From the Kitchen of Half Truth (18 page)

“She was my best friend, too,” she says, her voice thick with emotion.

I don't know what to say. I've never known my mother to have any friends. None other than me, that is.

“She's a wonderful mother,” I tell her sadly, as if this information sums up everything Gwennie has missed in the last sixteen years.

“I know she is,” sniffs Gwennie. “I always knew she would be.”

It is silent for a long time. I look down from my bedroom window, holding the phone to my ear, watching my mother picking flowers from the garden border, assuming she is gathering a little bouquet for the kitchen table. But instead, she carries the flowers over to the compost heap. They are no good. It is too late for flowers now. From up here I can see that the array of colors that filled the garden has dwindled and faded without my ever noticing, and the flowers that remain are wilting, clinging to their last breath of life.

“Please, help me,” I beg Gwennie.

Gwennie lets out a heavy sigh, clearly burdened by this decision. “Where are you living now?”

She is surprised to hear my mother is back where she started, in the house where she grew up, and even more surprised to realize that all this time the three of us have been so close.

“I'm just outside Cambridge,” she says. “Isn't it funny how people go back to their roots?”

“I wouldn't know,” I say flatly, reminding her that without her help, I am, and might always be, rootless.

“I would love to see your mother one last time,” muses Gwennie. “We were so close. This isn't how I wanted things to end either.”

“Then let's help each other,” I say eagerly. “Maybe seeing you is just what my mother needs. I'm sure she would love to see you again, whatever happened in the past, and maybe it will help bring some closure to all this.”

“But I don't know,” Gwennie says, seemingly torn. “Maybe it's not the right thing to do. Maybe it's better to just let things be. Although I really would love to see her one last time, and I think she would like to see me, but maybe I'm wrong, maybe she wouldn't. Oh, I don't know.”

I can see what a difficult position I have put her in, and I know that my phone call must be quite a shock, but part of me wishes I could just reach down the telephone line, grab her by the neck, and shake her until she understands what this means to me. I don't have time for indecision. I don't have time for ifs and buts. Where can I go from here if she won't help me? There's no one else I can turn to. This feels like my last chance.

“I don't think I can help you, Meg,” says Gwennie after a while, her voice full of sadness and regret. “I'm so sorry, but I really don't. It's not my place to tell you things your mother might not want you to know. It's not for me to interfere. I've already said far too much. And I don't think I should come and see her, even though I would love to. If there's even the slightest chance that seeing me would upset her, then I don't think it would be right. Not now. Not now that…”

Her voice trails off, fading along with any hope I had of knowing the truth about my past.

“I'm so sorry,” she says again.

I don't respond. I don't know how to. I feel this is my cue to make her feel better by saying something like “don't worry” or “it doesn't matter.” But it does. It matters more than she can ever imagine.

I hang up the phone, not because I want to be rude or hurt her or express my anger, but because I can't think of a single word that could make this situation better for either of us.

***

I spend the rest of the day lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling, looking at the little star-shaped stickers that my mother carefully peeled off the ceiling of my bedroom in Tottenham and brought with her when she moved. They didn't stick once she got them here, so she went to the painstaking effort of gluing each one back into its original constellation. I thought it was sweet, at first. Sweet but strange. Why would she still think I wanted glow-in-the-dark star stickers when I was eighteen years old and not even living here? It's like she can't let go of the little girl I once was, like she wants to keep that child forever wrapped in a wonderful bubble of fairy-tale goodness. And she can't even see the harm she's doing me. She can't even see that inside her tight embrace I am struggling to be free, unable to breathe, unable to find myself.

So that's it, I think. That's the end. Chlorine can't help me anymore, Timothy won't help me anymore, and Gwennie already thinks she's said too much. Maybe one day they will change their minds, maybe one day, somehow, the truth will come out. But by then it will be too late. My mother will be gone, along with any chance for questions, or discussion, or mutual understanding. I will never know it all. Not now. I will never hear it from her side.

And my mother will die in a state of delusion, her mind muddled and fogged by images of things that never happened, images of Christmas turkeys running wild and her baby daughter floating around the kitchen in an egg-white bubble. Nobody wants that. Nobody wants to leave this life without being able to remember, in those final moments, what it was all about. What it was
really
all about.

I wanted to bring her back down to earth before the end. I wanted her to think clearly, to remember who she is and where she came from and what she has done with her life. I wanted her to have peace and clarity, coherence and understanding. But there's no chance of that. Not for either of us.

I wonder who my mother is when she's stripped of all the lies. I wonder who really exists underneath that layer of make-believe. It makes me sad that we will never be able to communicate at the same level. Not fully, anyway. I will never know her adult-to-adult. We will never talk woman-to-woman.

I look up at the stars and almost laugh.

As if she could ever think of me as anything other than a little girl.

***

By half past five, the light from the bedroom window is starting to fade, and I remember the days, not so long ago, when it was still light at nine in the evening, and my mother and I would sit on the patio in just shorts and T-shirts, eating ice cream and doing the crossword. Where did it go, I wonder, that summer that was meant to last forever? How did I ever let it slip away?

I hear my mother's bedroom door close as she goes to take a rest. Later she will deny ever lying down on the bed, her limbs aching, her breathing a struggle, and she will tell me that she was spring cleaning or trying on some old clothes.

Shortly after, I hear the squeak of the back gate as Ewan enters the garden, his tools clattering on the ground. After a while he turns his radio on, and I can hear the faint sound of music playing. Sometime after that, Digger starts barking.

And barking.

And growling.

And then there is a squeal, like an animal is being stabbed with a pitchfork.

I jump up and look out the window. There is Digger down by the open gate, tumbling over and over with a little white ball of fur—a rabbit? a cat?—while Ewan sprints across the garden shouting at him.

I rush downstairs, tugging my shoes on as I go, and fly out the back door, skidding on the muddy grass as I run through the garden. I'm not sure what worries me more: the idea that my mother might be woken from her nap or the idea that our gardener's dog is trying to kill our neighbor's cat. As I get closer, I can see that Digger is caught in a tussle with a small white terrier, the pair of them rolling over and over in a ball, emitting blood-curdling yelps and squeals, while Ewan tries to pry them apart and a woman in a green anorak flaps her arms and screams, “Byron! My little Byron! Oh God, he's going to die!”

By the time I reach them, Ewan has Digger by the collar and the little white dog (which is now muddy brown) is cowering in the arms of the irate woman.

“You should keep him under control!” the woman screams.

“You should keep your dog out of other people's gardens!” Ewan snaps back.

Digger is straining to get away from him, barking angrily at the little dog, who he clearly sees as an intruder. The little dog, in turn, is baring his teeth and snarling. Both of them are muddy and bedraggled.

“He could have killed my poor Byron!” shouts the woman, clutching the dog protectively to her bosom.

“Maybe poor Byron should stay on a lead,” Ewan suggests, clearly trying to contain his anger.

“Well, if you're going to leave your back gate open—”

“That's no excuse for just letting him wander in here.”

“I was trying to get your attention, but your radio was on—”

“Digger, quiet!” snaps Ewan, yanking the barking dog's collar.

“Oh, Byron, stop struggling!” complains the woman, clutching the wriggling terrier tighter.

“Sorry, who are you?” I ask, sounding ridiculously polite amid all the chaos.

The woman looks up, aware of me for the first time, but instead of meeting my eye, she gazes over my right shoulder, the anger suddenly draining from her face.

Ewan and I both turn to see my mother standing behind us, her arms wrapped tightly around her frail body, shivering. She looks pale and startled, staring at the woman as if she were a ghost.

“Val,” the woman whispers, her eyes locked with my mother's in mutual disbelief. “Gosh.”

And suddenly I realize who this woman is.

“Hello, Val,” Gwennie says, smiling cautiously.

My mother just stares at her, frozen.

“Mother, it's Gwennie,” I say, gently touching her arm, “your friend. Do you remember?”

My mother shakes her head almost imperceptibly.

“No,” she whispers quietly, “no, I don't remember.”

“Val,” Gwennie smiles, taking a step forward, “it's me, Gwennie. You must remember—”

“No,” says my mother, taking a step back, “I don't remember. I don't remember anything. I—”

Before I even notice she is about to fall, Ewan rushes to my mother's side and catches her as she collapses.

“Mother!” I gasp, running to her side and supporting her lolling head. Her eyes roll, and she groans quietly.

I lean in close, trying to hear what she is saying, but all I hear her murmur are the words
I
don't remember
.

 

“What do you want to know?” Gwennie asks.

Like a child in a sweet shop, I want to gorge myself, to grab hold of every fact, every piece of information that's on offer. I am starving for truth.

“Everything,” I say greedily. “Tell me everything you know.”

There is no hesitation now, no putting it off until another day, no wondering whether this is the right thing to do. I know what it feels like to have the truth offered up like a delicious treat, only to have it snatched away at the last moment. And I don't intend to go through that again.

We sit at the kitchen table facing each other, steaming mugs of tea in front of us, the rain pitter-pattering against the windowpane. Outside, the sky is gloomy and gray, but inside the kitchen it is bright and warm, with Gwennie's wet raincoat hanging by the back door and our shoes drying on the mat. I sense that Gwennie could flee at any moment. She is hesitant, still undecided on some level, fiddling nervously with Byron's ears as he snores softly in her lap, exhausted by his tussle with Digger.

I try to remain calm and still, waiting patiently for her to speak, sensing that one false move could scare her away. I don't want to pressure her. But if she thinks I won't barricade the door and slash the tires of her car to stop her from leaving, she is making a big mistake.

After laying my mother on the couch, Ewan left, quiet and confused, and I sat with her, stroking her hand, watching her eyes race back and forth behind their papery lids, while Gwennie hovered anxiously in the doorway, chewing her fingernails and asking how she could help. Finally, once my mother's nightmares had subsided, giving way to dreams that made her smile and mutter quietly about butterbeans, I felt able to leave her side.

“If you really want to help,” I tell Gwennie matter-of-factly, hardened by shock and exhaustion, “then tell me the truth about my life.”

As she gazes at my mother lying listlessly on the couch, her pale, thin body tucked beneath a blanket, perhaps she finally understands that she really is my only chance.

“All right,” she says, “all right, I'll tell you.”

***

“Your mother and I had been best friends for many years,” Gwennie says, her hands wrapped tightly around her mug of tea. “Since we were eight or nine, I suppose, when I joined her school. I lived a couple of roads from here, and we were always running around together, getting into mischief. We both loved being outdoors, and we used to take milk bottles and go fairy hunting in Coley Woods, even though we weren't allowed to go in there. We had such wild imaginations. I think that's why we got along so well. A hole in a tree could instantaneously become the portal into the fairy kingdom, and a glint of sunlight through the leaves could suddenly turn into two fairies dancing. We would always come home covered in dirt, and our parents would get ever so angry, but we didn't really care. Our games were all such good fun. One minute we would be American Indians looking out for cowboys, and the next we would be elegant princesses waiting to be rescued from our tower. We lived in a wonderful, magical world of make-believe, just like little girls should. Not a care in the world. We would laugh and laugh until our bellies ached and tears streamed down our cheeks, the kind of laughter you forget as an adult. It was a fantastical, carefree, happy time. The best years of my life in many ways.

“We grew out of it, of course. That kind of innocence doesn't last long. By the time we were teenagers, we had all the usual pressures of exams, nagging parents, and homework to contend with. We still went out and had fun, just in a different way, I suppose. Your mother was always such a vivacious, bubbly girl, very lively and outgoing, and extremely pretty with long auburn hair and big, sparkling blue eyes. She used to love going dancing on a Saturday evening down at the Forum, and all the boys had an eye on her. But she wasn't interested. She was a true romantic, waiting for Mr. Right, and until he arrived and swept her off her feet, she wasn't going to waste her time on any of the boys from town. Besides, she had so many other things to accomplish that for a long time boys just didn't come into the picture. She was expected to do well in her exams and planned to go to university and study English literature before spending a couple of years traveling to remote places around the world and coming back, falling in love, getting married, and having children.

“‘There's just so many things to do, Gwennie,' she used to tell me, ‘so many places to see, so many people to meet.'

“She was full of life, so full of energy and enthusiasm. The world was out there waiting for her, and she was straining at the leash, dying to embrace it all.”

I try to imagine my mother eager to get out into the world, desperate to meet people and see things and go places. It's hard to do, when the farthest I have known her to travel is from London to Cambridge, and she only did that the once, when she finally moved to a new house.

“My mother doesn't really like people,” I tell Gwennie, finding it hard to imagine the picture she is painting.

Gwennie nods slowly, as if this makes sense. “You can learn not to,” she tells me sadly, fiddling with Byron's little white ear. I notice a red line of dried blood on the soft, pink inside, where he must have been scratched in the fight.

“At fifteen, she fell in love for the first time,” Gwennie says, “and it was like she was walking on air. He was an American, I think, in the army, if I remember correctly. It was all part of a pen pal scheme that our youth group initiated. She loved writing and the idea of travel, so writing to someone in the armed forces appealed to her tremendously. She got to hear all about the places he had been stationed, and within a couple of months she was really quite besotted. She believed she had found the love of her life. He wrote her long, gushing letters full of adoration and told her they would marry as soon as she turned eighteen. She was desperate to tell me everything about him, each little thing he had said or done, but I really didn't want to hear. I was jealous, you see. My pen pal was a German girl called Nadine with a hairy upper lip and an obsession with ant farms.

“I was angry with your mother for falling in love. I wanted to fall in love too, and letting Wally Waters squeeze my left breast in the back row of the cinema just seemed so shallow and pointless compared to the romance your mother had found. So I wouldn't listen to all the things they had said to each other or the plans they had made for the future. I would change the subject, or turn the record player up, or tell her to stop going on about him all the time, anything so that I didn't have to hear how wonderful he was. That's why, I'm afraid, I don't know very much about him. But I do remember his name, if you would like to know it.”

I shrug, wondering whether Gwennie is going to take me on a journey through every single relationship my mother might have ever had.

“Only if it's relevant,” I say, eager to get to the crux of all this.

“Well, I suppose it's relevant,” says Gwennie. “After all, he was your father.”

I stare at her, shocked, and for a moment I don't believe her. She's confused. She must be. My father was a French pastry chef, not some American pen pal from the armed forces. But then I remember that I'm the one who is confused, as always, and I wonder why I keep forgetting this. So I nod, holding my breath.

“His name was Don,” says Gwennie.

“Don,” I whisper, seeing how the name feels on my tongue. “Don.”

I don't know what I expected to feel when this moment finally came, but what I didn't expect to feel was nothing. I search my soul, seeking out some little spark of fulfillment, some sense that I have suddenly become whole, that my identity is now complete. But there's nothing there. This name means nothing to me.

Gwennie eyes me cautiously, as if waiting for some sudden and startling reaction. But I just look at her blankly.

“Go on,” I say, as if nothing has happened, as if my world has not just changed forever.

“One day,” continues Gwennie, “your mother didn't want to go dancing anymore. She didn't want to listen to her favorite records, or go cycling down by the river, or go to the shops, or do anything at all. It was as if someone had pricked her with a pin and taken all the air out of her. She slept all the time, which aggravated her parents, and when she was awake all she wanted to do was bury her head in books, and not even the schoolbooks we were meant to be reading. We were weeks away from taking our finals, but she was devouring romantic fiction and fantasy novels like they were going out of fashion. She seemed withdrawn and spaced out, lost in her own little world.

“‘Gwennie,' she said to me one day, in an unusual burst of enthusiasm, ‘why don't we go fairy hunting? You know, like we used to?'

“Well, I looked at her as if she were mad. ‘We're not children anymore, Valerie,' I told her.

“‘So what?' she said. ‘Why can't we still do those things? It was such fun, wasn't it? Things were so good back then.'

“‘Val,' I complained, ‘I've got studying to do. And a Saturday job. I don't have time for playing around anymore.'

“Her eyes became wide and tear-filled, like a child who had been chastised.

“‘No,' she said, apologetically, ‘of course not.'

“But then, that weekend, I caught her. I was in the woods with Wally Waters when we stumbled across her in the bushes, milk bottle in hand.

“‘What are you doing creeping about in the bushes, you weirdo?' Wally asked her, a cigarette dangling from his lips. ‘Are you spying on us?'

“Your mother looked at me, red-faced and guilty, and I just stared at her, wondering why she had suddenly taken up fairy hunting again when she had just turned sixteen.

“‘I reckon she's spying on us, Gwennie,' Wally said. ‘Perhaps she's jealous. Perhaps she fancies me. Do you fancy me, Valerie?' he asked teasingly, reaching out to touch her chin.

“Your mother, who had always thought Wally was a lovable idiot, suddenly went white as a sheet and ran off as fast as her legs would carry her.

“‘Your best pal's a complete nutter,' said Wally.

“Well, that was the end of Wally and me. Needless to say, your mother did very poorly in her O-levels. Sitting in that exam hall, I watched her, one day after the next, staring blankly at the wall, barely writing a thing. Nobody knew what was wrong with her, and talking to her was like talking to a brick wall. She would insist that she was perfectly fine, but it was as if the lights were on but nobody was home. At the same time, you could see her mind was whirring away, lost in thought, but about what, who could tell? Nobody imagined for one second that she was pregnant; she managed to hide it so well. I think she even managed to hide it from herself.”

“So when did she meet up with my…with Don?” I ask, feeling we have skipped an enormous chunk of the story. I can't bring myself to use the word “father.” There is no meaning in it for me, no association I can make with this unknown man. It's ridiculous, but I realize the only person I feel comfortable calling father is an imaginary pastry chef from Paris.

“I don't know,” says Gwennie, shaking her head. “I was never entirely sure when they met up. It wasn't until later that…well, it's complicated. Shall I just—?”

“I'm sorry,” I say, realizing I have interrupted her flow of thought. “Please, carry on.”

Gwennie takes a sip of tea and clears her throat. “I found you in the shed,” she says, “which is an unusual place to find a baby. I knew what had happened from the moment your mother opened the front door. There was blood on her clothes, and she was clearly in shock. I suppose there could have been other explanations, but they never crossed my mind. I just knew she had given birth. I don't know how, but I just knew.

“I kept asking where the baby was, but she couldn't answer me. She just stared at the floor and hugged her arms around her body. So I started to search for you all throughout the house, and then it occurred to me that if you weren't in the house, you must be in the garden. And there you were. Tucked up in a blanket, nestled between a bag of compost and a watering can.

“‘I have to cook dinner,' was all your mother would say when I brought you inside. ‘Mother and Father will be home soon, so I must get the dinner on.'

“She was crazy, of course. Temporarily insane. She had managed to convince herself that none of it was real—the conception, the pregnancy, the birth—she had blocked it all out, and her brain clearly couldn't make sense of your arrival. And I was no help, really. I didn't know what to do. I was scared. I'd never even held a baby before, and I remember wondering how long you would live without food.

“‘You have to feed it,' I said, holding you out to your mother.

“‘Okay, okay,' she said, flustered, flinging open the oven door. ‘Put it straight in then.'

“‘No,' I shouted at her, ‘feed it, not cook it!'

“But your mother just looked at me blankly and started pulling pots and pans out of the cupboards. And then your grandparents walked in, looking rather startled, to say the least.

“‘What is that?' your grandfather demanded, pointing at you.

“Your mother didn't answer, so I said, ‘It's a baby.'

“‘I can see it's a bloody baby!' he snapped. ‘What's it doing here?'

“But even as he asked the question, I could see him looking at the blood on your mother's clothes and piecing two and two together. Your grandmother, one step ahead of him, had already burst into tears and was wringing her hands and asking the Lord's forgiveness.”

“So they weren't there when I was born?” I ask, finding it surprisingly hard to let go of the “truth” as I have always known it. “They didn't help her through the labor?”

“Gosh, no! I don't think they could have coped with that. They both went into a state of shock as it was. I can't tell you exactly what happened next, because it was all such a blur. I remember your grandmother becoming quite hysterical and your mother calmly asking her what was wrong, which made your grandmother wail even louder, because she thought her daughter had gone mad, which effectively she had. Then the gasman arrived at the back door asking to look at some pipes, and your grandfather, who was all worked up and in a temper, grabbed him by the collar so that the poor gasman had to defend himself with a nearby frying pan. And the next thing I knew your grandfather had snatched you out of my arms.