2. 6 An uncomfortable meeting.
Post date: 27-Sep-2015 07:33:57
We left Lucy with Sylvia and Stan for the day and Bernie and I went up to Manchester on the train. I didn’t want to face the Harris woman and her daughter alone!
Bernie, for whom the journey as far as Crewe was very familiar, chatted cheerfully and pointed out landmarks on the way, trying to keep my spirits up. Not particularly successfully, I have to say. I was becoming increasingly convinced that it had been a mistake to allow myself to be talked into this meeting. We alighted at Piccadilly, and Bernie commented on how new and clean the station looked now, following the renovations that had been done for the Commonwealth Games a few years earlier.
We walked hand-in-hand along the platform. As soon as we got out on to the concourse, there they were! Valerie Harris was slightly taller than her daughter. She had black hair, which I assumed was dyed, and brown eyes. She looked much younger than I had expected. When she saw us, she stepped forward with her arms outstretched. Bernie and I held hands tightly and I pulled her a bit closer to me in case my “mother” had any fancy ideas of attempting to hug me.
I think that probably was what she had in mind initially, but she took the hint and both women shook hands quite sensibly when I held mine out to them. I introduced Bernie and we all made our way to a coffee shop where we could talk.
I’ll leave Valerie’s story to another chapter, so that I can include various things that I only heard about later. So when you read this account of our conversation you need to remember that I’m missing out all the things she told me about how I came to be conceived and who my “father” was and what her parents said and did when they discovered she was pregnant.
The first hurdle to overcome was how we would address one another. She wanted me to call her “mum” but I wasn’t having any of that. I suggested “Mrs Harris” but she was so clearly upset by the idea that I gave way and we compromised on first names all round.
After that, I think Valerie got the message that I wasn’t particularly keen on furthering our relationship and she turned her attention to Bernie. Perhaps she thought that, being a woman, Bernie would be more interested in family ties.
‘What do you do, dear?’ Valerie asked, ‘now that the children have left home.’
I’d told her on the phone that I had two kids and I’d told her their ages, but not their names or where they lived. She was a bit put out about that. She had evidently had hopes of corresponding with her grandchildren, but I was not going to give her a chance to disrupt their lives the way she had mine.
‘I teach maths at St Luke’s,’ Bernie told her. This is her stock answer when she wants to play down her status. When she says this, most people outside academic circles assume that St Luke’s is a school or at most a Further Education college.
‘That’s nice. Jane’s a teacher, aren’t you?’ she said, turning to her daughter.
‘Yes,’ Jane agreed. ‘Primary – early years.’
‘And what about your daughter?’ Valerie asked, still trying to make conversation with Bernie. ‘Is she following in your footsteps?’
‘Since she’s only six,’ Bernie answered,’ she hasn’t made up her mind about a career yet.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Valerie turned to me with a puzzled expression, ‘I was sure you said your daughter was in her twenties.’
‘That’s right,’ I agreed, getting guilty pleasure in her confusion.
Bernie took pity on her and explained that I’d been married before and that, therefore, my children weren’t her children.
‘So now you’ve got a new young family,’ Valerie commented. ‘Rather like me. I had you and then it was twenty years before I had Jane. How do your older children like having a little sister?’
‘It’s not really like that,’ Bernie explained, with commendable patience. ‘They both knew her before Peter and I were married – from birth in fact – so it really hasn’t made a great deal of difference to them.’
‘It isn’t as if they were still living with me,’ I pointed out.
‘So having a wicked stepmother hasn’t really affected them at all,’ Bernie added.
Eventually we got our family relationships sorted out in Valerie’s mind. For some reason she got ridiculously excited at the idea that Bernie and I were newlyweds and was very disappointed when Bernie couldn’t show her any pictures of the wedding and was unable to describe the dresses beyond saying that the bridesmaids had worn ‘long blue lacy things’. We didn’t bother to mention that Bernie hadn’t worn a dress at all, preferring to come in black trousers. In retrospect, perhaps it would have been a good idea to impress upon Valerie more of our eccentricities in the hope that she might have been put off by them.
Valerie insisted on showing us a tatty black and white photograph of a man who looked to be in his forties, whom she described as “your father”. She held it out to Bernie with the words, ‘Don’t you agree that Peter is the very image of his father?’
Bernie looked at the picture politely and said something non-committal. Afterwards, on the train home, she confessed to me that she thought there was a strong family resemblance and it was not at all surprising that Valerie had recognised it when she saw me at the press conference. I suppose I do know now where I got my red hair!
‘I would have sent you a copy,’ Valerie explained, ‘but, as you can see, it’s not is very good condition and the photocopy just didn’t do him justice. I had to keep it hidden away, you see – in case my parents found it.’
She was very disappointed that I hadn’t brought any pictures of my kids, but I was determined not to give her any possible means of tracing them and making contact. Leeds, where Hannah lives, is far too close to Stockport for comfort and I know that Hannah often goes shopping in Manchester, so it wouldn’t be impossible that they might happen to bump into one another. She then asked about what they were doing and where they lived. I told her that my daughter was a nurse, like her mother, and my son was in computers, but I refused to give any hints as to their location.
Jane was being rather left out of the conversation, so Bernie tried to divert attention away from the inquisition that Valerie was subjecting me to by asking her about her own family.
‘I can’t have children,’ Jane said. ‘At least – my ex-husband has had three with his new wife, so I assume that it was my fault that we didn’t have any.’
‘It’s such a pity, isn’t it?’ Valerie chipped in. ‘I was beginning to think I would never be a grandmother, which is another reason why it’s so wonderful to have found you again, Peter.’
Bernie and I looked at each other, but neither of us could think of anything to say to that. It was clear that Valerie was hoping that I would fill what she obviously thought of as a serious gap in her life caused by her only daughter having let her down in respect of producing grandchildren for her. That realisation made the whole sorry situation even worse – it that were possible.
We struggled on for an hour or so longer. Valerie made all the running in the conversation. Bernie and I tried to remember to nod and smile at appropriate points and Jane answered whenever her mother turned to her for confirmation of something that she had said. Eventually I decided that enough was enough and I got up, saying that we had better be getting back to Lucy.
Valerie pressed me to give her phone number or address, but I wasn’t prepared to give her a way of approaching me again. I tried to impress on her that this was a one-off meeting and she ought to try to forget all about me. Of course, she didn’t accept that and I did feel rather bad about leaving her like that, because she did seem genuinely upset.
I asked Bernie on the way home whether she thought I was being unfair. She thought for a bit and then said that she supposed that at least now perhaps Valerie might start valuing Jane a bit more, seeing as her other offspring had turned out to be so unsatisfactory! I wasn’t sure how to take that, but I think she’s right that Jane is the one who has really lost out in all this. It must be dreadful for her to find herself being pushed out in favour of some long lost brother turning up out of the blue with a wife and kids and a successful career, when she’s lived with her mother all these years and is now seen by her as a failure.