Mother

by S. E. Lynes

  ‘Every morning,’ she began, taking his hand again, ‘when the post drops through, I get a moment where I feel this little pulse of excitement. And then when I see there’s nothing but bills, bank statements and the like, the feeling drops like a stone and all I feel is disappointment. Most people get that probably, but I think it’s more so for me because of what I’m always hoping for. Maybe I’m no different to anyone else. Maybe we’re all longing for something special to happen. Maybe life is just a constant process of readjusting our expectations.’

  ‘But that day you got my letter,’ he interrupted – couldn’t help himself.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and squeezed his hand so tight it hurt. ‘That day I didn’t have to readjust anything because something special did happen. There was your letter in its little white envelope, all neat and precise.’ Her left eyelid lowered halfway in a comic expression, as if she were joking or being ironic, or perhaps she had something in her eye. He did it too, felt his eyelid tremble. ‘And the address was written in this painstaking handwriting. Black ink. So neat. It was addressed to me, of course. And I knew. I just knew. I was shivering before I even opened it. Standing in the hallway shivering.’

  He said nothing, stayed utterly still, held his breath in case the sound of it stopped her from continuing.

  ‘Of course it was five o’clock by the time I got to read it. The house was like Clapham Junction. I had to do the packed lunches, get the kids sorted, go to work. God knows how I did. Then after work I had to pick up the twins, get their dinner, get them settled. I fed them early then put them in front of the television, took the letter upstairs and into the bathroom. It’s the only room with a lock in this house. Not very picturesque, I know, but I sat on the loo and read your words, and I felt as if my bones were melting. Literally, Christopher. You should’ve seen me. I was crying so much my jeans were covered in wet spots. You’ll think I’m romanticising, but I’m telling you it was like that. It was like forgiveness and redemption all at once, except I only realised in that moment that I’d been waiting to be forgiven, if that makes sense. I’d waited for your letter for over half my life and there it was in my hands, and all I had to do was hold on, not mess up, and I had a chance of seeing you again. Even as I was reading your words, I thought: this will be my first story for him, this right now, sitting in this bathroom on this loo seat, crying over his letter. I’ll lighten it up for him, I thought. Joke about having the loo paper right there, how handy that was to dry my tears.’ She sniffed, smiled, rolled her eyes, as if to suggest she was silly.

  He wanted to tell her there was nothing silly in anything she had said, but could not speak. He had imagined her reading his letter in her room, perhaps, or in the kitchen. But it didn’t matter. None of it mattered.

  ‘I hadn’t forgotten your birthday,’ she said. ‘How could I? So on the twelfth of March last year I knew you’d turned eighteen, just as I knew you’d turned one and two and every year in-between. I had nothing of you except for the smallest picture, no bigger than a credit card, black and white. You were barely a week old when…’ She stopped again, threw her eyes to the ceiling, blinking fast. He placed the flat of his hand between her shoulder blades and told her it was OK, that there was no rush.

  She nodded, closed and opened her eyes, passed her hand over her brow. ‘I’d registered with NORCAP on your birthday, and since then I’d been running for the morning post much like I used to run for my Bunty comic when I was eight. Except Bunty used to come regularly, on a Thursday I think it was. Whereas your letter never came.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry, love. Nothing for you to be sorry about. It’s me that’s sorry.’

  ‘No. Don’t say that.’

  ‘Well I won’t if you won’t, eh? How about that?’ Her left eye closed again but only a little way – her tic or mannerism or whatever it was – and she laughed the small gasping laugh he now recognised as hers.

  He laughed too, in a similar way, and again closed his left eyelid a little. ‘And then?’

  ‘Then? Then nothing. The months passed. Spring, summer, autumn, and before I knew it, it was Christmas. David said I should forget about it, but I couldn’t. I thought you must have decided to live your life without me, and that was fair enough.’

  ‘No!’ Christopher raised their tangled fingers to his lips and kissed the knot they had made. Odd, that he felt no strangeness in doing this. Just the opposite, in fact.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘You’d every right to make your choice, love. I couldn’t say I’d made mine back then, but that was my fate.’

  ‘What do you remember about me?’

  ‘Your smell,’ she said quickly, and smiled. ‘The way your head smelled, especially in the morning, the day after you were born. I inhaled it like it was Vicks, and I remember thinking, I could live off that smell. I wouldn’t need food or water or anything, just that. And your head was so soft and your eyes were so round and wise, as if you’d been here before and you were looking at me as if to say, What are you doing here? And then I suppose my most vivid memory after that is handing you over. Sister Lawrence. She had this placid smile and I wanted to punch her, punch that smile right off her face. Not that that would have solved anything. She was all right, one of the nice ones. And I was fifteen. I had no real idea of what I was doing – I couldn’t grasp the enormity of it. I put my baby into a stranger’s arms because that’s what I was told to do. But my hands had become hot and sticky with holding you and they got stuck under your head. Sister Lawrence had to slide her own hand between your head and my hand and kind of prise you away.’

  ‘Where was this?’

  ‘At the convent. We were in the mother superior’s office. Some girls had their whole pregnancy there, but I was allowed to stay at home. I wasn’t allowed out of the house once I started to show, but at least I wasn’t at the convent for the whole time. Bloody miserable place.’

  ‘Were you alone?’

  ‘No. If my memory serves, my parents took me there with you in my arms and brought me home alone. There was no conversation before, and when they drove me home, no conversation then either. The subject was never mentioned again. You were never mentioned again. Nothing, not a word, as if removing a whole human being from our lives was little more than the end of a chapter. It was all at best inconvenient, at worst unfortunate. Any attempt to speak of it beyond that day was to pay too much attention to something best forgotten.’ She stopped, rubbed her forehead, ran her hand over her eyes. ‘Different times.’

  ‘You don’t have to say any more.’ It cost him all his will to say it. He wanted more. He wanted all of it. Every detail played out, second by second.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘They know about you, Mum and Dad. Now, I mean. They’re looking forward to meeting you. Thing is, we’re not going to get anywhere looking backwards and blaming people, are we? It was a long time ago.’

  How wise she was – how good, how kind.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked her.

  ‘Of course, love,’ she said, patting his hand. And then, after a moment, ‘Gerard, that was the mother superior’s name. This was at St Matthew’s. I missed my O levels. I took them a year later at college. I’m grateful to my parents for that. They were very particular about that, and I would never have become a teacher without them. I was bitter at them for years, of course, but now I think they were trying to do right by me, that’s all. I’d always been bright at school and they didn’t want to see me waste it.’ She breathed deeply, shook her head as if to clear it before continuing. ‘The mother superior’s office was a drab old place though. You should have seen it. Brown, everything brown, although that could just be how I remember it – maybe I’ve got it in sepia tones in my mind or something like those old photos. When I think of it, I can smell dust even though there wasn’t a speck. Incense, too, and something else, which I think now must have been carbolic soap or some such. None of your Shield there, I
can tell you – none of your Impulse body spray or what have you. No smell, no colour. Even the books were brown – it’s a wonder I didn’t develop a hatred of them right there and then, a wonder that they, not God, became my salvation.’

  ‘Salvation?’

  ‘Yes, love. Education. Look at you, at university. It’s fabulous. You’ll get your degree and you’ll be able to get a decent job rather than stacking shelves or emptying bins like some of these poor souls. You’re going to have a good life, Christopher. There’s nothing stopping you.’

  ‘No,’ he said, feeling his chest loosen and swell. ‘Not now.’

  ‘I’m already proud of you and I’ve only known you five minutes.’ This time when she laughed, he laughed with her. He had known she was going to laugh, had seen her eyelid begin to quiver, so was able to meet her laugh with his own. As he laughed, he felt his left eyelid lower and wondered if he’d always done this and was only noticing it now.

  ‘And that was it really,’ she said. ‘I had to sign some papers, I remember, though I can’t remember any of the words. I just signed. Insidious duress, I’d call it now. I was fifteen, did I mention that? It outrages me even now. Signature! I didn’t have a signature! What fifteen-year-old has a signature? I didn’t even have a chequebook! I just wrote my name in my best handwriting, that was all. I consigned my Martin, you, to the arms of a nun not much older than me, and that was it.’ She began to cry. ‘Sorry, ignore me. I haven’t talked about it for a long time.’

  He pushed his arm all the way around her shoulders. Her shoulders were narrow; in the cup of his hand he could feel the small square of bone at the top. It was only after he had put his arm around her that he realised he had done it. But even then, on realising, he had no desire to pull it away.

  ‘I didn’t cry,’ she said, composing herself, reaching into her sleeve for a handkerchief. ‘Not then. I signed, and then I gestured to Sister Lawrence to let me take my baby one last time. I wanted to press my nose into the soft folds of his… of your neck. I wanted to breathe my last breath of you. Your own baby’s neck, the softness, the sweet smell… I can’t even put that into words, Christopher. I only hope you get to experience it one day and you’ll know what I mean. I thought if I could inhale you, I could breathe you into my marrow or bottle you and stopper you inside me or something, but they wouldn’t let me take you. I can remember my mother turning me by the shoulders and walking me to the door. It was all so bloody gentle, so bloody quiet. But inside I was a volcano. And I’ve played that moment over too many times to count and each time I wonder how I didn’t scream, why I didn’t throw my mother’s hands from my shoulders, snatch my baby and run out of there and never come back. I could have taken my chances. You and me against the world. But I didn’t. And that’s what I’m sorry about. No amount of confessions can remove the weight of that.’

  She pressed her hands flat over her face and wept. He pulled her small body towards him. She let her head rest against his chest and sobbed into her hands, and he kissed her hair and told her it was all right. It was all right. It was all right.

  ‘I’m here now,’ he said. ‘No one can take you away from me.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Ben reaches the apartment a little before six. When he steps inside, Martha gives a sweet cry of delight. He has kept his promise. That it’s enough to make her squeal in surprise opens a chasm of guilt in his chest.

  He holds up the bottle of Moët & Chandon he has picked up on the way home. ‘You, my beautiful one, are looking at Benjamin Bradbury, future senior designer and winner of the Oakland branding contract.’

  She whoops, claps her hands and laughs.

  He takes her in his arms. ‘Wait a second.’ He puts the sweating bottle on the table and takes hold of her once again. He buries his mouth and nose in her soft neck. She smells of the coconut soap she favours, and the downy softness and sweet smell of her skin make him want to tear off her clothes and forget about everything but her. He runs his hand down her neck, onto her breast.

  ‘Come on,’ she says, taking hold of his hands. ‘Not so fast. Let’s do a toast.’

  ‘A kiss.’ He pulls her back into him and kisses her deeply. She responds, sliding her hands to his buttocks before pulling away again.

  She pushes her thumb against his lips. ‘Don’t look at me like that. Pour your woman a drink, at least. I’m not some cheap floozy, you know.’

  She fetches two glasses. He opens the champagne with a pop. He pours it, raises his glass but changes his mind. He puts his glass aside and drops to one knee.

  ‘What are you doing?’ She’s still holding her glass, waiting to drink.

  ‘I don’t have a ring or anything, Martha,’ he says. ‘I wasn’t planning on doing this right now, but I just realised I can’t wait another second to ask you if you’ll marry me. So, Martha, will you? Will you marry me? Please?’

  The room has stilled, the air turned thick. For a moment, fear clenches his jaw. She kneels down on the kitchen floor, pulls his glass from the tabletop and hands it to him. She meets his gaze with her steadfast green eyes.

  ‘Idiot,’ she says. ‘Of course I will.’

  * * *

  Later, when they have made love and drunk the rest of the champagne and shared a light joint in bed, he lies with Martha dozing in the crook of his arm. Only now, in the warm peace, does his phone call with his mother come back to him. He should call his parents now, he thinks. Call and tell them the news. It is in moments such as this that he is filled with regret.

  Physical distance had been his only intention going to college so far away from them. He didn’t hate his parents or anything. But once the first semester in California was through, the thought of returning to Washington brought with it only dread. So he didn’t go, pleading a flu virus that had swept through the university. A particularly virulent strain, for such a complete fabrication.

  ‘But you didn’t come home for Thanksgiving,’ Dorothy had said. ‘Will you even be here for Christmas?’

  He’d listened for the chink of ice in the glass but had given no answer.

  By the end of his final year, Dorothy called but once a month, and only to ask if he was eating enough, whether he needed any money. He had not spoken to George, his father, since they’d fought over Nixon. Carter was in the White House now, of course, but the damage had been done.

  ‘Well I guess I should let you get on now,’ Dorothy always said when she herself could no longer bear the strain. ‘Your father says hello.’

  ‘OK, Dorothy. Thanks. And thanks for the money. Tell George I said hi, OK?’

  Ben had stopped saying he’d go visit real soon. Martha had pulled him up so many times for lying. It was only through her that he’d realised he did lie – out of habit. She taught him that there was rarely any real need to lie, that actually the truth was almost always easier. By then she was his world, his refuge, his home.

  He’d met her in his final year. She was in the university bar with a bunch of girlfriends and had stood up to use the bathroom. The alcohol hit her – at least that was what they decided when they discussed it afterwards – and she fainted against his back. When she came round, he was sitting on the floor of the bar, her head in his lap.

  ‘Hi,’ she said and smiled that sweet and sleepy smile. ‘I was playing quarters.’

  ‘You should really give that up,’ he said. ‘You suck.’

  ‘You’re right. I need to find another game.’

  They said nothing else for maybe five or ten minutes.

  ‘Listen,’ he said eventually. ‘I feel bad, but my thighs have gone numb and I really need to move my legs…’

  ‘Oh, sure.’

  He helped her raise her head, pressed the glass of water to her mouth. She drank, eyeing him like a child taking the host from the priest.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, getting herself upright now. ‘I’m reading anthropology. I’m not usually this wasted, but I was doing it for research.’

  ‘Is that r
ight?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Effects of tequila shots on the contemporary human.’ She held out her hand. ‘My name’s Martha Edwards.’

  ‘Ben Bradbury.’ He shook her hand. His left, her right: awkward, more like a step at a barn dance than a greeting. But he held on anyway.

  After graduation, he asked her to move in with him and felt his life start. She felt it too, he thought – there was a new seriousness about her, a desire to put the madness of college behind them and find something more substantial. She applied to train as an elementary-school teacher, and he resolved to find work in design: something good, something impressive. Martha was proud of his commitment. She said it came from love. But he wondered later, looking back, whether it came from nothing more noble than a desire to prove George and Dorothy wrong – about art, about politics, about everything. And when George pulled in a contact and found Ben a job at a reputable design company back in DC, a fact communicated to Ben via Dorothy, he said thank you, he was real grateful, but he preferred to stay with Martha in California.

  The gamble paid off. An impressive portfolio and a certain relaxed charm that can only be acquired by misspending at least some of your youth on marijuana, girls and good times soon found Ben a job at United Graphics, a company specialising in corporate-identity branding. The open-plan office in downtown San Francisco came complete with fashionable red chairs and desks of black-stained wood. His job title was Junior Illustrator, apprentice to a creative manager called Darko, whose glasses were pieces of electric-blue plastic with lenses dropping onto each cheek and whose designer sneakers Ben was determined to fill once Darko became senior creative director. By ’82 – that’s his aim.

  He feels Martha stir beside him.

  ‘My shoulders are cold,’ she says. She sits up, her long back lean and strong, the hint of a tan line at the bottom. ‘I’m thirsty, do you want some water?’