What We Hide (23 page)

Percy’s mother, Alia Graham, was fourteen when she met the scrawny and hilarious Mick Malloy at the Silver Blades Roller Rink on a Saturday night in July.
Behind
the roller rink, to be completely accurate, and Alia prided herself on accuracy, then and now, sixteen years later. Alia was at Silver Blades for the first time, with her chum, Keisha, who had reported the terrible and tantalizing fact that if you wanted to practice snogging, the narrow alley sheltered by an overpass was the place to do it.

Alia was not especially yearning to practice snogging, but she was tired of being the only one who had not, so she borrowed roller skates from Tracy, who lived in the next-door apartment, and joined her friend at the bus stop, pausing to apply eye shadow before turning the corner into the high street.

“What did you bring
skates
for!” shrieked Keisha.

“My mother would have wondered otherwise,” Alia said.

Mick was also there for the first time, because his mate Harry had told him it was a good place to meet girls of the
sort who did not seem to mind mucking about without valentines and fairy lights. Mick was seriously in need of some mucking about. He had been class clown since primary school, always the friend and never the fondled, and he was about to bleeding well burst.

Alia and Mick returned to Silver Blades the following Saturday, but by the third week they were past needing the excuse—or the scrutiny. They were telling each other things that no one else would ever know, in between letting their hands—and then their tongues—wander deeper and deeper into forbidden territory.

When Alia finally admitted to her mother that she had missed three periods, she hardly had a chance to finish her sentence, let alone say goodbye to Mick Malloy. Alia’s mother saw no reason to hesitate. She’d be damned if her daughter walked up Church Street showing a belly. Alia agreed to her parents’ plan only on condition that her baby’s father never be threatened or punished. Her parents agreed only on condition that Alia never see him again.

She flew to Antigua under cover of a story of a sick grandmother. The granny who met her at the little island airport showed as much vigour as a bandleader and didn’t bother to scold. Having a baby wasn’t such a terrible thing. Plenty of island girls did it. Granny Lala had been sixteen when she’d had Alia’s mother. What did it matter? But she didn’t want to know about the boy. Being white was enough to sentence him.

Alia wrote to Mick for months, never hearing a word
in return. Each morning, Alia lingered behind the beaded curtain, scrubbing the kitchen tabletop, until the postman came into the shop. She preferred to believe that Lala destroyed the letters rather than that they did not exist. She never asked.

When Percy was born, Alia used her own surname in case he grew up to have a stammer like his daddy. The baby’s skin was as if he’d been dipped in caramel pudding, exactly midway between her own and what she remembered Mick’s to be. His enormous eyes, his scrubby hair, his teeny fingers and poking-out ears … the enchantment was complete. She was fifteen and would not kiss anyone except her son for another twelve years.

Alia believed with all the broken bits of her heart that she’d used up her allotment of true love too early in life. What was left was to work hard and surprise them all with how much money a smart girl could accumulate.

She left the baby with her granny and walked every morning along the dusty road to All Saints Secondary School, in the opposite direction of the tourists on their way to float in the buoyant turquoise waves at Windward Beach or to see the old stockade in English Harbour.

Percy squalled and then toddled and then learned to read, always within a few yards of his great-grandmother’s shop, where she sold general provisions to island people and home-steeped vanilla rum to tourists. Lala’s shop was on the road that ran by Falmouth Harbour all the way to Nelson’s Dockyard. Percy thought, when he was a child, that Nelson must be the man who sat at the gate to the
marina, a man far older than Lala, with no teeth at all and parrot feathers stuck in the brim of his straw cap.

The sunshine ended when Percy was nearly six years old. Alia’s father, laying bricks for the foundation of a house in Liverpool, stepped backward into a hole and conked himself out, tipping a barrow full of rubble and mashing up his leg. Alia packed up her little boy and flew to England to help nurse him, ready at last to forgive her parents for whisking her away from her own childhood.

Alia was unprepared for the shock to Percy of arriving in England. To her, it was coming home. She’d told him stories all his life, about the soothing mist and the quiet colour of grey, about the island so big there were places you could not see the sea but had tall, tall houses instead, where you might not know everyone and not everyone knew the story of you.

He had never worn boots, never touched wool, never nibbled liver. He had not smelled city rubbish, heard traffic, nor seen a sky the colour of knives.

Percy had no photographs of his island childhood, because there was no camera in Lala’s house. There were dozens of pictures in existence, but none that he would ever see. The skinny boy with a beguiling smile was a popular subject for tourists who stopped to buy Lala’s creamy homemade cheese or a jar of vanilla rum. If he scooped up one of the speckled chickens that ran every which way, he’d usually see a coin for his cuteness.

Percy’s memories of faintly clattering palm leaves and white sunlight swiftly turned to dreams, barely recalled
but mournfully missed. Later, he thought of them as scenes from movies, edited to the briefest repeating moments of hot dust under bare feet, black nets hauling glittering fish through blue water, Lala’s voice singing over the whisper of evening rain.

In England, he noticed the incidence of fathers living with families behind the doors of the apartment building in Birmingham where he and his mother lived right next to her parents. He began to wonder as he never had before, where was his own daddy?

“But
why
doesn’t he come?” he’d asked. “Do you think he loves me?”

He knew that Alia’s answer was not intended to be cruel, but it wasn’t what Percy wanted to hear. “How can a person love someone he doesn’t know?” she said.

Despite his mother being correct about most things, in this case Percy wondered. His mother loved him utterly, but did she know him? Certainly not the part that became consumed with all things Mick Malloy.

Percy twiddles his fork, thinking the unthinkable.
Maybe the other boys should have come after all
. At least Adrian would have kept his fat mouth flapping and it wouldn’t be so obvious that none of them—man, woman, or child—know what to say. What level of crazy had led Percy to fantasize a clasping fellowship with his father? For Mick’s tender remorse, and his own simple words of profound forgiveness?

There’d been a bit of awe inside the van, noticing the mini refrigerator stocked with ginger beer and Coca-Cola, the telephone implanted in the dashboard, and the dozens of photos tacked up on the ceiling, recording a funny, sunny, brilliant life without Percy. There’d been getting stuck as a herd of sheep dawdled across the drive, then careering over cobbled village streets to the hotel, and examining a menu that offered devilled kidneys with nettle sauce and Yorkshire curd tart.

“Hamburgers all round,” Mick tells the waiter. “With fried onions. And a bottle of your best bubbly.”

Now what? Percy’s mind skitters around, looking for a place to land where he’ll be clever, at ease, and lovable. Useless endeavour.

“I’m going to take a piss,” says Mick. “Back in a mo.”

Oh god, oh god, now he is alone with the most beautiful girl he has ever seen and she’s looking at him with eyes as sharp as the fork he’s jamming through the tablecloth.

“I’m not your dad’s girlfriend,” says Charlie. “In case you were wondering. I met him because I was doing a paper about his films. At college. In the States.”

“People
study
him?”

“After I saw
Left Behind
, I flipped out. And then
Lucy’s Secret
. It was a big deal, getting permission, you know? To interview him. Transatlantic phone calls and everything. But he was great, chatty and friendly. Offered me a job, Just, you know, a gopher, really, starting out the way
he
did.
Lost Child
was my first, and then the one that comes out in the spring,
Cold Fingers
.”

Percy sees Mick at the entrance to the restaurant, popping a mint into his mouth, leaning in close to say something to the hostess. Something that makes her laugh, putting a hand in front of her mouth.
Chatty and friendly
. The girl holds a menu like a shield across her chest. Charlie sees too. She keeps talking, faster and more quietly.

“I know it’s weird,” she says. “Today. Seeing him. Especially with me being here. I’ll leave you alone after lunch. I don’t think … he doesn’t quite realize … Listen, every situation is different, but my parents divorced when I was nine, and even though they lived two blocks apart, I never felt like I was part of my dad’s life, so I’m guessing …”

Percy slugs his ginger ale so the bubbles scorch his throat. This is what people mean when they use
American
as a derogatory adjective, this telling of stuff that isn’t any of your business. Jenny, from Philadelphia, she’s the same way, blurting out details about her mom’s therapy or Esther McKay’s tits.

“I just … my essay … it’s especially meaningful now that I’ve met you.”

Percy squints, to cut the glare of her sapphire eyes.

“It’s probably really obvious to you,” she says. “Of all people, right?”

What is she saying?

Percy’s hand pats the pocket where his inhaler sits. “The kid?” he whispers. “There’s always a kid.” His lungs crowd his bumping heart. “Who goes missing.”

Mick is sauntering back to the table, oblivious to the ladies who turn to follow the clicking of his cowboy boots.

“The lost child,” says Charlie.

“It’s not in my head?” Percy says. “You noticed it too?”

“Noticed?” Charlie’s laugh involves a swish of golden hair and a glimpse of pink tongue. “It is seriously groovy meeting you! The title of my thesis”—she leans in, hurrying to finish—“ ‘The Missing Child in the Movies of Mick Malloy.’ He doesn’t even realize.”

Charlie makes the bizarre excuse that Yorkshire bees are famous, and she’s off to buy a jar of local honey. Mick pays for the meal and Percy wonders if he is getting the flu, the way his head is aching. They wander out to what the hotel calls a terrace—a bit of a porch, really—overlooking the muddy River Wharfe that runs through town.

“The girl was telling me,” says Mick, “this used to be a stagecoach stop on the way from London to Edinburgh.”

Jesus
, thinks Percy.
Really? We’re going to talk about local landmarks?

“Last thing you care about, eh?” says Mick. “I know, I know, who gives a toss?” He drags one of the iron chairs to the railing, scraping it across the floor, leaving two long scratches. “Come on, let’s sit,” he says. “Bring over another chair.” He puts his boots up on the railing, settling in.

Percy stares at the marks on the floor. His mother would flat out
die
of mortification. He picks up a chair with both hands and carries it over next to Mick’s.

How long have they got before Charlie comes back? There’s so much to wonder, to ask, to tell. Trying to sustain
the appearance of cool is the hardest thing he has ever done.

“Turns out,” says Mick, “that the school’s finances are in a total cock-up. So your headm-m-master—he’s a bit twee, eh?—he’s dancing all over the idea of leasing the place out for the summer.”

“To make your film, do you mean?”

“We spoke, on the telephone, but until I could see it, I had no idea it would be so fabulous.”

“Ha,” says Percy. “
Fabulous
. Not the word I’d choose … And I’m just thinking what Adrian would say.”

Mick laughs, a merry laugh that sends a skewering thrill straight through Percy’s chest. He has made his father laugh.

“Fabulous as a location for a horror flick. Possibly not as home sweet home,” says Mick. “You’ve been there, how long?”

What dad doesn’t know about his kid’s school?

“Percy,” says Mick, “I expect you’d like … a bit of a … father-son thing. But … look at m-m-me! I’m a total wanker.”

Is Percy supposed to agree?

“I won’t pretend it wasn’t m-m-my fault,” Mick says. “We were kids, you know? Never used a Durex. Did. Not. Have. A. Clue.… Her parents were livid, she told them she’d off herself if they went after m-m-me. She rang from the airport, gagging with sobs. Simple as that. Life over. You likely know all this, am I right?”

Did his mother’s version count as knowing? Alia was the
calmest, most practical person Percy had ever met. The idea of her threatening suicide was ludicrous.

She never would have, Mick assures him. It was part of her instant survival plan. Scare them to bits, keep the baby, protect Mick from jail but agree to never see him again.

“And she never has, except the once. I think I wrote a hundred letters, never got one back. When she first came home to Birmingham, after your granddad got smashed up, Alia had a little party for your birthday. Her parents didn’t come, being at the hospital. So …” He stops to rub his eyes like an old man. “She rang up, said you were there, turning six, as if I wouldn’t remember. She said I could come just for a wee peek.”

“And then?” says Percy. “After that?”

“I was just leaving for a crap film job,” Mick says. “A little one, called
Silent Cry
. I was an AD. You know, assistant director? Which on those little flicks is code for having an extra copy of the script so when the director pours coffee over his, you’re ready with the backup. But he had a bloody heart attack, second day of a three-week shoot. I stepped in to save them a few quid, rewrote the script, changed m-m-my life.”

This stuff, Percy knows. Every time Mick’s name is mentioned in the press, the story includes some variation of his miraculous beginning.