by Beth Morrey
I frowned, confused. Angela was staring straight ahead at her son, who was still bouncing.
“Of course, whenever.”
“I mean, I need you to have him for the night. Just one night. Could you do that?” She turned toward me, and there was a martial light in her eye that disturbed me.
“Yes, I could have him for the night. Which night do you mean?”
Angela turned back and watched as Otis climbed down from the trampoline and moved on to the swings, pushing himself backward and forward, skinny little legs like pistons, his breath making puffs of vapor in the air.
“I don’t know. Just a night sometime soon.” She wrapped her fingers more tightly around her coffee and blew on it. “Is that OK?”
I paused, thinking of various questions and rejecting them all. “Yes,” I said finally. “Whenever you want.”
“Thank you,” she said. And it felt like we’d made a pact, but one that we wouldn’t discuss further, so we called Otis and said it was cold, and he moaned, and Angela said he could have a hot chocolate at home, and we all walked back. I left them at their gate, watching them disappear into the house, before making my own way home, wondering what it all meant.
“A whole night?” I asked Bobby. “What could that be about?”
But Bobby had no more of an idea than I did. I texted Sylvie, saying I’d seen Angela and she seemed all right, because although she obviously wasn’t, somehow it felt like a betrayal of trust to say otherwise. I worried about cold winters and gas ovens, but then reassured myself with the thought that Angela couldn’t possibly mean to do something stupid, when against all the odds she’d clearly managed to keep up her resolution. She hadn’t smoked once during the whole walk.
Chapter 35
Lancaster Villas
Kensington W8
15 February 1955
Dear Sibyl,
I’m afraid I couldn’t bring myself to tell you on the telephone, which is wretchedly cowardly, and I can hardly bear to write it, but we always agreed to tell each other everything. Mama didn’t have a stroke, as everyone is saying. There was a letter of sorts. When Henry and I found her, she was clutching her old buttonhook in one hand, and a piece of paper in the other: “All this buttoning and unbuttoning.” It’s a quote, I believe, from someone else who gave up on things. I’m terribly sorry, though I suppose it’s not too much of a surprise since Father died—or at all, really. She always was in her own winter’s tale.
Henry is hushing it up—says it would do no good at all for people to know. I’m not sure I agree with him though—Mama never talked about it, and perhaps that was the problem. But we all prefer to do things our own way, and hers was a private one, so maybe it’s for the best. Let us remember her though through the things she made and loved—I enclose her favorite thimble as a token, but you must come down and collect anything else you’d like.
Your loving sister,
Lena
The buttonhook and the thimble were up in the attic along with the letter. I stroked the brass metal cap with its tiny indentations; Jette’s fingertip shielded from the prick of the needle, while the rest of her had no protection from the constant stabs and skewers of life, until she couldn’t take it anymore. Punch, jab, punch. There was only so much therapeutic sewing a woman could manage. But was it really any different to my mother, succumbing to an illness that might have been cured?
When Leo got ill, he considered it, and even hinted at me helping him, but I wouldn’t listen, and then it got too late and we missed the boat, as it were. After he went, I considered it myself, but something kept me from it—some shred of optimism, I suppose, which was always what Jette was lacking, making beautiful things, but never seeing the beauty in them. All this buttoning and unbuttoning. Either your own, or someone else’s. I could see how it could all become too much. Much easier to be like Fa-Fa, less introspective, getting someone else to do the hard grind, only concerned with where his next pipe was coming from. Or like Aunt Sibby, the vicar’s wife who only cared about her chickens, but was still prepared to wring their necks when it suited her. Peace of mind took a certain ruthlessness, as well as a lack of imagination. Because it wasn’t just about being content with your lot, was it? It included not worrying about anyone else’s. As soon as you started, the floodgates opened.
I didn’t hear from Angela again until nearly two weeks later, in early February, when she turned up on my doorstep one evening, puffy-faced and red-eyed, and asked me to look after Otis the following night. She wouldn’t come in, just shook her head and lurched off back down the path. I spent a sleepless night watching the shadows on the walls and then a frantic day cleaning the house in preparation for his arrival, remaking Arthur’s bed with its dinosaur duvet cover, baking a batch of biscuits watched by a drooling Bobby, and dropping by the library to pick up a DVD that Deirdre had recommended.
I picked him up him from school at three-thirty, wondering what Angela had told him about this impromptu sleepover, but he seemed happy enough to go with me and resisted my tentative questions about his mother’s mood. Given that he was unable to remember what he’d had for lunch that day, it was unlikely he’d give me any valuable insight into her frame of mind. We walked quickly around the park with Bobby, as the light was fading, and then went back home, where I settled him in front of the television with biscuits and milk, and soon heard him chortling away at the film while I prepared sausages and a baked potato. I wondered if I’d hear from Angela, but there was nothing, not even a text. Otis ate his dinner in the kitchen, waited on by Bobby, and seemed to enjoy it, though he objected to my homemade apple pie, as it had apples in it. I’d seen him eat apples on a regular basis but it seemed he thought cooking them was an abomination. So he ate the pastry and custard and then we went up to the attic and played with Henry’s old train set until it was time for bed.
We skipped his bath, as that felt a bit beyond me, but I supervised his teeth-brushing, helped him get into his Minions pajamas, then led him to Arthur’s room, where we snuggled up to read a new book from the library about a dragon who was desperate for a job. His eyelids grew heavy as I read, and afterward I kissed his forehead and sat in a chair in the corner until he’d gone to sleep. He slept like he’d fallen out of an airplane, on his front, star-shaped, dark eyelashes fanning his cheeks, thumb in his mouth.
I quietly let myself out of the room and found Bobby on the landing, sitting bolt upright, staring at me. It was her, Bruce and me as far as she was concerned, and the change to the status quo made her wary. So I took her downstairs, gave her a bit of sausage Otis had left, and settled her on her bed. I ate in the living room, flicking through an interiors magazine Sylvie had left on her last visit. Then I fed Bobby and cleared up, listening to the sound of her new tag clattering on the bowl as she ate. Denzil told me that you shouldn’t put the name of the dog on the tag, because that just helped dog-nappers, so you put the name of the owner instead. As Angela had reminded me, I wasn’t her true owner, but all the same I’d gone to the cobbler’s and got them to engrave CARMICHAEL on one side and my phone number on the other. I liked the sight of it glinting on her Christmas collar.
After her dinner, Bobby felt frisky, and brought me Bruce for a game of tug. I sat on the sofa and pulled at the frayed and damp rabbit as she mock-growled and pounced. We were still engaged in this game when my mobile rang. Dropping the rabbit, I picked up the phone abstractedly, watching her as she darted forward to snatch her toy, shaking it until she was sufficiently convinced she’d “killed” him. Then she tenderly placed him on the floor and licked him thoroughly.
“Hello?”
“It’s me. I’m outside. I didn’t want Bobby to bark. Can you let me in?”
I went to the door and opened it, grabbing Bobby’s snout to smother the outraged woof. As I straightened up to look at Angela’s tearstained face, I thought of her odd request, and the not smoking, and
not drinking, and suddenly it all became clear and I cursed myself for being so stupid, so infuriatingly blind. I, of all people, should have seen the signs, should have prepared better for this moment. Opening my arms, she fell into them, sobbing.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” she mumbled against my shoulder. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
“Hush,” I said. “Hush.” I led her into the sitting room, and found some tissues, and sat with her while she blew her nose. Then I left her on the sofa with Bobby while I made some cocoa, which she didn’t really drink, just held, letting the heat warm her fingers as she stared into the dying embers of the fire. Later on, I made a hot-water bottle and took her up to the spare room, where Alistair and Emily usually slept when they stayed. It was a bit bare and cold, but I retrieved the paisley throw from the living room and wrapped it around her as she shivered in bed. Then I sat and held her hand and thought about all the things I wanted to say but couldn’t. I couldn’t find the right words, wanting to confess but not able to dredge up the right confession, even now.
“I voted Leave.”
She blinked and looked toward me blankly. “What?”
“I voted Leave. In the referendum. I haven’t been able to tell you, and I feel so bad about it, it was a stupid thing and I was wrong and feel so awful, about Otis not being able to travel, and Hanna’s door, and Mel’s funding and everything else that’s gone wrong. I’m so sorry . . .” I tailed off, biting my lip, unable to meet her gaze.
After a second, she started to laugh, weakly at first, and then properly, wheezing, new tears starting in her eyes, but better ones.
“You fucking idiot,” she said finally. “What were you thinking?”
“I thought it was what Leo would have wanted. But it wasn’t, Mel said.”
“I should bloody well hope not,” she huffed.
“I’m sorry,” I said again. And she squeezed my hand and lay down with her eyes closed. I didn’t let go, and long after she’d gone to sleep I was still there, still holding her hand, thinking about Bertie and what I did all those years ago.
Chapter 36
I called him Bertie from the moment I realized I was pregnant, that summer of 1956, when Leo had gone and I was back in Lancaster Villas for the holidays, supposedly preparing for my third year at Newnham. It took me a while to comprehend it, maybe because I didn’t want to, but eventually the nausea, which wasn’t limited to the mornings, made things very clear. I spent a few weeks being sick in secret, sneaking off to the bathroom to grip the basin and cough up the bile from the back of my throat before collapsing, clammy and shaking, onto the tiled floor. Even when the sickness passed, I gagged with the misery and dread of it, contemplating the abyss of confusion and hope and horror I’d fallen into.
Downstairs, my mother and her cronies were busy organizing their latest crusade, distributing leaflets, making placards, going on marches. She’d thrown herself into the campaign for the abolition of the death penalty, devastated and outraged by the execution of Ruth Ellis the year before. So she was often out parading in front of Wandsworth prison, or Holloway, and didn’t notice her wraith of a daughter quietly retching round the house, waiting to be found out. In the end I had to tell her, as I had no idea what else to do. She stood in our drawing room, still holding a placard that read THOU SHALT NOT KILL, while I whispered my confession, unable to look her in the face. The silence of that moment after, as I cringed and wept, and then the blessed relief as she put down the sign, and I felt her arms around my shoulders. “Hush,” she said. “Hush.”
I never doubted my mother’s warrior-like qualities, and in the following days she channeled that fiery energy for me. Money was found, discreet inquiries made, appointments booked. But, alongside the single-minded ferocity with which she dealt with it all, was a tenderness and absolute acceptance that humbled me, made me feel more guilty than ever, because I didn’t deserve it. Part of me wanted her to rail and condemn, just as another part of me wanted her to tell me I should keep the baby. It was Leo’s child, after all. Bertie, even though I would never find out if he was a boy. Bertie, even though he would never be born.
I saw two psychiatrists, and my mother said it was necessary for me to appear mentally unhinged. This I had no trouble with, as by that point I was delirious with sickness and lack of sleep, going into rooms and forgetting why I was there, twirling my hair round my fingers and pulling it out in great clumps.
I saw them on separate days on the same street in central London. They both asked me a few questions, making notes so they didn’t have to look at me. The first time, I couldn’t breathe properly and had to put my head between my knees to quell the dizziness. The second time I fell into a kind of abstraction and stared into space, barely aware of the voice prodding my eardrum, an echo in my head. I wasn’t sure if any of it was real, or simply the bravura performance that was essential to get me out of this mess. Leaving the second office, I caught a glimpse of the doctor’s notes: history of mental illness in the family. Like Sibby wringing the necks of her beloved chickens, my mother was prepared to make sacrifices.
We got a cab to the clinic out in Ealing, where I remembered very little except white sheets and the smell of disinfectant. When my mother asked and I told her she said, “Thank God.” I had pain and bleeding for a day or two, much less than I deserved, and spent that time lying flat on my back in bed, staring at the ceiling, feeling euphoric and wretched, hopeful and despairing, cramped and unraveling. My mother brought me tea and toast with the crusts cut off, which I didn’t eat, but let dry out on the bedside table, thinking of the stale carrot sandwiches in the cellar. Then, after three days, she told me to get up and start studying: “There’s a reason we did this.”
I got a first-class degree—the highest honors—in Classics, which no one at Newnham expected, least of all my bewildered tutors. But that was my gift to my mother, my refuge in adversity; it was the one thing I could do, having put her and myself through all that. I slogged away, staying late in the library, attending every lecture, devouring every book, conjugating every last verb. No longer the skimming stone, but the boulder, shouldered and pushed up the hill, even if it all meant nothing without Bertie.
I left Cambridge with my splendid degree and empty womb, my mother’s arms around my shoulders, proud and validated. But when Leo came back and we got engaged, she was horrified. How could I marry this man given our history? She pulled me aside at the wedding—“Darling, are you sure?”—and I nodded because he was my Odysseus, my destiny. From the first time I saw him, I knew that we belonged to each other. You couldn’t insulate yourself against misfortune—an arrow would always find its way in somewhere—but with the right person, when life knocked you down, you would be able to get up again. Onwards and upwards, as Leo used to say. When I married him, I felt like I was finally making amends—picking myself up—and when I next conceived, Bertie would rise again.
How did I keep that knowledge to myself for all those years? What kind of marriage was it? An uneven one, as I’d always known it would be, weighed down by my love and my secrets, while he was unencumbered. But we bobbed away, he and I, the anchor and the buoy, and our whispered song was never entirely drowned out. I still heard it then, though it was very faint, as I sat in our spare room, holding Angela’s hand, mourning her lost child and mine, as my dog listened patiently to my confession.
Chapter 37
The following morning I let Angela sleep in and got up with Otis at an unholy hour, feeding him cereal and letting him watch far too much television, keeping the door to the living room closed so as not to wake her. I didn’t tell Otis she was there, instead embarking on the tricky process of getting him ready for school, retrieving socks, hunting down his school bag and wrestling him into his clothes while he tried to play trains, draw a picture of a monster and wrap Bobby in his scarf. When we finally got out of the house, I was sweaty and breathless with the effort, and it
was only after I’d dropped him at school and he’d scampered off, bag flapping against the backs of his knees, that I realized Bobby was still wearing the scarf. I took it off her and stuffed it in my pocket, taking the opportunity to scratch her neck.
When we got back from our walk, Angela was down in the kitchen drinking tea and listening to the radio. She was still pale, though less pinched than the night before. She leaned down to fondle Bobby’s ears and looked up at me slightly shyly.
“Did you sleep well?”
She nodded, sipping her drink. “Not bad, considering. Thanks for taking Otis to school, how was he?”
“Fine. He gets to set the table at lunch today, apparently that’s a huge privilege.”
She smiled. “Funny how they manage to turn chores into treats. I can never manage that myself.”
I poured myself some tea and ate some cereal, because I hadn’t had time while I’d been chivvying Otis, all the while surreptitiously watching Angela to gauge her mood. The spell of the night before had been broken, and her shields were up again. When I finished my breakfast, I got to my feet and deposited the bowl in the sink.
“Hanna says her boss has made the café dog-friendly. I thought I’d take Bobby for a coffee—would you like to join me, or would you prefer to rest?”
That fired her up, as I hoped it would. “I’ll come with you,” she said, going to fetch her coat.
It was a beautiful clear day, with a light cold breeze, and we walked slowly toward the café, Bobby pulling ahead, dragging me this way and that, as she was compelled to sample the aroma of every lamppost, bin, weed and twig in the vicinity. Angela walked with her hands in her pockets, head down, staring at her clinking boots.
“Why didn’t you tell Sylvie?”
She looked up, eyes narrowing at the question. “What?”
