Bad Mothers United

by Kate Long

  ‘OK, then, Eric. Cup of tea it is. Oh, do you take sugar?’

  He smiled. ‘Naw. I’m sweet enough.’

  Something small inside me went skip-skip.

  Above our redundant chimney one break of blue showed in the cloud: just enough to make a pair of trousers for a sailor, as my mother would have said. Finally the rain was easing off. I felt his eyes on my back all the way up to the house.

  KAREN: So what I was hoping we could do today, Mum, was fill in some of the family tree. I know we’ve got the big Bible and the records in there, but it’s not always clear who’s who. There are three Alfred Marshes, for a start.

  NAN: My mother’s brothers.

  KAREN: What, all of them?

  NAN: Aye. Florrie had five childer, but three of ’em died straight away. She passed t’name down each time.

  KAREN: Really? It seems a bit morbid.

  NAN: It’s what folk did i’ them days.

  KAREN: Oh, I see. That poor woman. How dreadful. And her husband wasn’t nice with her, was he?

  NAN: He was a drunkard, Peter Marsh. I never knew him, he died more or less as I was born, but my mother used to say if he spilled his ale he’d put his head down and lap it up off t’table. Honest. And when he had no money left, he’d sit outside t’pub and beg.

  KAREN: What, he’d spent all his wages on drink?

  NAN: Oh, often on his way home from t’pit. What they used to do, landlords, was put hot pies and such out on t’window-ledges, tempt the men in as they walked past, then some of ’em would stay and blow their pay packet. It were wicked, really. And t’women waiting at home. But he’d be having a rare old time, treating everybody. He were everyone’s pal when his pockets were full. One time t’Sally Army band came round playing hymns and preaching temperance, and he was there blind drunk. No shame. He went up to t’captain and said, ‘Don’t you worry about me, I’m so full of Christ I could jump through that bloody drum.’ And his mates were all laughing, you know. At his funeral, t’other colliers were saying what a grand lad he’d been, but I don’t think Florrie were shedding many tears.

  KAREN: And he died in 1917, I’ve got down?

  NAN: That’s right. So Peter and Florrie, they had two childer as lived – my mother Polly, and Uncle Jack who emigrated. But my mother lived wi’ Florrie because she never married. That’s where I was brought up, at my grandma’s.

  KAREN: And your dad was Harold Fenton?

  NAN: Aye. But like I said, he’d never marry her.

  KAREN: Was that not a big scandal?

  NAN: It were very shaming for us. But what choice did we have? He made us take his surname for a Christian name—

  KAREN: Yes. Why did he do that?

  NAN: To show he claimed us, to show we were his. I’m Nancy Fenton Hesketh on my birth certificate. Brrr.

  KAREN: It bothers you, doesn’t it?

  NAN: Jimmy felt it more than me. I think that’s why he used to go wandering off. It were like he were searching for summat, I don’t know. Then one day he skipped school, didn’t say owt to anyone. Just took off. It got teatime and he hadn’t come back . . . and he weren’t one for stopping out, not when there was food to be etten. Harry Poxon come round t’next morning and towd us he’d seen Jimmy down by t’canal, playing wi’ a stick. I think we knew then . . .

  (Pause.)

  KAREN: Mum? Oh, look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.

  NAN: Aye (voice wobbling). Funny thing is, I were only twelve meself, but it dunt seem that long ago. It still feels fresh, do you know? Like he’s only just gone. Time goes to pot when you get to my age.

  KAREN: Oh, Mum. Hell. I’m so sorry. Let me switch this damn machine—

  CHAPTER 4

  On a day in April

  ‘By the way, I should warn you, I’m officially a Terrible Mother,’ I told Martin Eavis as he poured me another cup of his tarry coffee. The tutorial was over, my Austen essay pulled apart, and I knew I had ten or fifteen minutes where he’d let me chat about general events. Other students didn’t get this kind of time with him; none of my other tutors had offered it to me. But Martin was different. We had an understanding.

  ‘I assume you’re joking?’

  ‘I am but I’m not.’

  ‘How so? I’d have said you were an excellent parent, from the way you talk about your son.’

  ‘Not really.’ I hesitated before the confession. ‘Last time I was home I smacked him.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘That’s terrible, though, isn’t it? That’s what scuzzy mothers do.’

  ‘You mean the ones who feed their newborns Kentucky Fried Chicken and give them cigarette-lighters to play with? I didn’t have you down as a snob, Charlotte.’

  That made me blush. ‘I didn’t mean—’

  ‘I’m only teasing. Was there a reason for the smack?’

  ‘Yeah, he was about to tip a tea pot full of boiling water down his front.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘It was a reflex. I didn’t enjoy hurting him. I’ve never smacked him before. Mum went berserk, though, it was like she was going to phone Social Services and report me there and then. I know she’s out of order but I still feel like the worst mother in the world.’

  He leaned back in his chair and I heard the leather settle under him. There were piles of paper and box-files and cardboard wallets and books on every surface. On the wall behind him was a print of Ophelia drowning, and an engraving of some Gothic façade, a cathedral maybe. A row of arty postcards was propped along the mantel.

  ‘OK. So let me ask you this: do you think he’ll remember the incident when he’s grown up? Does he even remember it now?’

  ‘Knowing Mum, she’ll probably coach him so he doesn’t forget. Build up a nice head of resentment just in time for his adolescence.’

  ‘She’s on your side, isn’t she?’

  ‘Huh. That depends which way the wind’s blowing. Have you ever smacked Isabella?’

  The photo of his dumpy daughter sat on the desk between us.

  ‘No, I haven’t. The occasional wallop might have done her good.’

  We laughed finally, and I felt better. I loved the way he spoke, direct and considered. Whatever we discussed, I always felt we’d cut to the heart of it.

  He was built, I’d secretly thought, almost along the lines of Daniel. Wiry and tall but without the glasses or the mad hair. Martin’s hair was sleek and grey-brown, and he had lovely elegant hands. Once I asked him if he played an instrument and he joked that he could ‘saw out a tune on the ’cello’. And as soon as he said that, I was picturing him in his Georgian flat, sitting in front of an open sash window, some sad Elgar tune floating out into the street. I wondered what must it have been like for little Isabella growing up with Martin for a dad. How lucky was she? A house filled with classical CDs and poetry books. Had she appreciated him? I hoped so.

  ‘So as far as you’re concerned, smacking a child doesn’t automatically make you a bad mother?’

  ‘Not in isolation. How could it? Otherwise we’d have had virtually nothing but ruinous parenting since humans first stood on two feet. It’s only within the last twenty, thirty years that corporal punishment’s even been questioned. For almost our entire history children have been physically chastised for doing wrong. Think of our brightest and best over the previous millennium, Charlotte, the scientists and explorers and artists and tacticians who’ve shaped the progress of civilisation. Every one of them would have been smacked, or worse, as infants. Did it prevent them from functioning as balanced and loving adults, and as parents in their turn? Well, did it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yet humankind’s continued to progress, to nurture and create and produce great works of art which touch the sympathies of generation after generation and ennoble our spirits. How could that possibly have happened if every smacked youngster had been destroyed by the experience? It couldn’t have.’

  ‘Yeah, but you’re not advocating smacking, are you? You�
�re sort of joking?’

  He spread his hands. ‘I am and I’m not. So to speak.’

  Once again he’d nailed me.

  ‘Seriously, Charlotte, within the benign environment of good parenting there are too many other positive qualifying forces at work. You can relax. A single incident is unlikely to scar.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Thanks. You’ve made me feel a whole lot better.’

  ‘Good. And aside from the smacking business . . .’ he pursed his lips and blew on his coffee ‘. . . how are things at home?’

  I considered. ‘Still not great. We’re all – it’s hard to express – kind of coming loose somehow. It’s since my grandma died. Mum’s not really coping and it’s as if she’s angry with everyone. It’s as if the grief is just hers. But I’m sad about Nan too.’

  ‘Have you told her that?’

  ‘I don’t want to make things worse.’

  Nowadays I never talked to Mum about how much I missed Nan, partly because I didn’t want to stir up any extra household misery, but also because I was frightened she’d come out with something like, ‘Well, you never saw her much towards the end. You were never around.’ Yet Nan had been so important in my life. She’d been my best childhood friend, she’d been the bridge between me and my mum during those difficult early teens. Most of all, she’d been my champion when Mum was on at me to terminate the pregnancy. Dithery and ancient she may have been, but Nan had stuck up for me like a lion in the face of my mother’s anger. Where Mum had pushed my scan photo away as if it was something horrid, Nan had pored over it and marvelled alongside me. She’d dangled a needle over my belly to test whether I was having a boy or a girl. She laid her hand on my skin and the baby had kicked her. She saved me from believing I’d made the wrong decision.

  And I had been around for her, as much as I could. We’d even brought her up to York in my First Year, shown her the Department and the city walls and the union, none of which she was very interested in. Then we’d taken her to a tea shop and she’d perked right up. Kept stage-whispering about the waitress’s chin, about how she ‘favoured Bruce Forsyth’. When the girl came to take our order, Nan went, ‘Nice to see you,’ and winked. The girl had no idea what was going on, luckily, but Mum knocked the salt pot on the floor in embarrassment and I had to bite my knuckles to stop myself laughing. Afterwards, on the drive home, Mum had asked her if she knew where she’d been. ‘No, but it were lovely,’ Nan said. ‘Is it where our Charlotte works?’ Mum said yes, and ever after Nan had me down as waiting on tables. It didn’t matter. It had been a nice visit.

  ‘The problem is, Martin, whatever I do, it’ll be wrong. That’s the way it is in our house right now. I’m a failed mother and a failed daughter, two for the price of one.’

  ‘I’m quite sure you’re neither.’

  The leather chair squeaked again as he stood up. For one awful moment I thought he was coming to peer into my face or put his arm round me. But what he did was go over to the clock, open the glass and adjust the minute hand. He said, ‘Bear with your mother; she obviously has some issues to work out on her own. Meanwhile your job is to love your son and enjoy him. That’s what he’ll remember.’

  ‘Is it enough, though?’

  His eyes travelled to the photo on his desk, the plain and treasured Isabella.

  ‘I think we have to believe it is,’ he said.

  Days we’d had of hot weather. The sunlight on the concrete flags by the bins looked foreign in its brightness. Grass stopped growing. A plague of ants in the kitchen finally made me clear out the cupboards, whizz away all those ancient tins with their laughable price labels, and in turn that had sparked off a kind of frenzy to improve the whole house. I bought a nice patterned Will-proof oilcloth for the table, and washed all my cushion covers and touched up the paintwork round the doors. I papered over some blurred stencilling I’d done above the picture rail in my bedroom. The old wooden knobs on my chest of drawers I unscrewed and replaced with blue and white ceramic ones I’d seen in Better Homes magazine.

  Now the garden wanted tidying, and I’d had this idea of replanting a flowerbed I’d let go, putting in some Michaelmas daisies and maybe some pinks the way my mother used to have it. The hydrangea near the back fence also needed replacing. There’d always been a hydrangea there as long as I could remember; as a child I used to sit under it and pick big green caterpillars off the leaves, mad things with horns on the end and yellow flashes down their sides. Then I’d take them indoors, one hand cupped over the other, to make Mum scream. Fine, she was, with dead rodents, but there was something about a grub she couldn’t abide. I thought it was funny to watch her cringe. Occasionally I wouldn’t even be holding a caterpillar in there, just empty palms, and she’d still have a fit. Then one time my dad was home and he cottoned on to what I was up to. He didn’t shout, he was never one for shouting. He just led me upstairs and said, ‘Would you like it if I turned off the light at bedtime and shut the door on you? Would you think that was funny?’ Because at that time I was terrified of the dark. And that was it. No fuss, no lecture, he straight away made me see what I was doing wrong. He’d have made a brilliant teacher. Wasted, he was, at that paper mill.

  I switched the hose to mist and began working my way across the overgrown bed, starting at the shed end and moving along, layering on moisture, quenching the grass and weeds so every leaf and blade shuddered with a bend-and-spring-up action. I imagined the beetles and bugs underneath scurrying for shelter. Where were the green caterpillars these days? You never saw them any more. A whole lot of things had quietly disappeared while I was growing middle-aged.

  Water gathered in the hollows and trickled out onto the flags, carrying dust and greenflies with it. I let myself imagine my mother inside the house, pushing bedsheets into the old top-loader we used to have, or shaking Lux flakes into a bowl to rinse her tights. Nowadays Better Homes shows wooden airers hanging from ceilings with bunches of herbs tied to them or copper pans, very chic; when I was little, we used our airer to dry clothes. The maiden, Mum called it. Bill, the maiden’s stuck again, fetch a chair. Dimly I remembered her electric mangle with marbled green rollers, and a spin dryer with an elephant trunk-style pipe you had to drape out of the window. I could almost smell the steamy laundry if I concentrated. My scalp prickled and I thought, If I turned round now she’d be there at the kitchen window. She would. What would she be mouthing at me through the clouded glass?

  ‘Hullo, Karen.’

  The voice came out of the blue, and in my shock I fumbled the hose, squirting my own crotch, chest and chin. Eric was standing at the fence, watching me. I tried to say, ‘Hello,’ back, but it came out as ‘Hell.’

  ‘Doing a bit of watering?’

  ‘Watering myself, mainly.’ I glanced down at my jeans, at the big dark stain across the denim. At least he’d seen how it happened, he couldn’t put it down to stress incontinence.

  ‘I think it’s alive, your hose.’

  ‘I think it is.’ I flicked off the trigger and dropped the head on the ground. A last spiteful dribble squeezed out of the rose end and snaked towards my toe. I stepped nearer to the fence. ‘How are you? I haven’t seen you around much.’

  ‘Ach, I’ve been back and forth to the old place, winding things up. There’s been a lot to sort out and it’s tricky when you’re on your own.’

  ‘I see.’

  So no partner on the scene. That was interesting.

  ‘Anyhow, I called you over because there’s someone I’d like you to meet.’

  Eric bent down for a second, out of view, and when he stood up again he was holding a boy-toddler under the armpits. He grinned, then with his arm round the child’s waist for support, set him on top of the fence so his bare legs dangled over our side.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Is he yours?’

  Eric nodded. ‘This is Kenzie.’

  ‘Hello, Kenzie. And how old are you?’

  The boy stared
at me saucer-eyed. ‘He’s four,’ said Eric.

  ‘Is he?’ That surprised me. He was only the size of our Will. Still, you could see the resemblance between father and son: the same close-cut curly brown hair, the same set to the mouth. I pointed to the plaster on his bony knee. ‘Someone’s been in the wars.’

  ‘Ach, he’s always getting into bother. That one he got running full pelt into a clothes prop. Week before, he tripped over a doorstep. You canna take your eyes off them for a minute without some disaster. Well, you know yourself what it’s like. I’ve seen your wee lad.’

  ‘He’s my daughter’s.’ I felt a blush rise.

  ‘No kidding? I assumed he was yours. You don’t look old enough to be a grandma.’

  We started early, I nearly said, but bit my lip. He didn’t want to hear about two generations of slip-ups. Exactly what age was Eric? Was he much younger than me? I wondered whether I could somehow steer the conversation so the information came out casually: Hey, Eric, do you remember the first men on the moon? The three-day week? The night Elvis Presley died?

  ‘He’s called Will. William. I have charge of him. His mother lives away, she’s a student.’

  Eric nodded, impressed. ‘She’s lucky to have you to look after him, then. We don’t know where your mum is, do we, Kenzie? Disappeared without a word. We do all right, though, mostly.’

  Kenzie picked at his plaster as my heart leaped with compassion and outrage. I fought an urge to reach out and gather him into my arms. Some women shouldn’t be allowed to have children.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, ‘you know what? We’ll have to get them together. Two little lads. He could come round. It’d be nice for them both.’

  Eric’s face lit up. ‘It would. That’d be great.’

  ‘And you could come too and have a cup of tea inside.’ I imagined us sitting together on the sofa, chatting, while the boys played on the rug. I could perhaps do us a plate of sandwiches, or a even a cake, make Mum’s drop scones—

  ‘Well, aye. Although I’ve a lot of work on here, everywhere’s such a state. It would be a fantastic help if you could keep him out my way for an hour or two. Then I can make a really good start.’