Gilliflowers (2 page)

Anyway, he said, abandoning his Christmas sermon, before he revealed the depth of his total ignorance about theology and the origins of man, I drank my chocolate and went over plans for the day. Penny (B-I-T-C-H) and the Muppet were scheduled to land. I had their room all made ready. There’d been talk of Shane’s dad also coming to spend the holiday with us, but thankfully he declined, opting to spend the day with an old pal and his family. The old pal’s days were numbered due to having bladder cancer. Time grows more precious the closer it comes to running out.

Being close to Christmas every restaurant and eatery in the land would be booked up and packed out so Shane decreed Saturday’s evening meal would be at home. I had it all prepared. I was making chicken in a tarragon and white wine sauce. I’d browned the chicken breast pieces the night before and added the sauce. It was in a casserole dish in the fridge ready to pop in the oven. The jars I’d poured the sauce from had been washed and safely stashed in the recycling bin so no one would know it was ready made and not homemade. A sprinkling of fresh tarragon leaves lent credence to the lie. I was going to serve it with wild rice and vegetables. Easy peasy.

A sherry trifle also resided ready and resplendent in the fridge for dessert. It was compiled from bought Madeira cake soaked in best sherry and covered with layers of tinned fruit, ready-made custard from Sainsbury’s and cream squirted from a can. I’d decorated it with toasted almonds and glace cherries. It looked great. The houseboy was organised. I had no qualms about Saturday’s meal being composed of ready-made ingredients. I was saving my energies for the days ahead. We were hosting a party on Sunday evening for work and office colleagues of Dick and Shane. Monday, Christmas Eve, was to be a quiet affair before the big splash on Christmas Day.

Boxing Day was reserved for entertaining business associates.

There would be ten of us sitting down to Christmas dinner. As well as Penny and the Muppet, we had Howard, Rob and Mike joining us as well as a married couple called David and Sheila. They were pals of Dick from his golf club and would have been spending the day alone if he hadn’t invited them. Their twin sons were on a gap year backpacking around the world and wouldn’t be home for Christmas. Leo was spending the holiday with his elderly mother and some of his family. I was glad I wouldn’t have him comparing my fair efforts at presenting Christmas lunch with his own impeccable history of producing a festive feed up fit for kings.

By the time dawn broke properly a spitty snow was falling, adding to the building festive ambience. I was delighted. A white Christmas looked a possibility. Shane came downstairs at half past eight to inform me Dick was feeling unwell and was staying in bed a while longer. I was to take him some tea and a couple of paracetamol.

I did so and then returned to the kitchen to make Shane’s breakfast. He looked at me critically as I set coffee before him. “How long have you been up?”

“Since about four. I couldn’t sleep.”

“What are you worrying about?”

“Nothing. My mind was a bit overactive that’s all.”

“Your mind is always overactive.”

He took a sip of black coffee. “Listen, Gilli. Don’t get yourself in a state about Christmas arrangements. Let Penny help you with the preparations.”

“I don’t need help. I’ve got everything planned and in hand. I know what I’m doing.” I changed the subject. “Have you remembered I’m going to visit my mum today, to take her presents?”

He nodded. “What have you bought her?”

“Posh perfume and some gold earrings, proper ones not costume.”

“Go much over budget?”

“A bit, but not too bad. It’s not like I have a big family to splash out on, Shane, and it’s not like I spend a lot on you and Dick. I’m not allowed to.”

“Stop pouting.” He stretched out a hand to pat my face. “Do you need a lift to your mother’s?”

“The traffic will be hell this close to Christmas. I’ll get the train. It’ll be quicker.”

“If you have any problems getting back give me a ring and I’ll pick you up.”

Before I set off he gave me thirty pounds telling me to buy mum some flowers from us all. It was a nice gesture. I thanked and hugged him.

When I got off the train I detoured to a florist before heading to mum’s house, opting to buy a pretty plant arrangement of blue and pink hyacinths in a hand painted ceramic bowl. They had a beautiful scent. Mum seemed pleased with them. She made tea and we chatted for a while. I told her about all the preps I was making for Christmas and she shook her head in wonderment.

“You wouldn’t so much as pour milk on your own breakfast cereal when you were a kid and now here you are catering for all these people. You’ve done well for yourself, Gilli.”

I asked what she was doing for Christmas and she said she and Frank were going to his brothers for Christmas dinner and then having a few friends over for Boxing Day along with Frank’s stepdaughter Kelly and her boyfriend.

“Stepdaughter?” I raised my eyebrows. It was news to me. “How come and where the hell from?”

“From his first marriage. He hasn’t seen her since she was a kid. She moved to the Isle of Wight with her mother after the split. Her boyfriend has got a job in this area and she’s moved here with him. She got in touch with Frank a few weeks ago.”

“Why?” I couldn’t keep the incredulity out of my voice.

“They got on well when she was little and she remembered him and thought it would be nice to meet up again. I suppose it must be hard for her and her boyfriend coming to a place where they don’t know anyone.”

“What is she like?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t met her yet. Boxing Day will be the first time. I’ve spoken to her on the phone once, she sounds nice enough.”

“Probably because she hasn’t got any of his blood in her veins.”

“Don’t be like that, Gilli. Frank’s all right. He’s been good to me.”

“Sorry.” I decided to steer away from contentious waters. “Do you feel up to going out for a sandwich and a drink, my treat, seeing as I won’t be seeing you over Christmas?”

She said she’d love to and we took a walk out, ending up in her local pub that served food. It was busy, but we managed to get a table. A few of the patrons recognised mum and called out greetings, one woman asked who her toy boy was and mum dutifully laughed and owned me as her son.

The food was typical pub fodder, chips with everything, even the sandwiches. I ordered a hot sausage sarnie while mum went for more seasonal turkey and stuffing. I bought her a glass of wine and myself a pint of Stella. The sandwiches took an age to come. I was almost three quarters of the way down my pint before they were set on the table.

Nature called and I headed for the facilities. I was washing my hands when a bloke came in. I glanced at him, as you do, and he said a beery
‘all right son.’
I recognised him as one of those who had called a greeting to mum. I didn’t know him from Adam, but he seemed to know me. His next words sent ripples of shock through me.

“You have to be Geoff Brown’s boy. You’re a dead ringer for him.”

“You knew my dad?”

“I lived in the flat next to him and your mam when they first got married, before they got a council house. He was killed not long after. Must only have been about the age you are now, poor little sod.”

I returned to the table to find mum had bought me another pint. I didn’t really want it, but I could hardly say so without hurting her feelings. I finished my first pint, ate what remained of my sandwich and made a start on the second pint startling both of us with a question. “What was he like, my dad. You say Frank’s good to you, was my dad good to you?” Her face took on a look I remembered well from my childhood whenever I asked questions about my dad, closed, secretive.

“He was good. Why ask?”

“That bloke you said hello to came in the loo. He said I look like my dad. Do I?”

She nodded, but didn’t elaborate. She never did.

I was Geoff’s boy. The words came to mind, but who was Geoff? I wanted to know. Old questions tumbled out. “What was he like, mum, tell me. Why have you never talked about him? Why don’t you have any photos of him to show me?”

“We weren’t photo kind of people, son. If you want to see what he looked like then look in the mirror. You’re his image. It’s no good dwelling in the past, Gilli. He died and I moved on.”

She looked uncomfortable, but I persisted. “I want to know about him. He was my dad.”

“Sometimes I don’t think I really knew him. He was young, we both were, and we never really had time to get to know each other properly. I don’t want to talk about him, Gilli. It’s painful.”

She was beginning to look upset and I decided to back off, asking one last question. “Are his parents still alive, do you think they’d mind if I got in touch?”

“They’re dead and he had no brothers or sisters.”

I must have looked as stricken as I felt because she touched her hand to my face.

“Your dad made me laugh. He wasn’t really ready to be a parent, but he loved you when you came along and he did his best. There’s not much else to tell. You can’t build a relationship with a dead man, love.”

Silence fell between us. My curiosity had nudged her back to a place she obviously didn’t want to be. She looked sad and anxious and I felt bad. “Sorry, mum.

I didn’t mean to upset you. Shane always says I want to know too much including the unknowable.”

She smiled. “I wasn’t sure of him at first. I was a bit scared of him to be honest, but he seems to care about you, Gilli. They both do. I know they’ll look after you.

Enjoy what you have with them.”

I smiled and nodded and we returned to conversing about surface things. To my dismay the loo man came over to the table, bringing mum a small sherry and me a shot of whisky, wishing us both a happy Christmas. It was seasonal generosity kindly meant and as such I felt obliged to accept and drink the whisky. Shane would have my balls on a platter if he found out I’d had two pints
and
a whisky in the middle of the day. Spirits were off limits.

I felt decidedly squiffy as I took my leave of my mother and headed homewards. I dwelled as I sat on the train, staring through the dark windows at a dark landscape seeing my own face reflected in the panes - Geoff’s boy. Of course I’d known my dad’s name was Geoffrey, but I didn’t think of him in terms of it, and my mother seldom referred to him at all so hearing it had given me a jolt. It somehow made him more real than he’d ever been and yet more elusive. I tried to detach myself from my reflection, to stand back from it and pretend it was my dad looking back at me. It was impossible. The eyes remained mine.

Mum had said he wasn’t ready to be a parent, the implication being I was an accident or more wanted by her than him. He’d been in his teens when he fathered me. Mum had been in her early twenties. They’d both been kids really, he more than her, so it was understandable he wasn’t ready to be a father. Men mature at a different rate to women, they’re younger for longer in an emotional sense. How would we have got on if he’d lived? How would he have coped with me being gay? How different would my life have been?

As ever I was asking questions that couldn’t be answered. Our lives had converged only briefly. He was dust while I remained solid flesh. I’d wanted to ask mum if he was buried and if so where, but it seemed an insensitive question to address to a woman who was terminally ill. I had a notion he’d been cremated. I couldn’t ever recall my mother visiting a cemetery to lay flowers on a grave, as surely she would have done.

It’s said most people have an urge and a need to know where they came from. It looked pretty much like I’d come from a place called Anonymous. My father’s life and origins were literally a dead end. I knew nothing of mum’s origins either. She was a closed book. Just as she seldom discussed my father so she seldom discussed her parents. Fucking hell! I felt a wave of despondency. My entrance into the world had hardly been greeted with fanfares. You’d think at least one grandparent out of four would have shown an interest in their grandson. No wonder I’d been possessive of my mother. She was the only close person in my childhood.

I walked home from the station hoping the cold air would clear my head, which had begun to ache. Penny and the Muppet were in residence when I got back. Their car was on the drive. Marking the ground with a ring of salt to ward off evil was obviously a myth and a load of old bollocks. What a waste of Saxa. Still it had killed a few slugs. (Lie detector says it didn’t happen) The house was quiet when I entered. I called a greeting, hearing Dick return it from the lounge. I took off my shoes and coat and put them away and then pushed open the lounge door, surprised to find only Dick and the Muppet. I spoke a greeting to the latter and then addressed Dick.

“Where’s Shane?”

“Dropping gifts at Leo’s before he goes away. Penny’s gone with him. Have you had a nice day, honey? How is your mother?” He held out an arm inviting me to come hither and be hugged.

I stayed by the door, not wanting him to get a whiff of the whisky on my breath.

“Fine thanks, Dick. I’m going to make coffee, do you want one?” I included the Muppet in the invitation, which both he and Dick accepted. I headed for the kitchen. I felt like shit. My early start to the day compounded by lunchtime boozing was taking a toll. I was hoping a caffeine boost would help chase away my dull headache and kill the desire I had to lie down and go to sleep.

There was a big tin on the table in the kitchen. I knew it would contain a Christmas cake baked by Penny. She does one every year. Prising open the lid I had a peek, but the cake was wrapped in foil, even so I could smell its fruity richness. It made me feel peckish for something sweet. I didn’t dare disturb it though. I made three coffees and put them on a tray along with a plate of iced Christmas cake slices as baked by Mr Kipling, or the factory that churns out goods in his name.

Shane and Penny returned home as we were finishing our coffee and cake. They brought an atmosphere with them. The Muppet seemed oblivious, but Dick caught it and gave Shane a quizzical look when Penny shortly announced she was going for a bath. Shane replied with a shake of his head and a murmured ‘later.’