You Be Mother

by Meg Mason

  All evening, Brigitta closed her ears to the conversation, resenting her forced proximity to an excessively merry family. She tolerated their constant trading of places, even as it complicated the task of putting down their orders, and bore the offence of being beckoned over by adolescent members of the party who required more ice and some chips and a different spoon.

  After dessert, the youngest children began to fall asleep under the table and Brigitta stepped around them as she reset for coffee. Unnoticed, she watched as one of the married daughters got up and moved to sit beside her father. They whispered to each other in confidence, the woman rested her forehead, for an instant, on her father’s shoulder. He said something in her ear, which made her laugh, and then as Brigitta looked on, he gave her cheek a fleeting pat. The gesture, something about his large, lovely hand resting so gently against her face, made Brigitta drop both the plates she had just picked up to clear.

  The entire table turned at the sound of shattering china. One of the older children began a slow clap and was reprimanded by the matriarch. Brigitta got down on her hands and knees to gather up the larger pieces into her apron.

  ‘Might I call for reinforcements?’ The father appeared beside her and crouched down. ‘What a bugger.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, I’ll go and fetch a cleaner,’ Brigitta said, folding the corners of her apron around the shards. ‘I’m not actually a servant, you see. Or waitress, I should say. I’m an actress.’ From the adolescents’ end of the table, she heard a snicker, but the father looked sympathetic.

  Passing through the kitchen, Brigitta dumped the pieces into a breakages bin and continued to the small rear office where she kicked the door shut and gave in to sobs.

  It was not fair. It was not fair! How could a family be so arrogant in its good fortune? All of them together and happy and having pretend tiffs over the bread basket, while her family had been decimated, the survivors scattered.

  The pain of it was overwhelming. Brigitta needed her mother. Wiping her face with her apron, she reached for the desk phone, dialled the long home number and waited. After a moment, she heard her mother’s voice.

  Brigitta released a single cry that came out like a cough.

  ‘Briggy, is that you? Darling, I can’t talk. Fighting fires.’

  ‘Mum, I’m –’ Brigitta said. The line went dead. Brigitta listened to three dull beeps, then hung up and tried again. The engaged signal came back.

  ‘Fuck,’ she said. ‘Fuckfuck.’ What kind of fire her mother could possibly be fighting on a Saturday morning, in the perfect sanctuary of the big house, she could not begin to imagine. If it was a moment of grief, Brigitta would have been recruited to it already, as she always was, no matter the hour, or what else she might be doing. Ever since James died, she’d been a servant to her mother’s emotions. It would have to be a Freddie fire, or a small incident involving Domenica and a silk rug. They had barely spoken since Brigitta fled, so it was just as likely nothing was wrong and she was just being punished. The depths of pettiness to which her mother could sink!

  Brigitta tossed the phone on the desk and brought her feet up onto the chair.

  ‘Ah, scuse us, why are you in here?’

  Her manager, a very tall and briefly successful male model with a self-conscious East End accent, stood in the doorway, both hands on his snake-like hips.

  ‘I’m having a personal crisis, Lawrence. Sorry. Do you mind?’ She smiled as politely as she could and waited for him to leave. If not motherly succour, she could have privacy at least.

  ‘Ah, we’d all love a personal crisis, darling, but it’s still chaos out there. Fucking Armageddon. So either get back on the floor or go home.’

  ‘No, clearly.’ Brigitta got up and began tugging at her apron strings. As she passed Lawrence in the narrow passage, she pressed the damp, dirty ball of her apron against his chest and stormed out via the service doors.

  ‘Rochester Road, in Kentish Town please,’ Brigitta said as she climbed into a taxi. ‘But actually can you take us past that 24 hour Tesco and I’ll run in and grab a few things. They’ve got a wine bit, don’t they?’

  ‘I’ll have to keep the meter going, love.’

  ‘Yes, that’s fine. That’s fine.’ Brigitta sat back and before returning her mind to this fresh injustice, remembered to say to the driver, ‘You take cards, don’t you?’

  46.

  Changi Best Value Pharmacy

  Phil had expected the warm glow of altruism to last a good deal longer that it did. As soon as she heard the gate close, her spirits drooped. All that phoning up the department and arranging the bills, and for that moment anyway, it felt like a damp squib.

  Some hours passed, Phil could not have said how, and as it approached 4 p.m. she wandered back to the kitchen, still reeking of poison chook, and noticed the Amex statement on top of the mail pile, the table’s permanent centrepiece. Too restless to do anything pleasant, Phil thumbed it open. She should get the paper knife from Frederick’s desk and do the whole thing properly, the festival programme, investor notices, an invitation requesting the presence of Mr and Mrs Frederick Woolnough at a charity function. But her hips ached from a morning at the sink, and her legs were as heavy as lead.

  Glancing down the first of many printed pages, Phil’s eye fell on SELFRIDGE & CO. PLC, £180. AUD CURRENCY CHARGE 2.5%. Another, the same day, for SELFRIDGE & CO. PLC, £420.15. Waitrose Supermarkets, Jane Packer Flowers, somewhere called The Providores on Marylebone High Street, nearly £300 at a shop called Whistles. Majestic Wine Warehouse cropped up every few lines, between taxi fares, cash advances, three and four pound charges, daily, at Starbucks. Phil read through charge after charge. They ran in reverse chronological order to January, each attracting their own ruinous conversion fee. The final line was $67.23 Singaporean dollars at somewhere called CHANGI BEST VALUE PHARMACY PTE. At the very bottom of the final page, the statement requested a minimum payment of nine hundred and something, against the current balance of $17,433AUD. As she dialled Brigitta and waited, Phil forced a series of measured breaths, feeling alternatively furious and disappointed that this would be their first conversation since her daughter’s dreadful departure.

  She’d longed to speak properly this morning when Brigitta had phoned during the poultry crisis, but it could not have been a worse moment. They must pick up from here and there would be no easy détente now that the true extent of Brigitta’s recklessness had been revealed.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello Brigitta. It’s your mother.’

  ‘Hello.’

  Phil did not let herself be put off by the touch of coldness in her daughter’s voice, and cleared her throat. ‘Well.’

  ‘Well.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘It’s seven o’clock in the morning, so in bed. Oh and by the way, I just got sacked.’

  Phil gripped the phone, unpleasantly aware that this was a job much better suited to Frederick, who’d only needed to summon a child as far as the study door to have them keeling over with remorse. ‘Well, if you’re wondering where I am, or indeed how I’ve been since your untimely departure, the answer is at home, also. And you know I was just sitting here going through some post.’

  ‘Was that your emergency?’ Brigitta said archly. ‘Sorting the mail?’

  ‘Actually, I’ve found some really quite surprising charges on the Amex. Really, quite staggering. Shall I read them out?’

  There was silence, before she heard a cough and then Brigitta’s voice, drained of all provocation. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Oh indeed,’ Phil said before she knew exactly where she was leading. ‘I think this shows it’s time to draw a line under this experiment of yours. Polly has told me that you lost the Barbican role as well, which I only assume means things are over between you and the married man. That and now this, Brigitta. I think you’ve had your go. It hasn’t worked. Time to just rule off and write tomorrow’s date, don’t you think?’ Phil softened her tone, waiting for
Brigitta to collapse under the weight of maternal grace. As a child, she’d always been the first breaker after any group misdemeanour; Phil only had to wait her out.

  But when she spoke, Brigitta sounded hard. ‘No.’

  ‘Say again?’

  ‘No,’ Brigitta said. ‘I’m not coming home. I haven’t failed. I only lost my part because I came to see you. And when I tried to call you tonight you were too busy for me, so why would I come home? You’re not actually there for me.’

  ‘Oh darling, don’t be wet.’ It came out much too strong. She heard Brigitta gasp, as though in pain. Things were getting out of hand and Phil scrabbled around for a coup de grâce. Briefly she considered fainting, but felt restrained by the medium. If Brigitta couldn’t see her, there was no point casting herself onto the flagstones.

  ‘I’m just stating facts, mother. You have been too busy for me most of your life.’

  ‘Well then, if you choose to stay, and particularly if you continue your adulterous dalliance, there will be no more support of a fiscal nature.’ Phil was furious. ‘I’ve offered you a loan that many times, Brigitta, and you refused it like a true martyr, and now I find I’ve been subsidising you all along, and at such a rate. Well. I’m sorry, but that ends today. I will be calling the bank and cancelling this card. I won’t insist you repay what you’ve already rung up, but I do hope you understand how genuinely disappointed I am. I think your father would feel the same.’

  Phil stopped and waited for a sign of contrition but still Brigitta sounded more angry than sorry. ‘All right, fine. And I assume you’ll be stopping all Freddie’s cheques too, will you? How many fuck-ups are on his tab?’

  Phil put a hand to her neck, aghast. ‘That is an entirely different matter.’

  ‘The only difference that I can see, Mother, is that it’s me this time. And I’m not allowed to be a complete disaster like Freddie or perfect like Polly, or bloody well sainted like James. You always needed me just to get on and be all right. And you were happy to pay for it, as long as I didn’t make any work for you. I’m sorry I didn’t realise that arrangement was over.’

  Then, having already been so cruel, Brigitta hung up without saying goodbye.

  Phil swept up the entire pile of paper and dropped it into the bin, on top of the chicken pan. A few of the loose pages sagged into the puddled oil. She was so deathly tired of her daughter’s singular grievance. Brigitta had levelled it against her for years.

  While it was perhaps true that a share of the focus had gone off her immediately after James’s death, could Phil be blamed? She had lost a child! In her mourning, one or two of Brigitta’s key moments had certainly been missed, but they ought to have been got over by now. Instead, the wound opened again and again, even though this time, mourning Frederick, Phil was trying so hard to include Brigitta in her grief.

  Desperate to be out of the stifling kitchen, Phil went through to the front room and poured a generous measure of Frederick’s whisky. She carried it to the French doors and looked at the sky over the city.

  It would be dark soon, Phil realised, and she felt depressed by the thought. When the whisky was gone in a couple of bitter mouthfuls, she realised she couldn’t stay in the awful, silent house a moment longer.

  In the fridge, she found a half wheel of brie and a bottle of rosé, unseasonal but the only thing that was cold, and feeling unpleasantly self-conscious – a middle-aged woman marching around the kitchen in a fit of temper, shoving things into a basket like some silly film actress – she left by the kitchen door. At this moment, there was only one person she felt she could really talk to.

  47.

  One in four’s a dry one

  There was no security on the ground floor, and after locating the stairway in the rear corner of the dark, brown-tiled foyer, Phil climbed to the top floor and knocked on what was, by her best guess, the correct door.

  She heard a rustle, then the voice, soft and hoarse. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s me. Phyllida Woolnough!’ More shuffling, then the door opened an inch and Abi peered out. She was wearing a large woollen jersey as a dress, and her hair was wet. The fragrance of apple shampoo met Phil in the hall.

  ‘Gosh,’ Abi said, opening the door fully. ‘Hello. Are you all right?’

  Phil was annoyed by the look of pure shock on Abi’s face, calling attention as it did to the irregular nature of the visit. But emboldened by the whisky she said, ‘Quite, thank you.’ She waited until Abi seemed to realise she wanted to come in and took a step back.

  Phil found herself immediately in a tiny living room, which had an even smaller kitchen through a sort of arch, and a closed door on the opposite wall that presumably led to the bedroom where she could hear Jude making a weak protest against sleep. The only decorations were a quite good line drawing of the Opera House sails sellotaped to the wall beside her own little study of nasturtiums, hung too high to Phil’s eye and both overshadowed by the most enormous television. Abi had been watching her inspect the room, holding down the hem of her knit to cover as much as it would of her thin legs.

  ‘How did you know where I lived?’ Abi asked. ‘I mean, what door was mine?’

  ‘It wasn’t difficult, dear. There’s only a dozen in the block and they can’t all look at me.’

  Phil strode over to the window with the basket on her shoulder and peered down at her own house from above. Her window seat was perfectly recognisable through the fading light. ‘Goodness, I’ll have to give a little shimmy to the binocs next time I’m there, won’t I?’

  She turned, hoping to find Abi enjoying the joke, but the girl still stood in the same spot, apparently petrified. One of her legs seemed to have developed the faintest tremor. ‘Well, do shut the door, Abigail. Where shall I sit? I thought we’d have a drink. I brought some cheese.’

  Phil glanced towards the only seating, and was pleased at least to see the course brochure open on a cushion with an uncapped highlighter resting in its centre fold. A faintly familiar-looking throw rug, boiled to felt in a hot wash, was crumpled beside it, as though it had been shrugged off Abi’s lap when she got up to answer the door.

  ‘Oh very good,’ Phil said, taking in the tableau. ‘Lots there you like the look of?’

  Abi’s eyes darted to the brochure and back to Phil, who was starting to feel genuinely aggrieved by the lack of welcome. ‘You might pop that on a platter and put a few crackers with it,’ she said, handing over the cheese.

  Abi disappeared and came back a short time later, with the unwrapped brie on a plastic chopping board. She set it down on the seat of a dining chair that was to serve as the coffee table. ‘I’ve only got Jatz, sorry. They are two-for-one this week so that’s good,’ she said apologetically, lowering herself onto the carpet and sitting with legs crossed like a schoolgirl. ‘I hope that’s okay. I love cheese.’

  ‘Lovely platter, wedding present was it?’ Phil said, meaning to make a little joke, but Abi’s face told her she’d been unkind. ‘Ignore me dear, I’ve had the most unpleasant phone call with Brigitta and a fairly decent helping of Scotch.’ She cut herself a large wedge of cheese and smeared it onto one of the orange crackers. ‘But never mind all that. I thought we could put our heads together and come up with a plan for getting this chap of yours back. What do you think?’

  ‘Oh, okay.’ Abi sounded uncertain.

  ‘But would you be a lamb, please, and open that before we get to work.’ With the cheese knife, Phil pointed towards the bottle in her basket and Abi disappeared to the kitchen again.

  ‘Will these be all right?’ she asked, returning this time with a beer schooner with German-looking lettering in gold around its rim, and a large jar that, judging by its shape, had once contained an inexpensive passata. ‘I can’t find the wine glasses just at the minute.’

  She held one in each hand, waiting for Phil to make her selection. After a moment of consideration, Phil nodded towards the schooner and received it, half full of rosé.

  ‘Dear,
you should have told me your dungeon was rather in need of decorating. Mine is frankly over decc’ed and I’d be delighted to start fobbing a lot of it off, since I can’t foresee a time when I’ll need a range of serving options and glassware for forty, can you? Cheers anyway.’ Phil tilted her schooner towards Abi’s jar and drank for much longer than she thought she could.

  ‘Now. Abigail.’ The rosé was delicious, she realised, taking another sip and smearing another orange round with cheese. As she chewed, Phil tried to order the parts of a new project that had presented itself to her in the flats’ common stairwell. She would help get this boyfriend back. ‘You do, I’m right in thinking, want to make a go of things with Stuart? You love him and he loves you, can we agree on that?’

  Abi was holding a cracker with both hands and crumbling tiny mouse portions off one side. ‘I’m not really sure. I thought so. I mean I do,’ she replied in a way that sounded like a question. ‘We’ve had hardly any time together since Jude and I got here. Stu was so funny and so nice and always really happy in London, but he hasn’t been anything like that here, except for about ten minutes. Maybe it’s because of the baby, but I really thought he’d be a good dad once he got used to it. I suppose I was being quite romantic . . .’

  ‘What do you want then, Abigail? Let’s start there instead. Tell me what you would like to happen.’

  Abi dipped her finger in her wine, then sucked it. ‘All I want,’ she said, with a curious lack of emotion, ‘all I have ever wanted is a family. That is the only thing, Phil, the one and only thing.’