Snapshot: Together at last, my father and me
One spring Saturday, in 1990, my mother and I were in a hotel bar with pre-lunch drinks, when we were told that our meal would be delayed. She had another large sherry, then, suddenly, she looked at me and said: “I’ve got something to tell you.”
“You have a half-sister and four half-brothers!”
She went into her handbag and handed me a creased scrap of paper. “I have the name of their Welsh village, Llanfrechfa – and their cousin, Karen, who lived close by.”
I’d always been just me. I did know that my father, Harold, already had a wife in Wales before moving to London, where he met and knew my mother. Apparently, he’d left before I was born and, quite frail, had probably died by now.
Over lunch, Mother revealed little more, but I had already picked a spring bud of promise from its tree. Imagine, I thought, a sister and brothers!
Then, as we parked outside my house, another surprise: Anthony, an antique-dealer friend and neighbour, was waving both arms at us. He’d hurt his back, couldn’t drive, and absolutely had to collect a piece of furniture for an important client. Would I be a dear and drive him there?
“Where?” I asked.
“Newport, Wales,” he said.
We consulted a map and there was the village of Llanfrechfa, just a few miles from Newport.
Before leaving, I made sure my mother was comfortably settled and at her suggestion rang directory enquiries for the cousin’s number. Then I phoned a surprised Karen to explain my quest and asked if I could visit her later that day. Curious, she gave me her address.
I told Anthony the emerging news as we drove up the motorway, and, after collecting his piece of furniture, we set off to find the rest of the story.
In Llanfrechfa, we climbed the steps to Karen’s door. When I had told Karen and her husband the full story, she said, “We could take you to your sister Gerry’s house. Uncle Harold lives with her.”
I stared in shock. “Uncle Harold? You mean my father is alive? And just a few miles away?”
No one answered the door when we rang. We stood as a team – Anthony, me, Karen and her husband – outside my new sister Gerry’s house, staring at a flickering television light in an upstairs window. Harold’s window, Karen said. I sent a silent message through the wall: Father, Dad, Papa, it’s me down here. Look down and see your long-lost daughter!
Karen was calm. “We’ll go and find Michael, your second brother, he’ll know where Gerry is.”
Michael wasn’t in the first pub, nor the second, but he was in the third. And then everything speeded up, unfolding suddenly. Michael took us to meet George, the eldest. Together, they told me about David, now living in Cambridge, and Richard, sailed off to a good life in Australia. Then my big brother George rang Gerry, who was visiting friends down the road.
It’s not every day you get to meet your sister and brothers. I didn’t know the right words that would say, “Hello, it’s me!”
At last, just before midnight, I met my father and when I was holding my father’s hand, and he was holding mine, my spring bud of hope and promise exploded into blossom.
But if the chef hadn’t been late to work, delaying lunch that spring day as I sat with my mother in the bar, with her extra sherry, would she ever have told me – and would I ever have found my father?
Edwyna Beaumont
We love to eat: Mum’s chequer cake on our birthdays
Ingredients
Four round cakes
Icing to stick it all together
Make two each of two round sponges in contrasting colours – you need to use a recipe that makes a firm cake, as moist or crumbly mixtures will spell disaster. Trim them if necessary so they are all flat on top and the same thickness. Measure the diameter of your cake and cut two paper circles, one of them a third and one of them two thirds of the diameter (you can get fancy cake tins to make this cake but I think that’s a) cheating and b) an unnecessary expense). Place the rings on each cake in turn and carefully cut round them, making sure to hold the knife perpendicular to the cake.
Now comes the fun part: carefully separate the rings of cake, and reassemble with the colours alternating, gluing the pieces together with icing. When you’ve done the first layer, fill with a layer of icing and start on the next, making sure to alternate the colours with the first layer. I usually do just three layers, as four makes a towering cake, but you still need to bake four cakes in order to get the necessary rings.
When all the layers are done, cover with icing to conceal the secret within. When it’s cut open, it will be chequered – surprise!
Mum often used to make this cake for our birthdays – there were four of us so she had plenty of opportunity to practise. I think she usually made mint (in a lurid shade of green) and chocolate. I remember the feeling of excitement when I cut open my cake and found it all chequered inside – I didn’t know how Mum did it and it seemed like some kind of magic trick, the secret of which only she knew.
Years later, I remembered the chequer cakes, googled the instructions and made one for my daughter. It was fiddly but not difficult, and Esme was just as thrilled as I had been as a child when the cake was cut open. Since then I’ve made a couple more, alternating with other “secret inside” cakes, but none are quite as satisfying as this one.
Mum has dementia now and cake-making is a skill she has long since lost, but when the cake is cut and the chequered inside reveals itself, I always think of her and those long-ago, magical birthdays.
Andrea Needham
