You Be Mother

by Meg Mason

  By the time the violent juddering of take-off lifted them up and away, Jude was asleep, still clinging to a handful of hair.

  Abi leaned forwards and craned towards a window on the other side of the aisle, permitting herself a final glimpse at the city spread out beneath them, shining under the morning sun. ‘Thank you. Thank you for being such a nice place,’ she whispered, then dropped back against her seat and closed her eyes.

  The stewards began distributing meals. Abi declined a tray, sure that trying to peel off the scorching foil and scoop the contents into her mouth one-handed would wake Jude.

  Sometime later trays were cleared, nylon blankets crackling with static were distributed and as the pinprick lights were turned down, the cabin’s inmates sunk into an uncomfortable torpor.

  To forget the angry buzz of her left hip, pinned against the metal armrest by Jude’s sleeping body, Abi gazed at the flickering colours on her neighbour’s screen. In the white noise of the back row, phrases of her letters played back in her mind. But it didn’t matter anymore. Phil, and Polly, Stu and his parents, all of them would know the truth by now, and would soon be behind her, on the other side of the ocean she was passing over at a thousand miles an hour.

  86.

  All our mornings

  In an effort to ease tensions at the big house, Polly had drawn up a duty roster. Freddie burst out laughing when he saw it stuck to the fridge, and asked if he could look forward to a cool robot sticker for taking the bins out every night for a week.

  Polly had thrown a wet sponge at him but otherwise, Brigitta reflected, as she walked back from her job of piddling Domenica, the roster had actually improved things.

  Everyone was being nicer to each other and the boys’ excitement about today had diffused the sense of endless waiting.

  A few days ago, Phil had dug out the box of ancient and deeply familiar decorations and they’d all sat around with flutes of fizz, watching Max and Toby clump them together on the lowest branch of a tree Mark had organised. They put it where they always put it, and a warm breeze through the French doors spread the smell of pine needles through the house. And now it was Christmas Day.

  Brigitta still did not have a plan, beyond this walk. She and Freddie were supposed to prepare a cold luncheon, so it was really only taking a lot of lids off and tipping it out onto the platters that Polly had snatched back from Abi, that awful day. Brigitta still could not think about it without shuddering.

  No one else was out in the midday heat and Brigitta wandered slowly past the other big houses along the path. Most looked closed up for the summer, but now and again a family out on their patio would wave or call out ‘Merry Christmas’. As she passed the flats, she looked up at the third floor but there was no sign of life, and she walked on, resolving to be more grateful for her messy, demanding, spoilt family, as though doing so now could assuage their treatment of others. Notably, orphans. Of course Abi did have a mother after all, Brigitta thought, but to spend so much energy pretending otherwise surely meant there was something pretty wrong with her.

  When she came around the front of the house and leant down to unclip Domenica, she noticed an envelope sticking out of the box. She tugged it out, expecting a Christmas card hand-delivered by a neighbour who had missed the last post, but when the envelope came free it appeared much too thick and soft, as though many pages were folded inside. Brigitta turned it over and saw her mother’s name in the small, careful handwriting of a schoolgirl.

  She slipped through the gate and went straight up to her room, perching on the edge of the bed with her back to the door as she unsealed the envelope and took out the folded wad of paper.

  Dear Phil

  I am so sorry for all the trouble I have caused. I never meant to lie to you about my mother. It was only a misunderstanding but then I couldn’t bring myself to clear it up, because the truth is, ever since I met you, I have wished that you could be my mother instead. You probably knew that already, but it was the only reason I did all the things I did. You don’t have to keep reading this but I know I won’t see you again, so I want to tell you the real, true story about my mother. Her name is Rae.

  Brigitta looked away from the page. It wasn’t meant for her and reading on would be such an invasion, but she couldn’t help herself. The poor girl, pouring it all out on paper now, as though things could still be set right.

  As Abi began to describe the miserable facts of her life since an accident killed her father and sister, her writing became a scrawl, enormous messy letters making only three or four words to a line. Parts of it Brigitta could barely make out.

  ‘Herding? No. Oh God . . .’ she said under her breath.

  . . . my mother started keeping things. Hoarding them really. I was only 10 when it started, and I tried to . . .

  Brigitta turned the page.

  . . . then started to lose lots of weight and I still feel bad because I didn’t notice to begin with. She always wore . . .

  ‘Oh God.’ The details that followed made Brigitta’s stomach churn, and she scanned ahead until her eye fell on her own brother’s name.

  Brigitta laid a hand across her forehead. She couldn’t bear to know the details of how Freddie had acted towards such a vulnerable girl, who had probably come away thinking it was all her fault. That knowledge would change their relationship for ever, Brigitta knew, and she turned to the last page.

  Even though I feel so ashamed, I’m still grateful for everything you did for me. All our mornings at the pool, drinking coffee and talking about books and the funny things people do, they were the best mornings of my life. I’ve never been happier than I was then and I will always be glad I met you. I know that Jude won’t remember you, but one day when he’s old enough, I will tell him all about you and his first year in Sydney.

  ‘Oh God,’ Brigitta said for the final time. A hot tear rolled down her cheek and dropped onto the page.

  ‘Brigitta, where are you?’ Polly’s voice came from the bottom of the stairs. Hurriedly she refolded the letter and noticed a postscript that had been added to the outer page.

  PS. My name isn’t actually Abigail. Abi isn’t short for anything. I want to be truthful about that too, although I know it doesn’t really matter.

  ‘Briggy!’ Polly was coming along the hall. ‘We’re all waiting to do the presents.’ She put her head around the door. Brigitta shoved the whole lot under her leg and turned to see Polly looking around the room suspiciously. ‘Are you coming down? We want to get started. Why are you sitting by yourself in semi-darkness?’

  ‘Just having a moment to myself, Pidge.’

  ‘All right, well, can you not because Toby’s about to pass out from waiting.’

  Polly ducked out and Brigitta tried to decide what to do with Abi’s letter. If she gave it to her mother, it was bound to upset her. If Polly got hold of it, she’d get rid of it before Phil ever saw it.

  Dragging a chair to the wardrobe, Brigitta reached to the highest shelf and slid it between two folded blankets. As she reached the very back, her hand met something cardboard. She put the letter between her teeth and yanked it out.

  Written on the lid in her own childish script was, ‘BRIGGA’S BOX OF SAD THINGS. DEFFINATELY NO LOOKING’. The only thing in it was some crusty tube of ointment, but seeing it for the first time in so long made her feel homesick for a different time. She put Abi’s letter inside and hid it all back behind the blankets.

  As Brigitta made her way downstairs, bracing herself for festivity, she could only think how useful the box would have been this year. Her father. Guy, her career, Kentish Town. Polly being so hard on everyone, Freddie being so Freddie, her mother’s doing as she pleased between moments of mad denial. Even Abi and her sweet babe – in it would all go. But, she thought passing by the window seat, she’d have needed a much bigger box.

  87.

  Well, Merry Christmas then

  Roger was not getting into the spirit of things and it was making Elaine tense. S
he had not been up since 6.30 a.m. brushing a half-ham with an expensive ready-made gourmet glaze at ten-minute intervals, so that he and Stuart could sit like a pair of sad sacks around the thoughtfully decorated conservatory table. Clearly, neither of them had paused to consider how difficult it was to make citrus pomanders from scratch.

  Elaine shook the end of a Christmas cracker at him. ‘Roger!’

  ‘I’ve already done one, thanks Elaine,’ he said, pointing at the pink paper Christmas hat pulled down as far as his woolly eyebrows. Stu had refused to put his on but at least, Elaine had decided, he’d deigned to come out of his room.

  ‘Well, Merry Christmas then,’ she said, grasping both ends and trying to apply opposing force. Because she had opted for the more expensive kind with better prizes, the thick foil would not yield and she lost her grip, toppling a glass.

  Roger leapt up to avoid the tide of Sparkling Appletiser washing towards him and managed to spare his special occasion slacks. But as he stood dabbing the tablecloth with a napkin, his woolly brows shot up, and his mouth fell open, as though in the grip of an idea. Elaine twitched. Generally, she preferred Roger not to have ideas.

  ‘Stuart,’ he began, voice quavering.

  ‘What?’ Stu was leaning back in his chair, staring into the middle distance. After two bites he had pushed his plate away, a criminal waste of glazed ham, but Elaine consoled herself with the knowledge that, because it had come out so unusually moist, it would do for sandwiches.

  ‘Stuart, you can’t let her go.’ Roger pulled off his paper hat and screwed it into a ball.

  Stu looked at him askance. ‘What?’

  ‘You mustn’t let Abi go.’

  Elaine could not remember the last time Roger issued a direct command and she was not enjoying the experience now.

  ‘Newsflash, Dad. It’s over,’ Stu said, sounding emptied of emotion.

  ‘Only if you let it be. Plenty of couples have got over more than this, just by setting their minds to it. You’ve got a son to think about. If you let her go, you can be sure you won’t see him grow up. Have you thought of that, Stuart? Really thought about it? I don’t like to be direct with you,’ Roger’s volume rose and rose, ‘but I think you’re making a damned huge mistake.’

  ‘Roger!’ Elaine snapped. ‘Please don’t curse on the day of our Lord’s birth! We’re in the middle of Christmas lunch. Sit down and finish your ham.’

  Roger turned to his wife and, for the first time in their married life, looked at her with something approaching anger.

  ‘I am very sorry,’ Roger said, pushing in his chair as though he was finished with festivities. ‘I think I need to go for a drive. So . . . Elaine . . . the ham will . . . have to keep!’

  She clutched her small bosom in shock. For a moment, nobody moved, until Elaine stood up and, defying every cell in her body, began scraping their plates at the table. ‘This Christmas has just gone to hell in a handbasket, hasn’t it!’

  But Roger was right about one thing. Elaine could not deny it. Being so truly moist, the ham would keep.

  88.

  Mostly it’s been torture

  ‘Righto you lot. I’m done for. Merry Christmas all.’ Mark stood up, looking distinctly wobbly, and crunched over the carpet of wrapping paper, plastic packaging and pine needles. Phil had retired with the boys, and now Polly and Freddie and Brigitta were alone in the front room, lit only by tree lights.

  Freddie was lying on the floor, tooling vaguely through the Blackberry Mark had given him. Brigitta was curled up at the foot-end of Polly, who lay the length of the velvet sofa. All three were stuffed, woozy with drink and too tired to go to bed. The King’s College Christmas CD was playing on repeat. It had been on all day; no one could be bothered to turn it off.

  Brigitta yawned. ‘I know we didn’t plan this exactly, but I haven’t minded being all together. Today, I mean. Not the whole time. Mostly it’s been torture.’

  ‘Me neither,’ Freddie said, without looking away from the screen. ‘Even though you are both fucking crackers.’

  ‘We are fucking crackers?’ Polly said, but her voice was warm and teasing, as if all the stress of her year had been dissolved in champagne or, Brigitta thought, relief that the day was over and at this moment, no one was having a crisis that required her intervention.

  ‘I mean it as a compliment,’ Freddie said.

  ‘Obviously.’ Polly moved onto her side and closed her eyes to sleep where she lay.

  ‘I miss Dad,’ Brigitta said into the soft silence. ‘Do you realise this is actually our second Christmas without him? It feels like the first, don’t you think?’ She finished the warm dregs of champagne in a glass within reach and fished out the bloated strawberry at the bottom. It fizzed softly in her mouth.

  ‘I feel like it’s all been blur,’ Polly said, eyes still closed. ‘I think I’ve just been in survival mode for twelve months.’

  Freddie tossed the Blackberry aside and stretched. ‘God, I miss Jamie.’

  Brigitta and Polly sat bolt upright and stared at their brother.

  ‘What?’ Brigitta said.

  ‘Do you?’ Polly asked. ‘On special days do you mean, or all the time?’

  Freddie turned his head lazily in their direction. ‘All the time. What? Of course I do, don’t you? I miss him every minute, you silly bitches. We shared a room every day of my life.’

  Brigitta did not know what to say, and could see that Polly was struggling as well. The last time they’d discussed it between themselves, they’d both admitted to missing James in a vague, conceptual way. He had become such a distant figure, any lingering sadness had been replaced by the sharp ache they felt for their father. Brigitta realised then that she’d never thought Freddie would be any different.

  Freddie propped himself up on both elbows. ‘Why do you think I’m such a fuck-up? You’ve had each other this entire time, but I lost my only brother. I was nine for fuck’s sake.’

  Brigitta caught Polly’s eye and felt guilt, remorse, understanding, love pass between them. We have, she thought. We have had each other this entire time. Polly looked away, visibly chastened.

  Freddie picked up his phone again, moving on as Brigitta knew only Freddie could.

  ‘Hey, Brig, do you remember Will Binney? My mate from school?’

  ‘Mmm. Mum used to give him haircuts in the garden when he’d been docked for it touching his collar.’ She stretched out and lay, top and tail, against Polly’s side. ‘Why?’

  ‘He’s in London now. In the arts, and he’s just pinged me, asking for your details.’

  ‘Will Binney,’ Polly said. ‘He had the biggest thing for you, Briggy.’

  ‘Please. Will Binney is gay on a tray.’

  ‘I’ve been on a sixteen-day rugby tour with Will Binney,’ Freddie said, ‘and I can confirm he’s most definitely not gay. Anyway, he’s doing that Cloudstreet thingo in London and they’re basically driving around Shepherd’s Bush at this point and pulling Australians into a van. Shall I flick him your wotsit?’

  ‘Can you still remember how to do an Australian accent?’ Polly asked. Brigitta gave her a swift kick.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so, Freddie. I’ve started to think I won’t go back. Someone has to stay with Mum for a while and I’m not sure London’s forgiven me yet.’ Brigitta shot her sister a nervous glance, but for once, Polly let the moment go, focused as she was on picking an After Eight off the carpet with her foot.

  ‘London couldn’t give a fuck, Brig,’ Freddie said. ‘You’re good and that’s all. Besides, I don’t think you fit behind Mum’s drapes anymore.’ He cast a glance at the tall curtains on either side of the French doors, which had once upon a time opened on Brigitta’s many childhood plays, improvised over fourteen acts.

  ‘And anyway,’ Freddie went on. ‘I’ve decided I’m going to stay, as penance. I’ll mind Mum for a bit, or let her mind me, whichever she’d enjoy most.’

  Polly threw the wrapper at him but Brigitta
could see she was smiling. He was not forgiven, but Brigitta knew he would be.

  ‘Right! Custom has it the Woolnough children sneak out for a dip on Christmas night once the parentals are asleep. Come on.’ Freddie got himself standing without his stick and hopped towards the sofa.

  ‘Freddie, no. Shouldn’t we clean up a bit?’ Brigitta said.

  ‘And I’m too tired. I need to go to bed.’

  ‘Too bad, Pidge. It’s tradition. I’m going to need one on each arm, I’m an invalid after all.’

  * * *

  Phil heard Brigitta creep up the stairs sometime after midnight and after a short eternity in the shower, she tapped on the door.

  Phil was sitting with a glass of whisky. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are you all right? I saw the light under your door. I didn’t realise you were awake.’ Brigitta padded in, squeezing a river of water out of her hair directly onto the carpet.

  ‘Your father and I would always wait up until you all got back from the plunge.’

  ‘Ha. How did you know about that?’

  ‘Only by the quantity of sodden towels that greeted me every Boxing Day for twenty-five years. I think we’ve all now learned nothing goes unnoticed in this house.’

  Phil held the covers back and, as always, Brigitta climbed in. ‘Mum, Freddie just told me that a school friend of his is looking for actors, in London, and I thought I might give it a go but only if it is all right with you.’

  ‘Do you mean that Binney boy?’

  ‘Yes. You used to cut his hair, remember?’

  Although it could just as well be used against you, Brigitta really was the most reliable rememberer of family facts and Phil smiled at the memory. ‘I always thought he was a bit keen on you, darling.’ From somewhere distant, Phil recalled his regular appearances at the back door that always coincided, to the minute, with Brigitta getting in from tennis.