‘No, not yet. I wanted to speak to you first.’ The shaking was heaviest in her legs. Build-up of the emotional helter-skelter of the past days and the final twist in the tail at St Marguerite’s, or the fact that she’d now been standing for almost twenty minutes on the same phone? She noticed the cashier starting to look out the window at her at intervals. ‘Why did he suddenly decide he wanted to find him after all those years?’
‘Because he was dying, Elena. Don’t forget, he knew about the cancer a good three years before. In fact, the doctors only gave him eighteen months, two years. As I say, your mother hasn’t really shared the details with me — but I think he saw it as a last chance to make some amends.’
A lump suddenly rose in her throat; she found it hard to swallow. But in the end he hadn’t made it: ‘…He was sat exactly where you are now, head in hands when he found out he wouldn’t be able to see the boy.’ The wave of empathy that hit her felt so strange, alien, that it made her shudder. She hadn’t felt that way about her father since… well, since almost the age young George had been when he left St Marguerite’s.
‘There’s something else, Elena. Something I do know more about, and I think should tell you now. You know that money I used to send you now and then?’
‘Yes.’ She’d blankly refused to touch the money left in trust for her or take any money from her father. Then when she’d run into problems, which was probably more often than she’d have liked on the hippie trail — Uncle Christos would send money. It wasn’t a fortune, but given the timing and the dire circumstances, it was practically a lifesaver each time. Then in addition he’d send generous sums for her birthday, Christmas, her patron-name’s day, Buddhist New Year — whatever excuse he could think of. She was sure she’d never have survived those years without Uncle Christos’ help.
‘Most of that money was from your father. I’d send a bit for your birthday, thirty, forty pounds, whatever — but he’d insist on sending the other two-sixty or seventy. Or when you had problems, a lot more. And he’d swear me to secrecy each time: he knew that if I said it was from him, you’d refuse it.’
Elena felt as if her life was like a set of plates in a Greek restaurant. Just when she had the table set again, ‘Right. Okay. That’s what my life was like,’ some mad waiter had come along and again spun the plates into the air to fall smashing on the ground. She found it hard to find her voice; she sounded frail, tremulous. ‘But, why… why didn’t he say something later. Tell me what he’d done.’
‘You know your father. Proud to the end. Proud and obstinate.’
‘I know. I know.’ She leant against the kiosk and closed her eyes, sighing heavily. Suddenly it wasn’t just a problem with her tired, trembling legs; her whole body and mind felt weary, not a spark of energy or clear thought left.
‘I think he’d have seen it as admitting that he’d made a mistake with you. And you know your father was never very good at that — admitting he was wrong. It was the cause of probably ninety-percent of the arguments I used to have with him.’ Uncle Christos risked a small chuckle.
‘Is that it? Or is there something else maybe I should know — like perhaps he wasn’t a hot-shot businessman after all but secretly head of the Hampstead Hare Krishna’s. Or, surprise, surprise, he’s not dead, but living in some commune in the Himalayas along with Elvis and Lord Lucan?’ She’d aimed for humour as an escape valve, but the acid, tremulous edge in her voice left little doubt: she was angry. Angry and confused.
‘I’m sorry, Elena. I know how you must feel. But, no — that’s it, that’s as much as I know. As to why your father made that last trip to try and see George and what happened when he was there — only your mother knows the details. When are you going to phone her?’
‘Well… straight away, I suppose.’ It seemed a stupid question given how much she desperately needed to know what had happened — but she picked up the concerned edge in Uncle Christos’ voice. He was afraid it would be like his hopes of her finally seeing her mother these past years: she’d put it off and in the end would never do it. ‘I’ll call her as soon as I put the phone down now.’
‘That’s good. I’ll… I’ll leave you to it then. And once again I’m sorry, Elena… it was just how your father wanted it.’ Small resigned sigh, smothered by the air-rush of a passing truck. ‘Good luck with your mother.’
But having said her thanks and signed off, standing with the dead phone and the dialling tone back again, with Lorena starting to look around expectantly from the car only a few yards ahead, suddenly she wasn’t so sure. She didn’t feel she could take any more shock revelations right now. Each one had been like a body blow and she felt like a punch-drunk boxer, sagging against the side of the kiosk for support under the relentless rain of blows, her legs aching from trembling and now her hands shaking too as she gripped the dead receiver. One more blow and she was down.
She stood uncertainly a moment more, unsure whether to call then or wait till later and meanwhile hopefully summon more reserves and nerve to face the call. Lorena looking over anxiously also reminded her that she still had to decide what to finally do there.
The delay hardly helped. Elena was going to wait until they were back at the hotel to make the call, but with each passing mile back to Montreal on Highway 30 her anxiousness to know pressed harder. It was like a tightening coil at the back of her neck, and as she started to get a headache and could barely summon a clear thought, she swung the car into the next available stop, a roadside diner 17 miles from Montreal.
It was busy and, judging from the car park, popular with truckers. She ordered a mineral water at the counter for herself and pointed the waitress over to the table with Lorena for her coke and blueberry muffin. She swilled back two aspirins quickly followed by another valerian with the mineral water on the way to the phone by the washrooms at the back. She’d gained a bit more resolve and energy since speaking to Uncle Christos, but still her nerves were shot: how best to start a conversation with the mother you’ve hardly spoken to in half a lifetime?
The ringing tone seemed slow with a slight echo to it. As a hesitant voice finally answered, ‘Hello,’ Elena put her other hand by her ear, fading out the clatter of plates and voices and the hiss of the short-order grill.
‘Mom, is that you? It’s Elena… Elena!’ She started with the preamble of enquiring how her mother was, then quickly lurched into not being able to even think of how to start apologising for not being in touch for so long. ‘I’m sorry, mom, so — ’
But her mother cut in halfway through. ‘You’re there now — in Montreal?’
‘Yes… yes, I am.’
‘Uncle Christos said you might phone. And it’s okay, Elena — you don’t need to apologise. You had every good reason to stay away and not see me. I understand.’
Oh God. Elena closed her eyes and wished the floor could open up. The ready, almost fatalistic acceptance made it all the worse, made the guilt worm deeper. But then her mother too rambled for a moment about how was Gordon and her two young ones Christos and Katine, before returning to the meat of why Elena had called: her father’s trip to Montreal the year before he died.
‘…Uncle Christos is right that him knowing that he was dying provided the final push. But it’s not as simple as that — it had been building up for some while. Many years, in fact… going all the way back to when you discovered you could no longer have children, and then later Andreos’s suicide.’
Elena felt the years stripped away, pictured herself suddenly again in her late teens in Andreos’s room telling him how upset she was with their father, how she felt like just running away. And him saying ‘Don’t leave,’ but never explaining why she shouldn’t: too shy to admit that he wanted her to stick around as his own emotional bolster. ‘But… but all those years. How come I never knew, or at least guessed?’