You Be Mother

by Meg Mason

  Elaine did not like mysteries, unless she was the mastermind, and in the matter of selling Milson Road she was certainly that. In one of life’s heavenly coincidences, not long after she’d had the idea of putting the flat on the market she had received a telephone call from a high-end estate agent with offices on the best side of Neutral Bay.

  Apparently, the agent explained, another resident in the building had plans to ‘push through’, which was why their offering price was so extraordinarily above market. Quietly, Elaine had accepted the offer and gone about the preparation of deeds and contracts in the inviolable privacy of her sewing room, knowing that when the time came, Roger could be pressed into signing. ‘We’d be mad not to,’ was going to be her line. ‘We’d be looking a gift horse in the mouth.’

  With the proceeds, she planned to help Stuart towards a nice three-bedroom, one-point-five-bathroom townhouse with ample parking and a level garden that would one day be suitable for a growing family. On that front, she’d also begun forming a shortlist of candidates from among the single daughters of her choir friends, and although she sensed it was a touch on the early side to bring it up – bearing in mind Stuart had apparently given up showering for the time being – Elaine hoped Christmas would provide opportunity for some gently orchestrated meetings.

  Occasionally, it was true, she experienced an involuntary wave of longing for Jude. Usually when one of his toys turned up behind a cushion, or someone at choir practice delayed the start of vocal warm-ups with a long and joyous anecdote about something their grandchild had said or done. Despite the circumstances of his birth, Jude had grown up to be quite nice, and the days Elaine had minded him on her own while Abi was at university were some of the most pleasurable of her life. Although she would never admit it, because the very plain fact was, to indulge her own desire for ongoing contact with Jude would only prevent Stuart’s wound from healing over. She needed to be stoic, for the sake of her own son.

  83.

  Such an arse

  ‘Mum!’ Brigitta shouted the moment Phil stepped into the crowded kitchen. ‘Somebody finished all the normal tea!’ Brigitta was holding an empty foil bag upside down, raining black dust onto the flagstones and waiting, apparently, for her mother to magic up some more.

  Toby and Max sat at the table making nasty-looking robot figurines fight with each other in a way that was putting obvious dents in the pine. Polly, in running gear, stood at the sink filling a water bottle and ignoring them. Somebody had changed the radio to a commercial station, which filled the kitchen with the infuriating babble of advertisements, and from the next room Mark’s baritone boomed about offshore something and regulatory something else. Only Freddie was absent from the scene, asleep upstairs no doubt, blissfully unconscious and bathed in the morning sunshine that poured in through his window.

  Tensions simmered on in the big house, lifting to a hard boil over idiotic things like the washing up. After her violent disquisition at the kitchen table, Brigitta had continued to lobby her mother to go across to the flats, but Phil had dug in with Polly on her side, and the campaign was gradually abandoned.

  Without the tea she’d come down to make, Phil left the room and walked straight back upstairs, returning to her unmade bed. She wanted her house back. Having longed for the companionship of her children all year, she now wished only for space.

  Polly had annexed Frederick’s study, working well into the night to keep with London time. Mark preferred to take calls directly below Phil’s bedroom window, the single advantage of which was that she was learning a great deal about capital markets. Freddie and Brigitta had set up camp in the front room, both of them yet to announce where they were going after Christmas, and in the meantime, picking up their adolescent personae with gusto. Brigitta lazing endlessly in any patch of sunshine like a house cat and traipsing wet footprints through the house after a swim, coming obviously bra-less to the dinner table; Freddie constantly needling them all, teasing, coming and going as he pleased.

  When Polly finally annexed the kitchen as well, Phil resolved to come downstairs as seldom as she could. ‘Why are you letting Freddie act like such an arse?’ Polly had screeched at her some nights before, when a risotto she’d asked him to watch caught the bottom of the pan and had to be turfed out. Letting! Phil thought as she evacuated. As though her powers of letting and prohibiting, where Freddie was concerned, hadn’t ebbed away years ago!

  But it was true, Freddie was such an arse. Never had Phil wanted so much to throttle him, bodily, as when she’d first seen him in Abigail’s grotty flat, grinning like a rat-trap, as though it was all a terrific joke.

  She’d barely been able to speak a word to him since, even though he’d dialled up his charm by a good few notches. As a boy he would push his luck too far, then deploy his full magnetism to win Phil’s quick forgiveness so he could feel golden again. Bulletproof. Nothing had changed.

  Brigitta, Phil could see, was slowly being won over by her brother’s efforts, their constant bickering gradually replaced by giggling and private jokes. Surely nothing was properly resolved, but at least their cessation of hostilities was kinder to the ear.

  After the anniversary of Frederick’s passing came and went, it was somehow settled they would all stay on for Christmas. Phil could not remember being consulted about any of it and was forced to accept as kindness what had come to feel like a continual invasion. There was no quiet, no opportunity to think properly about Abigail and the awfulness that had transpired between them. Half-formed thoughts came and went, between rushes of anger, moments of true wistfulness, and the constant low hum of wanting to know why. Why had Abigail done everything she’d done? Was she malicious or foolish? Cruel, or merely as lonely as Brigitta supposed.

  In the sanctuary of her bedroom, Phil straightened the covers and reached for the le Carré. A hundred pages in now and she’d simply stopped worrying about who anybody was and why they were all pointing guns at each other. She let her mind wander as the lines passed in front of her eyes.

  ‘Have I uncovered a passion? Are we both readers?’ Phil remembered asking the first time she noticed Abi throwing hungry looks at last year’s Booker on her lap. Was it their first ever appointment at the kiosk? How long ago that felt, although as clear as anything Phil could see the smile that spread across Abigail’s face as she’d received a 400-page stinker like the most wonderful gift.

  Such a trifle. The word repeated itself. Is that all their friendship had been? A trifle. A pleasant diversion from real life, in which Phil got to be kind and generous, was amused and amusing, with none of the ancient grievances and hurts and wrongs dragged up daily by her children to pollute simple companionship?

  Nothing was ever entirely forgiven, let alone forgotten, in the layers and layers of family history, so that your only chance for a morning passed peacefully at a pool or in your own garden was with a total stranger. Someone else’s daughter.

  The idea brought Phil up short. She tossed the book away and it landed with a soft thud on the carpet. Abigail was a stranger – possibly even a fantasist. That had been Polly’s word for it, one of the more repeatable ones. She’d had a mother tucked away the entire time and must have lied and edited and skirted around the fact constantly, every day they had spent together. Why had Phil not caught her in the lie? It was true, she had no memory of Abigail expressly saying her mother was dead. Only that there’d been an accident with the father and sister. But, as she found herself combing through scraps of conversation – ‘I expect there wasn’t anyone to teach you,’ ‘I’m used to being on my own a lot but it’s a different sort of alone when you’ve got a child’ – it was clear she’d never owned to her mother being alive either. Phil sighed. Was there a father stashed away too? Was the dead sister merely an invention? The sudden appearance of doubt on that front refreshed Phil’s melancholy. Eventually she forced herself to get up and run a bath.

  But as she flung on the hot water and sat waiting for it to fill, Phil felt a sti
ng of accusation. Because neither was she entirely innocent in it. She had let herself come to rely on a girl who she’d known from the outset to be a pit of need. Was it any wonder that Abigail had become attached? In that, she’d been careless. Yes, that was her only crime, Phil thought in her own defence, carelessness. It was beside the point now. She’d never been playing with a full deck. Whenever she felt an unwanted twist of guilt, she would remind herself of that.

  84.

  There is one thing

  ‘Are you sure you won’t come, Stu?’ Roger was standing outside his son’s bedroom door with his wife’s car keys in his hand and a large box wrapped in dinosaur paper under his arm.

  Stu was leaning against the doorframe in nothing but boxer shorts, with his arms folded across his chest. His hair was sticking up in wadded clumps, and Roger sensed it could do with a shampoo. ‘Nah. I don’t think so, Dad.’

  Roger lingered for a moment, hoping Stu would change his mind. Instead, Elaine appeared in the hallway with the clean, damp sponge recommended for the careful cleaning of Lladro. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s a birthday present for the little fella.’

  ‘I thought we said we would post something.’ She spoke in the pointed tone Roger remembered her using to spell out l-o-l-l-y and b-e-d in front of Stu when he was a young boy.

  ‘Did we Laine? I can’t think why I’d have agreed to that. I want to see him on his special day. He was the best present I’ve ever had.’ Before his nerve could fail, he hastened down the hallway and buckled himself into the Daihatsu like it was a tiny, fuel-efficient getaway car. All the way down the highway, Roger drove dangerously close to the speed limit and ran a series of orange lights through Chatswood. And all the time, his excitement grew until he was standing outside Abi’s door holding the present with both hands. He had missed Jude so much that he knocked much harder than he meant to. Abi opened it an inch and peered through the gap. She didn’t look very well. Pale, and like she’d lost a great deal of weight. Roger felt quite upset to see her like that, but managed a smile as she let him in and he saw Jude crawling around the empty room.

  The flat was completely packed. Most of the furniture was gone, including the pull-out. The only thing left was an open suitcase in the middle of the floor. Although Roger was happy to crouch in front of Jude and present him with the gift, it made him feel quite sad to see that Abi had managed to get the little fellow a bought cake and had put it down on a towel laid out like a picnic rug. They must have been about to have it when he arrived. She offered him a slice, which he accepted even though he knew there was a distinct chance he could ruin his dinner with so much icing.

  ‘How have you been, Abi?’ he asked. Abi seemed very anxious and Roger longed to set her at ease. ‘Stu has told me a few bits and bobs about what’s happened, but you’re not to worry, Abi. I’m not the sort to throw stones, as they say.’

  Abi looked relieved and sat beside him on the carpet. She undid one end of the present so that Jude would be able to tear the rest. After a period of concentrated effort, his patience began to wane and Abi helped him with the last bit.

  ‘They’re always more interested in the paper at this stage, aren’t they?’ Roger said modestly, although to his mind, Jude looked very taken with the high-quality digger he’d chosen from an overwhelming selection at Killara Toy Planet the previous day.

  ‘Is there anything I could do for you though, Abi?’ Roger glanced around the empty flat. ‘I’d love to be helpful in some way.’

  ‘There is one thing.’ Abi stood up and held Jude’s hands until he got himself up on two feet and then, to Roger’s amazement, clambered up Abi’s leg and onto her hip like a little monkey.

  ‘Anything, truly love.’ He got up and brushed off his trousers, keen to be put to work.

  ‘Do you have $223 that I could borrow?’

  His heart sank. Stu had told him the story of returning to the flat that day and finding Abi there surrounded by boxes, with a dicey fellow from next door, and Roger understood in theory that she had been planning to take Jude back to the UK. The point was, it was only now, seeing the empty flat for himself, that he truly realised Abi would not be around much longer. And neither would Jude. Roger wished, so powerfully at that moment, that she had asked him to look at a leaking tap.

  As it happened, he’d withdrawn $300 that morning and although he hated to give it to her, knowing it would be put towards their tickets, Elaine’s fruit and vege co-op money was burning a hole in his pocket. Abi wouldn’t ask if she didn’t truly need it. And she’d never do anything that would hurt little Jude. Roger took the notes from his wallet and began counting them into her palm, until eventually he closed her hand around all of it. ‘And I can send you more, Abi. I will. I don’t want you to worry about anything.’

  ‘Thank you, Roger. You’ve always been so nice to me.’

  Neither was game to look at the other. Instead, Abi carried Jude over to her suitcase, open in one corner of the room.

  ‘Would you be able to give something to Stu as well?’

  From the inside pocket, Abi took out a sealed envelope containing a thick, folded letter. Roger held it carefully.

  ‘Well,’ he said ‘Well . . .’ It seemed like there was nothing left to say. ‘I suppose I’d better be getting on. Do you think I could –’

  Before he was able to finish, Abi turned Jude towards him and Roger was simultaneously elated and destroyed when Jude reached out, wanting to be held. Abandoning all modesty, Roger held Jude close to his chest and kissed his warm, sticky cheek and smelt his lovely hair. With a stab of anguish, he gave the boy back to his mother and hurried towards the door.

  Abi was behind him when he paused to look back.

  ‘I love you, Roger,’ she said, kissing his cheek.

  Roger had never told anyone that he loved them except Elaine and Stuart, and as much as his heart longed to say the words, his mouth wouldn’t form them. ‘You’ll always have a friend in me, Abi. You always will. Goodbye, little fella,’ he said, taking Jude’s face in his hands again. ‘Don’t forget your Pa-pa.’

  85.

  One adult and him

  Before dawn, Abi readied them both as fast as she could, and when everything was done, lifted Jude into the carrier. Even facing outwards, the clips would barely fasten around him and he felt as heavy as a sandbag. At the last minute, she had decided the pram would be too cumbersome for her to manage on her own and had folded it away in a corner of the flat. Abi took a last look around, the nubbly carpet, the hard white walls, the windows slid shut against the stirring trees, black shadows against a black sky. She closed the door and slid her key back through the gap.

  Her suitcase contained nothing but essentials, which slid around as she bounced it downstairs. In her pocket was a second letter, and as her taxi arrived, she darted over the grass verge and pushed it into Phil’s letterbox. It was overgrown with a cloud of jasmine and she twisted off one of the fragrant tendrils and put it in the pocket of her tracksuit pants.

  As the cab carried them away, Abi closed her eyes. She did not want to see the glinting harbour, the terracotta rooftops on the peninsula, and somewhere through the trees the mint-green pool that would be as flat as a mirror in the early morning. Jude babbled, sucked two fingers, held out a hand and promptly fell asleep in the cab’s furry car seat. Abi envied his not knowing. But she could not cry and performed each function – getting out, paying the driver, finding a trolley and the Air India desk – like an automaton.

  ‘We’re one adult and him,’ she said, directing the clerk’s attention to the oversized infant strapped to her front. ‘To Heathrow please.’

  The woman studied her crumpled documents with disapproval. ‘You’re too early. Your flight doesn’t board until 5 p.m. I can’t check you in for another seven hours. You should go home and come back later.’

  Abi looked down at her suitcase. Slowly, she turned and began to walk away, with no idea where she was going. The straps of the b
aby carrier were already cutting into her shoulders.

  ‘Actually,’ the clerk called after her. ‘Ma’am? Because you’ve got the little one I could probably make an exception. You don’t want to have to drag that bag around all day, do you?’

  Abi could only whisper her thanks. Moments later, she accepted their boarding passes and watched as her worldly possessions were spirited down the conveyor.

  ‘Merry Christmas,’ the clerk said, signalling the end of their interaction with a glance over Abi’s shoulder to the next in line.

  Passage through customs was mercifully swift and, revived by a cardboard tray of hotcakes, Abi wandered the departures floor to keep Jude amused. As the hours passed, the airport began to feel like a small town she had lived in all her life. They developed favourite places, learned which were the better toilets, and sat on the floor between rows at the newsagent and read every book in the children’s section one by one, ignoring the shop attendants’ repeated suggestion that she either buy something or leave.

  By the time the flight was called, Abi had lost the sense they were even waiting for something. She joined the back of a long, slow-moving queue at the gate, deeply certain so many people could not fit on one plane. Again her world shrank, from the terminal to a single seat, 86F, the centre of the hot, back row. Jude had not slept since the ride to the airport and was passing through tiredness into something more ominous.

  While the cabin filled, Jude wanted to stand on Abi’s lap, treading his feet painfully up and down on the tops of her thighs. He threw his head back in a moment of wild, bent-backed mania, connected with Abi’s forehead and let out a piercing cry. Refusing even then to sit down, he grasped the headrest in front with both hands and wrenched it back and forth with all the strength in his short arms. It became a game, him reaching out, Abi peeling his hands away. The man in front quietly switched places with his young daughter who, to Abi’s untold relief, waved through the gap and began passing stickers back to Jude, who finally abandoned his tantrum to inspect the tiny farm animals adhered to the tips of his fingers.