A year later, she married a man called Martin Watson, who built apartments on vacant Glasgow lots that had previously been used for burying bodies. He’d known her since she played Maria in The Sound of Music at the Eastfield Youth Theatre. He’d played the oldest son, Friedrich. He’d wanted to kiss her back then, but after four months of rehearsals and five 7.30 p.m. performances as her stepson, he started to feel wrong about it. Five years later, when she inspected one of his river-view penthouses, he finally had the courage to make a move. Gran was ecstatic, the marriage an excellent one. Soon, her daughter would don an apron and stand at the kitchen bench of a large Kelvindale townhouse, making Scottish Tablet with her first child while pregnant with her second. Alas, Mum got tired of Martin’s traditional expectations and capitalist views after a year, and moved us out. I was two, so the only family unit I remember is me and my manic mum, who set about climbing the ranks of non-profit organisations, taking over, saving, the world.
*
‘Your mother adores you, she’s just torn between roles and role-modelling, like so many women are,’ my gran told me when I was twelve. The hormones had kicked in and I’d run away to Gran’s – seven blocks in total. We’d had an argument. Not the usual mother–daughter type like this:
Mother: You will not get a tattoo!
Daughter: Fuck you, I will if I want.
Mother: Don’t swear.
Daughter: Why not? You do!
Mother: And I told you to tidy your room.
Daughter: Whatever.
No, no, Mum was too busy and too serious to waste time arguing about such things. These trivialities were agenda items, swiftly ticked during meetings at the dining room table. ‘You won’t get a tattoo? Good. 2: I’m not going to swear any more. You’re right, it’s a bad example. So you won’t swear?’ No pause before ‘Good. 3: Sunday nights are a good time for you to tidy your room. This, Catherine, is something I would like you to do from now on.’
I got a tattoo when I was nineteen btw – Bacchus, the god of wine, in a black circle on the inside of my left biceps. Gina and Rebecca got Pegasus, but I thought that looked wank. I think they’re jealous of mine now.
We didn’t argue about tattoos, swearing, and tidying, but we did argue, like the time I ran away to Gran’s. We yelled at each other about issues that Mum cared a great deal about, ones I didn’t even know about, let alone give a toss. Refugees, the Middle East, female circumcision, for example. One night she had a dinner party with Antonio and a bunch of colleagues and made me join them. I’d zoned out of the conversation, which was both dull and passionate. I was in the middle of a scintillating text chat with Gina about how chubby Rebecca was getting when Mum said: ‘What do you think about the situation in Gaza, Catherine?’
‘I don’t think about it.’
‘Shall I fill you in?’ She’d gone bright red, angry. She’d probably guessed what I was going to say.
‘Nah, you’re all right.’
After everyone left, she yelled at me: ‘You should be interested in the world! How can you be so self-absorbed?’ She scratched a fresh list there and then: 1. Read at least two articles from the Guardian every morning. 2. Watch the Channel 4 News with me each evening. This. Catherine. Is something I would like you to do from now on!
She threw the list at me, slammed the door.
But that wasn’t the argument that made me run away to Gran’s. That argument was about porn. She’d checked my browsing history and found the site I’d been viewing as a novice masturbator. Gina and Rebecca had been on at me to try it for a long time. You’re so prudish, Catherine! God’s sake, woman, get with the wank! They’d instructed me to use the shower head while thinking of Harry Groves in Third Year. No luck. Maybe because our shower head only reached as far as my belly and the spray wasn’t forceful enough, or because the only image of Harry Groves that stuck was him eating a peach and it wasn’t sexy at all, messy and kinda pukey – a lump of pink flesh stayed on his chin and I’m sure he noticed, but he didn’t bother wiping it off. After several attempts to hone the shower head and the image of Harry Groves, they lent me a dildo and told me to use it in bed while thinking of Brendan Xavier from the telly. No luck (the dildo terrified me and Brendan Xavier’s thick short eyebrows took up the whole screen in my fantasy. He looked like the devil.) After that they’d given me a bullet vibrator and the name of a porn site and instructed me to browse till I found something that worked. I’d tried a few times, but the sites had all made me a little queasy. Not sure I was into – or ready for – all that inside-out stuff. I don’t know if I’d have kept on trying, but before I could even decide, Mum confronted me.
I was embarrassed, being caught, but livid at her response. She made me watch one of videos in front of her.
‘Do you know who that girl is?’ She’d paused the vid, pointed at the woman whose hair was being pulled, eyes open and looking up as a faceless man shoved himself down her throat.
‘What?’
‘Do you know how old she is?’
‘How would I know?’
She zoomed in on her face. She had tanned skin, barely any make-up.
‘Look at her. Eighteen? Seventeen? Maybe sixteen? Maybe younger. Look at her eyes. What do you see? Who do you think her mum is? You think her mum’s seen this? Where do you think her home is, Catherine?’
I wanted to kill her. I’d need therapy about this later in life.
‘She might have been kidnapped, trafficked, stolen. Her family might not know where she is. Or she might have been sold by her father. Or her neighbour might have paid her to do this, taken her to some strange house in some strange place and hit her if she didn’t do what they told her to do. Do you know what her dreams are, Catherine? You know what’s on her list?’
She’d zoomed in even closer but I was too angry to look. My mother’s bullying righteousness was making me want to pay someone to kidnap and kill her. Also, I’d found Mum’s bag of goodies in her bedroom cupboard – vibrator, videos.
‘You are such a hypocrite, Mother! I’ve seen your porn stash.’
She blushed, paused. ‘But I did my research. Those are made by women. This one here, what do you know about it? What do you know about her?’
‘Why don’t you watch the short interview with her before the vid, Mother? Her name’s Rixie and she’s from Texas. She won best blowjob at the LA cock awards last year and wore a glittery gold gown! It’s an industry, a business, and she “like totally loves her job!” Not everyone’s dodgy, God!’
‘Oh yeah? And in the interview did she say what’s on her list?’
‘Not everyone has fucking lists.’
‘Maybe this week she wanted to train for a 5k run. Maybe she wanted to start learning to play the guitar. Maybe she wanted to try and stop swearing. Don’t you realise that by watching this you’re keeping that girl in that room? You’re almost as bad as the traffickers who kidnapped her!’
‘No one trafficked her! She’s from Texas!’
I ran to Gran’s. And I didn’t get with the wank till I was seventeen. (And btw, it was always Paul I imagined. Worked every time.)
*
I loved spending time with Gran, I clung to her, relished her traditional maternalism. Her shortish dyed light-brown hair was always perfect. And right up till she died she wore foundation, mascara and lipstick, all the time. I think she even wore it to bed. She lost her husband when I was five. I don’t remember him at all, but Gran talked about him very affectionately. Apparently he made puns all the time, and believed eating out was a waste of time and money. (‘He’d say: “My wife is a better damn cook than any restaurant chef!”’) They had a happy marriage, Gran told me.
I often visited Gran after school. She would remove my stains and make me three-course meals from scratch, unlike Mum, who at that stage was always too busy during the week to make more than one-course meals from Marks and Spencer’s.
I realise now that as much as I needed to spend time with Gran, I always went
home afterwards, home to the mother who was not really a mother. And the reason I always went home, was that I wanted to. She and Gran were the two halves of me that hadn’t quite fitted together yet.
I was eighteen when Gran died. Heart attack, it was. In the kitchen, apron on.
I believed my mother loved me in the same way as she’d loved Martin Watson. I was an attempt at conventionality that failed. I was even clingier than him, after all. I got in the way of several promotions. She told me so. ‘I stayed in Glasgow for you, Catherine! London would have been a much better place, career-wise.’ As it was, she had to commute there at least once a week after she’d reached director level. Gran was around the corner from ours, and I slept there when Mum was away, moving myself back home on her return, often feeling a nuisance and a mistake.
*
I’d go with Plan C: wine, chat, difficult truths. I decided it would happen tonight after work, even checked we had a bottle of her favourite Sangiovese in the cupboard.
On Skyscanner.net, flights to Costa Rica were around £800. On the way to the travel agency, cash in pocket, I ummed and ahhed about the best date to go. I know it’s callous, but one of the most significant factors was how long Rose had left. I Googled dementia on my phone in the taxi, but Marcus was right – there were many different types of the illness, and I had no way of knowing how advanced hers was, although she was connected quite often, so maybe not too advanced. If she lived another year, I could make a shedload more money and have enough to travel the world for months. From what I could gather, the old dear would probably not last years, but may well hang around for at least another twelve months. She was attached to me, and a lot of the time thought I was Margie, so she might well keep paying me to run pointless errands. I decided I should stay at Dear Green for another month at least, and make myself indispensable to her. I booked a one-way flight to Costa Rica leaving in four weeks’ time, making sure it was a flexible ticket that I could change, in case the money was still rolling in and it was worth staying a while longer. I whistled all the way to Dear Green. Mistake-girl was getting outta here. She would be list-free, agenda-free, job-free, post-grad-in-social-work-free and mother-free.
*
An hour later I was by the river, screaming. I had run there shortly after saying ‘Hey!’ to Jimmy in Room 3. I had run as fast as I could, stopped when I reached the rocky bank, and screamed. I was never going to stop screaming. It felt too good to stop. I wish I’d done it aged five, when Mum made me make my own lunch before my first day at school; at twelve, when she made me go to the supermarket to buy tampons; at fifteen, when she dropped me at the sex clinic to so I could go on the pill, despite my assertions that I always used condoms and did not want to go in there alone and sit in a line with the prostitutes and drug users from Govanhill. I should have spent my life screaming at her. I was making up for it now.
I was so excited when I got to work – the ticket to Costa Rica in my wallet representing my new life – on planes, in jungles, on beaches, in cafés. I’d sorted out how to tell Mum and felt confident about it. I was so excited that I forgot Marcus had wanted to see me upstairs first.
I skipped in the front door, poked my head in to say hi to Rose, who was drawing at her table. She was in the present day, but looked worried, writing frantically. ‘Are you okay, Rose?’
She put her pen down and her face transformed. I can’t tell you how amazing these transformations were. Her face and body language became ten. Her eyes opened more widely, inquisitive, eager, optimistic. She held her back straighter. She fidgeted, jiggled a foot, bit at a fingernail. More than that, though. Her skin changed colour, from greyish-yellow to rosy pink.
She stood up easily, something she didn’t do when she was old Rose, and ran over to me, grabbed my arms, kissed the top of my head. ‘Margie, listen. I promise I’ll be back. In an hour. I promise. I promise. I’ll light a fire.’
She grabbed some drawing paper from the desk, ripped at it, scrunching pages into balls, then placed them on the floor at the foot of her bed. She put her pencils and brushes on top, teepee style. ‘Matches! Wait, I’ll run and get matches. Don’t move.’
Holy shite, she was even crying like a kid, too. Not holding back, going for it. ‘I won’t let you die alone. I swear on Dad’s life, I won’t let you die! I’m just going to get matches.’
A couple of days ago, I’d have run off and hidden from this irksome display. I guess I’d changed a bit already. I smiled, and put my arms around her. ‘I’ve got matches. I’ve got them. I know you won’t leave me, Rose, I know. I know, it’s all right.’
I put her in bed, touched her cheek. ‘Everything’s okay. I’m okay. I know you won’t leave me. It’s all okay.’
As I watched her relax and slowly close her eyes, I didn’t see an old person who jumped the line to get on buses, paid for groceries slowly, took up space. I saw Rose Price.
She fell asleep.
Then I remembered. Marcus. Oops! I walked along the hall towards the back door, still happy, still excited. I waltzed past Room 4, and I’m sure I waved to Jimmy in the room opposite. He was strumming his guitar. I’m sure I said ‘Hey there, Jimmy!’ I’m sure as I was saying ‘Hey there, Jimmy’ I decided that I had just imagined seeing something in Room 4. A flash, a vision, from deep within my psyche, perhaps dug out because of the ticket I’d just bought, the escape I’d just planned. I don’t know why I walked back to check if this was the case but I did so without any worry or concern, just a quick check. I walked back to Room 4. The door was half open. I opened it fully, expecting to shake my head with a ‘silly me’. Alas, the image hadn’t come from an imagination fuelled by guilt. My mother was in the room, sitting in the armchair by the window.
‘Mum?’
‘Catherine.’ She’d said my name in an unusual way, as if ‘Catherine’ meant ‘Help’.
‘Did they say you could sit in here? What do you want?’
‘Sit down, sit.’
‘I’m working, Mum. You could have phoned me. Get up! I’ll get in trouble.’
‘Catherine, come and sit beside me.’ She had a piece of paper in her hand and I could see the numbers on the left. She was wanting a meeting, with an agenda.
‘Mother, I have no time for this now. I’m working. Whatever it is, let’s talk about it when I get home. For God’s sake, Gabriella’s coming. She’ll sack me.’
Gabriella had arrived at the door beside me. She gave my mother a kind smile, then touched my arm. ‘You were supposed to go up and see Marcus before you started today.’ Her voice was out-of-character gentle. I flicked her hand off my arm.
My mother bit her lip. ‘I have to tell you something.’
‘Well hurry, I have work to do. So do you. You should be at work.’
‘Honey, nine weeks ago I was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour.’
I went like Nancy for a few minutes. Frozen. Maybe underneath Nancy’s blank exterior, her brain raced like mine did in that moment. Three words from the sentence my mother had just spoken beat at my head. Diagnosed. Aggressive. Tumour. No, I thought. That doesn’t make sense. My mother is a chairperson and a director and a righteous bossy boots who makes lists and saves lives and was okay last night, she was okay.
‘Say that again.’
‘Nine weeks ago I was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour.’
I repeated the sentence to myself. Brain tumours are deadly. Aggressive ones are deadlier. I noticed Mum’s suitcase at the foot of the bed, a few of her clothes already on hangers in the open wardrobe, a photo of me on the bedside table.
‘Baby, sit down. Come, sit beside me. I knew you’d want to look after me, but it’s much better doing it here. This place has an excellent reputation. I looked into it thoroughly, and it’s easy for you to get to. This is my home now.’
But I was supposed to move out of home first. But if this was her home, where was mine? But . . .
And then I ran to the river.
Three Weeks Pr
ior to Death
Chapter Eight
AGE 82
Rose had been staring at her latest drawing for thirty minutes. Once again, she’d drawn Room 7. She’d drawn a camera in the corner. She was drifting, and she could tell, and she had to stop it. This had made sense to her, she was sure of it. Room 7. Camera. In the picture she’d just drawn, four figures were standing around the bed, obscuring the view of the person lying down. Only their backs were visible. She chanted in her head – Stay Rose stay Rose stay Rose stay. She read the caption beneath.
The Exit Page 7
