2.10 My Mother – Part 10: Irreconcilable differences.

If this was one of those television reunion programmes, Valerie and I would have fallen on one another’s necks weeping and then spent the remainder of her life in some sort of bittersweet love-in. If it were fiction, the author might even throw in a miraculous recovery so that we could live happily ever afterwards until Valerie finally passed away peacefully at a grand old age. But this is real life and it turned out quite differently.

We drove up to Stockport, having decided that would make getting away at a moment’s notice easier than if we were tied to railway timetables. Valerie and Jane lived in a pleasant nineteen-thirties semi-detached house on the outskirts of the town. We parked outside and walked slowly up the path to the front door, which was opened immediately by Jane, who must have been watching out for us.

She led us inside and showed us into a bright sunny room at the back of the house, where Valerie was reclining on a sofa. She looked very pale and seemed to have lost weight. She held her hands wide in a gesture presumably intended to invite me to embrace her, but I shook her hand formally and said something bland about being sorry to hear that she was ill.

With the idea of getting things over with as quickly as possible, I took out the photographs that I had brought. I’d chosen Hannah’s and Eddie’s graduation pictures. Not the close-up ones, which might have allowed Valerie or Jane to recognise them in the street, but the full-length ones showing them standing in gown and mortar-board holding their degree certificate tied up with red ribbon. Hannah’s had Angie and me standing on either side of her. I handed it to Valerie.

‘This is my eldest,’ I said. ‘She was the first person in the family to get a degree. We were very proud of her.’

Valerie took the photograph with a smile and looked down, evidently expecting to share in our pride. Then her face suddenly changed and I’m sure she shuddered and recoiled in disgust. She looked round at me and Bernie in bewilderment with what I can only describe as a look of horror on her face.

‘This can’t be right,’ she said at last. ‘This isn’t my granddaughter. It can’t be!’

I’d often seen people being taken aback by finding that my kids have dark brown skin and afro-type hair, but this was the first time that I’d seen such revulsion as Valerie displayed. My immediate impulse was to shout at her that of course Hannah was her grandchild and she’d better get used to the idea of having a couple of black kids in her family. At least, that was my impulse after I’d restrained myself from simply hitting her in the face and storming out. But then I thought of an even better way of making her pay for her abhorrent reaction.

‘No,’ I agreed, speaking as calmly as I could, ‘this is not your granddaughter, because I am not your son. We are complete strangers with nothing in common. The fact that your name happens to be in my birth certificate is a compete irrelevancy. I’m glad you understand that at last.’

I got up, planning to make a dignified exit before I was tempted to say any more, but Valerie clutched at my sleeve and pulled me back.

‘This other black woman,’ she said, pointing at the photograph. ‘That’s your first wife, I suppose?’

‘Yes. Do you have a problem with that?’

‘Why did you have to marry a black?’ she asked, looking up at me with a mixture of puzzlement and anxiety. ‘Was it because you’d been in a home?’

‘What a ridiculous question! I can’t think what you mean.’ I tried to pull away, but she held on with a surprisingly firm grip.

‘I mean – did the other girls think you weren’t good enough, because you didn’t have a proper family?’

I jerked my arm away and stood looking down at her. For several seconds I could not think of anything to say to this preposterous remark.

‘I married Angie because we were in love,’ I said at last. ‘I never regretted it for a single moment of the twenty-five years that we were together – right up to the day that some other bigoted lunatic, like you, stabbed her to death in her own kitchen for being different from them. And now, I think we’d better be going. I’m sure you won’t want to have someone like me in your house for any longer than you have to.’

I was hoping to get away without actually coming to blows of having a shouting match, but I hadn’t reckoned with Valerie’s outstanding talent for making crass remarks.

‘But surely,’ she said, ‘you would have preferred to marry a nice English girl – like your present wife, for instance.’

Up until now, Bernie had been uncharacteristically silent, believing that this business was just between Valerie and me. But now, having in effect been appealed to as a witness to support Valerie’s side of the argument, she let rip, her accent becoming more and more broad Scouse as she got into her stride.

‘Now look here, you,’ she began. ‘You’ve no right to speak like that about someone you haven’t even met. Peter’s wife was the best friend I ever had and if you think you can say differently, you’re talking through your hat. How dare you judge her based on the colour of her skin! And how dare you persecute Peter the way you have. Can’t you see what you’ve been doing to him, stalking him like that? It’s about time you started taking some notice of your daughter, who’s been sticking by you all these years with precious little thanks as far as I can tell, instead of chasing after the son that you imagine you ought to have but which you don’t deserve and who is worth ten of you. You’re just a prejudiced old cow who thinks the world owes her, just because she’s dying. Well my mother died when she was forty, having never had a bad word to say about anyone, and Peter’s wife was killed before she reached fifty because of people like you. So don’t imagine that you deserve our sympathy when you can’t even appreciate what a sacrifice it was for Peter to bring you those photos, after he’d promised himself he wasn’t going to let you get your claws into his kids the way you have with him.’

She paused for breath and I took the opportunity to make our exit.

‘Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs Harrison,’ I said, speaking very formally and avoiding eye contact with our host. ‘Now we really must be going. It’s a long drive back to Oxford.’

Jane showed us to the door. I fancied that there was a hint of relief on her face and wondered if she was grateful to Bernie for having drawn her mother’s attention to the way in which she had been pushed into second-place by the arrival of her estranged half-brother.

We got into the car and drove off. After a few minutes, Bernie spoke in a rather small voice.

‘I’m sorry Peter. I was out of order saying all those things. It’s just that she did make me so angry.’

‘You only said the things I would like to have said but didn’t have the courage.’

‘But she is elderly and dying and probably only has the attitudes that she was brought up with.’

‘That’s what really worries me,’ I admitted. ‘I can’t get it out of my head that I might think like that if she’d decided to keep her baby instead of putting me in the home.’

‘Oh Peter!’ Bernie put her arm round my shoulders and then withdrew it when she realised that it was impeding my ability to drive. ‘I can’t imagine you holding those ridiculous views, but I do see what you mean. It’s a horrible thought, isn’t it?’

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