“I see.” He must hear something in my words because his eyes slide away from me to the brown and orange carpet. Hecould be trying to memorise the pattern of squares and circles as his tartan slippers scuff at a corner. Then he looks up. “Will you tell me your story?”
So, for the third time in two days, I talk about how I grew up. Dad’s death, the argument with Horrible Howard and my drive across the country on Saturday. With every telling, the story grows a bit. Now it includes how the professor reacted and my doubts about the welcome I might get from a stranger in a care home.
Bill digs in his pocket for a folded handkerchief and blows his nose. “Oh, thank God. Thank God,” he says as if from the bottom of his heart. “Thank God.” Then he meets my eyes. “You see I thought he, he… He promised that he took responsibility. I knew he would, but I was so afraid because he wouldn’t tell me anything.”
“How muchdidyou know?” I can’t help asking.
He sighs. “Only that you existed.” He sighs long as if emptying his chest of all the air. Then he starts to talk.
“Will was studying in London, we didn’t see much of each other. I was up in Humberside, working on the wind turbines. After my wife passed…” His eyes shrink as if closing on an old sorrow just for an instant. “She left him her money so he could go to a good university. I hoped he’d go to Hull or Lincoln, a university near me but he had his heart set on London and…” He twists his lips as if in apology. “I didn’t want to stand in his way. Maybe it was a mistake, but he’d set his heart on Kings College. It was his dream.”
He must find telling me this harder than expected because he takes a moment to organise the jigsaw pieces into groups. The picture on the box shows an ocean and sky, lots of blue. Bill mustbe very good; then it occurs to me he must get lots of practice stuck here in this boring overheated room.
“I took my son down to London,” he continues eventually. “Helped him get settled in. He was not yet eighteen, too young to live alone, but very excited to start his new life. And I was busy, long shifts out at sea. It put distance between us in more ways than just miles. I told myself it would help him rely on himself, become a man. Until two years later. Very late one night, I’m asleep when they come to wake me. ‘Phone call for you, sounds urgent.’ So, I climb up to the head engineer’s office still in my pyjamas, to take the call. It’s my boy. Crying. ‘Dad, I’ve made a terrible mistake,’ he hiccups. ‘I got a girl pregnant.’ It’s half-past two, and I’m standing there on a rig in the middle of the North Sea. My poor boy alone in the big city.”
This picture of a crying boy calling his dad in the middle of the night, the son who had his heart set on a particular college, the son so beloved by his parents…It doesn’t fit with the self-possessed cool professor.
“What did you do?”
Bill shoves the jigsaw pieces to the end of the table and spreads his hands on the Formica surface. “What could I to do? I had to see the shift through to its end. We worked in two-week cycles. So, I tell him to calm down and that I’ll be there as soon as I can. Wait for me, I told him. We’ll talk to the girl’s family, and we’ll do the right thing. You see,” – he meets my eyes – “I thought it was a student and was praying to God she wasn’t underage. I was terrified of Will having to go to prison. Anyway. By the time they put us back on dry land, I jumped on the first train down to London. But it was all too late. He’d sorted everything out. He told me she’d gone back to her husband. That was a shock, I can tell you. A married girl? He refused to say anymore about it. I kept asking questions, but he never answered. What was I thinking? That my boy had cuckolded the husband, lied? I thought your father…er…I mean…”
“Dad,” I say. “Stephen Henderson.”
“Yes. I thought they’d lied to him, slipped him someone else’s child. It gnawed at me. Every year I’d ask Will to find you. ‘Don’t rock the boat, Dad. It’s better for everyone especially the child.’ I was ashamed of him. But you say your dad knew and accepted you. And that my son was paying towards your upbringing?”
“Yes, and ten years ago, he sent us the money for my college.”
“My dear girl. My dear, dear girl. And were you happy? You were educated? Where? Tell me about your life.”
The professor never asked me a single question. His own biological daughter. He didn’t even want to know what his money had paid for. But this old man is desperate for news. No sooner do I answer one question than he’s ready with another.
At some point during the conversation, he reaches for my hand and clasps it between both of his.
“Who’s the young lady, Bill?” a man calls from the card table. “All this touching and smiling can’t be good for you at your age.” He gets up and comes over. “You old fox?”
There’s a soft electric hum behind me. It’s the man in the electric wheelchair coming over too. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”
“Deniro, Gethin, this is Leonie, my granddaughter,” he says that like it’s a Christmas gift. No one has introduced me with such pride, not since Dad passed away.
“You never said you had a granddaughter,” says Gethin, the man in the wheelchair.
“I don’t tell you hardly anything, you’re a gossip.”
“Gossip? I never.” He might be joking but his eyes travel over me.
“Yes, you are.” Deniro starts to drag a chair over. “You might as well be a woman with knitting in your hands while your tongue wags.”
The chair is heavy and he struggles as the legs scrape on the carpeted floor until I get up to help him.
“Thank you.” He seems surprised.
“She’s a sweetheart, like that Rachel fromFriends. Isn’t she lads?” Gethin asks around.
“She’s an actress.” Bill beams at his friends. “She’ll be in a play next month.” He makes it sound likeRomeo and Julietat the Royal Shakespeare Company.
“It’s only panto,” I say trying to play it down.
A lady comes over to join us. She smiles at me. “Hello, I’m Vanessa.” She’s in a twinset and pearls; her almost white hair neatly swept up in a glossy bun.
