Half-truths & White Lies by Jane Davis Read Free Book Online Page B

insist on taking Nana Christmas shopping and was
able drag her away from the novelty jumpers. For the
next two years my father was delighted to receive a
cream Aran wool jumper and a chunky fisherman's
jumper that he could genuinely enthuse about.
    'What did you say to the old boot?' I caught him
asking my mother as they were canoodling in the
kitchen. He always loved that word. Canoodling.
Canoodling in the kitchen. There's a word that's just
waiting to be caught misbehaving.
    'I asked her if she would prefer to buy you something
you could wear the whole year round rather than just in
December.'
    'Genius! And that's why I married you.'
    But Nana cast a disapproving eye over my father in
his cream Aran. 'Are you sure that you don't want to
change it for something a bit more colourful? I've kept
the receipt.'
    For my part, I missed the ritual and the play acting. It
is an unfortunate sign that you are growing up when
you stop appreciating the beauty of cartoon ties and
Christmas jumpers.
    I caved when I unfolded his overalls. Once white but
never laundered, every stain represented a morning that
we had spent together washing and polishing, peering
into bonnets as my father showed me how to check the
oil level and change the spark plugs, mending chains on
bicycles and removing the innards of tyres to look for
punctures, as all the while I pretended that I could
recognize a subtle difference in the engine noise after
my father had spent hours doing a spot of fine tuning.
Listening to him talk about cars was like learning a
foreign language. I understood most of the individual
words but much of their meaning was lost on me. I
didn't let on because I didn't want him to think that his
enthusiastic explanations fell on deaf ears. The fact that
parts of it eluded me made it all the more magical and
mysterious. I spent most of my childhood trying to
make up for the fact that I was just a stupid girl, even if
it meant disappointing my mother. It seemed obvious
to me that my father longed to have a son to play with
and to teach.
    The world that I inhabited with my father was out in
the back yard, the tool shed or the oil-stained drive at
the front of the house. There was nothing that made me
happier than to be told that I was too dirty to come into
the house for lunch and being asked to undress at the
back door, while my clothes were put straight into
the washing machine. It was a matter of pride when my
mother, in an attempt to save my 'good' clothes, went to
Halfords and bought me a set of boy's overalls.
    While other fathers read their children bedtime
stories, my father lulled me to sleep with the Haynes
manual for whichever car he was working on at the
time, pointing at diagrams and elaborating on the workings
of carburettors. If he ever heard my mother coming
up the stairs, he would proclaim loudly, 'And they all
lived happily ever after,' or, 'And that's what happens if
you go into the woods wearing a red cape,' while sitting
on the manual he had been reading from. (I would
always have a second book to hand in case she ever
asked any awkward questions.) If she appeared in the
doorway, he would then pretend to be surprised when
he noticed her and say, 'I didn't see you there, love. You
must stop creeping about like that.' I loved the secrets
that we shared. It was almost as if my father and I were
the children of the house, while my mother and Nana
were the adults. He was as relieved as I was when he got
away with something.
    'That was a close escape.' He would wink. 'They're
always checking up on me.'
    'Me too,' I sympathized.
    'Well, you are only seven.'
    'How old are you, Daddy?'
    'Let me see. It was my birthday last April so that
makes it seven thirty. Isn't it time you were asleep,
Andrea Fellows?'
    'Have you forgotten your age again, Daddy?'
    'Yes. But it will have changed again by tomorrow, so
there's no point worrying too much.'
    Behind his suit jackets, I found what I had been looking
for. Something to link my middle-aged,