In-Laws and Outlaws

by Kate Fulford

  “It was my decision, as executor.” Malcolm announced. “Your mother took a lot of persuading.” I’ll bet she did.

  “Right, well I need to think about this,” said Gideon, rubbing his temples as if he had a headache. “It’s all come as a bit of a shock.” He looked genuinely dazed. His mother, on the other hand, was clearly clicking through her options. She took the one she always took – play the victim, go on the attack, and finally shift the blame to someone else.

  “I gave up everything for you and your sister,” she almost whispered, her voice apparently betraying a deep sense of hurt. She really was a piece of work. “My father,” her voice rose slightly as if she was gathering her strength, “was simply being vindictive. He made my life a misery and then he tried to hurt me from beyond the grave.” Her hand flew to cover her mouth as if stemming a sob. It was far more likely that she was trying to hide the look of satisfaction she felt on having come up with a usable defence. “Your father felt that I had suffered enough.” This was dramatic stuff, but it came across, to me at least, as a little too pat. It sounded, much like Malcolm’s earlier statement, too well rehearsed.

  “What exactly did you give up, Mum?” Gideon asked. “Were we such a burden to you?” This was more like it. Go get ’em Gideon.

  “Now, Gideon, I don’t think you should talk to your mother like that.” Malcolm intervened. “She’s had a great deal to put up with over the years, and I can only try in whatever way I can to make up for all the distress she has suffered.”

  “Ian, Gideon, my darling,” Marjorie had a slight catch in her voice that could have been an incipient sob but I think was more likely to have been a stifled laugh as she saw that the tide was turning in her favour, “you know I’d do anything for you, risk anything for you.” Even the director of a South American soap opera might have asked Marjorie to take it down a notch, so impassioned was her performance. “Haven’t I proved that to you, in every way possible? What more do you want from me?” Marjorie buried her head in her hands and began to weep (or possibly laugh) into them.

  “And where is the money now? I mean, is there any left?” Gideon was clearly having trouble processing what had happened and was not taking much notice of his mother’s quite terrific performance.

  “Well, not that specific money. That’s been spent but . . .” Malcolm was clearly not as accomplished a liar as Marjorie. He may have been going to say more, but his words were drowned out by a shriek from Marjorie. Going for maximum drama she had fallen forward clutching her head with one hand and her stomach with the other. It looked to me as if she had been struck down by appendicitis, but I think she was going for guilt ridden repentance.

  “What’s the matter Mum?” Gideon asked. Marjorie had sunk to the floor and was slumped, dramatically if inelegantly, against the dishwasher, one hand grasping at the worktop above her head. Watching Marjorie emote in her kitchen was becoming rather repetitive. Malcolm, Gideon, and I had already been treated to an entire morning of this stuff on account of Malcolm’s supposed infidelity. Now it looked as if we were to get another chance to marvel at Marjorie giving it her all. I only hoped she would add some variety to her performance as, for this audience member at least, it ran the risk of becoming a bit samey.

  “I’m so sorry.” She gasped out the words as if they caused her physical pain. She began to sob copiously but I was quite sure I saw her take a sideways glance at me in which she looked anything but tearful. I have never had any time for Dominic’s theory that the world is ruled by a secret cabal of lizard people but as Marjorie looked up from where she had collapsed in a supposed paroxysm of emotion, I swear that just for a moment I saw an inner eyelid flick back to reveal her true lizard self.

  Gideon, clearly more impressed than I by his mother’s dramatics at this point, had rushed to her side and was attempting to comfort an apparently distraught Marjorie. You had to give it to the woman, she knew how to play him. From her position on the floor she reached up a claw like, bejewelled hand and clutched Gideon’s wrist.

  “I’m sorry, I knew it was wrong, but your father . . .” Marjorie paused to dab at her nose with the tiny handkerchief she always had, along with many other things as I was discovering, up her sleeve. Malcolm looked on awkwardly as if, despite being technically part of the family, he would rather be anywhere than where he found himself. You made your bed, I wanted to tell him, I hope you’re finding it comfortable.

  “That was . . . interesting.” I said once we were home and ensconced in the sitting room with a mug of coffee each.

  “Yes, it was.” Gideon replied, non-committally. He had, so far, said nothing to indicate which way the wind was likely to blow.

  “I wonder what Helen will make of all this.” I pondered.

  “Oh, I expect she’ll be pissed off with Mum. She’ll want to blame her rather than Dad.”

  “I thought mothers and daughters were meant to be close.” I said. “How come she doesn’t see your mother in the same way that you do?”

  “Because she has no idea what Mum did for me when I was a teenager.” Gideon said.

  “Neither do I.” I replied. Just bloody tell me I wanted to yell. As if he could read my mind (which thankfully he can’t) that was exactly what he did.

  “Well, you know that I had kidney problems when I was a teenager.” he began.

  “I do.” I replied.

  “For a while it looked as if I might need a kidney transplant.”

  “Yes, but you said it didn’t come to that.” I wanted to do that thing producers do on live TV and wind my arm furiously to indicate that he should get to the point as quickly as possible, but I was just going to have to let him crawl along at his own pace.

  “No it didn’t,” he continued, “but if I had needed a transplant I would have needed a donor.” Get on with it man. “So Mum offered herself as a living donor.” Was that it? I was a little disappointed in Gideon if I’m honest. It really didn’t sound to me like that was worth a lifetime of devotion. I mean, anyone can offer an internal organ. I once seriously thought about becoming a bone marrow donor after seeing a documentary claiming that they were just crying out for the stuff. I didn’t get around to it in the end, I can’t remember why, but my point is valid. Offering body parts to others is a doddle, and Marjorie didn’t have to go through with it as Gideon hadn’t needed a transplant anyway. I waited silently to see if there was any more to come, because I was distinctly unimpressed so far. Turned out there was.

  “When they realised that I didn’t need a new kidney,” Gideon resumed after a quite unnervingly long pause, during which I had wisely, and with not a little effort, managed to keep quiet, “Mum donated one of hers to another family anyway.”

  “Oh!” Now, that was a surprise.

  “She said,” Gideon stared dreamily into the middle distance as if he were repeating the words of some mystical eastern guru, “she said that having been through what she had she couldn’t bear the thought of another mother suffering in the same way.”

  “Oh, did she?” It sounded like utter tosh to me. From what I’d seen of Marjorie I very much doubted she would have given a stranger her toenail clippings let alone a major internal organ. But I had no evidence, only intuition, to contradict this stomach churningly heart-warming story.

  “And Helen doesn’t know about this?” I asked.

  “No one does, except Dad. She really doesn’t want anyone to know.” I’ll bet she doesn’t. “So you see why I can’t share my sister’s view of our mother. Helen seems to only see the bad side of Mum.”

  “The bad side?” I asked, hoping to have found the chink through which I could make him see how awful his mother truly was.

  “I don’t mean that Mum has a bad side.” OK, so no chink then. “I mean that Helen only sees bad things in Mum, she interprets everything Mum does negatively.” While you, my handsome dupe, interpret everything she does in a ridiculously positive light.

  “So what do you think Helen will make of your
mother having . . .” I searched for a non-judgemental description of what Marjorie had done following her father’s death. “Appropriated your inheritance?”

  “But it wasn’t Mum, was it? It was Dad. He gave it to her, she probably didn’t even realise what she was doing was wrong.” If there had been a handy wall against which to bang my head I would have done so.

  If I was frustrated by Gideon’s inability to see his mother for what she really was, this frustration was as nothing to my sense of impotent fury the following day when Marjorie played a blinder. I was getting ready to bellow to Gideon that dinner was ready when there was an unexpected buzz at the door.

  “It’s Mum,” Gideon said, coming onto the kitchen, “she’s on her way up.”

  A simple “oh,” was all I vouchsafed.

  “Gideon, my darling boy,” I had never heard Marjorie use such florid language before. I was even more surprised when she threw herself into his arms, declaring “I am so, so sorry. I didn’t realise, I didn’t know, I was a fool!” She clasped Gideon to her well-padded torso (she had no bosom to speak of) before continuing. “I believed your father when he said it was the right thing to do. He convinced me that I was safeguarding the money for you both. And I was!” She must have been up all night working on that one. And it had been time well spent. She had, in one fell swoop, exonerated herself and made Malcolm the fall guy. I actually felt a sense of relief. After the kidney related revelations of the day before I had wavered for a while. What if she was a good person and I, like Helen, was reading her wrong? But I wasn’t, any fool (but not Gideon unfortunately) could see that she was the most transparent fraud. And there he was, the fall guy, Malcolm. He stood a few feet behind Marjorie in the hallway, head bent in contrition taking whatever Marjorie dished out, just like he always did.

  “So,” Marjorie said with a flourish, “here it is.” And with that she waved an envelope under Gideon’s nose.

  “Here what is?” asked Gideon, taking the proffered envelope.

  “The money of course, plus interest. Your sister’s is in the post.”

  “But Mum,” he exclaimed, “you didn’t need to do this!” Oh yes she bloody did. Even I had to admit a sneaking admiration for her at that moment. From absolute zero to almighty hero in one easy payment.

  “I only hope you can forgive me.” Marjorie simpered, clearly loving her role as Lady Bountiful. “I was led astray, I should have been stronger, stuck to what I knew was right. And a little extra won’t hurt right now will it? You and Eve can put it towards your wedding!” She clapped her hands together in glee as she said this. The look she shot me, though, told a quite different story. It was gleeful all right, but it was also triumphant. She had, it seemed outwitted me. Where next, I wondered dismally, where next?

  We all made our way through to the sitting room while dinner spoiled in the kitchen. “I was so sorry that Helen’s behaviour caused you to put off your lovely wedding,” Marjorie continued in the same flowery vein, “so if this can in any way, in any way at all, make your day, whenever you decide to go ahead with it, even better, then nothing would make me happier.” Nothing would have made Marjorie happier than to see me fall under a bus, of that I was quite certain, but Gideon was lapping it up.

  “Oh, Mum, you really, really didn’t need to do this.” Gideon gushed. Oh she did, she really, really did.

  CHAPTER 19

  “I’m a retherearcher for the National Thtatithtical Offith.” I explained.

  “I thought it was the Office of National Statistics,” my interviewee, in whose living room I was sitting, queried.

  “We often get confuthed,” I continued. I had never had cause previously to consider how many sibilant sounds there are in everyday speech. Even if I had, I couldn’t have anticipated that the false teeth I was wearing would have caused me to have quite such a problem with them. I suppose that I should have tried the teeth out beforehand, but it was too late now as I sat opposite Malcolm’s sister in her home in Basildon.

  I had learnt of Cynthia’s existence during one of Marjorie’s many execrable Sunday lunches. On this particular occasion Marjorie had been even frostier than usual, and uncharacteristically silent. It had crossed my mind that I might have been the cause of her selective muteness, but it turned out not to be the case.

  “Who would want to live in Basildon anyway?” she had snapped, about halfway through lunch. Up to that point Basildon hadn’t made an appearance of any sort in the conversation, so I was rather bemused. Malcolm’s response shed a little light on the matter though, and just enough for me to surmise the cause of Marjorie’s ill humour.

  “She is my sister and I am very fond of her,” he had said. “I am quite happy to visit her on my own, you know.”

  “But Basildon, I ask you,” Marjorie had sneered, ignoring Malcolm’s offer to go alone. She spoke as if Malcolm’s sister lived in Basildon solely in order to upset her. “And that daughter of hers. Dreadful creature. But I suppose she can’t help who her mother is, poor girl.” Marjorie gritted her teeth, she may even have gnashed them a little. “But if she was my daughter I’d . . .” what she would have done I wasn’t to find out because at that moment Malcolm had some sort of coughing fit and, once he had recovered, Marjorie dropped the subject.

  So here I was, sitting chatting with Malcolm’s sister Cynthia, in Basildon, which didn’t seem that bad from what little I had seen of it. As I couldn’t be sure I would never come across her again at a family event, as well as the ill-fitting teeth I was wearing a wig that made me look a little like Richard III, and a pair of pebble glasses. As well as this I had smeared a huge amount of peacock blue eye shadow on my eyelids, I swear they were actually heavier than usual I’d used so much. I had also bought myself an outfit from a charity shop. It would have been perfect for someone three sizes bigger than me and it crackled whenever I moved, but other than that it was perfect. I was here on a fact finding trip having decided that I needed to prove that Claire was wrong and I was right.

  Having told Claire about Gideon and Helen’s stolen inheritance, or as much as I could without revealing my role in the events, she still refused to see things in exactly the same light as me.

  “The truth is that you don’t have any evidence that things are anything other than they appear to be.” Claire had said. I had, I will admit, been hoping for a more supportive response. Claire was, at the time of this conversation, weeding her vegetable garden while I sat on a bench a few feet away drinking tea. Claire loves growing fruit and vegetables, but the attraction is lost on me. To spend so many hours tending plants which yield so little produce, most of which is eaten by bugs and rabbits anyway, seems to me the definition of futility. Claire on the other hand, thinks gardening is life affirming, so each to their own. “Are you sure that you’re not guilty of . . .” she continued.

  “If you’re going to say the final contrition error I’ll punch you.” I interrupted.

  “Fundamental attribution error actually, and I wasn’t going to say that. I was going to say that you may have your own reasons for believing the worst of Marjorie.” Claire got up, took off her dirt caked gloves and came to sit by me. It was a warmish autumn day, and her garden was looking quite lovely. She lives just beyond Kingston on Thames in an Arts and Crafts style house that has seen better days. It would be spectacular if it was only tidied up a bit and redecorated, but Claire’s mind is always fixed on higher things, like vegetables and God, so interior design doesn’t really figure in her world.

  “Why on earth would I want to see the worst in Marjorie? That makes no sense at all.” I responded.

  “It does, if you would just think about it for a moment,” Claire replied. I paused for a moment and thought about it.

  “I’ve thought about it and it’s nonsense.” I said conclusively.

  “You could,” Claire suggested, “be self-sabotaging.” She wasn’t easily going to give up on the idea that it was me and not Marjorie who was the problem.

  “Oh, cou
ld I?” I responded. “First of all, why would I do that? And second of all what does that mean?”

  “You have a long history of failed relationships.” Claire replied, getting straight to the point. Claire doesn’t beat about the bush. She tells it like it is, or at least as she sees it. I like her for it and it annoys me intensely at the same time.

  “It’s not that long!” I exclaimed, although the list was, if anything, longer than even Claire knew.

  “And you very much believe that this might be it, with Gideon. I have never known you to become so attached to anyone. I do believe you actually care for Gideon, I mean really care for him, and you are afraid it won’t work out. Now, this is where the sabotage comes in. If your relationship with Gideon were to fail . . .”

  “That’s a mighty big if . . .” I scoffed.

  “Yes, well . . .” Claire swatted my ‘big if’ away as if it were nothing. “It’s possible that you don’t, unconsciously, believe that this relationship will work out, but you have convinced yourself that you want it to.”

  “I do want it to!” I exclaimed.

  “It’s possible that, having fallen for Gideon, you don’t, deep down, believe you are worthy of him. He’s a really good man, which is not a characteristic widely shared by your exes.” Claire had a point. I have, it’s true, been out with some real stinkers. “And you have done some bad things in your life.” True again, although Claire didn’t know the half of it. “And some bad things have happened to you. It’s perfectly possible that you don’t feel good enough for Gideon.”

  “Not good enough! Me, not good enough!” I spluttered.

  “I’ve known you for a long time Eve, and I’m a clinical psychologist, or at least I’m training to be one. Do you really think you can fool me?” I had, on several occasions, fooled Claire that is, but it wouldn’t help our friendship to acknowledge this.