Secrets My Mother Kept (37 page)

‘Yep, to be a waitress.’

‘That’s when she met yours and Mary’s dad,’ I said looking towards the twins.

Reg Stevens – the man whose name was written on all of us younger children’s birth certificates. I had begun to feel sorry for him the more I found out. Uncle George, my mum’s younger brother, had always told us what a nice man Reg was, a kind and gentle Yorkshire man who had fallen head over heels in love with Mum.

I picked up a tiny black and white photo and passed it to my sisters.

‘She was so pretty wasn’t she?’ I said. ‘A real Irish Rose.’

The photo showed a beautiful young woman with dark hair, and although we couldn’t see the colour of her eyes, we could see the sparkle.

‘She could charm the birds out of the trees,’ said Marge, wryly sipping her tea.

Marion shook her head. ‘It was more than that though. Everyone, men and women alike, were drawn to her. She was so good at listening; made people feel that they were important and had something to say that was worth hearing. Everyone except us, of course,’ she added, glancing over at her twin with a pinched, hurt look on her face.

‘It was almost as though she was capable of hypnotising them,’ I said.

‘We didn’t need a genealogist to figure that one out,’ Marge said with a little laugh.

‘No, I know,’ I continued, ‘but there are some things that she has helped me to find out. For example I have a copy of Mum and Reg Stevens’s bigamous marriage certificate.’ I took the envelope and handed it to Marge.

‘They were married in Sheffield!’ she exclaimed.

I nodded. ‘Yep, and look at the name!’

‘Kathleen Francis Coates – widow!’ Marge looked across at me. ‘She used a fake name – your name!’

‘Well it wasn’t my name then; it was nine years before I was born.’

‘And her age – look: she says she was twenty-six, but in 1945 she was thirty!’

My sisters all wore the same shocked look on their faces. Mum had always been so good at lying, and here it was in front of us, proof that she was well practised even then.

‘But why lie about her age?’ Margaret asked.

‘Well have another look,’ I said. ‘Reg was only twenty-six, so perhaps she felt it was a good idea to become the same age as him.’

We sat in silence considering the document in front of us. Had this been the start of the downward spiral of Mum’s life? Just when she thought she was getting a second chance at happiness? Or had the descent into misery started long before, when she married Ron Coates?

‘So she married Reg, just before the end of the war,’ Marion stated, ‘and Mary was born about a year later.’

‘Yes, but by that time, her bigamy had been discovered, and she was in prison. Holloway we think, as Mary was born in St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington. You know they gave her electric shock therapy?’

‘Oh God, poor Mum,’ said Margaret, letting the tears flow freely now. I got up and got a box of tissues from the table and pulled one out to give her.

‘I think we might need a few more of those before you go home tonight,’ I said smiling thinly.

‘So do you think Reg knew anything about her other family?’ asked Marion, looking intently at the certificate in front of her.

‘No, I doubt it. She already had five children, but she kept that well hidden. I don’t believe he knew anything about her other life. He was a young sailor, just back from the war, and to him she was a single waitress who was fun to be with and had a reckless enthusiasm for life – a shining girl. Someone worth coming home for.’

‘When she got out of prison that first time, that must have been when she went up to Birmingham, to Uncle John’s?’ Margaret added. She was starting to look more and more tired as the evening wore on. She had never been much of a drinker, and the glass of wine she’d drunk had obviously already affected her.

‘Yes, I think maybe she was hiding from Reg, because he came to find her. Remember what Dot told us? I supposed she was ashamed . . .’ I sipped my wine, and its heat warmed me. ‘And then she went back with him, but obviously not for long.’

‘Long enough for her to get pregnant with me and Marge,’ Marion interjected forcefully, ‘and then she must have just dumped us at Valence Avenue with Granny and Aunty and the others. But why?’

‘Well reading between the lines, I’m guessing that she either met someone else, and was messing Reg around, or of course he could have found out about her other family. He wouldn’t have left her otherwise.’

‘Unless something happened to him,’ Margaret said.

‘I’m guessing she was still waitressing in London when she met Thomas all those years later.’

‘Well she certainly wasn’t at home with us. Until that day she turned up out of the blue.’ Marge took another gulp of wine and I filled up her glass, emptying the bottle.

‘I think I’ll open another one,’ I said and went into the kitchen.

I could hear Marion now. ‘Yes I remember that too, it was weird, we just stood looking at her. It wasn’t long after that Kath was born.’ The twins would have been seven and Mary eight when I arrived. ‘And do you remember telling our teacher at school that we had a baby sister?’

‘Yes, and feeling really upset because she just raised her eyebrows and said, “Not another one!” ’ replied Marge. We all laughed, as I refilled our glasses.

A silence descended for a few minutes. It was as though we were trying to ready ourselves for the next part of Mum’s story – the part when Mum must have lost all hope; when she felt like it was time for her to give up.

‘The letters start the December before I was born, and stop the July before Margaret was born. It would be an unlikely coincidence if he wasn’t our dad,’ I said.

Margaret was silent. We all knew that we would never know for certain.

‘But why did they stop?’ Margaret spoke now suddenly. ‘Why did they stop before I was born? What happened?’

Marion and Marge exchanged looks, and then Marge broke the silence.

‘We were on holiday in the Isle of Wight,’ she started. ‘Granny was there, we shared a tent with her, Pat, Josie, Peter and Mary, all of us in the one tent with you – except for Mum.’

Their eyes met again and Marge went on. ‘You were only about a year old, just starting to walk,’ she continued. ‘Mum had her own tent the other side of the campsite, we didn’t see much of her.’

‘There was nothing to eat, I remember that,’ said Marion joining in now. ‘We had to pick blackberries and Granny cooked them up for us to eat.’

‘And then the lady came,’ said Marge.

‘What lady?’ I asked. Why hadn’t I heard any of this before?

‘We don’t know; she was very smart, I do remember that,’ said Marion.

‘Yes and she asked where our auntie was,’ said Marge, ‘so I told her, “She’s not our auntie, she’s our mummy.” I suppose I was proud that I had a mummy now.’

Their words jangled around in my head. What did it all mean?

‘When we got home from that holiday things got harder than ever,’ Marion carried on. ‘Money was very scarce. I suppose looking back now it was because Thomas had stopped sending any more cheques. Mum was suddenly around all of the time, but always seemed to want us out of the way – especially us, Mary and Peter. We still loved her and wanted to please her however we could.’

Marion was getting upset now, and the emotions in the room were growing.

Was Thomas with Mum in that tent? It didn’t seem likely, but it was possible. Who was the mysterious woman who came looking for Mum? Could she have been Thomas’s wife? His sister?

‘The fraud, that’s when she was convicted of fraud and sent to prison again,’ I said. They nodded.

‘She must have been desperate,’ Marge said, watching our reactions. ‘She had come to rely on the money from Thomas, it helped feed us, kept her in cigarettes, kept her sane, knowing that there was still someone who cared so much about her, even though by that time her looks were starting to fade . . .’

‘So she used the fact that the grocer had cashed cheques for her over a couple of years,’ I said, the pieces fitting together more snugly now.

‘And Thomas worked for Walt Disney – she would maybe have had letters from him with their letter heading . . . who knows how she managed to convince that poor gullible grocer that she was Roy Disney’s wife! It beggars belief, but she did,’ Marge finished.

We sat looking at each other.

Did Thomas even know I existed? And Margaret, did he know about her? Were we his children? Or was there always someone else?

I picked out the last remaining sheet of information that the genealogist had given me. I held Thomas’s death certificate for a moment and then, trembling, handed it to Margaret.

‘I was five and you were three when he died.’

A look of realisation washed over her face. ‘Oh no,’ she murmured quietly.

I nodded. ‘The scary day,’ I said and we cried quietly together, each of us swamped by our own memories of that day so many years before. The day we’d chosen to forget for so long.

62

Hidden Truths

When the knock came Mum was startled, her eyes flying towards the front door.

‘Come on, quickly!’ she hissed through almost closed lips, bending down and grabbing our hands. We got as far as the doorway when we heard a scraping noise; someone was pushing at the tall rusty gate that led round the side of the house to the back garden.

‘Come on – run now!’ she said pulling us forward and bending down low, so that we fell towards the stairs.

‘Come on – up here!’ Positioning us halfway up the staircase, she held her finger up to her mouth. It was a tally man, and he was trying to get in the back door while we were crouched out of sight.

Mum was rigid with anxiety, and hung on to us in case we moved and gave ourselves away. ‘Don’t worry,’ she whispered, ‘he will go soon if we keep quiet and pretend we’re statues.’

We froze, hardly daring to draw breath and wanting desperately to move or cough. There was a loud knocking at the back door and then at the kitchen window. He was banging so hard I thought the glass would break and he would come jumping through all covered in blood. I tried saying some prayers in my head but couldn’t remember the words. We waited for what seemed like an age until we heard the back gate clang shut as though he had swung it in temper.

Mum let out a soft sigh. ‘Wait there while I peep out of the window.’ She slid down the stairs and into the front room, then called to us, ‘Come on you two, the coast is clear!’

We followed her back into the kitchen, and watched as she sat and lit a cigarette. Her pale blue eyes had taken on that other look, the one which made us feel like she was being pulled away from us. As she sat in her chair by the fireplace, looking much older than her forty-five years, she told us a story about a bear.

‘There was once a bear and he was a friendly bear but had no friends. He was a cuddly bear but had no one to cuddle. He was a kind bear but had no one to be kind to. He was a loveable bear but had no one to love. He was a lonely and desperate bear.’

As she continued we were rapt, listening to her words spoken in a soft voice, drawing us into this other world of longing as we sat at her feet.

‘One day as the bear wandered through the forest looking for the things he could never find, he heard something. It sounded like crying, so he followed the sound. Behind a big old gnarled oak tree, with roots that reached deep under the ground, the bear saw that a trickle of water was bubbling and gurgling and forming into a stream, which flowed away into a wide river, which rushed towards the sea.

‘He wondered where all the water was coming from, and for a while he puzzled to himself. Then suddenly he realised what the water was and as he looked up he saw the whole world crying. Crying for those who had no friends, no one to cuddle, no one to be kind to and no one to love and to love them back.’

Mum’s eyes misted over as she continued the story, not looking at us at all now.

‘The bear became sadder and sadder as he stopped and watched, and as he stood there he grew more and more tired out with feeling so sad. So tired that his arms ached, and his head hurt, and he couldn’t keep awake, so he lay down next to the trickle of water and the oak tree and fell fast asleep. And as he slept he had a wonderful dream. In the bear’s dream he had friends, lots of them, and they cuddled him and were kind to him and loved him, and he loved them back, and he was so happy not to have to worry any more, so he decided that he would stay in his dream forever and never wake up again.’

As we listened Mum’s eyes grew brighter, and towards the end of the story she seemed to have cheered up.

‘What happened to the bear next?’ I asked.

‘Well he stayed in his lovely dream, of course,’ said Mum smiling.

‘But wasn’t he sad not to wake up again?’

‘No,’ said Mum, ‘of course not! He had all the friends, cuddles and love that he needed now in his special dream place.’

With that she got up and picked up a worn old green cushion from the settee. It had a smooth, grey sheen on it from many years of use and it had never been washed.

Mum took the cushion out into the scullery and opened the oven door. As we followed her, she smiled at us.