‘David Anthony.’
‘Who? He’s dishy, isn’t he?’
‘Is he?’
‘Well, in a ravaged sort of way. Is he divorced?’
Morna laughed. ‘No.’
‘Mum, you’re not going out with him, are you?’
‘Would that be so monstrous?’
Chris didn’t answer, hunted for her slippers.
‘No, I’m not, in fact. I’m doing some work for him.’
‘Work, at this hour?’
Morna had always kept her evenings free, devoted them to Chris. ‘I’m sorry if he’s in your way. He just came to pick up a translation. I assumed Martin would be here and we could all have …’ Shouldn’t have mentioned Martin. Chris was weeping again, silent tears which puffed her eyes. ‘Don’t cry, darling. You’re probably just exhausted from the journey and everything seems worse. Christmas doesn’t matter. We’ll sort it out. Perhaps Martin could go instead of me.’
‘How c … can he? He’s got a job and Daddy’s hardly likely to pay for …’ Chris broke off, pulled out a rose from one of the flower arrangements, watched it shed its petals. She was wearing a creased and dirty tee shirt with ‘MAIS OUI’ printed across it in scarlet capitals. Her breasts barely pushed the letters out. Perhaps Martin wanted curves.
‘Where’s your luggage, anyway?’
‘Still on the bike.’
‘It can’t stay there. What are you going to …?’
‘Leave it, Mum.’
Morna pushed the hurt down, tried again. ‘How was France? You’ve hardly told me anything about it?’
‘Okay.’
‘Did Madame improve?’
‘A bit. Could we leave it till the morning? I’m whacked.’
‘Yes, of course. How about some dinner?’
‘Not hungry, thanks.’
‘Chris …?’
‘Mm …’
‘Could I ask you a favour, darling? I know you’re tired, but …’
‘If it’s ‘‘will I phone Martin and ask him to bring my luggage back’’, no, I won’t.’
‘Nothing to do with Martin. It’s … David. I wondered if you’d come downstairs, just for half an hour, and help me talk to him? I invited him to dinner, so I can’t really …’
‘Who is this bloke? Is he staying here or something?’
‘Don’t be silly.’ Morna sounded sharper than she intended. Did her daughter imagine that she had smuggled David in the day she had left for France and been living with him ever since? The thought was not unattractive. Working together, as she had never done with Neil, unravelling problems of chronology, discussing shades of meaning in a single word, digging up more and more fragments of St Abban as if he were a pot or artifact.
‘He’s only dropped in for an hour or so. As soon as we’ve had dinner, I can drive him to the station, and then we’ll be on our own. All right?’ Morna hugged her daughter again. ‘You’ve still got your Mum, you know.’
‘Yeah, I know. Thanks.’
Chris sounded embarrassed, stood rigid, unresponsive. Morna let her go. Perhaps she should have stopped the hugging now that Martin was on the scene. Bea still hugged her and she had to admit she didn’t really like it. The smell of dog and powder, the possession.
She stared at Chris’s neck. The scarf had slipped, revealing a purple bruise. She mumbled something, escaped into her own room. Eighteen years ago, she had had a bruise like that herself, in exactly the same spot. It had been wintertime, so she had worn polo-necks and mufflers until it faded. Weeks it took, marbling purple to red to mauve to dirty yellow. A love-bite, Neil had called it. He hadn’t used his teeth, more his tongue and lips, nuzzling on and on in a fierce hurting sort of kissing as if his mouth were a suction machine pulling on her flesh, leaving his mark for everyone to see—the milkman, the butcher, the lynx-eyed couple opposite, Bea herself. And then he had bitten—hard—her ear and then her breast. She had hated it, hated it, pushed him off. Wild beasts bit, not husbands. The nuns had never mentioned biting. ‘Hands’ they’d said, or kissing with Our Lady in the room, even making souls for God, but never ever teeth. She felt outraged. The bruising on her neck was like a blazon of sin, or the purple bands which the prostitutes of ancient Rome wore to advertise their services. She was now a sexual being, her loss of innocence as blatantly on show if they had hung up the blood-stained bed-sheets outside the window.
Neil couldn’t understand her upset. The marks to him signified passion and virility, proved they were adult and enjoying it. However, he didn’t bite again. Tried other things instead, things which Reverend Mother would have blushed at, or simply not believed went on between a Christian man and wife. Often, she had removed her mind, so that they were happening far away to someone else, some cheap non-convent girl at the far end of the bed, while she herself lay back against the pillows and thought of Florence Nightingale.
She felt guilty now. How could she have been so prudish, selfish, even? What was virtue in the nuns’ eyes was sin in the world’s—to be rigid and unco-operative in bed, to fail to enjoy it. And supposing she had passed on her antipathy to Chris? Was her daughter outraged because Martin had given her a love-bite which perhaps he had intended simply as a welcome-home gift, his equivalent of apples, flowers? Had it been more than just a love-bite? What had they been up to all this time? Booked into some hotel in Dover, made babies there together?
She had always tried to blot out what her daughter did with Martin. People said it was impossible to imagine your parents having sex. She hadn’t had to deal with that. Bea had dodged the issue by remaining a widow and a staunch Catholic. But it was equally impossible to imagine daughters making love. They would always be too young. Yet Chris and Martin had known each other for eight long months already. Surely they …? Except where would they go? Martin worked as a printer, but his real passion was for scuba diving. That took all his wages—not hotel bills. Neil had seduced her in his car. Martin had a third-hand motorbike. Martin had stayed the night with them, but only once or twice, and she had put him up in the spare room. On the first occasion she had woken in the early hours, anxious suddenly. Had she been woken by a noise—the opening and shutting of a door, the creaking of a bed? She crept along to her daughter’s room, opened the door a crack. Chris was sleeping on her back, on her own, wearing a brushed cotton tracksuit which doubled as pyjamas and made her look innocent, a defenceless child again. She had tiptoed away feeling cheap, a traitor. She had never forbidden sex, hardly ever mentioned it. She had been as coy as Bea, as naïve as the nuns. She had broached the subject once, started talking vaguely and too fast about VD, contraception. Chris had stopped her.
‘We’ve done all that at school, Mum.’ She sounded bored, as if it were algebra or economics. ‘Miss Mason told us in biology. She made the whole thing sound like some disease. Doctors before you start, to dish you out pills and things or fit you with horrible contraptions, then clinics when you catch the pox, then more doctors for the abortion … No thanks!’
‘It’s not like that.’ Morna had started, then stopped. Wasn’t it? Sex education was more or less impossible. How could you talk about release or ecstasy unless you had experienced them in person? Perhaps Miss Mason was a woman like herself—honours in her degree course, but a failure when it came to sex. Degrees hardly counted unless you had also graduated in the school of Masters and Johnson. She had read the books, worked through the syllabus, yet still failed to make the grade. The books depressed her. One was alphabetical, moved from algolagnia and anus to yohimbine (some sort of aphrodisiac). She knew what Chris meant about diseases. Half the entries had been pathological—epididymitis, pederasty, phimosis. The other half made her feel frigid and inadequate—banished to the remedial class.
‘Mum …’
She jumped. Chris was standing at the door. The scarf was gone. She was wearing a high necked blouse now, the same dirty crumpled jeans. ‘I thought you wanted dinner?’
‘Yes, sorry. Let’s go down.’
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The doorbell rang before they got halfway. Chris nose-dived the last five steps, dashed along the hall. Morna could see a dark head blurred and distorted through the glass panel in the front door, hear Chris’s shrill triumphant ‘Martin!’ She tried to suppress a sudden stab of anger as she greeted him herself. Did she resent her daughter’s boyfriend simply because he had usurped her place as Most Important Person in Chris’s life? Or because she was a snob like Bea? Or because Martin always seemed a stranger, even when he sat daily in her house? It was as if he and she were from two different countries with different languages, could communicate only in stiff and formal monosyllables—polite noises which meant nothing, hid bafflement and tension on both sides. Or was it more that she hated her daughter’s submission to her man, echoing her own to Neil? Even now, Chris would probably be apologising. They had disappeared upstairs together. She had apologised herself to Neil, even after the biting. Submission was safer.
She left them on their own, returned to the study where David was still sitting at the desk. He had never married, never known that endless game of winning points and losing sleep, or losing face and gaining approval, safety.
‘I’m so sorry. My daughter …’ David didn’t have a daughter either, couldn’t understand that terrifying mix of love, fury, guilt, fear. ‘I think things are all right now. I’ll dish up dinner, shall I?’
She led him into the kitchen, opened the oven door. She had left the gas on low, but even so the meal had spoilt—steak toughened, fish curled up at the edges; Martin’s chips, once golden-crisp, now beginning to stick together in a greasy mass.
‘I’m sorry, David. I cooked us Dover sole, but I’m afraid it doesn’t look too marvellous now.’
David stepped back from the oven. ‘I’m sure it’ll be absolutely fine. Sole’s my favourite fish, in fact, though I haven’t had it for an age.’
She was all the more annoyed that she had spoilt it. She was normally a good cook, one who would never dream of cooking chips or vegetables in advance, then leaving them to mush and shrivel; had done so only to staunch her growing fear, keep herself busy as the mocking clock ticked on. She placed the vegetable dishes on the table, turned the oven off. She wished Chris and Martin would hurry. She had called them twice, but still no sign of them. Were they kissing again, or still fighting over Christmas? Joy with a red bow on her fringe, Bunny with a love-bite on her neck. Bunny would have graduated summa cum laude. A rabbit with honours, who also believed in Love and Peace and …
‘Do sit down, David. I hope you don’t mind eating in the kitchen? Chris says it’s more … homely. No, sit there at the end. That’s it. And if you’d like to pour some …’ Morna jumped, swung round, her own voice drowned by a sudden crashing down the stairs, pounding footsteps, angry shouts. She dashed into the hall, sprinted down the passage just in time to see the front door slam. She wrenched it open again, heard Martin’s Triumph coughing into life. Chris was clambering on to the seat behind him, squashed between her luggage and Martin’s studded leather back, the two of them screaming insults at each other above the engine noise.
‘Wait!’ she shouted herself.
Chris turned round, yelled something indistinguishable as they swerved away.
‘Be careful!’’
No one heard. They had already turned the corner. It was dark now, really dark. Morna stepped back into the house, fighting tears and anger, almost collided with David who was just walking through the door.
‘Look, Morna, I … I’d better push off now. The trains run every half an hour, so if I leave immediately I can catch the …’
‘No.’ She stood with her back to the door, barring his way. ‘I asked you to dinner and we haven’t had it yet.’ She was using Martin’s tactics, raising her voice, bullying, letting the anger oust the tears.
‘No, really. I feel I’m in the way.’
‘Whose way?’
‘Well, your … daughter’s.’
‘She’s gone.’
‘But …’
‘I’d like you to stay, David.’ Wheedling now, little-girl voice. Shameful. ‘Please.’
She coaxed him back to the kitchen, back to his chair. The vegetables were cold now, as well as overcooked. She lifted up the lids—courgettes flabby, cauliflower as pappy as its sauce, peas puckering and shrunken.
‘W … We can’t eat these. Or the fish. Let me make you an omelette or … or …’ She tried to keep her voice steady. The tears were threatening again—tears for all that wasted food, the whole botched and shattered evening. She had wanted David to relax, to see her as a successful cook and hostess as well as painstaking translator. Instead he was stuck on his own at the far end of a table set for four, looking rigid and uneasy, and probably ravenous.
‘It looks quite all right to me,’ he said, fiddling with his fork. ‘And please don’t bother with omelettes. I’m really looking forward to my sole.’
She went to check on it, fins charred, flesh dry. Was he seeking a chance of penance, or just unwavering in his endless politesse? ‘I’m sorry, David, but it’s gone all leathery. Best chuck it in the wastebin and start again.’
‘No, don’t do that!’ He sprang up from his chair, blocked her access to the bin. ‘It’s a shocking waste of food and my mother always regarded waste as a major crime.’
‘Did she? So did mine.’ Morna grinned suddenly. She had forgotten they had things in common—even mothers, obviously. ‘All right, we’ll eat it for both our mothers’ sake—to make us big and strong. Is that what yours said?’
‘Oh, yes.’ David was grinning now, as well. ‘And to make my hair curl. She was right, you see. It has.’
‘And allow us to see in the dark. No, that was carrots, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, and spinach for iron. I could never understand as a kid how a plate of green and soggy spinach had anything to do with the great tall railings round my infant-school, which my father said were iron.’
Morna laughed, dished up fish and vegetables. ‘Right, iron railings coming up! We’d better open the wine to wash them down.’
She had bought a sparkling wine to celebrate. Ironic in the circumstances. She filled two glasses, watched the bubbles pop and seethe. ‘Let’s drink a toast to something. What about St Abban? Or would he disapprove?’
‘Le Goff would be better. He left twelve crates of claret in his will, as well as all the papers.’
‘You didn’t get those too, did you?’
‘’Fraid not.’
‘Monsieur Yves Le Goff, then.’ She raised her glass. ‘When was it that he died?’
‘April last year. Easter Day, in fact.’
‘Bad timing—to die on Resurrection Day.’ She was sounding flippant, disrespectful. It was the effort of trying to play the hostess when she wanted to snatch up her car keys and hurtle after Chris. ‘Though I presume you believe in an afterlife?’
As always, he hesitated. ‘I wouldn’t use that term. If it’s after, then it isn’t life. I prefer continuity.’
‘Unfortunately, death breaks that.’ She hacked off a piece of bread, crumbled it, sat staring at the pieces. Fragments of her father exploding over Hamburg, crashing from youth and glory into void. Chris and Martin crashing now, so busy quarrelling, they didn’t see the articulated lorry hurtling towards them as they wavered out of lane.
‘Only if we let it.’ David was eating his fish with relish, although it had lost almost all its flavour, tasted cardboardy and dry. She had failed as cook and hostess, failed Chris as a mother.
‘Look, I’m … I’m sorry about this evening, David …’ Perhaps she should confide in him, explain about Bunny’s invitation, her daughter’s sense of being tugged between Martin and her father. But was that fair on Chris? Was it even fair on David? There had been non-stop tension since he first stepped through the door. Even now she wasn’t really concentrating on what he was saying about different interpretations of reincarnation. Her mind was still on Chris. How serious was the quarrel? Would he
r daughter submit this time, or …? If she and Martin parted, would she dare to love again? Trust? David’s word. Too easy.
She glanced across at his plate—nothing left but bones now, empty eye sockets staring back at her. She passed him the salad, watched him disrupt Chris’s flower-tomatoes, apple petals—her work of art a mess of jumbled colours.
She excused herself a moment, removed their fish plates. Martin’s steak was lying on the side looking shrunken and neglected. She hadn’t valued Martin enough, hadn’t realised the hole he would rip in Chris’s life if … if … All right, so he wasn’t permanent, but eight months was a long time when you had lived only seventeen years. She retrieved the steak, parcelled it in foil.
David had finished his salad, pushed his chair back from the table so that he could stretch his legs a little. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I enjoyed that.’
Simply good manners again, she wondered? It had sounded genuine enough. ‘There’s still some cheese,’ she said. ‘And strawberries.’ She should have made a sorbet—something cool and sharp. The Indian summer sultriness still lingered in the air; the heat from the oven doubling its effect. Beads of perspiration were pricking beneath the rough tweed of her dress; her face was flushed with wine. She filled her glass again.
David picked up one forgotten radish, put it on his side plate. ‘I’m pretty full already, I’m afraid.’
Morna flounced up, kicked her chair back. The strawberries were huge, the most expensive in the shop. She had soaked them in curaçao with just a dash of brandy, sprinkled finely grated orange rind on top; made a special détour to the delicatessen for really unusual cheeses. And David hadn’t room. He had stuffed himself with dried-up fish and smelly cauliflower, even tackled Martin’s soggy chips, but he couldn’t manage one liqueur-rich strawberry, one sliver of Doux de Montagne, imported from the Alps. She guessed it was some penance thing again. If she made a hash of the food, then David had to eat it, even press for second helpings, but if something were good—worse still a luxury—then he must refuse on principle. She had been the same herself at school—a pious little prig actively seeking out lumps in porridge or fat on meat, so that she could be top in holiness.
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