Astonishing Splashes of Colour (32 page)

I sip my coffee. James smiles at me and opens the sandwiches.

He tackles the complexities of the packaging with meticulous
care. He is like a magnet. Stray crumbs are drawn towards him so that he can keep them under strict control, liquids never spill because they recognize a force more powerful than their own. He offers me a sandwich, but I look past him.

Emily and Rosie aren’t my nieces, I think in a sudden panic. We’re only cousins. I’ll never be allowed to look after them again. I can’t be their favourite aunt anymore.

The train is warm and glowing, protecting us from the outside darkness. We stop at stations, we move on. We could have gone through the Channel Tunnel and been in France by now, for all I know. I don’t read the names of the stations. We are a small yellow entity moving through the uncertainty of a black world. And yellow is deceptive. It is hard and bright and brittle and can disintegrate at any time. The darkness is constantly threatening to break through. I always thought I could easily separate colour from absence of colour, but how simple it is to step from one to the other without even realizing.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” I say out loud.

“I don’t know,” James says.

“What difference would it have made? What was the point of the secret?”

That’s what bothers me most. Not losing a mother—who I thought was dead anyway—not being a granddaughter when I thought I was a daughter, not being a niece when I thought I was a sister. It’s the pointlessness of it all. The realization that everyone else was in on a secret that I knew nothing about. They were all together, conspirators huddling over their makeshift fire, while I was out in the cold, in the dark, because nobody thought fit to invite me in.

“Perhaps they thought it would be better for you at first,” says James. “And then no one knew how to tell you the truth as you got older.”

I sip my coffee, which has gone cold.

“I’m probably not even called Kitty Wellington.” I stop and
think about this. There is no such person as Kitty Wellington. I feel the blackness surround me, and I try to look inside for solace, but there’s nothing there. James is saying something and I can’t hear him.

The lights start to flicker, but it’s so brief that I might be imagining it. I shut my eyes and open them again. There. Is it real or imaginary? I watch the other passengers for signs that it’s real, but they’re reading, sleeping, looking out of the window with glazed eyes.

“Strange,” says James. “Something wrong with the power, I suppose.”

The lights go out, suddenly and completely, and I hear a howl of fear. It takes me a few seconds to realize that the sound came from me. I shouldn’t have done that, I think. I knew it was going to happen. Yellow never lasts.

I can hear James’s voice, repeating something over and over, but I can’t hear the words because the blackness is pushing its way inside me, pressing so hard that I need all my energy to resist it.

I feel his hand on mine as it rests on the table. “It’s all right,” he says. “It’s all right.”

“Ladies and gentlemen.” The metal voice makes me jump. “This is the guard speaking. We appear to have a fault with the lighting, but rest assured we are doing our best to put it right and normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.” He overac-centuates the end of some words and it takes time to make sense of the extra syllable.

I look out and discover that the blackness outside is not as black as I thought. I can see windows in houses, cars on distant roads, even light from the moon. The pressure in my head eases a bit. James’s hand is rubbing mine gently, soothingly.

The lights flicker on briefly, go off again, and then come back and stay on.

I look at James looking at me.

“Oh, James,” I say, and start to cry.

The receptionist looks at me across the desk. Her short black fringe makes her look like Cleopatra, but her label says Antonia. Her lipstick is perfect, immaculately drawn and coloured in, so her lips look artificial, painted on to disguise the fact that her mouth is small and tight. “You missed an appointment,” she says sternly.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “My grandparents died suddenly.”

She still looks too authoritative, but her voice softens a little. “Oh dear.” She pauses to think what to say. I can see it’s not easy. “It’s hard to lose grandparents, isn’t it?” she says.

It’s hard to lose a mother too, I think, and to gain a new grandmother.

She looks at the screen in front of her. “We have a cancellation this morning—ten thirty. Do you want to wait?”

“Yes,” I say.

The waiting room is crowded, and a woman with a baby and an older girl sits down next to me. The girl has to stand, while the mother puts the baby on her lap.

“Mum,” says the girl, “I want to sit down.” She has wispy light brown hair tied into two long plaits. The plaits are too thin and end in a tiny feathery curl. I remember girls at school like this, who’d never had their hair cut. It doesn’t get a chance to thicken and flourish. The girl looks about eight, and is picking at patches of leftover purple varnish on her nails. She stands defiantly close to her mother. “I want to sit down,” she says again, quietly, but firmly. Her face is very pale and the skin below her eyes has a purple tinge, as if she hasn’t slept all night. She has enormous eyes—blue and very bright. She might be older than I first thought. She stands close to her mother and stares at her fiercely.

“Sit on the floor,” says the mother, and pushes her down. The
girl reluctantly bends her knees and crouches on the floor, holding herself tightly in a neat bundle.

Then she looks up at me, her eyes steady and intense, as if she believes she can hypnotize me into moving. I try a nervous smile, but she doesn’t respond, so I look away.

“Ma—ma—ma—” says the baby.

“Henry!” says the mother delightedly and holds his hands while she shakes him up and down on her lap.

He chortles. His laugh is long and infectious, a perfectly tuned, rhythmical giggle. “‘Gain,” he keeps saying, “‘gain.”

I watch him. I want to put out my hand and touch his chubby arms, kiss his padded cheek, make him look at me as he giggles. I smile at him.

The girl is interested in his fun. She puts a hand up to him. “Henry,” she calls gently, tickling his elbow.

Henry tries to turn and see her, so his bouncing rhythm is lost. “Leave him alone, Megan,” says her mother sharply.

Megan’s hand falls back and she turns away from them.

I catch her eye again and smile sympathetically. This time, I see a flicker of response in her eyes and a quick grin flash across her face.

The mother tries to jiggle Henry on her lap again, but he has lost interest. He puts a finger into his mouth and sucks urgently. Then the finger slips out and he starts to wail. I want to take him, put him on my lap, cuddle him tightly.

“Mrs. Maitland.” The receptionist is calling my name. “You know which room?”

I nod and walk quickly down the corridor to Dr. Cross’s room.

She’s expecting me. The receptionist must have rung through.

“Hello, Kitty. Come and sit down.” She always looks pleased to see me. I enjoy the sensation of being welcomed, until I remember that she must say the same to everyone. It’s just a professional skill.

I sit. I look at the ceiling, out of the window past the venetian blinds, without seeing. They ought to have mirror windows, so that people inside can see out, while people outside only see their reflections. They could know how ill they look before they meet the doctor.

I tell Dr. Cross about my grandparents dying. I tell her about the funeral. Then I stop. She knows there’s more and she waits. She doesn’t push or prompt me. I experiment with various phrases in my head, then I give up and let the words come out in the way they choose.

“My mother came back from the dead,” I say. “The prodigal mother. And it turns out that she’s not my mother at all.”

I tell her the story, about Margaret and about Dinah, about the terrible betrayal I feel from my father who is not my father, and the brothers who are not my brothers.

She listens and doesn’t say anything immediately. She appears to be thinking. So I sit in her silence, which wraps itself round me like a blanket, a protective layer of comfort. All the confusion, anger and loneliness that have been racing around in my mind seem suspended for a time. I would like to stay like this all day.

“Did James know?” she says.

I hesitate. “He says not.”

“Then we must believe him, mustn’t we?”

I like the way she has identified the most alarming part.

“What do you want to call your father now?”

This takes me by surprise. I’ve been so tied up by the difficulty of knowing what to call my mother, or even myself, that I haven’t realized I can no longer call him Dad. I couldn’t call him Guy, and I can’t think of an alternative.

Dr. Cross somehow knows this. “Perhaps we should go on calling him your father for the time being.”

I feel absurdly relieved.

“Have you talked to him since all this happened?”

“No,” I say.

He’s been to my flat. I heard him ringing the bell, banging the knocker, calling through the letterbox. “Kitty!” he called. “Kitty, I need to talk to you.” And then, more quietly, “Please let me in, Kitty. Please.”

I’ve never heard him sound like this before. He demands, he shouts, he expects; he never asks. Eventually he went away. I wonder if he’s tried James’s flat, but I’m not sure if he realizes that James and I live next door to each other. He hasn’t been back to my flat since the day I moved in. I always go and see him.

He tried phoning, but I didn’t pick up the phone. I heard him on the answer machine. “Kitty. It’s Dad. Talk to me.”

After five attempts, he decided to offer an explanation. “I was going to tell you, Kitty. I always said I would tell you the truth when you were eighteen, but you grew up before I realized. Why does it change everything? Have I ever let you down?”

That’s not the point. You lied to me.

“I like being your father,” he said again. “I want you to stay being my daughter.”

Fine. Whatever you want.

I still didn’t answer the phone.

Dr. Cross listens to this in silence. I am sorry to be burdening her with this, but who else can I tell? She seems to absorb it all. Nothing surprises or shocks her.

Eventually I realize that I’ve stayed for longer than usual. Her appointment system will be disrupted.

“Come tomorrow,” she says. “Ask the receptionist to put you at the end of the day if there are no available gaps.”

I feel a huge surge of affection for her. How does she manage to absorb all this complexity and remain calm?

“Thank you,” I say and leave.

Outside, I wait to make another appointment. Henry, Megan
and their mother are still waiting. Megan is sitting on my chair, swinging her legs. She smiles quite openly when she sees me. Her mum looks up, makes a connection and notices Megan next to her. “Keep still,” she says sharply, but Megan’s legs don’t stop moving. Her lips move slightly as she chants a song to herself in time with the rhythm of her legs.

Her mother gives up and turns her attention back to Henry. “Half a pound of tuppenny rice, half a pound of treacle,” she sings softly. He stops moving and watches her, waiting for the “Pop goes the weasel,” when she parts her knees and he nearly falls through. Then he chuckles and she enfolds him in her arms and kisses his head.

I have to look away.

The receptionist gives some leaflets to the woman in front of me. “An appointment will be made for you at the maternity hospital,” she says, “and they’ll write directly to you.”

You can’t tell the woman is pregnant. She looks healthy and cheerful and fit—not at all like Suzy or me.

I look at Henry on his mum’s lap. He could have been killed like Suzy’s baby, he might never have existed. He is looked after by his mother who feeds him and changes his nappy and loves him.

I leave the queue without making an appointment.

I nearly fall over a mother with a baby boy in a pushchair. He is wailing.

“Sorry,” I say.

“Please don’t start all that again, Henry,” I hear from the mother, who has a tired desperation in her voice.

“Harvey Patterson.”

“Oh, yes,” says the woman with the pushchair. “We’re here.” She picks up her baby. “Shh, Henry,” she says.

I go out, walk through the park, back to my flat.

T
HE WORLD IS FULL OF BABY EQUIPMENT
and I want my share of it. I stand outside Mothercare for a while, looking round before going in, to see if there’s anyone who might recognize me. I stand in front of a display of little dresses for baby girls of 3–6 months, and gradually relax slightly. They’re so pretty—a maroon velour dress with matching knickers, a pink check smock over a frilly blouse, tiny pink socks that look like kittens. I want to buy all of them, but I don’t. I haven’t got a baby girl.

Buy me, the pram covered in vivid red, green and yellow squares shouts at me from the far end of the shop. Me, me, says a cot with Winnie the Pooh bedding. He’s watering the garden and picking flowers. There are riotously coloured mobiles above me—Pooh Bear again, teddies going to bed, Hey Diddle Diddle, with a cat with a fiddle and a cow jumping over the moon.