You Be Mother

by Meg Mason

  ‘Well I’m sorry if I don’t have a nice rich husband and help and a perfect house,’ Brigitta leaped off the bed, narrowly avoiding the styrofoam tray. ‘And don’t say it! I’m not jealous. I don’t want your life. I just want my life.’

  ‘Why now? Why now? That’s what I’m struggling to understand. Why must this rebellion of yours happen now?’

  ‘When would be a better time? When Freddie sorts himself out? When James magically comes back to life? Tell me when, Polly! When will it be my turn?’

  ‘So it is all for attention then, is it? At least you’ve admitted it.’

  ‘Fuck!’ Brigitta said as she realised with forehead prickling and mouth suddenly streaming that she was about to vomit. As she lunged for the toilet, a great river of dark red liquid poured out of her mouth, splashing up the sides of the bowl. She clutched the seat with both hands as her stomach heaved in one vicious spasm after another.

  ‘God, it’s like being in Year 12 all over again,’ Polly said from somewhere behind her. Next, a bouquet of tissues was handed through the broken concertina door. Brigitta accepted them, still unable to speak. When she re-emerged, jelly-legged and faint, Polly had put an outfit and toiletries into a Sainsbury’s bag and was holding the door open. ‘I’ve got the car downstairs. Come home with me. We can sort this out later when you’ve had a rest. Natalia is making pirozhki, and the boys are watching X Factor all day.’

  After dressing, Brigitta accepted her coat, stepped sockless into a pair of boots by the door and began following her sister out. She felt exhausted. ‘I thought her name was Nadia.’

  ‘That was a different one.’

  It was only when Polly stepped into the hallway to wait and was briefly distracted by her phone that Brigitta realised she wasn’t going. ‘Sorry, actually Polly, I’m going to stay here.’

  Her sister glanced up, freshly irritated. Still inside, it was easy for Brigitta to close the door against her sister’s protest. ‘I’ll call you later. Thanks so much for the visit. Okay, drive safely. Bye.’ She slid the bolt across, and didn’t wait to hear Polly retreat downstairs. The thrill of escape lasted until, a minute or so later, it was replaced by another powerful wave of nausea.

  43.

  Death by toxic towelette

  Abi took the lid off the biscuit tin and passed it to Noel who was sitting beside her, blowing into cupped hands. May had been colder than usual, and a strong wind was whipping up the harbour, finding its way in through the cracks in the decking. Phil held Jude, cocooned in a thick baby blanket. The sight of him always bare-headed had compelled her to get an easy Aran hat on the needles and he was wearing it now. Perhaps she’d do him a little matching cardigan to grow into. Each fresh gust compelled the six crate-sitters to shuffle another inch inward until their knees nearly met.

  ‘Like penguins on the ice,’ Phil said. ‘Noel, I expect you’ll be on my lap in a minute.’

  ‘What are these, Abi love?’ he asked, blushing.

  ‘Her first batch of ginger biscuits,’ Phil cut in. ‘A triumph I might say.’

  Abi offered her the tin. ‘I won’t, thank you Abigail. I’m up to dolly’s wax.’

  ‘They’ve got a real crunch, Abi,’ Barb said, covering her mouth as her gums became coated with crumb. ‘I prefer a crunch biscuit to a cookie.’

  ‘Do you now, Barb? How intriguing.’ Phil, now always on the lookout for evidence of Barb’s alternative lifestyle, let her eyes widen imperceptibly to all but Abi.

  ‘I shouldn’t have another one,’ Noel said, taking another one. ‘A lot of diabetes on my side.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Barb nodded soberly. ‘Sandy had to go to A&E over Easter and I thought it might be diabetes because she was very tired and had an excessive thirst. But it was only dehydration from doing the Spit to Manly walk without cream on.’ Sandy confirmed the fact with a nod.

  ‘What are you making next, Abi?’ Barb went on. ‘I have a crustless quiche recipe that’s very good for visitors. And it keeps, so it’s a real cut-and-come-again.’

  ‘A crustless quiche,’ Phil said, marvelling. ‘How unconventional. But we’re actually on a poultry jag. In fact, we’ve got a bird in as we speak.’

  ‘At nine in the morning?’

  ‘Barb, if we’re going to get to braises by the end of the week as planned, we do what we must. Abigail, we ought to be going if we don’t want to walk in to ashes. Besides which, Jude is about to turn blue.’

  The timer was going when Phil let them in her back door, and with the whizzy heater left on, the kitchen had warmed up to a pleasant fug. With Stu gone, Phil’s kitchen was Abi’s best refuge against the ringing emptiness of the flat. She put Jude down on a soft, folded quilt that had become a fixture in the kitchen, now that his primary occupation was trying to roll over until the effort laid him out. ‘Although he’ll only do it when there’s something really worth rolling for, like some carpet fluff,’ Abi said at the time.

  ‘Well I expect there’ll be plenty to tempt him on my floors, dear.’

  The oven light was on and, knotting her apron, Abi went over to look through the glass at the chicken, glorious and golden, sizzling in its own fat and looking exactly like the one on the cover of Phil’s Cordon Bleu Meat and Game. She opened the door expectantly, and a plume of acrid smoke spilled out and billowed to the ceiling, hovering there in a dark mass, reeking of melted plastic. She covered her face with the apron and looked desperately at Phil, who was striding around the table with a tea towel pressed to her nose.

  ‘Good Lord, what on earth?’ Phil shoved past her, grasped the scalding pan with more tea towels, and dropped it into the sink. ‘Something’s melted, Abigail. Heavens, take Jude out. Put him through to the front room and shut the door, out of this air.’

  At the same moment, the phone rang and Phil snatched it up.

  ‘Briggy, is that you? Darling, I can’t talk. Fighting fires.’ Without waiting for a reply, she tossed the cordless into the fruit bowl and threw open a window above the sink. A gust of cold air thinned the worst of the trapped smoke, and Phil peered into the tray.

  ‘It looks absolutely fine,’ Phil said, prodding it with a long fork as Abi returned after installing Jude in a circle of cushions. ‘I can’t think what the dreadful odour is.’

  Abi stood beside her, inspecting the carcass. ‘I did everything you said.’

  They wiped streaming eyes in unison and Abi tried to think. Before they left for the kiosk an hour earlier, Phil had nipped off to spritz her cymbidiums and left her in the kitchen with rattled-off instructions for getting the fowl into the oven. Abi followed them absolutely.

  ‘Unless,’ she hesitated. Phil was trying to flip the whole lot over but it was bonded to the tray. ‘Unless, was I supposed to take out that funny pad thing from underneath?’

  ‘Ah.’

  At that moment, the chicken came away from the pan, exposing the remnants of an absorbent packaging pad, swollen with cooked blood.

  ‘I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want to interrupt you,’ Abi said. ‘I thought you must be supposed to leave it, to soak up the juice or something. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘The thing that looks a bit like a sort of a . . . surgical dressing?’

  ‘Yes,’ Abi said, downcast.

  ‘We’ve cooked that, have we? Then I’d say it’s unfit for human consumption,’ Phil said before breaking into hearty laughter. ‘We won’t risk death by toxic towelette. But we ought to eat something I suppose, so I’ll see what’s in the fridge and send a bit home for Stu besides. Is that Jude I hear?’

  Bored with his own company, Jude was beginning to squawk and Abi went off to retrieve him. When she returned, Phil had open a new copy of Hons and Rebels. ‘Fancy, I’d just read this line yesterday,’ she said. ‘Listen. “Darling, you know I don’t know how to take things out of ovens, one’s poor hands . . . Besides, I do so hate getting up early.”’

  ‘Is that Aunt Sadie?’

  ‘No dear, that’s the real Nancy, so you’re in goo
d company at least. And it was too early to eat a roast anyway, but I will see what I’ve got.’

  44.

  The eternal hairshirt

  It was over a plate of cheese and oatcakes that Abi confessed that Stu wasn’t one hundred per cent around at the moment, dinner-wise. Abi had set Jude down on the folded quilt, where he lay contentedly blowing milky bubbles.

  Phil cocked her head. ‘What do you mean, not around?’

  ‘I mean, he’s staying at his mum and dad’s during the week, and he comes back here on weekends. Well, he’s supposed to, but so far he’s had too much on, generally speaking.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘It’s better in terms of him getting his work done. He’s really under the pump with his course. Jude’s still up loads in the night and Stu needs to concentrate. We need to have a proper chat really. It’s not forever. I mean, I assume it’s not.’

  ‘You assume. And quite how long has this been going on?’

  ‘Um, roughly, I would say . . . since Brigitta was here?’ Abi said, admitting, when Phil probed her, that the days actually could feel quite long, and the evenings even longer, especially with it getting dark so early and there being no promise of company at the end. Even if he came home late and tired, or drunkish and overexcited, any time with him was the prize for patting Jude to sleep through the bars of his cot for fifty minutes every night and singing ‘You Are My Sunshine’ until her throat ached.

  Now, the only time Abi didn’t feel lonely was standing in this kitchen with Phil beside her, explaining that you always roll pastry away from the body, and when it says ten minutes for the onions it means ten minutes or else your gravy will turn out a fearful orange.

  ‘It’s funny really,’ Abi continued. ‘I’m used to being on my own a lot but it’s a different sort of alone when it’s with a baby, isn’t it? It’s a bit worse, to be honest, because you can’t even go out when you want to.’

  But it was clear Phil had stopped listening. ‘Since Brigitta was here?’ she said finally. ‘He’s been gone since then? Abigail, that’s what, six weeks? I’m shocked. Really I am. And his parents haven’t driven down and hiffed him out at the top of Milson Road?’

  ‘It was partly their idea,’ Abi said, embarrassed.

  ‘Well that makes it worse not better, to my mind.’

  ‘I think they’re worried about him failing his course because of all the distractions here. Perhaps he’ll come back after his exams.’

  Phil rolled her eyes extravagantly. ‘Abigail, I beg your pardon. Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could all hive off when parenthood got all too distracting? I’m sorry but this is unacceptable. Truly. I have half a mind to go up there myself and drag him back by the scruff of his neck.’

  Phil got up and for an instant, Abi feared she was going to drive her Volvo straight to Gordon and have it out with Elaine in the carport. But she only unlatched another window and threw it open.

  ‘It’s my fault really, I’m the one who bollocksed up the birth control and everything.’ Jude was tiring of his place on the floor, and Abi lifted him onto her lap.

  ‘But you’re not teenagers, Abigail.’ Phil leaned against the bench and folded her arms. ‘Even if parenthood was not, in a sense, deliberate, you clearly believe you’ve got to wear the eternal hair shirt, but you’re actually both adults. If you coming here was the arrangement you made together, he can bloody well rise to the trot. Certainly it’s short rations at the moment and it will be for some time I expect, but you’ve got the makings of a very pleasant little family life if he would only hold up his end.’

  ‘I’d hate him to fail his course because of us though. I know he misses his mates as well.’

  ‘Oh Lord. Please.’ Phil had had enough. She turned and lifted the scorched pan out of the sink then dropped the whole lot in the bin. ‘I can’t hear any more. Frederick got the Bar from revising almost entirely in the car with baby Polly conked out in the back. It was the only way to get any quiet, driving her to sleep, then watching the sun come up over Middle Head with his jurisprudence on the steering wheel. It’s the spirit of the Blitz for the first five years at least. This Stuart of yours needs to toughen up. Although I suppose it means I can stop sending up his bloody tea.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Abi said.

  ‘Oh do stop apologising, dear. You’re the last one to blame. We’re all entitled to one or two disasters in this life, don’t you agree? Now before I forget –’ Phil wiped her hands on a dishcloth, returned to the table and started shuffling through the pile of papers. ‘Ah yes, here we are.’

  From underneath an American Express statement, Phil turned up an envelope with a university crest in one corner. She extracted a thick course brochure and set it in front of Abi. ‘Since you’ve conquered the culinary arts, poultry notwithstanding, I wondered if it’s time to give that brain of yours a little go. I put in a call to a friend of mine, the mother of one of Pol’s school friends, who’s nice and high up in the English department over at Sydney, and she’s dispensed this rather delightful booklet about their short courses. Have a look, why don’t you? Here, give me the boy.’

  Abi passed him over and read the front page: ‘The University of Sydney, Department of English Winter Programmes.’

  ‘Of course, you’d choose whichever modules took your fancy but I did think the Literature of the 1930s looked very good, although I doubt beloved Aunt Sadie gets a look-in. And then that Fictive Self looks quite thrilling.’

  Phil had circled the course description in fountain pen. ‘The Fictive Self: Self Invention and Imagining Identity in Women’s Writing.’

  Abi read it, then glanced at Phil, searching her face for any sign that she suspected Abi was already expert in the area of inventing and imagining. But Phil’s only looked like someone waiting for their gift to be unwrapped at the party, knowing full well it would be the best one. She patted Jude, laying contently over her shoulder.

  ‘In fact, it made me look out my old copy of Dalloway,’ Phil said. It too was retrieved from the pile and she opened it to a page with the corner turned down. ‘Have you read it?’

  ‘Um.’ Abi did not want to admit that she hadn’t. ‘I think I got stuck on the first chapter.’

  ‘It doesn’t have chapters, Abigail,’ Phil said wryly. ‘Anyhow, listen to this.’

  Immediately her voice dropped to the sonorous purr of someone reading for radio. ‘As we are a doomed race, chained to a sinking ship . . . as the whole thing is a bad joke, let us, at any rate, do our part; mitigate the sufferings of our fellow-prisoners . . . decorate the dungeon with flowers and air-cushions; be as decent as we possibly can.’ Phil closed the book and held it against her bust. ‘Isn’t that glorious? Decorate the dungeon with flowers.’

  Abi longed for the reading to continue but lifted herself out of the reverie. ‘I love it. I do. I love that.’

  ‘Well then, wouldn’t it be lovely to pick two of these and give that quick little mind of yours something to gnaw on. Boredom is a housewife’s ruin as we all know. Well that and gin, and of course Jude’s all-consuming now but he won’t always be.’ She moved him higher onto her shoulder and continued the slow, rhythmic patting.

  ‘And if it’s not a degree course, it probably wouldn’t matter for my visa,’ Abi said, to sustain the fantasy for a moment longer. ‘Oh, but what would I do with this one?’ Jude snuffled, as though aware he was being talked about.

  Phil slid the paperback in her direction. ‘In life, dear, when one wants something, one simply does it and waits for the practicalities to arrange themselves. Perhaps the dear old Brush will turn out to be useful after all.’

  A ripple of disappointment came and went as Abi realised Phil wasn’t going to volunteer. Still, it wasn’t possible. Abi pushed the envelope back towards Phil. ‘It’s such a nice idea, and thanks for getting all that and everything but it’s probably, really, that I can’t afford it just at the minute.’

  ‘You’ve quite missed my meaning, dear
. The bill will come here. I’ve arranged a little tab, in case you want to go on to something more formal afterwards. You only have to do the work. I know you haven’t got a bean, you mad girl.’

  There was nothing Abi could do then except laugh out loud at the thought that soon, there would be something else beyond wiping things and feeding and walking and waiting. And nothing to do with at-risk youth, which prolonged her outburst until Phil crossed her arms and became stern.

  ‘All right. Hush, would you. I should say, Abigail, you’ll work like a bugger, won’t you? I expect to see finishing, please.’ Phil handed the baby back. ‘And if you do, we can see about lighting another one off it.’

  ‘I promise,’ Abi insisted. ‘I definitely promise.’

  They got up and, without thinking, Abi stepped in and hugged her, sandwiching Jude between them. ‘Lord, dear, you smell like sump oil,’ Phil said, obliging for a moment then releasing her with a firm movement. ‘Go home and wash your hair, would you? And take this lot.’ Phil handed her Mrs Dalloway and the course guide, and opened the back door while Abi put her jacket on and wrapped Jude warmly against the cold outside.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ Abi said, and again from the courtyard, and again from the other side of the gate. As she walked home, she sent her mother a picture she had taken of Jude on the quilt in Phil’s kitchen, pausing in front of the flats to read and delete Rae’s short reply. ‘Pats abcess is back–its started weeping.’

  45.

  I’m having a personal crisis, Lawrence

  Brigitta sat in the back of a taxi, seething. Ordinarily she tried to take the Tube back to Kentish Town after a shift, but she’d missed the last one and decided Phil could shout her a car service. It was not an emergency so much as compensation for her mother being unavailable during the emergency earlier that night.

  The restaurant had been overbooked, as it often was on Friday nights, but two no-shows by floor staff had forced Brigitta to swap her usual position behind the desk for a pad and apron. She was put on the private dining room, preferable at least to the open floor – until the party started to arrive at 8 p.m. It was a large family group, three adult siblings, their partners and many offspring, and handsome, silver-haired parents. The impeccable pair sat at the head of the large table, ordered lavishly, received grandchildren onto their laps and would, Brigitta knew, quietly attend to the thousand-pound bill at the close of the evening.