Chapter 15
Dot and Sean have gone for a walk when Geoff appears at the door of the apartment and says he wants to talk about Dot.
‘My favourite subject,’ I say, hoping he’s not going to spring anything on me. I make us tea, and we take it into the living room.
‘She seems very happy,’ Geoff says, and I smile, because that’s just what I want to hear. ‘And you do, too.’
‘I am,’ I say.
‘I spoke to Ron, my lawyer friend back in the UK. He thinks there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get the divorce through in about four months.’
I do a quick calculation of the months in my head. It’s nearly the end of May. June, July, August, September. ‘Perhaps we’ll get married next summer, then,’ I say.
‘Maybe,’ Geoff says. I can see that he wants to say something else, and I feel a stone of dread forming in my gut.
‘Do you not approve?’ I ask. It’s a funny question, because I know he can’t possibly take issue with the fact that we’re both women. Perhaps it’s our age. Or maybe he doesn’t think I’m good enough for her.
‘It’s not that. I think you’re both wonderful women, and I can see how happy you make each other. It’s pretty damn near perfect. But are you sure you know everything about her?’
‘No,’ I say, immediately. ‘I don’t. I can’t possibly. We missed sixty-odd years of each other’s lives and we’ve only been back together for a couple of months. And besides, it’s Dot. You know what she’s like. She takes a while to get things off her chest.’
He sits back, looks a bit relieved. ‘And that doesn’t worry you?’
‘Not at all,’ I say. ‘It took her a while to tell me you and her were still married, and I know there’s something else. I feel like her heart is broken, but I don’t think it’s about another woman, or another man.’
‘It’s about her son,’ Geoff says, as if he can’t hold it in any longer. ‘Peter.’
Peter. The third son who Dot never mentions. Of course it is. She told me in the early days that he lived a long way away and they weren’t in regular contact, and I just took it at face value. But of course that’s the thing that’s hurting her.
‘He’s the youngest, is that right?’
‘Yes,’ Geoff says. He looks slightly pained for a moment. ‘It’s not really my place to tell you, but I think you should know. Peter, he wasn’t an easy child. He didn’t get on well with the other two.’
‘I thought still being married to her second husband was the big secret,’ I say, trying to keep my voice light.
Geoff winces. ‘I hope it doesn’t change anything. But talk to her. Get her to tell you the whole story.’
‘I will,’ I say. ‘And thank you.’
When we’ve finished our tea, Geoff gets up to go, and I’m alone again. I go to the bedroom and pull my suitcase out of the wardrobe. Unzip the inside pocket and pull out the notebook I brought with me as an afterthought. I flick through the pages until I find what I’m looking for.
Dot and Mabel’s first list
Marry me Get married
Find Geoff
Travel to America
I cross out the third item and add a fourth.
Talk about Peter
And then I leave it lying on the bed, where I know Dot will see it. It’s not that I’m scared to bring it up, but I’d quite like her to have the opportunity to do it.
* * *
I don’t have to wait long. She comes to me later that same afternoon and holds up the notebook.
‘I didn’t know you’d brought this.’
‘Well,’ I say, ‘last time I was working my way through a list, I kept having to add things, and you just never know, so—’
‘I didn’t mean to keep Peter a secret from you,’ she says.
We are standing close together, our bodies only inches apart, but neither of us reaches out to touch the other one.
‘I know,’ I say, because I do. I think she just keeps things she finds difficult a bit closed off, but if we’re going to be married, we need to open all those hidden doors. She said so herself.
‘Shall we go out for dinner, and I’ll tell you the whole story?’ she asks.
I nod, and she leaves the room, and then I hear her talking to Sean and it makes me wonder what he knows.
An hour later we’re sitting outside an Italian restaurant with an ocean view, glasses of wine in our hands, and there’s nothing left to do but talk.
‘It was a difficult pregnancy,’ Dot starts.
‘My blood pressure was high. It hadn’t been with the first two, and it meant I was in and out of hospital.
Geoff and Rupert were amazing, helping out with the boys.
And then he came early. Only a few weeks but he was tiny and I was so scared.
John and William were both late, both over nine pounds, and Peter…
well, he was five pounds six ounces, and I was scared to hold him, somehow. Scared to break him.’
Where was his father? There’s no trace of him in this story. But I won’t ask. It will all come tumbling out, in time.
‘John and William are close in age, you know. Less than two years apart. But then there was a gap of several years before Peter and it always felt like it was the two of them together and him on his own. Partly because John and William would go off with their dad sometimes, but it wasn’t only that.
John and William used to push him around a bit.
Normal brotherly stuff, I think, but Peter was quite sensitive, always getting upset.
And then he started playing up for me and getting in trouble at school.
It got worse as he got older. When he got to about thirteen it changed to getting in trouble with the police.
And it didn’t seem to matter what I did.
Nothing made any difference. He’d always fly into a rage and say I wasn’t listening and I didn’t understand and he’d go off to his room and slam the door.
It just made for such an awful atmosphere in the house all the time.
John and William hated it, so they’d spend as much time out with friends or at friends’ houses as they could, and I was on my own with him.
‘It wasn’t all bad all the time, of course.
When I look back it seems like it was, but I have to remember that it wasn’t.
There were times when Peter would come and talk to me and he’d say he was sorry for whatever had happened that week, and I’d feel like maybe we were going to turn a corner.
We’d have a few good days, and then it would go back to how it was before.
It was exhausting, honestly. I didn’t talk about it to anyone because I felt ashamed.
Felt like I must have gone wrong somewhere with my mothering of him.
Geoff used to say he didn’t think that was the case, but I wouldn’t be told.
‘And then he got to sixteen, eventually, and he said he was moving out. And quite honestly, I wasn’t about to argue with him.
I knew that the house would be a happier, calmer place without him in it, and so I just let him go.
If anything, I was relieved. Isn’t that awful, Mabel?
I even foolishly thought that maybe we’d have a better relationship when we didn’t live together, weren’t at such close quarters, but it didn’t work out like that.
He just disappeared from my life completely.
And it’s hard to admit this, but things were so much better without all the trouble and the shouting.
John and William were both still living at home, and they were like different people once he was gone.
I tried to keep up with what he was doing, tried to arrange to see him, but he just wasn’t interested and after a while, I pretty much gave up.
‘He got into drugs. I found that out from William, who’d bumped into him in town.
At that point, I tracked him down and asked him to come back to live with us.
Said I would help him. He came back for a couple of days, and then on the third morning I woke up and he was gone and my purse was empty.
He took my card, pretty much emptied my account.
I had to ask Geoff to help me with the mortgage that month. And that was that.’
I don’t know what to say. I can’t imagine having an experience like that. I don’t know what it’s like to have a child, but you assume there’ll be good times and bad. You don’t expect it to be like that.
‘How long is it since you’ve seen him?’ I ask.
Dot looks up and I know she’s thinking. ‘Years,’ she says.
‘Must be thirty years. Every now and then I would try again, might get as far as having a cup of tea with him, but we never forged a proper relationship. And this is part of the reason why I didn’t say much about him to you, Mabel.
He isn’t in my life. I don’t think of him when I think about my family. ’
No, I think, but he’s part of you. All of this, this whole experience, has had a bearing on who you are. So it’s important for me to understand it.
‘Do you know what sort of life he’s had?’
She does a swift shake of her head, but it isn’t a no; it’s like she’s trying to dislodge something. ‘Not really. I’ve heard the odd thing, but I don’t know what’s rumours and what’s true. I don’t even know for sure whether he’s alive or dead.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say.
‘For what?’
‘That you had such a hard time with him. That things didn’t work well between you.’
She looks at me, and her eyes are filmy with tears. ‘I let him down in all kinds of ways, I think. But I swear to you, I didn’t just wash my hands of him because he was hard work.’
‘I know you didn’t,’ I say, gently. I stand up and gesture for her to do the same. At the side of the table, she falls into my arms and I see, in that moment, the weight that she carries. This experience with Peter is what’s broken her heart. And it might be too late to mend it. But it might not.
‘Thank you for telling me,’ I say.
‘Thank you for listening.’
A waitress comes over then, and I realise we’ve been here a while and they must have seen that we were in the middle of something.
We order pasta and more wine, and we’re in the most beautiful setting but there’s a heaviness cast over us, and I wonder whether this is what it’s like for Dot all the time.
We need to find him, I think. We need to put things right.