FOUR
‘WELL?’ Aaron asked curtly, breaking the silence between them once he was certain that Aunt Ruby was out of earshot.
‘I don’t know what to tell you.’
‘How about the truth?’
‘I didn’t know that there were letters.’
‘But you knew that my birth mother was alive?’
‘No. I mean, yes, sort of … I only found out about a week ago.’
‘How could you have only found out about a week ago? She’s been writing letters to Mum for years,’ Aaron cried incredulously.
He was doing his level best to remain calm, but he could feel the anger bubbling away again just below the surface. He stared at Arthur, silently imploring him to make sense of the whole sorry situation. He had come to him expecting answers, but Arthur was doing little to reassure him that the whole episode was simply a big misunderstanding.
‘I told you, I didn’t know about the letters,’ Arthur protested feebly, mounting his only defence.
‘What do you know then?’
Arthur stared silently into his lap, nervously twisting his fingers, unable to meet his son’s accusatory gaze. There was an air of self-pity that hung about him like a bad smell and the way in which the old man appeared to be wrestling with his conscience made Aaron doubt the sincerity of his words. Aaron waited for an answer and Arthur, seeming reluctant, quietly began to explain.
‘Catherine … your mother … she wasn’t a well woman towards the end. Her illness sort of … took over. There wasn’t anything that we could do … to help her, I mean. She was in a lot of pain; you know she didn’t get out of bed most days … too weak to really.’
Aaron looked quizzically at his father, wondering where he was going with his story, but Arthur paid him no mind as he searched for the right words to describe the events that had taken place.
‘There were a lot of pills: pink ones, white ones … I still don’t know what half of them were for. Some of them made her a bit … crazy, a bit loopy when she took them. She would see things that weren’t really there and sometimes she would say things, all these things that didn’t make any sense, not really.’
‘Things like what?’
‘She talked about places that we’d been together, only I’d never been to them before. And about people, all these people that I’d never even heard of …’ Arthur answered, his voice trailing off.
The memory of Catherine’s final weeks seemed almost too much for him to bear and he gripped the table as a wave of sadness appeared to sweep over him. By the end, the woman that he had so loved and adored was barely recognisable and it obviously pained him to remember her that way, yet Aaron’s eyes were still firmly fixed on him, pregnant with expectation.
‘At night she had these awful fits; you should have seen them. All feverish and sweaty like she was having a bad dream or something. She called out names, but I couldn’t always make them out. She talked about you … a lot … and then there was this Kalpana. Every night she seemed to mention Kalpana, but I didn’t even know if it was a man or a woman. Sometimes she would cry out “Remember it’s for lucky”; I never understood what that meant either. Her doctor said that it was nothing to worry about, that the pills were causing her to experience vivid dreams, but Kalpana was the only name I could consistently make out … so I asked her about it one day.’
‘And?’ Aaron asked, exhaling audibly.
He had been listening to Arthur’s story so intently that he had unconsciously been holding his breath. Now his chest felt tight and his stomach churned with nerves while he waited for Arthur’s response. Arthur drew in a deep breath and let out a long sigh before answering.
‘She said that she would tell me when you got home … that she would tell us both … together.’
Aaron felt his emotions stir involuntarily inside, painfully reminded once more that he hadn’t made it home before his mother had died. He forced his eyes shut in a desperate bid to prevent the tears from overflowing and broke his gaze with Arthur for the first time since their conversation had begun. The world seemed to be mocking him; not content with robbing him of a final chance to see his mother, it had simultaneously deprived her of a last opportunity to tell him the truth. Worse still, it had left him to contend with Arthur instead.
Uncharacteristically, Arthur reached across the table and tenderly patted his son’s forearm in a gesture of comfort. Stunned, but nonetheless appreciative of Arthur’s action, Aaron reopened his eyes and nodded silently, signalling for him to continue with his story.
‘On the day that she … died … I was sitting with her in our bedroom. She was in and out of sleep and the words that she was calling out made even less sense than usual. She kept asking for you and I kept telling her that you would be here soon, but I don’t think she believed me. She was insistent that God was deliberately keeping you away, that he was punishing her because she had punished Kalpana. It didn’t make any sense to me, of course. I asked her about it again and I wasn’t expecting her to tell me, but then … well then she told me that Kalpana was the name of your birth mother. Silly, I know, but I had never thought to ask before.’
‘Okay,’ said Aaron slowly, finally finding his voice, ‘but that still doesn’t explain why you both told me that she died after I was born?’
Arthur shifted uncomfortably in his seat, seeming unsure exactly how to proceed.
‘I thought she had died after you were born too,’ he began quietly, ‘that’s what Catherine told me. I never met your birth mother, Aaron; Catherine was the one that knew her. I didn’t even meet you until she brought you home from India.’
Arthur paused, as though trying to gauge his son’s reaction, but Aaron tried to refrain from passing judgement until Arthur had finished his story.
‘I thought it was the pills talking again, so I just tried to comfort her, to calm her down a little bit so she wouldn’t get quite so worked up … but she wouldn’t let it go. We went on like that for a few hours until finally she looked me dead in the eye and said, “You don’t understand, Kalpana wants to see Aaron and I won’t let her”. Well of course then I thought that she had really lost it. I mean, how can a dead woman want to see you? It just doesn’t make any sense.’
‘Didn’t she tell you about the letters?’ Aaron enquired sceptically, fishing a fistful from his pocket and placing them ceremoniously on the table. Arthur’s mouth fell open in surprise and it was enough to answer Aaron’s question.
‘I … no … I … I thought that maybe she was confusing the past with the present. You know, remembering when you were born. She became very close to your birth mother and I know that she always felt bad that she couldn’t do more to save her … well, at least that’s how it had always seemed. I assumed it was just … guilt. The more I tried to reason with her, the more irrational she became. She started shouting at me and at Aunt Ruby too.’
‘Aunt Ruby was there too?’
‘Yes, she came upstairs when she heard the shouting. We both tried to explain that Kalpana was gone and that she wasn’t being punished for anything, but even with two of us there she wouldn’t listen. So we left her for a while, you know, to calm down. It was horrible seeing her get herself into such a state and she was already so sick. I was worried that any more stress would push her over the edge.’
Arthur whispered the last sentence and it hung inescapably in the air between them. There was a brief silence while Aaron struggled to digest the details of the tale, but Arthur drew in a deep breath and continued, seeming determined to finish.
‘About an hour or so before she died, I went back upstairs to check on her. She wouldn’t look at me at first and we sat in silence for a while, but eventually she started to talk. She was convinced that you weren’t coming home. I told her that you weren’t far away, but she looked … defeated. She started to squeeze my hand, gently you understand because she was quite weak, and then she began to apologise. She apologised to me and to you, for lying to us and for not being the person that
we thought she was. She said that she just wanted us to be happy.’
Tears had welled up in Arthur’s eyes, and though it was the first time Aaron had ever seen him cry, he had little sympathy for the old man.
‘I didn’t understand what she was talking about. I told her that we were happy, that we both loved her very much and that she didn’t have to be sorry for anything,’ cried Arthur, now weeping openly. ‘She asked me to make her a promise. Of course I agreed, you know that I would have done anything for your mother.’
‘What did she make you promise?’ demanded Aaron.
‘You have to understand, Aaron. She had been saying so many utterly ridiculous things, it was difficult to know if she was speaking the truth or if she even meant the things that she was saying.’
‘What did she make you promise?’ Aaron repeated, growing increasingly impatient.
‘She … she made me promise to tell you that Kalpana was alive. That Kalpana was alive and that she wanted to see you … and that she was sorry. Sorry for lying to you.’
Aaron felt his blood begin to boil again.
‘Why didn’t you tell me this as soon as I got home?’ he hissed through gritted teeth, trying hard to maintain his composure.
Arthur lowered his head.
‘Because … because I still didn’t believe her.’