‘What’s the matter?’ said Jessy. ‘Do you want me to throw you out?’
‘Well, Jessy,’ said Edward, humouring them both with a well practised smile, ‘this could be blackmail, have you thought of that?’
‘No,’ said Thomas. ‘Money has not been mentioned.’
‘This is a classic blackmail situation.’
‘Of course we should give her some money,’ said Jessy.
‘No, of course we shouldn’t, not until we know it’s true.’
‘I’m sure it’s true,’ said Thomas. ‘You don’t know her. She’s not the sort of person who’d do that.’
‘There’s an easy way of finding out,’ said Edward. ‘Ask for a DNA test.’
‘Oh, God, how sordid,’ said Thomas.
‘It certainly does introduce a belligerent note,’ said Jessy.
‘It’s up to you,’ said Edward. ‘But this family could be supporting anybody’s by-blow, for years.’
‘No,’ said Thomas. ‘She’s all right.’ And then he added, coming out at last with one reason for the pride which shone from him: ‘Dad’s going to be pleased.’
‘If he isn’t pleased he’s not very consistent,’ said Edward.
‘You can’t expect consistency, not from Lionel,’ said Jessy. She never spoke of her ex-husband except with a careless contempt. This was partly because of the manner of their parting, and partly because of the feminist movement which she energetically supported,
Lionel, very handsome, irresistible in fact, had been so unfaithful that at last she had to heave him out. ‘Love you, love your infidelities,’ she had screamed at him. ‘Well, I won’t. “Fair enough,’ he had equably replied.
They met often, and always quarrelled, describing this as an amicable divorce.
Lionel paid the school bills, and, given the precariousness of an actor’s life, his payments for clothes, food, travel and so forth had been dependable. The parents had quarrelled violently, about the boys’ upbringing, but less now. He was an old-fashioned romantic socialist and insisted on both boys going to ordinary schools, as then was common among his kind. ‘Sink or swim.’ ‘Do or die’ his wife riposted. Although Edward had emerged from the junior school, Beowulf-the same as Victoria’s - pale, thin, haunted by the bullying, hardly able to sleep, and stuttering badly, this had not prevented his father from insisting on the same treatment for Thomas. I lis prescriptions for them had borne fruits, though unequally. Edward had learned a compassion for the underdog, or the other half, that burned in him like a tormented conscience. ‘You’d think you were personally responsible for the slave trade,’ his mother might shout at him. ‘You are not personally responsible for people being hanged for a loaf of bread or stealing a rabbit.’ As for Thomas, he had learned to love black girls and black music, in that order. No one could ever fail to admire Edward, but Thomas? And now here he was, in his last year of university, a father, with a child of six.
‘I think the best thing to do is to ask her here with the child, to meet us all - Lionel included,’ said Jessy.
This being considered too much of an ordeal, Victoria and Mary came one Sunday afternoon, when Edward was there, and Jessy.
It was indeed an ordeal, mostly because Edward was being so grand, so aloof. He cross-examined Victoria as if he did not believe her. He sat at the foot of the table, in the vast room they called the kitchen, Jessy with her sad grey hair at the top, remembering to smile from time to time at Victoria and the child. Thomas, who seemed ready to flirt with her, he was so pleased with himself, sat opposite Victoria. The child, in a white dress this time, with little white boots and white bows, sat on a pile of cushions and behaved with painful care. She had been told she was going to meet her other family, but had not really taken it in.
‘Are you my daddy?’ she asked Thomas, her great black eyes full of the difficulty of it all.
‘Yeah, yeah, man, that’s about it.’ His American phase was useful to fall back into, at such moments.
‘If you are my daddy then you are my granny,’ said Mary, turning to Jessy.
‘That’s exactly right,’ said Jessy, encouragingly,
‘And what are you?’ she asked Edward. She did not miss the hesitation before Edward brought out, ‘I’m your uncle.’ He smiled, but not as his mother did.
‘Am I going to live with you?’ Mary asked,
Edward sent a sharp glance at his mother: was this a clue at last as to what Victoria was after?
‘No, Mary,’ said Victoria. ‘Of course not. You’ll be with me,’
‘And Dickson too?’
The Staveney’s had only just managed to take in that there was another child, from another father.
‘Yes, you and me and Dickson,’ said Victoria.
Considering the difficulties, it all went oft” well, and at the end Jessy kissed Victoria. Thomas gave her a brotherly kiss, and Edward, hesitating again, put his arms around the child, and it was a good hug.
‘Welcome to the family,’ he said, nicely, even though it did sound a bit like a court order.
He had complained that all this was happening before anything had been clarified with the DNA test.
Victoria went home, not knowing what had been achieved, part regretting she had ever rung Thomas, and she wept, thinking of Sam, who had been such a strength when he was alive. It is not only in Rome that saints are created from unlikely material. If Victoria had been able to foresee a couple of years before, how she would be thinking and talking about Sain, after his death, she would have not believed it.
All this was being discussed with Bessie, every twist and turn, usually talking into the dark in Victoria’s bedroom. Bessie’s own flat - Phyllis - had become impossible. The two boys, now sixteen, young men, were out of
