worse.’

He looked at her. ‘Usually people do not ask. They do not want to know. Or I think they would not believe.’

‘Well, I’m asking. But only when you feel like it.’

‘Yes,’ he said, looking down, almost as if ashamed. She stroked his back. He gave a rueful smile. ‘Thank you.’

She assumed that most of his family had died, somehow. For him, the idea that you might find a parent when you believed them dead would be a miracle indeed, even though he could see that the situation was different. He encouraged her to go and see Michael O’Neill with an open mind.

‘Maybe there was good reason,’ he advised. ‘Give him a chance. He is your father – that doesn’t change.’

Sybil counselled the same. Katie realized that week just how much things had changed in her life. She was openly sharing her problems and concerns with others who cared about her. It felt a new, happy experience.

As she walked into Lewis’s tall, imposing building it was with a prickling feeling of dread. What if she met her mother? Did she even work here still? Surely not, after all this time? And what, more disastrously, might happen if
he
met her? Katie slipped up the stairs, giving the drapery department a wide berth.

There was no sign of him in the Ranelagh Rooms, where they had agreed to meet. She sat feeling very nervous at a table facing the door of the smart room, amid the Saturday shoppers who had come for a breather and a cup of coffee, and told the waitress she would order once her friend arrived. That morning she had chosen her clothes carefully, dressing in her navy business suit, her coat and smartest navy hat, her hair taken up into a neat pleat – almost as if for a lover, she realized, her emotions still flitting between defensive anger and tremulous need. Whatever else, she wanted him to see the best of her. Pulling off her navy gloves, she sat back trying to look composed. Was he going to be late?