The Storyteller's Daughter (27 page)

“She was so full of determination that within a month she had got herself a job as a waitress and moved out into a tiny bedsit. It was a miserable, dark, cold little place, but it was all she could afford. The landlord was always banging on her door demanding rent, the neighbours upstairs rowed all night long, the childminder was always letting her down and when she couldn't work she didn't get paid… it was a hopeless situation. You were often sick. You'd been born slightly prematurely and you didn't seem to be growing very quickly. Your mother was starting to look ill herself.

It was all a dreadful mess, but your mother soldiered on, insisting she was fine and that she wanted to earn her own money and manage alone. Until one night, when it all got too much, and she finally broke down in tears. And that's when she told me what happened with Don.”

I lean across the table, hanging on Gwennie's every word. We look at each other for what feels like a very long time, her eyes wide and suddenly anxious, mine glaring and impatient.

“And?” I almost shout.

Gwennie swallows hard. “He had been on a visit to Portsmouth – which makes me think now that perhaps he was in the navy, not the army – and he had asked your mother to go and meet him. She hadn't told anyone, because she knew perfectly well her parents would never have let her go, and it was just bad timing that I was on a family holiday in Devon. If I hadn't been on holiday then I expect she would have told me and perhaps asked me to go with her, and then maybe things would never have happened the way they did… ”

Gwennie stares off into the middle distance, lost in thought.

“What would never have happened?” I ask, urgently.

Gwennie tuts and looks pained. “He wasn't what she imagined, Meg. He wasn't the gentleman he made himself out to be. She was young and naïve… so,
so
naïve. She just didn't have a clue.”

I feel a sense of panic rising in my chest. “What happened?”

Gwennie shakes her head despairingly. “They went somewhere, I don't know where it was, just to be alone. Your mother was so innocent, all she wanted to do was talk, and perhaps have her first ever kiss, a romantic moment to remember forever, her first embrace with the man of her dreams. But what happened between them… she never wanted that. She never,
ever
wanted that. And she told him so, but he didn't listen, or didn't care… ” Gwennie looks up and sighs. “She trusted him, Meg. He said he loved her, that he wanted to marry her, and she trusted him implicitly.” She shakes her head regretfully. “She was such a silly girl. Such a very silly girl.”

I suddenly feel like I am going to be sick. “You're lying,” I hear myself say, angrily.

Gwennie touches my arm gently.

“You're lying, aren't you?” I accuse, snatching my arm away.

She just looks at me, sadly.

Of course she's not lying. I know that. But I wish so much that she was. I have never wanted someone to lie to me so much in my life.

“She only spoke about it that one time, and the next day it was as if nothing had happened. She went back to acting as if everything was just hunky-dory, even though she was clearly sinking. I told her to go home, to ask your grandparents to take her back, to explain that it wasn't her fault she got pregnant, but she was too ashamed to tell them, and she had too much pride to go back. They knew where she was because my parents told them. They even sent her some money and a letter expressing their concern. But she had been far too deeply wounded by their rejection and refused to make contact. If they thought she had disgraced them, if they wanted her gone, then that's what they could have, she said. She would make something of her life and show them. All the kids back home who called her names when they found out she had had a baby, all the neighbours who had whispered when they found out what happened, she would show them all. She struggled on for a year, but there was no way she could cope. At that point she may well have married anybody who offered. Unfortunately, the person who offered was Robert Scott.”

“My stepfather,” I whisper.

“Yes. Your stepfather. She met him in the café where she worked. He was a butcher by trade, up from Brighton for a few days visiting a friend in London. They struck up a conversation about the quality of the sausages and six months later they were married. I should have stopped her. I knew there was something not right about him, but your mother couldn't see it. Desperation made her blind. He offered her a home for you both, and he was attentive and kind to her, at least to start with. He was an awkward man with pock-marked skin and a stutter, and I think your mother mistook his shyness for gentleness. I don't think she was attracted to him, but she was grateful and that was enough.

“They had a cheap wedding in a registry office in Brighton, just the two of them and myself as witness. After that they moved into Robert's little terraced house in the centre of town. Your mother did her best to make it a home and did everything from the DIY to growing a vegetable patch, but things were bad right from the start. As I understand it, the beatings started within weeks of the marriage. Robert would fly into terrible rages, hitting your mother about the head, pushing her against walls and furniture, once even fracturing her wrist. She never told me any of this, of course, I had to piece it all together from snippets the neighbours gave away. By this point Timothy had split from the band, and we had moved to Oxford so that Timothy could pursue a master's degree in law. We were penniless, and I only got to see your mother every so often, whenever I could afford the train fare to Brighton. Whenever I did see her, she seemed to have sunk deeper and deeper into denial, insisting that everything was fine when that was clearly not the case. She started cooking all the time, always having to be busy. I think it was her way of coping.”

“Why didn't she leave him?” I ask, unable to comprehend how she could have stayed in such a miserable situation. “Why did she let him treat her like that?”

“I begged your mother to leave him but she wouldn't. In the end I gave my telephone number to one of the neighbours and asked them to call me if anything happened. I was honestly scared for her life. The neighbour told me she had heard Robert threaten to track your mother down and kill you both if she ever left him. Your mother must have been terrified, although she completely denied Robert ever said such a thing, of course. She denied everything. She was always telling me that she had fallen down stairs or walked into doors. I think she even managed to convince herself. It was ludicrous.”

“But surely the police – ”

“There was nothing they could unless your mother made an official complaint.”

I place my head in my hands. This is so much worse than I ever expected. Never in a million years could I have been prepared for this.

“Although your mother seemed to spend half her time in a daze,” Gwennie continues, “she was always one step ahead of Robert where you were concerned. She tried to keep you well out of his way, and if ever he got angry because you were crying or had knocked something over she would make sure she was the one to bear the brunt of his fury, not you. Generally, he just ignored you. You were no more than an annoyance to him. The tragic thing was that you
so
wanted him to love you. You tried desperately to get his attention but it never worked, which was probably just as well. You used to call him ‘daddy'.”

I clutch my stomach, feeling sick at the thought of it.
Daddy.
I always wanted to say that word to someone. I just can't believe I used to say it to such a monster.

“Your mother finally summoned the courage to leave on the day of your fifth birthday,” says Gwennie, “the day he tried to strangle you.”

I look up at her, my face expressionless, my heart numb. Her words are like waves washing over me, barely disturbing the surface. Nothing could shock me anymore. Nothing could be any worse than what I have already heard.

“You had spilt paint all over something-or-other, and he had blown his top. He grabbed you by the neck and hit your head against a coffee table. Your mother tried to prise him off you, and when he didn't let go, she pulled a knife out the kitchen drawer and charged at him with it. She would have killed him, I'm sure of it, but he let go of you and grabbed the knife from her. I'm not sure what happened next because your mother really wasn't making much sense when she phoned me, but obviously it was enough to shock her into action.”

I stare at the table, trying to imagine this scene; my mother charging at someone with a knife, clearly intending to kill them. My mother who won't swat a fly and who apologises to vegetables before chopping them up, who thanks each piece of meat for the life it has sacrificed and who has started talking to trees in order to help them grow. She would have murdered him. She would have plunged a knife in his heart.

“She left everything behind but the clothes on your backs. Robert called me, demanding to know where you had gone, and when I hung up on him he drove all the way to Oxford and started banging on our door in a terrible rage. For a moment I knew what it must have felt like to be your mother. It was absolutely terrifying. To this day I thank heaven that Timothy was there otherwise who knows what he might have done. But the thing is, I couldn't have told Robert anything even if I had wanted to. Your mother honestly hadn't told me about her plans. She knew, I think, that if Robert suspected I had any information, he would have stopped at nothing to get that information out of me. It was too much of a risk. She was trying to protect me.”

“So that was it?” I ask. “That was the last time you ever saw her?”

“Yes. Until today. I waited and waited for news to come but it never did. I even visited Val's parents but they knew nothing either. It was as if the pair of you had just vanished into the night, breaking all contact with anything and anyone from the past.”

I stare into my mug of cold, untouched tea, my mind blank, my heart empty. I feel as if all the life has been drained out of me.

“Was I… ” Gwennie begins, uncertainly, “was I right to tell you?”

I shiver, even though the kitchen is so warm that condensation mists the windows. I don't know the answer to this question.

“You did what I asked you to do,” I say flatly.

There is a long and painful silence between us. I'm sure I should have more questions to ask, but I feel dead inside. My head aches and my stomach feels sick.

“Why did you change your mind,” I ask, “about coming here?”

Gwennie sighs and gives a listless shrug. “I suppose I needed to know the truth as well. For all those years I tried to believe that you had started again, that you were safe and well and happy. I liked to think that maybe your mother had fallen in love, become a cook and travelled to all the places she dreamed about visiting. And that you had grown to a healthy size, were doing well in school and enjoying a new family life. But I never knew. Not for sure. I suppose I had my own gap to fill.”

She picks up her teaspoon and rubs it between her fingers, as if wishing a genie would appear and with a click of his fingers make this horrible situation go away.

“Plus, I have a daughter,” she adds. “She's younger than you, just thirteen. Her father and I might not be together, but she knows where she came from, who she is. I think that's her right. I wouldn't ever want her to be without that knowledge.”

I trace my finger round the rim of my mug, over and over again, gazing at the cold film of milk on the surface of my tea.

“Do you get on?” I ask, for no particular reason.

Gwennie gives a little, quiet laugh. “She rather hates me right now. But I'm hoping she'll grow out of it.”

I nod and muster a small, appreciative smile. “She will,” I tell her, “I promise.”

Gwennie examines my face closely, staring into my sad, tired eyes. “You're so like your mother,” she says, and I almost laugh at the irony of it.

I have strived all my life to be nothing like my mother. I have clung desperately to the principles of truth, logic and rationality, whilst my mother has indulged in fantasy and denial. I have wrung my hands, stamped my feet and wept tears of frustration in the face of her delusions. And yet I wonder now how different I have really been.

I recall Dr Bloomberg's words when I visited his office that day.
It's amazing what we can forget.

I touch the scar on my forehead, the scar I now know came from having my head banged against a coffee table, not from being attacked by a crab cake. I have forgotten everything, not because I have wanted to, but because I have needed to. And yet I am filled with the horrible certainty that deep down some part of me still remembers. The White Giant who haunts my dreams is no giant at all, but a man in a butcher's coat. Those calloused hands around my neck are no figment of my imagination, but the shadow of my past. His name, his face, his pock-marked skin. That house, the fear, the violence… it is all still there, lurking in the deepest recesses of my mind. The memories that I so desperately wanted to recall have been there all this time, and, now, like a sleeping beast that has been prodded with a stick, they have begun to stir. Vague recollections are now teetering on the edge of my consciousness, and I have a sense that it would all come flooding back to me if only I let myself remember.

The question is, do I want to?

Chapter 16

I sometimes think that Mark should wear a spandex leotard, a mask and a cape with an enormous R printed on the back. Rationality Man to the rescue; applying logic in the midst of chaos. I called him late last night, after Gwennie had left, like a damsel in distress. ‘Help!' I wanted to scream down the line, ‘I've just discovered the truth about my past! My mind is in turmoil, my thoughts are confused and my feelings are threatening to overwhelm me! Save me Rationality Man!' Of course, what I actually said was, “Mark, I've just been told the truth about my past. It's all been rather a lot to take on board. I was wondering whether you might be able to come down tomorrow instead of Sunday so that we can go over it? I mean, if not, don't worry, I'm absolutely fine.”