Tom thought he might pray. It was worth a try. Quite formally, like a child, he steepled his fingers. But he couldn’t do it. His palms refused to go together. It felt like the tug of repulsion you get off two magnets held the wrong way. He couldn’t bring himself to talk to God. He chuckled bitterly. “I’ll have to talk to just you, then, Liz.”
He said, “Elsie tells me we could have been family.” If Craig had stuck with Penny, they might have been in-laws, that was what Elsie had said. Tom sighed, irritated by her plans. All these pretend-family ideas. Where was the blood link there? Craig was by no means his son. He’d never felt like that to Tom and now they all knew how Craig felt about it. Tom winced. Craig marrying Penny wouldn’t make Tom kin to Liz. Tom felt about as related to…this chair as he did this woman. Yet look at how Elsie pushed and pulled at these relationships, to get them to come true. As if being related was the most important thing in the world. Tom knew there was more to it than that.
I started visiting people as early as I can remember. My mum took me round all the houses. And this was the country, it was different to here. It was up hill and down dale to all the houses. We were tramping over fields and through stiles and it was a struggle when the snow was up to our knees. “We weren’t all living in each other’s pockets. Not then.
Mum used to go round with her friend Sally. Plain Sally, with a worn, chapped face, her hair in pigtails. She followed Mum round faithfully and she believed, like Mum, that they were spreading the word. What were they telling people?
What they believed in their hearts the word to be. A childish version of what they heard and what they read. Father Dobbs used to laugh at them but he said, “Their hearts are in the right places, those lasses, they won’t do any harm.” Good, simple-hearted faith, he called it. Mum and her friend Sally were both a little in love with the handsome father. Mum passed me into his care and tutelage when I came to an age to learn properly what faith was about. She loved to see me go with him and to surpass the things she knew. She loved to hear me spout my learning and I was only a child, I used to love showing off.
Father Dobbs was a marvel. It was he who discovered I could draw. I drew Jesus for him, and all the disciples, and Mum wanted a drawing, and so did Sally, and so did everyone who lived nearabouts.
There was a ritual to a visit in those days. I remember the patterns and routines around those houses. I’d be given a glass of milk and a biscuit perhaps and listen to all the talk. Sally would be telling them the friend she had in Jesus and I could see them look at her thinking, A nice girl like that, what a shame she’ll never get a man. Everyone had a front parlour for visitors to sit in. They listened patiently to the two girls and their simple-hearted faith. When they found that I could draw, Mum and Sally wasted no time in using my talents in the cause. I was to make myself useful and so I did, I sat with my drawing book and childishly sketched our hosts as they sat there, flattered and excited. I would draw them meeting Jesus in heaven; I had Jesus down pat. Usually I did it all in pencil, but sometimes they wanted themselves painted, to make it more real.
My mother was beautiful, you would believe anything she said simply because she was so beautiful. She didn’t need cleverness or a plain friend helping her out. She didn’t even need her son, drawing Jesus and the neighbours, to make those neighbours listen. When she talked about happiness her face glowed like clean china.
Father Dobbs went to London. He never came back to us. He made it plain that he didn’t like the drawings of Jesus and the neighbours. Mum had made me draw him with Jesus, shaking him by the hand. Father Dobbs wasn’t pleased and it was one of the few times he scolded me.
Mum died very young. Her faith never left her. Sally took me in. When I was fifteen, Sally was forty-five and you might say we became lovers. She was tender-hearted and curious. I was lonely and I didn’t know what was what. This plain woman, growing hefty and old before her time, was almost more innocent than I was. She took me to bed and it was all a disaster, of course. We had no clue. I went to London, looking for Father Dobbs.
Sally was at the station, seeing me off. I was thinking I’d never be back in Yorkshire. She was telling me I had to get my education. I had to go to art college. I had to be Michelangelo. Getting on the train, I was embarrassed by this coarse, red-haired, frayed woman, in whose clammy, fleshy arms I had spent the night, telling me to turn myself into Michelangelo. I smiled and urged the train on.
I wanted to find the father and make myself an architect. I wanted to design the shopping precincts, the tower blocks, the housing estates of the future. That was my destiny.
I never found Father Dobbs. He’d gone.
Liz, do you think I should tell you all this?
Lying there, you’re so receptive.
Yet you gleam, you give off light. You’re like my mother’s face. But you and her, you’re just reflected light. You give it off without really understanding. Father Dobbs was helping me to understand. He went, like everyone else does. Who’s left to
