You Be Mother

by Meg Mason

  ‘What do you think?’ Brigitta sucked her bottom lip.

  ‘About what, darling?’

  ‘About me going back?’

  ‘Oh.’ Phil put her whisky on the bedside table. ‘Could you, darling? Please? It’s been lovely, of course, but I’m beginning to feel quite murderous from all the rooming in.’

  Brigitta clapped a hand to her forehead. ‘You are actually, honestly, the most infuriating woman in the entire world. Can I sleep here?’

  ‘Go on then.’ Phil reached over and switched off her light.

  As they settled into the darkness, she felt Brigitta reach for her hand. The large windows were open, and the breeze carried in the scent of gardenias. Laughter drifted in from a passing launch.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Phil whispered after a moment, ‘once you’re back you might look up Abigail. Not right away but you know, one day. Just to see that she got on. I see now she was something of a troublemaker but she was also my ballast this dreadful year, darling. For what it was worth.’

  ‘I will. But her name’s not Abigail though, Mummy. It’s just Abi.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ Phil felt thrown. Would there be no end to the revelations?

  ‘I don’t know, I just do. Abi’s not short for anything.’

  Phil rolled away, and with the weight of Brigitta’s arm across her middle she lay and thought about her, the girl. Just Abi. Her anger was spent and she offered up a vague prayer for her wellbeing, which petered out as she drifted gently into sleep.

  89.

  Lucky you

  Abi had worked it out wrong. When they landed, it was still Christmas Day.

  ‘You’ve come in from Australia,’ explained the customs officer from behind his Perspex window. His pale face was the same dirty grey white as his shirt. Behind him, a sign reminded Abi that if she assaulted the staff or used obscene language, she was liable to be prosecuted. ‘You gain a day. Get to have your Christmas twice.’ He pushed their passports back under the glass. ‘Lucky you.’

  Abi thanked him and returned the passports to a waxed paper airsickness bag she had found in her seat pocket. On the back was a to-do list she’d written out somewhere over the Atlas Mountains.

  Ring Tanya re job.

  Sort nursery.

  Some cleaning etc.

  The long flight had left her nauseous. With Jude happy enough in the carrier for the time being, she lined up for an Egg McMuffin to settle her stomach. Someone had made a half-hearted attempt to decorate the food court with tinsel but it only added to the derelict feeling of the terminal, as though the building itself could not bear the weight of all the human experience that had taken place within its walls.

  Egg McMuffins tasted much worse than Abi remembered, strangely metallic, and she tossed it into the bin on her way into the underground walkway that led to the London shuttles. The Tube wasn’t running on Christmas Day, so there was no way to avoid the twelve pound fare.

  She let herself be carried along by a tide of people surging beneath its low ceiling, until they were spat out at the other end. Her memory flared with the first lungful of cold morning air. The bus fumes and car exhausts, the smell of crowds pressed too close, steam rising off damp overcoats, the cigarette butts smouldering in overflowing bins, wet leaves and rain running in the gutters, it was in her bones. It was Croydon and Highside Circuit. It was Rae and Louise. It was long, lonely days in the Student Services office and the longer, lonelier trips home. All here, unchanged. London would absorb her back, just as it had let her go.

  Needles of rain were coming down at an angle and Abi tried to find a place to stand under the glass shelter, but the travellers already huddled there did not move to admit her. She tried to shield Jude with one side of her hoodie but he was unhappy now and throwing his weight from side to side in the carrier. Abi had no energy left to rock him. Although icy wind cut through her clothing, sweat beaded on her upper lip. She did not feel well.

  A shuttle came and went, fitting only half the waiting passengers. An electronic board tracking the next one flicked from eight minutes to fourteen. When it finally came, Abi was last on, missing out on a seat. She stood at the front, a leg each side of her suitcase, and one hand clutching a nearby headrest. Before the shuttle pulled away, a vagrant passed by the closing doors, which sucked in his stench. Abi breathed through her mouth, against another wave of nausea boiling up from her stomach to her throat.

  Jude began to cry. Abi found her phone and scrolled through photos to distract him. ‘Look Jude, there’s Phil in her garden.’ The green of the grass seemed to glow against the backdrop of grey faces and rain-slicked windows. She scrolled through each picture, whispering in his ear until his temporary misery subsided.

  Slowly the shuttle wound its way out of Heathrow and joined the A-road. At a set of traffic lights, Abi looked out and saw a girl a few years younger than her, waiting to cross with a pram. She had a dozen gold rings of descending size in each ear and a curl stuck to her forehead with gel. She was wearing a pair of reindeer antlers, shiny leggings and ballet flats with the backs trodden down. Abi had almost forgotten about them, that kind of mum, and she looked away quickly in case the girl happened to look back and mistake Abi for one of her own.

  The shuttle let off at Mitcham. She needed to find a taxi but as she turned to look along the road, fatigue and biting cold and the smell of the fried chicken being eaten out of a cardboard bucket by a yellow-faced teenager made her feel suddenly faint. As she shot her hand against a tree to stop herself from tumbling over, a thousand white stars burst in front of her eyes. Abi found the paper bag in her pocket, shook out their passports and threw up into her to-do list.

  90.

  It is not a special day for us

  It was not until Abi was standing at the peeling front door of Highside Circuit that she realised she didn’t have a key. Or any key, to any door, anywhere. Without credit, Abi had not been able to text Rae to say she was coming home, but she knew her mother would be there to peer through the front nets and let her in.

  Inside the carrier, Abi could feel Jude’s nappy soaking through and into her T-shirt. She was so thirsty her tongue kept sticking to the roof of her mouth.

  She stepped over the waterlogged cartons spilling newspapers and swollen piles of junk mail in front of the door and knocked. The bins spewed rubbish, and rain pooled in the lids upturned on the ground. A single weed, trying bravely to establish itself in a crack in the concrete, was the only note of green. Although it was mid-morning, the pewter-coloured sky above Croydon gave no sense of time. It only was.

  Through a gap in the nets Abi saw the blue flicker of the television in the front room. Soft rain was falling. She knocked again, stamping her feet against the cold.

  When no one came she rapped on the window, until Pat’s front door opened and a young woman stepped out, draping a scarf around her head.

  ‘Nobody is home,’ she said in a softly accented voice. ‘The lady isn’t inside.’

  ‘Where is she?’ Abi asked, looking around as though Rae would be somewhere in the concrete courtyard. She hadn’t been further than the Iceland on the corner with Merton Road since 1998. ‘I’m her daughter.’

  ‘My husband drives a car and yesterday she asked him to take her to the hospital.’ The woman looked at her and then at Jude with concern. ‘Please come inside. It is very, very cold.’

  Not knowing what else to do, Abi stowed her suitcase behind a carton and stepped over the low dividing wall. Inside, the woman took off the headscarf and hung it on a peg. She had long, dark hair that fell around her shoulders like a slippery shawl. Pat’s Axminster carpet was gone and the wallpaper that was designed to make the hallway look like a birch forest in spring had been painted out. Someone was trying to remove the mustardy tinge to the Artex ceiling, formed by three decades of Pat’s smouldering Parliaments, but had only got halfway along so far. Abi followed the woman to the kitchen where four young children were sitting at the table, eating bread and N
utella. She gestured towards the only empty chair. Abi sat and finally released Jude from the carrier, feeling the weight of his wet nappy in her lap. One of the children, a girl of about six, slipped off her chair and found a coloured plastic ring. She wiped it on her sparkly L’il Princess T-shirt and handed it to Jude.

  ‘Your mother is not healthy,’ the woman said, as she put a glass of tea in front of Abi and stirred in three large teaspoons of sugar.

  ‘I know.’ It had been a secret, well kept for years, and all of a sudden it seemed everyone knew. ‘Do you know why she went in? What for exactly?’

  ‘We hear a lot of coughing, very bad, through the wall, night and day. But I am not sure where she go because she never come outside. I bring her food but she say no thank you.’ She spoke cautiously, as though the news would come as a shock. ‘I am sorry to tell you.’

  ‘I already knew. Thank you though.’

  ‘My name is Darya.’

  ‘Sorry, I’m Abi. Thank you for this tea, it’s really nice.’

  ‘It is St Georges Hospital on the Blackshaw Road. I cannot come with you because my husband is working.’

  Buses did not run on Christmas Day. Already low on money, Abi realised she would have to walk. ‘I know the one. Thank you. I suppose I should get going,’ she said, although the tea was spreading warmly through her insides like dye in water, and she did not want to leave the warmth of the kitchen, where the familiar ghost of Pat seemed to hover. Abi tried to rouse herself.

  ‘Perhaps, you do not know me, but I am trustworthy,’ Darya said hesitantly. ‘If you must walk you can leave the baby with us.’

  ‘I would, I totally would.’ Abi was eager to acknowledge the unusual kindness. ‘But I can’t ask you to mind him on your Christmas Day.’

  ‘It is not a special day for us. If you feel happy, I am happy. Outside is very cold.’

  The children had been following the conversation as they sat eating and now the L’il Princess girl stood up, stuck her hip out and folded her arms. When she spoke, Abi had to cover her mouth against erupting laughter. ‘We was gunna do parpcleaners, innit.’

  Home again.

  When it was settled, Abi accepted a Nutella sandwich for the walk and kissed Jude goodbye. He refused to leave the little girl’s arms, mesmerised by her T-shirt and pierced ears. Darya apologised for not having a raincoat or umbrella to lend her.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Abi said. ‘I’ll be fine. If you don’t mind me asking, how old are you? You don’t look old enough to have four kids.’

  ‘I am twenty-three years old.’

  ‘Oh right. Same here.’

  ‘So we are both feeling old enough, then.’ With that, Darya stepped in and hugged her and did not appear to mind when Abi cried, just for a moment, into her lovely hair.

  91.

  I am a fucking social worker

  ‘Could you tell me where to find Raelene Egan?’ Abi asked the receptionist. ‘She’s a patient but I don’t know which ward she’s on.’

  It had taken over an hour to walk to the hospital, and Abi had done two full laps of the squat redbrick building before she found an entrance. Foil-like windows, tinged with green, stared at her blankly, unconcerned, as the rain soaked her to the bone.

  ‘How’d you spell it?’

  ‘E, G, A, N.’

  ‘Bear with me a minute.’

  Abi watched the receptionist depress each key with a marked lack of haste.

  ‘Here we go. Egan, R. She’s no visitors at this time.’

  ‘I’m her daughter.’

  ‘ID?’

  Abi had her passport and showed her the photo page.

  ‘Right. Hold a minute.’ She spoke briefly into her headset, at the same time drawing circles on a photocopied map of the hospital.

  ‘Third floor to High Dependence.’

  As soon as the lift doors opened, a doctor stepped forward, as though he’d been waiting for her. ‘You’re Raelene Egan’s daughter?’

  Abi wiped wet hair off her face and nodded.

  ‘I’m Jonathan. Head of the team looking after your mother. I take it you have not seen her in some time.’ He flipped backwards through a folder of notes.

  ‘That’s right, yeah. I was in Australia. I got in just now. Well, this morning.’ Abi wondered if she was allowed to call him Jonathan.

  ‘Before I take you in, I have to warn you, she presented under five and a half stone. Thirty-five kilos. We’ve been unable to improve on that. The body is working too hard with the pneumonia. Little response to the antibiotics, but we’re limited in terms of dosage owing to the current weight. I’m very sorry, Abi, but it’s about keeping her comfortable at this stage.’ He paused, waiting for a show of emotion. ‘We’ve been attempting to contact you for the last twenty-four hours even though your mother requested that you weren’t to be notified. I am very sorry.’

  Abi studied the zip of her hoodie.

  ‘So, this way then.’ The doctor placed a hand on Abi’s back and ushered her along the corridor. ‘And I’ll talk to a nurse about getting you some dry clothes.’ It was only then that Abi worried she would cry. But she would not be shocked. Abi, who had lifted Rae naked and unconscious out of a shower run cold. Abi, who’d slept in her mother’s bed on nights when Rae couldn’t get warm. Abi, who had spent her life watching her mother die. The chemical dread that flooded her body as she walked beside the doctor was only a reflex, she told herself, her zero-setting from a long childhood.

  The ward was divided into four by thick paper curtains. A narrow strip of windows looked out on a featureless carpark below a flat, white sky.

  The doctor held the curtain back and excused himself as Abi stepped in and saw her mother for the first time in a year. Her shell of clothing was gone. The parka, the jumper upon jumper, the knee socks over loose leggings, the knit hat. Instead, two bare arms lay at her sides, like lengths of rope knotted at each bulbous elbow. Her face was turned away so that her neck was a mess of sharp tendons and deep hollows.

  Sensing someone’s presence, Rae looked over. Her face stretched into a smile, skin against cheekbone, eye sockets dug out with a spade. Abi realised she was going to be sick.

  ‘My girl,’ Rae said as she watched her daughter lunge for the wastebasket beside the bed. ‘My darling. You’ve come home. I told them not to bother you. I’m sorry, lovey. I didn’t want to be trouble for you.’

  Abi stayed crouched over the bin and spat out a final acid mouthful.

  ‘You right, my darling? Hold a minute, I can buzz us a nurse,’ Rae said as she was overtaken by a wet, burbling bout of coughing. Abi hauled herself to standing and carried the heavy bin out to the corridor, looking for someone who could take it away.

  No one came. Eventually, Abi put it down against the wall and walked back to her mother’s bed.

  ‘This is the best surprise of me life,’ Rae said. ‘You’ve made me day, you have. Made me year!’ After each exclamation, they both waited for a fit of thick, mucousy coughing to pass. ‘If I’d known you was coming, I would have done us a proper ex-mas lunch. Where is my grandson? Where’s the little man?’

  ‘I’ve left him with a friend,’ Abi said.

  ‘What about Stu, love? Has he come with you as well?’

  Abi shook her head.

  ‘Oh, Abi love.’ Rae’s rictus grin faded. She reached out a hand, tight and pink and shiny, and Abi made herself take it. ‘I wish I’d known you was coming. I only came in here yesterday because if I’m honest, I’ve only come in here because I needed a bit of company. No you, and no Pat. I only didn’t want to bother you.’ She brightened. ‘They’ll let me out now. Now that you’re home. And we could have Christmas tomorrow, couldn’t we? I’ll tidy up a bit. All the puddings and that will be on sale at Marks.’

  Rae closed her eyes. She had exhausted herself.

  As Abi went to sit down, the doctor reappeared and invited her to a nearby treatment room.

  ‘I thought perhaps you’d have some questions,’
he said, shutting the door.

  ‘When do you think she’ll be able to go home?’ Abi asked. ‘I’m here now, so I can look after her again.’

  The doctor shuffled his seat closer to hers. ‘I’m terribly sorry. Perhaps I wasn’t clear earlier. Your mother will remain here until – I should say, her heart has been weakened by the years of chronic malnutrition. It will only be a matter of weeks. At best.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I wish there was more we could do.’

  ‘No,’ Abi said, voice rising.

  ‘I really am terribly sorry. Although it’s fortunate that you made it back in time. Often patients are able to hang on until loved ones return.’

  Abi felt a long anguished cry rise from her belly.

  The doctor waited. ‘We are able to connect you with a social worker, who can . . .’

  ‘I am a fucking social worker!’ Abi cried. Then, dropping her head to her hands, she whispered, ‘Well, I almost was.’

  92.

  Run to the pain

  Every car and lorry gave Abi a blast of the horn as it tore past her. It was getting dark and the footpath had run out some time ago, and now Abi was running along the edge of fast-moving traffic, trying to find a gap in the high concrete barrier. She had left the hospital by a different exit and, unable to orient herself, she’d taken a narrow alley to where she thought taxis would be waiting. She could ask the driver to take her £6 towards home. Instead, she found herself edged in by a thin, dirty canal. To rejoin the right road she climbed through a hole in a wire fence, wet again and shaking now all over. Her feet ached from the rising cold but she could not stop running. Now she was approaching an immense roundabout. Six lanes of traffic converged from multiple directions. She hovered at its edge in a circle of street lamp, waiting for a break in the streaming cars. A white van slowed as it passed. The driver wound down his window, ‘Give us a smile darling. It might never happen.’