A Good Enough Mother

by Bev Thomas

  It could happen to any one of you – was what I wanted to say, but I knew that wasn’t true.

  Why? What happened? How has this happened?

  It was like turning an alien object around in my fingers, trying to make sense of it. What would be an easy explanation? He was struggling with his peer group. He was anxious. He was depressed. It was the pressure of exams.

  But lots of teenagers struggle with all these things.

  Not many try to kill themselves.

  The trauma did recede. It was, as I knew from the nature of my work, physically impossible to stay in that heightened state of nervousness and shock. It gets replaced by something else. Sometimes it’s a sharp anxiety that takes your breath away. Sometimes it’s more grating, like the scratching of an animal at the door. I came to find a way to live and manage the constant worry. The what if? Is he all right? What’s he doing? What’s he feeling? Given, in my mind, Tom’s mood that evening, that day, that week, and that month hadn’t been any different to his mood on any other occasion, there was something deeply unsettling about this unknowability.

  He went to rehab every day. It was a four-week programme; it gave some structure to his summer, which was a relief, while Carolyn was busy Interrailing with friends around Europe. She sent him postcards of different cities, Venice, Rome, Prague and Budapest, and she made a point of ringing twice a week, on days she had pre-arranged with Tom. She rang on the landline and we’d hear him disappear upstairs to his room to talk. He didn’t say much about the rehab unit, and we were advised not to probe too much. A state of ‘detached interest’ was what Dr Hanley recommended, and I refrained from asking how well he’d manage that if his own son had tried to kill himself. After a few days, Tom did mention Oliver, a boy he met in the unit. It was Oliver who introduced him to the book about Christopher McCandless.

  At the time, I felt I had much to thank Oliver for. To my knowledge, Into the Wild was the first book Tom had read in two years. Not only had he managed to finish it, but it had sparked real interest and enthusiasm. There was something wistful about the way he talked about the book – and about McCandless. Tom was clearly gripped by the story, and he went on to read all the books that were quoted by Christopher: The Call of the Wild, by Jack London, and books by Henry Thoreau. He talked animatedly about Christopher’s brave decision to turn against commercialism. Giving away his trust fund to charity. Abandoning his car. Turning his back on convention. The pointlessness of possessions, of consumerism. The way Christopher embraced nature and a life out in the elements. An affinity with the outdoors. His bravery in living the life he wanted. ‘Alaska became the place that symbolised freedom for him.’ At first, I was pleased. He hadn’t shown an interest in anything for a long time, so it was a struggle to maintain ‘detached interest’ and not become over-eager. It wasn’t long, however, before the book, and this young man’s life, became something of an obsession.

  His care co-ordinator, a lanky tall man called Declan with a soft Irish accent, said it wasn’t anything to worry about. Often, he explained, there was a need to focus on something else very quickly after such a period of despair. Despair? In the past, as a child, Tom had fixations with things. Full-blown immersions in new hobbies or interests that were passionate, fervent and utterly consuming. Then, like the flick of a switch, the interest would stop, and the piano, or the rock collection, or the telescope would remain untouched. It was almost as if, in his attachment to these external things, he was trying to find the answer to something much more profound in himself. To that extent, I wasn’t particularly concerned by the introduction of Christopher McCandless into our lives. At first, I took it as another passing fad.

  ‘It’s all he talks about,’ I said as the weeks went on, during one of the key worker sessions with Declan.

  ‘Chris McCandless this, Chris McCandless that. Then he talked about someone called Alexander Supertramp. Who’s that? I asked him. Turns out it’s the same person. His alter-ego. I mean, doesn’t Tom need to be building himself up – not constantly quoting someone else? Someone who sounds like he’s got a few problems of his own. How is that going to help develop his self-esteem?’

  At home, Tom began to quote chunks of Into the Wild when debating issues with David. In answer to some of the arguments around consumerism between him and his father, he began to come out with some sentences he simply wouldn’t ordinarily have said. I came to see afterwards, when I read the book, that he was lifting quotes straight from the text.

  Declan shrugged. He was a man in his early forties, I supposed, yet he looked much older, ravaged by a lifestyle I didn’t want to know about. But I was relieved, too, that whatever he did and said seemed to be helping my son. One day, when I was there for a family meeting, I spotted them out in the garden, talking cross-legged under the trees. Tom looked animated, deep in conversation. When I came over, he was quiet, sullen and non-communicative.

  ‘It’s normal,’ Declan reassured, ‘he’s working some things out.’

  And in any event, I was grateful. He seemed to be looking well. Coming out of himself at last, talking to someone outside of the family. I was crushed by my exclusion. And yet at the same time, I saw the benefits.

  ‘There are worse aspirations,’ Declan said, when I spoke of my worries about the book at Tom’s mid-programme review.

  ‘But the boy dies,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ he nodded, slowly, ‘although I’m not sure that’s the point. Have you read it?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Well – bits,’ I said.

  ‘Do you perhaps see what Tom aspires to in Chris? Do you see what draws him to a young man like that? A man not afraid to tread his own path? To be happy with his aloneness? To be independent?’

  ‘He leaves his family,’ I said, ‘they don’t hear from him. He dies alone. He starves to death in an abandoned bus in Alaska. What part of that is good?’ my voice trembled.

  He is silent for a moment. ‘I suggest,’ he said, ‘that you read it all, putting yourself in Chris’s shoes. What might it feel like to be Chris? Look for something else in the pages of that book. Look for what might have ignited something in your son.’

  I nodded. But, of course I didn’t do what he suggested. Was I too worried, as I claimed to David? Or too inflexible? Too self-absorbed? Too attached to my view of the world? Or maybe I was simply too angry to be told what to do by a man I barely knew.

  ‘I’m not sure about him,’ I voiced to David one night.

  He was silent as I ranted about my concerns and worries.

  ‘You hate the fact that someone else has got close to Tom.’

  I said nothing. The book stayed unopened on my bedside table.

  Sixteen

  The time away was my idea. ‘It’s a cabin,’ I said, ‘by a lake.’ Neither of these two facts inspired any great enthusiasm from the family, apart from Tom, who seemed mildly interested in getting out of London. ‘How remote is it?’ he asked. ‘Does it have electricity?’ and was disappointed to discover it did. I booked it anyway. Carolyn was just back from Interrailing, and wasn’t keen to be going away again. ‘I had plans to see friends,’ she protested. But Tom had finished his four-week rehab programme and had a gap before starting twice-weekly therapy in September – and we had ten days before the GCSE results. I felt it would be good to get away. A ‘break’ I called it. Not a holiday.

  As we set off late afternoon, Tom started telling us about how he’d seen the film of Into the Wild. ‘We watched it at the unit,’ he said. ‘We were all allowed to suggest a movie. Mine got picked.’ I could feel David’s frustration as Tom talked in detail about the pros and cons of the book and the film. ‘The film’s directed by Sean Penn. Really gave you a sense of the space. The sheer beauty of Alaska.’ Again, that wistful tone. ‘He’d been wanting to adapt the book for film for years, but the family had resisted.’ And on he went. His fixation showed no sign of abating. David said nothing, but fiddled with the radio, constantly switching channels
to catch the traffic updates. I made the odd comment, trying to navigate the tricky path between showing I was listening to Tom, while not ‘indulging’ him in this single-minded obsession, but my words were vacuous and placatory. I saw this on Tom’s face as he reached into his bag. For the rest of the way, we drove in silence. The kids were encased in headphones, Carolyn listening to music. Tom engrossed in a film.

  The cabin was in a part of Devon we’d never visited. As David drove, I followed the owners’ directions, through smaller and smaller villages, until we took a right turn by one of those old red post boxes buried in the wall. After a narrow twisting road through dense woodland, we reached the cabin. It was high up, nestled in the trees, and the only houses in sight were way across the valley, or down in the village. It was a simple wooden construction, and had once been the engine house for the slate quarry up the hill, winching the containers up and down. There was a deck out to the side that overlooked a deep rolling hillside. A simple kitchen, a double room and a small room with bunk beds. The kids hadn’t shared a room since primary school. Perhaps they were tired from the journey, but I was struck that they didn’t complain. Any disdain was directed towards the lack of wi-fi. We ate the fish and chips we’d bought on the way and went to bed. I lay awake wondering if this was a huge mistake.

  In the morning, I rose early to see the rich green in the distance. I sat on the deck with a mug of tea, the sun warm on my face, and I watched the light on the trees and the hazy mist of heat as it moved across the sloping hills. Great golden lines of sunshine fanned out over the velvety valley. The only sound was the bird-song and the hum of bees. I laid out melon, bread and jam on the deck and one by one the chairs were filled. I could see straight away that Tom liked the place. He was eager to walk up and find the lake, the now disused slate quarry. He ate quickly, and set off.

  ‘Can we swim up there?’ Carolyn asked.

  I had no idea. ‘I can bring our swim stuff,’ I offered.

  ‘I’ll catch Tom up,’ she said, getting up and draining the rest of her coffee.

  While the simple kitchen was fully equipped, there was a sink and draining board outside in the sunshine, and without any discussion, David washed and dried up outside, like he’d done on camping holidays we’d had when the kids were small.

  The way up to the lake was a steep incline, and the old iron tracks that carried the slate trucks were still there, embedded in the wild undergrowth where the pulley had once winched the slate up and down the hillside. And as man had retreated, nature had taken over, to the extent that it seemed unimaginable that the place had once been a busy, thriving work site. The pathway up to the lake was almost prehistoric in its colour and the density of its foliage. Giant fans of ferns uncurling like great beckoning fingers. Thick gnarled trunks were encircled with twisting ivy and the ground was carpeted with a soft and springy layer of moss.

  ‘It looks like nobody’s ever been here,’ Tom said later that morning, ‘like the land that time forgot.’

  Both David and I were breathless when we reached the top of the incline. The path that twisted through the trees was flat and as we emerged from the woodland, we caught the first glimpse of the lake, spreading out before us, a deep jewelled green.

  Tom was in the water, lying on his back.

  ‘There’s fish,’ he said excitedly, ‘carp and pike. We can catch some – and cook food up here later.’

  There was a small wooden hut by the side of the lake where Carolyn changed, then myself and David. The sun was bright. Whorls of dust swirled in the shafts of sunlight that cascaded on the floor. Outside, there was the whoop of a bird, and the gentle lapping sound of Tom swimming across the water. A shriek as Carolyn jumped in. Other than that, a still quietness. As I wriggled into my swimsuit, I caught David smiling at me, and at the door he reached for my hand, pulled me to him and kissed me. A different sort of kiss from the perfunctory pecks we’d exchanged in the recent months.

  The water felt crisp and clean on my skin as I pulled my arms back and forth. I twisted onto my back, squinted up at the clear blue sky. I felt surrounded by great bands of bright primary colours; the blue sky, the deep green lake. It seemed unreal, like we were encased in a child’s drawing of a woodland scene. ‘It’s the depth of the water,’ Tom explained, when I marvelled at the colour, ‘together with the angle of the sun at this time of year.’

  ‘We saw deer,’ Carolyn said as we dried off by the lakeside.

  ‘A mother and fawn,’ Tom added, ‘just in the clearing before we got to the lake.’

  Carolyn sounded unsentimental. Perhaps too full of city cynicism to understand that such things were not run of the mill. It was only at the end of the week, when their sighting proved the only glimpse of these two beautiful creatures, that their faces seemed to glow when they mentioned it again, full of pride and wonderment for this moment they had shared.

  No one wanted to leave the lake. It was creeping towards lunchtime and we were all getting hungry. In the end, David offered to go to the shops and get food.

  ‘We’ll do what Tom suggested,’ he said, ‘we’ll eat up here today.’

  ‘Can you get bacon,’ Tom said, ‘for fish bait?’

  David laughed. ‘Will do. Might also get some sausages in reserve. Just in case.’

  But there was a lightness in his voice. Devoid of the judgemental and cynical tone of recent months.

  ‘Trust me,’ Tom said, ‘we won’t go hungry,’ and together they made a list of things that would cook easily on a fire.

  While David had gone, Carolyn and I spread towels on the rocks and read, outstretched in the sun.

  Tom set himself the task of making us all fishing rods. He went off into the forest to collect wood. In a sealed tin in the hut, he found old penknives, a length of rope twine and a couple of firelighters. While I was reading, I stole looks at him as he worked. I marvelled at the time he took. The care, the way his fingers smoothed over the wood. The patience as he whittled the sticks. He made holes carefully in the other ends of the rods. He unravelled the twine to produce small lines that he threaded through the holes. It wasn’t long before Carolyn joined him, and they sat hunched over together, their heads almost touching. I smiled as I recalled school holiday weeks spent at Forest Camps. ‘He’s good with wood,’ they’d said.

  ‘They’re so beautiful,’ Carolyn said, her fingers stroking hers, ‘thank you.’

  The handles were thicker and on each he’d carved our initials.

  ‘So smooth and clean,’ I said, ‘just lovely.’

  Tom was beaming under the sunhat he had fashioned out of fern leaves. ‘Ash,’ he nodded, ‘always comes up so smooth. But – we’ll see,’ and he nodded over to the lake, ‘the proof of the pudding …’

  As instructed, David returned with potatoes to bake, bacon for bait, bananas, mangoes, chocolate and tin foil. I unpacked the crisps and wine and beer, but kept the two packs of sausages hidden in the bottom of the bag.

  We all collected wood. Tom made a tripod. Built a fire without using either of the firelighters. He caught four fish, David two – but one got away – and Carolyn and I one each. Tom found wild thyme in the woods and we cooked the fish skewered on sticks that Tom had whittled to a fine point. We ate them with our fingers on shiny plates of enormous dock leaves. Followed by baked banana and chocolate and slices of mango with juice that ran down our chins.

  Those first few mornings, I still woke with panic, momentarily gripped by the pressing worry about how the four of us would fill the yawning hours ahead. How would we rumble along until bedtime? What would we do? What would we talk about? We so rarely spent time together– and when we did, it was always fraught with tension and unspoken recriminations.

  Yet somehow, over the course of the next few days, we sank deeper into the place. There was a slow languid quality to time, a dreamy reflective state, like our lives had been dabbed with watery brush strokes. There were no endless debates about schedules or about when and what we were going to
do. We did the same thing every day, without discussion. The weather was relentlessly warm and sunny. We breakfasted outside, then made our way up to the lake, staying there until just before dusk. While we had identified the nearest pub, there was a general reluctance to go, one of us always finding a reason not to, until eventually we abandoned the idea altogether. Trips to the local store were made only out of necessity, and the planned trip to Exeter that had been suggested in the car on the way down was never mentioned again. Even David, who loved his fix of daily news, became less and less inclined to make the morning trip to the village shop for the paper. By the Wednesday he concluded, ‘It’s always going to be bleak. I don’t think I’ll bother.’

  In the cabin, the television reception was poor, so on our return from the lake, we sometimes played cards, or we watched a film from the stack of DVDs in the cabin. They were old family movies – Mrs Doubtfire, Parenthood and Indiana Jones – ones that would have been disregarded if we’d been at home. Carolyn had her sketch pad and she did pencil drawings of us all. I displayed them on the window sill in the cabin. I still have them pinned to the board above my desk at home; one of Tom whittling his sticks, David asleep in the sun, me reading lying on a rock. ‘These are really good,’ I said, after she gingerly handed over the sketch pad. She said something about not being able to draw hands, but her face under her sunhat was so aglow with pride, it made me want to weep.

  We took a couple of photos, but for the most part, the camera and iPhones lay discarded on the table. It was as if all of us had signed some unspoken treaty to avoid any intrusion of the modern world that might break the spell we had created. We moved gently through the simple domestic chores. Laying the table, sweeping the floor, washing the dishes outside in the sun, all these tasks became ritualistically slow and enjoyable. One day, chopping up fruit to make a fruit salad, I noticed the feel of the fruit under my fingers; the sleek shine of the apples, the thickness of a mango and the calloused surface of the pears, the dimpled skin of an orange. My fingers lingered over these different textures, as I chopped methodically, looking out over the sunny hillside. Tom was out on the grass reading, his long hair flopping down over his face. Something happened to me that week. Something happened to all of us that week.