The Storyteller's Daughter (17 page)

“Sorry, did you say baby?”

I put a finger in one ear and shelter closer to the wall, trying to block out the noise of a rubbish truck passing slowly by.

“Yeah. Tiny thing it was. Poor mite.”

“Whose baby was it?”

“How am I meant to know? Could have been any one of them. These lads, you know, once they're in a band, tight trousers and all that malarkey.”

“But what about the mother? Who was the mother?”

“I dunno. Long as I get the rent what do I care who bleedin' lives there? I don't know who the girls were. Just a couple of gymslip groupies, one who had obviously got herself knocked up by someone in the band. She didn't stay long, though, the one with the baby. And I don't blame her.”

“Do you know where she went?”

“Do I sound like someone who gives a monkey where these people go? Look, if you want to know the ins and outs of it all just go ask the guys yourself.”

“But how – ”

“You've got the flier for one of their gigs, haven't you?”

“Well, yes, but it's ancient.”

I hear a deep, rasping, smoker's laugh.

“You don't really think a bunch of no hopers like that ever moved on, do you?”

It takes me fifteen minutes to walk to the Frog and Whistle, during which time I swing from being convinced that I am on the path to finding my real father who was probably a musician in a band called Chlorine, to being convinced that I am simply wasting my time and should probably just go home. By the time I arrive at the pub I am sweaty, confused, and have a large ice cream stain on my top from bumping into a woman with an orange lolly. I have been offered drugs, accosted by a beggar and nearly run over by a taxi jumping a red light. Really, I just want to go home. But what if I'm getting somewhere?

I can't give up now.

The Frog and Whistle doesn't look nearly as cheerful as its name might suggest. In fact, it's old and dingy, with tinted windows and a peeling door. I linger outside, wondering whether it's really necessary to go in. So what if a young girl and a baby lived in that house, I ask myself for what must be the one-hundredth time. It could have been anyone. Why on earth would my mother have been living there, anyway? But then, why would she have a flier with that address on if it didn't – “Oh, just go inside, you idiot!” I snap.

An old man who has been struggling to open the pub door turns and looks at me with wide, startled eyes.

“I'm so sorry, I didn't mean you,” I say, quickly, opening the door for him as way of an apology.

I am beginning to see why Mark gets so frustrated with me at times. There are only two ways to go: forward or backwards. What's so hard about that?

Impatiently, I shuffle inside after the old man, shocked that anyone who moves so slowly still bothers to leave the house, and am immediately struck by the stench of stale smoke, beer and urinals. I can't believe anybody would choose to spend time in here, and judging by the fact that the pub is practically empty I'm not the only one who feels that way. The only customers, (apart from the old man, who has sat down at a table in the corner without even buying a drink) are a man in a flat cap with a rottweiler, and a woman with a beer gut, a pint, and the words ‘Hot Stuff' printed on the seat of her tracksuit trousers. It's dim and dreary, the only redeeming feature being that at least it's cool.

I quickly approach the bar, hoping to make my visit as short as possible.

“Excuse me, do you know of a band called Chlorine?” I ask, getting straight to the point.

The barman, a flabby middle-aged man in a white-grey vest looks up from where he is slumped across the bar, studying a photo of a scantily clad woman in a tabloid newspaper which is spread out in front of him.

“What's the capital of Turkey?” he asks, drearily.

“I'm sorry?”

“Turkey. What's the capital?”

He places the end of a pen in his mouth and chews lazily on it.

“Ankara.”

He looks down and I realise he's actually attempting to complete the crossword.

“That can't be how you spell phlegm then,” he mutters, crossing something out.

“Goal!” shouts the old man from his table in the corner.

He is staring at a large TV screen on the wall which, much to my confusion, is showing snooker.

“Alright, Jimmy?” shouts Hot Stuff from her bar stool, winking flirtatiously at the old man.

I have got to get out of here quickly.

“I heard that a band called Chlorine sometimes play here. Is that right?”

“Yeah,” yawns the barman, throwing his pen down on the bar and stretching his arms up in the air. The bottom of his vest rises up and I try to avoid looking at the tire of white flesh that hangs over the belt of his jeans.

“I'm trying to get hold of them. You don't happen to have a contact number, do you?”

The barman nods slowly. “Yeah.”

He picks his pen up form the bar, and I prepare to grab the number and leave. But instead of writing the number down for me, he puts the pen up the bottom of his vest and uses it to scratch his belly.

“Can I have the number?” I ask, feeling slightly sick.

The barman shakes his head lethargically. “No.”

“Goal!” Shouts the old man again.

“Shut up, Jimmy,” mumbles the man with the rotweiler in an Irish accent.

“Why not?” I ask.

“Women,” says the barman, as if this is an explanation in itself.

“I'm sorry?”

“Wizz says don't give his number to women.”

“Wizz?”

“The singer.”

“I'm not some sort of groupie – ”

“Are you after child support?”

“No! I've never even met them. I just want to contact them because they might have known my mother a long time ago, that's all.”

“Is she after child support?” The barman looks me up and down lazily. “Because you might be a bit old for it.”

“Nobody wants child support,” I say slowly and clearly, “I just want to get in contact with one of the band. Any one of them will do.”

The barman leans on his newspaper and stares vacantly at me. I wait for a response, but I'm sure his eyelids are actually closing. I think he might be falling asleep.

“So, can I have a number?” I ask, loudly.

His eyes snap open. “No. Can't. Women.”

“No, I'm not – ”

“Goal!” shouts the old man.

God, this is hopeless.

“How do you spell phlegm?” drawls the barman, staring at his paper.

“I don't know,” I nearly snap, “I just need a number – ”

“F. L. E. M.” shouts Hot Stuff.

“You sure?” says the barman, putting the end of his pen inside his ear and jiggling it around.

“Forget it,” I mumble, turning and walking out of the pub.

“They're here last Friday of the month,” says the Irishman with the rotweiler, as I pass his table. He's staring into his pint so it takes me a moment to realise he's talking to me.

“I'm sorry?”

“Chlorine. Last Friday of the month, they're here, if you're trying to get hold of one of them.”

“Oh.”

I am so tired and confused that for a moment I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not. I had just decided to give up this wild goose chase, and now it seems the challenge is back on.

“Thank you,” I tell the Irishman, “that's very helpful,” although I'm not sure if it is.

As a gesture of gratitude I lean down and tentatively pat the top of his dog's head. It growls at me, barring the sharpest teeth I have ever seen, and I jump backwards, clutching my hands close to my chest in case the dog tries to bite them off.

The Irishman doesn't even look up from his pint.

“Last Friday of the month,” I say, shaken, backing towards the door as the dog glares angrily at me, “that's great. What a stroke of luck.”

“Not really,” mumbles the Irishman, “they're here last Friday of every month. Nowhere else will have them.”

Fifteen minutes later I am on the 21:10 train back to Cambridge, eating a Cornish pasty I bought from a stall in Kings Cross Station and feeling strangely optimistic all over again, having worked myself up into a state of excitement.

What if I really am onto something here? What if my mother really was a groupie and Wizz is my real father? What if he's been looking for me all these years, but just didn't know where to find me? Maybe my mother has been trying to hide the truth from me because my father was a hard-partying rocker living a life of hedonism, playing his electric guitar night and day and throwing TVs onto tramps? I might have an emotional reunion with my father and discover another side to myself. Maybe I'll start throwing TVs out of windows, too. I've never demonstrated any musical talent, but perhaps that's just because I've never tried.

Through a mouthful of pasty I start to hum, measuring my voice for any possible potential. I think I at least sound in tune, until I start choking on a flake of pastry and end up coughing and wheezing while the woman next to me slaps me on the back.

By the time I walk in the front door I am buzzing. This is it! I'm sure of it. Mark was right. He always is, I should never have doubted him. My mother's distress at seeing that flier clearly was a clue. I'm like a detective unravelling my own past. Who knows what secrets I'm about to uncover? If Wizz is my father then perhaps I'll be able to reunite him with my mother for a final reconciliation. Whatever happened in the past will surely be forgotten, and, for a short while at least, we'll be a family! Once my mother knows I have discovered the truth, there will no longer be any point in lying, and she will throw her hands up in the air, say ‘alright then, I give in!' and tell me all the missing details to fill in the gaps. And her final moments will be clear and lucid, and we'll be honest with each other once and for all, together in those final moments of peace and understanding.

On the kitchen table sits a plate of lamb chops and vegetables, and a bowl of pink blancmange sprinkled with hundreds and thousands. Both are covered with cling film, and I feel a pang of guilt. My mother would have made the blancmange just for me. It's my favourite, but it's about the only thing she cannot stomach.

‘It gives me enough wind to blow a forest down,' she always says, rather inelegantly.

I eat the blancmange and then tiptoe through the hallway. It's silent and the lights are all out, apart from the little lamp by the telephone, which my mother has left on so that I can make my way safely upstairs. But just as I am passing the lounge I see her in there, lying asleep on the sofa, a tartan rug covering her legs. I am about to switch the light on and tell her to get up, that she will get backache sleeping there all night when I pause, my hand lingering over the light switch.

She looks so fragile. So child-like and vulnerable. She's not the mother I once knew, who carried me on her shoulders and lifted me up every time I fell. She's not the mother who swung me round, or raced me across the park, or turned me upside down while I shrieked with glee.

She's weak now. A shadow of the woman she once was.

What am I doing? I should have been here this evening. I should have been thanking her for making pink blancmange, and spooning it down while she watched me eat each mouthful, as if I was still a little girl.

‘I get just as much pleasure from watching you enjoy it as I would if I was eating it myself,' I can hear her saying.

I listen to her breath catching in her chest each time she inhales, a sound like the tiniest bit of air being released from a balloon. She looks small underneath the rug, and I remember all the times we snuggled up on the sofa in our flat, that rug wrapped so tightly around us that we felt like one person. She seemed big then, much bigger than she looks now, and she used to tell me that it was a game, that we were pretending to be a sausage roll. As I got older I realised we had to snuggle up because the heating had broken down again, or because she couldn't afford to pay the gas bill. But I never told her that I knew. I wasn't ready to stop being a sausage roll.

What if she had fallen tonight and I wasn't even here? What if she had suffered another turn? Mark was right, I am running out of time. But it's time I should be spending with my mother, not running around searching for scraps of information.

What would it do to her, anyway, to destroy this world she has created for us? What would it mean to tear it all apart? They make her smile, these silly stories. They make her happy. And I can't take that away. Not now.

I feel selfish and guilty for going behind her back.

I take the flier from my pocket and crumple it into a ball, squeezing it tight in the palm of my hand.

This clue to the past has come too late.

Chapter 10

I sit at the little table on the patio, the warm midday sun on my back, looking at the rather strange flower display that my mother has created. A large serving plate full of red, orange, purple and yellow flower heads sits in the centre of the table, and I wonder why my mother has decided to decapitate all these poor flowers. She's never been a fan of formal flower arrangements, preferring the natural, unruly look, but tearing the flowers to pieces and scattering them on a plate is not something I have ever known her do before. Perhaps she's ‘expressing' herself again, like the time she painted an enormous mural of an octopus on her bedroom wall, or the day she insisted on communicating only through the medium of song.

She has been strangely excited about lunch today, and when she emerges from the kitchen, squinting in the sunshine, clopping down the back steps in her flip-flops, I pick up my knife and fork in anticipation, expecting her to place some culinary delight in front of me. Instead she just plonks a decanter of vinaigrette on the table.

“Tuck in then, darling,” she says, sitting down opposite me and gesturing to the plate full of flower heads.