by Kate Long
‘What’s that awful smell?’ she said, then she spotted the trail of crumbs across the tiled floor, the dishcloth bundle. ‘Oh, right, yeah. I bet Nan’s been putting the cheese spread on again before the bread goes in, I caught her trying that one last week. She scrapes it on about an inch thick and it welds itself to the element.’ She put on a sorrowful face. ‘Poor old Nan. She doesn’t understand, it’s not her fault. Do you know she’s crying on the sofa?’
I ignored her; it was that or stab her to death with a fork. I didn’t know why she was being so bloody reasonable all of a sudden but I could do without it. The doorbell rang.
‘That’ll be Ivy. I’ll go. By the way, you’ve got odd earrings in, Mum.’
‘AND IVY IS?’ Mr Fairbrother took a sip of his pint. He’d moved his chair a little off from the rest of the Fourgates Ramblers and we were sitting at the end of a long table in the lounge bar of the Feathers. Thank God he’d seemed pleased to see me: thank God he’d been there at all.
‘One of Nan’s friends from her Mothers’ Union days. Ivy Seddon and Maud Eckersley take her up to church every Sunday, then Ivy comes and sits with her in the afternoon. They take her to the Over Seventies’ Club on a Wednesday across at the Working Men’s, and Maud visits on a Tuesday morning and stays for her dinner. And if one’s ill, the other comes, they never let me down. Then I have a woman from Crossroads Carers on a Monday and a cleaner for three hours on Thursday, which I pay for out of the Allowance. I mean, I could leave her with Charlotte, and I do, sometimes, but I try not to. And anyway, Charlotte’s at school most of the time, so I couldn’t even do part-time work without some help. It’s funny how these things creep up on you. Ten years ago, even five, Nan was fine, just a bit forgetful, then . . .’
Mr F looked sympathetic. ‘Your mother’s lucky to have that support network. That’s the marvellous thing, though, about community. Our parents grew up in a time when everybody knew everybody else in this village. Times may have been hard, but they all helped each other out. There’s too much isolation these days.’
I nodded, thinking of myself. Where was my little network of support, my social life? At fifteen there was a big group of us, out every weekend. More energy than we knew what to do with, on the phone all hours; it used to drive Nan mad. We all had plans, we were going to set the world on fire. Then Dee, my best friend, moved to Cheltenham, and then I got pregnant, and there was just this gulf between me and the other girls, even though they tried to be nice about it.
Some of it was not understanding. They got fed up of me moaning about always being tired, and they didn’t see at all why I couldn’t leave the baby and just go off places at the drop of a hat. And I couldn’t confide about the horror of veins all over my boobs, peeing when I sneezed, the big jagged purple lines on my tummy.
Some of it was, too, they were scared it might happen to them, that they might ‘catch’ my pregnancy. I always remember one of them, Donna Marsden, coming to see me in hospital. She’d got a little rabbit suit for Charlotte and she’d come all prepared to coo. But she barely looked at the baby. What she couldn’t keep her eyes off the whole visit was my saggy stomach, bursting out from under one of Nan’s old nighties. She was clearly appalled. Finally she slinked off down the ward in her size-8 jeans and I sat in the metal-framed bed and cried my eyes out.
The bottom line was, I was going to be married with a baby while they were all buggering off to college to screw around and do things with their lives. And by the time some of them came back to Bank Top to settle down and do the family stuff, I was divorced, and they didn’t much rate that either.
Mr F was still speaking, fortunately, and didn’t notice the tears of self-pity pricking my eyes.
‘Sorry?’
‘And, of course, your mother’s lucky to have you. Too many people walk away from their responsibilities these days.’ He smiled at me approvingly and I thought his face looked nice, fatherly. He was wearing an Aran sweater, canvas trousers and hiking boots. It was odd to see him out of a suit. ‘By the way, I take it you’ve had lunch?’
I glanced down the long table and took in the dirty plates and screwed up paper napkins. Bloody hell, him and his rambling mates had already eaten.
‘Oh, yes. I had something before I came out,’ I lied, praying my stomach wouldn’t rumble.
‘Then I’ll get you another, what was it, vodka and orange?’
‘Lovely.’ I’d have to scoff some peanuts in the loo soon or I’d be drunk as a lord. Pace yourself, I thought. On the other hand, the quicker I drank this round, the sooner I’d get something to eat.
‘SO HOW LONG’S your mum been a widow?’ Mr F’s brow furrowed as he handed me my glass and sat down again.
‘God, let me . . . nearly twenty years it’ll be. January 1978, my dad died.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Yeah, it was pretty grim in the end. Lung cancer. It seemed to go on forever, him being ill, but then I didn’t really know all the details. I was only fourteen, and Nan kept a lot of it to herself.’
‘She sounds like a strong woman.’
‘Oh, she is. They built them tough in those days. Once, when she was a little girl, she broke her elbow and she never cried. Her brother did, though, had the screaming hab-dabs, apparently, and they all thought it was him that was hurt because he was in such a state he couldn’t get the words out to explain.’
Mr F smiled. ‘But you’re strong in your own way.’
‘Not really.’ If only he knew the truth. But it was flattering all the same. This date I wasn’t going to spend the whole time dissecting my own inadequacies, I’d done enough of that in the past. His niceness, and seeing him in these unfamiliar surroundings looking like a real person rather than a boss, made me ridiculously nervous. I swigged at the vodka like it was going out of fashion and grinned inanely.
‘Yet to cope with losing your father at that age. It must have been traumatic.’
The grin fell off my face. ‘Yeah. It was, actually. We were really, really close, he’d have done anything for me . . . At least he didn’t live to see . . . But then he’d have loved Charlotte, he really would. I think it’s what pulled Nan through in the end, having a baby around. She was, I have to admit it, brilliant with Charlotte. I used to walk out of those screaming rows with Steve, go round to Nan’s and dump the baby in her arms. I don’t know how I’d have coped otherwise.’
‘And yet you still want to look for your biological mother?’
I paused, and Mr F looked concerned.
‘I’m sorry, do tell me if I’m stepping out of line—’
‘No, not at all. It’s nice to have the chance to talk it over with someone. I was just thinking . . .’ I drained my vodka and stood up. ‘Ahm, while I’m up I’ll get some more drinks in, you’re on . . . ?’ I glanced at his pint. Mr F had drunk about two inches. He tried not to look surprised.
‘No, not for me, thanks.’
‘Well, I’ll just—’
I got two packets of dry roasted and headed off to the ladies’. Actually, peanuts take longer to eat than you think. I leant against the sink and munched madly like a demented hamster, then the door opened and I nipped into a cubicle. Several years later I finished the first packet, tore open the second, and poured them into my mouth. Next door the other person pulled the chain, and the shock sent a peanut nib down the wrong way. I started a choking fit, scattering bits of mashed-up nut and spit everywhere. Finally I got my breath back, but by then I’d totally gone off the whole peanut thing. I threw the plastic packets in the loo and flushed. They floated back up. I waited till the cistern filled, the theme tune to Countdown running through my head, then flushed again. When the bubbles cleared the packets had vanished but two stubborn peanuts still lurked in the bottom of the pan. Bugger it, that’d have to do.
I opened the door cautiously and saw my reflection in the mirror. My cheeks were bright red and my eyeliner had run. I moved over to the sink and started to repair the damage, trying not t
o catch the eye of the other woman who was making a right meal of washing her hands. Sod off, I told her silently. But she went on standing there, and, I thought, taking sneaky glances at me every so often. Then, just as I reckoned she was finished, she sidled over and murmured, ‘You can get out of it, you know.’
‘You what?’ I hadn’t a clue what she was on about.
‘I used to be like you.’ Since she was about ten years younger than me and a heck of a sight more glamorous, I wondered what she meant. She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘I used to have an eating disorder.’ She laid a comforting hand on my shoulder. ‘You can break out of it, with help.’
Light dawned. She thinks I’ve been making myself sick.
‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Princess Diana . . .’
‘Thanks, but you’ve got me wrong—’
She smiled and began rooting in her handbag. ‘I always carry these. When you’re ready, just give them a ring. Admitting you’ve got a problem is the first step.’ She squeezed my elbow and placed a little card in my hand, then went out. The Bulimia Helpline, I read. Together We Can Change Tomorrow.
What about changing yesterday? Now that really would be worth ringing up about.
I got myself a spritzer and rejoined Mr F. Across the room the lady from the toilets gave me the thumbs up.
‘You were saying?’
‘About my mum? Yeah, well . . . It’s difficult to explain, you probably won’t have the foggiest what I’m warbling on about.’
He looked worried again. ‘No, please . . .’
‘Well, it’s like – no, you’ll think I’m mental.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well . . . well do you ever think you might be living the Wrong Life?’
He leant forward, as if getting his forehead closer to mine might help him understand.
‘I mean, who we are, where we live, the jobs we do – everything, really – it’s all just down to chance, isn’t it? The lottery of where we were born, and who to. It’s like, the same person could be born into two completely different homes, well not really, but imagine it.’ I started shunting bar mats purposefully round the table. ‘And in one home he might get loads of encouragement, go to a posh school, end up all confident and successful in some top job, while in another he might have awful scummy parents who don’t care about him, and he might get in with a bad crowd and go to a rotten school and end up in prison or something . . . Am I making sense?’
‘The Prince and the Pauper?’
‘Yeah, that’s it, sort of.’ I leaned a pair of bar mats into a wigwam. ‘And I don’t mean I’ve been living like a pauper, God knows Nan did her best, but I’ve always felt like I belonged elsewhere. I mean, I’m nothing like her. She’s never been that interested in my education, for one thing. As long as I behaved myself at school, that was enough for her. The comp was OK and I’d probably have done really well if, if—’ I had a sudden flash of memory, Steve in school uniform leaning against the iron gates, arms folded: that was the afternoon before the First Time. I shook my head and the image cleared. ‘But she’d never have even thought of the grammar, and I didn’t because of my friends . . . And she’s got, it’s not her fault, it’s the way she was brought up, oh, God, I sound like such a snob, but she’s got terrible taste. In everything. Calendars with kittens in baskets, plastic flowers in miniature wheelbarrows. I knew what kitsch was before I ever realized there was a word for it. And I try and keep the house nice, you know, improve it, but no one else cares. I’ve got this vision of my real mother in a lovely drawing room somewhere, fresh flowers, long white curtains. Like the cover of a Mary Wesley novel. Because I think she’ll be like me, she’ll understand me. And then, then . . .’ The wigwam slid apart and collapsed.
‘What?’
‘Then I can go on looking after Nan without hating her.’
I heard myself say it and I couldn’t believe it.
‘Oh God, I didn’t mean that. I did not mean it, just pretend I never said it—’
But Mr F was putting his hand over mine.
‘It’s all right,’ he said gently. ‘You forget, I’ve been a carer too. I know what it’s like. It’s perfectly natural to feel as if you’re at the end of your tether sometimes. When you love someone, that’s when the other emotions are at their strongest. It’s the most difficult job in the world. I know. But you do a marvellous job, keeping that house running, and your clever daughter . . .’
I started to fill up. This kindness was outfacing. ‘I must nip to the loo again,’ I said huskily, and went off to splash cold water on my face.
When I got back there was another vodka on the table for me.
‘I got us some peanuts too,’ said Mr F. ‘Dry roasted all right?’
‘Mmm. Then again,’ I plonked myself down and carried straight on, unstoppable, ‘it might be a real can of worms. I mean, she might hate me, my real mother, I mean. Or Nan. Nan might hate me for finding this other woman. Not to mention Charlotte. She’s unstable enough at the moment. But who do you live your life for, in the end? You’ve got to take some risks, or you might as well be dead. Don’t I owe it to myself? Don’t I owe it to my birth mum? What if she sobs herself to sleep on my birthdays, or kisses my picture every bedtime? There’s more than one sort of duty.’
By now I was talking quite fast. I made a conscious effort to stop, took a deep breath and asked; ‘So was it very hard, caring for both your parents?’
Mr F began to talk in a low, sad voice and I let my eyes unfocus. I felt very tired and slightly sick. After a while I realized he’d stopped speaking.
‘Sorry?’
‘Are you all right?’
My eyes smarted from the effort to keep them open. ‘Mm, yeah. Fine. Look, it’s been really nice, it really has, to talk, but I’ll probably have to make a move soon.’ The idea of getting up and walking anywhere seemed impossible. I could have put my head down on the table top and gone straight to sleep. I let out an enormous yawn. ‘Sorry.’
‘Do you want me to walk you home? If you’re not – if you’re a bit tired.’
‘I’ll be fine, really.’ I reached round the back of my chair, then remembered I’d left my jacket in the hall; it had been a perfect spring day when I set out.
‘Haven’t you got a coat?’
‘No. Well, it’s gone so mild. You’d never think it was only April.’
The pub door swung open and a middle-aged couple came in, shaking snow out of their hair.
‘Don’t worry. I always carry a spare cagoule,’ said Mr F, rummaging in his rucksack. He drew out a little package of bright blue material and began to unfold it. ‘You’ll need your hood up by the looks of things.’
I struggled into the shiny sleeves and he zipped me up. The other ramblers looked across and nodded at us.
‘Do you think it’s possible to love somebody and hate them at the same time?’ I asked, as he pulled the toggles tight.
‘Oh, yes. Very much so. Now, out into the frozen wastes.’ He squeezed my hand briefly, then steered me to the exit.
‘This is getting serious,’ sang Celine, quite out of the blue. Mr F looked puzzled, but politely held the swing door ajar and ushered me through.
‘I have to say—’ I began, but then with the icy air a wave of nausea swept over me and I had to stop and press my hand against the wall.
‘Do you feel faint? Best to put your head—’
I didn’t hear the end of the sentence because I found I was throwing up peanutty vodka against a half-barrel of pansies. Mr F’s arms were round me as I bent and heaved, and when I could right myself he offered me a hanky and turned away while I sorted myself out. ‘It must be something I’ve eaten,’ I mumbled.
He took my arm and we walked home mutely through the blizzard, my small circle of exposed face getting redder and redder and my wet fringe sticking to my forehead. My feet, in their unsuitable courts, were agony. At my gate he said briskly: ‘So, I’ll see you tomorrow,’ and I thought, Not if I go ups
tairs now and slash my wrists, except I’m too bloody cold to hold the knife steady and my veins have all shrunk to nothing anyway. I just smiled weakly. He gave his half-salute and strode off into the swirling white like Captain Oates.
Ivy Seddon opened the front door as I trudged up the path. ‘They’re smashing, them pack-a-macs, aren’t they?’ she shouted. ‘We saw you coming, be quick and get by t’ fire. And can you check her bag, I think it’s come away again. I’ll mek a brew.’
*
SHE’D ONLY been at the mill two weeks but I’d had her down as a hard-faced madam, sixteen or not. Then that Monday morning she went off for a break and didn’t come back, and I found her crying out by the bins, nearly hysterical.
‘T ’int fair!’ she sobbed. ‘He only has to hang his trousers ovver th’ end o’ t’ bed and I catch on. Me mum’ll kill him. She’d no idea it was still goin’ on. An’ she’ll want me to see that foreign doctor in Salford again. I can’t go through wi’ it. I thought I were goin’ t’ die last time. They pull all your insides out, you’re bleedin’ for weeks and weeks after. I’ll run away first. No one’s layin’ a finger on me, not this time!’
And I put my arm round her. ‘You’ll be awreet. Me an’ Bill’ll look after you,’ I said.
*
Mum had said to take the washing in if it started to rain and I wouldn’t normally have bothered, but my best jeans were out on the line. So when Ivy shouted up that it was snowing I crawled out from under the duvet and thumped downstairs. I’d forgotten about the toaster on the doorstep and, in my haste to get at the jeans, accidentally booted it, sending it skidding across the flags. Crumbs and what looked like bits of singed paper sprayed out of the slot. I ran across the lawn, tugged at the clothes in turn till they pinged off the washing line, pegs left swinging on the blue nylon rope or catapulted onto the lawn, I didn’t care, then laid the bundle over my arm and scooted back to the house. It was bitterly cold. On the way I scooped up the toaster, American-football style, and carried it under the other arm. I slammed the back door behind me and dumped everything in a heap on the floor.
