‘I can’t say I’m surprised. Your aunt Vanessa only lasted one day at secretarial college.’
‘Mother, I already told you. I haven’t dropped out. I just came back to collect a few things.’
‘It was a blessing in disguise, of course,’ Madeleine went on. ‘She would never have made a typist, not with those nails. Or her attitude to men.’
They sat opposite each other in the small, tidy room that Bill called the living room and Madeleine called the parlour. A modest sunrise was breaking through the net curtains: a Sunday morning in Kate’s childhood home in Deptford. A very recent childhood as far as Madeleine was concerned. As for Kate, she had let herself in through the front door for the first time in many years. Since, in fact, her mother had sold the place after Bill’s death. Kate was tremulously aware that her father was asleep upstairs.
Kate sipped the Earl Grey her mother had made for them. She hadn’t slept. She had ridden with Luke in the ambulance, holding his hand and chanting to herself ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry’ as the paramedics improved on her work to stop the bleeding. Once he was stable in intensive care there was nothing to do except call his parents. Barbara had answered with impressive speed given that she must have been in bed. But then, Kate imagined, this is what parents do: the phone rings after midnight and they expect the worst. Poor Barbara! Kate had always loved her and had now admired the focused and unfussy way she had taken the details of the hospital from this strange young woman on the end of the phone. She had told Barbara the truth, from a certain point of view: she didn’t know Luke well but there had been an accident.
Kate looked at her watch. There were no trains that late and Luke’s dad, Richard, would have driven them from Salisbury to York through the night. Kate had felt–perhaps conveniently–that she would only get in the way if she hung around. The truth was she couldn’t bear it. She couldn’t bear to see Luke’s parents in a hospital. Not again. She couldn’t begin to imagine the lies she would have to tell them while concealing the full impact of her own re-animated grief. What was she supposed to say? She was some girl who met him a few hours ago and that’s why she was at the hospital looking like the world had imploded? That Luke had somehow managed to give her his parents’ phone number before losing consciousness? She couldn’t do it. He was alive and there were doctors; when he came round he would see his mum and dad–not the witch who might as well have pushed him down the stairs with her broomstick. She had tried never to take the word ‘witch’ as an insult even when that was the intention. A witch was just an eccentric woman who tried to heal people in ways which too often provoked fear. Yup, she’d been a witch all right.
Above all, Kate needed to talk to her father. She had waited outside York station in the dark and fare-dodged the first train to London. God bless 1992: the ticket inspectors who couldn’t be arsed before rush hour and the automated barriers that didn’t exist.
Madeleine was a light sleeper and had appeared in her splendid black and gold oriental-style dressing gown before Kate had managed to fill the kettle.
And now, in her parlour, she was inspecting her daughter with a shrewd eye. The dawn had broken and Madeleine reached to turn off a side lamp without taking her eyes off Kate’s clothes. ‘Your father will be up shortly,’ she said. ‘You might want to visit the bathroom first and have a wash and a change.’
‘Do I smell, Mother?’
‘I’m sure it’s him you’ve come to see anyway. Lucky to catch him on a Sunday, but then of course you’ve thought of that.’
At forty-five, Kate’s mother was a state-of-the-art delivery system for laser-guided passive-aggression. In her head, Kate counted to twenty, slowly and in Russian. Madeleine had just entered her dyed blonde phase–a stylish bob, efficiently brushed in the dark while her husband slept. The lines at the downturn of her mouth were less pronounced than Kate was used to, the green eyes were agile and focused. This was vintage Mother–a woman of agency. Kate was on high alert.
‘Darling,’ Madeleine said suddenly enough to make Kate jump. ‘If it’s man-trouble, you know you can tell me about it.’
Kate made a rapid mental inventory of people she would discuss ‘man-trouble’ with before discussing it with her mother. The list started with Dr Susie Orbach and she got down to Anders Breivik before giving up. ‘There’s really no man-trouble, Mother.’
‘Well, then,’ Madeleine said, edging forward in her straight-backed chair, ‘woman-trouble, then. You can tell me, darling–I was around in the sixties. I’m quite unshockable.’
‘Oh God, here we go again.’ Kate was already annoyed with herself for taking the bait. ‘When are you going to accept that I’m not a lesbian?’
‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Look at Gloria Hunniford.’
‘I understand it would… hang on, Gloria Hunniford isn’t gay either.’
‘Well… you say that.’
‘Yes, I do say that.’
‘Well…’
‘No, not “well”. Look, I understand it would give you great pleasure to tell Estelle and Sheila and all the other Ladies Who Lunch that your daughter is a massive homo and you’re bravely standing by her, but—’
‘There’s no need to mock my friends. They’ve already been very supportive.’
‘What do you mean “already”? Oh Christ, I knew it! You’ve been dining out on this for years!’
‘Is it any wonder? The martial arts! The way you dress! We worry about you, darling.’
‘Well, you can take your bullshit worry and shove it up your arse, darling.’
Madeleine’s eyes widened at the appropriation of the d-word. Eighteen-year-old Kate could be argumentative but this was considerably more push-back than she was used to. She loved it. This had the makings of a proper fight. ‘There’s really no need to be so hurtful, Katherine.’
But Kate had one or two things on her mind. ‘Martial arts, for crying out loud. Look at you. Going around in the nineteen-sixties with your Little Red Book, quoting tosspot aphorisms from a mass-murderer, and then the first sign that your daughter is into something girls aren’t supposed to be into–that’s it. She must be queer.’
‘I would never use such a prejudiced term.’
‘Fuck the terms. The terms change. They’re less important than the individuals.’
‘Individualism, is it? Spoken like a child of Thatcher!’
‘Who you voted for twice, you phoney old twat.’
‘Kate!’
‘What? I thought you were unshockable.’
‘There’s such a thing as civility. I thought you understood that.’
This was an instinctively smart move. Kate knew she had an appalling temper and it constantly undermined her arguments. She took a breath. ‘I’m sorry. That was rude.’
‘All these years…’ Madeleine shook her head in martyred regret.
Kate understood that she had raised the emotional temperature too high for Madeleine to listen to another word she said. But she finished her argument anyway–something which, ironically, her mother had always taught her to do.
‘I apologise again,’ she said. ‘But it’s not cool to tell girls who like karate that they’re lesbian. They might be, and that’s fine, but they might not be and that’s also fine. The point is, girls don’t get into boys’ stuff so our parents can find an excuse to feel good about themselves. We like it because we like it.’
Madeleine had her hands in front of her eyes and was beginning to vibrate. ‘I can’t believe a daughter of mine is such a homophobe.’
‘Mother, please don’t cry.’
Madeleine was crying. Or rather, as Kate wearily recognised, Madeleine had actively summoned the necessary feelings which would allow her to cry. The feelings were real but they had been accessed with precision: she was a consummate actor. Kate offered a silent prayer of thanks that her mother would never really get the hang of Twitter. This talent for willed grievance would have made her a star.
There was a creak from the floorboards above them. ‘And now you’ve woken your father,’ she moaned. ‘Perfect.’
Kate was reminded that even Madeleine wasn’t going to live forever. Whatever victory this was, it was worthless. She tried a peace offering–at least a morsel of gossip which could be expanded at a future ‘luncheon’ with Estelle and Sheila. ‘All right, Mother. Look. There is a boy.’
Madeleine stopped crying and found a tissue. ‘There’s no need to humour me,’ she said bitterly. ‘It’s perfectly clear the matter is beneath your dignity.’
‘Actually, two boys.’
Madeleine interrupted her nose-blow. ‘Oh… Kate!’
‘I know,’ said Kate flatly. ‘Outrageous.’
‘You’ve only been there twenty-four hours. Are you determined to die of AIDS?’
‘I haven’t shagged them, Mother. I’m just a bit confused. That’s all I have to say about it.’
The loo flushed upstairs. Kate said, ‘And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell Dad. I don’t want either of you worried about me.’ Kate had never tried this before–bringing her mother into a conspiracy that excluded Bill. The woman opposite uttered a non-committal ‘Hmm…’ but she was clearly considering whether or not to feel flattered. Kate went on: ‘But like I say, I came back to collect some stuff. That I forgot to pack. There were some things that I missed.’
‘Hello, hello! I know that voice!’ Bill popped his head round the door, his thick, greying hair madly unbrushed; the collar of his pyjama top sticking up. He looked like an Elvis impersonator with twenty minutes to sober up before a show. Kate stood and approached him as calmly as possible. Which was not very calmly. She hugged him close.
Warmth. Peppermint. Cigarettes. Yesterday’s after shave. A touch of BO. All present and correct.
‘Looks like somebody missed me, then!’ She released him and laughed, wiping her eyes. Bill turned to his wife. ‘I told you, Maddy. I said Kate can’t go two days without our scintillating company.’
Madeleine drained her teacup and stood. ‘You said no such thing, Bill. You and your stories.’
Kate sensed her dad’s surprise at the tightness of the hug but he stayed on the surface for now. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a cup of tea.’
‘There’s one in the pot,’ said Madelaine, crossing to the door. ‘I’ll pour it.’
‘Oh yes please then, love.’
Kate had recently recovered the power of speech. She said weakly, ‘I came back to collect a few things.’
Madeleine had just gone through the door but now instantly reappeared. ‘That’s right. Kate came back to collect a few things. Also, she’s overwrought because she entangled herself in a ménage à trois. For all I know, she’s working as a prostitute and has got herself pregnant three times over. But it’s a women’s issue and it’s between ourselves. She’d prefer not to talk about it and I for one respect that.’
Bill turned his big face back to Kate. ‘Blimey.’
Kate looked from her dad to her mum with a resigned smile. ‘Thank you, Mother.’
‘Not at all. And you’re staying for lunch, I take it?’
‘I don’t want to intrude.’
Her parents were united in the same astonishment and the same word: ‘Intrude?’
‘Tell me how you met,’ Kate said as Bill handed her another saucepan to dry. They were side by side in the little kitchen, looking out onto the back yard.
Earlier, Kate had helped her mother chop vegetables, relieved that she didn’t have to conceal any new-found twenty-first-century skill in this area because she didn’t have any. The pair managed to restrict their conversation to literature and the weather. After lunch, Madeleine retired for her nap. Bill’s nap would be later, of course. It was a routine which Kate had to admire for its easy predictability. And although the division of domestic labour was largely traditional–which is to say Madeleine did basically everything–both parties seemed largely content with the arrangement. The husband went out to work; and if this particular wife felt she’d had a rough deal from the universe (or in her case–God) then she didn’t seem to locate her resentments in Bill. Madeleine Theroux was angry about a lot of things and with a lot of people. But not the handsome rocker she found in that dance hall in 1963. And presumably–and Kate still didn’t like to conjure these particular images, no matter how grown up she was supposed to be–well, they had separate naps but not separate beds.
Bill patiently scrubbed a roasting tray. ‘Oh gawd, you must have heard it a thousand times over.’
‘I think I’ve heard it twice. Go on. I like the way you tell it.’
He did an impression of a Northern Irish stand-up which was reassuringly dated even for 1992. ‘It’s the way I tell ’em! It’s a cracker!’
‘Go on.’
He didn’t need any more encouragement. ‘Well, it was a Saturday night down the Mecca in Hammersmith. The Palais de Danse, no less. Joe Loss & His Orchestra, hundreds of youngsters. Packed, it was. Magic. And I see this lovely-looking girl sitting on her own. Beautiful light green dress she was wearing, classy as you like. You’d think she’d be getting a lot of attention but nobody dared–half of us thought it was flamin’ Princess Margaret. Anyway, I go up and ask if she’d mind me spending a few moments telling her all about my new boots. Shoes, actually. Creepers. Bloody stupid idea but I couldn’t think of anything better to say. But I did know that beautiful women never want to hear that they’re beautiful because either they know already or they don’t agree. Either way, they’ve heard it all before. As you probably know, love. Anyway, she says she’d been admiring my new shoes from a distance and couldn’t believe it had taken me this long to come and tell her all about them. Cool as a cucumber, she was, and I nearly wet myself. Anyway, we get talking. She must have liked the look of me, or more likely felt sorry for me. And then I can’t remember how but we get on to politics and she asks if I’m Labour and I say yeah. And to my great surprise she says that she’s just joined her local Labour club, mainly to stick it to her old man but she’s a proper Wilson fan. And I tell her that, no offence, but that comes as a bit of a surprise, what with her sounding quite posh. She laughs at this and then says, “People say I’m this and people say I’m that… but I know that I’m just Madeleine Theroux.” And I say, “Yeah, we’re all just muddling through, love. Anyway, let’s have a fuckin’ dance.”’
Kate cackled at this. But had never understood whether Bill had misheard Madeleine in the noisy dance hall or whether his reply had been a deliberate joke. The tea towel in her hand slowed its journey around the rim of a saucepan as she realised this might be her last chance to ask.
She decided against it. Some stories shouldn’t be explained. They should be left alive with their own mysteries and contradictions. But it prompted another question. ‘Do you believe in fate, then?’
Bill raised his eyebrows at the soapy water. ‘What, as in me and your mother?’
‘Yeah. Do you think two people are ever meant for each other? Or is that just what couples tell themselves when they get too old to go dancing?’
‘Cheeky mare! We can still dance! You should have seen us at Keith’s fiftieth.’
‘You know what I mean.’
Amused, Bill took his hands out of the water and leaned on the sink. He looked up through the window at the clouds. ‘Nah, not really.’
Kate burst out laughing. ‘You old romantic, you!’
‘Well, you did ask.’
‘No, that’s good. It’s honest, anyway.’
Still smiling, Bill entered a reverie and unconsciously twisted at his wedding ring. ‘It’s not fate that counts, Katie. It’s love. Could she have ended up marrying someone else if I hadn’t gone out that night? Yeah, ’course she could.’
‘Could you?’
Bill looked at her.
‘I mean, if you hadn’t been in that place at that time. If you’d gone out the next Saturday. Or even if you’d been in a different corner of the Palais on the same night… It could all have been different, couldn’t it? There’s no law that says it had to be you and Mother.’
‘No, ’course not. No, there’s no law exactly. But… you don’t tend to think about it like that. At least I don’t anyway. It’s… I know you’re a bright one, Kate, but it’s hard to explain to someone young who’s never been married.’
Kate nodded carefully. ‘Yeah, I’m just interested. I suppose I’m thinking about the future.’
‘Well, all right–so you meet someone. Maybe it’s random, but the point is you met them and there’s no going back. You can’t go back. You all right, love? Don’t worry, that’s a quality saucepan–I’m always dropping stuff.’
Kate silently picked up her saucepan and placed it gently on the draining board. Bill went on.
‘Like I say, you can never go back. And you wouldn’t want to, usually. It would be weird. And then if you get married… well, that’s a choice. That’s not fate, that’s a choice. You marry them because you love them. And marriage… well, it’s a long game, at least if you’re lucky. You take the rough with the smooth, no doubt about it.’
Kate had to insist. ‘Yeah, I know all that, but—’
‘Well, you say that you know all that, but—’
‘I mean, I can imagine all that, but… what if you did have to go back? What if you had what you thought was a good marriage and a good life but then you’re back in Hammersmith Palais and there’s some other girl that you didn’t notice properly the first time? And she’s amazing. Not like some shrinking violet who’s good at looking like a shrinking violet but is obviously a massively confident English rose–but an actual shrinking violet…’ The national flower metaphor was not helping Kate; there was very little in her latest experience of Toby Harker that involved any shrinking. ‘I mean, more like a lovely thistle really, but a lot less prickly than you thought, and anyway some prickles are good so…’
She took a breath. ‘But I’m saying that it’s possible to get it right the first time but then, when you know what you know now–which you didn’t know then–you still think you were right the first time, but now in the second time there’s a whole new first time, and this time something different is definitely right.’ She looked at her dad and optimistically added, ‘Surely.’
Bill had been frowning through this and dried his hands on a tea towel. ‘Katie,’ he said calmly, ‘what’s this all about?’
‘What?’
‘Why are you here, love?’
‘I just came back to collect a few things.’
‘Come on.’
Kate turned slowly and walked to the other side of the room.
It is the ambition of many parents that the phrase ‘come on’, said in the right tone at the right moment, will elicit from their teenaged children an outpouring of truth. All previous evasions and secrets will fall away and there will follow an unbridled sharing of souls in which the parents will have the opportunity to divest themselves of their considerable wisdom and thereby not only make the lives of their children happier but also make their own lives less full of guilt and inadequacy. This was no such moment.
Bill had earned it–he had put the hours in with his daughter–but Kate knew there was no way she could give him even the most general outline of what was going on. She felt her throat beginning to constrict and wiped her eyes as if to warn them to behave. ‘There’s just some slightly complicated stuff going on and I needed a break.’
‘Sweetheart, what is it? You’ve been there one day.’
As a diversion, as much as anything else, Kate said, ‘A lot can happen in one day. Look at Grandad Marsden.’
‘Y’what?’
‘Grandad Marsden at the Battle of Cable Street.’
‘What the bloody hell has he got to do with it?’
‘I mean, what if he hadn’t been there? Seeing off Mosley’s fascists. It could all have been different, couldn’t it?’
Bill turned his back and looked out of the window. Kate frowned at her father from the end of the kitchen and persisted. ‘I mean, that could have changed the course of history, right? It only takes one person to do something different and… well, maybe I’m not meant to be at uni. Maybe I should be here spending time with you and I should… I dunno, get a job at Our Price. I mean, not Our Price obviously, because they won’t last another five minutes, but—’
Bill turned to face her. ‘You’re not jacking-in your education!’
‘Why are you so angry? Why d’you always get like this when anyone mentions your dad?’
‘I wasn’t talking about—’
‘Is it just a story? Was he not there?’
‘Yes, he was there!’
‘So why—’
‘Because he was there all right, but he was on the wrong bloody side, wasn’t he?’
Kate gawped. The only sound in the room was from the washing machine going through a rinse cycle. Bill noted her reaction. ‘Oh yeah, that’s right. The great hero of Cable Street.’ Keeping his voice under control because he didn’t want to wake Madeleine, Bill broke into a bizarre on-the-spot dance routine to the tune of ‘My Old Man’s a Dustman’.
‘My old man’s a Blackshirt! He wears a Blackshirt’s hat! He puts on Nazi trousers, and he goosesteps like a twat!’
Kate gazed at her father as he recovered his breath, recognising the typically English defence against personal humiliation–making a joke of it. She felt a fraction of the pain Bill had been carrying around all this time. Breaking the silence, she said, ‘Did you make up some verses too?’
‘Several.’
Wordlessly she crossed the room and hugged her dad. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, you silly old sod?’ she said into his shoulder.
‘Nobody wants an arsehole for a grandad, do they?’
‘I wouldn’t have cared.’
‘Oh yes, you would’ve.’
She thought of the white lies she had told Luke about his book in order to protect him; and about the truth she had told him yesterday–memories that had left him not so much rescued as hospitalised. There was no way of knowing if she’d done the right thing. And Madeleine… ‘Mother’s always known, then?’
Bill disengaged and looked sheepishly at his daughter, his hands slipping down to find hers. ‘Yeah, ’course she knows. It was part of the reason we got on so well, to be honest. Daddy Theroux was a bit of a shocking bastard an’ all.’ Kate adapted to this new reality as best she could. She quite liked the idea that her parents’ relationship was partly founded as an anti-fascist alliance.
‘Anyway,’ Bill said, ‘they’re both gone now. But I won’t lie, it was horrible growing up knowing the old man had been one of those people. Yobs on London streets, shouting the odds. Waving their Union Flags, looking for someone to blame. Daily Mail egging them on, police not knowing what to do with them. Horrible.’
‘Well,’ said Kate, almost to herself and with some bitterness, ‘those days are gone, aren’t they?’
‘Maybe,’ said Bill, ‘but you’ve always got to keep your eye out.’ He went to the kettle and tested its weight. ‘They don’t come with a calling card any more, not since the war. They don’t kick the door down and say, “’Allo, we’re the Nazis.”’ He took the kettle to the sink and filled it. ‘But they’ll be back–one way or another.’
Kate watched him replace the kettle and reach for a couple of mugs. She said, ‘Because people are always going to go through hard times and there’s always going to be scared politicians.’
‘Yeah,’ said Bill. ‘That, and the fact that some people are just arseholes.’
She laughed and he joined in. He leaned back on the sink and folded his arms. ‘You’ve always got to be on the lookout. You’ve always got to do your bit.’
Kate thought of the memory stick she had posted back to Charles Hunt.
‘Look, love, I won’t go on if you don’t want to talk about it. And I’m not exactly in a position to give you a bollocking about keeping secrets.’
‘You’d be on a bit of a sticky wicket with that one, Dad.’
He looked down at the floor between them and shook his head at the thought of the ‘scene’ they had just had. Kate and Bill didn’t do drama; not usually. ‘Yeah, fair enough. But look, whatever’s going on at uni–whatever trouble you’re in–if it really is trouble, I’ll help if I can. You know I will. But at the end of the day you’re eighteen years old. You’re a woman. Whatever’s going on, you need to face it.’
‘I know,’ she said quietly.
‘All this talk of the past, stories about me and your mum… I don’t see how it helps you, love. Now, if you want to stay here then nothing would make me happier. But I gotta tell you, Kate–you’d only be dreaming. This will always be your home, love, but it’s not where you belong any more. Not really, not you. Don’t you think it’s time to go back to the real world? Your own life?’
Something inside Kate changed. She felt a clarity blow through her mind like an autumn breeze dispersing the seeds of a dandelion.
She only said, ‘Give me another lift to the station?’
Bill nodded in a sad kind of satisfaction. ‘Let’s have this cup of tea before we say cheerio again.’
‘Yeah,’ said Kate. ‘Let’s.’