In Her Mothers' Shoes (46 page)

‘Let’s sit down.’ Penny gestured to one of the chunky charcoal cane chairs and sat in the other.

Kate perched on the edge of the seat and put her bag on the floor.

Penny started pouring the tea.

There was a moment’s awkward silence before Penny said ‘I can’t believe that you . . .’ and Kate said ‘Isn’t it funny how you and I . . ?’ and they both laughed, that same warm, hearty chuckle – the one Kate’s kids gave her such a hard time about.

‘Don’t sit next to Mum at the movies,’ Kate’s son James would say, ‘especially a comedy. You can hear her laugh all over the theatre.’

And her daughter Amelia would dig her in the ribs at the funny bits in
101 Dalmatians
and wriggle down in her seat and cover her eyes with embarrassment.

Kate waited for her aunt to go first.

‘I was just going to say I can’t believe that I’ve found someone else who looks so like me.’ She handed Kate a cup and studied her closely. ‘I mean, you look like Liz in so many ways, but she’s quite a few years older than you – and me. With my other sister Jilly dying young, and Jerry looking much more like his father, I haven’t experienced this before.’

‘Me neither. It’s funny isn’t it? It’s the first time I’ve seen anyone else behind my face.’

‘You look like your sister too, in some ways. Have you seen a photo of her?’

‘Yes, when she was in England.’

‘Goodness, that was years ago. ‘I’ll show you the family photos.’ Penny set down her cup on the coffee table, picked up an album nearby and opened it at the first page of sepia-coloured photos. ‘Look at these.’ She pushed the album towards Kate revealing an array of individuals and family groups from what appeared to be the early part of the twentieth century.

‘That’s your grandmother, my mother Helena Hamilton, when she was younger. They always used to tell me I looked like her and now I can see that you do too.’ She let go the album and looked up at Kate. ‘You know, my husband Graeme didn’t believe it. He thought you must be making it up, that you were a con-woman, trying to muscle in on the family fortune.’ She snorted derisively. ‘As if there was one.’

‘Oh?’ Kate picked up her cup and took a sip. Making it up? Her ability to tell fibs had long gone.

‘Lizzie doesn’t know Graeme knows now. I haven’t told her. I never told her I already knew either, and neither did Jerry. But as soon as Lizzie asked me to come today instead of her, I just had to let Graeme know about you turning up at long last. You’re family, for heaven’s sake.’ She smiled and patted Kate’s arm gently. ‘Graeme’ll see how foolish he’s being as soon as he claps eyes on you. There’s no doubt at all you’re one of us.’

‘One of us? You don’t know how much that means to me.’

‘How did you find Lizzie?’ Penny was pointing at a photo of Liz in the album and looking at her questioningly. ‘Did you have to search for a long time?’

‘I’ve been searching all my life.’ Kate realised this sounded a bit grandiose and laughed. ‘But I only made headway after the law changed in the mid-eighties and it became legal to search. There’s a standard letter you write, in case someone else reads it. I think Liz must have wanted to get the letter, deep down, or she would have put a veto on me. You know, put an official ban on me finding her.’

‘And that was, what, twenty years ago? She put you off meeting your brother and sister all that time?’

‘I promised her I’d wait until she was ready to tell them. But she always had an excuse. And when she got sick, she said it would be too much for her, make her worse. So she never told them and I kept my promise,’ Kate said.

‘She thought no one knew about you. There’ve been so many times I was going to tell her I knew. When she was really depressed, I was going to talk to her about it. I thought it might be the cause of her depression, keeping something like that inside her all these years, especially since the law changed, and not being able to talk about it with anyone. But it’s hard to get inside her protective shell. She pushes you away when you try to get close. Just changes the subject. She didn’t used to be like that when I was little. But she’s done it for years now.’

‘She seems to be a very private person.’ Kate took another sip of tea then bit into a biscuit, catching the crumbs before they fell to the floor.

‘She’s shy in public.’ Penny turned the page on the album. ‘Not like our mother. Helena Hamilton was always having people round for her National Council of Women meetings. But Lizzie used to hide upstairs, even when she was old enough to be introduced around. She’s not good in crowds or with new people, so she avoids going out as much as possible. But when she’s just with family, she can be the life and soul. Her family is everything to her.’

‘Mine too.’ Kate’s strong sense of family – even if she didn’t look like any of them – had been instilled by both Mum and Dad. Mum had continued to run round for years after the dreaded Great Aunt Doris who was Mum’s closest relative, while Dad spent as much time as he could with his brothers, his nieces and nephews, even when they lived out of town. She remembered long hot summers on her Uncle Leslie’s farm, endless sundowners with Uncle Trevor – while Dad nursed a single sherry for hours – and Christmases with cousins in Golden Bay. 

Penny nibbled on a biscuit then said, ‘What was it like, meeting Liz for the first time?’

‘Not at all what I expected.’ Kate put down her cup and thought about it for a moment. She couldn’t tell Liz’s sister the truth – that they hadn’t got on. ‘She told me about her family and showed me some photos.’ Kate thought for a second then ploughed on, figuring it would all come out sooner or later. ‘It was the weirdest thing, but when she showed me a photo of your brother, Rick, I realised I’d met him before.’

‘No!’ Penny laughed incredulously.

‘Yes.’ Kate smiled. ‘He’d written a play called
A Trap for Young Players.
They brought it to Christchurch and I got to interview Rick for radio.’

‘I suppose in New Zealand, there are sometimes very few degrees of separation between us.’

‘They say this country is just one big village.’ Kate shrugged. ‘She also told me about the family’s medical history, and especially about the cancer gene that seems to lurk everywhere.’

‘My sister Jilly, my aunt and eventually my mother – they all died of cancer.’

‘It was a worthwhile warning for me,’ Kate said. ‘A few years after I met Liz, I took myself off for a mammogram, just in case. I think I must have been about forty. They say you should start having tests at fifty, so I’d never have bothered if I hadn’t learned it was in my genes.’ Kate picked up her cup and took a fortifying sip. ‘And there it was – a tiny lump at the base of my left breast.’

Penny gasped.

‘I’m fine now,’ Kate attempted a reassuring smile. ‘I had a mastectomy and a replacement at the same time, then chemo – the works. It was a long time ago.’

‘I’m so sorry it had to be you.’ Penny gazed out to sea for a moment. ‘I got breast cancer too. Just a couple of years ago.’

Now it was Kate’s turn to draw in her breath.

‘Like you, I went through all the treatment and, like you, here I am today.’

Their tea went cold while they shared treatment experiences and reflected on how different things might have been if it hadn’t been detected at such an early stage.

‘Does Liz know?’ Penny asked.

‘Yes, I wrote to her when I found out and thanked her for the warning. It probably saved my life.’

‘She never said. But then she wouldn’t; she wanted to keep you a secret.’

‘I was hoping the secret would be out in the open now, that everyone would know.’

‘She’s made a start with me. I’ll see if I can push her to tell the kids.’

The sun was casting an orange glow through the living room when Kate realised how late it was. They’d been talking for nearly three hours without noticing the time passing, as if they’d known each other all their lives. Kate had to go. She was supposed to meet her friend Vanessa for dinner in Courtenay Place – an arrangement she’d made in case she suffered a similar disappointment to the day she’d met her mother – before catching the last flight home. It was just as well she hadn’t planned on an inaugural dinner with her siblings – that would have to be another day. Because she
was
going to meet them, she was sure of that. Penny had promised – well, at least she’d said she’d try.

‘They ought to know about their sister Felicity,’ she said then caught herself. ‘Sorry, Kate. It’s funny, I’ve always thought of you as Felicity. I can’t get it out of my mind.’

Driving along the motorway back into town she made the resolve that somehow or other she would get to know her brother and sister.

She’d always been stubborn. David once said, when she was hounding him to fix the bathroom door – a job he’d put off for weeks because she suspected he didn’t know how to do it – that she was one of those irritating people who just never gave up. ‘You’re like a dog with a bone,’ he’d said.

As she coasted down the gorge road, she got out her bone and began to gnaw at it.

There had to be a way to make it happen. She’d been asking Liz for twenty-three years to tell her kids, to let Kate meet her siblings. What if Liz never told them? It certainly seemed that was the likely outcome. From what Penny had said, Liz would keep avoiding the issue, change the subject, put it off as long as possible – forever if she could.

What was so frustrating was that she’d already met Rick. She could just pick up the phone and tell him the news. And it wouldn’t be that hard to find her sister Jessica through official records. Maybe that was what she should do. Just tell them. Write them both a letter and let them know she existed.

And yet – she had promised her mother she wouldn’t tell.

She decided to leave it a bit longer, to give Penny a few weeks to see if she could prompt Liz to make the move. And if she still wouldn’t budge, a letter was the only alternative.

Her mother was proving an enigma. She wanted to be able to understand her, to stand in her shoes and find out what it had been like all those years ago – and what it was like for her now. But how to get through to her? They were like chalk and cheese. They might look alike, but their personalities came from different worlds.

W
ould she have been more like her mother if Liz had kept her instead of adopting her out? What
would
she be like? She’d often wondered.

There was no Domestic Purposes Benefit when she’d been born, no support system for women who decided to keep their own babies, which accounted for the fact that so few did. Even a cheap Cuba Street bedsit would have been beyond her mother’s means with a baby and no means of support.

Kate knew she’d been lucky; she’d enjoyed not quite a silver-spoon existence but certainly a silver-plated one. Not that her
parents were wealthy; they’d had to go without so she could have
extras like m
usic lessons, ballet classes and swim school. And how had she rewarded them?

Kate wasn’t proud of her teenage years. All her childhood, she’d been compliant, a chameleon, adapting to her adoptive family to prove that she fitted in – she genuinely believed she might be sent back to wherever she’d come from if she wasn’t a good girl. But in her teens, she’d broken free and rebelled. It was as if she’d been holding it all back, waiting for the right moment.