Now Luke
Now
Luke
I take a taxi from Clerkenwell to Clapham, too wretched and confused to face the Tube or the office or anything apart from the confrontation that must come next. My head is filled with Rick’s words – ‘I’m not your father’– and then his refusal to tell me anything else.
‘Do you think she kept his identity from you for no reason?’
His frustration had returned, this man whom I’ve admired so much, first as art-loving bystander and then with what I believed was some biological claim upon him.
‘Well, if you won’t tell me, Alice will have to,’ I said, all bravado, though I don’t feel like that now.
It’s around 2.30, several hours before I am due home from work, and as I put the key into our front door, I wonder momentarily what I will find on the other side. I hear singing from the kitchen – oh God, that bloody song again, an anthem that penetrates right through to my core.
Alice has a lovely voice, and she sounds happy as she sings, happy and absorbed. When I enter the kitchen, for a moment she doesn’t see me. She’s sitting at the kitchen table with her sketchpad, Samuel in front of her in his bouncy chair. She has her head to one side, examining him, a small smile on her face. I feel as if I could watch them for hours, but perhaps I am signalling something through the airwaves, for she glances up and gives a shriek of surprise.
‘Luke! Don’t creep up on me like that. You gave me such a shock.’
There’s something in her face here, something I can’t identify: guilt perhaps? As if I’ve caught her at something.
‘Why aren’t you at work? Are you ill?’
You could say that. Ill in the head, sick in the heart.
‘Why did you lie to me about who my father is?’ Less of a question, more of a rant. ‘Why would you do that?’
And here’s the thing: her face collapses instantly. She puts her hand across her mouth and stares down at the table, and I see the telltale tremor of her shoulders.
‘You asked me if I was ill just now and I’m beginning to think I might be. Hannah thinks I’m having a breakdown.’
‘She said that?’
‘In so many words. She thinks this reunion of ours has pushed me over the edge.’
‘Same here,’ Alice says with a small smile.
And something about that smile, her casualness, snaps the final string. My rage is volcanic, bigger than me, bigger than everything. I can do nothing but submit to it, shouting like a tormented child.
‘Who is my father? Tell me! TELL ME.’
Alice shrinks away from me; I see it, yet I cannot stop. I feel … violent. I slam my hand down on the table so hard it hurts.
‘Tell me who my father is. You have to.’
I’m wailing, I’m demonic, and Alice has her hands against her face.
‘All right!’ She’s shouting too. ‘Sit down, Luke. And, for God’s sake, please calm down. Think of Samuel, if not me.’
Through all this yelling, the baby has remained asleep. And the sight of him – I can just see the top of his head peeking out above his chair – soothes me. I sit down opposite Alice. I breathe in slowly and let the air out in a long rush.
‘Christ. Sorry. I lost control.’
‘You don’t need to apologise. I understand how hard this is on you. But I haven’t been able to talk about your real father for a long time. Twenty-seven years, in fact. Your lifetime. I haven’t said his name out loud in all that time. I’m not even sure that I can.’
‘Then write it down. Write me a letter. Just tell me the truth. Please, finally, can I know the truth?’
‘A letter is a good idea. There’s so much to explain.’
‘Are you my mother, Alice? Or is that a lie too?’
‘Of course I am!’
‘I don’t understand why you would lie to me about Rick.’
‘Because your real father had gone by the time you were born and Rick stepped in and cared for you and loved you as if you were his. He was like your father.’
‘So he left you? My dad? Your lover?’
‘He did. And I never got over it.’
‘Who was he, Alice?’
‘I’ll write you a letter, Luke. I’ll tell you everything, I promise. I’ll do it tonight.’
‘Thank you. I’m sorry for shouting. I only want …’ I hesitate, unsure of how to continue.
Alice says, ‘Go on.’
‘I want things between us to improve.’
She nods, but I see that again she is on the edge of tears.
‘I hope that your knowing the truth is the right thing, then.’
‘Let’s start again. Can we do that?’
I remember now I’ve said it where this phrase comes from: my other mother, Christina, the words she always used when we’d had a fight: ‘Shall we start again?’
And perhaps Alice recognises its childish connotations too, for she laughs and holds out her hand for me to shake.
‘I’m on for that,’ she says.
We smile at each other, and there’s a glimmer of understanding; you might call it progress.
‘I should probably get back to the office.’
And that might have been it, the most constructive, bonding talk we’ve had for weeks. The promise that at last I’m going to find out the truth.
I stand up and peer over the top of Samuel’s bouncy chair at my sleeping son. And, in that moment, everything slides, my world pivots and this momentary warmth between us is replaced with the bone-freezing suspicion of old. For Samuel is dressed not in the Gap T-shirt and combat trousers we favour, nor even in one of his sleepsuits, but in old-fashioned orange and yellow striped dungarees that seem too small for him. Clothes that are old, dated, hand-made. Clothes that belong to another time, another era. Another baby.
‘His clothes,’ I say, and I find that Alice is watching me intently.
‘Just for the drawing,’ she says, but I know with a gut punch of instinct that this is not the truth.
She is dressing up my baby like her baby. This little chat we’ve just had means nothing. All she wants is for Samuel to be me, to be hers. Alice wants her baby back.