The Storyteller's Daughter (26 page)

Gwennie nods slowly, as if this makes sense. “You can learn not to,” she tells me, sadly, fiddling with Byron's little white ear. I notice a red line of dried blood on the soft, pink inside where he must have been scratched in the fight.

“At fifteen she fell in love for the first time,” Gwennie says, “and it was like she was walking on air. He was an American I think, in the army if I remember correctly. It was all part of a penpal scheme that our youth group initiated. She loved writing and the idea of travel, and so writing to someone in the armed forces appealed to her tremendously. She got to hear all about the places he had been stationed, and within a couple of months she was really quite besotted. She believed she had found the love of her life. He wrote her long, gushing letters full of adoration, and told her they would marry as soon as she turned eighteen. She was desperate to tell me everything about him, each little thing he had said or done, but I really didn't want to hear. I was jealous, you see. My penpal was a German girl called Nadine with a hairy upper lip and an obsession with ant farms.

“I was angry at your mother for falling in love. I wanted to fall in love too, and letting Wally Waters squeeze my left breast in the back row of the cinema just seemed so shallow and pointless compared to the romance your mother had found. So I wouldn't listen to all the things they had said to each other, or the plans they had made for the future. I would change the subject, or turn the record player up, or tell her to stop going on about him all the time, anything so that I didn't have to hear how wonderful he was. That's why, I'm afraid, I don't know very much about him. But I do remember his name, if you would like to know it.”

I shrug, wondering whether Gwennie is going to take me on a journey through every single relationship my mother might have ever had.

“Only if it's relevant,” I say, eager to get to the crux of all this.

“Well, I suppose it's relevant,” says Gwennie, “after all, he was your father.”

I stare at her, shocked, and for a moment I don't believe her. She's confused. She must be. My father was a French pastry chef, not some American penpal from the armed forces. But then I remember that I'm the one who is confused, as always, and I wonder why I keep forgetting this. So I nod, holding onto my breath.

“His name was Don,” says Gwennie.

“Don,” I whisper, seeing how the name feels on my tongue. “Don.”

I don't know what I expected to feel when this moment finally came, but what I didn't expect to feel was nothing. I search my soul, seeking out some little spark of fulfilment, some sense that I have suddenly become whole, that my identity is now complete. But there's nothing there. This name means nothing to me.

Gwennie eyes me, cautiously, as if waiting for some sudden and startling reaction. But I just look at her blankly.

“Go on,” I say, as if nothing has happened, as if my world has not just changed forever.

“One day,” continues Gwennie, “your mother didn't want to go dancing anymore. She didn't want to listen to her favourite records, or go cycling down by the river, or go to the shops, or do anything at all. It was as if someone had pricked her with a pin and taken all the air out of her. She slept all the time, which aggravated her parents, and when she was awake all she wanted to do was bury her head in books, and not even the schoolbooks we were meant to be reading. We were weeks away from sitting our O-levels, but she was devouring romantic fiction and fantasy novels like they were going out of fashion. She seemed withdrawn and spaced out, lost in her own little world.

“‘Gwennie,' she said to me one day, in an unusual burst of enthusiasm, ‘why don't we go fairy hunting? You know, like we used to?'

“Well, I looked at her as if she were mad. ‘We're not children anymore, Valerie,' I told her.

“‘So what?' she said. ‘Why can't we still do those things? It was such fun, wasn't it? Things were so good back then.'

“‘Val,' I complained, ‘I've got revision to do. And a Saturday job. I don't have time for playing around anymore.'

“Her eyes became wide and tear-filled, like a child who had been chastised.

“‘No,' she said, apologetically, ‘of course not.'

“But then, that weekend, I caught her. I was in the woods with Wally Waters, when we stumbled across her in the bushes, milk bottle in hand.

“‘What are you doing creeping about in the bushes, you weirdo?' Wally asked her, cigarette dangling from his lips. ‘Are you spying on us?'

“Your mother looked at me, red faced and guilty, and I just stared at her, wondering why on earth she had suddenly taken up fairy hunting again when she had just turned sixteen.

“‘I reckon she's spying on us, Gwennie,' Wally said. ‘Perhaps she's jealous. Perhaps she fancies me. Do you fancy me, Valerie?' He asked, teasingly, reaching out to touch her chin.

“Your mother, who had always thought Wally was a loveable idiot, suddenly went white as a sheet and ran off as fast as her legs would carry her.

“‘Your best pal's a complete nutter,' said Wally.

“Well, that was the end of Wally and me. Needless to say, your mother did very poorly in her O-levels. Sitting in that exam hall, I watched her, one day after the next, starring blankly at the wall, barely writing a thing. Nobody knew what was wrong with her, and talking to her was like talking to a brick wall. She would insist that she was perfectly fine, but it was as if the lights were on but nobody was home. At the same time, you could see her mind was whirring away, lost in thought, but about what, who could tell? Nobody imagined for one second that she was pregnant, she managed to hide it so well. I think she even managed to hide it from herself.”

“So when did she meet up with my… with Don?” I ask, feeling we have skipped an enormous chunk of the story. I can't bring myself to use the word ‘father'. There is no meaning in it for me, no association I can make with this unknown man. It's ridiculous, but I realise the only person I feel comfortable calling father is an imaginary pastry chef from Paris.

“I don't know,” says Gwennie, shaking her head, “I was never entirely sure when they met up. It wasn't until later that, well, it's complicated. Shall I just – ?”

“I'm sorry,” I say, realising I have interrupted her flow of thought, “please carry on.”

Gwennie takes a sip of tea and clears her throat. “I found you in the shed,” she says, “which is an unusual place to find a baby. I knew what had happened from the moment your mother opened the front door. There was blood on her clothes and she was clearly in shock. I suppose there could have been other explanations, but they never crossed my mind. I just knew she had given birth. I don't know how, but I just knew.

“I kept asking where the baby was but she couldn't answer me. She just stared at the floor and hugged her arms around her body. So I started to search for you all throughout the house, and then it occurred to me that if you weren't in the house you must be in the garden. And there you were. Tucked up in a blanket, nestled between a bag of compost and a watering can.

“‘I have to cook dinner', was all your mother would say, when I brought you inside. ‘Mother and father will be home soon, so I must get the dinner on.'

“She was crazy, of course. Temporarily insane. She had managed to convince herself that none of it was real – the conception, the pregnancy, the birth – she had blocked it all out, and her brain clearly couldn't make sense of your arrival. And I was no help, really. I didn't know what to do. I was scared. I'd never even held a baby before, and I remember wondering how long you would live without food.

“‘You have to feed it,' I said, holding you out to your mother.

“‘Okay, okay,' she said, flustered, flinging the oven door open. ‘Put it straight in then.'

“‘No,' I shouted at her, ‘feed it, not cook it!'

“But your mother just looked at me blankly, and started pulling pots and pans out of the cupboards. And then your grandparents walked in, looking rather startled to say the least.

“‘What is that?' Your grandfather demanded, pointing at you.

“Your mother didn't answer, so I said, ‘It's a baby.'

“‘I can see it's a bloody baby!' he snapped, ‘what's it doing here?'

“But even as he asked the question, I could see him looking at the blood on your mother's clothes and piecing two and two together. Your grandmother, one step ahead of him, had already burst into tears and was wringing her hands and asking the Lord's forgiveness.”

“So they weren't there when I was born?” I ask, finding it surprisingly hard to let go of the ‘truth' as I have always known it. “They didn't help her through the labour?”

“Gosh, no! I don't think they could have coped with that. They both went into a state of shock as it was. I can't tell you exactly what happened next because it was all such a blur. I remember your grandmother becoming quite hysterical, and your mother calmly asking her what was wrong, which made your grandmother wail even louder because she thought her daughter had gone mad, which effectively she had. Then the gasman arrived at the back door asking to look at some pipes, and your grandfather, who was all worked up and in a temper, grabbed him by the collar so that the poor gasman had to defend himself with a nearby frying pan. And the next thing I knew your grandfather had snatched you out of my arms.

“‘There's no way you can keep it,' he said, ‘it'll have to go up for adoption.'

“And that was the moment your mother suddenly came to life again.

“‘No!' she screamed, charging towards your grandfather and grabbing you from him. She clutched you so tight I thought she might kill you. I'm not sure she knew herself at that point what she was doing or who you were. I think you could have been a frozen chicken for all she knew, but she was clear about one thing and that was that you belonged to her and she was not letting anyone take you away.

“‘Fine,' your grandfather said, ‘you keep it. But you're on your own. You can stay two months and then I want you gone. You've disgraced me.'

“He never spoke to her again. Even for the months you were living under the same roof, he completely blanked the pair of you. And your grandmother wasn't much better, although I think she was mainly scared of getting into trouble with your grandfather. He was a severe man. Very religious, very concerned with what other people thought.”

“So it's true then,” I interrupt, feeling disgusted by my grandparents' behaviour, “they did throw us out. I thought we lived with them. I thought – ”

“Gosh no,” says Gwennie, “they didn't lift one finger to help your mother out, not emotionally, not practically, not financially. She struggled terribly, as you can imagine. It took some time for her to fully accept that you were even her baby – I honestly don't think she remembered even giving birth to you – but once she did accept you were hers, she adored you from your little head down to your tiny little toes. I kept asking who the father was, because she had never once mentioned meeting up with her penpal – with Don, I mean – but whenever I brought the topic up she just looked confused and started to mumble rubbish. She seemed to think you were a miracle conception.”

Gwennie takes a sip of tea, while I watch her impatiently, wondering how on earth she can pause to drink tea when I have just been born.

“As far as all the practicalities of motherhood were concerned,” Gwennie continues, “she was a disaster zone. With no-one to help her, she was completely clueless as to what to do with you. I tried to help her, but it was like the blind leading the blind. We were like two little girls playing with a doll that had lots of working parts but no instructions. And the fact that your mother seemed to keep zoning out, going off somewhere in her mind, losing concentration, really didn't help. I used to come round and find you in the strangest of places. She'd put you down and forget where she left you. I once found you in the airing cupboard. And another time I found you on the windowsill. But whatever else was going on inside your mother's head, the one thing that she never lost was her spirit and determination, and she was going to build a life for you both whatever it took, even if she had to do every step of it alone. But as it turned out, she didn't have to be alone.”

“But I don't understand,” I say, getting restless, “how do you know he was my father then? How do you know they ever met up if – ”

“I'm getting there,” says Gwennie, holding a hand up to stop me talking. “After my exams, I decided I had to get away from home. I wasn't getting on with my parents either, and one evening, after a blazing row, I decided I just had to get out. Your mother's two months were almost up and she was soon going to be homeless, so we decided to leave together. And there was only one place we could think to go.

“A band called Chlorine had played a few times at the Forum, and on a couple of occasions your mother and I had got chatting to the boys in the band. To be honest, I think we were just a couple of silly school girls to them, but your mother and I thought we were the height of cool, knowing a real life rock band. Anyway, the boys were moving to London to seek fortune and fame, and they gave us their address, saying that if we were ever in London and needed a place to stay we should call on them. So, off to London we went. Except obviously when Wizz – the lead singer, who you met – obviously when he made that offer he hadn't expected us to turn up with a baby. He was good to his word and let us stay, but it was a nightmare. Everybody moaned about your crying, the place was filthy, the band were always practising and making noise. Most nights they'd be drunk, or worse.”

“And that's when you got together with Bomb… I mean, Timothy?”

“That's right. Within days we were an item, which made the situation even more awkward because I was trying to help Val look after you, but what I really wanted to do was spend all my time with Timothy. We started to bicker, Val and I, which didn't help anyone, and then your mother decided it wasn't going to work and that she had to move out.