The Name You Once Gave Me

He had never told his mother how angry he had been in those days.

It was already past ten o’clock by the time he got there. As he walked up the garden path he hoped his stepfather would be out. More than he ever had in his life, he wanted to see and talk to his mother alone. He wanted to show her the photo, then look into her eyes and ask her for the whole story.

Thinking back on it, he realized how little she had told him in the past. When he was younger he used to press her for stories about his dad. What he wanted was the sort of stories other kids told: something funny or even weird he could talk about on the way home from school. ‘That’s just what my dad’s like,’ he imagined himself saying.

However much he asked, though, she was always vague. What she told him made him more curious without giving him anything he could get his teeth into. They had met when she had just started work as a teacher.

‘What happened? Daniel would ask. ‘Where was he?’

Someone had introduced them. She couldn’t remember who it had been. They hadn’t known each other long before she found she was pregnant. It had been a matter of weeks. All Daniel’s questions about the details met with the same answer. She didn’t know. His father had no family. He had been brought up in care, the same as herself and her sister Nancy. There was no one to worry about; they had been enough for each other. When she told him she was about to have a baby, he was happy.

He had been a photographer starting on his career, working for newspapers and magazines. The week she told him about Daniel he was offered a freelance job. They thought it was a good omen. They didn’t think about danger. They were young and death seemed far away. He was only going to be away for a month. She thought that all the questions could be answered when he got back. But he never did come back. A week later she was phoned to say that he had been shot and killed. There was no more.

Daniel opened the door with his key and went in quietly. As he had hoped, George his stepfather was slumped dozing in front of the TV. His mother was sitting in the little room behind. Through the half-open door he could see her peering at the computer screen, fingers busy on the keys.

Seeing her like this, it struck him that she was still pretty. She was almost fifty, but her figure was still straight and slim. The photo he had borrowed from Brownjohn was twenty-five-years-old. It seemed such a long time, and he wondered, for a moment, how living through all that time had changed his mum. In the picture her blonde hair had been longer, swinging down to her shoulders.

Now it was cut short, and if you looked closely you could see the streaks of grey. Those were only outward changes, he thought.

‘Mum,’ he said quietly.

She looked round, and smiled when she saw him. ‘Hello, love. I was just thinking about you.’

Normally, when he visited like this, they would chat about what he was doing but this time he couldn’t wait. He took the photo out of his pocket and held it up in front of her.

‘Who is this, Mum? Tell me who this is.’

She took the photo from time, her smile fading. She held it up to the light, turning away from him, studying it with care. ‘Where did you get this?’

She had her back to him and he couldn’t see the look on her face.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he answered. ‘Just tell me who these people are.’

I don’t know,’ she said slowly. ‘Who is it supposed to be?’

He paused for a moment, amazed at her reply. ‘That’s you,’ he said harshly. ‘Don’t you know your own face? And that man is “Chris”. And that baby is me.’

She held the photo up to the light again Watching her closely, he thought he saw her hand tremble, but it was gone in a flash.

‘I really don’t know,’ she said. ‘It looks like me. But I don’t remember it at all. And this man…I never knew a Chris who looked like this. I’ve never seen this man in my life.’

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_b6528713-a363-5653-bca1-bf932c02cd73)

‘BUT THAT’S YOU, MUM,’ Daniel persisted.

For a moment he felt unsure about where he was, like someone lost in an alien landscape.

‘Yes, I suppose it is me,’ she said. ‘Yes. It’s me, but I don’t remember.’

She turned around and looked at him, smiling. ‘Well, I did look like this once. A long time ago.’ She paused, thinking about it. ‘It looks like the garden at Number 12. You were only a few months old.’

‘Is that my dad?’

She raised her eyebrows in surprise. ‘No. I don’t know who that is.’ She looked again. ‘There were always people coming and going,’ she said. ‘I guess he was a friend of someone’s. Maybe Nancy.’

This was her sister Nancy. The two of them had been orphans, brought up in a series of foster homes. His mum didn’t like talking about those days. She had once told him that she felt guilty about the fact that he had no grandparents. She knew nothing about his father’s parents, which meant that they were all alone in the world.

‘Never mind, Mum,’ he had said. ‘I’m used to it.’

‘So was I. Until you came along. It was always just me and Nancy.’

Nancy had been the pretty one, she always said, who had married well and died young.

Now when she mentioned Nancy he looked at her sharply. ‘I thought Nancy had married and gone off before I was born,’ he said.

His mother sighed and looked away again. ‘She was on holiday. She came and stayed with me for a bit in Number 12.’

This was another thing she didn’t like talking about. Nancy had married into a posh family. Her husband became a diplomat and they travelled a lot. When she died in a car accident his mother had taken him to the funeral. He was only little, but he sensed her dislike of the people there. Later on he realized that he had been the only black person present. He thought also that his mother’s rage had been something to do with the way the posh mourners had behaved towards them. She told him later that when she went to sit in the pew reserved for the family an usher had stopped her. Instead of letting her sit where she wanted he had showed her to a seat at the back. After all that, someone in the churchyard had said something to upset her. She wouldn’t say what it was, and he could only guess.

‘They were just a bunch of snobs,’ was all she would say.

Nancy’s husband married again, not long after. Then he had gone into politics. When his mother saw his picture in the newspaper she would throw it aside, as if seeing him still made her angry.

‘Where did you get this photo?’ she asked him again.

‘A man I went to see today. I didn’t know before, but he used to live at Number 12 when you lived there.’

‘At Number 12? What was his name?’

‘John Brownjohn. He was a teacher.’

‘Oh. I remember him. John Brownjohn.’ She laughed. ‘He’s still around?’

‘He is, yeah.’

Quickly, he told her about his visit to Brownjohn and what the man had said about his father.

She held up the photo and glanced at it quickly. ‘And you thought this was your dad?’

‘That’s what he said.’

‘Silly old prat,’ she burst out. ‘He didn’t really know us. He was all right, but we kept ourselves to ourselves. We didn’t want him going around talking about us.’

Daniel nodded. That was how he and Louise were with the couple who lived in the flat above him.

‘Come here,’ his mum said.

She got up and hugged him, stroking his hair the way she used to do when he was little.