We
were tidying the spare bedroom. We had to get it ready. It was
no longer going to be the spare room. It was going to be our baby’s
bedroom. Our baby. I still could not get over the idea that someone
had loved me enough to commit the rest of her life to me and now
we were going to be parents. We had even done things the conventional
way. We met soon after I finished at University. We would meet
casually and went around together for a while. Then we started
to get serious. Finally I stopped resisting and started to let
myself trust a bit. I met her family. They seemed nice –
ordinary and peaceful to be with.
Of
course I knew they weren’t too sure about me. Young men
with absolutely no family and no background do seem a bit odd
to conventional folks. But they welcomed me into their family.
They certainly didn’t seem to try to put Jane off from getting
in deeper with me. So finally it was the church, the white wedding,
the neat little house and soon it would be the perfect family.
I
stared at the pattern on wallpaper. Yes. It had to be the perfect
family. Jane, me and our baby. Then maybe after a while another
baby. But not too many. I had to be able to afford to look after
our family properly. But how could a kid with no family know how
to do that? Would I – could I be a good father? I had absolutely
no memory of my own father at all. He was long gone before I was
able to distinguish one lot of features from another.
Then
one day my big brother told me that there was some doubt about
who the fathers of us three younger boys were anyway. He said
his father and our mother had been very much in love at school.
They got married when he was on the way, before either of them
was twenty years old and, despite being dirt poor, they had loved
him and really tried their best. They had wandered about Wales,
where they both came from, doing odd jobs, living in any place
they could find, moving on when they got bored.
They
were some of the original flower people I think. Free of all the
things they regarded as clutter. No house, no possessions worth
speaking of, no rent, no duties, no demands on them, no responsibilities.
Unfortunately the idyll wobbled when my mother started to drink,
to blot out the cold at night, or the hostility in people’s
stares in the day, or his crying when he was teething. This was
the beginning that led to me standing here staring at wallpaper,
wondering how to be a father and how regular families are really
supposed to behave.
I
shut my eyes. I breathed deeply. I emptied my mind, as I had been
taught to do once long ago. Blank it out. Shut it in the box and
it can’t come out and hurt you any more. I had done it.
I was safe. Then Jane put arms round me and waved Sydney under
my nose. “Can we get rid of him now, James?”
I
opened my eyes and saw the little Koala bear, with his hard, shiny
nose and little scratchy claws. The memories flooded in. “Sydney”,
I whispered. “That’s a funny name for a bear”,
Jane said.
I
turned and held Jane, but over her shoulder I was looking at Sydney,
as I clutched him in my hand. I was big enough to hold him in
one hand now of course, but when I was three years old I had had
to hold on tight with both hands, or hug him under one arm.
Sydney
had been with me longer than anybody else. He had never left me
–apart from getting lost for a bit under the bed or hidden
by the other kids a couple of times. He never blamed me. He was
always ready to be cuddled and he knew all my secrets. He knew
who I was and why I seemed to have no family. He had been in a
lot of places with me and when we got our own house I first of
all put him beside the bed, where he liked to sit. But Jane had
teased me, so he went to sit on the spare bed, surrounded by all
the odds and ends that we could never decide about, until now.
Eventually
Jane realised that I was not laughing, but sobbing, the deep,
painful, silent sobs that you learn to do so that no-one can hear
you and pick on you even more, or ask nosy questions about why.
“James,
what is it? You’re surely not that upset because I wanted
to get rid of Cyril are you?”
“Sydney”,
I muttered through clenched teeth. “His name is Sydney”.
“That’s
s funny name for a teddy, James. Why is he called that? And why
is he so special? He looks a bit worn out to me. Not hygienic
to have around the new baby. And he has scratchy little paws”.
I
drew a deep breath. Finally I decided I had to trust Jane enough
to tell her all about my family and why I would never let go of
Sydney, the koala bear with a funny name.
“I
got Sydney when I was three years old”, I told Jane. “I
got taken into care with two of my brothers. Our big brother was
there already”. My voice was flat, matter-of-fact, but inside
I was on that old roller coaster. The fear, the relief, the bewilderment,
the excitement of that first place in care all came rushing back.
Obviously
Jane was amazed. “You have three brothers? Where are they?
Who are they? You have always said you have no family”.
I began to panic and to think I had made a bad mistake. Would
she ever trust me again? Had I really lied, or had I just let
people make assumptions? But Jane wasn’t people. She was
my wife, soon to be the mother of our baby. They were going to
be my family.
Anyway
I had started now. The box was opened. It could only get worse
if I tried to close it and leave Jane puzzled with half-truths
and a lot of doubts about me.
To
be continued next month.
