My Son’s Child

When I returned to collect Tayo from the centre I was early and I lingered in reception, taking time to compose myself again. The lump had returned to my throat and I could feel my eyes start to moisten at the very thought of Tayo with his father. Come on Cathy, I said, get a grip. Fostering was full of emotional highs and lows, with the meetings and partings in the break-up of a family, but this was in a category all of its own. If I was finding the emotion difficult to cope with how much more was Tayo? I was going to have to be very strong for him, particularly over the coming months when his father had returned to Nigeria.

While I waited for Tayo, I occupied myself with looking at the drawings and paintings that the children attending the centre had done over the last year. They were pinned on three large corkboards that I passed all the time on my way in and out of reception but had never looked at. One was of a large plane flying high in the air with a bright blue sky and shining yellow sun. It looked familiar. I peered closer at the signature in the right-hand corner and sure enough it was Tayo’s. Beside his name was the date – 22nd February, the month after he’d come to stay with us, when his father was just a memory, and any hope of him seeing him again was as distant as the land below the plane.

I heard a door open along the corridor and I looked up. Sandra came out first, followed by Tayo and his father, both smiling openly and looking so very proud of each other. As they approached me, walking side by side, I could see that Tayo was the spitting image of his father, in stature, features and the way they walked. Tayo was just that much smaller.

‘All right?’ I asked unnecessarily as they approached.

Tayo nodded while his father shook my hand again. ‘We must speak more another time. Tayo has told me so much and I need time to recover.’

I nodded. Although Mr Ondura was still smiling there was sadness behind his eyes, and I guessed Tayo had been telling him of his life with his mother and some of the horror he had endured. Tayo, for his part, looked the best I’d ever seen him. Standing tall and proud, he was beaming from ear to ear.

‘My dad’s brought me presents,’ he said. ‘He’ll bring them to the house on Wednesday.’

‘That’s nice,’ I said. ‘I hope you thanked him.’

‘Thanks, Dad,’ he said.

His father smiled and ruffled his hair. ‘I’m pleased to see you haven’t forgotten your manners, Tayo.’ He winked at me.

Mr Ondura was so charming, well educated and polite, as well as utterly devoted to Tayo, that it was hard to understand how he had met and had a relationship with Minty who, bless her, was hardly his match, and I doubted she ever had been. He saw Tayo into the car and then he and Sandra waved until we were out of sight.

‘Sandra’s taking Dad back to the hotel,’ Tayo said. ‘And he’s going to phone me at seven to say goodnight, and so is my gran.’

‘Good. I’ll make sure the line’s free.’

‘Cathy?’

‘Yes, love?’

‘Dad says he has a partner and he showed me her photo. She doesn’t live with him but she’s really nice and he said she’s looking forward to meeting me. I asked him if my gran liked her, and Dad said yes.’

I glanced at him in the rear-view mirror to see how he’d taken this news. ‘So that’s good? Yes?’

He nodded. ‘Gran never liked my mum. I didn’t know why. But I guess she was right and knew things I didn’t.’

‘Possibly. But we won’t be too hard on your mum, Tayo. She’s made mistakes but I’m sure they weren’t intended.’ It was easier to be kinder to Minty now that Tayo had his father back, and it wouldn’t do Tayo any good to have his mother demonised now when, in a few months’ time, he would possibly be saying goodbye to her forever.

When Lucy and Paula returned home from school and college, Tayo was in the garden on the swings, so they went straight to find him and ask how it had gone.

They were still talking about it over dinner.

‘So we’re really going to meet this phantom father on Wednesday?’ Lucy teased Tayo across the table.

He rose to the bait. ‘He’s not a phantom!’ he retorted, ‘He’s real. And anyway he’s the wrong colour for a ghost.’

We laughed, and I thought how far Tayo had come. In the time he had been with us, his racial identity was now so secure that he could even risk a joke.

That evening his father phoned from the hotel at exactly seven o’clock and after we’d exchanged ‘good evenings’, I put Tayo on. They chatted easily, mainly about Tayo’s school the following day and how he must work because it was important for his future. Tayo asked his father if he had gone to university and his father said that he had. This was the only detail about his father that Tayo appeared to have got wrong, possibly because he’d made it up in order to get out of schoolwork. They were on the phone for about twenty minutes when Tayo said goodbye and immediately replaced the receiver.

‘Dad said Gran’s phoning at seven-thirty from Nigeria,’ Tayo said, then sat beside me and waited, looking over my shoulder as I flicked through the newspaper. Sure enough at seven-thirty the phone rang and I let Tayo answer it.

‘Hello?’ he said tentatively, then, ‘Hello, Gran!’ A grin spread from ear to ear and I suspected the same was true of his gran all those miles away, who was finally speaking to her lost grandson.

The phone call was very much the same as he had had with his father on that first night, as he spoke about school and his life here with us. Then his gran must have started reminiscing about the time when Tayo was with her, for he was listening hard and every so often burst out, ‘Yes! I remember that!’

She was on the phone for nearly an hour and I sat beside Tayo with the newspaper still open but not reading a word. Then Tayo said, ‘OK, Gran, I will. Goodnight. I love you too.’ He passed the phone to me. ‘Gran says it’s my bed time.’ And planting a kiss on my cheek, he jogged off up stairs.

Sensible woman, I thought, we’ll get along just fine. ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘It’s lovely to speak to you at last. I’ve heard so much about you from Tayo.’

‘And you, Cathy,’ she said. ‘I must add my own heartfelt thanks to my son’s. Thank you for looking after my grandson. You can’t imagine what we’ve been through since he was taken.’ Her voice broke with emotion. It was a beautiful singsong voice that was full of warmth and had more of an accent than her son’s. She began telling me about the day Tayo disappeared from the school playground and the immediate search that ensued when they found he was gone. ‘I don’t know why Minty took him,’ she said. ‘He had a good life with us, and she could see him whenever she wanted. She never was a mother to him, she was always coming and going. We never knew where she was or even which country she was in. She’d been gone for five months when she took him. We didn’t even know she was back in the country. It was Tayo’s school friends that gave the police a description of the woman who’d taken him.’

‘Did he leave with her voluntarily?’ I asked.

‘Yes but he was tricked. His friends said that she’d told him I was very ill and that I had asked her to fetch him and bring him home. Tayo didn’t know to check, he trusted her, he was only five years old. We were beside ourselves with worry as you can imagine, and it didn’t get better over the years. Ajani, my son, has spent a fortune trying to find Tayo, but any sighting of Minty and Tayo proved false and led to nothing. I think she was protected by the type of people she mixed with. They were bad people, not our sort of people.’

I was pleased that Tayo wasn’t around to hear this, even if it was more than likely true.

‘What about Minty’s family?’ I asked. ‘Did they ever have any involvement with Tayo?’

‘She hasn’t got one as far as we know. But, Cathy, we don’t really know Minty very well at all. I will tell you something that Tayo must not know. It’s not for his ears. Minty was a lap dancer in a club in Lagos. Men give these women money to dance and take off their clothes, and then there are other favours later for more money. I didn’t like Ajani going there but he’s a man and his own person. Minty was very attractive, I’ll give her that. According to Ajani, he slept with her twice and then she announced she was pregnant.’ She paused and I heard her sigh. ‘Cathy, my son is a good boy and he felt he had responsibility for the unborn child. I had my doubts that he was the father. What woman sleeps with a man as part of her work and doesn’t use contraception? I told Ajani I thought he should do a DNA test when the child was born and he was very angry with me. It was the only time we have ever really argued. Since his father died he has looked after me well and taken all the responsibility. I apologized to him and when the baby was born there was no need for a DNA test because it was obvious he was my son’s child, they are so alike.’

‘They still are,’ I agreed. ‘The family likeness is remarkable, I noticed it straightaway.’

‘Yes, Ajani said so too. Anyway, he forgave me and I forgave Minty. A new baby mellows all hostility and Tayo was my first, and remains my only grandchild.’

I was gripped by the story, imagining a young and beautiful Minty, holding baby Tayo. That must surely have been a moment when she could have grasped a chance of happiness.

‘We opened our house to Minty,’ she continued. ‘And for the first three months of Tayo’s life she stayed with us. But even then it wasn’t every night. My son was away a lot on business and when he was not at home Minty used to stay out all night. Ajani had stopped her working at the club as soon as she said she was pregnant. He gave her a generous allowance to live on, there was no need for her to stay out at night.’

‘Where was she?’ I asked.

‘I never knew for sure, but I could guess. She liked the attention of men, but I could never say that to my son. By the time Tayo was nine months old Minty had taken to spending more days and nights away than she was at our house. And when she was with us she barely looked at the child. I bathed and fed Tayo from the start. Sometimes she’d arrive in the middle of the night drunk and I’d have to put her to bed as well. Even my son was losing patience with her. By the time Tayo was two, Minty had taken to visiting for a few hours every so many weeks. She’d have a bath and good meal and either my son or I would give her money and she’d disappear again. I looked at her passport once; it was sticking out of her bag. She’d been visiting neighbouring countries and also Malaysia. She’s part Malaysian, that’s all I know of her family. I did wonder if she was smuggling drugs, but I didn’t ever say anything to my son of this. Their relationship had finished by that time, although you could hardly call it a relationship in the first place. If she hadn’t got pregnant I doubt Ajani would have seen her outside the club. He has a lovely lady now and it is my hope that one day they will marry.’

‘Yes, so I understand. He showed Tayo a photograph.’

‘Good. She is a kind, sweet person, a nurse at our local hospital. I know she will be very good to Tayo.’ She paused. ‘Cathy, what worries me most is what living that sort of life for five years has done to Tayo. My son told me what Sandra and Tayo have said about his life, that he didn’t go to school, and for a year he worked in a factory. I didn’t think that happened in England.’

‘No,’ I said sadly. ‘Neither did I. Tayo has coped remarkably well under the circumstances. Like all children, he appreciates routine and firm and consistent boundaries. He’s had his moments but he’s a good boy and has been very resilient, thanks to the good start you gave him. But you may have to be firm with him when he first arrives. He went through a bit of a testing time here, but a lot of that was to do with not finding his father. From the day he first came to me Tayo had his heart set on returning to you.’

‘Thank you Cathy, I’m so pleased. That is what I wanted to hear. I will say goodnight now.’

I smiled. ‘We have a little nighttime saying here and Tayo remembers you saying it when you used to tuck him into bed.’

Tayo’s gran said at once, ‘Night, night, sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Does he really remember that?’

‘He does. We’ve said it every night since he first arrived.’ She was quiet again, and I knew she was struggling with all the emotion. ‘Goodnight,’ I said. ‘We’ll speak again soon.’

‘Yes, and thank you, Cathy. God bless.’