Every Woman for Herself (25 page)

‘So you’re happy there, when he has to be in London,’ she explained. ‘We had a little chat when he came up to see Gloria. He told me he ordered the work done last time he was in London, after the Birthday Feast. Then he had the conservatory remodelled, and he says the garden is very lush and quite private, with a gazebo and a big pond with fish.’

‘But that means he was expecting me to … I mean, all that time ago when I—’ I broke off, confused. I’d accused him of treating me as an easy lay, when all the time he’d been turning his London house into a home from home for me? I looked at the photos again.

‘I can see now it’s
not
the Parsonage – it’s sort of Essence of Parsonage meets … well – Comfort, I suppose.’

‘Yes,’ Em agreed. ‘He said he wasn’t going to sacrifice central heating in the interests of authenticity.’

‘Don’t bloody blame him,’ Anne said. ‘Got it in my flat.’

‘I like chopping wood and stoking fires,’ Walter said. ‘It keeps me nice and warm. I feel the cold, I do, because I’ve got no bodily hair whatsoever.’

Em said, ‘I told him we’d have central heating if we could afford it, only Father always spends too much on tarts and booze – but we’d have open fires, as well. And real sockets for the electricity, not two-pin ones with battered old adaptors, like we have now.’

‘Yes, aren’t those dangerous?’ Jessica said. ‘The ones in my room look like Bakelite.’

‘They
are
Bakelite. The whole place is a deathtrap,’ I said.

‘Yes, but I’d know if it was going to burn down,’ Em said. ‘And it would show up in Gloria’s tea leaves pretty spectacularly, too.’

‘I’ve never seen a fire in the tea leaves,’ Gloria said. ‘Not unless you count what Charlie’s lit under that Mace, what can’t be put out with any potion I can brew.’

‘The whole house wants so much spending on it, it’s ridiculous,’ Jessica said. ‘It would be much better to sell it, and have a cosy little modern house in the valley with all mod cons and a built-in kitchen. The show house on the Mango estate is lovely.’

‘Sell it?’ echoed Em.

‘Better for bloody who?’ Anne asked.

‘Ran, why don’t we have the house valued, just out of interest, to see what …?’ she began to wheedle, but then stopped and stared.

Father, a strange and interesting shade of ash, was gazing down at his letter as though transfixed.

Then he looked up and gradually focused on Bran as though he’d never seen him before.

‘You’re not my son,’ he said slowly, in a strange voice. ‘I sent the cotton buds away for analysis, and you’re not my son!’

‘I know,’ Bran said, dribbling honey onto his toast.

‘What do you mean, you
know
? How can you know? I didn’t know till this minute when I read the letter!’

‘Mother told me.’

‘Mother? Which mother?’

‘I only have one of those,’ Bran said patiently. ‘Maria Podjecki. Professor Podjecki.’

Father’s mouth opened and closed silently, like a rather handsome halibut. ‘Professor?’ he managed to say eventually.

Bran nodded. ‘Anthropology. Came to see me in my first term. Pops in sometimes if she’s over for a conference. Smoked salami and schnapps. Don’t like the schnapps,’ he added.

‘You never mentioned it!’

‘No? Sorry,’ he added vaguely, since we were all looking at him. ‘Should I have done?’

‘But – I’ve been supporting you all these years, and you’re not even my son!’ Father dropped his head into his hands and groaned.

‘You mean that’s what your little experiment with the cotton buds was about? Having us tested out to see if we were the genuine article? Well, I wonder where you got
that
idea from!’ Em looked unlovingly at Jessica.

‘Devious old sod!’ Anne said.

‘It does rather make a mockery of your “Breed Your Own Brontës” experiment, Father,’ I said.

‘Unless he’s one of the Nurture rather than Nature brigade,’ Em suggested. ‘In which case, it doesn’t really matter, does it? It doesn’t matter to me who Bran’s father is either – he’s still my brother.’

We all agreed with that except Father, who was still staring down at the letter, turning it over in his big hands as though there might be a retraction on the back: ‘Ha, ha! Fooled you!’

‘I thought it was odd that Bran didn’t look like the rest of you. I mean, Em and Anne are the
image
of their father, but Charlie and Bran—’ Jessica broke off. ‘Are you all right, Ran?’

‘Oh my God!’ Father said. ‘I missed the second page – the second result – Charlie!’

‘What?’ demanded Jessica avidly, leaping up and peering over his shoulder. ‘Oh my God! Oh, no! I can’t believe it!’ She looked up, transfigured with excitement. ‘Guess what? Charlie isn’t Ran’s either!’

‘I want to speak to Lally Tooke,’ I said into the receiver for the tenth time, tracking my impossible mother across the American continent.

‘Well,’ said a voice doubtfully. ‘She’s vury, vury busy just now. May I ask who’s calling?’

‘Her daughter.’

That’s one thing I can be sure of, anyway.

‘Her daughter in England, Europe?’

‘Has she got any anywhere else?’

‘I don’t rightly know, ma’am, but if you hold on, I’ll go see if I can put you through.’

After several interminable and expensive minutes (at the expense of the man formerly known as Father) Lally said, ‘Hello? Which one of you is it?’

‘Charlie. But don’t ask me my surname, because I don’t have the slightest idea
who
my father is.’

There was a pause. The line hissed like a muted python. ‘You know …? Does Ran know?’

‘It was he who told me. He got some kind of kit and tested me and Bran.’

‘Bran?’

‘Bran turned out to be not Father’s either. Funnily enough, he already knew, but it just hadn’t registered as being of any importance. His mother’s been in touch with him for years – she’s Professor Podjecki now.’

‘Oh, I knew that – I took an interest, because of thinking Bran was your half-brother. And actually, we met once in Prague.’

‘Mother, who
is
my father, if Ran isn’t?’

She paused. ‘I wasn’t sure if you were Ran’s or not. Either way, you were a mistake, because I was about to leave when I fell pregnant, and I had to put it off until after you were born.’

‘So who was my father?’ I repeated. I didn’t want to go into her reasons for abandoning us again, although acute selfishness and enlightened self-interest become something totally other in Mother’s books.

‘Have you heard of Brendan Furness?’

‘The
poet
? It wasn’t!’

‘Must have been. He rented a house nearby, to get back to his roots because he’d hit a writer’s block, and he was quite a bit older than me, but terribly, terribly sexy, with big, sad dark eyes, although politically
totally
incorrect on women’s issues.’

‘Yes, Maria thought he was attractive, too. That’s who she told Bran his father was.’

‘The old goat! He had a heart attack and died the year after you were born – and no wonder!’

‘This is my father we’re talking about!’

‘Yes, but he didn’t know it, and he’d have run a mile if he did. And he was terribly clever and famous, so I don’t know what you’re worrying about. Look, I’m giving a reading in ten minutes, I’ll have to go and get ready …’

‘Don’t you want to know how Ran’s taking this?’

‘You just let me know if he throws you out,’ she said, ‘and I’ll send you a cheque. How is your divorce settlement doing?’

‘Ducked,’ I said, but I was talking to the air: she’d slithered off.

Mother is a Pisces, too.

‘Did you get her?’ asked Em, who was heading the crisis meeting taking place down in the kitchen.

‘Somebody bloody well should,’ Anne said. ‘Bran, I can’t believe you never said anything!’

Bran smiled, but that might have been because of the hot chocolate topped with whipped cream Em had just put in front of him.

There was one each; clearly this was a time for desperate measures. Flossie had a blob on the end of her black nose, and was trying to get her tongue out far enough to lick it off, her eyes like colliding planets.

‘Yes, I got Mother, eventually,’ I said, sinking down onto a chair and wrapping my strangely cold hands round the glass cup. ‘Bran, you and I have the same father.’

‘He’s dead,’ Bran offered. ‘Dead Poets Society. Only we can’t keep society with dead poets – except through their poetry.’

‘Quite,’ Anne said. She wrinkled her brow: ‘So, you and me and Em have the same mother, Charlie? And you and Bran have the same father …’

‘It means Charlie’s related to all of us by blood. Bran’s related to Charlie through their shared father, so …’ Em paused, thinking.

‘We’re all still family,’ Anne finished.

‘Of course,’ Em agreed. ‘It doesn’t matter who fathered who now, does it? We are
one
. We are the Rhymers.’

‘Like a tribe,’ agreed Anne.

I was feeling better. They were right.

‘But poor Father – I mean, Ran?’ I asked.

‘Shut himself in his study – shut the Treacle Tart out, and serve her right, the interfering bitch,’ Anne said.

‘He must be terribly upset.’

‘His
theories
are terribly upset. For the rest – well, he’ll get used to the idea.’

‘But he might not want to have Bran and me here any more.’

‘We’ll just have to wait and see. And it might be immaterial, anyway, since the Treacle Tart doesn’t want
any
of us here any more. He’s going to find himself playing effing Bungalow Bill in Mango Valley if he doesn’t put his foot down.’

Skint Old Health

For reasons that should be obvious, never leave lying about those alarmingly suppository-like waxy-pinkish plastic corks from cheap wine bottles.

Their inadvertent application would mean an embarrassing trip to the nearest Accident and Emergency department and possible entries in both
The Lancet
and the
Guinness Book of Records.

Father looked dreadful the next morning, but that was mostly because he’d been shut up in his study on a bender since the previous day’s postal revelations. He let Jessica in sometime, though, because she wasn’t round to wake the girls up for breakfast. Anne went and fetched them down, in the end.

However, when he did finally emerge, he kissed my forehead, patted Bran on the shoulder, and said heavily, ‘Well, well – you’re still my children, after all; but it’s been a shock. And if that old sod Brendan Furness was still alive, I’d have his balls.’

‘Ran, please – not in front of the girls!’

Feeb and Clo giggled into their porridge.

‘Ran and I are going to look at the show house together on the Mango estate, this morning,’ Jessica said brightly.

She’d found time to polish her surfaces and attire herself in a skimpy top and short, tight skirt, though I always think those bras that push up the skin of your chest and then slam it together in the middle are a mistake. From the side she looked like a narrow-chested pouter pigeon.

We all stopped eating and stared at Father.

‘What does it matter to
me
where I live?’ he said, sighing heavily. ‘I’m a broken man, with no son to carry on the family name … no grandchildren of my own …’

‘Jessica had better have her tubes unknotted then, and you can try again,’ Anne suggested.

Gloria stuck her head out of the pantry: ‘I know what I know!’ she said, which was neither illuminating nor helpful.

‘You can’t sell the Parsonage!’ I said.

‘Why not? He’d get lots of money for it, because it’s so big!’ Jessica said brightly. ‘He can’t really afford to keep it up –
or
to keep all of you … but then, he doesn’t need to, does he? Em can go and live with Chris, Anne’s got a London flat, Bran’s away at his university – he could live there, he doesn’t have to keep coming back – and Charlie can marry Mace: I mean, I know it wouldn’t last if she did, but she can get a big settlement when they divorce and buy her own place. Or maybe she’ll get the cottage.’

It was amazing what went on in that tricky bundle of wires she called a brain.

‘I’m not going to marry Mace, not even for purely mercenary reasons! I’m going to be happy and successful on my own,’ I declared.

‘Without a
man
?’ she asked incredulously.

‘Yes,’ put in Em. ‘And she doesn’t have to marry Mace to have a home. She can always live with Chris and me, and so can Bran.’

‘Not when they defrock Chris and turf him out of the bloody Vicarage, though,’ Anne pointed out.

‘De-leather,’ I corrected. ‘And he said he would buy a cottage – though I thought you were trying to persuade Chris to move in here, Father, so you didn’t lose Em?’

‘I don’t know what I want any more,’ Father said brokenly, although I noticed he’d managed to put away a gargantuan breakfast as usual. ‘I’m a broken reed.’

He went out with Jessica and the girls, so they could visit the new estate after they’d dropped Clo and Feeb off at school.

I wondered if that house in Passionfruit Place was still for sale.

‘I’ve found Kathleen,’ said Mace’s deep, knee-quiveringly beautiful voice. ‘Or rather, she’s turned up.’

The line crackled like Cellophane. Em, who’d just handed me the receiver, struck a ‘be still, my beating heart’ pose, hands to her palpitating bosom.

‘Shove off, Em,’ I said, and she grinned and went back upstairs.

‘What? Can you hear me, Charlie?’

‘Just about, Mace. Em brought the cordless phone down, but it doesn’t work very well here. Did you say you’d found Kathleen?’

‘Rod found the wedding organiser, and she gave us the phone number, but by then Kathleen had turned up at Rod’s place anyway.’

‘But where had she been?’

‘Some sort of fat farm, trying to lose nonexistent weight – and funnily enough, it turned out that Caitlin knew all the time, except I’d kept it from her that we were worried about where her mother was.’

‘Of course!’ I exclaimed. ‘She was going on about losing weight to get American film parts when I met her at the cottage, don’t you remember? And the coven did say she was dwindling! I bet she’s not as thin as Jessica, though. We’re thinking of using
her
rib cage as a dish rack.’