The Story of You (5 page)

‘All right, Dad,’ I said. Despite the fact I spent a lot of my time disappointed with him, I couldn’t stop the rush of love I felt when I saw my dad: the pure, blood kind, not based on any kind of spiritual connection.

‘Hiya, Bobby,’ he said, and we hugged briefly as he brushed his whiskery jowl next to my cheek. ‘Journey all right?’

‘Yeah, grand.’

We walked to the car in the evening sunshine. Dad doesn’t do standing on the platform and chatting. Mum would have told you half her news before you even got to the car. ‘I see you’ve brought the weather with you, like your sister,’ he said.

‘Oh, is Niamh here?’ I said, helping Dad lift my case into the boot. This would have been a big improvement to matters. Niamh has grown up with Denise. She understands her; the atmosphere improves.

‘No, but she was, she was here with Mary last night, but they’ve gone off on one of their expeditions for the weekend. You know how those two are attached at the bloody hip,’ Dad said, slamming the boot shut. He turned to me and studied my face for a second, as if about to say something profound, then changing his mind.

‘She’ll never find herself a boyfriend, the rate she’s carrying on.’

I pictured my sister and Mary, cuddling up under the stars in their clandestine tent, and I felt like crying. I wished she’d just tell Dad. It must be a huge burden for her to carry around.

Dad patted the pockets of that beige jacket for his car keys. I stepped back to give him the once-over.

‘We might have to have a word about this little ensemble, Dad,’ I said.

He raised his bushy blond eyebrows. ‘You’re a cheeky bugger, now get in that car,’ he said. When I looked in the rear-view mirror, I saw he was smiling.

The car was spotless.

‘Just had a valet, Dad?’

‘Every Monday. Without fail,’ he said, as we turned out of the station. ‘You know how Denise likes things spick and span.’

Oh, I knew.

Dad used to drive a pick-up truck. He used to bomb around the lanes like a nutter, one tanned arm hanging out of the window, thick gold chain around his neck, smoking a café crème, us three rattling around in the back – with no seat belts – amongst the timber and the old car parts, and the paraphernalia of whatever project Dad had up his sleeve at the time. I used to hate it when people asked when I was younger: What does your dad do? Because, genuinely, I didn’t know. I longed for him to have a normal job like my friends’ dads – on the railway, or with the Gas Board, but my dad had various jobs which changed all the time, so I could never keep track. He rented boats out to fishermen in Morecambe Bay, he mended people’s cars in our back garden, he did up houses (just not our own). He had a stint as an ice-cream van driver one summer, but used to swear all the time at kids who annoyed him. ‘Oh, piss off, Johnny, you little pillock.’ Mum used to tell him off, whilst finding it hilarious. I didn’t laugh at it then, but I do now. My dad’s funny. Just not always funny ha-ha.

It’s only a five-minute drive from the station to Mildred’s Café, near the shore, but you have to go the whole length of Kilterdale, and it’s like passing through a museum of my life; where at every turn there’s a relic from my past. We pass the swimming baths, where just the whiff of chlorine means I’m ten again, flat-chested and streamlined as a dolphin – through the muffle of the water, I can hear the cheers of my parents, (in particular, my mother and her foghorn voice, which Niamh inherited): ‘C’mon, Bobby!’ as I pound towards the finish line, another medal for Kilterdale Carps.

There’s the tiny cinema where, when Niamh was a baby, Mum would drop Leah and I off for the Saturday matinee, where they’d play old films. I loved those little snippets of freedom, the times alone with my big sister. The building is dilapidated today, but I can still smell the popcorn, the fusty velvet of the seats; I can still feel the ache in my throat as I tried not to cry at
E.T.
in front of Leah, and the feel of my hand in her bigger one on the walk through the fields back home. I miss Leah, I think. I miss us being children together.

We pass The Fry Up, Kilterdale’s chippy, where every Friday we’d go, all five of us, Mum letting us have cans of Dr Pepper and her always having a battered sausage: ‘It’s not as if I eat like this every day of the week, is it, girls?’ she’d say, grease dripping from her chin. In the summer, we’d sit on the little bench outside, Niamh being fed chips in her pushchair – the same bench on which, years later, I’d sit with Joe eating chips, and we’d talk about our lives that were yet to unfurl, no idea of what was to become of us, what lay ahead
.
I savour those summers, these memories. In my mind’s eye, they’re like sunbursts, sparkling on the sea. But then, like a current dragging me under, I always come back to the summer of ’97. Those memories feel like the cool, dark waters that run beneath the sunburst-covered sea, beneath everything I do.

We had to go down Friars Lanes. Due to the early warm weather, the hedgerows were high and bursting with green shoots; the fields, brown and cloggy with mud in the winter, were speckled with green. If you looked up, the trees were smudged with birds’ nests. They looked like masses of black thread.

I could feel Dad looking at me. ‘So,’ he said, eventually. ‘Why are you going to this funeral?’

He rarely spoke so directly and I started, found myself feeling defensive.

‘I don’t know, ’cause it’s his mum and it would be nice to support him. Because Marion was so good to me when my mum died?’

Dad nodded slowly and looked at me with this sad smile.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Nothing, it’s just …’ He paused for what seemed ages. ‘I thought you’d left all that behind, Robyn …’

‘I have.’

‘So …’

I tried to look at the fields, the copses beyond, not at the lanes unfolding in front of us.

‘So, what?’

‘So, I’m worried about you, that’s all. I’m just being concerned Dad.’

I was touched he was being concerned Dad.

‘It’s just the service and a few sandwiches back at the vicarage,’ I said. ‘And anyway, it was an excuse to see
you
.’ I reached over and touched him on his shoulder. He flinched, just ever so slightly, but he did, I felt it.

‘Okay, well that’s all right then.’

‘Dad, I’m thirty-two,’ I said. ‘I’ll be fine.’

He patted my knee and smiled. ‘And you’re still my little girl,’ he said.

Silence descended. It was thick and sticky and I didn’t know how to move it.

Dad spoke, eventually, changing the subject: ‘Look at them fields, eh, Robyn? Absolutely marvellous. I bet you miss all this in London, don’t you?’

I wish I did. I wish coming back was like therapy for me, like going back home was therapy for other people.

‘Yeah, not many cow-pats in Archway,’ I said. I kept looking out of the window, so he couldn’t see my eyes water.

I was glad once we’d got to Mildred’s. There was something about travelling in a car with Dad these days that was intense, what with the elephant squeezed in there with us.

We sat at our usual table at the back and ordered the same thing we ordered when Mum was alive: me a cappuccino and a millionaire’s shortbread, Dad a cup of tea and a teacake. Mum used to have a banana milkshake with cream on top and a herbal tea. She thought the latter cancelled out the former. She was a bit deluded like that. It’s probably why she thought three Rothmans a day couldn’t hurt anyone, and maybe they didn’t, who knows? Maybe the Rothmans had nothing to do with it.

Dad pulled up his red trousers, sat down and searched my face.

‘Bloody Nora, you look more like your mother every time I see you. Same beautiful smile.’ His eyes still welled up when he mentioned her.

‘Thank God, eh, Dad? I lucked out, gene-wise.’

‘Yep, you got your mother’s looks. Niamh is more of a King, I think, and Leah, well …’

The teacake had arrived.

‘Have you spoken to her, Dad?’

Dad made sure every millimetre of that teacake had butter on.

‘No, I haven’t managed to yet.’

‘But you know how upset Mum would be if she knew you two hardly spoke.’

‘She’s never in, I’ve tried lots of times.’ I was kind of disappointed he felt he could just lie like that.

‘Dad, Leah hardly ever goes out in the evenings any more, you know what she’s like about leaving the kids.’ He looked up. ‘Okay, you don’t, but I’m telling you, she’s paranoid, especially about Jack and his asthma. She had to take him to A&E the other night.’

Dad had picked up the teacake but put it down again. His whole face sort of slid.

‘Did she?’

‘Yes.’

A blackbird appeared at the window. It sounds ridiculous, but I sometimes liked to imagine it was Mum when things like that happened, checking in on us. I felt like she was urging me to get to the point.

‘Dad, also, about the ashes,’ I said. ‘Please can I have them? I’ve been asking for over a year now.’

‘Well, it’d help if we saw more of you. There’s only Niamh that comes to see us.’

Thank God for Niamh
, I thought. I hated what had happened, but most of all I hated what it had done to my relationship with my father, with my home town. As a family, we used to be so close.

‘Anyway, I’ve got some news,’ he said, changing the subject. Dad never had news. ‘Denise and I – well, I … am selling the house. We’re going to move to somewhere smaller. It’s too much for Denise to clean.’

That blackbird flew off then, presumably to have a good snigger.

Weirdly, I didn’t feel emotional about them moving out of the house we all grew up in; it hasn’t been ‘our’ house since Denise moved in, four months after Mum died, anyway, and magnolia-d the living daylights out of it.

‘That’s great news, Dad,’ I said. ‘So when might this be?’

‘We’ve put an offer in on a place in Saltmarsh, so all being well … a couple of months?’

I smiled. ‘I’m pleased for you, Dad,’ I said, and I was. Staying in that house with all the memories of Mum had affected him more than he let on, and whatever I felt about Denise, I couldn’t bear Dad to feel sad. ‘It’ll be good, a new start.’ He looked pleased I’d taken the news so well.

‘So, Mum’s ashes then,’ I continued – he wasn’t changing the subject that easily. ‘All the more reason for me to have them. Mum would hate to be in any house but that one. She loved that house.’

I tried to imagine Mum being happy in a dormer bungalow in Saltmarsh when she was alive, and struggled.

‘I know, I know.’

‘Even if she never got her new kitchen.’

Dad laughed, then sniffed, his eyes misting over again.

‘Also, when are you going to call Leah?’ I said, patting his hand. ‘Because surely this is the perfect opportunity for you two to stop being so ridiculous? The funeral was sixteen years ago.’

He sighed.
You conned me into thinking this was a nice cup of tea with my daughter and you planned this all along
.

‘I will, okay? Just don’t bloody hassle me, Robyn,’ he said. ‘You know how I hate to be hassled.’

‘Yeah, I know, I’m sorry.’

I feared I’d overstepped the mark; rocked what was turning into the first proper, one-to-one chat with my dad for over a year, and was eager to rein things back, but then Dad looked up and his whole face lit up. ‘Oh, here she is,’ he said, smiling at someone behind me. The scent of Elnett reached me before I even turned around, to see Denise walking towards us – her jet-black hair sprayed stiff, the lashings of silver eye shadow right up to her brows, and that look in her eyes already:
This IS a competition and I shall win.

I looked back to Dad. I wanted him to see my face, how annoyed I was that he’d clearly invited her, but he’d already got up and was getting his wallet out. ‘What do you want, love? I’ll get it.’

I timed my arrival at the church to avoid the bit where everyone mingles outside before they go in. I’ve never liked that part. I can still remember to this day, outside this same church, the humiliation of having to face my six-foot, surf-dude cousin, Nathan, whilst I was a blotchy, snotty wreck at my own mother’s funeral. All the embarrassing hugs from people I didn’t know. I was glad Joe was spared that part too, because he was carrying the coffin. I walked up the path of St Bart’s, just as they were taking it out of the hearse. It was pale oak against the vivid blue sky, with a waterfall of peach roses on top (I was right about those).

There was the crunch of shoes on gravel. Someone cried ‘one, two, three’ as it was lifted onto the shoulders of six men. I recognized Joe straight away, of course; at the back, one trouser leg stuck in his sock, a look of such gritty determination on his face, as if he were about to charge through the stained-glass window of the church and deliver her to the gates of heaven himself. I recognized every single one of the five other pallbearers too: Joe’s uncle Fred at the front. Peg-leg Uncle Fred, Joe used to call him, Joe being one of those people who could get away with insulting people to their face. On the other side of him was Mr Potts, still with his extraordinary eyebrows. Mr Potts would often be sitting at the vicarage kitchen table when you went round, talking
really
animatedly as his caterpillar eyebrows did Mexican waves across his forehead. Joe and I used to debate how differently Potty’s life could have turned out, if only he’d trimmed those eyebrows. So simple! He could have had a wife by now. Behind him was Ethan, Joe’s youngest brother, and then at the back, his other brothers, Rory and Simon, and then Joe. Joe’s dad was at the front of it, all in his black funeral regalia. So he’d made it. But then, as if the Reverend Clifford Sawyer was going to let any other rev guide his beloved Marion on her final journey to the gates of Paradise.

I gave the coffin a wide berth and joined everyone else in the churchyard. Half of Kilterdale was there. Side on, you could see how all four Sawyer brothers had the same profile: long face, these big, deep-set doe eyes and a slightly beaky nose; all put together it was somehow very handsome. Ethan has Down’s syndrome, so his features are obviously a little different, but they all have the same hair: light brown, with a hint of red, and so fine and straight you never have to brush it.