‘Thomas is Kay’s son. The only lad…’ She shook her head gently. Something about the face and the white curls reminded me of a doll I once had. It moved its head. It was brought by a charity to the kids’ home one Christmas. New. Still in its box. All wrapped up. But I couldn’t see the point of it, just sitting there, moving its head from side to side. I swapped it for a backboard that made a screeching noise when you chalked on it.
‘You don’t have to tell me,’ I said. ‘None of my business.’
‘Thomas is Kay’s son. Older than the girls.’ She looked around guiltily, as though there might be someone to overhear. ‘She had him before she got married.’
‘Tough.’
‘She’d only just left school. We found out she was expecting soon after she finished her A-levels. She had a Saturday job in a big department store in town. That’s where she met the father. He was a student, a bit older than her, working his way through university.’
‘Did you ever meet him?’
‘No. We knew nothing about him. Not even his name. She didn’t even want to tell us that much. We tried to help her through it. It was something you thought about in those days: what would I do if one of them fell pregnant? And I knew I couldn’t get cross or angry. No point, is there?’
This was all a bit close to home. I was thinking, I wish you were my gran. If my mum had had someone like you, I wouldn’t have been dumped outside a church for a collie bitch to sniff out.
‘Did she ever think of an abortion?’ It was something I’d thought about. The dizzying notion that I might never have been born.
Mrs Mariner shook her head. ‘By the time we realized what was going on, it was too late for an abortion. And I was glad. I didn’t think she’d be able to live with herself afterwards, no matter what she said at the time.’
‘What did she say?’
Mrs Mariner didn’t answer directly. Not because she was becoming suspicious about my questions. Everyone expects a social worker to be nosy. Just because she wanted to explain in her own time.
‘Kay was an easy child in a way. She liked everything just so. She always kept her clothes lovely and I never had to nag her to tidy her bedroom. She was organized, you could say. Not like Pam, who was a walking whirlwind. Kay had her life planned. She was going to train to be a teacher. Little ones. She wouldn’t have been able to control the older children. And she liked to be in control, our Kay. Then I suppose she met this lad at work and they were careless, unlucky, and she fell pregnant. But it wasn’t in her scheme of things. It wasn’t supposed to happen. She wouldn’t admit it even to herself. Do you understand what I mean, pet?’
I nodded.
‘I guessed in the end that she was expecting. You can’t live in a house this size and keep secrets. And like I said, with teenage girls it was always something that was a possibility. You’ll understand when you’ve bairns yourself.’
I said nothing.
‘It made her ill,’ Mrs Mariner continued. ‘Not physically ill. She just couldn’t accept it, not even when she was the size of a barrage balloon. We couldn’t get any sense out of her. She wouldn’t talk about the father. We wouldn’t have made a fuss. You can’t imagine Archie with a shotgun. But we thought the lad had a right to know, to play his part. He’d have parents. Imagine having a grandchild and knowing nothing about it.’
She paused again and I thought it was a story she hadn’t told for a long time.
‘He was born on Christmas Eve. An east wind that would cut your legs off. Too cold for snow. I went with her to the hospital and helped her through labour and she was as good as gold, breathing and panting just like they’d showed her. Braver than I’d been with mine. I thought it was going to be all right. There’s nothing more real than labour, is there? Nothing like holding the babby at the end. She’d have to accept him, then.’
‘And did she?’
‘She wouldn’t look at him. She burst into tears and said she wanted him adopted. Now I think that would have been best. I shouldn’t have interfered. But I thought she was ill. Depressed even. Not fit to make a decision. I thought she’d regret it when she was better…’ She was looking out through the window at the snowing pink petals. ‘I’d held him, you see. My first grandchild. A boy, like I’d always wanted for myself. I wasn’t thinking straight either. Selfish. She’d always done what she was told. Perhaps that was how she got pregnant. She’d go along with what he wanted to please him. And when I said she should keep the baby, she went along with that too.
‘I looked after Thomas when she was at college, doing her teacher training. I’d been working in the office at Parsons, not much of a job, not something I minded giving up. He was a lively one, always full of fun and mischief. He kept me young. Kay would be here in the evenings to bath him and put him to bed, and she never took advantage, never stayed out late. But deep down I always felt it was a chore for her. She did it out of duty. Not because she enjoyed it. She’d tuck him in and read him a bedtime story, but he could have been one of her pupils. Do you know what I’m saying, pet?’
I nodded. I knew exactly what she was saying.
‘Sometimes I think of the both of them he liked Pam best. She was a laugh. She took him to the park and didn’t mind when he got mucky. When she married and moved south he cried his eyes out.
‘Kay was thirty when she married. Thomas was eleven. He’d just started the big school and was finding it hard to settle. Nothing serious, but the big lads were rowdy and he could be quite nervy. Then Kay met Ronnie. He owns that big garage on the coast road and she bought a car from him. That’s how they met. She was teaching then of course, working in the infants’ school in Wallsend, where she’s deputy head now. She was doing very well for herself even then, but she and Thomas had never moved into a place of their own. It must have been a shock for the lad. New school, new home, new stepdad…’
‘And he’d miss you,’ I said.
‘Aye, I think he did. I think he did miss us. For a while he came for his Sunday dinner but it wasn’t the same. And we missed him. Kay didn’t tell us what was going on. We’d been like parents to him for all those years, then suddenly we weren’t to interfere. She and Ronnie knew best. We found out some. He was bunking off school. Friends of Archie’s had seen him in town. He’d been getting into trouble. Kay told us it was none of our business. Not in so many words, like. But that was what she meant.’
‘And then she got pregnant again.’
‘With the two girls. First Lucy, then Claire. She loves them to bits and I’m pleased at that, but it must have been hard for Thomas to see her with them.’
‘How old is he now?’
‘Nineteen last Christmas.’
‘Still at home?’
‘No.’ It came out as sharp as a bullet shot and she clamped her mouth shut after.
‘They didn’t throw him out?’ I was fighting mad on her behalf and Thomas’s.
‘Not exactly. More like an ultimatum. Behave properly in this house or leave. I can understand in a way. They’ve got the girls to think of. And I can’t blame Ronnie. I don’t think it was his idea. It was Kay being stubborn.’ She paused. ‘We’d have had him here, Archie and me, but Kay didn’t tell us what had happened until it was all over. Maybe now it’s too late and nobody can get through to him.’
‘Where’s he living?’
‘I don’t know.’ She was almost in tears. ‘I think Kay knows, but she’s not telling us. He’s not to be spoilt, she says. He’s to learn a lesson.’
‘Is he working?’
‘Yes, and you’d think she’d be proud of that. When he first left school he didn’t have anything. Then a friend of Archie’s took him on. As a favour to us, like.’ She nodded to the photo on the mantelpiece, towards the big man standing beside her husband on the bowling green. ‘That’s Harry Pool. He took redundancy from Swan’s years ago, in the 1970s. He saw the way things were going and set up on his own. He’s got a haulage business. He started off with one lorry, now he has a whole fleet and a yard on that little industrial estate where the railway used to go in Shiremoor. A house like a palace in Cullercoats. But they’re still best mates, him and Archie. They were at infants’ school together. He hasn’t changed. Not really.’