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Chapter 30
"Tommy," I said. "I have things to do today. Would you like to come and join me or would that create a problem with your mum."
"Mummy will be back later to collect me, she won't mind."
"In that case, my son, we are going for a drive!"
3/4 of an hour later, we were standing outside the local car rental agency and admiring the shiny metallic saloon car that was to be ours for the day.
1 hour later, we were well on our way on the M3 motorway heading for the coastal town of Bournemouth and Poole.
Tommy surveyed the dials and buttons with enthusiasm as he changed the radio station for the 30th time. He was enjoying himself so much that my headache was almost worth it.
"Barree?"
"Yes."
"Where are we going?"
"To see my mum in a place called Poole."
"Why?"
"She telephoned me last week saying she wanted to see me today so I thought since you were with me today you could come along too. Is that ok?"
Tommy screwed up his little face in concentration for a moment - but there were other things on his mind so he ignored the question, perhaps he didn't see its relevance.
"Where did you go to school Barry?"
"My school was in a place called Somerset which is in the middle of the countryside in the South West of England. Because my mother traveled a lot and I never knew my father, like the other pupils there, I boarded at the school."
"Was it nice?"
"It had lots of facilities and my mummy had to pay a lot of money to send me there but of course it meant that I didn't see her at the end of the day like you see your mum."
I glanced sideways at Tommy. The frown showed he was taking it all in. A large lorry started moving over before it had properly passed me and I stepped hard on the brakes to give it road space.
"What are 'facilities'?"
"Things like swimming pools and libraries. We had really good playing fields for rugby and football."
The mention of football made Tommy's eyes round like saucers.
"You mean fields with proper goal posts? Cool! I wouldn't want to go in the pool because I can't swim. Mummy said she would teach me once but she never has time."
He didn't seem to be expecting me to say anything more so we lapsed into silence, each with his own thoughts. Tommy was, no doubt, thinking of his future and I was thinking of my past.
My days at school had been as happy as those of any of the other boys that had been dumped there for safe keeping by parents who were too busy to care themselves.
Although I was aware that my mother moved in the shadowy world of the super-rich, it never meant I was showered with expensive presents and I never felt part of her exclusive club. The boyish rites of passage were always there when they were needed. My bicycle turned up on time to my jubilation so that I could, like the other boys, wizz down the leafy lanes to nowhere special.
When vacations came, they were usually somewhere foreign, sunny and warm. If I wanted to take a friend with me, the cost of two plane tickets never caused a problem. Sometimes my mother went with me on holidays and sometimes I just left the care of the schoolteachers at my boarding school for a holiday camp where yet more people were paid to look after me. Mostly my mum came to see me alone. She mother never talked about my father. It was an unbroken taboo. So I made up stories of my own.
Sometimes in the bathroom I would examine my eyes for traces of Oriental origin and investigate my fair complexion for dark traces that would indicate I might have been descended from Asia or Africa. When I asked my mum, she looked amused. She always dressed immaculately in clothes that looked as if they had been bought that same day. Her nails were perfectly manicured and her light suntan complemented her raven black hair and told of many hours spent a on sunny luxury yachts in the world's grownup playgrounds.
"You're as British and Anglo-Saxon as anybody," she said. "But it's what you are that is important, not where you come from."
When I went to university to read computer science, she sent me a small allowance but I still had to work to make ends meet. Although my mother seemed to mix with the super-rich, I occasionally wondered whether she was just on their fringes. At other times, I rationalized that she wanted me to make my own way in life because she cared about me and wanted me to become a rounded person. More recently, I came to understand that perhaps it was not all part of a super plan but just the random result of sporadic life's choices.
In any event, it was quite unusual for her to summon me to a maternal meeting at anywhere other than a top hotel and when she had telephoned me it had seemed rude to ask her why she had chosen this particular venue. But the signs for Bournemouth were becoming more frequent and with Tommy intensely focused on the portable games machine I'd bought him at the service station, I reflected that I would soon find out.
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