Hard Word

by John Clanchy

  ‘I’ve been out with boys before. Just because Grandma Vera wouldn’t let you go out with a boy till you were eighteen …’ I don’t know why I say this last bit, but Mum ignores it anyway.

  ‘You’ve been out in groups,’ she says. ‘This is your first solo date, and I want to meet the young man who’s taking you.’

  ‘Young man,’ I say. With what I hope is the right emphasis. ‘Would you rather I called him a boy?’ she says. And I realize I’ve made a mistake there. It’s always like this talking with Mum. She must have been through all these arguments with kids before but I can’t imagine with who, since I’m the eldest. I’m starting to feel really depressed after this, and I wish I’d never said I’d go. Everything gets so complicated. Even something as simple as going out to a film with a boy. Because, of course, by this afternoon, even before I get home to talk to Mum, Toni’s already recovered and she’s wanting to know all sorts of things – things that I knew she’d ask but I was hoping she wouldn’t till tomorrow when I’d been able to listen to my music and think for a night – things like ‘Where will you go after?’ And I just shrug, but she won’t get the message and babbles. ‘He’ll want to kiss you, will you let him?’ And ‘Toni,’ I say, ‘please,’ but she won’t stop. ‘Will you let him touch you?’ And everything’s getting so –

  ‘Look, Laura,’ Mum says. ‘Come and sit here. Now, am I wrong … ?’ she says, when we’re sitting on the couch together and I’m trying not to pick at the edging because she’ll say I’m sulking and not facing up to something or blah, and so I just focus on one of the roses in the carpet and keep looking at that. ‘Am I wrong,’ she says, ‘or are you less thrilled than you ought to be that a nice boy, with a lovely name like Philip – who happens also to be the captain of your school – has asked you out to a film? Hmm?’ she says, and she does what mothers always do, which is try and peer under your face or your fringe just when you’re trying to memorize the shape of a rose in the carpet, and it’s even worse when you don’t have a fringe at all but you’ve got your hair pulled back in a bun or ponytail like she used to do herself, and your only defence is to shut your eyes completely.

  ‘It’s just –’ I say.

  ‘Just what? You’re embarrassed about me?’

  ‘No –’

  ‘Philip? Katie? You don’t want your friends to meet your oldies, your brat of a sister … ? Hmmm?’

  She’s trying to humour me, but I can see she’s worried and is trying hard to figure it out. But I can’t say anything, it just won’t come out.

  ‘What, then?’ she says. And she’s doing all the talking, so it isn’t really a discussion or an argument at all. Then, Ah –’ she says. And she doesn’t make it a question at all. ‘It’s Grandma Vera, isn’t it. You’re worried that Grandma Vera will do something stupid and embarrass you.’ And I’m just about to say, No, it’s not that, that’s unfair, when Mum says, ‘Or your Philip. You’re worried it may be difficult for Philip, the first time he meets us, if Grandma Vera is there. He may not know how to respond. Is that it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, Laura dear, you know what I think about that?’

  ‘What?’ I say, thinking I might get a lecture. About how we’re all one family, you can’t be ashamed of family. Other people just have to accept us as we are. But instead she says, ‘I think it does you credit.’ And she kisses me on the forehead. And I can look at her then. I love my mother.

  ‘It’s just –’ I say.

  ‘I know,’ she says. ‘I know.’ And then she thinks, and says, ‘But I would still like to meet Philip. What about this,’ she says, ‘as a compromise? You meet Philip at the Mall, you see the film, and then you walk back here – not too slowly – and you have coffee here at home. We won’t pester you. Philip and I will just say hello, and Grandma Vera and Katie will be well in bed and out of the way by then. You can have a nice talk with Philip – your Philip – watch some TV if you like, and say goodbye to him from here. How would that suit?’

  ‘Yes, oh, yes. That’d be fine, Mum,’ I say. ‘That’d be fine.’ And I realize I’m saying it too fast, but it’s such a relief because it solves everything, and for a moment or two after that we’re just sitting there, looking at one another, with these pukey smiles frozen on our faces, until something else, something dark and cloudy, comes into her face, and I wonder suddenly if she’s thinking what I’m thinking.

  ‘I wish,’ I heard her say to Philip once, ‘Mother wouldn’t bare her teeth at me like that. I know she’s trying to smile, to show me she’s pleased, but she’s forgotten how to use her face. She’s forgotten,’ Mum said, ‘how to smile. Isn’t that an awful thing?’ And as usual Philip said something stupid like, ‘She’s always smiled at me that way.’ But Mum ignored him and went on, ‘Well, I think it’s awful – that a human being would want to smile, and no longer know how.’ I sometimes think when I hear things like this from Mum, that she’s not just sad for Grandma Vera but she’s anxious as well, and is thinking about herself, when she gets to Grandma Vera’s age.

  ‘Yes, Mum, that’s terrific,’ I say to her now. ‘Thank you.’

  I know it’s hard for Mum. Having to juggle everyone … Listening to me, especially if I’ve had a bad day at school. Or sorting out Katie and Grandma Vera when they’re arguing over cards or who’s going to have Yogi each night because Grandma Vera always forgets she’s had her last night and gets so upset, and Mum wants to give her Yogi but she doesn’t think it’s fair to Katie and she doesn’t want Katie to grow up thinking the world’s unjust, and so she just tells Grandma Vera she can’t have it and then Grandma Vera chucks a wobbly and screams and things, and a lot of what she says isn’t even words, until she forgets, and does something else. But that’s all going on and, of course, when Philip comes home from work, Mum has to forget everything else and hear about his day and all that discourse, and he expects her to remember all the details like who his colleagues are, and all the cases he’s working on, and you can see he gets irritable if he has to backtrack and explain things, and I’m just amazed at what Mum knows and can discuss like she’s a lawyer too, and says things like, ‘But wouldn’t they have to establish ill-will?’ or something, or ‘I thought Tony Ryle was supposed to research the commercial implications of that?’ and once or twice I’ve heard Philip say, in real surprise, ‘Yes, that’s right, you know you’re right,’ and even go off to the phone and ring his office and come back looking all smarmy and pleased and pour them both a second gin where they normally only have one when Mum’s cooking.

  And that’s why I hang around the kitchen so much because if Mum’s looking frantic or Grandma Vera’s playing up and Mum has to go off every second minute to sort things out and Philip’s getting annoyed at all the interruptions, I can distract him and he’ll sometimes end up talking to me, and I just go ‘Really? Really?’, but I’ve got no idea what he’s discoursing about except it’s all res this and res that and Latin garbage and such, and when Mum comes back from settling Grandma Vera or Katie, she doesn’t say anything to me but she just looks Thank you, darling at me, and Philip doesn’t notice and keeps on talking to me for the next forty hours when he should be talking to Mum again because she’s back.

  ‘I want you,’ she’s saying to me now, ‘to feel there’s nothing you can’t tell me. You may not want to tell me, that’s different. None of us ever tells another person everything.’

  ‘Even you and Philip?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Even me and Philip.’

  ‘But that’s different,’ she says, ‘from feeling that you could tell me. That you’d trust me enough.’

  ‘I do, Mum,’ I say. And I do, but I don’t want things to get all wet and sentimental. I want to go up to my room and think about Friday, and Philip. I think Mum sees this. But she’s in this soppy state now, and it’s hard for people – once they have got into it – to get out.

  ‘It’d kill me,’ she says, ‘if I thought my own daughters couldn’t tell me what they were rea
lly feeling. Even about me, even if it’s bad.’

  We both think about this.

  ‘You know?’ she says. And her eyes are going all soppy, I notice – until I say:

  ‘Do you think Grandma Vera feels the same way about you?’

  ‘What?’ she says, and it’s almost like I can actually see her mind coming back. Through her eyes. Mum’s got these weird eyes, not like Katie’s or mine at all. Hers are green or nearly yellow sometimes.

  ‘Grandma Vera,’ I say again. ‘Do you think – ?’

  ‘You’ve got the strangest way, Laura, of turning things around. Did you know that?’

  ‘You’ve got to see the perspective of the Other,’ I say.

  ‘The perspective of the Other? Where on earth –?’

  ‘Miss Temple,’ I say. ‘It’s in our Communication book. It’s talking about culture really, seeing how other cultures see things. But when you were talking, I was thinking it could be about people as well. Individuals.’

  ‘And you’re in Year 10,’ she says. ‘My God, Laura –’ she starts. And then she stops and says, ‘I’ve always tried to be honest with you about this. Grandma Vera and I – we’ve struggled with one another all our lives. I wanted to do so much when I was your age, and she’d never let me. I feel lots of things about her – including the fact that I now recognize a lot of it wasn’t her fault – but I’d be lying to you if I said I could look at her and say, I love you. I know it’s not right, I know it’s a failing on my part …’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘but that’s not what I asked. I asked whether she felt that way about you. That it’d kill her if she felt her own daughter couldn’t trust her, couldn’t tell her what she was feeling … ?’

  When I do get up to my room, I find I’m not think about Philip or Friday at all. I’m thinking about Mum and Grandma Vera, and that’s where it’s all got so complicated and everything runs into everything else. And I keep wondering whether she and Grandma Vera would both be better off if she went in a home. I’m sure that’s what Philip thinks, only he won’t say. I think people should say, and trust one another because if you don’t it makes it harder for the other person, because I sometimes think if Philip did come out and say it, Mum mightn’t throw a spaz at all, and say, How could you?, but just be relieved. But he won’t do it. And Mum is so determined. She won’t even allow herself to think about it, not by herself – it would take a total crisis to make her do that. It’s funny because she tells me she hopes I love her, without having to feel I have to, or faking it or anything, because you can’t manufacture love, it’s either there or it isn’t, and for children or parents it goes back so far, even before children can think – it’s like cats and dogs, I suppose, they know if they’re loved even if they can’t think about it – and I sort of agree with all that, but then I think, isn’t that what Mum’s doing herself … trying to manufacture love for Grandma Vera, only she can’t see it because it’s her and she’s too close to it all?

  And I wonder if she’s doing it, doing everything she does, and doing it all perfectly – everything, like her teaching, and she’s up half the night doing that, preparing and marking, and even doing some of it in bed because Philip always wants her to go to bed at the same time he does, and not just her teaching, but looking after Grandma Vera all the time and Katie and me, and Philip who wants her to pay attention to him all the time he’s at home – I wonder whether she’s doing all this so perfectly because she wants to, or because she’s trying to hide the fact that she doesn’t love Grandma Vera? And whether she’s trying to hide it from Grandma Vera, or from us? Or whether it’s just duty, or what? Because you’d think Grandma Vera would know, or maybe she does but she doesn’t remember that she knows. And what would happen to Mum if all this stopped suddenly, if Grandma Vera just died one day? What would happen to Mum then? And I’m thinking about all these things and they go round and round, and my head hurts. And it’s even time to go to bed because I’ve got swimming before school tomorrow, and I find I haven’t thought about Philip at all.

  And on top of all that, next day I still have Toni to face at school, but that turns out to be easy by comparison.

  ‘So,’ she says, ‘what are you going to do afterwards?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. We might just go back to our house for coffee.’

  ‘Ooooh –’ she says. ‘Miss Mature 2010,’ she says. We know each other so well, Toni and me.

  And are you going to kiss him? Open?’ she says. ‘Tongue?’ she says.

  ‘Toni –’

  ‘Well, are you? You must have thought.’

  ‘I haven’t actually,’ I say. ‘I think it’s better to let these things happen naturally. Let them evolve …’ And I can’t believe that it’s me that’s saying this. And for one strange moment, as Toni’s mouth drops open for the second time in two days, I think it isn’t me, it’s someone else. And I can’t stop her. Whoever she is. ‘Don’t you?’ I say, and start to walk off to the classroom.

  And when I notice Toni’s not beside me, I look back once, quickly, and I see her still standing there on the same spot by her locker and her mouth’s not open any more but she looks sad and a bit lonely, there by herself, and I almost go straight back to her, but the bell’s ringing and I think it won’t hurt her to stew for a while. I’m trying to understand the look on her face, and I see it again when she goes past the window to her French class – I gave up French, I hated it, not because I don’t like French, I do, but Mum can speak it much better than the teacher who’s not French at all, so I learn it from her at home and do Chem. at school instead – and seeing Toni go past, looking in at me, I know suddenly what the look is. It’s like you’ve known somebody all your life nearly, and one day they do something and they’re not the person you thought they were at all but a complete stranger and you think you’ve lost them forever. And that’s what Toni’s doing with her face – appealing. For me to come back. Laura? she’s saying. Lolly? And at the end of class, she must have worked it out too because I’m just walking to my locker and thinking about her, and all of a sudden from behind without anything being said, I know she’s there, and then her hand grabs mine and we don’t say anything for a bit, just walk to our lockers, together, before we look at one another.

  ‘Well, afterwards, then,’ she says, still a bit sulky, but not really, and it’s us together again, not strangers at all. ‘You’ll have to tell me afterwards.’

  And I hear the question in her voice.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Afterwards.’ And I remember what Mum said about nobody ever telling another person everything. Even her and Philip.

  ‘Because we’re best friends,’ she says.

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  And we are.

  Miriam

  ‘No, Farida,’ I say. ‘Not led the egg. Laid it.’

  ‘Laid it –?’ she says. While I ponder the genius of her original suggestion: The hen led the egg.

  Into the world? I’m still thinking, as Laid the egg echoes in the room around me.

  ‘But you also say laid the table?’ Farida wants to know. Her hands appealing to the rest of the class.

  My God, I think then, this language – how does anyone ever manage to learn it? And thinking of this, I’m struck yet again at how lucky we are – how lucky I am, that is, and Philip, and Laura, and Katie – to have come into the world with the gift of this language, this English, already there, unearned, on our tongues – even Mother’s, although in her case she’s gradually handing it back – while the rest of the globe is forced to sweat and struggle just to fit their mouths around these impossible shapes. Sounds. Lay, laid, laid. Slay, slew, slain …

  ‘Maria,’ I say, ‘can you give me a sentence using the past tense of drink?’

  Today it’s irregular verbs. Last week it was irregular spellings and phonics: off and enough, and cough and dough and plough. I hadn’t the heart to mention hiccough …

  ‘Of course,’ Maria says without hesitation. ‘Yesterday …’
she begins, rhythm and intonation blending like tequila and grenadine on her tongue. ‘Yesterday,’ she says, ‘I drank my boyfriend over the table.’

  ‘Under the table actually, Maria. But drank is perfect. Okay, so let’s see if you can give me the principal parts.’

  ‘Drink,’ she says, less confidently now. ‘Drank, drunk. ‘Wonderful, Maria.’

  This is a crazy way to teach a language, and an even crazier way to test it. But I have no say in the matter. They’ll all be facing a progress test after the break, and Immigration – which has about as much idea of language learning as Mother does of fly-fishing – still has a say in its construction. And so we’re revising.

  ‘All right,’ I say to her then, ‘now what about think? Give me the principal parts of that.’

  ‘Think,’ she says, in fact without thinking. ‘Thank, thunk.’

  The others look at me, caught between puzzlement and stifled laughter. Her answer is wrong somehow – they know that – and yet the sounds have a plausible logic to them.

  ‘No, Maria,’ I say. ‘That’s not right.’

  ‘I thought not,’ she says, and the laughter finally breaks.

  And this is Maria, God’s gift to teachers, a mermaid among language learners. An hour later, and we are still slogging our way through this formal morass.

  ‘Shamila,’ I say, as we limp towards coffee. ‘What about to fly? Can you give me the parts of fly?’

  ‘Fly, flied, flewn,’ she says, and my heart drags. Shamila would never use these forms in conversation or in her writing. She’s no longer trusting her own knowledge and instinct, I realize, simply following abstract patterns of sound. And all the others are the same – today they’re getting worse, not better. It is time to stop. ‘No, Shamila,’ I say. ‘That’s not correct. Sorathy?’

  ‘Fly, flew, flown. ’

  Ah, yes,’ Shamila says then. ‘I remember. Fly, flew, flown is right,’ she says. ‘But why?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ I say. And the brows which have been knotted and furrowed for the best part of ninety minutes magically clear, and they burst once more into laughter – and mimicry. ‘I have no idea, I have no idea,’ they repeat, happily, over and over, as we push towards the urn.