by Sharon Maas
Mum detested my smoking and had done her level best to stop me from starting; but I had anyway, and now I was hooked, and she had to accept it. But she had her rules: no smoking within the house. Not even in my own room. Never, under her roof, she said. I always protested, ‘But actually it’s my roof!’
Which was true. In a twinkle of good sense Dad had put the house – which he had inherited from his mother – into my name before going berserk with his crazy trading and eventually losing everything else. He’d never re-mortgaged it, which had saved us from ruin; because it was only through re-mortgaging the house that Mum had got rid of a huge chunk of Dad’s debt. The Docklands loft, of course, had been repossessed. So it was, indeed, my house, but only in name. Rather, it was the bank’s. Mostly.
‘Who pays the mortgage?’ was all Mum ever said to my homeowner claims. That shut me up.
I crushed the cigarette stub on the wall, chucked it into the wheelie-bin conveniently waiting for next-day collection, and set off on a jog down Cricklade Avenue towards Streatham High Road. I couldn’t wait to see Sal.
Salvatore Zoppolo – to use his full name – was my best friend. We’d been part of an inseparable foursome for longer than I could remember – me, Tony, Sal and Cat. Tony’d been my boyfriend, Sal Cat’s. And then Cat’s parents had moved to Australia and she’d gone with them, and Tony – well, Tony had got himself a new girlfriend while still officially with me. It was my first dumping by a boyfriend ever. Utterly devastating. Sal, in the throes of getting over Cat’s desertion by playing the field, lent me a shoulder to cry on. We became the best of friends.
After a while Sal got tired of drinking himself into a stupor with a different girl each weekend, and I got tired of wallowing in a swamp of self-pity. We both grew up, and so did our friendship. I found there the kind of familiarity I should have had with a girl friend, and I’d had with Cat. But all my former friends had drifted off into their own world, and most of all, they all drank – too much.
I loathed drunkenness. In the year before his death, Dad’s alcoholism had sometimes led to violence, and now the very smell of strong liquor made me retch. Friends thought I was a prissy bore for not drinking, I thought they were juvenile. Only Sal had the time and, now, after six months of bingeing, the sobriety, to get to know the real me.
He was waiting for me at Wong’s, and had already ordered – he knew me well enough to know what I’d want. I slipped into the seat opposite him and let out a deep sigh of relief.
‘Mum’s crazy. Stark raving mad!’ I said.
Sal pushed away the strand of hair that always fell over his eyes. His father was Italian, his mother English, and his dark good looks turned female heads and kept male predators away from me. I still grieved for Tony, and Sal provided perfect platonic protection.
‘I thought it was your Nan who was crazy? That’s what you said on the phone …’
‘Yeah, but Mum’s crazy for setting herself up. Agreeing to take on Gran. Might as well get a job in the lunatic asylum! She’ll never manage. She’s scatty enough as it is; how’s she going to cope?’
‘Maybe you underestimate her.’
‘Nope. Mum’s as scatter-brained as they come. She just about manages to keep the two of us going, and only with my help. How’s she going manage Gran as well?’
‘With your help!’
‘Exactly! That’s the trouble. She knew from the start that Gran’ll end up my responsibility. It’s started already.’
‘Tell me about it.’
And so I did. Wong’s teenage son placed plates of steaming noodles before us, and while we ate I gave Sal a rundown of the day, putting in some catty Gran-mimicry to get a few laughs from him – the way she chewed her cud, the way she clacked her false teeth, her accent, her claws, her myriad boring albums and her Limacol-patting. Then I got to great-great-great-I-don’t-know-how-many-greats-grandfather’s-or-whoever’s stamp album.
‘Worth millions!’ I said, rolling my eyes in mockery. Sal held up a hand and stopped me.
‘Maybe it really is very valuable. If it’s that old and rare.’
‘Ha! You should see the stamps in it – falling to pieces. And even if they weren’t, they’re nothing special. Just very primitive everyday stamps, nothing artistic or anything. And from British Guiana, a little backwater country nobody ever heard of. Who cares?’
‘Still – you never know. I’d get it valued if I were you. A philatelist might give you a couple of hundred for it.’
‘But even if so – she’d never sell it. It’s an heirloom. A precious heirloom!’
I mimicked Gollum, clasping an imaginary album to my breast and rolling my eyes suspiciously around the restaurant. I couldn’t help it. My frustration with Gran, with the whole situation, found an outlet in mockery.
‘My preciousss!’
Sal laughed. He reached out and laid a hand on mine. ‘She sounds a card, this grandmother of yours. I’d like to meet her. And I’d like to see this heirloom. One of my uncles collects stamps. He might be interested in seeing them.’
‘With any luck she’ll leave it to me in her will.’
‘You’d better start sucking up to her, then!’
‘You bet! I can’t wait to get my hands on it – and start a really nice bonfire in the garden. What with Gran’s junk, and Mum’s, we could heat the whole of London for a year.’
Talking to Sal released some of the frustration I’d gathered over the day, and I calmed down. I felt guilty about the resentment I hoarded for Gran, and told him so. Sal was going to be a doctor, a neurologist – he was in his first year of medical studies – and was already good at dissecting people’s minds, if not their bodies. I was in a gap year, working full time before commencing law studies. I had been working hard and saving up to go travelling next year – then Gran burst into our lives. Now, everything was chaos, and I’d probably have to forget Asia. I’d have to stay and help Mum. I moaned on for a while, and then I moaned about my own moaning.
‘I’m sorry about all the whingeing,’ I said.
‘It’s normal,’ he comforted me. ‘You’re in your nice comfortable world, just you and your Mum, and your grandmother is threatening to disrupt it. That’s all there is to it.’
‘I know, I know. But there’s more to it. I feel I should – I don’t know – feel love for her, or something. She’s my own grandmother, after all. The only one I ever had. And I used to love her, when I was small. It’s all gone. And the way she kept all those letters, and photos. It’s quite sweet, actually. I mean, I threw out her letters to me long ago. It means she actually cares. I ought to be feeling something. Touched, or something. But I don’t. All I feel is irritation, and the need to escape. I wish I could love her. But I can’t. I don’t even like her.’
‘Love isn’t a duty, Inky. Technically she’s a stranger. She might be your flesh and blood but try persuading your mind that you have to love her! You’ll have to get to know her properly. Give her a chance, practice patience and tolerance, and …’
‘You sound like a preacher or something. Or like Mum. For all Mum’s scattiness, she’s good with people. If she does feel any resentment towards Gran, she hardly ever shows it.’ I remembered their first icy moments, and added, ‘Not much, anyway.’
‘But you said they were estranged?’
‘Well, physically separated, for thirty years or so. I suppose you can call that estrangement. It seems they had a quarrel a long time ago and Mum ran away and never went back, and never even wrote. But I think it’s life that kept Mum away more than any hard feelings. When my aunt asked her if she could take Gran in she said yes immediately. She never once hesitated, never once doubted it was the right thing to do, she was just one hundred per cent ‘yes’. So I guess it’s all forgiven and forgotten.
‘Mum’s strange in that way. She’s scatty and negligent on everyday matters, but totally there when it comes to people and her responsibilities towards them. It’s just amazing, the way she stuck with Dad,
through all his troubles.’
I paused, remembering. They had been together a long time, gone through all the highs and lows. They met when she was only sixteen, travelled together, parted, got back together, parted again, married in England. They had gone through miscarriages together, and poverty, and wealth, and his infidelity. Through thick and thin, poverty and wealth, sickness and health; and alcoholism, in her eyes, was just another sickness. She’d never once considered divorce; apparently stand by your man was Mum’s watchword. Any other woman would have dumped him. But she really thought she could heal him; with love, with Yoga and religion and all her weird Eastern practices. She couldn’t, of course. He was too far gone for that. But she tried her best.
‘Like I said – don’t underestimate your mother. I think she’s great, the way she pulled through. And she didn’t do too bad a job of raising you, you know. I think she knows what she’s doing. I bet she knew exactly what she let herself into with your Nan, and she’ll get through it.’
‘With my help,’ I reminded him.
‘Yes. But you always knew that, didn’t you?’
‘I just wish I wasn’t such a beast. To Gran. I wish I could get along with her, stand her presence, at least. I always wanted a Gran.’
‘Give yourself time. It’ll come.’
‘The old sourpuss.’
He said nothing. I played around with my noodles, winding them around my fork. I’d already picked out all the shrimps, saving the best for last. I looked up and said:
‘I just feel so mean and nasty.’
‘You’re not mean and nasty. You’re human. And at least you’ve got a working conscience, if you feel nasty when you are nasty!’
I made a face at him, and he made one back at me.
‘Time,’ he repeated. He reached out and squeezed my hand. ‘And patience.’
‘She’s not exactly paving the way for me.’
‘Maybe you should pave the way for her. I’ll help you, if you like.’
‘Can you come round sometime this week? Some evening?’
‘’Fraid it’ll have to be Sunday. I’ve got night shifts all week, and Saturday I’m in Brighton with my parents.’
Sal had taken on a summer job, something in a hospital. My job was waitressing in Croydon. That trip I’d planned to the Far East: I couldn’t afford it. I mean it was my money, to do what I wanted, but I couldn’t leave Gran with Mum. It wasn’t just the money. It was everything. We couldn’t afford any extras under normal circumstances, and now we had Gran. From the financial standpoint, I had to wonder what Mum was thinking. But I knew. She thought we’d struggle through it. Somehow. By the seat of her pants, she always said. It was her watchword.
* * *
Sal had aroused my curiosity. When I went home I mentioned the stamp to Mum.
‘Gran says it’s worth millions,’ I said. ‘Could it be true?’
‘I remember that stamp,’ Mum said. ‘It was Daddy’s most precious possession. There’s one just like it, in America I think, that’s apparently the rarest stamp in the world, so maybe she’s right.’
‘But if it is, Mum, we could sell it, and then …’
‘For millions I suppose? It’s obscene, anyone paying that much for a stamp – for anything, in fact. Think of all the starving children you could feed with those millions! Obscene!’
‘But, Mum…’
‘Inky, just stop it; right now! It’s not your stamp, it’s not mine. It’s just a scrap of paper. Worth nothing except the value some people attach to it. It’s all in the mind. So shut up about it, OK?’
And she wouldn’t speak one word more about it.
CHAPTER THREE
INKY: THE NOUGHTIES
That first week passed quicker than I’d believed possible, but only due to Marion’s presence. Marion did all the cooking and all the cleaning, reducing the ever-growing pile of un-ironed laundry in Mum’s room to neat little stacks of folded clothes. The kitchen glowed; all the cupboards tidied and the counters clear and gleaming. The house had never shone so brightly; life had never been so easy.
And of course, Marion was there as a buffer between us and Gran. She was there in the morning when we left the house, getting Gran up and bathed and dressed. She fed Gran during the day, kept Gran and her bickering at bay when we both came home from work, exhausted and drained of energy, and cooked up a storm each evening, for Gran’s benefit and my delectation. That was the best part of having Marion around: the food. Mum had practically starved me all my life.
I had hoped to find out more about the mystery between Mum and Gran, but the more the week careened towards its inevitable end, the more my hope that I’d be taken into their confidence disappeared. The nearest I got to finding out was the day I walked into the kitchen to hear Marion say to Gran, in a tone of annoyed urgency:
‘Tell her, Mummy! You have to tell her! Before I leave! She has to know; Uncle Matt …’
‘Hi!’ I said, breezily. ‘Tell who what?’
‘Oh, nothing, Inky. Nothing important.’
‘Look, if it’s about Mum, you might as well tell me,’ I offered. ‘I can act as a go-between. Tell me and I’ll tell her.’
At that Gran, who had been untypically silent for the last minute, let out a cascade of cackles.
‘Inky, you ears too long! Just like me own.’ And at that she grabbed her rollator and trundled out of the room, as dignified as ever. Marion let out a long deep sign and shrugged.
‘Why can’t you tell me?’ I asked. ‘I mean it. Why can’t you trust me?’
‘It’s not a matter of trusting you, Inky!’ said Marion. ‘It’s just – it’s just too much.’
And with that she too walked out. The truth, it seemed, was too bitter for my juvenile ears.
* * *
On Tuesday, Mum and Gran had a huge flare-up. I suppose it had been simmering beneath the surface for days, and that evening, at supper, it just boiled over. Gran had brought up the subject of the stamp once again. She had been muttering about it ever since she’d shown it to me, bringing it into conversations, hinting at how rare it was, and how valuable, and what a family heirloom. Now she was at it again, and I couldn’t help but butt in.
‘So how much is that stamp really worth, Gran?’ I asked, as casually as possible. To be quite honest, I was a bit ashamed of myself. Ever since my conversation with Sal my thoughts had drifted back again and again to the stamp. What if it was really valuable? I accepted that Gran wouldn’t sell it; but once she died? No. I shouldn’t be having such thoughts. But if – and when – she died, after all, she would die one day, maybe soon, and then – had she made a will? I mean, I was her favourite grandchild, wasn’t I? No. Stop it, Inky! I shouldn’t be thinking that! That was a really, really nasty thought! What a horrible person I was! I was the kind of person I hated: people who would be ingratiating to old people just to get at their inheritance. But she certainly wouldn’t leave it to Mum – what if …? But no.
How can one switch off greedy thoughts? Impossible. They just kept coming.
Anyway, the question just popped out of my lips and Gran, of course, was quick to reply.
‘A fortune!’ she said. ‘A small fortune!’ She turned to Mum.
‘Enough to pay off your mortgage, Rika!’
How did Gran know about Mum’s mortgage? Maybe Mum had told Marion and Marion had told Gran. I knew that Mum didn’t discuss her debts and her money problems with anyone, and wouldn’t have told Gran herself. She was much too proud.
But if Gran had hoped to get Mum excited about the stamp, fat chance!
‘I can’t believe,’ Mum said, ‘I just can’t believe that an intelligent person could get so covetous about a little scrap of paper, they’d chuck millions at someone else to acquire it. I just don’t know what to say.’ She went on to sneer about these people who paid millions for such scraps when they could be saving humanity with the same money. At millionaires who had nothing better to do than throw money at scraps of paper. At pe
ople who loved scraps of paper.
Gran listened to Mum’s rant with a neutral expression, shovelling food into her mouth and chewing slowly, her eyes on Mum, letting her speak her heart.
I myself was astonished; it was unusual for Mum to be so judgmental; unusual, in fact, for her to criticize anyone for anything. ‘People are the way they are,’ she’d say, when I brought up some human foible or the other. ‘Everyone is different. They have their desires and they make their choices, and some choices are more stupid than others. Most people find out when they make stupid choices. They find out the hard way.’
And now, here she was, practically declaring stamp-enthusiasts to be dumbest people on earth.
‘So, your father was stupid?’ Gran asked, casually.
‘My father! He was no father!’
‘What! What you saying! You had the best father in the world!’
‘I’m saying, he was no father! All that man cared about was those bloody stamps. That one stamp in particular.’ She looked at me.
‘The man who called himself my father would spend hours and hours holed away in his study peering at stamps under a magnifying glass. It just wasn’t normal!’
She turned back to Gran. ‘He loved his stamps first, and then you, and then a long space, and then, maybe, his children!’
That’s when Gran exploded. ‘How dare you! What do you know? He loved us all more than anything in this world! He adored us! He adored you! You don’t know him at all! You don’t know anyone at all! How you could talk about love! You ran away from home and didn’t give a damn what anyone thought! About your own family!’
‘You weren’t anything of a mother either!’ Mum cried back. ‘It was Granny who mothered me! She was both mother and father for me!’
‘Yes, and even she you didn’t care about! She dead and gone and you never even came to see her again!’
