The Naked Drinking Club (42 page)

The husband answered. ‘Hello.’

I felt sick. ‘Can I speak to Margaret, please?’

‘Who’s calling?’

‘Kerry.’

‘Maggie! It’s yours!’

I heard her ask, ‘Who is it?’ and then she came to the phone. ‘Hello, who’s speaking?’

I detected concern and slight panic. ‘It’s me.’

‘Who?’

‘You know, don’t you?’

The bloody fruit-machine jingle went off in the background and the boys around it cheered. I had never imagined it to be like this.

‘No, I don’t. How can I help you?’

‘By putting me in touch with Madeline Thomson, my mother.’

She was silent, although I could make out the slight mouthing of words to her husband.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Now, I’m putting down the phone.’

I cupped my hands round the receiver, trying to block out pub noise and cover what I was about to say. ‘Now, this is what is going to happen. Unless you take me to my mother, I will kill myself but leave a letter for the local paper and contact my radio friend, so everyone will know the truth one way or another.’

‘Where are you now?’

‘In the Fern, down the road.’

‘She doesn’t want to know you, I’m afraid.’

‘Well, she can tell me that to my face.’

Someone leant over me and ordered a roast-chicken lunch.

‘I’ll call you back.’

‘I mean it, I’ll do it, I have already prepared a letter.’ The line went dead. I passed the phone to the meathead behind me.

I ordered a whisky, drank it straight down and waited for the phone to be free. The man made a quick phone call to order a taxi, and the second he put the receiver down, it rang again. The barman answered.

‘It’s mine!’ I grabbed it.

‘Is that Kerry?’ This time it was another voice.

‘Yes, who are you?’

‘I’m your auntie Carol.’

‘Who?’

‘I’m your mum’s sister.’

‘Who was Margaret?’

‘That’s our eldest sister, Margaret Mary; she’s very protective of your mam. Now listen, Kerry, this is important’ – I was reeling from the shock of speaking to my very first self-confessed blood relative and the use of ‘your mam’ in her sentence – ‘your mam is not very well at the moment. She’s had a hysterectomy and is just out of hospital yesterday, so she should be taking it easy, and I’ll be honest – she doesn’t want to meet you, she’s terrified.’

‘Tell her not to worry, tell her I won’t be trouble if she meets me.’

‘Well, I’m going to bring her to meet you, OK?’

‘Oh my God, oh my God, I mean.’ I wanted to grab someone in the bar and tell them.

‘But listen carefully. Once she meets you, then that’s it, finished, OK?’

‘OK, fine, anything.’ I didn’t care, I just needed a fix of her. Once in my life would do.

‘Now, do you know Brisbane at all?’

‘No.’

‘Well, there’s a pub down at the water, off Rowan Avenue on Shore Walk, right at the water, on the corner. It’s called the Last Drop. Meet me there at six o’clock, OK, pet?’

‘Yes, I will, OK.’ I didn’t have my notepad out but I didn’t need to. I would remember those words for ever.

‘And don’t expect too much.’

‘I won’t, I don’t,’ I said, lying.

I put down the phone and wondered how on earth I could contain myself for the next five hours, and started by ordering another beer, staring ahead. People nudged me as the bar filled up with workers ordering food, and going on and on about their fucking ‘chooks’.

CHAPTER
THIRTY-SEVEN

EVERYTHING I WAS
feeling was new. It was the most bizarre and totally amazing feeling I had ever experienced in my life. I was so excited and happy, ecstatically happy, nervous, but bursting with complete and utter joy.

I immediately decided not to drink again until later – I didn’t want to be too drunk to forget everything – but I didn’t know what to do in the meantime. The pub was a trap, I decided, and left.

Outside in the street, as I walked down to the train platform, I wanted to stop strangers and tell them, I was so high and so sure that my answer was near, that there was an end in sight to my oddness. I had actually heard the voices of two of my mother’s sister. It was mind-blowing.

Back at the backpackers’, it was hard to be around people. I needed to be in a place of my own to sit it out and hear some music and have a glass of wine that I’d make last in these special circumstances. I tried to find out where the others were at reception. The man wasn’t sure, but he thought they were taking the car to a garage and trying to get a rental car. I went to my bunk and lay down, but it was impossible to rest. I had four more hours to kill. I wanted to call an old friend back home, a girl I grew up with, and the only other person apart from my grandfather that I’d ever spoken to about my plan to find my mother. I decided against it, thinking it would seem odd, given that I hadn’t spoken to her for six years, plus she’d be asleep.

I decided to shower and get changed to kill another half-hour. That meant three and a half to go, but I’d be at the pub
on
Shore Walk an hour before – so that meant only two and a half hours, and it would take me half an hour to get there if I walked, so that meant two hours. I would lie on my bunk for another half an hour, hoping that Jim would return and come with me. I waited as long as I could, but left around three thirty, leaving another note for Jim.

Jim,

Waited but had to go. Think I found my answer! MY MOTHER!!! Meeting her down at the riverside at six. See you later tonight; tell me where you will be.

K x

The Last Drop was an old English-looking pub with small, yellowish, mottled-glass windows along the front. I went in and ordered a Coke, wanting to pace myself. I wanted to tell the barman my story but restrained myself. I looked at a clock above the bar every minute, willing the hands forward. I moved my seat so I could look out of the window at the spot where in a while I would see my mother arriving. I tried to process everything but it was impossible, as it was incomparable with anything before it.

The last hour was unbearable; I walked outside up and down the quay, then gave up and came back inside and ordered a large glass of white wine, reapplied my lipstick for about the tenth time, and started oversmoking. I put a song on the jukebox and asked the man behind the bar to turn it up.

Time moved more quickly once I’d ordered the wine and I found the song that I would play to mark the occasion: Jimmy Ruffin’s ‘What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted’. I sat on a stool by a tall table with a window view, as the song belted out. I felt all its words:

‘I know I’ve got to find, some kind of peace of mind …’

Of all the moments in my life, this was the one I was made for. I was going home, going back not to a place I remembered but to something new. Something that everybody else had that I couldn’t imagine. My pain and oddness would soon disappear. I needed to scream, but instead sat rocking on the
stool,
gulping my wine and ordering another, feeling the song throughout.

At five fifty-five, a car pulled up outside and parked at the edge of the dock, and a woman with bright blonde hair got out. I knew it was who I was waiting for despite our completely different hair colour.

I ran to the door of the bar and stood watching her walk towards me. She was smiling, I was smiling, and I could see me around the age of ten in her face and in her smile. She was petite like me, maybe in her late forties, well dressed and pretty with blue eyes. She spoke before she got to me.

‘Hello, I’m your auntie Carol, Kerry.’

I burst into tears.

‘All right?’

‘You look like me when I was ten,’ I blurted.

She laughed a little and hugged me. ‘You all right now?’

I felt awkward in the hug, but kept it up way past what felt natural.

‘Now listen, Kerry, I know this is hard for you but your mum doesn’t have much time. It’s not easy for her to get away, you see.’

‘What do you mean?’ I stood back from her, taking her in more, now that the initial shock had subsided.

‘Well, she hasn’t told her husband and her family about you.’ She shrugged her shoulders.

‘Never told them?’ I found this so hard to believe.

‘Complicated stuff, eh?’ She smiled warmly again and rubbed my arm reassuringly, as I started to cry again. I was shocked by my crying and had not expected to be this way. Nor had I expected my auntie Carol to be so friendly and light.

‘She’s dead shocked, you see, so you have to think about that when you meet her. This is what she’s been afraid of for years.’

‘That’s fine, that’s OK, I know, I just want to meet her.’

‘Well, I’m going to take you to her now.’

We left the pub for some reason and walked back to her car. She told me we were driving to another pub nearby. I went along with their high-security pub plans without questioning them, but felt them unnecessary.

There was little conversation on my part in the car. I
watched
her ankles move off and on the pedals; her ankles were shaped like mine. She and my mum occupied the same womb in my grandmother. That’s all I kept thinking as she drove. She attempted to make humdrum small talk, which I was unable to take part in.

‘What do you think of Brisbane, then?’ She turned to me smiling, searching my face and hair. ‘I daren’t ask about your face, it looks nasty. You haven’t been in a scrape with someone, have you?’ she joked.

‘White-water rafting accident.’

‘Where are you from?’

‘Scotland. Edinburgh.’

‘How long have you been here, then? And how the devil did you find us?’

‘It’s a long story, a lot to do with coincidences.’

‘There’s loads of us out here.’ She laughed, and kept looking round at me.

‘How come?’

‘Well, we are a big family. I mean, there were ten of us, and there’s four of us out here.’

I shook my head in disbelief.

‘It’s mind-boggling, isn’t it?’ She was so smiley and warm and normal.

‘Are you my auntie?’ I said for about the tenth time.

‘Are you my niece?’ she said back, which I loved.

We didn’t drive far, just a bit along the riverside in the other direction until we reached a car park. There was a car waiting outside another bar called The Shore. There were two women in it. One hid her face with her hand.

My auntie Carol ushered me out of the car with her hand on my shoulder and into the bar, straight upstairs. She thanked the bar lady on the way up as if she knew her.

‘Can I get you something?’ she asked, going into her handbag.

‘White wine, please.’

‘Go on then, you sit down, I’ll bring them over.’

I sat down in the corner, my back to the wall, looking out.

‘You all right?’ She brought over the drinks and put them on the table.

‘I’m nervous.’ I gulped my wine.

‘Well, course you are, pet. You’re going to be, aren’t you? I think we all are.’

Footsteps climbed the stairs. I heard two sets, one of them surely my mother’s. Two dark-haired petite women shuffled into the room. I didn’t know which one to look at. I fixed more on the one behind the one with glasses. Everything became slow and odd and not at all how I imagined. There was no running over and hugging, no shouting or cheering, no ending music; instead, the woman with glasses arranged stools round my table and ushered the shorter, silent woman to sit opposite. She was reluctant until the woman with her pushed her down onto the stool. It seemed ages before anybody spoke. I was breathing as though I’d just finished running.

‘Hello, Kerry,’ said the woman with glasses. ‘I’m your auntie Deb and this is your mum.’

My mum looked ashen. I stretched out my hand but she refused it, instead shaking her head. Auntie Carol brought drinks back from the bar for my mum and her sister.

Auntie Carol said, ‘Double brandy,’ as she put it down.

I looked at my mum but she didn’t look at me; instead she rummaged in her handbag, then brought out cigarettes. I noted my mother’s brand was menthol. Once she lit up and took a drag, she fixed on me, putting her mouth to the side and chewing on it. I watched her mouth smoke and her eyes dart around. She and I had the same shape to our faces, and the same mouth, although she had smoker’s lines. She had freckles and a tan; her face was quite lined for her age and her eyes were beautiful, like mine. She wore a gold bracelet, a watch and a wedding ring. I watched her hands – her nails were bitten down. She wore a frosted lipstick that, like me, she had freshly applied. Her hair was fairly short and highlighted; I wondered if we had a tendency to grey early in our family.

‘Go on, say something,’ said auntie Deb to Madeline Thomson, my mother. But she refused.

‘It’s all right,’ I said, smoking. I felt strong again. I could see she was terrified and I didn’t want to scare her away. I wanted to show her that I could be calm and controlled in a crisis.

‘Your mum hasn’t been well, you know, so she’s pretty
worn
out, and the shock of this is a bit much at the moment,’ said her sister Deb.

My mum flicked her ash into our shared ashtray. ‘I mean, am I never going to be able to forget this? Is this never going to leave me alone?’

Those were the first words my mother spoke to me. They had little effect on me; I was too carried away by the excitement of seeing who made me, a face like mine, for the first time. I used to draw pictures when I was young, in primary school, of my face with different hairstyles, and sometimes like a man with beard and moustache, trying out different ways to make me look, but here was the face that made me. She drank half her brandy down and did not smile once, despite my constant smile.

‘We’ll leave you to it,’ said Auntie Carol, moving away to another table with Deb.

‘No need,’ my mother said firmly. My aunties moved away all the same.

‘Is it brandy that you like, then?’ It was a dumb thing to say but I was just trying to find a way to talk to her.

‘It is, yeah.’ Everything she said was an attempt to close down our talk. She seemed to have no interest in me and how I felt, she seemed to have no curiosity – but I knew that would change in time. The sisters kept away from us and talked among themselves, keeping an eye on us all the time.