Mother and Child

by Annie Murray

  ‘Oh, I don’t like to shut you out, bab, when I know you’re coming. Fancy a cuppa tea?’

  ‘Don’t you move, I’ll make it.’

  ‘No need to go in there,’ Dorrie says as I am turning to go to the kitchen. ‘It’s all here – look.’

  Of course, that’s what is different about the room. There’s a table now by the window, arranged with all the things she might need: tins and packets, a tray with the kettle on it, the flex connecting to a gang plug on the floor, a jug of water, cups, teaspoons, a container of powdered milk.

  ‘Oh!’ I say. ‘That’s a good idea.’ But it feels sad. Dorrie – springy, invincible Dorrie – no longer feeling up to a walk to her own kitchen. ‘Who did that for you?’

  ‘Wayne next door. I had him pop in and move everything for me, bless him. He’s a good lad when he wants to be, whatever they say about him.’

  I manage another smile, emptying the carrier I’ve brought with me. ‘Here – brought you some milk. And more teabags.’

  Dorrie gives me a vague nod and I realize she’s actually just as happy with powdered milk.

  I boil the kettle, locate the tin with Tetley teabags pressed inside and pop them into Dorrie’s thin china mugs, decorated with trailing honeysuckle. I add two spoons of sugar to hers. Keeps me sweet . . .

  She sits quiet, watching me. One of the great things about Dorrie is that you can talk or not talk and it’s comfortable either way.

  She’s wearing a pair of silver-grey slacks, the fabric old and bobbly, and they look too big on her now, her thighs like sticks. And she’s cuddled up in a big purple jumper and has comfy slippers on with a rim of fake sheepskin. Somehow, even in winter, she still looks tanned. Her colouring is brown-eyed and sallow-skinned with dark rings under her eyes. I never met Ian’s dad because he died when Ian was small. His name was Tom Stefani, from an Italian family, which is where Ian gets his dark looks, but even though Dorrie Stefani had not a drop of Italian blood, she evidently looked every bit as Italian as her in-laws.

  ‘Here you go.’ Passing Dorrie her mug of tea, I can’t miss seeing the tremor in the old lady’s hands. It’s definitely getting worse. Her fingers are curled, the blue veins twisty as worms. ‘I’ll pop it on the table – it’s too hot.’

  ‘Thanks, bab.’

  I sit opposite her in the wooden-armed chair, and reach down to stroke Sweep, who stretches out under my hand, fur luxuriously warm. I start to feel the heat, with the gas fire blasting out next to me, and shift my chair away a bit.

  The wooden mantel above it is crowded with knick-knacks and pictures. At the far end, the old framed photograph of Dorrie, dark-haired with shapely eyebrows and wearing a glamorous frock, black or maybe navy, with white spots, collar-length hair styled in tight waves, on the arm of her fiancé, Tom Stefani. Tom, in a natty suit with wide lapels, grins at the camera. It’s a lovely, classic fifties look and both of them are handsome and radiant. Beside it, there’s another black-and-white picture of Dorrie standing in the street in a winter coat and hat with Ian as a little boy in short trousers and hair slicked across from a parting. She’s still beautiful but her expression is tense and she can barely manage a smile. It must have been taken after Tom died.

  The photos go into colour then: the picture of Ian’s sister Cynthia, who lives down south with her twin boys, taken a few years back. Cynth has gone up in the world a bit – husband does something financial though I’ve never been interested enough to ask in detail. She doesn’t come back here much. Ian’s and my wedding photo, Ian looking strange in a suit instead of his oily work clothes, me in a short white dress, plain as I could find. And there are three little pictures which tug at my eyes, but which also make me quickly look away: Paul – as a toddler; as a cheeky, gap-toothed seven-year-old; and as the introverted, troubled teenager, but still raising a smile from under that thick fringe for his nana, who loved him to bits. My chest tightens and I have to reach for a breath.

  ‘You all settled in, love?’ Dorrie says, clasping her hands in her lap as if to still them.

  I swallow, looking back at this dear, loving old woman. She is the one person who I have been able to be with, have not wanted to shut out because she is steady and kind and knows how to just sit, waiting quietly like a bird on its eggs.

  ‘Getting there. You’ll have to come and see.’

  ‘Oh, when you’re all straight. I don’t want to get in the way.’

  ‘You wouldn’t do that, Dorrie. Never.’ Our eyes meet and she smiles faintly. ‘Shall I pass you your tea?’

  Dorrie nods. ‘There’s some biscuits in the tin.’

  ‘I’m all right, I’ve not long had toast. D’you want one?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she says, as if biscuits are an entirely foreign concept that she would never think of indulging in.

  After a moment she says, ‘Ian at work?’

  ‘Yes, he’s busy. The new place is getting going all right, though. He’s turning into a tycoon – two premises now!’

  ‘And that lad – Gideon, is it?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Like the bibles.’

  ‘Yes, very religious family, I think. He’s getting on fine – eager to learn, Ian says. But he’s more of an apprentice – they’ll need someone else as well.’

  Dorrie nods, holding the mug with both hands. Carefully, she lifts it to take a sip. I try to look as if I’m not really watching, waiting to leap across and help. It’s costing Dorrie effort to keep her hands steady enough. The mouthful, a pause, a swallow. All slow, deliberate. My mind flashes up the memory of a day when Dorrie came with us to the seaside in Wales. It was one of those bright, gleaming afternoons, sunlight dancing silver on the waves, the wind scouring our faces. Paul was about four then and Dorrie had run up the beach to the ice-cream van, legs stringy-strong and tanned in her shorts, hurrying back beaming, hands full of Mivvis and ninety-nines.

  ‘Cold out, in’t it?’ She interrupts my thoughts.

  ‘Yes. Windy as well.’

  ‘Well – only four weeks ’til Christmas.’ She says it with a roll of her eyes that seems to ridicule all commercial folly.

  ‘Don’t.’ I really don’t want to think about it. ‘Can I do anything for you, Dorrie, while I’m here?’

  ‘No, bab – just sit with me. It’s nice to see you.’

  That’s Dorrie. Sit with me. Paul once said, ‘Nana’s like an old tree, isn’t she? She’s just always there.’

  Dorrie sips her cooling tea, staring ahead of her. I wonder if she is going to fall asleep.

  ‘Funny how things change, isn’t it?’ she says suddenly, her voice dreamy and slow.

  ‘They’ve certainly changed fast in your lifetime, Dorrie,’ I say. ‘What made you think of that?’

  But she shrugs.

  ‘I dunno. Places had more character somehow, in the past. Neighbourhoods, proper ones. People used to know each other’s names. D’you know . . .’ She sits forward, seeming to come to life. ‘I can remember when they used to bring all the pigs and sheep in along the Stratford Road on the way to the slaughterhouse. You’d see them of a morning, a man and his dogs, driving them along – on cold mornings you could see all their breath. You can imagine the state of the road after they’d been by . . . But then we was used to that with the horses. The lads used to pick up the muck and sell it, a penny or two a bucket for anyone with a garden.’

  ‘Nice memories.’

  ‘Oh –’ Dorrie straightens her spine and gives me a look. ‘Oh, no. Not all nice at all. There was more character to the place but they were hard times – cruel. You don’t want to go always thinking the past was better.’ She sinks back as if suddenly running out of energy. ‘It were different, that’s all. I just can’t get over it sometimes.’

  She sits silent for a long time, reclining in her chair, still holding the mug, half-full in her lap.

  ‘People take more notice of things now . . . All that health-and-safety sort of thing.’ She sounds drifty and I feel a moment
of unease. Is something happening? Is she having another turn?

  But she looks up at me suddenly and says, as she has said several times before, ‘It’ll get better you know, bab.’ And then something else happens which has never happened over these two terrible years: her own eyes fill and she starts fishing for a tissue in her sleeve as the mug tilts dangerously. ‘I know it don’t feel like it, but it will. You learn to live with it.’

  I reach across to take the mug from her, then kneel down at her side, my throat so hard and swollen up I can’t speak. I have never once seen Dorrie cry, not over anything.

  ‘I know I dain’t say much –’ Dorrie dabs her eyes. ‘What’s there to say?’ She shrugs. ‘No use going on – it don’t change anything. But I think of you – you and my Ian and young Paulie. It goes round and round in my mind, why it all had to happen again like that. You’ve had it hard, the pair of you.’

  The dammed-up tears inside me feel as if they’re straining at the walls, waiting to burst, but I still can’t seem to let go, even here, with Dorrie.

  ‘You don’t give in to it much, do you, bab?’ Dorrie says. ‘You’re not one for blarting. I was like that.’ She thinks for a few seconds. ‘More a case of can’t than won’t, I think.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, my voice husky. If I could just manage it – to weep and weep a flood up to my waist, if I could break through, allow the river of emotion to flow, then maybe something would change. But it won’t come. A few tears at the funeral, welling up now and then as weeks then months have passed – but the straining bulk of my tears feels trapped inside me. And I can see that Dorrie understands. I also realize that Dorrie was not just talking about Paul, but about when her husband died. A heart attack, Ian said, though he was barely old enough to remember.

  Handing Dorrie back her tea, I return to my chair. ‘Thanks,’ I say, because I can’t think of anything else and we give each other a What can you do? sort of look.

  ‘Will you get summat for me?’ She seems to rouse suddenly, sits up straighter. ‘In the other room. In the drawer of the sideboard. You’ll find an envelope.’

  The back room, almost never used, is her dining room – a modern mahogany-veneered table, six chairs and a sideboard, the carpet so immaculate it looks as if no one has ever walked on it before. I find myself tiptoeing.

  ‘The right-hand one!’ Dorrie calls.

  Best cutlery lies neatly in a velvet-lined holder, the spoons nuzzled sideways against each other. Beside them, a brown envelope. Inside I can feel a wodge of folded paper. I wonder for a second if it’s her will. But no, surely it’s too thick for that? What does she have to leave, after all, apart from her house?

  Dorrie takes the envelope from me, looking so serious that for a moment I go back to my guess that it contains her will. She has put her mug on the table and sits with the envelope on her lap, resting her hands on it. Once I’ve sat down again, she says, suddenly formal:

  ‘You’ve been a daughter to me, Jo, as much as my Cynth has, you being around the place always . . .’

  ‘Oh, Dorrie – don’t.’ I’m not feeling strong enough for this, for what I guess might be coming: talk of after she’s gone, who must have what.

  ‘It’s all right, bab. I just . . .’ To my surprise Dorrie blushes, looking bashful. ‘Well – a while ago I started doing a bit of writing, here and there. Odd memories and such. That’s how it started. And then . . . Well, I never finished it. I thought Ian and Cynth should know a bit more about their family. I’ve not always . . . Anyway.’ She rallies, handing me the envelope. ‘It’s not finished, as I say, and I can’t write now, not with these hands.’

  ‘You want me to give it to Ian?’ I ask carefully.

  Dorrie hesitates. ‘You have a read first, bab. And then . . .’ She looks down into her lap. There’s a solemnity to her face and I can’t tell what it means. ‘After that, we’ll see.’

  Back in the house I am tempted to sit down straight away and read what Dorrie has given me, but I really need to get on with some more unpacking and sorting. Towels into the chest of drawers in the bathroom, the kitchen cupboards to be rearranged. As I work, forgetting – no music, I don’t do music – I click the radio on in the living room, turned up so I’ll hear it in the kitchen. For a few minutes, adverts chatter out of it.

  On my knees on the chequerboard floor, head half in the cupboard under the sink arranging bottles of cleaning stuff, the tune coming from the radio clutches its jigging melody like a strangling hand about my heart.

  I struggle to my feet, bashing the back of my head on the cupboard.

  ‘The tide is high . . .’ Blondie.

  Paul, aged about eight, would dance to almost anything we put on the hi-fi but this was his favourite . . . I click the radio off and stand with my hand pressed to my chest, caught in the vision of his skinny little body swaying, his face given over to a daft, dreamy expression: Am I a good dancer, Mom?

  How did I manage to pack away his bedroom, over two slow-moving afternoons? Just me, not Ian. Ian said he couldn’t. Bagging up clothes was bad enough and his heavy metal CDs, magazines. But shoes . . . The sight of his shoes, shaped by him, his trainers, his black-and-white flip-flops, worn wafer thin, that he wore that last summer and almost nothing else, that blue football shirt he kept on even in bed which I practically had to wrestle off him to wash. On his chest of drawers, with a photo cube showing faded pictures of us on holiday and his old Toy Story figurines, sat the chocolate-brown bear, Lucy, we had given him when he first came home with us. Lucy, with her love-worn fur and missing eye, went into my tissue-lined box, with dinosaur Rex, his favourite Toy Story character, his first pair of shoes, the football shirt, his pyjamas and favourite Tintin books, that painting he did, painstakingly one summer, of the little lake he used to run around. From his desk I took the few biros still lying there, seeing his long, strong fingers holding them. They went in the box as well.

  One box, stacked amid the others, to contain all that remains of my boy. How did I survive it? And now this . . . I sink to my knees on the navy-and-cream striped living-room rug, curling into a ball the way you do to nurse your heart, my eyes squeezed shut.

  Three

  ‘Hiya!’

  I force myself to call out when I hear Ian come in, soon after six. It feels like jumping over a wall, the energy needed to get my voice out of my mouth, to sound like a person whose man has just come home, a person with energy to welcome and care. It’s only lately I’ve begun to manage this at all.

  ‘Hi.’ Ian drops his bag in the hall. As I make myself go to greet him, he straightens up from taking off his work boots. Every day, for years and years, he has done the same thing. All through the years of working his way up. The stint at Kwik Fit, starting his own business in Moseley – four lads there, one promoted to manager now, pick-up service, the lot. And now he’s set up the second workshop here, only a mile away.

  Every day, door, bag, boots. I used to be so happy to see him. Now, always, there is pain, swirled like mould through each of us. Our faces have forgotten how to smile. In the old days our arms would be round each other, we’d be laughing: these days he stands back, forbidding, not looking into my eyes. Our greetings are like waves that never break but just move on past.

  ‘All right?’ I fold my arms, leaning against the side of the staircase. The house is warm and I have cooked sausage and onions, jacket spuds, comforting smells to greet him. But I surfaced from my trance on the floor full of wanting. I want something – even just one small thing – to be how it was, to be alive between us. The jokes, the affection. My eyes are begging, Look at me!

  ‘Yeah.’ Ian pats his pockets. His overalls make him look even stockier. He is taller than me by two or three inches and strong, like his father, according to Dorrie. ‘Yeah – it’s going OK. I’ll just go and change.’

  He leaps up the first few steps, then slows, as if realizing how tired he is. I follow him to the foot of the stairs and watch him from behind. His brown hair, cut neatl
y at the back, is still surprisingly dark, though there is a slight thinning at the top. When he reaches the landing and turns to go to the bedroom, I almost can’t bear him disappearing. For a moment I wonder about going after him up to the bedroom, holding out my arms to him. But I can’t do it. Which of us has shut the other out, decreeing that their way to grieve was the only way?

  He’ll be down soon. Perhaps then.

  I wander into the kitchen to check on the spuds, then forget to do it and stand leaning against the counter.

  For a moment I’ve managed to spark enough in myself to reach out to him, but it was as if he was here, yet not here. We are like bodies going through the motions with nothing left to radiate to another person.

  I put my hands over my face and draw in a long breath. It’s as if he did not even see me and I know I have done the same to him, over and over again. Two lost people who cannot meet each other’s gaze. Absent, missing in action, since the night of 22 October 2012.

  ‘I found the cushions,’ I say.

  We sit opposite each other at the white table in the kitchen, which is pushed against the wall to make sure that there is only enough room for two people. White plates, sausages in gravy with a dab of mustard, potatoes, frozen peas. Ian knifes butter on to his potato. I have already asked about his day, which apparently was, ‘Fine. Good, yeah.’

  ‘And the DVD player turned up as well.’

  ‘Great,’ he says, mouth full. ‘You got on all right then?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I won’t tell him about the two hours spent crouched on the floor. ‘I’ll finish off tomorrow. Mom and Dad said they were coming over this afternoon but Mom phoned to say they had to look after Amy today, all of a sudden.’

  Ian looks up and for a second there’s a connection, a glimmer of sympathy between us. My mom and dad live in Redditch. Their life revolves round my brother Mark and his wife Lisa and their girls, Emma and Clare. Emma, the eldest, is thirty and is off being a busy career-girl dentist. Clare, the younger, stayed close, married Matt her school boyfriend and had Amy a year ago. What with the caravan and a great-grandchild, Mom and Dad are run off their feet. They like things to be local, to look after their own; relations mean blood relations, not incomers like Paul. Once again, thank heaven for Dorrie.