“Just remember, from now on, you’re a couple, Nicky and Ashley, not brother and sister; you can’t juggle two identities and hope to keep them straight indefinitely, one of you will make a slip. I suppose the fact that you have different names, and you’re obviously English, Nicky, means nobody is going to make any connections between you two other than the obvious. Just make sure you keep quiet about who you really are, Nicky. That goes for you, too, young lady!” She shot at Judy, who nodded wordlessly, obviously wishing she was anywhere but here right now.
We both nodded wordlessly. Was that it? Was she really that accepting? I was confused, and I’m sure Ashley was; we were her children, and we’d been caught in the aftermath of a sexual encounter, and this was all she wanted to do about it? In all the possible scenario’s I’d concocted, all the openings I’d considered giving myself to tell her about us, this situation here had never occurred as a possibility, and I was mentally gasping for air.
Ashley was the first to speak.
“Mom, do you really mean it? You’re gonna let me and Nicky go on together?”
Mother grinned wryly.
“I can’t see a way to stop it, not without driving both of you away! I don’t like it, I really hate it, but I like the thought of losing you both even less, so this is how it has to be. Don’t you dare let me down!”
She looked thoughtful for a second. “I suppose, if you’d grown up together, it would have seemed wrong, more wrong than it is, anyway, but Nicky’s grown into a considerate, caring young man, not at all like Brian Davis, and he obviously cares for you, so that kind of takes some of the worry out of it for me. It could have been worse, much worse. This way, at least, my kids are happy; I think I’ll come to accept it, just don’t expect me to dance for joy just yet!”
Something she’d said had caught my attention.
“Mother, who’s Brian Davis?” I asked her, wondering what he had to do with all this. Mother looked at me strangely, like I was simple. “He’s your father, of course Nick, why are you asking such a silly question?”
It was my turn to look strangely at her. “My father’s name is Robert Davies; my surname is Davies, look!” I pulled out my UK Driving License and showed her how my name was spelled.
“Go get your birth certificate, Nicky, I want to show you something!” she said, so I went and rummaged through my flight bag, and came back with the package Barbara had given me. I looked at my passport, my new US passport, and sure enough, my name was spelled Davis, as it was on my birth certificate. I hadn’t noticed the different spelling; other than admiring my US passport and noting the part on my Birth Certificate that stated where I was born, I’d completely overlooked the different spelling to what I’d always believed was my surname.
I looked at her in confusion. “What’s going on, mother?” I asked her.
Mother looked at me sorrowfully. “This is how your father hid you from me all those years; with a simple name change! His name is Brian Davis, he was born in Wrexham, in North Wales, and he grew up in Coventry, in the English Midlands. All your father did was add one letter to your surname and use his middle name; I’ve been searching for the wrong name for the last 18 years!”
She was in tears now, thinking of how she’d been misled by my father’s deviousness and petty revenge-taking. He’d changed our name so she could never find me, which was just one more thing I had to pay him back for.
Ashley shifted uncomfortably, wanting to comfort her mother, but not knowing if she’d allow that just yet. I had no such qualms; my mother was crying, and this business with Ashley and I was on-hold for now, as far as I was concerned, so I put my arm around her and held her while she cried silently for the years taken from her with a simple trick.
I wondered at the mental state of a man prepared to take such a petty, and yet ultimately so profound a revenge on a woman his own rage and abuse had driven into the arms of another man. Even if mother had looked for us in Coventry, or the surrounding Midlands, she’d have drawn a blank; I grew up in Carlisle, in the far North-West of England, in the Scottish borderlands, hundreds of miles from Coventry, or Wrexham, or any of the surrounding areas she might have tried looking.
Eventually she stopped, fishing out a tissue from her purse and wiping her eyes, looking at me sorrowfully. “I tried to find you Nicky, I really did, now I know why I couldn’t. I’m sorry, baby!”
I remembered a random factoid I’d read once when googling my name, that ‘Davies’ was the 6th commonest surname in the UK, and I realised my father had chosen to alter his name for precisely that reason; that any search would turn up hundreds of thousands, maybe a million people with the same name.
Judy stirred. “If it’s OK with everyone, I’ll just leave now…” she began, but a glance from mother nailed her back into her seat. “Wait there please, Judy, I’ll get round to you in a minute!”
Now Ashley spoke.
“Mom, why did Nicky’s dad leave you, and what does daddy have to do with all this?”
Mother looked resigned, as though she’d been waiting for this question, and was relieved it had finally been asked.
“Honey, when I was married to… Brian, I was only eighteen, younger than you are now. He was much older than me, almost twenty-eight, and my parents objected, but I loved him, so I married him anyway. After we were married, I discovered what kind of man he was, how violent he could be, what he was capable of. He… assaulted me, many times, and each time I’d leave him, but then he’d come and plead with me and promise not to do it again. I’d go back to him, and things would be fine, for a while, then he’d do it again.”
“Nicky was born the first year we were married, when I was nineteen. Brian was becoming worse; he was dealing with some scary, shady people, and he’d bring them to the house, and there’d be arguments and shouting; on top of that, his fits of rage lasted longer, and came more often, especially when a deal with one of those people fell through or went wrong, and he’d take it out on me, over and over again, until I’d had enough. I met a good man, he was younger than Brian, only a little older than me, but he became a good friend, my best friend, and eventually I couldn’t help it, I fell in love with him.”
“I didn’t love Brian any more, he and his ‘business associates’ frightened me, and I wanted to stay with James all the time, he was a better father to Nicky than Brian, so I left Brian and moved in with James, your father, honey, and asked Brian for a divorce. He refused, until I told him I was pregnant. He decided that he wanted nothing more to do with me, but that he wanted his son to live with him. I refused, and he made… threats, against me, against your father, against Nicky, threats I knew he was capable of carrying out, so I insisted we let a court decide.”
“Brian petitioned for sole custody, but the court awarded us joint custody, with Nicky residing with me during the week, and with his father on weekends and public holidays; we had a visitation schedule drawn up and had it approved by the court, and at first, all went well. Then one day, when Brian had Nicky as part of his custody, he called me and said that Nicky was his, and he was taking what was his, and put the phone down.”
“When James and I went to get Nicky back, the house was empty and he’d gone. I had no clue where he’d gone except that he’d most likely gone back to England, but I could never turn up a clue as to his whereabouts. Now I know why!”
Her tears began again, and I hugged her to me again.
At last I had the whole story of who I was and where I came from, and my heart was breaking for my mother; she’d lost so much, had so much go wrong for her, and now this, with Ashley and me. I should hang my head in shame for what I’d done. I was lucky indeed that my mother was human enough to recognise what Ashley and I had, and gentle enough to keep us all together any way she could. This was my family now, all of it, and I would never again do anything to hurt any of them, but especially mother; she’d had enough loss and grief and pain in her life already.
Ashley was silently weeping at the story, the full realisation of what mother had gone through hitting her, and when I held out my arm for her, she crept into the crook of it, burying her head in my shoulder as I hugged both of the women in my life close to me.
Eventually mother stirred and dried her eyes, passing Ashley a tissue so she could dry hers too. Now that everything was out in the open, the atmosphere lightened considerably, and I was able to leave and get dressed properly. Ashley followed me out, her hand finding mine, and mother didn’t say anything.
When we’d dressed, we came back into the living room; mother and Judy still sat in the same places, waiting for us to return. Ashley rescued Judy, taking her into her room and closing the door, leaving mother and me some privacy while we talked.
Mother looked at me sadly, her voice soft, almost pleading.
“Nicky, this whole business here, you and Ashley, why didn’t you just tell me? I wouldn’t have understood any more than I do now, but at least you’d have come and stood in front of me and told me to my face. Catching you like that was the worst feeling in the world, like I was spying on my kids!”
I hung my head in shame at that. We’d planned how to tell her, and the exact thing we didn’t to happen, for her to catch us red-handed, had happened.
I cleared my throat, and tried to explain.
“We’d decided to tell you, mother, truly, we were just waiting for what seemed like a good opening. I’ve already had this conversation with Ashley, and I told her then how bad it made me feel that we were hiding from you. If you’d asked me outright, I wouldn’t have been able to lie to you, I’m no good at that…”
She looked at me steadily, then reached out and gently lifted my chin, raising my head to look into my eyes.
“Right now, I’m feeling very confused, angry, a little sad, and a lot disturbed by all this. I want you to go out, both of you, be gone for a few hours while I get my head round this. Can you do that for me? Just give me some time to think about this, please, I promise I won’t go back on what I said, but I really need to be alone here right now. Will you do that for me Nicky?”
I took her hand in mine, squeezed it gently.
“We can do that, sure, are you sure you’ll be OK?” I asked her.
She smiled back at me. “Yes, I’ll be fine, Nicky, I just need to be alone for a while, just some time to think about how our family’s going to work. One thing, Nicky…”
I looked at her. “Yes Mother?”
“You will… be careful with Ashley, won’t you?” she asked me almost fearfully, “she’s had so much to deal with for so long, please promise me you won’t hurt her, she’s been hurt too many times already…”