Dancing in the Dark (24 page)

‘It's not
His
mysterious way I'm bothered about, it's Luna's. And so-called John Vincent Cairns's.'

‘Who?'

‘My father. John Vincent Cairns.' She's staring at me quizzically now and my stomach constricts. ‘
What?
'

‘Is that what she told you?'

‘Yes. What's wrong with that?'

‘Cairns was your grandmother's maiden name,' she says slowly. ‘She used to sign herself Lois Cairns Caxton, the way American people do. Your mother was Lucia Caxton, when we were at school. I hadn't realized she told you Cairns was your father's name.'

My father moves further and further away from me. The layers of obfuscation Luna has laid down over the years seem increasingly impenetrable. ‘Why would she lie like that? She must have known that I might find out from you. They probably weren't even married.' I can't keep the sense of betrayal out of my voice. ‘She's always said it was a whirlwind courtship.'

Terry gazes at me thoughtfully then shakes her head.

‘What?' I say.

‘There
is
someone who might know who your father was.'

‘Who's that?'

‘Her confessor, Father Francis. I remember her writing to me about him when she first went over to the States, saying he was kind of scary, all the girls were terrified of him.'

‘Even if she did confess what she was up to, he's not going to tell me, is he? Secrets of the confessional and all that.'

‘So that's not much help, is it?'

‘From something Luna said – or didn't say – I think my father's still alive.'

Terry doesn't seem nearly as surprised as I thought she would be. ‘I've often thought that,' she said. ‘That line she handed us about him being killed in a car accident before you were born somehow never quite rang true. But if he is . . . what then?'

‘I have to find him.'

‘Do you really, Theo? Suppose he's got a wife and kids. Grandchildren. Maybe he doesn't even know you exist. Maybe she disappeared without telling him.'

‘Why would she do that?'

‘I've no idea, but if you find him, are you just going to barge into whatever life he's living and maybe destroy it?' Terry is shaking her head. ‘I told Lucia years ago that by keeping silent, she was storing up trouble for herself and for you. It looks like the trouble's here.'

‘I just want to know, that's all.'

‘Why does “that's all” always mean so much more?' she asks sadly.

It's time I left. I squeeze her hand. ‘I don't think I've ever said it before, Terry, but thank you for all you've given me. For taking me in, raising me, for everything.'

‘Believe me, sweetie, it's us that are grateful.' She pats my cheek. ‘You know how much we love you. Max always wanted another little girl. Think how sour and wizened he and I might have become if we hadn't had you.'

‘Oh, sure.'

‘But you might also think about this,' she says slowly. ‘We took you in, but we didn't do much raising. Most of that was down to your mother.'

I think of Luna criss-crossing the globe with a child in tow. I remember the places I've seen, the people I've met. Luna may not have taught me to cook or sew or run a house, but she taught me to read, she showed me paintings, she discussed things with me. I remember evenings in whichever rickety room we were currently occupying, laughing as we concocted ever wilder pseudonyms for ourselves. I remember her charming spiky sketches. I remember distant happiness. ‘She did, yes.'

‘And even though you feel pretty down now, you're a strong woman, a strong person. Isn't that enough of a gift from her? She hasn't been the best mom in the world, in the conventional sense, no question of that. She's always had broader horizons than the rest of us, and that's why her friends value her. Maybe you should try looking at her that way too, as a friend rather than parent. I loved her because she was a one-off, an original. She was witty and warm and when she walked in, the room lit up. Like I said, she's not like other people, never has been, she always – what's that quote – marched to a different drum.'

She's right. I know that. But I still need to find out who I am.

As I am leaving, I say, ‘By the way, were you serious about giving away Nancy's shoes?'

‘Why, do you want some?'

‘I'd love to take a couple of pairs.' If apology doesn't work with Trina, maybe bribery will. Not that now is the optimum moment to try. I'll have to leave it for a while.

‘We're not talking an Ugly Sister thing here, are we? Because after all those years of buying school shoes, I know your feet are several sizes larger than Nancy's were.'

‘Several? Are you joking?'

‘Three, then.'

‘They're for someone else.'

‘Help yourself. Otherwise they'll only end up at the Oxfam shop.' She takes my hand, pulls me close, kisses me. ‘What you need to do is enjoy the things your mother
did
do, instead of resenting the things she didn't.'

‘I know.'

Which doesn't make it any easier.

I
spend the next two days making phone calls. When Marnie comes in on the third morning, I say, ‘Look, I know I've just been away but I'm going to take some more time off.'

‘Fine by me.'

‘So I'm going to the States tomorrow.'

‘You were there just a few weeks back.'

‘I need to go again. I shan't be more than a few days. You shouldn't have any problems while I'm away. There's always the mobile, if something really urgent comes up.'

‘Fine.' She is dying to ask questions, but manages to keep them to herself. ‘Is this business or pleasure?'

‘I doubt if it will be pleasure,' I say.

‘But not strictly business, either?'

‘That about sums it up.'

‘Take good care, won't you?'

‘Maybe,' I say, ‘I should learn to take less care.'

She fishes a chocolate bar out of her bag and puts it beside the telephone. ‘Good point. By the way, did you ever catch up with Trina?'

‘I did.'

‘So why isn't she outside?'

I can hardly bring myself to explain. ‘Basically, because she's got engaged.'

‘That's not good. I knew the boyfriend was itching to get a ring on her finger. He's probably had it ready for months, just waiting for the right moment.'

‘Which would never have come if I hadn't shouted at her. As you said, she was really happy here.'

‘Looked like it to me.'

We stare at one another. ‘Maybe I could visit her while you're gone,' Marnie says. ‘See if I could do better than you.'

I ignore her expression, which says plainer than words that she could hardly do worse. ‘It's worth a try.'

Another two-hour delay. What is it with these airline people? If I ran my business as inefficiently as they do theirs, I'd be out of a job in a New York minute. I wander round Heathrow, buy a paper, drink endless cups of ugly coffee. For a while, I slip into a kind of trance, seeing no other way to pass the time. In one of the airport bookstores, I pull out an atlas and open it at the page marked Eastern United States. I try to calculate how long it will take me to drive from Boston to Vermont, give or take a hundred kilometres or so. I buy a book to read on the plane, written by a much-touted American woman.

Finally we board the plane to Boston. Once I've been served drinks and something to eat, leafed through some magazines, I doze off. I hate to think how much later I wake, to find myself canted sideways in my seat, head almost resting on the shoulder of the woman next to me. She is wearing a blue shirt and well-cut jeans. Please don't let me have dribbled all over her shirt, I pray. I straighten up. I take a surreptitious peep but can't see any suspicious stains, and get out the paperback I bought at the airport.

My neighbour stretches her arms above her head and makes a series of grunting sounds. It's one of the hazards of air travel, in these post DVT-scare days. Then she pulls one of her knees up to her chin in a lithe kind of way I couldn't duplicate in the privacy of my own home, let alone in an airline seat. ‘I'm Gemma, by the way,' she says, seeing me watching her.

‘Theo.'

I look out of the window beside me. The plane skims across piled clouds, towers, castles, battlements, all as solid looking as rock. ‘Hard to believe that if you stepped into that, you'd plummet to earth,' I say.

‘That's what they
tell
you,' Gemma says darkly.

The flight attendant pauses by our seats, offering drinks. I ask for red wine; Gemma orders a gin and tonic. ‘And boy, do I need it,' she says, drinking half of it in one swallow. ‘I'm on my way to see my mother, and the first thing she'll do is stare meaningfully at my totally naked ring finger. She
so
wants me to get married – or at least engaged.'

‘Anybody in the offing?'

‘Actually, and at last, yes, I do believe so. But it's still early days, so I shan't be telling Mother, unless she drives me to desperation.' She rolls her eyes. ‘Mothers! You gotta love 'em.'

‘When she's scoped out the ring-finger, what else will she say?'

Gemma puts her hands behind her head and bends sideways from the waist until her face is almost in my lap. ‘That she doesn't like my hair like this or that blue never was my colour. That I've put on weight. That I obviously don't care about her any more or I'd have visited ages ago.' She smiles. ‘And then she'll hug me till my ribs crack, and tell me she's fixed fried chicken for supper, and when we get back to the house, there'll be a welcome banner hanging across the porch, which my sister and I made about a thousand years ago, and a pecan-caramel coffee cake will be cooling in the kitchen, my all-time favourite, and it'll be . . . it'll be
home
.'

Dozing again, as the plane drones across the Atlantic, turns over Greenland and comes down the east coast of the United States, I think of Fergus. I never asked him why there was a stork tattooed on his shoulder, and now I probably never will. My mother's image floats behind my eyelids, with blossoms in her hair, a wild child long before anyone gave them a name.
Mothers
. . .
you gotta love 'em.

You do.

It is mid-afternoon by the time we stumble off the plane in Boston. Although I'm not into random hugs, I nonetheless find myself returning Gemma's brief embrace with something more than perfunctory politesse. ‘I think you look great in blue,' I say.

I watch her pass through the barrier and into the arms of a plump brown-haired woman who is dabbing at her eyes. She holds Gemma away from her so she can check her over, pulls her back again into an even tighter embrace, pushes her away again to look at her hair, her face, her size, and all the time she's talking sixteen to the dozen. Gemma turns back to me and winks. I wink back.

When I ask how to get to St Margaret's Junior College, they tell me at the Tourist Information Center to take the road out of town towards Burlington and turn off after five kilometres, that I'll come to St Joseph's first and, two kilometres later, St Mag's. I drive slowly, taking in the landscape of my mother's college days, the first piece of her past that I've ever knowingly encountered. I think of those cute-as-a-button Doris Day or Debbie Reynolds movies I've seen on the television and wonder if Luna ever sat at the counter of the ice-cream parlour with a root-beer float in front of her, wore her hair in a ponytail, owned a pair of saddle-Oxford shoes. Not that I know for certain what a root-beer float is, let alone a saddle-Oxford. In any case, since it was the late sixties, she was more likely demonstrating against the US presence in Vietnam, in skirts which barely covered her fanny, skinny-rib sweaters and white knee socks.

I pass signs to St Joseph's and sure enough, two kilometres later, come to a tasteful dark-blue board with
St Margaret's Junior College For Girls
painted in gold letters,
founded in 1902
. I drive down a road which leads to another sign and a pair of red-brick gate posts, and follow the boards leading me to the reception area. The driveway winds between smooth lawns and mellow oaks, past a series of red-brick buildings in Gothic style, all narrow-pointed windows and granite turrets. On the left, a stream flows under a bridge into an artificial lake.

More buildings back away up a hill to culminate in a chapel with stained-glass windows, its front portico dominated by a huge white statue of a melancholy woman in a marble mantle. St Margaret herself, of course. From my school days, I recall that St Margaret was swallowed by a dragon and then brought forth from the belly of the beast without a scratch on her, thus qualifying her to be the special patron of childbirth.

Beyond the chapel, where the hill dips again to the other end of the stream, the buildings become less decorative, more functional and modern. Knots of people stand about under the trees, some with books in their arms, others with packs on their backs. Still others move purposefully along the paths. A woman with flowing grey locks sits with her back to a tree trunk, plucking at a guitar and singing.

At the Administration block, I park and get out. I go in and push open a door marked
Reception
. The room is small and very crowded: file cabinets, two desks, bookshelves, computers, and a thousand photos of groups of girls in white gowns and caps on Graduation Days, going back for generations. Since she left at the end of her second year, without graduating, my mother won't be among them.

Behind one of the desks sits a fresh-faced kid in a little white blouse with a rounded collar and embroidery down the placket. Fingering the pearl stud in her ear, she smiles at me, and asks what I want.

To find my father
seems too direct. ‘I'm from England,' I say. ‘I'm looking into my family background and since my mother was here at college, I thought I'd stop by and see if there was anyone left who might remember her.'