The Last of the Stanfields(19)
“Hey, my hometown was nothing to write home about, either. Look, back then I had to work long hours at the office and she had yet to find work herself, so your mother was feeling quite alone, sort of just walking in circles around the flat. But she was a fighter, all right. She signed up for some courses, found some short-term work, and hey presto, she was a teaching assistant and later a teacher. Add a pregnancy on to that—the sheer joy of becoming a parent notwithstanding—and, well, it all takes a toll. You have no idea what that’s like, but hopefully one day you will! Anyway, without the means to buy a proper wedding dress or a ring, or any of that razzle-dazzle that everyone expects, we waited a bit before taking our vows. There’s the honest truth. Does that satisfy your curiosity?”
“So, Mum got pregnant how long after you got back together? How far into the second chapter of your romance?”
“Nice choice of words. I suppose you could say your mother hated the mere mention of that first chapter. Ten whole years had passed, ten years of life, ten years of becoming a new person. So, your mother really loathed the young woman she once was, to the point where she would actually get jealous that I had been in love with the ‘past her.’ She couldn’t understand how one man could have loved two drastically different people. Of course, it never occurred to her that I could have become a drastically different person myself! Of course not. Well, truth be told, I really didn’t change all that much, so maybe she was right. Your mother lived in the present. She rarely looked ahead to the future, and she considered the past to be dead and gone. The two chapters of our story were night and day for her, Old and New Testament, if you will. Two tellings, which never agreed on the coming of the Messiah.”
“So, does that make you the Messiah in her story, Dad?” Maggie guffawed.
“One minute, twelve seconds,” he said, eyes fixed on the boiling water and flatly ignoring the wisecrack. He turned off the gas and served the tea.
“That sure is quick. One minute, twelve seconds to get Mum pregnant? That must be a world record,” I persisted.
After adding a splash of milk to his tea, Dad studied us each in turn. “I love you both, no doubt about that. I love you two more than anything on earth, aside from your brother of course. But, good lord, you can be a pain sometimes! Mum got pregnant very quickly, just a few months after we got back together. Do you want to know how much you and your brother weighed at birth, Elby? Well, believe it or not, you were the heavier one. So there!”
This made Maggie laugh out loud, puffing out her cheeks and imitating fat baby Eleanor-Rigby until Dad brought her down to size.
“Not so fast, Maggie. You weighed more than both of them combined! All right, now that all your prying has ruined my mood, I think I’ll have a little stroll through the cemetery. Care to come with?”
Maggie hadn’t been back to the grave once since the funeral. Seeing Mum’s name on the gravestone was more than she could handle.
“You know what? Scratch that,” my father said, reading her face. A father, after all, picks up on such things. “Don’t take it the wrong way, but I should go alone, clear my head.” With that, Dad downed the rest of his tea, put the mug in the sink, and planted a kiss on each of our foreheads, taking his leave. Then he paused in the doorway and called back to us, “Don’t forget to lock the door on your way out, Maggie,” before walking out of the flat with a smile on his face.
10
ELEANOR-RIGBY
October 2016, Croydon
We waited just long enough to ensure our father was really gone before taking up a thorough search of the premises. We cut the bathroom from the list, knowing it was far too improbable a hiding place. Maggie scoured the hallway cupboard from top to bottom like a forensics expert, but found no trapdoor or secret compartment. As I was finishing combing through the master bedroom, Maggie ducked back into the kitchen and had a look at our family tree.
“Totally fine, enjoy a nice break, don’t worry one second about helping me!” I called out sarcastically.
“I didn’t get any help from you for my rooms, as far as I know,” Maggie shot back. “You’re not done yet?”
I sulked back into the kitchen, tail between my legs. “I looked everywhere and couldn’t find a single thing. I even tapped the entire wall looking for hollow spots. Nothing. Nada.”
“You didn’t find anything, Elby, because there’s nothing to find. The letter is full of shit. Fun as this has been, it’s time to call it a day.”
“Try to think like Mum here. If you were her, where would you hide your stash?”
“Why hide it in the first place, and not just spend it on your family?”
“Well, say it wasn’t money but something she couldn’t do anything with? I mean, think about it. What if she was a drug dealer when she was young? Everybody was on drugs in the seventies and eighties.”
“Like I said, Elby: you watch far too much TV. And I don’t mean to burst your bubble, but a lot of people are on drugs today, too. You extend your London visit much longer, and I might need to start taking some myself.”
“Out of the three of us, Mum was closest to Michel.”
“Brilliant observation. If that’s an attempt at making me jealous, it’s downright pathetic.”
“It’s not pathetic, it’s the truth. I only mention it because if Mum had some kind of secret she was keeping from Dad, then Michel is the next most likely person she would tell.”