The Naked Drinking Club (43 page)

‘I call it D-day,’ she said, dragging hard. She smoked like a bitter person. She sounded pretty Australian with a slight hint of Englishness in her vowels. Her voice was a heavy smoker’s voice and quite husky.

‘Sorry?’

‘That’s what I’ve always called today. D-day.’ She stubbed out her cigarette for much longer than she needed to. I was looking at her like I was in love. Even her harsh words were beautiful to me.

‘When I heard the call on the radio, I said to Carol, that’s bloody D-day. I’ve always said the day you found me would be my D-day.’ She finished off her drink and lit up another cigarette. I reached for mine; she pushed hers towards me, offering them up. I thanked her and took one, excited to be smoking my mother’s cigarettes.

‘So.’ She paused to inhale, and she seemed calmer. ‘How did you manage to find me then?’

‘It’s such a weird and long story.’

The aunties were silent, listening to everything that was said between us.

‘First of all I went to Register House when I was eighteen, so I had your name and address at the time of my birth, then I went to Newcastle and asked around in your street.’

‘So, someone shopped me?’ She looked angry again, increasing her drag rate.

‘A neighbour said you went to Australia and married an Australian soldier called Duffy, and the rest was my own detective work and pretty much fate.’ I smoked, waiting to see what she’d make of my story.

‘I bet I know who told you.’ She looked over at the sisters, and they both nodded.

‘Do you believe in fate, Madeline?’ This was the first time I’d used her name.

‘There’s certainly something else going on out there, there has to be.’

Auntie Deb asked us if we wanted another drink, we both said yes. I became aware of how limited my time with her was tonight, so I tried asking the essential, must-know questions.

‘What are my relatives like? I mean ancestors, what do they do?’

‘Just ordinary people – builders, electricians. Just workers.’

‘What about my real father?’

‘I haven’t seen Robert since before you were born. We were both very young.’

‘Did you love him?’ I wanted to know the circumstances under which I was conceived.

‘At the time, I suppose I thought I did, but like I said, we were young.’

‘What does he look like?’

‘He was very good-looking, what you would call a catch. Dark like you. You look like your father, I thought that as soon as I saw you. I got a shock.’

‘What else about him?’

‘He loved Bobby Darin, I remember that, and he was always very well turned out.’

The aunties came back with the drinks.

‘Look, I understand, I know they made you give me away, I know that’s what they did in those days.’ I felt myself turning into this understanding, kind, selfless person. I didn’t recognise myself, but I wanted to be nice. I felt sorry for her; she was as fucked up as I was.

‘If you knew how they treated us in the home, made us feel like we were so dirty. And we felt grateful that we were given a place to go and have our babies, and glad that our babies were going to a good home. It was just what happened, you had no choice if you had no money, and we were poor, everyone was.’

‘What about your family now? Have you got children?’

‘Two boys and a girl. Andrew is twenty-three, Calum is twenty and Linda is eighteen.’

I felt a little depressed momentarily as I calculated my half-brother’s birth at being the year after mine or even less.

‘So you got married quickly after me.’

‘After what I’d been through, I just wanted someone to come and take me away. I was lucky, he was my saviour at the time, he really was.’

‘What does he do? Is your married name Duffy, then?’

‘No, it’s not, but I can’t tell you anything about them, OK? Not my married name or anything else, OK?’

‘OK, that’s OK.’ It annoyed me slightly, her telling me this, but I could find out anything I really needed to. ‘What happened to my father, then?’

‘He went off to sea.’ She looked down. ‘He was in the merchant navy. He said he would come back and get me and the baby, he wrote to me in the home saying that he’d be back but …’ She shook her head and downed half her new drink.

‘Did he see me, then?’ I hoped he hadn’t; it would make me feel better about him leaving us.

‘No, he left before you were born. He came back on leave to see me when I was in the home, brought a big lovely bunch of flowers and told me that he was going home to tell his mother that he was marrying me and that everything would
be
all right, and that he’d come straight back when he could. He didn’t show. You were born, and I got a letter from his mother saying that he was marrying someone else.’ She stubbed out her cigarette firmly again. When she looked up she had tears in her eyes. ‘If you knew what it felt like, to lie to everyone, to have to write back home saying that I was happy and had a job and all that crap.’

I looked down now.

‘All the time, I was lying to everyone, ’cause I was sitting writing letters from a bloody home, waiting to give my baby away.’

There was a pause and then she said, ‘Is there anything else you want to ask me?’

My mind raced to think of more questions and categories, so that on leaving I would feel no regret about missing stuff out I wanted to know.

Then she said, ‘What do you do, then?’

‘Just selling paintings door to door. Just a traveller’s job for now.’

‘So have you been to college?’

This was a family-type question that pleased me. ‘No. I was going to go to art college but I messed things up at school. I’ve had a messed-up life, wasted things, I have lots of regrets already.’ I laughed a little.

‘Life is full of regrets; I learnt that at a young age, too. That was one of the things they said to us, about our babies going to good homes.’ She became quite animated. ‘They said the baby would have more chances and opportunities than if it stayed with us. That it would have a nice home and probably go to college, and get a good job.’

I didn’t know what to say. I felt like I’d disappointed absolutely everybody in my entire orbit, including myself, with the college failure. But I’d fucked up school in the first place because I couldn’t concentrate because I was so unhappy – which was probably linked to feeling weird and adopted.

‘Are you staying here, then?’ she asked.

‘Don’t know, haven’t decided yet. But I will have to leave soon I suppose. I’ve got a six-month visa.’

‘I just want to forget this. I had no choice, you know.’

‘Yeah, I know. Why did you come to Australia, then, what about your family back home?’ I knew really but I wanted to hear it from her.

‘A fresh start. Nobody knew me. When I met my husband he was in the army in Ireland, and he told me about this place that was warm and sunny, and where the houses were big and new and there was plenty of work, and it would only cost us ten pounds to go there. So I wasn’t going to say no, was I?’

‘No, suppose not.’

‘I’ve got my two sisters here, and one brother. My mam and dad came out but they’re both dead now, and the rest of the family come over and visit.’

‘Do you ever go back over there?’ I hoped she would say yes.

‘Been over three times for weddings and funerals, but it’s expensive to fly back and forth, so we only do it when we really have to.’

I wondered if having to see me again would be one of these occasions.

‘You’ve got a lovely mouth,’ she said, thawing slightly. Her comment knocked me out; I read it as love.

‘Have I?’

‘It’s a nice shape.’

‘Thanks.’

My mother ordered another brandy and I had some more wine.

‘What were my grandparents like?’

‘Your grandfather was in the army, he was a hard man and a drinker. He gave us a hell of a life, but then his life was pretty grim when he was a boy so … I lost my mam just three years past. There were ten of us so we never had any money.’

‘Fuck, ten? So I’ve got millions of relatives?’

‘I suppose you have.’

‘That’s weird, you know?’ I imagined a formal photograph pose with loads of people who looked like me.

‘I can’t stay long, you know, I have to get back before my husband gets home from work.’

‘Does he know about this?’ I said
this
, instead of
me
.

‘No, he doesn’t. I’ve kept it from him all this time.’

‘What does he do?’

‘Electrician.’

‘What do you do?’

‘Just a housewife.’ She gulped her third drink with more urgency than the first two.

‘They were bastards in that place, what they did to us, how they made us feel. There were some women who walked up and left before they had the babies, just had enough and decided to keep them, and when they got up to leave we would shout things out to them and clap and stuff, but they were the brave ones. I wasn’t, I was too afraid to be brave, I admit that. My father would have killed me, he would have absolutely killed me if he’d known I was pregnant.’

‘What, you didn’t tell him?’

‘No. I said that I was working as a nurse. So was our Carol, she’s older than me and was further ahead in the nursing, and she knew of this place in Scotland, in Dundee, where you could go and have the baby, so I told Mam and Dad that I got a job there and I went away. Those bloody letters saying how much fun I was having and how good the job was!’ Her eyes grew watery; she sucked on her menthol.

I felt nothing at this point. This was the story of the making and the leaving of me, but I knew nobody in the picture.

She got a handkerchief from her bag and blew her nose but there were no tears, except from the aunties who were both sniffling at the other table.

‘What was my birth like? What time? What did I look like?’

‘It was a beautiful bright sunny afternoon when you were born, it was half past four in the afternoon, and the birth was straightforward.’

The term ‘straightforward’ was hard to hear.

‘They told us we were doing the best for our babies, you know, and that’s what we believed. They said that you were going to a good home with a caravan that you could go on your holidays in. Was that true?’

I could have said a whole lot more at that point but, like her, I chose to focus on the caravan.

‘Yes, it was a good home, and there were loads of nice caravan holidays …’ I petered out at the end, suddenly feeling
great
sadness for the pain I had caused my adopted mother over the years, and the hatred I had for my unhappy and bitter father.

‘Well, then, I did what was best.’

I said nothing and helped myself to another of her cigarettes. She lit me up and I touched her hand briefly. I was desperate to go to the toilet but was afraid to leave in case she was gone when I returned. In the end I would have to risk it, trusting that the aunties were too understanding of both our sides to let it end abruptly.

I sat on the toilet peeing, thinking about the Bobby Darin songs I knew, and my love of the jukebox. Someone else came into the cubicle next to me and peed just after me. Outside, I stared into the mirror trying to imagine a male version of me. I looked at my nice mouth and pressed my fingers to it.

The toilet flushed and my mother walked out. I didn’t know what to say now that we were alone, so I compared our heights. We shared the hand dryer, both standing there after our hands were dry, moving them around. I strained over the noise of it.

‘I’m slightly taller than you – how tall are you?’

‘Five three,’ she said.

The dryer stopped.

‘I’m five five.’ I stood close to her, comparing heights.

‘They made us do it, you know, there was no choice.’

I held the door open for her and we walked back to our seats.

‘Right then, how you both feeling?’ asked Carol.

‘I have to get going,’ said my mother.

We all sat down but my mother put her cigarettes away, which meant my time with her was nearly up. I drank down the remainder of my wine, and considered taking my mother’s empty glass as a keepsake in case I never had another drink with her, but thought it would probably get broken during the journey home.

She fixed her smudged mascara with a handkerchief. ‘I have to go, pet, sorry.’

This was the first time she had said ‘sorry’. I was expecting more.

‘Can I have a contact number or address?’

‘No, sorry, this is all I can do, and I wish you the very best, really I do.’

I started to feel slight panic. The sisters got up like bodyguards, in case things got out of hand, no doubt.

‘OK, then please can I have something of yours? Anything?’

‘I haven’t got anything.’

‘Please, could you all look in your bags, and give me something, anything.’

They all rooted around. My mother went into the small zip compartment in her handbag.

‘I’ve only got this. It’s just a stupid thing I’ve had in this bag since Christmas, I think. It’s just something stupid from a cracker.’

‘Let me see.’

She handed me a tiny silver alien, like the robot thing in the seventies Smash adverts; it was just bigger than my thumbnail.

‘And this.’ Then she passed me a small silver aeroplane the same size. ‘I got them in a Christmas cracker and they’ve been in my bag all this time.’

‘Just stupid things, like,’ said my auntie Carol, offering me a small pillbox from her bag. I put the plane and the alien in the pillbox.

‘I don’t know what you’re wanting with them,’ said my mother.

‘Just something to keep,’ I said, already attaching massive meaning to them. The alien, of course, was me, and the plane was what brought me to her, and what took her from me, and what would take me away from her. The pillbox was for the bitter pill she’d had to swallow all these years. (Plus, ‘The Bitterest Pill I Ever Had To Swallow’ by The Jam, a song I fixated on when I was at school.) These items were perfect. ‘I want to say something important to you.’

She looked afraid again, like when she first entered. ‘All right, but then I’ve got to go, I’m sorry.’

My mum stood up.

‘If I can’t get in touch with you after this, I want you to
know
you can with me. One day I’ll get my shit together and do something, and I’ll be someone, famous maybe, and you can come to me. I won’t mind, OK?’