Finding Fathers; Dangerous world
- Thread starter KateF
- Start date
KateF
Silver Member
Thanks all. Feeling glad I've started this again. :character00148:
***
Memories are unreliable. Floating images, movies scenes, snatches of conversation, other people's memories, our memories of their memories, our memories of our own memories...
So far this story is accurate as I can make it. But I've just had to go back to the summer of 1992. Not the summer of 1992 I hold in my head, which consists of lots of pictures of a brown carpeted room with a single bed, the walk across an old mill field to school, dog eared settees in the sixth form common room. Not that 1992. But the one in documents I keep in carrier bags. Which I think are the first thing I'd rescue from my flat if there was a fire. These coffee cup stained papers and letters and small notebook diaries sometimes feel like the only real evidence of that time. Thank goodness, I sometimes think, it wasn't all happening now, when texts and emails would have seen that section of my confusing history vanish into cyberspace.
So-
something tangible;
My hardbound A5 black notebook with red corners. Labelled "Journal K.E.H" on the front in blue biro. I sometimes read writer's diaries and gasp at their breadth and depth. But the seventeen year old me gave the barest of details and rarely gave much clue about what she was actually feeling (if anything). But, tracking back the beginning of the father story I found, buried amongst irrelevant details that I seemed to give equal weight to, the forgotten beginning of the search.
"21st April
...At school the Bean Party won the election and in the big world the Tories surprisingly achieved a 21 seat majority. Met a real live poet Peter Sansome at a library reading and been to Meadowhall. It's the Easter hols and I've had a palmreading party at Denise's (seven people) and shopped at Manorgrove. Also got my birth certificate and went to the address. Spoke to Madge who was very upset at the rift but didn't know who the father was. Have written to Mum today (!) Will she reply? The letter was semi-grovelly but probably a bit cool. Dad (My StepDad) is the schizophrenic (?) villain. I'm sure he's brainwashed her. "
Ah, you see, I'd forgotten that bit.
I'd been to the registry office in Bradford and bought a copy of my birth certificate. I already knew from having asked there just before I left home that there was a blank space under "Father's Name". But it was only when the beige and red sheet of A4 with careful black ink copying was in my hands that I saw my mother's profession was given as "secretary to a textile agent" and there was an address in a suburb of Leeds that I recognised as the one I'd lived in until being three. I took advantage of the holidays and set off on the bus. Two buses it must have been. One down the hill the four miles to Bradford Interchange. Then another, a few miles into Leeds.
I don't remember the journey but if I could have I'd have sat on my usual front seat on the top deck and rested my feet on the metal bar that protruded above the seats. Maybe I'd have checked my hair by looking up into the angled round mirror which was how the bus driver could check no kids were running riot on the top deck.
I can see myself wandering round the terraced streets, hunting for memories. Hoping something would hit me with the nostalgic charge of a pine tree smell at Christmas.
I saw a small, walled park. Remembered swings, swinging higher, and higher. "Push me, no push me!"
And I can see myself sat in a cosy living room with a woman called Madge. Was it our old front room or had I asked down the street if anyone knew the woman called Jennifer who lived there with twins seventeen years earlier? The name Madge did ring a bell from all those years ago. She had one leg, deathly pale and circled with blue and yellow, laid out in front of her on a stool. It wasn't like flesh, but china. Well, that's what the toddler me remembered. When the teenage me asked her if she'd ever had a broken leg, she said no. That's the one detail I remember of our meeting. Did she have a broken leg and just forget? Did chilblains or strange tights look like a broken leg to a two year old?
I wrote none of this at the time. Just;
" 1st May.
Yesterday the letter from Val came. My Dad seems to be one of two people-John W or Neil. I'm on the trail and I never thought I would be. I feel slightly numbed though. But this week I had had a funny feeling something would happen."
Then I added nothing until;
"June 17th
Spent my birthday at Jean's (A schoolfriend's mum). It was okay though she got news that Cliff was moving to Wakefield which put her off balance. I wrote to Jackie (the Godmother I mentioned earlier) on June 1st because;
1) It was a new moon
2) I felt unwanted after my birthday-8 cards all in.
3) I wanted something to aim for/think about
4) I want more clues in the quest for knowledge re father."
My Godmother had answered that letter by return. Here it is in front of me now, typed not word processed. The paragraph about my father still the one that stands out;
"I can understand that you want to find your natural father Kate, but not so sure if it is a good idea. I cannot help you as I do not know his surname. Your mum and natural dad parted when she was carrying you. He provided for you and your brother until your mum met your dad and married him. He adopted you both and was so very good to you. I thought they had told you and your brother about it. I think as time went on they just kept putting it off.
If your natural father has chosen to keep out of the scene I think you will have to respect that decision. From the little I know (I never actually met him though saw your mum frequently) he is a very nice person and would not have deliberately chosen to abandon you. It was just the circumstances."
My Godmother continued to be a voice of good sense, breezy middle class normality and eventually bafflement as she realised that things were seriously amiss in my mother, her former best friend's family. A few weeks later she wrote begging me to think about coming to live with her family as she thought I shouldn't be on my own;
" Told your mum I spoke you you. I don't think she seemed keen on a reconciliation and has a strange view about you going to university, I really can't think why she doesn't understand what a wonderful opportunity it is...
Hope you're enjoying your studies and are able to start putting the past behind you. It's such a shame everything developed as it did and I hope it hasn't affected you too badly. Its been especially hard for you to face these things on your own. However, you seem to have some good friends."
She was lovely and she meant well. She meant more than well. But "putting the past behind me" felt like a suggestion to put a plaster on a severed leg. All my attachments were in the past, and fractured, confused and unresolved. I couldn't see a future without the past and I still had no idea what half of the past meant, or where it was.
Summer passes and my diary mentions voluntary work doing storytelling sessions in libraries for kids, an audition for "Blockbusters" (the TV show, not the video shop), thinking about universities, a trip to stay with my Godmother and having "occasional spells of depression/loneliness but lots of positivity". Hmm. I've heeded my Godmother's words about respecting my father's wishes not to be on the scene. My visit to the estate agent wasn't in the summer after all, it wasn't until the autumn. Little did I know, as the days passed, that time was short.
But the diary also says I resolved that August not to spend so much time at Jean's house because I didn't want to "cut in on another family". This was a reference to the friend's family I'd stayed with for the six months immediately after leaving home. They didn't have space for me really, and I was desperate not to depend on anybody again, so had moved out into my bedsit and carried on at the same school doing A-levels. The feeling of not belonging had started in my own family, and just seemed self-perpetuating. So I was dragging my heels in finding my father. Driven by a need to belong somewhere, hindered by the fear of not belonging...
***
Memories are unreliable. Floating images, movies scenes, snatches of conversation, other people's memories, our memories of their memories, our memories of our own memories...
So far this story is accurate as I can make it. But I've just had to go back to the summer of 1992. Not the summer of 1992 I hold in my head, which consists of lots of pictures of a brown carpeted room with a single bed, the walk across an old mill field to school, dog eared settees in the sixth form common room. Not that 1992. But the one in documents I keep in carrier bags. Which I think are the first thing I'd rescue from my flat if there was a fire. These coffee cup stained papers and letters and small notebook diaries sometimes feel like the only real evidence of that time. Thank goodness, I sometimes think, it wasn't all happening now, when texts and emails would have seen that section of my confusing history vanish into cyberspace.
So-
something tangible;
My hardbound A5 black notebook with red corners. Labelled "Journal K.E.H" on the front in blue biro. I sometimes read writer's diaries and gasp at their breadth and depth. But the seventeen year old me gave the barest of details and rarely gave much clue about what she was actually feeling (if anything). But, tracking back the beginning of the father story I found, buried amongst irrelevant details that I seemed to give equal weight to, the forgotten beginning of the search.
"21st April
...At school the Bean Party won the election and in the big world the Tories surprisingly achieved a 21 seat majority. Met a real live poet Peter Sansome at a library reading and been to Meadowhall. It's the Easter hols and I've had a palmreading party at Denise's (seven people) and shopped at Manorgrove. Also got my birth certificate and went to the address. Spoke to Madge who was very upset at the rift but didn't know who the father was. Have written to Mum today (!) Will she reply? The letter was semi-grovelly but probably a bit cool. Dad (My StepDad) is the schizophrenic (?) villain. I'm sure he's brainwashed her. "
Ah, you see, I'd forgotten that bit.
I'd been to the registry office in Bradford and bought a copy of my birth certificate. I already knew from having asked there just before I left home that there was a blank space under "Father's Name". But it was only when the beige and red sheet of A4 with careful black ink copying was in my hands that I saw my mother's profession was given as "secretary to a textile agent" and there was an address in a suburb of Leeds that I recognised as the one I'd lived in until being three. I took advantage of the holidays and set off on the bus. Two buses it must have been. One down the hill the four miles to Bradford Interchange. Then another, a few miles into Leeds.
I don't remember the journey but if I could have I'd have sat on my usual front seat on the top deck and rested my feet on the metal bar that protruded above the seats. Maybe I'd have checked my hair by looking up into the angled round mirror which was how the bus driver could check no kids were running riot on the top deck.
I can see myself wandering round the terraced streets, hunting for memories. Hoping something would hit me with the nostalgic charge of a pine tree smell at Christmas.
I saw a small, walled park. Remembered swings, swinging higher, and higher. "Push me, no push me!"
And I can see myself sat in a cosy living room with a woman called Madge. Was it our old front room or had I asked down the street if anyone knew the woman called Jennifer who lived there with twins seventeen years earlier? The name Madge did ring a bell from all those years ago. She had one leg, deathly pale and circled with blue and yellow, laid out in front of her on a stool. It wasn't like flesh, but china. Well, that's what the toddler me remembered. When the teenage me asked her if she'd ever had a broken leg, she said no. That's the one detail I remember of our meeting. Did she have a broken leg and just forget? Did chilblains or strange tights look like a broken leg to a two year old?
I wrote none of this at the time. Just;
" 1st May.
Yesterday the letter from Val came. My Dad seems to be one of two people-John W or Neil. I'm on the trail and I never thought I would be. I feel slightly numbed though. But this week I had had a funny feeling something would happen."
Then I added nothing until;
"June 17th
Spent my birthday at Jean's (A schoolfriend's mum). It was okay though she got news that Cliff was moving to Wakefield which put her off balance. I wrote to Jackie (the Godmother I mentioned earlier) on June 1st because;
1) It was a new moon
2) I felt unwanted after my birthday-8 cards all in.
3) I wanted something to aim for/think about
4) I want more clues in the quest for knowledge re father."
My Godmother had answered that letter by return. Here it is in front of me now, typed not word processed. The paragraph about my father still the one that stands out;
"I can understand that you want to find your natural father Kate, but not so sure if it is a good idea. I cannot help you as I do not know his surname. Your mum and natural dad parted when she was carrying you. He provided for you and your brother until your mum met your dad and married him. He adopted you both and was so very good to you. I thought they had told you and your brother about it. I think as time went on they just kept putting it off.
If your natural father has chosen to keep out of the scene I think you will have to respect that decision. From the little I know (I never actually met him though saw your mum frequently) he is a very nice person and would not have deliberately chosen to abandon you. It was just the circumstances."
My Godmother continued to be a voice of good sense, breezy middle class normality and eventually bafflement as she realised that things were seriously amiss in my mother, her former best friend's family. A few weeks later she wrote begging me to think about coming to live with her family as she thought I shouldn't be on my own;
" Told your mum I spoke you you. I don't think she seemed keen on a reconciliation and has a strange view about you going to university, I really can't think why she doesn't understand what a wonderful opportunity it is...
Hope you're enjoying your studies and are able to start putting the past behind you. It's such a shame everything developed as it did and I hope it hasn't affected you too badly. Its been especially hard for you to face these things on your own. However, you seem to have some good friends."
She was lovely and she meant well. She meant more than well. But "putting the past behind me" felt like a suggestion to put a plaster on a severed leg. All my attachments were in the past, and fractured, confused and unresolved. I couldn't see a future without the past and I still had no idea what half of the past meant, or where it was.
Summer passes and my diary mentions voluntary work doing storytelling sessions in libraries for kids, an audition for "Blockbusters" (the TV show, not the video shop), thinking about universities, a trip to stay with my Godmother and having "occasional spells of depression/loneliness but lots of positivity". Hmm. I've heeded my Godmother's words about respecting my father's wishes not to be on the scene. My visit to the estate agent wasn't in the summer after all, it wasn't until the autumn. Little did I know, as the days passed, that time was short.
But the diary also says I resolved that August not to spend so much time at Jean's house because I didn't want to "cut in on another family". This was a reference to the friend's family I'd stayed with for the six months immediately after leaving home. They didn't have space for me really, and I was desperate not to depend on anybody again, so had moved out into my bedsit and carried on at the same school doing A-levels. The feeling of not belonging had started in my own family, and just seemed self-perpetuating. So I was dragging my heels in finding my father. Driven by a need to belong somewhere, hindered by the fear of not belonging...
Kate.. words really cannot explain how much this thread touches me. I'm with you every step of the way and only wish that I could have been when you were going through it.
You are an amazing person and i just want to send you massive hugs as I'm sure this is bringing up a lot of emotions for you.
lots of love and hugs to ya darling
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
You are an amazing person and i just want to send you massive hugs as I'm sure this is bringing up a lot of emotions for you.
lots of love and hugs to ya darling
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
KateF
Silver Member
It means alot to have you say that- thank you Mini and Gen.
People being with me in the writing is oddly comforting. Though I'm able to do it now because I'm feeling nourished and nurtured in a way the poor seventeen year old me just couldn't have. Feel like I need to have a section about my Stepfather before I can move onto the next step of the search for my father.
*************
I am four, I am on the spinning teacups ride at Disneyland. The sun is a yellow bulb, illuminating everything into even brighter primary colours. The sky is electric blue. My brother, with his curly blonde hair, and me with my straight, brown bob are screaming with laughter as we hold onto the wheel in the middle of the teacup. Daddy spins the wheel faster and faster with his strong, brown, hairy arms and we whirl faster than anyone else’s teacup, warm and laughing in the California heat, sliding on the shiny plastic seats and leaning into each other as we spin. Later we’ll have icecream in sugar cones and burgers without the gherkins and Daddy’ll take polaroids of us wearing black mickey mouse ears and being cuddled by Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and we’ll take it in turns to have piggy backs on the way back to the car when our feet can’t carry us anymore as day turns to dusk and the windows of Sleeping Beauty’s castle glow orange in the darkness behind us as we step through the turnstiles back into the real world.
In Disneyland everyone is a child and characters from books come to life and Walt Disney asks you to leave Today behind.
In September 1992 I was about to set off on the Quest for my Real Father. In this fairytale, I was first going to have to have my final encounter with my Evil Stepfather before I could go any further on the quest. My conscious mind might have tried to deride this version by smugly saying that I didn’t believe in turning people into fairytale baddies. Meanwhile my subconscious had no such compunction and regularly turned him into a madman out to murder me or bury me alive or set poisonous snakes on me in nightmares that saw me wake up with a racing heart.
How does a man who was the Best Daddy on the Spinning Teacups become the Evil Stepfather? How does a boy who got teased as Billy Bunter at school for being fat and wearing thick, black glasses become the Lord Mayor’s n’er do well alcoholic son? Then how does he marry his father’s young, blonde secretary, become an instant Dad to toddler twins, join Alcoholics Anonymous and take over the family business?
My Stepfather was a man who knew the power of magical transformations. In every fairytale and in the life of every magical transformer, you don’t usually have to look far before a lost parent turns up somewhere. Or rather doesn’t turn up but disappears. The photo of the Mother he lost when he was twelve, looked down from his office wall. Angelic faced in black and white, lost and leaving him to the loneliness of being called Billy Bunter and failing to live up to his father’s expectations.
Maybe he thought he could rewrite the ending of his own fairytale when he begged and cajoled and threatened his temperamental young wife into being the star of his home movies and playing out his worst fears on tape. When he pressed “Stop”, she chose him again, and again. The coach never had to turn back into a pumpkin and Sleeping Beauty was never going to wake up.
You can’t have two heroines in a fairytale though. As is so often the case, when a Stepdaughter reaches those awkward adolescent years, it would be easier for everybody if she just stayed a child. I was not going to be subject to my Stepfather’s remote control, and no matter how much he pressed “Rewind”, things could never go back to where they were before I grew up, before I knew he wasn’t my biological father, before I knew he made my mother sleep with other men and before the lies he told about me after I left home to anyone who would listen.
I can hear my anger underneath those words. Sometimes I wish I could feel it more. In 1992 it was easier, and maybe safer, to feel sorry for him. I could still see him and me on the spinning tea cups, him on his own, lost mother, being teased at school, me on my own, lost mother, in a bedsit. The magical spell that abusers can weave so they’re not on their own anymore; making somebody else feel what they felt.
“8th September
So much for “all’s well”. Coming out of Sourheads I saw “Dad”. I was going to ignore him but he said hello. We than had nearly an hour’s worth of conversation/row. He said like a stuck record “You won’t be sorry until you’ve reached your lowest”. This is an excuse because surely I can’t get any lower. At times he was convincing and I can understand why Jackie is okay with him-he was unreasonable but restrained. He kept calling me evil and wouldn’t admit I had any justification to do what I did. As we left the cemetary a man was concerned enough to ask if I was okay as he’d heard a commotion. He said confidently he was my Dad and we were having a serious discussion. He said he’d “get” Jim (the man I left home with) who may be in Austria. I found it hard to be overtly disbelieving of things he said. I went to Jean at the chemist after and then spent the evening with her.”
“26th September
New moon in Libra today indicates secrets or past re occurring. Saw Dad in the Co-op today. I was in the queue. He walked right past and said expressionlessly as if I was an acquaintance, “Hello Kate, alright?”. I said “Oh hello” and felt panicked. Helen (my younger sister) was outside with Cocoa and I said hello. It was foggy luckily so I don't think she saw exactly which door I went into ”
I can hear my confusion in those diary entries. My difficulty in smashing the glass that seemed to separate his reality from mine. I threatened the fantasy of a stable family life he had built up and he wasn’t going to let anything or anyone destroy that. His fear, and his fantasy world made him terrifying to me and it seems strangely apt that we went our separate ways into the fog after a last meeting in which we acted like strangers.
Above my desk I have a framed photo of the plaque at the entrance to Disneyland where I went again last year with my sister and her young family. The first time in over twenty years. The thrill of the invitation to escape as I said a fervent and obedient “Yes, I will” in my head to Walt Disney’s instruction; “Here You Leave Today And Enter The World Of Yesterday, Tomorrow and Fantasy” was as powerful as it had been when I was four. Somewhere in another world, I'm still whirling in the spinning teacups, safe from everything that can happen when you grow up.
Fifteen years ago I was on the verge of rewriting my own story…
People being with me in the writing is oddly comforting. Though I'm able to do it now because I'm feeling nourished and nurtured in a way the poor seventeen year old me just couldn't have. Feel like I need to have a section about my Stepfather before I can move onto the next step of the search for my father.
*************
I am four, I am on the spinning teacups ride at Disneyland. The sun is a yellow bulb, illuminating everything into even brighter primary colours. The sky is electric blue. My brother, with his curly blonde hair, and me with my straight, brown bob are screaming with laughter as we hold onto the wheel in the middle of the teacup. Daddy spins the wheel faster and faster with his strong, brown, hairy arms and we whirl faster than anyone else’s teacup, warm and laughing in the California heat, sliding on the shiny plastic seats and leaning into each other as we spin. Later we’ll have icecream in sugar cones and burgers without the gherkins and Daddy’ll take polaroids of us wearing black mickey mouse ears and being cuddled by Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and we’ll take it in turns to have piggy backs on the way back to the car when our feet can’t carry us anymore as day turns to dusk and the windows of Sleeping Beauty’s castle glow orange in the darkness behind us as we step through the turnstiles back into the real world.
In Disneyland everyone is a child and characters from books come to life and Walt Disney asks you to leave Today behind.
In September 1992 I was about to set off on the Quest for my Real Father. In this fairytale, I was first going to have to have my final encounter with my Evil Stepfather before I could go any further on the quest. My conscious mind might have tried to deride this version by smugly saying that I didn’t believe in turning people into fairytale baddies. Meanwhile my subconscious had no such compunction and regularly turned him into a madman out to murder me or bury me alive or set poisonous snakes on me in nightmares that saw me wake up with a racing heart.
How does a man who was the Best Daddy on the Spinning Teacups become the Evil Stepfather? How does a boy who got teased as Billy Bunter at school for being fat and wearing thick, black glasses become the Lord Mayor’s n’er do well alcoholic son? Then how does he marry his father’s young, blonde secretary, become an instant Dad to toddler twins, join Alcoholics Anonymous and take over the family business?
My Stepfather was a man who knew the power of magical transformations. In every fairytale and in the life of every magical transformer, you don’t usually have to look far before a lost parent turns up somewhere. Or rather doesn’t turn up but disappears. The photo of the Mother he lost when he was twelve, looked down from his office wall. Angelic faced in black and white, lost and leaving him to the loneliness of being called Billy Bunter and failing to live up to his father’s expectations.
Maybe he thought he could rewrite the ending of his own fairytale when he begged and cajoled and threatened his temperamental young wife into being the star of his home movies and playing out his worst fears on tape. When he pressed “Stop”, she chose him again, and again. The coach never had to turn back into a pumpkin and Sleeping Beauty was never going to wake up.
You can’t have two heroines in a fairytale though. As is so often the case, when a Stepdaughter reaches those awkward adolescent years, it would be easier for everybody if she just stayed a child. I was not going to be subject to my Stepfather’s remote control, and no matter how much he pressed “Rewind”, things could never go back to where they were before I grew up, before I knew he wasn’t my biological father, before I knew he made my mother sleep with other men and before the lies he told about me after I left home to anyone who would listen.
I can hear my anger underneath those words. Sometimes I wish I could feel it more. In 1992 it was easier, and maybe safer, to feel sorry for him. I could still see him and me on the spinning tea cups, him on his own, lost mother, being teased at school, me on my own, lost mother, in a bedsit. The magical spell that abusers can weave so they’re not on their own anymore; making somebody else feel what they felt.
“8th September
So much for “all’s well”. Coming out of Sourheads I saw “Dad”. I was going to ignore him but he said hello. We than had nearly an hour’s worth of conversation/row. He said like a stuck record “You won’t be sorry until you’ve reached your lowest”. This is an excuse because surely I can’t get any lower. At times he was convincing and I can understand why Jackie is okay with him-he was unreasonable but restrained. He kept calling me evil and wouldn’t admit I had any justification to do what I did. As we left the cemetary a man was concerned enough to ask if I was okay as he’d heard a commotion. He said confidently he was my Dad and we were having a serious discussion. He said he’d “get” Jim (the man I left home with) who may be in Austria. I found it hard to be overtly disbelieving of things he said. I went to Jean at the chemist after and then spent the evening with her.”
“26th September
New moon in Libra today indicates secrets or past re occurring. Saw Dad in the Co-op today. I was in the queue. He walked right past and said expressionlessly as if I was an acquaintance, “Hello Kate, alright?”. I said “Oh hello” and felt panicked. Helen (my younger sister) was outside with Cocoa and I said hello. It was foggy luckily so I don't think she saw exactly which door I went into ”
I can hear my confusion in those diary entries. My difficulty in smashing the glass that seemed to separate his reality from mine. I threatened the fantasy of a stable family life he had built up and he wasn’t going to let anything or anyone destroy that. His fear, and his fantasy world made him terrifying to me and it seems strangely apt that we went our separate ways into the fog after a last meeting in which we acted like strangers.
Above my desk I have a framed photo of the plaque at the entrance to Disneyland where I went again last year with my sister and her young family. The first time in over twenty years. The thrill of the invitation to escape as I said a fervent and obedient “Yes, I will” in my head to Walt Disney’s instruction; “Here You Leave Today And Enter The World Of Yesterday, Tomorrow and Fantasy” was as powerful as it had been when I was four. Somewhere in another world, I'm still whirling in the spinning teacups, safe from everything that can happen when you grow up.
Fifteen years ago I was on the verge of rewriting my own story…
Isobel1965
Gold Member
Bless you, hun xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
KateF
Silver Member
Thanks lasses. It's not painful at the mo. More, illuminating and a weird sort of relief.
*********
The power of October 1st...
Rewriting my own story?
Discovering it maybe. Digressions, digressions. What happened next?
I am torn, because I have October 1st 1991 to talk about and October 1st 1992. I want to move forward with the narrative- I'm on the verge of actually finding something out about my real father in 1992. What is my Mum's ex-fiancee going to say to me when I ring him? But as ever for me, I have to go back before I can go forward.
I woke up in my bedsit, probably put a pound coin in the electricity meter that ticked round slowly on the wall next to my bed, got the bottle of milk that was just about cold on the windowsill and poured some into a bowl of Coco Pops. I was trying to be in the moment, in the present, but kept being dragged back to a year earlier, the day I left home.
It's as if I thought if I remembered hard enough I could reach through a portal in time on a day with the same name and speak to Jim, my first (unwise) love and the man I left with. "Where are you, where are you?". A year earlier, after I'd stepped off my flight from Leeds then through passport control at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris he had given me the briefest of hugs and we'd started walking quickly; the steel and glass atrium of the terminal building arching above us. "Let's get out of here", he'd said, looking uneasy. "I've only been in here half an hour and I've seen three people I know already".
The story of the ten days between the "Interpol Hunt Missing Girl" headline in the local papers and the "Missing Girl Found" headline is, as they say, another story. Suffice to say that after those ten days, Jim rang me to say he was on the run and would get in touch. A year later I was still waiting.
What's that quote from Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest"? ; "To lose one parent is unfortunate, to lose two is careless". Well, I'd lost two father figures in a year and was looking for a third. Talk about repeating patterns...
It is even more obvious now that the desperate need to end the uncertainty of not knowing underpinned both my search for my father and my hope, back then, that I would see Jim again. In the blank under Father's Name on my birth certificate and the pause before Jim signed a false name on a German hotel register, I was looking for myself. But I was never going to find me in those gaps and nothing could fill the gap inside me that had been there so long it felt normal.
"Perhaps today will prove to be as significant as last year was" I said in my diary. I set off to school, as I had done the year before, but this time I actually arrived, rather than taking a diversion via Leeds train station and Yeadon Airport. This October 1st I had lessons in Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure" and Napoleon's Empire. I chatted to the girls in the sixth form common room at lunchtime. Then when the 3.15 pm bell rang I walked up to the village, got the bus down into Bradford, found the estate agents where my mother used to work and saw John W-.
My diary adds two things to my earlier account. I recorded that John looked like Arthur Daley. And he only met my mother's fiancee again after seventeen years because he was actually standing in for someone else on an appointment and unusually, had been the one that went to the house Neil M- was selling.
After having stalled this search over the summer, I wasn't hanging about now. After leaving the Estate Agents, I went straight to a phone box in Bradford Interchange, lifted the heavy black receiver and dialled Neil M's number.
"Who are you?", he repeated. This was harder than I'd thought. He sounded suspicious and hostile. "How do I know you're Jennifer's daughter?". Then suddenly, perhaps after getting over the out of the blue-ness, he changed his tone and spoke directly but kindly. Like John W, he didn't sound in the least bit emotional about his relationship with my Mum. I told him what my Godmother had said about my father. A married man. Partly braced in case Neil suddenly confessed to paternity, I was relieved and amazed when he said that he had met my father, when he was my mother's boss, at a party at his house. He was tall and balding. Had a wife, who was "a bit officious" and two children. He said the office was up a certain street in Bradford, that he couldn't remember my father's name but would probably know it if he heard it and that I should ring back when I had some possible ones.
I was astonished. This sudden flood of information, after what had seemed like the impossibility of finding anything out. Even a description of my Dad. Okay "tall and balding" wasn't alot to go on, but it gave me a clearer image in my head. He was really real, an actual person.
Back at my bedsit, I found the list of textile agents I had photocopied from an old copy of the Yellow Pages in the central library a few weeks earlier. There'd been eleven textile agents listed in Bradford the year before I was born. Sure enough, one of them was on the street Neil M- had mentioned. Oddly, another coincidence, I had actually circled that one in red pen already. Its name had the same initials as me and my brother "K and R". I realised that the night before, on my way home from rehearsals for the pantomime I was in, I would have walked past the building where my Mum and father used to work.
It's the ultimate office cliche isn't it? The boss and the secretary. There's even something particularly seventies about it, the stuff of sitcoms and comedy sketches "Anything you'd like me to take down for you sir?, nudge, nudge, wink, wink". But somehow being able to imagine the place where they worked made it, again, more real. Also, because I had had a secret relationship that ended in disaster the year before, I thought I knew how they must have felt. The arenaline high of an illicit relationship, the anguish of not being able to be together. Neil's description of the wife as "officious" fed my wish to believe that they weren't doing anything wrong. I was constructing my own romantic fantasy of their "tragic love" based on the few details I had and a big dollop of projections from my own experience with Jim. I was giving into the inevitable temptation of rewriting the story of how I came to exist.
Despite all that romanticism, I had a logical head too, and knew that I would need to find out more about the textile agents, in order to find my father. The threads of my origins were being woven together. A pattern was emerging slowly.
The next day I was back to Bradford Central Library. I loved that place. A sixties concrete monstrosity on the outside, inside calm and space and clean tile floors and rows and rows of books that, like anniversaries, were portals to other worlds. No entry for the company in this year's Yellow Pages. Nor the year before, or the year before, but it had still been there until 1989. A librarian said that to get more information I'd have to send off to companies house for their records on microfiche. I filled in a form and went back to the phone box to ring Neil M. Yes, it was the company I was looking at he said, definitely. He didn't think my father was either of the names in the company though, but he definitely had been one of the directors. There was no edge to his friendly voice at all, it felt like he was happy to help me on this quest if he could.
I felt like a private detective.
This gathering of the information together piece by piece was exciting and also somehow reassuring. If I could find the answer to the question Who Is My Father? I felt like the answers to any question could be extracted, sequenced, logically assembled and revealed. Nothing could be hidden really if you were persistent enough. So I still had a family full of secrets and no idea where Jim was? Maybe I could solve that too.
Gaps to fill, puzzles to solve and all the while still failing to get very near the key mystery we all have to face. Who the heck was I?
*********
The power of October 1st...
Rewriting my own story?
Discovering it maybe. Digressions, digressions. What happened next?
I am torn, because I have October 1st 1991 to talk about and October 1st 1992. I want to move forward with the narrative- I'm on the verge of actually finding something out about my real father in 1992. What is my Mum's ex-fiancee going to say to me when I ring him? But as ever for me, I have to go back before I can go forward.
I woke up in my bedsit, probably put a pound coin in the electricity meter that ticked round slowly on the wall next to my bed, got the bottle of milk that was just about cold on the windowsill and poured some into a bowl of Coco Pops. I was trying to be in the moment, in the present, but kept being dragged back to a year earlier, the day I left home.
It's as if I thought if I remembered hard enough I could reach through a portal in time on a day with the same name and speak to Jim, my first (unwise) love and the man I left with. "Where are you, where are you?". A year earlier, after I'd stepped off my flight from Leeds then through passport control at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris he had given me the briefest of hugs and we'd started walking quickly; the steel and glass atrium of the terminal building arching above us. "Let's get out of here", he'd said, looking uneasy. "I've only been in here half an hour and I've seen three people I know already".
The story of the ten days between the "Interpol Hunt Missing Girl" headline in the local papers and the "Missing Girl Found" headline is, as they say, another story. Suffice to say that after those ten days, Jim rang me to say he was on the run and would get in touch. A year later I was still waiting.
What's that quote from Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest"? ; "To lose one parent is unfortunate, to lose two is careless". Well, I'd lost two father figures in a year and was looking for a third. Talk about repeating patterns...
It is even more obvious now that the desperate need to end the uncertainty of not knowing underpinned both my search for my father and my hope, back then, that I would see Jim again. In the blank under Father's Name on my birth certificate and the pause before Jim signed a false name on a German hotel register, I was looking for myself. But I was never going to find me in those gaps and nothing could fill the gap inside me that had been there so long it felt normal.
"Perhaps today will prove to be as significant as last year was" I said in my diary. I set off to school, as I had done the year before, but this time I actually arrived, rather than taking a diversion via Leeds train station and Yeadon Airport. This October 1st I had lessons in Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure" and Napoleon's Empire. I chatted to the girls in the sixth form common room at lunchtime. Then when the 3.15 pm bell rang I walked up to the village, got the bus down into Bradford, found the estate agents where my mother used to work and saw John W-.
My diary adds two things to my earlier account. I recorded that John looked like Arthur Daley. And he only met my mother's fiancee again after seventeen years because he was actually standing in for someone else on an appointment and unusually, had been the one that went to the house Neil M- was selling.
After having stalled this search over the summer, I wasn't hanging about now. After leaving the Estate Agents, I went straight to a phone box in Bradford Interchange, lifted the heavy black receiver and dialled Neil M's number.
"Who are you?", he repeated. This was harder than I'd thought. He sounded suspicious and hostile. "How do I know you're Jennifer's daughter?". Then suddenly, perhaps after getting over the out of the blue-ness, he changed his tone and spoke directly but kindly. Like John W, he didn't sound in the least bit emotional about his relationship with my Mum. I told him what my Godmother had said about my father. A married man. Partly braced in case Neil suddenly confessed to paternity, I was relieved and amazed when he said that he had met my father, when he was my mother's boss, at a party at his house. He was tall and balding. Had a wife, who was "a bit officious" and two children. He said the office was up a certain street in Bradford, that he couldn't remember my father's name but would probably know it if he heard it and that I should ring back when I had some possible ones.
I was astonished. This sudden flood of information, after what had seemed like the impossibility of finding anything out. Even a description of my Dad. Okay "tall and balding" wasn't alot to go on, but it gave me a clearer image in my head. He was really real, an actual person.
Back at my bedsit, I found the list of textile agents I had photocopied from an old copy of the Yellow Pages in the central library a few weeks earlier. There'd been eleven textile agents listed in Bradford the year before I was born. Sure enough, one of them was on the street Neil M- had mentioned. Oddly, another coincidence, I had actually circled that one in red pen already. Its name had the same initials as me and my brother "K and R". I realised that the night before, on my way home from rehearsals for the pantomime I was in, I would have walked past the building where my Mum and father used to work.
It's the ultimate office cliche isn't it? The boss and the secretary. There's even something particularly seventies about it, the stuff of sitcoms and comedy sketches "Anything you'd like me to take down for you sir?, nudge, nudge, wink, wink". But somehow being able to imagine the place where they worked made it, again, more real. Also, because I had had a secret relationship that ended in disaster the year before, I thought I knew how they must have felt. The arenaline high of an illicit relationship, the anguish of not being able to be together. Neil's description of the wife as "officious" fed my wish to believe that they weren't doing anything wrong. I was constructing my own romantic fantasy of their "tragic love" based on the few details I had and a big dollop of projections from my own experience with Jim. I was giving into the inevitable temptation of rewriting the story of how I came to exist.
Despite all that romanticism, I had a logical head too, and knew that I would need to find out more about the textile agents, in order to find my father. The threads of my origins were being woven together. A pattern was emerging slowly.
The next day I was back to Bradford Central Library. I loved that place. A sixties concrete monstrosity on the outside, inside calm and space and clean tile floors and rows and rows of books that, like anniversaries, were portals to other worlds. No entry for the company in this year's Yellow Pages. Nor the year before, or the year before, but it had still been there until 1989. A librarian said that to get more information I'd have to send off to companies house for their records on microfiche. I filled in a form and went back to the phone box to ring Neil M. Yes, it was the company I was looking at he said, definitely. He didn't think my father was either of the names in the company though, but he definitely had been one of the directors. There was no edge to his friendly voice at all, it felt like he was happy to help me on this quest if he could.
I felt like a private detective.
This gathering of the information together piece by piece was exciting and also somehow reassuring. If I could find the answer to the question Who Is My Father? I felt like the answers to any question could be extracted, sequenced, logically assembled and revealed. Nothing could be hidden really if you were persistent enough. So I still had a family full of secrets and no idea where Jim was? Maybe I could solve that too.
Gaps to fill, puzzles to solve and all the while still failing to get very near the key mystery we all have to face. Who the heck was I?
Isobel1965
Gold Member
Darling - you really do have to get this published when it's completed.
xxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxx
KateF
Silver Member
:thankyou:
*********
The quest continues...
Sometimes it hurts to look back at the seventeen year old me, sometimes I laugh, sometimes I think "You daft cow!".
At this point in the diary I hinted at something that was taking up alot of my mental space. My english teacher had always been an inspiring presence. Not the getting people to leap on desks-type like Robin Williams in "Dead Poets Society", just quietly suggesting books I might like and going along with my mad scheme to start a school magazine (mainly because I wanted to get out of having to spend breaks outside in the cold). When I went back to school the week after leaving home, while conversations stopped in corridors when I walked past, he just joked about how I'd made the front page of the local paper. Without fuss he gave me a lift to the first meeting of a new youth drama group and laughed at the irony as the Del Shannon song "Runaway" came on the radio as I got in the car.
"His presence is a comfort" I told my diary on 7th October. Of course, I had a huge crush on him, but my fantasies mainly involved me rescuing him from various unlikely situations like him breaking down in the middle of nowhere, and me happening past. Yes, some people imagine stockings and suspenders, I just fantasised myself as a glorified version of the RAC. I think I knew it then really, and I certainly know it now, that more than anything he represented the consistent, kind (without being too "in my face") and accepting father figure I was yearning for. And actively looking for...
I kept going back to the library to check if they'd got the microfiches in, and just before the October half term, they finally had.
I slid the black rectangles of plastic under the glass and switched on the reader. The warm light hummed. At first none of it made sense. Just pages of figures and official company speak. I scanned through, looking for anything in 1973, 74 or 75. These records went back right to the fifties and the company seemed to have changed hands several times. I wrote down some names on the back of the brown envelope the records had come in. Scrawling them messily in my rush. I was drawn by one name particularly- a John Broadley. For some reason that sounded right. I could hear that as my father. I double underlined it. He was a director right through from the sixties.
It would be poetic wouldn't it, if that was his name? If I just knew. But, without knowing it, I have also already written my father's name down in smaller letters. He was a director through the seventies as well. For some reason "Norman" sounded too unfamiliar.
I rang Neil M- twice more. The first time I run through all the names I've written down and wasn't sure either he said. Their addresses would help. He knew the house he visited was somewhere in Eccleshill. The second time, he said "Yes, definitely, that's him". Norman Reynard.
Back in my bedsit I looked at the name on the envelope. I've never known anyone called Norman. Well, Norman Wisdom. Can't even picture him really. I know that "Reynard" is near the French for fox though- renard. I like that.
So. What next? The search was driving me on without me having to think about it. Step by step. I had a name and his address through the 1970s, but the company has no records that mentioned him after then. It was back to the library the next day after school and on to the electoral roll. It's funny to think I could have had his number nowadays with a couple of clicks on "192.com". But there I was, poring over big books of addresses and microfilm. I'm glad in a way though. It felt almost physical, like I was actually doing something real to find him
The last time Norman featured in the electoral roll at the address I had was 1980. But, I noticed that in the 1992 electoral roll, one of the next door neighbours who had been there in the seventies, was still there now.
Back to the phone box. I was used now to resting a pen and paper on the little black shelf while I cradled the receiver between my ear and my shoulder. And used to the distinctive phonebox smell that was half metallic, half wee. And to feeding enough coins in so that you wouldn't hear the beeps. The way my heart speeded up as the last 10 p counted down number by number. I found it quite a safe place though, a little box where you can see out at the world going by around you, secure behind the glass squares. The directory enquiries woman gave me my father's former next door neighbour's number. I stared at the digits underneath his name. Jack Hartley. I imagined some sort of down to earth Yorkshire war veteran. I knew I would need a plausible story for this one. The truth probably wasn't going to be too helpful if he'd known what was going on for his neighbour in the mid seventies.
"If you're going to lie, keep it as close to the truth as possible"; Jim's words echoed in my head.
"I'm er...tracing Norman Reynard's family tree and I wonder if you'd any idea where he moved to after he left your street?" I said to the gravel voiced old man who answered the phone, sounding unconvincing, even to myself.
"I don't know and anyway I can't give information like that out", he said sounding slightly angry.
"But I'm just wanting information about this branch of my family" I said, "I'm sure he wouldn't mind". I slipped unconsciously into a slightly posher voice in the hope of sounding authoritative.
"Absolutely not" he rapped and promptly put the phone down.
"But-"
Oh. My stomach dropped. I felt reprimanded and guilty. Like I'd been caught out doing something wrong.
Jack Hartley spoke directly to the voice in my head that said "you have no right to do this, who are you to know, digging into things that are none of your business?".
My flurry of searching ground to a halt. It would take me another three or four weeks to overpower those voices and get back to the quest. All the while wondering if my father was still in Bradford, if he was even still alive. The next enquiry was going to yield fruit surprisingly easily. Next time I would get my father's address and telephone number. If I'd known that would I have carried on straight away? Was I scared of finding him or scared of not finding him? Probably, as so often with questions like that, the answer was, a bit of both...
*********
The quest continues...
Sometimes it hurts to look back at the seventeen year old me, sometimes I laugh, sometimes I think "You daft cow!".
At this point in the diary I hinted at something that was taking up alot of my mental space. My english teacher had always been an inspiring presence. Not the getting people to leap on desks-type like Robin Williams in "Dead Poets Society", just quietly suggesting books I might like and going along with my mad scheme to start a school magazine (mainly because I wanted to get out of having to spend breaks outside in the cold). When I went back to school the week after leaving home, while conversations stopped in corridors when I walked past, he just joked about how I'd made the front page of the local paper. Without fuss he gave me a lift to the first meeting of a new youth drama group and laughed at the irony as the Del Shannon song "Runaway" came on the radio as I got in the car.
"His presence is a comfort" I told my diary on 7th October. Of course, I had a huge crush on him, but my fantasies mainly involved me rescuing him from various unlikely situations like him breaking down in the middle of nowhere, and me happening past. Yes, some people imagine stockings and suspenders, I just fantasised myself as a glorified version of the RAC. I think I knew it then really, and I certainly know it now, that more than anything he represented the consistent, kind (without being too "in my face") and accepting father figure I was yearning for. And actively looking for...
I kept going back to the library to check if they'd got the microfiches in, and just before the October half term, they finally had.
I slid the black rectangles of plastic under the glass and switched on the reader. The warm light hummed. At first none of it made sense. Just pages of figures and official company speak. I scanned through, looking for anything in 1973, 74 or 75. These records went back right to the fifties and the company seemed to have changed hands several times. I wrote down some names on the back of the brown envelope the records had come in. Scrawling them messily in my rush. I was drawn by one name particularly- a John Broadley. For some reason that sounded right. I could hear that as my father. I double underlined it. He was a director right through from the sixties.
It would be poetic wouldn't it, if that was his name? If I just knew. But, without knowing it, I have also already written my father's name down in smaller letters. He was a director through the seventies as well. For some reason "Norman" sounded too unfamiliar.
I rang Neil M- twice more. The first time I run through all the names I've written down and wasn't sure either he said. Their addresses would help. He knew the house he visited was somewhere in Eccleshill. The second time, he said "Yes, definitely, that's him". Norman Reynard.
Back in my bedsit I looked at the name on the envelope. I've never known anyone called Norman. Well, Norman Wisdom. Can't even picture him really. I know that "Reynard" is near the French for fox though- renard. I like that.
So. What next? The search was driving me on without me having to think about it. Step by step. I had a name and his address through the 1970s, but the company has no records that mentioned him after then. It was back to the library the next day after school and on to the electoral roll. It's funny to think I could have had his number nowadays with a couple of clicks on "192.com". But there I was, poring over big books of addresses and microfilm. I'm glad in a way though. It felt almost physical, like I was actually doing something real to find him
The last time Norman featured in the electoral roll at the address I had was 1980. But, I noticed that in the 1992 electoral roll, one of the next door neighbours who had been there in the seventies, was still there now.
Back to the phone box. I was used now to resting a pen and paper on the little black shelf while I cradled the receiver between my ear and my shoulder. And used to the distinctive phonebox smell that was half metallic, half wee. And to feeding enough coins in so that you wouldn't hear the beeps. The way my heart speeded up as the last 10 p counted down number by number. I found it quite a safe place though, a little box where you can see out at the world going by around you, secure behind the glass squares. The directory enquiries woman gave me my father's former next door neighbour's number. I stared at the digits underneath his name. Jack Hartley. I imagined some sort of down to earth Yorkshire war veteran. I knew I would need a plausible story for this one. The truth probably wasn't going to be too helpful if he'd known what was going on for his neighbour in the mid seventies.
"If you're going to lie, keep it as close to the truth as possible"; Jim's words echoed in my head.
"I'm er...tracing Norman Reynard's family tree and I wonder if you'd any idea where he moved to after he left your street?" I said to the gravel voiced old man who answered the phone, sounding unconvincing, even to myself.
"I don't know and anyway I can't give information like that out", he said sounding slightly angry.
"But I'm just wanting information about this branch of my family" I said, "I'm sure he wouldn't mind". I slipped unconsciously into a slightly posher voice in the hope of sounding authoritative.
"Absolutely not" he rapped and promptly put the phone down.
"But-"
Oh. My stomach dropped. I felt reprimanded and guilty. Like I'd been caught out doing something wrong.
Jack Hartley spoke directly to the voice in my head that said "you have no right to do this, who are you to know, digging into things that are none of your business?".
My flurry of searching ground to a halt. It would take me another three or four weeks to overpower those voices and get back to the quest. All the while wondering if my father was still in Bradford, if he was even still alive. The next enquiry was going to yield fruit surprisingly easily. Next time I would get my father's address and telephone number. If I'd known that would I have carried on straight away? Was I scared of finding him or scared of not finding him? Probably, as so often with questions like that, the answer was, a bit of both...
Last edited:
KateF
Silver Member
So, back to the phone box again.
Time has moved on. It's November 17th now. Bradford was doing alternating grey days and drizzly days and grey and drizzly days in the way that Bradford can do so well.
I have the phone number and name of the current managing director of the company my father had worked for. As I dial I imagine him reclining in some sort of office chair, filing cabinets half open under the desk, in-trays piled with papers. He answers the phone, sounds relaxed, easy going, not like the brittle suspiciousness of Jack Hartley.
"You're looking for Norman Reynard? Yes, I've got his address. Spoke to him the other day actually"
He is alive. He spoke to the man I'm speaking to now. And as I take the address down, it turns out that he still lives on the other side of Bradford, just seven miles or so away from me.
That evening I take the address to my friend Jean's house. I went there most Tuesday nights. Liked the easy familiarity of how I would make the coffees for us in the white kitchen of the small semi. Two Sweetex for her, one for me, always carrying my mug on the left into the living room. She was divorced and still bruised by the break up. Her husband had left her for another woman two years earlier and she still sometimes spent Saturdays in bed. We were both still trying to work out our pasts and would circle round and round the same topics again and again. Her husband. Jim. My family. We'd approach them from different angles as if we were hoping for a different conclusion. We listened to each others circles, more patient than other people who would have wanted us to move on, to spiral on from what we couldn't come to terms with. I went to school with her daughter who was glad her Mum now had someone to circle with.
Jean was pleased I finally had an address for my father and we sipped coffee as I wrote a letter to him, reading out sentences as I went along. She suggested that I could get him to ring her house since I didn't have a phone. We also concluded that I should put a deadline in the letter for him to contact me so I wouldn't have to wait forever, poised in case he did. Both me and Jean knew the tension of hoping for an outcome that depended on a man making contact.
I read the letter now and I think it's the strange work of someone who wasn't used to including feelings in communication. Who was being careful. Who was trying hard not to seem needy, not to ask anything at all. Scattergunning through relevant facts, without filling in too many details. Hoping he might fill some in himself.
I remember the dilemma of how to start the letter.
Dear Norman? It felt like that I couldn't call my father by his first name. (and also that I didn't want to). But Dear Dad was obviously far too presumptuous. I solved it by not addressing it at all. The letter just goes straight in. My neatest handwriting in black pen on a sheet of lined notepaper.
I do hope this letter is not too much of a shock. I don't want to cause you any distress.
I am Jennifer G-'s daughter and believe that you may be my father.
I am contacting you entirely on my own. The rest of my family have no knowledge of what I am doing.
I found out that I was adopted only a year ago and would appreciate a chance to get to know you. I realise that this may put you in a difficult position because of your family commitments.
A friend has agreed to let me use her telephone number so that you can contact me if this is what you decide to do.
Ask for Jean on 814569
If you wish to contact me at all, telephone the above number by Monday 30th November and leave a message.
If you haven't phoned by then I will assume that you would prefer not to make contact and I will understand
Yours,
Kate
Time has moved on. It's November 17th now. Bradford was doing alternating grey days and drizzly days and grey and drizzly days in the way that Bradford can do so well.
I have the phone number and name of the current managing director of the company my father had worked for. As I dial I imagine him reclining in some sort of office chair, filing cabinets half open under the desk, in-trays piled with papers. He answers the phone, sounds relaxed, easy going, not like the brittle suspiciousness of Jack Hartley.
"You're looking for Norman Reynard? Yes, I've got his address. Spoke to him the other day actually"
He is alive. He spoke to the man I'm speaking to now. And as I take the address down, it turns out that he still lives on the other side of Bradford, just seven miles or so away from me.
That evening I take the address to my friend Jean's house. I went there most Tuesday nights. Liked the easy familiarity of how I would make the coffees for us in the white kitchen of the small semi. Two Sweetex for her, one for me, always carrying my mug on the left into the living room. She was divorced and still bruised by the break up. Her husband had left her for another woman two years earlier and she still sometimes spent Saturdays in bed. We were both still trying to work out our pasts and would circle round and round the same topics again and again. Her husband. Jim. My family. We'd approach them from different angles as if we were hoping for a different conclusion. We listened to each others circles, more patient than other people who would have wanted us to move on, to spiral on from what we couldn't come to terms with. I went to school with her daughter who was glad her Mum now had someone to circle with.
Jean was pleased I finally had an address for my father and we sipped coffee as I wrote a letter to him, reading out sentences as I went along. She suggested that I could get him to ring her house since I didn't have a phone. We also concluded that I should put a deadline in the letter for him to contact me so I wouldn't have to wait forever, poised in case he did. Both me and Jean knew the tension of hoping for an outcome that depended on a man making contact.
I read the letter now and I think it's the strange work of someone who wasn't used to including feelings in communication. Who was being careful. Who was trying hard not to seem needy, not to ask anything at all. Scattergunning through relevant facts, without filling in too many details. Hoping he might fill some in himself.
I remember the dilemma of how to start the letter.
Dear Norman? It felt like that I couldn't call my father by his first name. (and also that I didn't want to). But Dear Dad was obviously far too presumptuous. I solved it by not addressing it at all. The letter just goes straight in. My neatest handwriting in black pen on a sheet of lined notepaper.
I do hope this letter is not too much of a shock. I don't want to cause you any distress.
I am Jennifer G-'s daughter and believe that you may be my father.
I am contacting you entirely on my own. The rest of my family have no knowledge of what I am doing.
I found out that I was adopted only a year ago and would appreciate a chance to get to know you. I realise that this may put you in a difficult position because of your family commitments.
A friend has agreed to let me use her telephone number so that you can contact me if this is what you decide to do.
Ask for Jean on 814569
If you wish to contact me at all, telephone the above number by Monday 30th November and leave a message.
If you haven't phoned by then I will assume that you would prefer not to make contact and I will understand
Yours,
Kate
Isobel1965
Gold Member
OMG hun!!!
lol re the phone boxes!
awww re Jean!
oooh er re the letter and the deadline......
Enthralling stuff, lady!
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
lol re the phone boxes!
awww re Jean!
oooh er re the letter and the deadline......
Enthralling stuff, lady!
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
HelenG
Member
Dear Kate
This is so enthralling. I really hope this is not hurting you to write all this down.
I so hope you have the courage to look for a publisher.... I devour books and this thread is causing me such a dilemma... I REALLY want to read the next instalment... but SO don't want to reach the end - hope that makes sense!
Can't you tell I don't have your way with words
This is so enthralling. I really hope this is not hurting you to write all this down.
I so hope you have the courage to look for a publisher.... I devour books and this thread is causing me such a dilemma... I REALLY want to read the next instalment... but SO don't want to reach the end - hope that makes sense!
Can't you tell I don't have your way with words
KateF
Silver Member
Bless , thanks all.
(and Helen G- I suppose the good thing is that unlike a book, there's no end to this cos I've not written it yet if you see what I mean!). In the midst of a big school arts project so won't get to update til tomorrow night, poss Friday night at the latest. Thanks for reading. xxx
(and Helen G- I suppose the good thing is that unlike a book, there's no end to this cos I've not written it yet if you see what I mean!). In the midst of a big school arts project so won't get to update til tomorrow night, poss Friday night at the latest. Thanks for reading. xxx
KateF
Silver Member
The same dilemma as addressing the letter. How to end it?
"Yours sincerely or faithfully" would have felt too formal and "love" didn't feel possible yet, writing to this stranger. The "Yours" wasn't completely unconscious. As I wrote it I was aware of the double meaning. I was his. I was saying that I belonged to Norman Reynard. But he had let me go once in circumstances I still didn't really know about. Was there any chance he would want to change his mind seventeen years on?
I posted the letter on my way to school the next morning. Holding the white envelope poised half in, half out of the red pillar box slot for a few seconds before letting it drop. I remember sitting in the dinner hall that lunchtime. Cutlery clattering all around me, kids voices rising and falling in the school hall. This was normality now, this was safe. But I knew sending the letter meant that I was back in the world of the unexpected, where my fate depended on the unpredictable actions of others. Potential chaos. I was used to that, after the upheaval of leaving home. It was exhilarating, but also didn't feel quite real.
Somewhere in an alternate universe, another Kate was carrying on her life before the summer of 1991 when everything crashed. Her parents weren't swingers who blackmailed sex partners, her Dad was her Dad, she hadn't left home with a 46 year old gun runner, she hadn't been arrested after ten days and lived in a bedsit on her own since March.
Because none of these things were thinkable or possible, my brain hadn't fully processed them.
It was going to take a long time to bring together the Kate of "Before" and the Kate of "After", so I often felt like I was viewing the world from behind a glass screen. Finding my father was the latest surreal episode in the strange dream my life had become. No wonder that Salvador Dali poster "The Metamorphosis of Narcissus" felt like the right one to have on my wall. The rest of Dali's poem;
When that head slits
when that head splits
when that head bursts,
it will be the flower,
the new Narcissus,
The next morning as I woke up in my freezing bedsit I looked at the time on my clock radio. 7.30. Would he be opening the letter yet? Was it sitting on his mat? Would his wife see the letter? How would he hide it from her?
I hardly considered the possibility that he would tell his wife. I saw it as something he would keep secret. I now had more faith than I wanted to have that people could keep huge secrets if they needed to.
I can't remember how I spent that weekend. I don't think the letter was on my mind all the time though. My brain kept coming back to it. The Letter. But I was also imagining that Norman wouldn't decide what to do straight away and just casually pick up the phone immediately.
I now know how what he was thinking in those first few days after The Letter. But that interrupts the narrative. And at this point, for once, it feels comforting to have a story that flows from A to Z. From Action to Consequence, Cause to Effect.
So. It is Tuesday. As usual I walk up through the estate of semis to Jean's house. Ring the doorbell. As usual. Jean answers the door. As usual. But looks agitated, ushers me in, says "He's ringing, in twenty minutes." "Wha-?" "Your Dad's ringing. I told him I was expecting you tonight and he's ringing back at 8.30".
My heart was thumping in my chest. Again, that strange mixture that characterised my life then of the normal and surreal. Jean saying "your Dad" made it sound so comfortable. But...
We went into the kitchen as she boiled the kettle and kept talking. A solicitor had rung first she said. "A solicitor?" I was shocked. Jean said that she'd told her a little bit about me but had insisted she wouldn't tell her any more because it was my story to tell but that I wasn't just some teenager who had run away from home on a whim. Then later, my father (there was no question now, he was my father) had rung. He sounded "nice" she said. Jean had reassured him that I didn't want anything from him apart from the chance to get to know him. She thought he was glad I'd sent that letter. She had said I would be visiting later that evening, so he had suggested that he ring then.
This was so much to take in. It felt odd that a solicitor, Jean and my Father had all been involved in this process of what sounded like negotiation. It was real. My hands were shaking as I held the coffee cup. What would I say? What if we couldn't talk to each other? What was he going to sound like?
The phone in the living room rang. Me and Jean looked at each other. She answered it. "Hello?" Smiled; "Yes, she's here. I'll put her on". I swallowed and held out my hand for the receiver.
"Yours sincerely or faithfully" would have felt too formal and "love" didn't feel possible yet, writing to this stranger. The "Yours" wasn't completely unconscious. As I wrote it I was aware of the double meaning. I was his. I was saying that I belonged to Norman Reynard. But he had let me go once in circumstances I still didn't really know about. Was there any chance he would want to change his mind seventeen years on?
I posted the letter on my way to school the next morning. Holding the white envelope poised half in, half out of the red pillar box slot for a few seconds before letting it drop. I remember sitting in the dinner hall that lunchtime. Cutlery clattering all around me, kids voices rising and falling in the school hall. This was normality now, this was safe. But I knew sending the letter meant that I was back in the world of the unexpected, where my fate depended on the unpredictable actions of others. Potential chaos. I was used to that, after the upheaval of leaving home. It was exhilarating, but also didn't feel quite real.
Somewhere in an alternate universe, another Kate was carrying on her life before the summer of 1991 when everything crashed. Her parents weren't swingers who blackmailed sex partners, her Dad was her Dad, she hadn't left home with a 46 year old gun runner, she hadn't been arrested after ten days and lived in a bedsit on her own since March.
Because none of these things were thinkable or possible, my brain hadn't fully processed them.
It was going to take a long time to bring together the Kate of "Before" and the Kate of "After", so I often felt like I was viewing the world from behind a glass screen. Finding my father was the latest surreal episode in the strange dream my life had become. No wonder that Salvador Dali poster "The Metamorphosis of Narcissus" felt like the right one to have on my wall. The rest of Dali's poem;
When that head slits
when that head splits
when that head bursts,
it will be the flower,
the new Narcissus,
The next morning as I woke up in my freezing bedsit I looked at the time on my clock radio. 7.30. Would he be opening the letter yet? Was it sitting on his mat? Would his wife see the letter? How would he hide it from her?
I hardly considered the possibility that he would tell his wife. I saw it as something he would keep secret. I now had more faith than I wanted to have that people could keep huge secrets if they needed to.
I can't remember how I spent that weekend. I don't think the letter was on my mind all the time though. My brain kept coming back to it. The Letter. But I was also imagining that Norman wouldn't decide what to do straight away and just casually pick up the phone immediately.
I now know how what he was thinking in those first few days after The Letter. But that interrupts the narrative. And at this point, for once, it feels comforting to have a story that flows from A to Z. From Action to Consequence, Cause to Effect.
So. It is Tuesday. As usual I walk up through the estate of semis to Jean's house. Ring the doorbell. As usual. Jean answers the door. As usual. But looks agitated, ushers me in, says "He's ringing, in twenty minutes." "Wha-?" "Your Dad's ringing. I told him I was expecting you tonight and he's ringing back at 8.30".
My heart was thumping in my chest. Again, that strange mixture that characterised my life then of the normal and surreal. Jean saying "your Dad" made it sound so comfortable. But...
We went into the kitchen as she boiled the kettle and kept talking. A solicitor had rung first she said. "A solicitor?" I was shocked. Jean said that she'd told her a little bit about me but had insisted she wouldn't tell her any more because it was my story to tell but that I wasn't just some teenager who had run away from home on a whim. Then later, my father (there was no question now, he was my father) had rung. He sounded "nice" she said. Jean had reassured him that I didn't want anything from him apart from the chance to get to know him. She thought he was glad I'd sent that letter. She had said I would be visiting later that evening, so he had suggested that he ring then.
This was so much to take in. It felt odd that a solicitor, Jean and my Father had all been involved in this process of what sounded like negotiation. It was real. My hands were shaking as I held the coffee cup. What would I say? What if we couldn't talk to each other? What was he going to sound like?
The phone in the living room rang. Me and Jean looked at each other. She answered it. "Hello?" Smiled; "Yes, she's here. I'll put her on". I swallowed and held out my hand for the receiver.
Isobel1965
Gold Member
Oh Lordy - hurry up and write the next bit, babes!!!!
