In Her Mothers' Shoes (42 page)

She went in further and scanned the far corners. Not there. Perhaps her mother had chickened out?

Steeling herself, she slid into a seat near the window, picked up the menu and studied it closely. Salads. Quiche. Fish and chips. Fancy burgers. Toasted sandwiches. Too much choice. No appetite. She put it down and stared out the window. That’s when she noticed a woman in a blue blazer and pale blue scarf hesitate outside, turn back the way she’d come, pause, and return to the café, stopping in the doorway then continuing on in.

This must be her mother. The mother she’d dreamed about all her life, the first grown-up she’d ever seen who shared her DNA.

She didn’t look much like the Hapsburg princess she’d dreamed of.

She didn’t look all that confident.

She didn’t look much like Kate. But then, she was nearly twenty years older.

Who did she look like? There was a vague familiarity. Kate couldn’t quite put her finger on it; maybe she’d met her somewhere, somehow, before.

The woman looked around. Kate stood up and waved then hurried forward.

‘Thank you for coming.’ She’d rehearsed what she was going to say; that wasn’t it. It just slipped out, responding to the fear in her eyes. Was it fear? If not, it was close. She tried to make herself more relaxed and welcoming, less nervous, less apprehensive.

‘Look at you,’ her mother said. ‘You look just like my sister.’

They embraced. It felt odd, artificial. This was her mother. Yet she didn’t feel like flesh and blood. She was a stranger. They were both strangers.

‘Do I?’ Kate forced a laugh. ‘I’ve never looked like anyone before.’

They sat at the table, awkward, uncomfortable.

‘I’m so glad you said you’d meet me,’ Kate said. ‘I wasn’t sure if you would.’

‘To be honest, I wasn’t sure either.’ Her mother pushed her glasses on top of her head – just like Kate did – and studied her. ‘I’d buried you so deep in my past, I didn’t know if I could face it again.’

‘I’m glad you did.’ Was she glad? She didn’t think so. Not yet. ‘I was going to say “Mother” but it doesn’t seem right, somehow. What should I call you?’

‘Just call me Liz.’

‘Okay Liz.’ She laughed nervously and tried to think what to say next. ‘Did you have trouble finding a park?’

‘Oh, no. I don’t drive. I never have. I caught the bus.’

‘You don’t drive? That’s unusual.’

‘I tried once. My husband Steven tried to teach me. But I was hopeless. I haven’t driven since.’

Kate was just about to say that Mum drove and she was seventy, but stopped herself just in time. ‘I couldn’t survive if I didn’t drive,’ she said instead. There was a moment’s pause. ‘I don’t know where to begin.’ She smiled nervously. ‘There’s so much I want to ask you.

A waitress hovered behind.

‘Shall we order first?’ Liz picked up the menu. ‘I’ll have a quick look.’

Kate looked for something light. ‘I think I’ll have the pumpkin soup, please,’ Kate said to the waitress. ‘And a glass of lime and soda.’

Liz put the menu down and looked relieved. ‘That sounds good. I’ll have the same.’

As soon as the waitress had departed, Kate started on her list of questions.

She learned that she had a whole new family – well, half a family, on her mother’s side – a new aunt and uncle, a brother and sister, a niece and lots of cousins, all completely oblivious to her existence. She learned that there were artists in the family, writers, poets even; according to her mother she was related, somewhat distantly, to the poet John Masefield and his cousin the playwright Christopher Fry. She learned that she had every chance of living to a ripe old age, that there was no history of heart attacks or blood pressure, or diabetes, or asthma, that the women in the family who weren’t struck down by cancer lived to a ripe old age.

‘Cancer?’

‘Yes, there’s a lot of cancer, I’m afraid,’ Liz said. ‘Your grandmother died of cancer, and my sister Jilly died of leukaemia when she was just eight years old. I’ve only got one sister now, Penny. She’s quite a bit younger. You’d like her.’

Kate didn’t know what to say. She’d never thought of getting cancer, never had a skin check or a mammogram. Maybe she should? Or maybe the cancer genes had been overridden by her father.

‘What about my father? Do you know if he had any health issues?’

Liz pursed her lips. ‘No. I don’t know anything about his background. He was a tram conductor and he seemed healthy enough; he was a runner, very fit. That’s all I know.’

Kate didn’t like to probe. There was a steely fix to her mother’s eye that discouraged further discussion. She already knew his name from the information Mum had produced. If she wanted to know more, she’d have to find him herself.

Her mother started fiddling with a locket around her neck. Oval-shaped, silver, with a finely detailed pattern etched on its face, the locket seemed to act some form of stress relieving distraction for Liz.

‘That’s a pretty necklace,’ Kate said, hoping to draw her out.

‘It was my grandmother’s,’ was all she would say.

Their lunch arrived and the subject changed ever so subtly from the past to the present. Liz asked about Kate’s family.

‘I’ve brought photos.’ She pulled out an envelope and flipped a series of family photos onto the table, picking up the one on the top.

‘That’s Amelia. She’s four and at pre-school. And James is just nine months. He’s home with his grandmother today.’ She knew that was stretching the truth, but didn’t want to admit to having him in day-care while she worked part-time. Her mother might not approve.

Liz smiled. ‘They’re lovely.’ She held the photo closer then picked up the next one on the pile, of David and the kids. ‘But I can’t see any resemblance to my daughter Jessie or her wee girl Emily. I think they look more like their father, like David.’ She turned the photo round so Kate could see. ‘Don’t you think?’

‘They do.’ It was true, everybody said Amelia was the spitting image of her father. But James looked different, more like her.

‘Have you got any photos of your grandchildren?’

Liz produced several photos from her bag. ‘I brought these to show you. This is Jessie with baby Emily – she’s getting on for two now. She was born in London when I was over there.’

‘Did you go over to be with Jessie at the birth?’

‘Yes.’ Liz hesitated as if she was about to say something else, but didn’t.

‘Your first time in London?’

‘Yes.’ She toyed with her soup spoon. ‘But I was glad to get home. I didn’t like it much.’

That was a surprise. Kate couldn’t imagine anyone not liking London.

‘And you said you had a son?’

‘Yes, Richard. I’ve got a photo of him somewhere. Let’s see. I hope I didn’t forget to bring it.’ She delved in her handbag. ‘It’s of Richard with his wife Kim. It should be here somewhere. They got married just before Christmas. Lovely wedding. Jessie couldn’t come back for it, not with a new baby, but she’s promised to come back to New Zealand later this year.’ Liz looked pleased. ‘I love having my family around me.’

Kate didn’t seem to be included in that. It was perfectly understandable, she told herself, especially when you’ve just met your mother for the first time. You couldn’t expect her to embrace you into the family just like that.

All her life she’d felt an outsider, not belonging to her adoptive family, no matter how nice they were, she never felt she was one of them; but she didn’t belong to Liz’s family either – they didn’t even know she existed.

She’d wanted to say about the baby, Emily, that she looked just like Amelia at that age, but it was as if Liz didn’t want to know, as if she were denying any possibility of genetic similarity.

‘Ah, here it is.’ Liz produced the photo from a side pocket in her bag.

Kate couldn’t believe it. ‘That’s Rick!’

‘Yes, Richard.

‘Oh God!’

‘What? Do you know him?’ Liz was looking alarmed.

In that instant, Kate realised she couldn’t admit to having met Liz’s son before, to knowing who he was. Liz was so fearful of her family finding out about her shameful secret, she’d be horrified to discover her son Richard had already come face to face with the secret personified.

‘No. He just looked familiar, that’s all.’ He did too. She’d seen it in him when they’d met. Something she recognised, something about his laugh. She’d thought it was because he’d been on television, because he was familiar to the thousands of people who’d seen him in their living rooms every night on
Gloss
. Now the puzzle was solved: his familiar laugh was an echo of her own.

She should have realised Rick was Liz’s son. Not at the time she met him – she didn’t know her birth mother’s name then. But she’d discovered Liz’s married name a month later, in March last year, during the search at the births, deaths and marriages registry. The surname Davidson and Rick’s home town of Wellington, both should have been a give-away. How ironic! All this time she’d been trying to trace her mother and her brother had already been introduced to her, been interviewed by her, without her knowing.

She hadn’t seen him since that time she’d interviewed him, when she’d gone to the opening night of his play
A Trap for Young Players.
But he’d been on a high, celebrating with the rest of the cast; she’d only said a few congratulatory words before he was lost in the opening night crowd around the theatre bar.

The review had been guardedly positive, which was quite something for the theatre critic. She remembered the gist of it: ‘this well-known television actor has made a credible transition to the stage’, he’d said, adding somewhat sniffily that Rick had written the play himself, as if that ought to be held against him, while praising its theatricality. Kate had seen Rick’s name mentioned since then in television roles, and had heard his play had been picked up by another theatre in Auckland. She wondered if his mother had seen it when it premiered in Wellington before coming down to Christchurch.

‘What did you say Rick, er Richard, does?’

‘He’s an actor. He was on television you know, in
Gloss
.’

‘Yes, I remember. Did he act on the stage too?’

‘Yes, I think so, but I’ve never seen him. I don’t like going into town and the theatre – I don’t like crowds. But he was good in
Gloss
.’

Liz took the photo out of Kate’s hand and passed over another. ‘Here’s Richard and Kim again with all of us at Christmas.’

They went through more photographs, tracing back the years to when Liz was a teenager.