I didn't realise this would be interesting to other people lol.
So... I was up to the phone call.
I remember being at my cousins house and having my Mum ring me and say 'your father is going to ring you, you have to come home'. I couldn't quite believe it, I was numb, excited, terrified, scared, emotional, anxious, happy - you name it, I felt it. I rushed home and then the phone rang and as easy as that, there I was talking to someone who I had waiting most of my life to speak to. He was casual, excited, and I distinctly remembered him saying 'how old are you?' which made me feel a bit strange, didn't he know that? And then he asked when my birthday was which gave me a twinge of pain, didn't he think of me every year on my birthday, like I thought of him on November the 15th every year without fail? But that twinge was overtaken by the excitement I felt and my Mum felt for me as we marvelled at our find!
Over the next week a flurry of phonecalls happened across the continent - and my Mum came up with a great idea suggesting that I change my tickets from New Zealand to visit my extended family to go to England and stay with my flesh and blood, my father. By this stage it was only 2 weeks until I was due to go, but my Mum managed to change it and all of a sudden - bang I was lining up at customs at the age of 21 to fly across the world, to meet my father at the other end at Heathrow airport. I remember the flight well. I didn't sleep a wink the entire flight as I again went through all the emotions; giddy with excitement, terrifying fears, teary, scared, happy as well as being unbelieving that at the other end, I was going to come face to face with my father, the missing part of me.
I remember getting off at Heathrow and being overwhelmed by the size of the airport, it was massive (hey, Darwin girl here!). I came out through customs desperate for a cigarette and found a smoking area inside of the airport (it was obviously the 90's), while I waited - terrified. I remember smoking my cigarette and seeing a grey haired man, with golden skin and my eyes walking towards me. I hurriedly put my cigarette out and turned to meet him. He looked so different from the father that I remembered, in all my imagining of how this moment would happen - I had imagined my father with dark hair and a younger, firmer face.
I've forgotten about what exactly happened during that first meeting - my memory is not so good - probably due in no part to the jet lag that was trying to engulf me. I do remember driving the 3 or so hours back to Norfolk, to his house in Norwich - with he and his partner Marjorie. I remember being in awe of the rolling countryside and the dairy cows everywhere (hey, Darwin again!) and I remember stopping for breakfast somewhere along the way home and them trying to convince me to have a fried bread (bleurk!). After some time we arrived at their house - a heritage listed 300 year old house which was called 'Gothic House' - it was a tudor style beautiful house. My father apologised and said he had to go to work 'for a few hours', I didn't care because I was exhausted and I had planned to sleep anyway. I went up to my bedroom, made beautifully with a gorgeous little card from his partner welcoming me into their house etc. I unpacked and looked longingly at the bed.
Majorie called out and asked me to come down for a cup of tea. I considered it and thought it polite to do so, but planned very quickly to make my excuses to have a nap soon after. I remember sitting there with a cup of tea and Marjorie started off pleasant enough, but after a short while she began to confide in me about my Father. I started to shift uncomfortably in my seat as she began to disclose my father's various indiscretions and how he cheated on her with 'this one' and then that one. I stared at her, with my eyes hanging out of my head as she went into more and more detail and of course after all these years, I couldn't remember exactly what she said except for when she regaled a time that she came home and checked the sheets of the bed where I was to stay claiming that 'the sheets were still WET from them' *vomit*, I remember thinking at that point, who is this freak? I said 'oh, well I guess this is really none of my business' and then apologised and explained that I hadn't slept for over 30 hours and went off to bed.
My father wasn't around much during my time over there. Marjorie worked as a teacher in a seaside town around 30 minutes away, so she was also gone every day. This gave me much more time than I would have liked, alone. It was freezing cold, I had no transport and I was in a village about 20 mins drive out of Norwich. Now, I'm quite an extroverted type of person - I have lots of friends and I am always busy at home. I had come from working two jobs to fund this trip - lots of goodbye parties, love and romance and then bang I was placed in a house in the middle of a foreign country with no friends, no car and in the middle of nowhere. It's sad now to think back to what I turned into. My whole day began to revolve around the television. I would start the day with morning programs, then came neighbours/home and away, then the Jerry Springer type shows. There would be a break of an hour, where I would go and have my daily bath and then walk over the bridge to the shop, buy cigarettes and the papers before I would return back in front of the television to catch the second instalment of home and away and neighbours. After that one of them would be home. This is what I did 5 days a week - oh and I greeted the mailman - I was desp for company. I can't tell you what I did at night, I don't have that many memories - I do remember helping my father a little bit on the computer..
Weekends would be filled with my father driving me around the countryside. I remember a hell of a lot of churches and old buildings. I remember driving through Essex, Sussex, Cambridge. I remember my father buying me an icecream when it was 1 degree, even though I didn't want one - who eats such things when it is that cold?? The British apparently lol. While I was happy that we went on these "family" drives, I needed more. There were things that I needed to get off my chest to my father, about how I missed him, why didn't he come and find me, did he miss me? Some issues that I had been carried around and stuff that I wanted to go over. The only problem was that those were subjects that he just didn't want to talk about. He said; oh, that is the past - why dwell on the past.. lets look to the future! Which made me feel even more funny because this had consumed me for almost my entire life. I couldn't just put it aside and pretend everything was alright. Little did I know that there would be little chance of just carrying on as if everything was fine anyway....
Back to Marjorie. As I mentioned, my father worked a lot. And Marjorie was home before him and would take me to the shops or on errands that she had to do. And yes, after her 'sheet story' she continued to tell me inappropriate things - by god she did. I remember her taking me to a gym that she thought I might like to join (hinting that I should, yet it was a 20 minute drive away when I had no car) and we made pleasant conversation in which I told her that the only time anyone had ever teased me at school was to call me 'googly eyes' (I have big eyes..!) which I found hysterically funny. Her favourite topic of course though was to direct me back to the cheating ways of my father, oh goody just what I like to think and talk about (NOT). Anyway she spoke about this woman he used to be with and said 'oh you are so lucky that he wasn't with her when you found him, she would have NEVER let you into his life'. I laughed and said 'oh I don't think I would allow anybody to stand in the way of meeting and getting to know my father, if she would be silly enough to do something like that, that is'. I spoke firmly about that because I didn't think that would be a reason enough for anyone to stand in the way of a daughter meeting her father - and I wouldn't have stood for it.
The next day as I sat at home after my bath/walk to the shops for smokes, I had settled in to watch home and away. My father and Marjorie arrived home and after a few minutes of hushed conversation in the kitchen, my father called me in. I walked in, my father looked funny and Marjorie was looking at me with disgust and hatred in her eyes. My Dad said 'Alexis, Marjorie has just told me that you threatened her last night and said that if you asked me to, I would leave her for you'. I looked at them and went 'huh?'. He repeated it to me again and after thinking about it for a while I realised how my statement made the night before.. (go on read it again, do you see anything untoward in my comments??) and told him so. Marjorie seethed and said 'you're a liar, you are a liar. You said you would take him away from me if you wanted to etc etc etc'. My jaw was hanging in the breeze at this point. My father turned away and she walked up to me and slapped me across the face - unfortunately he didn't see that. But what he did see when he turned around was me with my hand closed into a fist, swung back and ready to punch her square in the face. He restrained me. I became hysterical. She retreated upstairs to her bedroom and I sat down and he told me that he was seriously considering leaving her. I cried that she could have been so cruel to me. He told me that he was due to travel for 3 days around the countryside and I begged him not to go because I couldn't be alone with her, for I felt sure that she actually hated me.
He played the go-between for a number of days and relations began to thaw. But I didn't forget, because I never do. And the cease fire was only temporary anyway.
I must break this into another part because it feels so therapeutic to write this out and now it has turned out so much longer than I had aimed it be. So, keep hanging on and I'll be back with the next installment.
