My Real Children (21 page)

“She’s on her mother’s passport,” Pat said. “We didn’t think.” At the Swiss and French borders they had barely glanced at their papers. Borders within Europe were growing less important. Only Britain still maintained its moat.

“Well, next time think,” the man said. “Where’s your mother?” he asked Jinny.

“In London,” Jinny said, with a quick glance at Pat.

“All right then. You’re lucky you’re all British and you’ve only been in Europe, or you could be in real trouble.”

“Thank you so much, officer,” Pat said, and gave the cringing smile she hated giving. She hated getting in because she was white and had the right kind of voice, too, but she wasn’t going to start any fights. She shepherded the children away.

By the time they reached London it was early evening and they had been travelling for twenty-four hours without a break. All of them except Philip were exhausted. Philip had an amazing capacity to sleep in any circumstances, which he had not lost when he left babyhood. Pat took a taxi to the hospital, with the children and the luggage. At reception she asked for Bee, and was told that only relatives could visit and that children were not admitted under any circumstances. She could have sat down and wept, and perhaps the woman on the desk recognised her distress. “Her fiancé is with her. I’ll send somebody to see if you can speak to him.”

“Her fiancé?” Pat blinked.

“Yes.”

After a long wait, Michael came out, and Pat understood. “Oh Pat, thank goodness you’re here.” The children ran to him and he bent down and made a fuss of them.

“They won’t let me see Bee,” Pat said, over their heads.

“Let me talk to them. Wait.” Michael went up to the desk and argued with the receptionist. Pat tried to keep Philip still. Flossie started to cry. After a while Michael came back. “They’ll let you in for just a minute. I’ll stay with the children. You should have said you were her sister. I told them you were my sister, and she’s stretching a point.”

“And you told them you’re Bee’s fiancé?”

“That was Bee’s idea. Otherwise they’d only talk to Donald, and he had to go back up to Penrith, the sheep needed him. You have to be a relative, in hospital. Friends aren’t anything.” He patted her shoulder. “Go in and see her and then I’ll talk to you.”

Pat followed the directions and found herself in a big ward full of women in beds. All the beds had tight white covers pulled over them. At the end of the room was a television, blasting out a soap opera. Most of the beds had visitors. When Pat saw Bee she couldn’t understand how the shape she made under the covers was so small. She was wearing a hospital gown but had Pat’s old green silk scarf wound around her neck. She bent down and embraced her. They were both weeping. “Oh Pat,” Bee said. “I feel like such a fool.”

“I’m just so glad you’re alive,” Pat said. “I kept thinking how you could have been killed.”

“Might have been better,” Bee said. “No, I don’t mean that. But I’ve had six operations, and they’ve given up on trying to save the knees. I’ll never walk again. I’m going to be in a wheelchair forever, no two ways about it.”

“We’ll find ways to cope,” Pat said. “I love you so much. I couldn’t have managed without you.”

“Good to see you too,” Bee said, and smiled. “Everyone’s looking at us.”

“I don’t care,” Pat said. “Will it hurt you if I sit down on the bed?”

“Yes,” Bee said. “Everything hurts me. I’ll have to get used to that. And goodness knows how I’m going to manage in the lab.”

Pat sat on the chair by the bed and took Bee’s hand in hers. “When are they going to let you out of here?”

“It could be a while. But now you’re here maybe if you want I can get them to send me to the Addison in Cambridge, which is just as good.” Bee bit her lip. “I didn’t know if they’d let you in. We told them Michael was—”

“I know. It was a good idea. Michael told them I’m his sister. If you move you to Cambridge we can tell them I’m your sister.”

“Hate having to lie,” Bee said. “It isn’t illegal, for women.”

“No, but no point getting into trouble. The children. I had a hard time bringing Jinny into the country. She was very good, she said just the right thing.”

“How are they?” Bee asked, and her face crumpled.

“They’re wonderful. We came back on the train and they were all three really good. They’re longing to see you, but there’s no hope of getting them in here.”

“You do still—I mean, I’m going to be useless. I don’t even know if I’ll be able to work. I don’t want—”

“Bee, you wouldn’t be useless even if you were just a head in a jar,” Pat said. “And I still want you. I wish this hadn’t happened because it’s a horrible thing to happen to you, but I love you as much as ever, more than ever.”

“I’ll ask about the move to the Addison, then,” Bee said. “I think—it could be months before I’m out. And at the moment it’s all bedpans, and it might always be bedpans.”

“I can cope,” Pat said. “If it has to be bedpans, you’re worth it.”

Then a bell rang for the end of visiting time, and she had to leave.

20

“It’ll Change Everything”: Trish 1973–1977

George took his O Levels in the summer of 1973 and passed everything with flying colors—seven As and two Bs, far better marks than Doug or Helen had ever brought home. He elected to do sciences at A Level—Maths, Physics and Chemistry. “I want to do space science, Mum,” he said. Tricia remembered his enthusiasm for the moon landing and smiled.

“You still want to be an astronaut?”

George blushed. “Not an astronaut. A scientist who works in space. They have Hope Station now, and they’re starting to set up the moonbase. That’s the most likely way for me to get up there.”

“Whatever makes you happy,” Tricia said.

Tricia didn’t understand her children. She never had. Doug was a minor but significant pop star. Goliath was in the process of breaking up—they kept getting back together and then breaking up again, as Doug’s relationship with Sue went through the same process. Doug was working on an album with Peter Gabriel. Helen drifted from casual job to casual job, and from boyfriend to boyfriend. She was nineteen and the beauty she had had as a child had flowered into something so lovely that Tricia was almost afraid for her. Helen’s face and figure were perfect, and she knew it. She talked from time to time about modeling or acting, which Tricia encouraged, because it would have been a way for her to become independent, but in the end she always accepted another job waitressing or in a bar. Now George was going into science with a goal of space. Only Cathy seemed like an ordinary adolescent—at nearly fourteen she worried about schoolwork and boys. Cathy always craved approval. Tricia blamed Mark, who had never taken much notice of her, and still did not, even now when she was the only one of the children who seemed to care about him.

Her mother was still at home, still with Marge coming in every day to look after her while Tricia was at work. She was deteriorating visibly—fearful and afraid of anyone new, any change. She forgot even ordinary words and would spit out accusations if anything went wrong. Tricia was horrified how judgemental and unkind her mother could become at those times, though she tried to put herself into her place and understand that really she was afraid. She liked her routine, and slept a great deal of the time.

Tricia was working full time in the Grammar School in Morecambe, which was due to become comprehensive and merge with the local secondary modern school next year. She was also teaching two evening classes, working with the two local preservation societies and with CND, which was contemplating changing its name to the Campaign for Peace, as nuclear disarmament seemed like a won battle. Her life was busy and fulfilling. Her house was always full of friends—the children’s friends, her friends from the campaigns or from classes, people she knew who were thinking of starting a whole food co-op and cafe in town, friends from the women’s group, and colleagues. People were always popping in for a moment and staying for hours. It sometimes made it difficult for her to get marking done—she started getting up early to do marking before school rather than counting on doing it in the evenings. She didn’t miss Mark at all, indeed she felt relieved of a weight since he had left. Although he was still at the university she seldom saw him. He came almost every Sunday to take George and Cathy out for lunch and was punctilious about informing her if he wasn’t going to be able to do that.

With all this new bustle and press of things in her life came a new name. It came first from the women’s group, where almost all the women used shortened forms of their names as part of their reimagination of themselves. “But Tricia is already a shortening,” she said, when Barb said something. “It’s Patricia really.”

“You should be Trish,” Barb said.

Tricia thought about it and decided she liked it, and soon she was Trish to everyone except Mark, who continued to call her Tricia, and her mother, who still called her Patsy when she recognized her.

That summer, 1974, Doug paid for the whole family to have a holiday in Majorca. Trish didn’t like the heat or the hotel, which was full of other British holidaymakers. She worried about her mother, who was spending the fortnight in a nursing home in Morecambe. She didn’t like the oily food or the flies on the beach, and wished they’d gone to Cornwall instead. To her astonishment, in the second week she ran into Marjorie from Oxford, whom she had not seen since her wedding. Marjorie was married and had twins. They caught up, but found they no longer had much in common, if they ever had. When Doug joined them for a few days at the end she found the reactions of the other holidaymakers to his fame uncomfortable. Marjorie could hardly believe that Trish had a son who was a pop star and became tongue-tied in his presence. Sue wasn’t with him, and when Trish asked him he said that they’d broken up permanently this time and Goliath was over.

Just after the New Year of 1975 Helen came in late one night from a night out with a boyfriend while Trish was washing coffee cups after a meeting of the Lancaster Preservation Society.

“Hi Mum,” Helen said. “Have a nice evening?”

“Very successful. We think they’re going to go ahead with the one-way system and the pedestrianized zone. There won’t be any cars in the middle of town except handicapped and emergency vehicles.”

“Great,” Helen said, sitting down at the kitchen table.

“Shall I put the kettle on?” Trish asked.

“Thanks, Mum.” Trish put the kettle on and dried her old brown teapot. “Could we have peppermint?”

“Is your stomach upset?” Trish asked, putting peppermint teabags into the pot.

“A little bit … Mum?”

“Yes?” Trish put two mugs on the table.

“How did you know you were pregnant?”

Trish sat down and stared at her daughter. “I knew when I skipped a period. But before that I felt sick, almost from the beginning, and my breasts were tender. That was the sign with all my pregnancies. Why are you asking?”

The kettle shrilled and she automatically turned to pour boiling water into the pot. When she turned back, Helen still hadn’t spoken.

“What do you want to do?” Trish asked. “Do you know who the father is?”

“Not for sure,” Helen said, looking down at her empty mug. “It could be Martin, or it could be Phil.”

“You’re not planning to get married then?”

Helen shook her head. “Absolutely not. I thought I was safe because I was on the pill, but then I had those antibiotics for my throat around the time of Cathy’s birthday, remember? And Gaynor says those could have stopped it working. I’ve missed two periods, and my breasts are sore, and I never feel like eating anything.”

“Then you should go to the doctor and find out for sure,” Trish said. “It does sound as if you’re pregnant though. Do you want to have it?”

“It’ll spoil everything,” Helen said, and began to cry.

Trish poured out the tea. “Well, babies are people. I didn’t understand that for a long time, but it’s true. If you have this baby it’ll certainly change everything. But you do have a choice.” Trish knew all about this from the women’s group. “Abortion is legal now. If you go to the doctor and tell her you really can’t face going through with it, as a single mother, and you’re so young, very likely you’d be able to have a termination at the Infirmary. You’d have to have counseling, but they’d do it. Two periods—eight or ten weeks? It should be quite simple.”

“I don’t know if I could kill it, though,” Helen said, putting both her hands around her mug for warmth. “Babies are people, and if you’d done that we wouldn’t be here. I’d like to have a baby. And doesn’t having an abortion mess you up so you can’t have babies later, when you want to?”

“No,” Trish said, firmly, taking a sip of her own tea. “That’s a myth.”

“Even so. I’d like to have it, but I don’t know how I could.” Helen looked up at her.

“You can keep on living here and have it, and I’ll help as much as I can, but I’m not going to stop working and take charge of it for you so you can keep on living your life the way you do now,” Trish said. “I’ll help out financially as much as I can, but you know I don’t have all that much money. Gran might be prepared to help too—well, you know she won’t understand, but I think we could use some of her money to help and she would want to do that if she could understand. We can probably manage. But it will be a struggle, and your life is going to have to change a lot. Is that really what you want? It’s a lot of work having a baby. I found it overwhelming when I had Doug.”

“But I won’t have to put up with Dad as well,” Helen said.

“You’ll have to tell your father he’s going to be a grandfather, if he is. If you decide to have it. Oh my goodness, I’m going to be a grandmother!” Trish got up and hugged Helen. “I have to say that’s a very exciting thought.”

“Thank you, Mum,” Helen said, then wiped her eyes and blew her nose. “Thank you for being so helpful, and thank you for saying that.”

In April, George took the Oxbridge entrance exams, and in June he took his A Levels. He got his three As and was duly accepted into New College Cambridge. “I did think of Oxford because of you and Dad, but this is the best place for what I want to work on,” he said.