The Art of Friendship (29 page)

Keith put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a square of folded paper and laid it on the table in front of Pete. His hands were shaking as he unfolded it and carefully smoothed it flat with the palm of his hand.

‘Read it,’ he said quietly.

Pete scanned the paper briefly and shook his head. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s your birth certificate. Peter Andrew Moody. Look, there,’ persisted Keith, his voice gentle as a caress. He placed his finger on the paper. ‘See where it says “father”? Read it, Pete.’

‘Unknown. It says unknown.’ Pete looked up at Keith and there were tears in his eyes.

‘That’s right, son,’ said Keith, his voice choked with emotion.

Pete put a hand to his face and quickly rubbed his eyes. He sniffed and stiffened. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked.

‘I don’t really know,’ said Keith vaguely, protecting Janice. Avoiding the truth that it had been her all along that had not wanted Pete to know. She who had insisted they put off telling him, year after year, until they could do so no longer.

‘This doesn’t change anything between us, does it, Pete? I wish I was your real father but I’ve tried to be the best dad I can.’

Pete smiled bravely and Janice wanted to reach out and touch him. To take away some of the pain, some of the shock so evident in his ashen face. But physical intimacy between her and Pete had always felt awkward.

‘No, Dad. It doesn’t change anything between us,’ said Pete and Janice smiled with relief for Keith. Maintaining his relationship with Pete, intact and unscathed, was what mattered most.

The tension in Keith’s face dissipated, his entire body relaxed. ‘I’m so glad, Pete. I’m so glad you feel that way. It’s a privilege being your dad.’

Pete touched the birth certificate, ran his fingertip over the words inscribed there. ‘I couldn’t have asked for a better dad,’ he said, his voice tight with emotion. ‘But why choose to tell me now? Why tell me at all?’

‘We knew we’d have to tell you one day – when you were an adult. Ultimately you have the right to know. And we knew you’d need your birth certificate to register at university in the autumn.’

‘And yet you kept it a secret for so long.’ Pete paused, still staring at the paper in front of him. ‘What were you afraid of?’

Keith looked at Janice, warily, and ducked his head as if avoiding a low-flying missile. ‘I was afraid…I was afraid you might not love me once you knew.’

‘And you?’ said Pete, and he turned his steady gaze on Janice. ‘What were you afraid of?’

Janice blinked, her eyelids snapping open and closed like a camera lens. Her chest tightened and her breath came in shallow, silent gasps. ‘I…I wasn’t afraid of anything. Keith is the only father you’ve ever known. As far as I am concerned he is your father.’

‘But that’s not what it says on my birth certificate.’ His gaze was unflinching. She felt her cheeks grow hot with shame. She looked away.

Slowly, Pete pushed the piece of paper under her nose. She could not look at it.

‘It says “father unknown”.’

‘I know.’

‘But I have the right to know, isn’t that right, Dad?’ Pete turned his head towards Keith but never took his gaze off
Janice. Keith did not respond. ‘I have the right to know who my real father is.’

‘I can’t tell you,’ she managed to squeeze out, so quietly that she had to repeat it a second time. She put her hand to her throat. ‘I can’t tell you.’

Pete regarded her with a sort of detached curiosity. ‘Is that because you don’t know? Or because you don’t want me to know?’

Keith interrupted. ‘Look, Pete. This is between you and your mother. I’m not sure I should hear this. Do you want me to leave the room, Janice?’

‘No,’ snapped Janice and she grabbed his arm. ‘I won’t be saying anything you can’t hear, Keith.’

‘Do you not know who my father is?’ persisted Pete.

She shook her head.

‘Or do you just not want to tell me?’

She shook her head again and he gave a short burst of mirthless laughter. ‘It’s one or the other,
mother.
It can’t be both. You either know who he is, or you don’t.’

‘It’s for your own good, Pete,’ she blurted out. ‘I’m just trying to…to…protect you.’ She would never tell him. She would die first.

Keith put his hand over her trembling one and squeezed it. But the trembling did not stop.

Pete started to snigger, a heartless, hysterical chuckle that soon became a full-blown laugh.

‘Pete,’ said Keith at last. ‘Will you stop that? What the hell is so funny?’

Pete wiped tears from the corner of his mouth and the laughter ceased immediately. His expression was suddenly poker straight. ‘You don’t know, do you, Janice? You don’t know who my father is.’

Janice slid her hand out from under Keith’s. She could
allow Pete to believe this, unsatisfactory as it was, or she could tell him something a little closer to the truth.

‘I do know,’ she said quietly, lifting her chin up, meeting his gaze. ‘It happened at university.’

Pete laid his forearm on the table and leant across. ‘Who was it?’

‘I…I…‘She was aware of Keith staring at her in surprise. ‘It was…’ She could not say it, not now, not ever. ‘I never saw him again. It was…just a…a one-night stand.’

‘Just a one-night stand,’ repeated Pete flatly. He sat back and looked at her as though she was something on the sole of his shoe. Pete shook his head, mocking her. ‘You can’t remember. You old slag!’

‘Pete,’ bellowed Keith and he rose to his feet, knocking the chair backwards onto the floor. He rolled his shoulders, still strong, and lifted his fists as though ready to strike out at the slightest provocation. Though Janice knew he would never hit Pete. ‘How dare you talk to your mother like that! Apologise at once.’

Pete stood up, face to face with Keith, nothing in it between them height-wise. Pete shook his head defiantly, the way he used to do when he was a kid. ‘Do you know what? I don’t feel inclined to.’ He let out a hollow laugh and looked at Janice. ‘You two crack me up, do you know that? You’ve done nothing but bang on and on about poor old Laura and how badly I’ve behaved. You tried to make me feel like a piece of shit for knocking her up when she was just as much at fault as I was. Ramming your middle-class morals down my throat. But who are you to talk to me of what’s right and wrong?’

He snatched the birth certificate up and held it in a tight fist in front of his chest, crumpling the edges of the document. ‘You had a bastard,’ he said, addressing Janice. ‘And you don’t even know the name of the father.’

The words bounced off Janice like arrows, each one piercing a little hole in the invisible armour she had constructed over the years, her shield against the world. Each one taking with it a tiny bit of her sense of self. But she held firm, she did not break down. It didn’t matter what he said. It didn’t matter what he thought. She could live with his hatred. For this was better, so much better than the truth.

He screwed the certificate into a tight ball and fired it at Janice. She flinched when it hit her chest, though she hardly felt it. It bounced off her and fell to the floor. Pete rested his closed fists on the table and he leant in close to Janice’s face. ‘Don’t you ever try to tell me what to do again,’ he breathed. He looked so much like his father – he even sounded like him. And he was rotten too, like him, bad to the core.

‘Get out!’ screamed Keith. ‘Get out!’ He pointed to the door. But it was too late. Pete had said everything he wanted. Everything he would ever say to her on the subject.

He left the room and it was only then that Janice put her hands over her face and started to sob. She felt Keith’s arms around her and heard his whispered words of comfort. But she remained stiff-backed, resisting the urge to collapse against him. She must be strong. She mustn’t weaken, not now, not after all these years. The worst was over and she had weathered it. She had done her duty as a mother.

‘You do know I don’t care, don’t you?’ said Keith, stroking her hair, his lips close to her ear. ‘It doesn’t matter to me how Pete came into this world. Or how you lived before I met you. You do understand that, don’t you, Janice? It doesn’t change anything as far as I am concerned. It doesn’t change the way I feel about you at all.’

What a good man he was. He was ready to forgive her anything. But even he might find the truth hard to stomach.

Two days after her last exam, Laura came into Patsy’s bedroom late one night and sat on the edge of the bed. Patsy, who had been lying awake for over an hour, stared at the outline of her daughter in the darkness, fearing what was coming next, and waited.

‘I’ve decided what to do,’ she said and Patsy’s stomach lurched. ‘I’ve decided to have an abortion.’

Patsy, who realised that she had been waiting for this all along, put her face in the pillow and wept. She cried over the gruesome practicalities of the procedure itself and the emotional damage it would wreak on Laura. She cried because she had allowed herself, fleetingly, to imagine what this grandchild might look, and feel like, in her arms.

‘Please don’t cry, Mum,’ said Laura, stroking her head, her voice crackling with emotion, and immediately Patsy felt ashamed.

She should be the one supporting Laura, not the other way round. Quickly she sniffed back the tears and sat up in bed. They were alone in the room – Martin was in the study trawling the web for jobs. The room was in darkness save for the shaft of yellow light seeping through the half-closed door from the landing. It cast a golden halo round Laura’s head.

‘I’m sorry, Laura. It’s not helping, is it? Me, bawling my eyes out.’

‘I cry too, Mum, every night.’

Patsy felt like someone had stabbed her chest. ‘Oh, darling.’

‘I’m afraid.’

‘You don’t have to do this, Laura.’

There was a long silence. Patsy could not tell if Laura was crying, or not. Perhaps that was how Laura wanted it to be. When she spoke her voice was surprisingly steady. ‘I always thought I’d have children one day, Mum. But not like this. I’m not ready to be a mother. And I want my children to have a dad who loves them.’

‘Are you sure, Laura?’

‘Yes.’

Patsy took her daughter’s hands, soft and smooth, in her own. ‘Are you absolutely sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘The other option is to…to put…’ She paused, steeled herself. ‘To put the baby up for adoption.’ She had never said the word baby out loud. Doing so now, hearing the word come out of her own mouth, brought fresh tears to her eyes. She swallowed and fought them back with all her might.

Laura made a sound, a low whimper like an animal in pain. ‘I couldn’t do that, not in a million years. I couldn’t have a baby and then give it away.’

‘No,’ said Patsy and she squeezed Laura’s hand. She hated the idea of abortion and had at one time – in her youth and before she knew any better – been opposed to it. And there were too many abortions; it was used too freely by ignorant women as a form of contraception.

But experience had taught her that life was never as black and white as the moralists would like it to be. There were
situations, and Laura’s was one of them, when bringing a child into the world was just not the right thing to do – for the mother or the child.

‘Mum?’

‘What, love?’

‘Will you help me?’

Patsy patted the back of Laura’s hand, trying to instill confidence in her daughter though she had never felt so out of her depth, or so terrified, before. ‘Of course I will, darling. I’ll be there for you every step of the way.’ She paused, and added, ‘But if this is what you want and you are absolutely certain of that…’

‘I am.’

‘Then really, pet, the sooner it’s done the better.’

Five days later, Patsy sat at the computer in the study searching for flights to London. So often had she booked flights online, to Edinburgh, London, cities across Europe and further afield – each occasion a happy one, a cause for celebration. Never before had she undertaken the task with such sorrow in her heart.

And in addition to grief, her heart was full of anger and bitterness. Incredibly, Clare had been right about abortion in Northern Ireland. Dr Sullivan had confirmed it when Patsy went to see him the morning after Laura announced her decision.

According to Dr Sullivan attempts were made only last year to bring abortion law in Northern Ireland into line with the rest of the UK, but all the political parties in Ulster resisted it. And the British government backed down because, it was widely believed, pushing it through would threaten the stability of the peace process.

The more Patsy pondered this legal anachronism, the more enraged she became – at the politicians and churchmen
and pro-life campaigners, sanctimonious in their certain belief that they knew what was best for women.

The staff at the Marie Stopes Clinic, in Brixton, South London, couldn’t have been more helpful. They said they had thousands of women across their door from Northern Ireland every year seeking abortions, fugitives from an archaic province. It made a farce of the whole system. Denying women abortions didn’t stop them wanting them, or getting them, they just, like Laura, had to endure an arduous, expensive and shame-faced journey simply to obtain what was, for women in the rest of Britain, a basic human right.

Martin came in and stood behind her. Patsy tried to let go of the rage, tried to concentrate on what she had to do to help Laura.

‘She says she doesn’t want me to come,’ said Martin.

‘Did you want to?’

‘No. But I would’ve if she’d wanted me to.’ He sounded relieved.

An abortion clinic was the last place for a man, thought Patsy, but she did not voice this for fear of hurting Martin. ‘She might feel uncomfortable talking about…you know…medical, personal things in front of you, Martin.’

He nodded glumly.

Patsy turned her attention back to the computer screen. ‘We’ll go over for two nights.’

‘Is that going to be long enough?’ he said.

Patsy swivelled round in the chair and looked up at him, her facial muscles strangely immobile. She imagined her face wiped clean of all expression, mirroring what she felt inside – worn out, exhausted, numb. ‘Apparently. So long as she’s under twelve weeks they can do a vaginal aspiration and technically she could travel home the same day…’

Martin put his hands over his ears. ‘Stop! Please! I don’t
want to hear it, Patsy. I don’t want to think about what’s involved. I’m sorry. But I just don’t think I can bear it.’ He stumbled backwards and sat down on the green sofa-bed. His face was grey, his eyes bloodshot. He’d hardly slept since Laura had shared her decision.

Neither had Patsy. But she would
have
to bear it, and familiarise herself with every gruesome detail so that she could ensure Laura knew exactly what was involved. So that she could support Laura during it and when it was all over. Her shoulders just weren’t broad enough to carry all the burdens placed upon them. But somehow she must.

‘Martin, can you cover for me in the gallery those two days? I’d rather not shut. I don’t want people asking questions. You could just say I’m on a buying trip if anyone asks.’

‘I’ll do whatever you need me to do. Look, don’t worry about the cost of the flights, Patsy. Just book the most convenient. And don’t skimp on the accommodation either. I don’t want you two staying in some grotty dump somewhere. Or eating rubbish. Eat in decent restaurants.’

Patsy forced her lips into the semblance of a smile. It was a nice sentiment but where did Martin think the money was going to come from? They were living on her earnings from the gallery, Martin’s unemployment benefit and, slowly, eating their way through their little pot of savings. She tried not to think of money at such a time, but it was hard when the life they had lived so happily seemed to be crumbling all round them.

It was Laura’s eighteenth in less than a fortnight. What kind of a birthday could they give her? What could they do, or say, to take away the misery? And even if they had an endless supply of money, it wasn’t in their gift to give Laura what she really wanted – to somehow turn back the clock and undo what had been done. Nothing would change the
fact that what should’ve been one of the highlights of her young life would for ever be utterly overshadowed by this event.

‘Patsy, I know how hard this is for you.’

She lowered her eyes. He could still read her mind after all these years. When she looked at him again, he was crying silently, rivulets of tears running down his face and onto his white t-shirt, spotting the fabric with the palest shade of grey.

She knelt on the floor and took both his hands in hers. She pressed her forehead against his and she said, ‘Please, Martin. Please don’t cry.’

‘But I feel like such a failure. I’m Laura’s father. I’m supposed to protect her, keep her safe. That’s my job, isn’t it? And I let this happen.’

‘You couldn’t have stopped this from happening, Martin. No father could. You can’t be there every minute of every day.’

‘It doesn’t feel like that. I feel like I should’ve been.’ He pressed a fist to his breast.

‘You are not to blame. No-one could’ve protected her from Pete Kirkpatrick, Martin. If you’re looking for someone to blame, look to him.’ She hadn’t thought it possible, but her hate hardened around his name even more.

She released his hands. He ran them over his face, wiping away the tears. ‘I’m sorry, Patsy. Sometimes it just gets to me.’

‘Me too,’ she said bitterly.

A week later and she and Laura were back from London, both traumatised and, in Patsy’s case, numbed by the experience.

It had all gone to plan. They’d stayed in a perfectly adequate two-star hotel in Streatham recommended by the
staff at Marie Stopes. It was big enough to afford Laura the anonymity she craved, and less than two miles from the clinic. The morning after their arrival, they walked to her appointment in the warm June sunshine, navigating with a map Patsy had printed off the internet – she was too embarrassed to ask the hotel staff for directions, or a taxi to the Marie Stopes clinic. Laura wasn’t committing a crime, she ought not to be ashamed, and yet the very fact that they had been forced to leave their home in secrecy to seek out this treatment reinforced those feelings.

Looking back, she needn’t have bothered taking such precautions. The hotel staff were efficient and polite but, in spite of her and Laura’s conspicuous Northern Irish accents – which seemed so much more exaggerated away from home soil – not one enquired as to the nature of their visit to London. Perhaps they had seen too many dazed, gaunt-eyed mother-and-daughter duos passing through the hotel’s door to ask too many questions.

The doctors and nurses at the clinic were utterly professional while managing to convey a sense of compassion that Patsy found particularly hard to bear. But the worst thing was not being allowed to stay with Laura while she underwent the procedure. Patsy walked the streets, aware of nothing around her, only the pounding of her feet on the hard, unforgiving pavement and the hot sun on the back of her neck. Seeing nothing, feeling nothing, her feet burned with pain and still she would not stop, while a doctor in a white coat did what Patsy could not bear to think about.

On the morning of their departure, Patsy and Laura came downstairs with their small black suitcases. Laura went and stood by the window staring out, arms folded, shoulders hunched, putting on a brave face, literally – her full make-up, applied like armour, made a good job of hiding the ghostly
pallor beneath. Patsy paid the bill. The receptionist, an ample-bosomed woman about her own age, smiled sadly at Patsy, her big brown eyes so full of kindness that Patsy had to look away. And when the woman pressed the receipt into Patsy’s open palm, she caught her wrist with the other brown hand, her bare nails a natural shade of luminous pink like the inside of a shell.

‘Your daughter’s gonna be alright now, honey,’ she said in a lilting, sing-song accent. ‘I bin there. You jus’ wait and see.’

And now, standing in her kitchen ironing on the Saturday after their return, the memory of that simple act of solidarity brought tears to Patsy’s eyes.

Martin had gone to play a round of golf with some pals. In an effort to cheer her sister up – to replace the lacklustre Laura that had come back from London with something resembling her old self – Sarah had organised a day out as an eighteenth-birthday treat. She’d taken Laura up to Belfast to have her hair done at some trendy salon on Bradbury Place. They were going to have lunch somewhere nice and then go shopping. Patsy had been asked along, of course – to their credit, her daughters always willingly included her in their shopping trips – but she had not wanted to go, using the gallery as an excuse. In the end she’d closed at lunchtime and came straight home. She needed some time alone to be miserable, worn out with trying to keep everyone else’s spirits up.

It was Laura’s birthday on Thursday and Patsy was dreading it, for she knew none of them, least of all Laura, would feel like celebrating. She and Martin had splashed out five hundred quid on a Raymond Weil watch for Laura they could ill afford. If ever Laura deserved a little spoiling, it was now. They wanted her to have something wonderful to remember her eighteenth birthday by, not just misery.

She lifted a damp top out of the laundry basket and her stomach heaved. It was the pretty summer blouse that Laura had worn to the clinic – a blouse made of fine printed cotton with short puffed sleeves and tiny pearl buttons. A garment of extraordinary detail, considering Laura wouldn’t have paid more than a few quid for it in H&M or New Look. It was, she knew, one of Laura’s favourites.

But it would for ever remind Patsy of the abortion, the pink roses and tiny curling leaves a reproachful reminder of her failure as a mother. She gave the blouse a vigorous shake, then laid it on the ironing board and smoothed out the worst of the creases. Then she placed the iron very carefully on the front of the garment, right across the chest where it would be most visible and impossible to disguise. She pressed down hard.

The doorbell went. Patsy paused, lifted her head and gently, as if letting go of a tiny child’s hand, released the iron from her grasp. She walked to the door that led into the hall and glanced back. Then, slowly and deliberately, she made her way to the front door.

It was Janice, her face partially covered by a pair of over-sized sunglasses, making it impossible to read her expression.

Patsy put her hand on her chest, so surprised to see her there that she was, for a moment, quite speechless.