Jacks felt like crying. She wanted to tell Allison how she used to work in the bank three days a week, before she’d become her mum’s full-time carer. She wanted to shout how going out to work was a piece of cake compared with being on call twenty-four/seven, a slave to the sound of her mum’s bell. She felt attacked and her instinct was to defend herself. But this wasn’t about her or Allison, this was about their children. Plus Jacks knew what a nurse’s life was like; during all those long shifts she probably looked after thirty Idas. She determinedly followed Pete’s advice, stayed calm and spoke from the heart.
‘Martha was all set for university. She’s had offers and is very capable of getting the grades and I feel that she is throwing it all away. I’m not just unhappy about the situation, I am gutted, absolutely torn apart.’ Jacks found it harder to voice this than she’d expected. A lump built in her throat. ‘She’s not the kind of girl to sit at home and not work.’
‘That’s what she said.’ Allison again confirmed the relationship she had with Martha.
‘Well she’s not a liar either and so if that’s what she said…’ Jacks let this trail.
‘Martha said you didn’t like Gideon.’ Allison’s tone was quiet, far from aggressive, but hurt.
God, Martha! Is there anything you are not telling this woman?
‘I’m sure that’s what she thinks, but it’s not true. I haven’t had a real opportunity to get to know him, but he seems like a very nice boy and Martha is clearly very fond of him. I suppose I’m angry with him for putting my daughter in this situation. But I’d be angry with whoever it was.’
‘He is a really nice boy, hard working and genuine. He’s had a lot to deal with in his life. He took it very badly when his dad and I split up. His nan pretty much brought him up – I was working all the hours – and to his credit, he’s looking forward to having a family of his own, more so than I would have imagined. He came with Martha for her appointment yesterday, took to it like a duck to water. He’s always liked the idea of children. I think that comes from feeling quite lonely as he grew up – we don’t have a big family, just him and his cousin Tait, and Tait was born and brought up in Sydney; my sister emigrated years ago. But I hear what you are saying about feeling angry. I feel the same.’
Jacks stared at her. Appointment? What appointment?
Allison placed a finger under her little upside-down watch and checked the time. ‘Look, I’ve got to get back to the ward, but it’s good we’ve met at least, and had this chat. Whatever happens, I’ve got a feeling they are going to need us, both of us.’ She smiled, bending low and resting her hand on Ida’s arm. ‘Bye, Ida, it was nice to meet you.’
Jacks watched her stride out of the coffee shop and towards the lifts. The meeting hadn’t exactly gone as she’d planned it.
Back at Sunnyside Road, she pulled the wheelchair from the car.
‘Come on, Mum, let’s go get some air.’
Jacks wanted to walk, clear her head while she replayed the conversation with Allison. Pushing Ida along the pavement on their way to the shops, she thought about Martha having gone to the appointment without even telling her. Yet Allison, almost a complete stranger, had known all about it. Who were they, this woman and her son, whose lives had suddenly become enmeshed with her own? Oh God, I’m losing her! I’m losing her, and that woman, with her full-time job and upside-down watch, will just replace me, take over. I’ll be squeezed out… Please, someone, help me! I don’t want to lose my daughter.
Jacks wheeled her mum around the corner and out towards the Beach Lawns. ‘Let’s go pick up some bits for tea, shall we?’
As she rounded the bend, she saw Gideon on the opposite side of the street. She looked down, making out she hadn’t seen him, but he was clearly heading for her. Shit!
‘Mrs Davies? Mrs Davies?’ he called.
Jacks slowed and waited for him to catch up. ‘What, Gideon? What do you want?’
‘I don’t know.’ He looked at the ground.
‘You’ve come after me to tell me you don’t know what you want?’ she barked.
‘Yes. Well, no, not really.’ He licked his lips, which were dry with nerves. ‘I just think we should talk to each other. I want to talk to you.’
Like Martha does to your mum, you mean? ‘Well, go ahead, talk.’ She stared at him.
He hesitated. ‘I practised what I was going to say to you, but…’
Jacks groaned.
‘But now I’m here in front of you, I’ve gone a bit blank.’
Jacks watched him kick the toe of his black Converse sneakers against the pavement. He looked up at the sky as though that might be where his inspiration lay, flicking his long fringe from his eyes. ‘The thing is, I know you don’t like me.’
Oh God, not you too! ‘It’s not that I don’t like you. As I said to your mum earlier, it’s that I don’t like you for Martha, don’t like how you have come along and messed up her life.’
‘Okay.’ Gideon was calm. ‘I think that’s kind of the same thing, but the point is, I love Martha, I really do and she loves me and I won’t always be working for no money in some backstreet garage. I’ll have my own car business one day. I’ve got plans.’
‘You think this is about money?’
‘Isn’t it?’ He looked confused.
‘No, it isn’t! It’s about Martha achieving her dreams, finishing her exams, going to university and watching the whole world open up in front of her. You are stopping her doing that. You.’ She ground her teeth. ‘My daughter could pick any path, that’s what her tutor told me. Those were the actual words. She is so smart, she can pick any path!’
Gideon nodded. ‘I know she’s smart. But the fact is, she’s chosen me. That’s the path she picked.’ He looked again at the pavement. ‘It’s happening. We’re having a baby and I want you to feel happy about it.’
‘Do you, Gideon? You want me to feel happy? Well, there’s a coincidence, because I want to feel happy too.’ With that she steered her mother along the pavement and didn’t look back.
Mid afternoon, Jacks heard the front door close and looked up to see Pete coming into the kitchen.
‘You’re early,’ she observed.
‘I finished early so I picked the kids up.’ He smiled at her as though expecting praise.
Jacks simply nodded, not willing to thank him for collecting his children, something she had to do most days.
Martha had gone straight up to her room, avoiding her mother, and for this Jacks was grateful. She could delay for a while longer the decision about whether or not to mention her hospital appointment. Jonty trotted into the kitchen with his bag of dirty PE kit in his arms.
‘Is that for me?’ Jacks asked, as though he had brought her a gift.
‘Yes.’ He dumped it on the table and without breaking his stride asked, ‘Is Martha going to have a baby?’ He was wide eyed. ‘Elliot said she was, but I said I didn’t think she was because she doesn’t even have a husband who could be a daddy.’ He wrinkled his nose and waited to see who was right, him or Elliot.
‘That’s right, Spud, she is going to have a baby.’ Pete smiled. ‘Exciting, eh? You will be an uncle!’
‘I don’t think I’m old enough to be an uncle, am I?’ Jonty looked quizzical.
‘Sweet Jesus,’ Jacks muttered under her breath and covered her eyes.
Jonty considered the news as he reached into the biscuit tin for a pre-tea cookie. He stopped midway, with his hand in the tin, and turned to his parents.
‘What’s up, mate?’ Pete was primed for an adverse reaction; he had lots of answers ready.
‘Well…’ Jonty swallowed. ‘I was just thinking…’
‘Thinking what?’ Pete urged.
‘I don’t want to share my room with Martha and a baby. I don’t think there will be enough space.’
‘Oh, don’t you worry about that!’ Pete laughed. ‘These things have a funny way of working out.’
Jacks stared at her husband. Was that th
e best he could come up with? She had to admit that she too was curious about how on earth they were all going to fit into their already cramped terrace. Unless… Oh no! Her blood ran cold at the thought. Martha might go and live with Gideon! This was the first time she’d considered that. If Martha left, it really would be the end.
Jonty, placated by his dad’s stock phrase, grabbed his biscuit, held it in his mouth while he replaced the lid, and went off to slump in front of the television.
Jacks sighed and started to tell Pete about her horrible conversation with Allison, who had made her feel like an outsider in her own family.
‘I felt left out,’ she admitted. ‘Jealous.’
‘Well, that’s just rubbish. You’re her mum!’
The bell rang upstairs.
‘Yes, but I don’t feel like her mum right now. I feel more like the enemy.’
She hurried out of the kitchen and up the stairs. When she opened her mum’s bedroom door, the smell was overpowering. Her eyes watered as she flung open the window.
‘Come on, let’s get you into the shower.’ She pulled her mum up a little more roughly than she’d intended.
‘Ow! You are hurting me!’ Ida yelled.
Jacks ignored her as she propped open the bathroom door with her foot and slid back the shower door. She stripped her mum and nudged her clothes into a pile with her toes.
‘It’s too hot!’ Ida screamed. ‘You are burning me!’
Jacks thrust her own hand under the running water. ‘Look! No it’s not, it’s cool! For God’s sake, how many more times do I have to tell you that?’ she snapped.
The two tussled in the shower, both soaked and covered in lather. Jacks sniffed back the tears as she wrestled her mum into her clean nappy and clothes.
‘Everything okay?’ Pete asked from the doorway.
‘Oh, everything is peachy!’ Jacks said flatly as she gathered up her mum’s soiled clothing.
‘I’m worried about you.’
‘Well, I’d say you’ve quite a lot to be worried about, wouldn’t you? It’s been a bit of a time of it, hasn’t it? Our eighteen-year-old daughter is up the spout by some bloody lout and my mother goes wandering off into the night so we have to call the police! I expect the Jeremy Kyle research team will be on the phone any day, asking if we want to star in a summer special. We might as well – they might pay us enough to afford a crib and it’s not as if the whole fucking town doesn’t already know all our business!’
‘Why are you fighting?’ Neither of them had heard Martha approach.
Jacks rounded on her daughter. ‘Why do you think, Martha? What could Dad and I possibly have to argue about? As if our life wasn’t perfect enough, we now have your baby to consider and as Jonty asked earlier, where exactly will this child sleep? What do you suggest? That we put a cot in the hall? Or maybe give you the lounge and we can all sit on our beds like in a student bedsit! Not that you would know about that, as you are never going to be a student, are you? I forgot!’
Martha started to cry.
‘That’s great, that’s exactly what we need – more tears. Because, trust me, if tears were the answer, Martha, I’d have fixed everything a long time ago! I tell you what, why don’t you tell your dad how you got on at the hospital yesterday? I’m sure, like Allison, he’d love all the details.’
‘Go easy, Jacks,’ Pete interjected.
‘Go easy? Oh yes, I forgot it’s all my bloody fault. As usual.’ She was shaking now. ‘Do you know what? I’m sick of it, sick of it all. I’m going out.’ She placed her mum in the stair lift and fastened the strap. ‘See you down there, Mum!’ she yelled.
‘Where are you going at this time of day?’ Pete said worriedly, not used to such erratic behaviour. ‘It’s almost dark.’
‘Anywhere, it doesn’t matter where. Somewhere I can have a little think. And I’m taking her with me.’ She pointed at her mother. ‘God forbid I should get time off from nursing her for five minutes, that would be too much to ask!’
Pete looked hurt. ‘You can leave her here, of course you can.’
‘Can I, Pete? I had one day to myself and it was like I was being punished when I got back. It’s just not worth it.’ She recalled coming back from London, tired and emotionally drained, to be greeted by Ida, clearly out of step, giving her bell even more exercise than normal. She had rung three times that first night. ‘I might as well just accept that I’m tethered to her, whether I like it or not!’
‘Toto?’ Ida called.
‘You’ll have to shout a bit louder than that,’ Jacks yelled. ‘He’s been six feet under for the last twenty years!’ Ida stared at her. ‘Come on.’ She lifted Ida from the stair lift and put her coat on, then slammed the front door shut behind her.
It was getting dark as they drove through town and out on to the motorway. Jacks gained speed as she gripped the steering wheel, ramming her foot down and pushing the gears through their paces.
‘Do you know the worst thing, Mum? It’s that you hated my dad. You must have. You made his life a fucking misery and all he ever did was work hard to keep you in fags. He was a wonderful man, what did he do to deserve that treatment? You were so horrible to him so many times and it affected how I loved you and in return how you loved me. I couldn’t get close to someone who treated him that way, how could I?’ Her eyes welled as she sped down the outside lane.
‘Are you capable of loving anyone? Why did you have me? Why did you bother? No one forced you! You’d have thought you might have been happy to have a child after all that time, and yet you shut me and Dad out like we were lepers. Why couldn’t you have joined in our laughs, just once, instead of sitting to the side, looking on, judging. My whole life I felt like an inconvenience and isn’t that a turnaround? Now you’re the bloody inconvenience!’ Jacks glanced at her mum, who stared out of the window, seemingly oblivious.
‘And now Martha… She’s throwing away her life. Throwing it away. I can’t believe it. I can’t! And who did that bloody woman think she was today? How dare she tell me what I should be doing or what my daughter needs!’ Jacks shook her head as she thumped the steering wheel.
Ida didn’t stir; she was looking at the pretty streetlights that lit the way along the wide lanes as they turned off the motorway at Gordano Services and headed towards Bristol.
‘I thought it was a good idea to give you that bell in case you fell or got scared or needed something. But instead it’s like my remote control: you ring it and I jump. I hear it all the time. I hear it over the telly, over the kids’ voices, everything. It rules my life and I fucking hate it!’
Jacks drove with no direction in mind until she found herself at a turning for the Clifton Suspension Bridge. She reached into the cubby in front of the gearstick and selected a pound coin from the little hoard she kept for emergencies. She tossed it into the barrier bucket before driving slowly over the magnificent bridge.
‘Lovely!’ Ida commented as she looked out to her left at the wide bend of the river, on its way through the Avon Gorge.
Jacks drove along the grassy downs and stared enviously at the grand five-storeyed Georgian houses lined up like sentinels. They were all beautifully lit from within. She gazed at the tall sash windows, which allowed glimpses of carefully poised lamps and plush curtains. She indicated and slowed as they passed Clifton College, its ancient buildings gathered in front of a pristine playing field, its interior lights sending out a golden glow. ‘Looks like bloody Hogwarts,’ she observed as they slowed over the bumps in the road.
She stopped by an ancient stone arch to let a boy cross, a tall, dark-haired boy in a fitted blue suit with a burgundy scarf at his neck and a stack of files and textbooks in his arms, a boy who smiled and waved, polite, yet in a hurry to get wherever he was going. The kind of boy who would go to university, where there would be a girl…
‘She’s having a baby. It doesn’t matter how often I say it, I feel sick every time. Why did this have to happen?’
They drove
past the zoo and up on to Circular Road with its incredible views of the Avon Gorge and the Severn Estuary. Jacks pulled over and parked on the downs, which were deserted at that time of the evening. She sat for a minute before cutting the engine and stepping outside. She hauled the wheelchair from the boot and pulled her mum into it, ignoring Ida’s groans as she manhandled her and put her seatbelt on.
She pushed the chair up the path until they reached the high viewing point that looked down over the gorge. It was hard in the dark, navigating the dips where the gravel had been scuffed away to nothing. The wheelchair teetered to the left and right. Ida sat very still as Jacks steered her with determination. The chill breeze whipped their faces as they neared the cliff edge, drying Jacks’ tears almost as soon as they fell. They could see the bridge illuminated in the distance. It was stunningly beautiful.
Jacks stood very still, gripping the handles of her mum’s wheelchair, her knuckles white. The beeps and revs from the traffic below were the only thing to break the silence. ‘I feel like everything is going wrong for me. My heart is beating too quickly, pushing my blood round so fast that I feel like it might burst.’ She stared at the top of her mum’s head. ‘I don’t expect you to understand, but to love so deeply makes you vulnerable, makes you weak. And now I know what they say is true: the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The boy I loved, the one I still dream of nearly twenty years on… It turns out he’s indifferent, and maybe he always was. The idea of him, the memory of what we had and the dreams of what we might have had, kept me going for years, through all the down times, and now that’s gone too. Everything I used to rely on is turning to dust.’ She released the sob that had been building in her chest. ‘I’m tired, so bloody tired.’ The lights twinkled far below. ‘And poor old Pete, we had so many hopes, thought we were kindred spirits, but were we? Or were we just a couple of bloody rejects making the best of a bad situation? I don’t know. And now it’s happening all over again with Martha, marching into a life I didn’t want for her.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know how I can live with all this disappointment, all this bitterness.’
Perfect Daughter Page 18
