Murder Most Fab (6 page)

There
was a secret at the heart of our existence, which always stood between us: the
identity of my father. I didn’t have a clue who he was. The subject wasn’t
taboo, but if I asked about him, Mother would squint dreamily at the sky, say
something like ‘You have his eyes, little man!’ and no more. Any prolonged gaze
skyward meant that informative conversation must stop.

Specifics
were hard to get out of her, and even as a young child I registered the
inconsistencies in the answers she gave me, and the picture I had in my mind of
my father grew increasingly bizarre. I’m sure she wasn’t deliberately evasive —
I’d describe it more as creative ramblings. According to her, my father might
be tall or short, black or white, musical or tone deaf, all in the same week.
The only thing that never altered was her devotion to him, and his to her. It
wasn’t long before I grasped that she said whatever came into her head, never
thinking I would absorb every word and dwell on it obsessively as I lay in my
little bed gazing up at the ceiling where she had painted the stars and the
planets for me, albeit in an order of her own choosing. There was no North
Star, for instance, but a lovely green four-leaf clover instead. ‘Much nicer!’ she
said.

That
was typical of how she rewrote the facts of life to suit herself. In the
entrance hall of our cottage, for example, she marked every six months how much
I had grown. Except the latest pencil mark was a good three inches higher than
I was. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that’s how tall you would have grown if Renata Rabbit
hadn’t eaten all of my lovely, healthy spinach, the little minx. It’s only
fair. I don’t see why you should suffer.’

It
dawned on me that my mother would never reveal the definitive truth about my
father, and the picture of him that I had lovingly built up crumbled into dust.
I couldn’t even be cross with her — she probably no longer knew what truth was.
So, instead of asking for facts, I enquired why he never came to visit.

‘He
doesn’t know about you, sweet-pea,’ she answered, ‘but if he did, he’d be very
proud indeed.’

After
that, I gave up trying and instead made up a new image of him: he was a soldier
from the army camp in Dymchurch, perhaps, a brave and handsome man of the kind
I read about in my favourite adventure stories. I filled in the gaps with my
childish imagination, and if my friends asked about him, I’d say he died in
action, fighting for his country, but I had no idea in what battle or country.

There was one person I
could rely on to tell the truth: Alice’s mother and my grandmother, Rita. She
told me once that my mother had been just nineteen when she had fallen
pregnant, and that it had all been ‘most unfortunate’. But she, too, would say
no more.

I
looked forward to seeing my Grandma Rita. As far as I knew she was my only
close relative, and she visited us every month, sweeping down from London in
her big black shiny car, which all but blocked the lane outside our cottage.
She wore lipstick, powder and chunky jewellery, but the effect was more
formidable than glamorous. She’d peer at me disapprovingly, stroking her
crucifix, then silently hand me whatever she’d brought for me, something
unexciting but practical, the kind of thing it would never have occurred to my
mother I might need — a grey jumper or a navy blue winter coat to replace the
one that Grandma Rita had noticed on her previous visit was threadbare. She
took no pleasure in the act of giving, seeming more embarrassed by it than
anything, and I always thanked her politely: her presents were useful, even if
they didn’t set my pulse racing.

Grandma
Rita never stayed for long. After an hour at the most she would glance at her
watch and say, ‘Goodness, is that the time?

I
mustn’t catch the traffic. Goodbye, Alice, and goodbye, Johnny — be kind to
your mother and work hard at your studies. Show me the flowers before I go.’

This
was always a highlight. While my mother stayed inside to clear away our tea
things, Grandma Rita took my hand and I led her down the passage to the back
door. From there she’d peruse the flowerbeds.

‘Blackfly
on the rosebuds. I suppose your mother wouldn’t hear of killing them?’

‘Oh,
no,’ I’d answer, shocked. ‘They’ve all got names.’

‘How
ridiculous! What’s that one called?’

‘Jeffrey.’

‘And
him?’

‘He’s a
she. Claudia.’

We’d
play this game for a while, until she broke away to point at some bindweed.
‘Pull that out, Johnny. It’ll strangle everything else. Never mind Alice, just do
it, quickly.’

And I
did. In what felt like an act of defiance to my mother, I tugged at the yards
of weed that wove their sticky way among the cultivated plants and shrubs.

‘Do
that whenever your mother’s not watching and your evening primrose will soon
recover,’ she said, then lowered her voice to whisper, ‘and if you spray the blackfly
with rosewater it doesn’t kill them. They just fall into a deep sleep …‘

Abrupt
and unbending as my grandmother was, I relished her visits. It was a novelty to
have someone stiff and cross to talk to, such a refreshing change after my
mother’s Butlins brightness. I would sometimes force myself to misbehave just
so I could hear a raised voice.

‘Your
shoes are muddy, remove them at once, you mucky pup!’ Grandma Rita would shout,
when I tramped in from the garden. My mother would have said, ‘What a lot of
mud! You
have
been having fun outside!’

I
worked out later that the purpose of Grandma Rita’s visits was to pay the rent
on the cottage and give my mother her small allowance, which we depended on for
our survival.

Nothing
was ever said, but I sensed Grandma Rita disapproved of her wayward daughter
and the bastard grandson she had produced. My mother never indicated that she
had disgraced her family by having me, but I began to realize she had made
great sacrifices for me — willingly and without condition, but still she had
paid a price for bringing me into the world. There was a sense of banishment
about our lives. Apart from Grandma Rita, no other family member ever showed
their face. Our Christmas cards were few.

The
mystery of my father hung round us like a mist, and I could never forget that
this secret lay between us. When my mother smiled at the moon, or cried at the
beauty of the Kent sunset, or stared for hours into the log fire, I imagined
she was thinking of my father. As a child, I had learnt not to ask difficult
questions; as I grew older, either my mother or I became a little more
perceptive. Either way, I began to doubt the sincerity of her unstoppable,
almost unnatural happiness. Maybe, I wondered, a torrent of misery lay behind
it, held back with immense willpower. If she saw me uproot a weed or massacre
the blackfly, it might come crashing in.

One damp October night
when I was twelve everything changed. My mother came into my bedroom to wish me
goodnight. She sat on my bed, hugged me to her chest and said, ‘Promise me one
thing. Promise you’ll live an interesting life. I don’t care about success,
happiness or dignity. Just make it a good story.’

‘I
promise,’ I answered, not knowing what she was talking about. ‘Are you all
right?’

‘Johnny,
my little love, I don’t live my life in the real world. I don’t hold with it. I
think it’s for the best,’ she said, as if that explained everything. ‘I tried
it once and couldn’t hack it. Goodnight.’

She stood
up, and her petticoats rustled as she walked to the door. Then she looked — not
at me but at the clover leaf on my ceiling — and spoke:

‘When I am dead, my dearest,

Sing no sad songs for me;

Plant thou no roses at my head,

Nor shady cypress tree
…’

For a moment, I racked my
brain but then the next few lines swam into my mind. I answered obediently:

‘Be the green grass above me

With showers and dewdrops wet;

And if thou wilt, remember,

And if thou wilt, forget.’

Christina Rossetti was one
of the first poets I had memorized.

Later
that night I awoke with a start. As I blinked into the darkness, I could hear
my mother weeping. She sobbed quietly and without hysteria, the sound muffled
beneath bedclothes but a relentless, soulful cry, pulsing into the night,
unanswered and despairing. Then I heard the words she was repeating: ‘I see
him, I see him!’

Eventually
she stopped and I fell into a disturbed sleep.

The
next morning when I woke up for school there was no sign of her. She had
started to lay out some breakfast for me, but had only got as far as leaving a
grapefruit on the kitchen table with a knife sticking out of it. Beside it
there was a note with another of Christina’s couplets:

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

I felt very strange about
this but didn’t know what to do other than make my packed lunch and set off to
school on my bicycle.

Because
my mother was as she was, I had always clung to routine, whatever the
circumstances at home. It was a way of making myself feel safe. I could only
assume she had gone out early to pick some berries or gather kindling.

That
afternoon I was hauled out of class and taken to the headmaster’s office. He
was behind his desk and Grandma Rita was sitting stiffly in a winged armchair
by the fireplace.

‘Hello,
Johnny,’ she said. ‘You’re to come and stay with me for a while. Alice … your
mother is unwell. Too much
Wind in the Willows,
I dare say.’ She tried
to sound carefree, but it didn’t come easily to her.

‘It’s just
a temporary arrangement,’ said my elderly headmaster, Father Thomas,
reasonably. ‘I’m sure you’ll be back here very soon.’ He gave me what was
intended to be a reassuring smile, and stood up, bent over like a turtle
straining to escape its shell.

There
was an air of embarrassment in the room, as if someone had made a nasty smell.
I had encountered this before, the previous August, after the parish priest
asked my mother to wear something more suitable than a bikini top and hot pants
to Sunday Mass. Afterwards, the village’s horror had been made apparent to me
whenever I popped into the shop for a packet of crisps on my way home from
school. People practically held their noses.

This
current situation was very worrying indeed, though.

‘Is she
all right?’ I asked, old enough to know that the truth was, once again, being
kept from me.

‘One
doesn’t often use the words “all right” in relation to Alice, but she is …
happy enough. Just indisposed. It would be unwise for her to attempt her
motherly duties at present.’

‘My
son,’ said Father Thomas (a term of address I longed to hear, if not from him),
‘how was your mother last night?’ He sat down again, indicating that this was
no casual enquiry. They both leant forward, waiting for my answer.

By now
I was most concerned about my mother. I had no idea what ‘indisposed’
signified, but it sounded grim, and I didn’t want to betray my mother and get
her into more trouble by recounting her distressed behaviour.

‘She
was fine. Great, in fact. Her usual happy self. We read some Sylvia Plath poems
before bedtime. Where is she? Please can I see her?’

Father
Thomas and Grandma Rita looked knowingly at each other.

‘Sylvia
Plath,’ said Father Thomas, mouthing the name so I wouldn’t hear, although I
could see him perfectly well. Then he whispered loudly, ‘Head in the oven. I’ll
say no more …

‘Let’s
be off,’ said Grandma Rita. ‘We don’t want to get caught in the rush-hour.
Thank you, Father Thomas. We shall liaise with the authorities and no doubt be
in touch.’

‘Yes,
indeed,’ said Father Thomas, rather formally, rising from his chair a second
time and offering an arthritic hand. He shuffled round the desk and his hand
now hovered over my head. ‘Bless you, my son. God go with you.’

Grandma
Rita leant heavily on me as we made our way out of the school towards the
Bentley.

‘Not a
word in front of Andrew,’ she said, nodding towards a middle-aged man in a
peaked cap who was needlessly polishing the windscreen with a chamois leather.
‘He’s such a gossip.’

As we
settled into our seats, she said, ‘Radio Four, please, Andrew. Shall we break
into the Murray Mints?’

Apart
from this, and the odd tut about the traffic or rude comment about the type of
people who lived in Chatham, we travelled to London in silence. We reclined on
the back seat, separated by a thick, log-like armrest made of creamy leather.
‘Stop shaking, Johnny,’ said my grandmother.

Until
then I hadn’t known I was.

She
surprised me by reaching out across the armrest and taking my hand. ‘Worry not.
I think your mother will recover, and be able to look after you as well as ever
she did. And I’m always here, you know. More of a soldier on guard than a
guardian angel, true enough, but here all the same.’ She turned her head to
stare at me. Her shoulders faced front. ‘You look so small. But you’ll be fine
—you
are
my grandson, after all.’ She patted my arm, and reached into
her bag for another Murray Mint.