Disappearing Home (21 page)

I wonder what I'll wear when I first go dancing. I want blond hair like Doris Day's. A nipped-in, belted waist and pointy shoes with kitten heels under a sky blue dress. The dress will have a matching cloak that I swirl around my shoulders. If I'm seen, I can
flip it over my head as a disguise. I'll dance with a man wearing a light grey suit, burgundy tie and a white shirt. We'll go to the dance in a carriage, a gold carriage with six white horses. The dance will be in a palace in London. We'll dance all night under a crystal chandelier. A live band will play; violins and guitars. Outside on the balcony I'll feel his breath on my neck. See his eyes look at me like Jimmy looks at Sue. What would I say when he asked me to marry him?

‘Robyn!'

Her voice like a needle in my head. ‘You've left the fucking telly on again.'

N
an sits in her straight-backed chair, pulls down the hem of her pinny. I open the book and begin reading. Anne has been invited to a picnic. Marilla's amethyst brooch has gone missing and Anne was the last one seen with it. Marilla says Anne isn't going to the picnic unless she confesses to taking the brooch.

‘Has she taken it?' Nan says.

‘No, she doesn't know anything about it.'

Nan shakes her head. ‘Tell Anne to fetch the police.'

I can't help laughing. ‘The story's already been written, Nan.'

‘I know that. I mean, the police would get to the truth.'

I read on. Anne confesses to taking the brooch. She tells Marilla she lost it, so that she can go to the picnic. Nan shakes her head. ‘She won't let her go. She's got no chance now. I'd rather have a thief than a liar.'

Nan's right. Marilla tells Anne she's to miss the picnic as a punishment. Just before the picnic begins, Marilla finds the brooch dangling from a loose thread on her shawl.

‘I bet she gets to go now,' Nan says.

I read on. Nan's right again. She loves the happy ending. I turn the next page; even though the chapter has ended I pretend to read on. Something about Nan knowing what's going to happen before I read annoys me.

I lie, tell her how Marilla only thought she'd found the brooch. When she looked closer, it was a worthless glass one she'd won in a raffle. The amethyst brooch is still missing. This new piece of information throws Nan. She picks her bag up off the floor, opens and closes the catch over and over. ‘Where did Anne see the brooch last?' Nan says.

‘In Marilla's room.'

‘Then she needs to get in that room and search it. It can't be far. Is there a window open in the room?'

‘Why?' I say.

‘Just flip back through the chapter and check.'

I pretend to find a sentence that says the window was open. My lies feel like the opposite of lies.

‘Got it,' Nan says, shaking her head. ‘I don't know why I didn't think of it before.'

‘Think of what?' I say.

‘Magpies, they're known for stealing from open windows. Shiny things. Marilla's brooch is in a magpie's nest.'

I open the book back up. Pretend to read on. This is fun. I tell Nan that Marilla found the amethyst brooch after all, dangling from a thread on her other shawl. ‘Stupid woman,' Nan says. ‘Needs to get at the truth before she goes accusing people of stealing.'

I feel bad and want to laugh out loud at the same time. You can tell by the look on her face, the truth isn't what she wants; she wants to be right. Like when Nan told me about my toes. She told me a long second toe means I am going to be a ballet
dancer. That's not true. She told Mum she was right about what things would be like for a bastard. I realize that the truth isn't as important as getting things right.

I close the book. A thousand times since I heard Nan tell my mum about me being a bastard I've wanted to say:

‘Nan, what's a bastard?'

The book is closed on my knee. Anne-Shirley says things as they pop into her head. I like that about her. I've never done that. I think too much about things. If I was Anne-Shirley, just for a minute, I'd say out loud, ‘Nan, what's a bastard?'

Nan stares at me. Asks me to give her a minute, leaves the room. I feel like I've found a new side of me, a side that is something like Anne-Shirley. I hear the toilet flush. Nan sits back in her chair.

‘That's not for me to say, love. Ask your mother.'

‘I wanna know, Nan. I know it's something important, tell me the truth.'

‘Let me know what happens to Anne-Shirley in that next bit …'

‘Nan?'

‘Ask your mother.'

‘I'm asking you. Please, Nan?'

‘You can't breathe a word.'

‘I won't.'

She tells me my dad is not really my dad, but somebody my mum met on the rebound. My real dad, she says, was a gentleman. He was in the army when he found out about me, she says. When he got out of the army, he came back to marry my mum, not straight away cos he needed time to think. It wasn't long before he found out she'd already married somebody else. He knocked at the door. I was three months old. But it was too late. Before he left he asked Nan for my name. To tell the truth, Nan says, I felt sorry for the lad.

I toss the book to the floor as if it had suddenly burst into flames in my hands, and I run from the room. I feel like I've been punched hard from the inside.

After a while, Nan taps on the bathroom door.

‘Robyn, love, open the door. I thought you had an idea he wasn't your dad. I thought they might have told you something. I'm sorry, love.'

Snot and tears cover my face. I wipe it all away with toilet paper. Go back into the living room, sit down on the settee. Nan brings in tea and biscuits, puts them on the table by the back window. ‘Come and sit over here.'

She puts her hand over mine. ‘All right?'

I say nothing.

‘To answer your question, do you still want me to?'

I nod.

‘If a child is born without a dad, I mean, if the woman's not married, or the dad buggers off, or if it's a mistake, like they didn't mean to have a baby, then the child's called a – well, some people use the word …'

‘Bastard?' I say.

Sunday, while I read the words from
Anne of Green Gables,
my eyes catch Nan's. And we carry on another story that's already been written. The story of how my mum didn't know that the man she was really meant to marry would come back.

In our flat, I watch Mum light her cigarette off the cigarette of the man she pretends is my dad. And I think about how it began almost from the time I was born, the telling of lies that feel like the opposite of lies.

S
aturday. It's gone eight. I wake Mum up. Tell her we've overslept for work. She tells me I don't have a job any more. She got the sack. The boss told her since she started working on the stall, his takings have been down. Mum goes into the kitchen, puts the kettle on. ‘And he told Jimmy everything, so that's that.' She takes out a fag from her pocket, taps it on the top of her hand.

‘They can fuck off, all of them,' Mum says. ‘I won't set foot in that market ever again, even if they start giving the stuff away.' She points the fag at me. ‘And you're not to either.' She puts the fag to her lips and lights it. ‘His takings have been down since I started?' The kitchen fills with smoke. ‘Cheeky bastard, they're all robbing him blind. Four of us work on that stall. He hasn't got rid of anyone else, though. It's me that's taken all the shit.'

I get washed and dressed, eat a bowl of cornflakes. When I've finished, Mum gives me a piece of paper.
Three jars of coffee. Four tins of salmon, boneless.
Hands me the bag with the handles frayed down to the white wire and money for a packet of malted milk biscuits. ‘Do I have to?'

‘I'll find another job soon.'

I scrunch the list up in front of her face; drop the bag on the floor. ‘I don't want to.'

‘Look, if he gets up and there's no money he'll be a fucking nightmare all day.'

I think about what he did to Mum's face before. ‘Why are you with him?'

Mum turns away, looks out of the kitchen window.

‘Mum?'

She doesn't turn around when she speaks. ‘Will you do it or won't you?'

‘I'll do it this time.'

‘Thanks, love.'

I pick the bag back up.

I walk away, slam the front door hard. Back to this and all because of that lazy good-for-nothing. He spoils everything. If he'd get himself a job then he'd have his own money for ale. I don't mind getting stuff for Sylvia, that's different because I know it's important; she asks me to get stuff she needs. When they sell this stuff, the money will be spent in the betting shop and the Stanley, then get pissed up the wall. I won't do this again. I'm never doing this again.

‘Maybe there are jobs on Greaty,' I say to Mum when I get back.

‘Doubt it.'

I tell Mum I'm taking a walk down the grass hill to Netherfield Road, and on to Great Homer Street. Mum nods at me. ‘Stay away from that old bastard's flat,' she says. ‘Don't want her knowing my business.'

It feels wrong being in the market when I should be in Jimmy's Café. At least I never went near his till, so I can't get the blame for taking any of his money. ‘Any jobs, mate?' I say at least fifty times. I even try the smelly fish stall. They're nice to me. Shake
their heads and say,
sorry, love.
Mum's right. Most of them already have kids serving.

The market is packed. Outside the chippy, men eat from trays with plastic forks holding it all away from their red and white scarves. I follow them along Great Homer Street towards Anfield. I stand close to them outside Liverpool's football ground and look for my real dad. Nan told me he was a red-hot Liverpool supporter when she knew him. He had a season ticket and went to the match with his brother. He had dark hair like mine and he wore glasses. Nan said he was a gentleman. Maybe he looks like John Steed out of
The Avengers?
I smile. Nobody in the queue wears a bowler hat.

On stalls smaller than the market ones, men sell scarves and rattles and badges. Kids queue up with rattles that they shake until my head feels like it's going to split in two. It smells like the market, hot dogs and onions, pink candyfloss on a stick. I can't stop thinking about my dad. Bit by bit, I have put together a picture of him in my head. And now I see his face everywhere. It changes all the time. Any dark-haired man with glasses that passes me could be him. I stand by the gate and wait. Hope he will see something of himself in my face, something that will help him remember me.

Nan said he always brought her two bottles of Guinness when he came to take my mum out on a date. He would laugh and joke with her, even ask her to follow them to the Stanley with Nellie for the last hour. ‘You don't get many like him,' Nan said. ‘I opened the front door to your real dad when he came back to marry your mother. I shouted down the lobby for her to come to the door. She screamed when she saw him. Screamed again when he asked to marry her. Then that lazy good-for-nothing appeared from the living room and told him to get lost because you were his kid now. He'd done it all legal. There was a fist fight outside
on the landing. But in the end, there was nothing he could do. He didn't even get to see you. Somebody told me he moved away after that, to Speke.'

A man walks towards me with a kid. He looks like my dad. Dark hair and glasses, a kid's hand in his hand. I've thought about that, a new family he might have made. Nan said looking for him now would be like looking for trouble. She told me to forget all about him and wait. But that's all I ever do, wait for things to happen to me. I want to make something happen for a change. You never know, Nan said, he might get in touch with you. But I could tell from her voice she didn't mean it. She knew what I knew. He'd given up on me and Mum, and found somebody else.
You don't get many like him.

I'd written down a few questions on a piece of paper in Mrs O'Connor's class, in case he was with a kid when I saw him. I had to think about the questions, make them sound ordinary, write them so nobody but us two would know what they really meant:

1. Did you know a woman called Babs?

2. Do you remember May Crown from Tommy Whites?

3. Were you ever in the army?

4. Do you know a girl called Robyn?

But by the time I get the piece of paper out of my pocket the man with the kid has already walked past me.

If my real dad had met my mum after he got out of the army, none of this would have happened the way it did. Everything is about time and where you are inside time. There is a right time and a wrong time. They met at the wrong time and that adds up to making a mistake. That mistake is me. If they had met at the right time I would be the opposite of a mistake. I would be in that
queue with a rattle clamped inside my fist, my other hand in my dad's hand. I would tell my real dad all about Jimmy and the café and how he listens to the match on the radio. My mum would be speaking to Nan. They would be in Greaty Market right now, getting a few bits. And that lazy good-for-nothing would have met somebody else, somebody that isn't my mum.

There's a roar from the crowd inside the ground. The match has started. I sit down on the pavement and watch the police officers ride by on their horses. The floor is full of litter: half-empty chip wrappers, trays with forks in, empty cans, cigarette stumps, pools of spit with green blobs in the middle. Women with full carrier bags of shopping sidestep heaps of horse shit. There are bins full with stuff nobody wants any more. I feel stupid. This whole idea of coming to Anfield is stupid. How could he know me? He didn't even have a baby picture of me in his head. Everything is wrong. I tear up my careful questions into little bits and throw them away with the rest of the rubbish.