Mothers and Daughters (8 page)

‘You can pay for those, young madam!’ shouted Mama as Dr Friedmann flew down the stairs to see what the racket was.

‘What is this?’ he asked, as they both screamed at him and he held his hands up. ‘One at a time!’

‘Why did she not bring this to you sooner?’ he was whispering to Mama after she told him the tale and had buried her face in her striped cotton apron.

Looking up, he smiled at Connie. ‘Your mother only wants to protect you. She has always looked out for you. It is not easy for her to talk about past things,’ he replied.

How dare he take her side in this? Connie fumed. He was no relation, or was there something going on she didn’t know about?

‘What has this got to do with Mama? It is my holiday, my school trip. I have saved and saved, and put down all my money as a deposit. She wouldn’t even let me get a Saturday job. I shall ask Granny Esme, if you won’t help me,’ she yelled, storming to the door.

‘Wait, Connie. Your mama has something to tell you, something which explains everything. You will understand then,’ said Dr Friedmann, beckoning her back from the vestibule to sit down.

‘Go on then,’ she said, trying to play the grown-up. ‘If my father was alive he would pay for me to go on this trip.’ It was a mean jibe but she couldn’t help herself. They were holding her fate in the palm of their hands.

‘Ana, go and get the papers. Better it is settled. The child has a right to see them now,’ he ordered.

‘No!’ Mama was shaking her head but she scuttled into the hall and ferreted in the back of the sideboard, which stood by the hatstand. Why hadn’t she thought to look there, Connie wondered.

‘Your mother is doing what is best for everyone, Connie. Don’t be angry with her,’ said Jacob Friedmann, as she returned and threw a pile of tattered papers contained in a shabby wallet onto the table.

‘There, are you satisfied now? Take your papers, for all the good they’ll do you! You won’t get onto the Continent with them as they are,’ she snapped, and Connie could see she was shaking. She’d never seen Mama like this before, even when she and Susan had set-tos in the kitchen.

The battered documents were well thumbed and handwritten in Greek, hard to decipher. There were official stamps and military papers. Even with Connie’s knowledge of Classical Greek, they made no sense to her at all.

‘What does it say?’ Connie asked with hands trembling, trying to pretend she was not scared.

Mama lifted them up. ‘I met your father in Athens at the end of the war. Then you were born and there was nothing official,’ she replied with a shaking voice.

‘Did Freddie marry you after I was born then?’ Connie said with relief knowing that when girls got
into trouble this sometimes happened. They ‘had’ to get married. Was that what all this was about? A question of timing?

‘There was no marriage. He was killed. There were complications. It was better to say nothing. Everyone assumed I was a war widow.’ Mama was looking at her with graveyard eyes while Dr Friedmann put his arms around both their shoulders as if to soften this news.

‘So I’m not a real Winstanley. I’m illegitimate. Who was my father then? Somebody from Crete? A Yank, like Melanie Allport in the Lower Sixth?’ Connie was trying to pretend she didn’t care but her legs were trembling under the table.

‘You know who your father is. I met Freddie Winstanley in Athens on shore leave. We were very friendly. I didn’t know then about Auntie Susan in Burma. It was a wartime romance. It was not meant to happen like this.’ Mama’s voice faltered.

‘Like what? You tell me I was not meant to happen? That I am a bastard, an accident? And what has Auntie Susan got to do with this?’

Nobody spoke for a second and then the awful knowledge flashed like a bulb before her eyes. ‘Oh, no! Not Joy as well … Was she some accident too? You both … with my father. It’s disgusting! All these years, you’ve lied to us. Joy and I are half-sisters and nobody said anything to us? Granny wouldn’t lie about all that stuff about Cedric,’ she sneered.

‘It was Esme who thought up the whole story to protect you both. She took us in when she could have turned her back on us,’ Mama said. ‘She didn’t want you to be pointed at in the street.’

Connie could hardly breathe for shock and anger. To be fobbed off with a pack of lies when all the time the Winstanleys kept their grubby little secret, making up fictitious characters like out of Charles Dickens.

‘I don’t believe you. She lied to protect the good name of Winstanley, more like. What is my real name then?’

‘Konstandina Papadaki … See, you are registered here but you will need a special visa to visit another country. It’s too late for all that now. I didn’t want the school to know our business.’ Mama was not looking her in the face. ‘I’m sorry but you brought this on yourself.’

‘I don’t really exist, do I?’ Connie shouted. ‘Does Joy know she’s a bastard?’

‘No, and don’t you go blabbing your mouth off to her. She has been through a bad time. It is not our business to tell her, and Susan may never want to. She has a British passport, as does her mother,’ said Mama.

‘But it’s not fair. She got all that fuss when she was ill. Please let me go!’

‘Connie, I’m tired, my back aches, change the record. It is too late. You are half-Greek, be proud of that.’

‘You’re not or you’d not be so quick to let them change my name to Constance Winstanley!’

‘You are named after your grandmother, Constance Esme, your father’s mother. It is tradition. Joy must wait until Auntie Susan chooses to reveal her story. If she ever does.’

‘On her wedding day most likely … Oh, by the way, did you know your bridesmaid is your sister? It
is
my business if she is my half-sister. How dare you not tell me? Why have you waited so long?’ Connie cried out, wanting to run away to her room and hide.

‘That’s enough! Let your mother rest. This is hard for her too. She is only trying to shield you. She means for the best,’ said Dr Friedmann, and Connie turned on him.

‘I don’t need your opinion.
You’re
not my father. All this baloney about doing well at school … What, so you can show me off to pay back the Winstanleys for taking you in? “Look, we have made a clever daughter for you.”’ She was pointing her fingers at them both like daggers.

‘Your mother has had a bad day without all this, Connie. She’ll do what she can.’ But ears were closed to his plea.

‘I suppose Auntie Lee knows, and Uncle Levi, and no wonder Ivy never liked us. Does Neville know? It will be all round Grimbleton if he finds out my mother and auntie are sluts, camp followers to the British Army!’

‘God in heaven! Stop that at once! Don’t dare talk to your mother like that!’ Dr Friedmann yelled.

‘I speak as I find. She goes with soldiers and gets pregnant.’ Connie was weeping with frustration.

‘You have no idea how it was then, and I hope to God you never will. I was young and hungry, and the soldiers were kind and gave us food. They were lonely and we were exhausted. Freddie was handsome and charming and we went dancing and we did all the things you take for granted now. Those freedoms were bought with the blood of young men and women like him. We were fighting in the mountains at an age when you were sitting in your room playing music. The war was over, the Germans were defeated and everyone wanted to go home. Don’t you tell me what I should or shouldn’t’ve done then. Don’t judge when you have no idea what we went through for victory. I have fought dogs for crusts of bread …’ She shivered. ‘I can say no more. I will never talk of that time.’ Mama was sobbing now and Dr Friedmann held her hand.

‘She’s right. She brought you here to be safe and to have a future. She has done well for you and now you have good family, yes?’ he said.

‘They are not my family. It is all lies,’ Connie said, running out into the hallway. Where should she go? To Rosa in town? To Sutter’s Fold and Granny Esme … who was really Joy’s gran as much as hers?
They were all Winstanleys but she didn’t feel like one of them any more.

Suddenly the school trip crumbled before her eyes, all that scrimping and saving for nothing. Someone on the waiting list would jump into the place and share a room with Jane, and they would become best friends and come back into the new school year all pally.

Connie had no legs to run away, but sat on the bottom step of the stairs and cried until she thought her heart would burst with anger. Then the door opened and Dr Friedmann came to sit down beside her.

‘I know you are disappointed but I promise you there will be other trips,’ he whispered.

She turned her back on him. ‘How do you know?’ she sniffed, snot running down her lips. ‘I hate her. I hate you all!’

‘I know you do now but your mama loves you. Give her a chance to make amends. One day when you are a mother you will understand what it is to do the best for your child. One day perhaps you will go to Greece and see it for yourself through her eyes. You will see the world we grown-ups have made a mess of. We will sort out your documents. We will make it right for you somehow. You have my word,’ he said, leaning over to put his arm on her shoulder.

Of course she knew he would honour the promise but she was too angry to give him any quarter.

‘She has ruined my life,’ she snapped at him.

‘She is your mother and she gave you life,’ he retorted. ‘It is not the end of the world. You have life and a family that love you. I have no family of my own. The Nazis saw to that in the death camps. They never got a chance of life. I have been blessed with good friends here. Don’t be angry with your mother or Esme. They thought they were doing the best by hiding the truth, but the truth has a way of coming out all on its own at the wrong time.’

‘But I wanted to go on the school trip, that’s all. I didn’t want all this. Why didn’t she tell me?’ Connie said, standing up and running up the stairs.

Dr Friedmann stood in the stairwell patiently, his voice echoing into her room. ‘Perhaps just for this very reason – that when you knew, you would be ashamed of her. Have you never done something like that? Forged a signature … made promises you can’t keep? Your mama is human and run down. We all make mistakes. Think about it.’

She burrowed under the eiderdown, not wanting to hear him. Tomorrow she was going to have to tell the world that she didn’t exist. Tomorrow she would have to let her teachers down and there was only one person to blame. How could she ever trust Mama again?

Yet, if she were honest, somewhere hidden in the secret drawer of her mind the news had come as no surprise. She’d sensed the mystery surrounding their
coming to Grimbleton, but to be taken in under such circumstances … How many times had Granny Esme patted her curls and sighed?

Joy was in for a big shock, that was for sure.

Next morning on the bus she whispered the news to Nev and swore him to secrecy. He hardly raised his eyebrow.

‘Honestly, Connie, you’re such a simpleton. Did you never wonder why my mother hasn’t a good word for the Olive Oil Club?’ He paused and then whispered, ‘My theory is she once fancied Uncle Freddie herself.’

‘Never! Has she spilled the beans to anyone?’

‘What do you think? My mother has a mouth as big as the Mersey Tunnel but she’s too frightened what others will think to let slip a family secret. We might not get the Winstanley millions,’ he hooted.

‘You knew about Joy too?’

‘Of course,’ Nev winked.

‘So who was Uncle Cedric?’

Neville pursed his lips. ‘That was Auntie Su’s nice touch, don’t you think, to explain away her presence: just another war widow in the district.’

‘But for us to be sisters like this?’ Connie shook her head. ‘I just can’t take it in.’

‘Don’t worry my lips are sealed. I won’t breathe a word. I’m in enough trouble as it is. Mother thinks
I’ll fail my exams and she’s threatening coaching again. She has such big ideas for my small brain.’

‘You’ll get the shop when Uncle Levi retires. You’re made up.’

‘But I don’t want to spend my life dishing out powders and corn plasters, growing fat like him. They sleep in separate rooms, Mum and Dad, you know. Have done for years. I think my dad has a girlfriend on the sly … “The flighty piece from the stocking bar,” Mum calls her.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Connie offered.

‘Don’t be. She’s no angel either, if truth be told. There’s rumours that the Betterware salesman lingers ere long over her dusters of a morning. I just let them get on with it. Anyhow, enough of all that. I’ve got another idea for the Silkies. I saw the Kaye sisters on TV, the ones who had a hit with “Paper Roses”. Let’s get a proper act together like them again. I’ve got some good contacts in Manchester who’ll help us.’

‘How did you manage that?’ Connie was all ears despite her misery.

‘Never you mind. Let’s just say, your cousin is getting himself well connected, if you catch my drift.’ Neville winked again.

She didn’t, but was too polite to say. She was glad he was distracting her from all the doom and gloom ahead. Poor Joy was living in joyful ignorance but it would be cruel to blurt the truth out now.

Connie smiled at her cousin. There was more to
him than a mop of curls and flash clothes. It was something to do with taking himself off to Manchester on Saturdays with another dressy lad from the Lawns called Basil Philpot, poor sod. Where they went to he’d never say, just that he’d made some mates at a jazz club who were very theatrical. She’d asked if she might come along but he’d given her a funny look. ‘I don’t think so, Connie, not your scene at all.’

There was nothing for it but to head upstairs to the staff-room door to break the news to Miss Kent. Connie spun a sad tale about her mother being ill and off work that was partly true, because she had been having a lot of doctor’s appointments lately about her bad back. ‘We can’t make the final payments and I must stay close to home,’ she lied, holding her breath.

‘I’m sure we could raise some special funding to tip the balance,’ answered Miss Kent. ‘It’s a pity for you to lose your place, Constance. We know how keen you are.’

For one second she was tempted to defy everyone but then she remembered the family secret. ‘Thank you, but no. Mama is very independent. I wouldn’t shame her by taking charity.’ She almost convinced herself with all these fibs. ‘It’s just not meant to be this time.’

‘Well, I am so sorry and I hope your mother gets well soon. We will refund what we can, of course. There is a waiting list.’

‘Thank you, Miss Kent,’ Connie bowed her head, shamed. How easy it was to deceive when you were trusted. Now she’d have to make do with reviving the Silkies over the summer hols. They might make some dosh if they learned a few more numbers from the hit parade, or she put some of her own songs to music. Maybe they could get a record made … Girl groups were still popular: the Beverley Sisters, the Kayes and the Vernons Girls …

The startling revelations about her parentage buzzed round in her head like a demented bee. She and Joy had lived like sisters all their lives, sharing a house, trying to smooth over the rows between their mothers. Now she knew why there was always tension in the air over silly things, like which girl was doing better at school.

What a to-do there must have been the day they first turned up.

Now she must keep all this from Joy until Su decided to come clean. Did Rosa know? Had the whole street put two and two together?

Joy had once told her there was a photo of Uncle Cedric in Su’s dressing-table drawer that puzzled her, for when she pulled it from the frame to see if there was writing on the back, the picture was cut out from a magazine. It had puzzled them both at the time.
But now she knew they were half-sisters, and that there was no real Cedric.

Suddenly Connie felt ashamed to have called Mama such awful names when she’d done her best, as a refugee, to bring them to safety, finding them a safe home and making a new life in a foreign country after such a sad time. Now she’d used her in a big lie to her teacher. She’d let everyone down.

She couldn’t wait for school to end to rush home and apologise, to make things right between them, but she had lacrosse team practice first.

It was like the first day of her new life as Konstandina Eleni Papadaki. She rolled the names over her tongue. Yesterday she was plain Connie. Today she was someone quite different. Somewhere in the back of her memory she recalled Mama calling her Dina. Then one day when she went to school she’d become Connie.

As she stared out of the bus window, she marvelled that nothing outside had changed though she felt so different: grey skies, smoking chimneys, silent mills with broken windows. King Cotton had crashed in the town making many out of work.

The Winstanleys were the fortunate ones in their tall red brick house standing proud at the top of Division Street on three floors, comfortably off by the standards of most of her school pals. They had a family to protect them and what Mama, Su and Granny had done, she could now see, was done out
of love and concern, not spite. How stupid she’d been to be so cruel.

She leaped off the bus and sped home but there was no one around. Then she saw Auntie Su, standing in the kitchen, ringing her hands.

‘Connie, you’re so late!’

‘Where’s Mama?’

‘She’s had to go into hospital … for some tests. She had another of her bleeds this lunchtime after her shift so they took her straight onto a ward.’

‘A bleed? Did she fall?’ asked Connie but Su was shaking her head.

‘Not that sort of bleed … a monthly bleed … too many bleeds. You’ve seen how pale and tired she gets.’

Connie had been so wrapped up in this holiday business, living in her own world, she hardly noticed anyone else, especially her own mother. ‘When can I go and see her?’

‘Not tonight, she may go into theatre. Dr Friedmann will bring us news.’

‘But I have to see her now … I said some awful things last night …’ Connie broke down and suddenly Joy was with her.

‘Uncle Levi will take you in as soon as he can. It’s just an investigation, isn’t it, Mummy?’

Connie didn’t like the sound of that word. Investigation meant prodding and prying into organs, X-rays, blood samples. Mama was a nurse; she would
make a rotten patient. She knew too much. ‘She will be all right, won’t she?’ Her eyes pleaded to Su for some crumbs of comfort. She felt like a three-year-old lost in the street, unsafe, frightened, searching for Mama in the crowd.

‘She’s in the best place. I’ve made you some tea … sit down. It’s been a shock, I know.’ Auntie Su fussed but her dark eyes looked worried.

Connie sat limp, feeling sick, thinking of the lies she’d made up only that morning, never suspecting for a moment that there might be truth waiting to explode over her head. Had her lie caused this funny bleeding? Had she betrayed her mama for the sake of a two-week coach trip to the Continent?

Oh, please, God, I hope not, she prayed, crossing herself many times. She must buy a candle to light, pray for a quick recovery. Only then would she be forgiven, only then would she feel safe. There was only one thing she wanted to do and that was to sit by Mama’s bedside and tell her what a silly, selfish, stupid daughter she’d been, and how she loved her with all her heart.

In the nightmare weeks that followed, Connie got to know the inside of Ward 9, gynaecological ward, as if it were her own home. Mama had an emergency hysterectomy and lay prostrate, white-faced, trying to smile at Connie.

‘She’s had it all taken away,’ whispered Granny trying to explain the operation, not looking at her
while she spoke. ‘There were growths in it … she’ll be better now.’

Connie wasn’t fooled for a minute. There was more to this than just the operation. She could sense the way the nurses fussed and smiled and fobbed off her own questions. The next day she searched out the medical section of the civic reference library, reading every textbook she could find on the reasons for such an operation. There were the usual words like ‘ovaries’ and ‘fibroids’; biology lessons came in handy but one word kept coming up, over and over again:
carcinoma
. Any Greek scholar could tell the root of that:
Kackinōma
… the word no one ever mentioned when a neighbour fell sick, got thin and died.

The same evening Connie cornered Dr Friedmann in his study. ‘What’s really wrong with Mama?’ she demanded.

‘She had a growth and it’s been removed.’

‘Was it benign?’ she said, using the only word she dared speak.

He hesitated but she stared him out. ‘I have to know the truth. Will she get better?’

‘Sit down, child,’ motioning her to the little armchair squeezed into the corner. ‘We hope so. There are special treatments in Manchester.’

‘Radium treatments, you mean? I know about Marie Curie. How long will it take?’ So it
was
cancer, but still she daren’t speak the word.

‘There’ll be a course of treatment at the Christie.
It’s the best in the North of England,’ he replied, taking her hand. But she pulled it away.

‘Has the disease spread?’ She’d read up enough to know about metastasis, but she wasn’t sure how to pronounce it.

‘A little … but it’s not too late to give her treatments.’

‘It’s all my fault,’ Connie cried. ‘I pretended she was ill so I wouldn’t get into trouble at school. I told lies and I brought this on her … ‘Her body was racked with sobs.

‘No, you didn’t.’ He shoved a handkerchief in her hand. ‘Your mama has been unwell for some time but kept it to herself. Now we have a chance to fight it. Ana must have hope and see smiling faces. She is a tough lady, strong in mind, but her body suffered in the war. It will be a battle but the Olive Oils will battle with her and you will give her strength too. You are her bright star, her golden girl. It is enough that she has you in her life to live for, so no dark thoughts now. Dry your eyes. We must all be strong together.’ There was something in those sad grey eyes that worried her. He was breaking bad news gently. He was doing the best he could, but underneath she sensed his own fears.

The autumn term began, the holiday girls rolled back from their trip, but Connie had no ears to listen to their tales: who had palled up with who, who had stayed out all night with some American soldiers …
What did she care when her whole week was focused on those trips to the hospital to be with Mama?

There was always a lift: Diana came up from London, Queenie Quigley and Maria brought their van, Levi and Neville chauffered Gran. Nev had passed his driving test and Auntie Su had bought a little Morris Minor that she shared with Dr Friedmann.

Connie watched all Mama’s beautiful red hair fall out, just a few fuzzy tufts left, her skin tissuey and yellowy silver. She grew thin but everyone tried to keep cheerful and strong.

Only Dr Friedmann would tell her the truth. ‘It’s not going to be as easy as we’d hoped but no one will give up, Connie.’

How could she study Ancient Greek and history with this burden on her back, however understanding the teachers were? None of it mattered. All she wanted to do was be with Mama and make her better, clinging on to any sign of hope. Sometimes when she went, Mama was sitting in the chair by the bed but the beautiful silk dressing gown that Su had given her with peacock feathers printed on it, hung off her bony frame. They talked in Greek to be private from the other patients, wrapping the curtains round the bed. Then Mama was tired and needed to rest, and it took many attempts to get her back into bed. Connie cried all the way down the corridor. Why? Why her mama? Why now?

Rosa and Joy dropped their own plans to include
her. They took her dancing, practised their singing routines, but her mind was in only one place: beside Mama’s bed.

She took herself back to the Greek church to ask Father Nikos to visit, but he was already a regular at Mama’s side. She bought a silver tama with a whole body on it to pin to the icon and pray to the saints for her recovery.

‘Find me music, Dina,’ Mama whispered one day. ‘Cretan music.’

Father Nikos found an old wind-up record player and a scratchy 78 of ancient mantinades. Ana’s face changed when she heard the music and her eyes looked far away.

‘You must go back for me, see the island for yourself, say a prayer by my mother’s grave … for my sister, Eleni, light a candle for me … find my cousins near Canea. There will be Papadakis who will remember me. Make it your own. Promise me …’

‘We will go together, Mama,’ Connie whispered back. ‘When you are better. Auntie Lee will fix it for us … by train to Italy, by boat. I will take you there.’ There was a faint smile on Mama’s lips.

‘You will go … I will be already there … Promise.’

‘No, Mama,
mazi
… together, you and me. My Greek is almost forgotten.’

‘You learned it at my breast. It is still there in your heart but you will go one day. It is waiting for you.’ It took all her strength to utter that command.

Connie couldn’t bear such words and ran out of the cubicle. Auntie Su caught her.

‘Don’t worry, she has little pain now. She is going to sleep and not wake up.’

‘But I don’t want her to sleep. She is my mama … who will look after me now? How will I live without her?’ Connie sobbed. ‘And I know about you and my dad.’

‘Shush! Now is not the time for all that,’ whispered Susan. ‘None of that matters now. You are a Winstanley; we are all family. We look after our own. It is your mama’s wish. Don’t let her see you upset. Go back and say goodbye. It is time for her to rest.’

But when they tiptoed back through the curtain to say good night, Ana Papadaki was no longer there. She’d slipped away quietly. In her place was a cooling shell, a stranger with vacant eyes staring out towards the window.

They sat each holding a hand, silent, lost in their own thoughts and memories. Connie couldn’t breathe for panic.
She’s gone to Crete and left me behind
.

‘She was a very good woman,’ Su said, picking some of the bedside flowers and arranging them round her head. ‘Rest in peace, my sister.’

Connie blinks back the tears, blinks herself back to the
blue bench in Chania airport
. When will that plane ever land?

Mothers always get the blame, she sighs. When you
lose your mother young, it changes everything. Fifteen
was no age to be orphaned, everything taken for granted
is suddenly not there. There was so much she didn’t
know then about her mama’s early life, her life with
Freddie, short though it was. So many unanswered
questions that only a mother could give. Life could never
be the same and she was different from Joy and Rosa,
kind though they all were to her then
.

No prayers, lavish wreaths and anthems at the
funeral could make up for that huge loss. It had been
like some never-ending dream she sleepwalked through
.

I have felt the loss of you all my life. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye and when I was, you’d gone and I was bereft.

She thinks about the string shopping bag with
leather handles that they took to the market each week
to buy vegetables, carrying it between them when it
was heavy
.

She lost herself in her studies as Mama would’ve
wished, not wanting to finish school to come home to
the empty chair. Doing prep in the reference library
delayed the moment when she must return to face the
hubbub in the Waverley
.

I was told to be brave and cope, and I did, she thinks.
There was no grief counselling in those days. You just
got on with loss like they did in the war, buried it deep,
as if Mama had gone on some long journey and would
send a postcard telling of her return
.