The Cactus

by Sarah Haywood

  This was getting me nowhere. I had a job to do, and a limited amount of time in which to do it. Pulling out the main drawer of my mother’s dressing table I was hit by the sickly smell of stale makeup. I opened an old powder compact and brought the small pink puff to my nose. The scent reminded me of the times my mother would lean over to kiss me good-night as I lay in bed. I always wanted her to stay longer, to hold my hand or stroke my hair, but she invariably had to go to Edward, who wouldn’t settle until he’d had innumerable stories and lullabies, a mug of cocoa and checks for monsters in the wardrobe or under the bed. (He probably still won’t. Is that Rob’s role?) And, of course, once my mother had acceded to all of Edward’s demands, she then had my father’s to deal with.

  I threw the face powder—together with compacts of blusher, palettes of eye shadow and tubes of frosted lipstick—into the bin liner on the floor next to me. To them, I added pots of face cream, hand cream and lip salve, along with hairpins, hairnets and rollers. That left only the framed family photograph, a pair of china candlesticks and a silver-backed brush, comb and mirror set, which I carefully placed in a cardboard box. After a moment’s hesitation, I retrieved the powder compact from the bin liner and added it to the collection.

  Next I opened my mother’s naphthalene-infused wardrobe, which was crammed with dress-and-jacket and skirt-and-jacket suits in pale lemon, baby blue and lavender. I remembered her explaining to me, when I was a child, that she liked to stick to shades that she knew complemented her pale coloring and that would coordinate with each other. I told her that that was boring, but she was quite set in her ways. I filled three bin liners, destined for the charity shop, before the wardrobe was finally empty. I then turned to the chest of drawers, the contents of which were similarly destined, other than the tights and undergarments that I picked up between thumb and forefinger and put in the rubbish bag. It all felt like such a terrible invasion of my mother’s privacy. In the bottom drawer, I found a misshapen buff-colored cardigan that used to belong to my father; one of his old favorites. I decided to retain it. Perhaps it would be useful to protect the contents of the box, I reasoned.

  Inside my mother’s bedside table, I found a fake crocodile skin box. This was where she kept her cheap bits of costume jewelry, which she chose to wear in preference to her more expensive items. I remembered having fun, when I was a small child, adorning myself with these baubles and standing in front of the wardrobe mirror, pretending to be the queen or Princess Grace of Monaco. For some inexplicable reason, I now felt impelled to recreate the scene. I draped half a dozen strings of beads around my neck, clipped diamanté earrings to my ears, pinned several enamel brooches to my black top and balanced a faux-pearl necklace on my head, like a tiara. I stood in front of the same wardrobe mirror and took in the regal effect. It was like being seven years old again—an age at which it was no less likely that I’d rule the country or marry a prince than that I’d be a teacher or a police officer or an airline pilot.

  Rob, sure enough, had to choose that moment to knock on the door and enter, carrying two mugs of coffee. I’d thought he was still lounging in bed; more time must have passed than I realized.

  “Christmas has come early this year.” He smiled. “I mean, you look very decorative, very Bollywood.”

  I could feel the color rising to my cheeks, despite my efforts to subdue it. I struggled to think of a rational explanation for my ludicrous behavior but was unable to do so. I removed the items of jewelry and replaced them in the box, taking care not to give away my mortification by rushing. Having closed the lid, I sat on the Lloyd Loom chair in the corner of the room and accepted a mug, as though nothing unusual had occurred. Rob perched on the matching ottoman at the end of the bed. The coffee was instant.

  “Looks like you’re making headway,” he said, oblivious to the awkwardness of the situation. “I guess it’s hard, having to sort through years of stuff and decide what to keep and what to chuck. It’s like drawing a line under a huge part of your past. That’s probably why Ed couldn’t face it.”

  “Couldn’t face the hard work, you mean.”

  “I think he’s just trying to stay strong. To move on.”

  I simply laughed. I was determined not to get into an argument, despite my urge to counter such poppycock. Surveying the room, Rob asked what I was intending to do with the furniture. I had to admit I hadn’t yet formulated a plan; I have no room for it in my flat, but it’ll come in useful when I receive my inheritance and buy a house. It’ll have to go into storage until then.

  When our coffee was finished, I suggested to Rob that he go outside to do what he does best—tidy the garden—while I continued undistracted.

  “Are you always this bossy?” he asked, as he was leaving.

  “Not bossy,” I called after him. “Just organized.”

  Within another hour or so the task of clearing my mother’s bedroom was complete. All that remained was the bare, dusty furniture and a pile of stuffed boxes and bin liners. The baby was squirming, enlivened either by the caffeine or by the vigorous activity of the morning. Lying down on the double bed, I stroked my bump in an effort to calm it. I heard the opening chords of “Perfect Day” drifting up from somewhere downstairs. As Lou Reed joined in, so did Rob. His voice was more tuneful, more controlled, than you might expect from someone so nonchalant. Perhaps he’d been a choirboy as a child. I recalled that my brother had also had a surprisingly tolerable voice when he was younger. He’d once had ambitions of singing in a band (of course) but found rehearsing for a couple of hours a week too much commitment. I closed my eyes and allowed my mind to drift along with the music. I thought about my own perfect day as a child.

  It’s our family’s first morning in our rented holiday cottage in Cornwall, the summer before I start secondary school. My sleep hasn’t been disturbed, and I haven’t woken feeling sick with dread. When my mother hears me stirring, she comes in with a mug of tea. She doesn’t just put it on the bedside table and leave. Instead, she pulls open the curtains and sits on the edge of my bed. The intensity of the light lends a cartoonish quality to everything around me. My mother’s wearing a sleeveless cotton dress with pink-and-red roses on it, which I’ve never seen before, and her hair is twisted into a loose bun.

  “What would you like to do today, sweetheart?” my mother smiles. “It’s your choice.”

  While I’m thinking, I watch fairy dust drifting in the shafts of sunlight. I ask if we can go rock-pooling at the local beach. Without checking whether Edward’s happy to do that, she agrees. My father also comes in to say, “Good morning.” He’s in holiday mode, in shorts and short-sleeved shirt, his sunglasses already tucked into his top pocket. I’ve never seen him look so healthy. As he hugs me and calls me his little princess, I smell no trace of alcohol on his breath.

  We eat breakfast together at the wooden table in the back garden, which has a view all the way down the steep hill to the sea. Both sea and sky are such a soft, hazy blue that it’s impossible to see where one ends and the other begins. No one quarrels, no one cries, no one storms off. Edward hasn’t been reprimanded by my father this morning, so he isn’t scowling or kicking the furniture, and my mother has no need to fight in his corner.

  When we’ve finished eating, Edward asks my mother if we can go to the amusement arcade.

  “Not today, Eddie. I’m going rock-pooling with my lovely daughter,” she replies. He doesn’t sulk.

  My mother takes her time brushing and plaiting my hair, while my father butters bread for our picnic sandwiches. We don’t want to miss a single minute of this rare and precious British sunshine, so my mother and I decide to walk to the beach. She asks my father if he’ll drive down and meet us at the seafront. Because he isn’t drunk, he doesn’t refuse.

  As my mother and I are sauntering along, looking at the almost tropically bright butterflies and wildflowers in the hedgerows, she isn’t silent and detached; she asks m
e about the book I’m reading, how I’m getting on with my friends, how I’m feeling about starting my new school. We’re still chatting when we arrive at the beach. Even though the rest of our family aren’t there yet, my mother doesn’t panic that my father might have started drinking and crashed the car. We sit on a sunny bench and wait. My mother takes my hand in hers and squeezes it.

  We spot our car pulling into the car park, stroll over and help take the buckets, spades and folding chairs from the boot. We share the paraphernalia between us and carry it down to the beach. My brother asks my father to play Frisbee with him once we’ve set up our little camp. My father isn’t drunk, so he says, “Great idea.” My mother and I pick up our fishing nets and head off over the rocks. She isn’t in a rush, she isn’t anxious to get back and check on my father and brother, and time spools away as we’re on our hands and knees, pushing aside curtains of seaweed and poking under rocks. We catch fifteen crabs and twelve tiny, darting fish. I’ve never seen so much life in one pool.

  When my mother and I get back, my father still hasn’t started drinking. We unpack our sandwiches, sit on our folding beach chairs and eat our lunch. My father doesn’t slur his words or drop things; my mother isn’t too preoccupied to listen to what I say and respond to it; Edward isn’t hostile or belligerent. Later, we decide to play crazy golf at a little run-down place along the seafront. My father doesn’t take his woven plastic shopping bag containing an emergency supply of cheap British sherry. Neither does he disappear for half an hour, then reappear flushed and staggering. We lose track of the scores, but no one cares who’s won and who’s lost. My brother doesn’t have a tantrum when my mother tells him we’ll have just one round of golf today, and my father has no cause to shout at him.

  As the sun starts to dip in the sky, my mother drives back up the hill to our holiday cottage. My father, Edward and I walk, so we can detour to the shop on the nearby caravan site to buy ice creams. We pass the local pub without my father saying he’ll just pop in for a swift half. Edward and I don’t have to sit on the pavement outside, waiting and waiting for him to come out, and we don’t have to endure looks of pity. My father doesn’t stumble on the way home.

  That evening, my father still doesn’t go to the pub, and neither does he open a bottle. Nobody tells me how stupid and ugly I am. Nobody tells Edward he’s a spoiled brat who’s going to end up in Borstal. My father doesn’t harangue my mother and they don’t fight. We play Monopoly, which goes on for so long we finally agree to call it a four-way draw. When I go to bed, my father kisses me good-night; he still doesn’t smell of alcohol. My mother comes to tuck me in, and sits on the edge of my bed again.

  “Have you had fun today, sweetheart?” she asks.

  “It’s been the best day, ever.”

  Her face is luminous. She switches off my lamp and softly closes my bedroom door, and I realize I’ve felt no anxiety, no humiliation, no helplessness all day. As the light through the curtains fades, there’s no shouting or screaming from downstairs. No doors are slammed. I don’t need to hide in the shadows at the top of the stairs in case I have to intervene between my parents. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t fall asleep, and I do.

  That’s my perfect day. I may have embellished the truth a little.

  * * *

  After lunch, a doorstop sandwich that Rob messily prepared, I made a start on the dining room. In the corner by the window was my mother’s bureau, at which she would write her letters and keep her diary. The drawers were crammed with dog-eared cardboard folders, some containing old, official-looking documents, which were unlikely to be of any importance now, and some containing personal correspondence from friends and relatives. I was tempted to dump the entire lot in the recycling bin to save precious time. In the end, I tied the personal folders together in bundles. I’d take them back to London and give them a quick once-over before disposing of them. The sideboard and dresser were full of items that weren’t at all to my taste: heavy cut glass fruit bowls, vases and cruet sets; china figures of long-necked girls; brass knickknacks. I was faced with a dilemma—I felt oddly reluctant to dispose of them, perhaps because they formed the tangible backdrop to my childhood. They weren’t, however, things that I could imagine ever wanting to use or display.

  Rob stuck his head round the door to check, yet again, how I was getting on. He’d obviously been instructed to keep an eye on me.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “If it helps, I can store the furniture for you in my new house. I’ve got hardly anything of my own anymore, so it’d be a stopgap for me. We’d be doing each other a favor. And while you’re about it you can put boxes of any stuff you’re undecided about in my loft. You can have it back whenever you like.”

  A fresh dilemma—on the one hand, I didn’t wish to be obligated to a virtual stranger, and someone who was in league with Edward at that. And it would mean I would have to have ongoing dealings with Rob, which I certainly didn’t want. On the other hand, he was proposing a temptingly cheap and convenient solution, which in my current financial situation would be hard to turn down. The things I’d need to store were of no particular monetary value and of no interest to Edward, so it was unlikely that Rob would try to hold them to ransom. Plus, although the offer was almost certainly made to soften me up so I’d reveal information about my tactics, there was absolutely no possibility of that happening. I concluded, therefore, that it could do no harm.

  “Might be best not to mention it to Ed, unless he asks,” Rob said. “I mean, with you two not being on the best of terms. I don’t know what he’d think about it.”

  Oh, good one, Rob, I thought. Very clever, pretending you’re not my brother’s faithful sidekick and henchman. That’s bound to win over my trust. Well, two can play—are playing—that game.

  Rob fetched a pile of old newspapers, plus several more cardboard boxes, and I allowed him to assist me in packing away the objects. It was the ideal opportunity—as we were both sitting on the floor in an informal manner and engaged in a mundane, repetitive task—to subtly probe Rob about the circumstances surrounding my mother’s will. This is what I managed to get out of him (I’ve omitted my numerous prompts, together with the continual ums and ers, and the more major digressions):

  “I’d only just got back from India. I was staying at a mate’s house at the time. He’s got a wife and family, and I didn’t want to get under their feet, so I spent quite a bit of time with Ed at your mum’s house. She was so kind, always made me feel welcome. In fact, she offered me the spare room straightaway, but I didn’t want to impose on an old lady. On the day I witnessed the will Ed suggested I nip over in my lunch break to pick up a CD he’d been promising to lend me. When I got there, your aunt was sitting with your mum at the dining table. Your aunt greeted me like a long-lost friend, though I couldn’t remember having met her before. As we were chatting, Ed went and got an envelope, then said he had to pop out. Your mum told me she’d written a will and she’d like us both to witness her signature. She got a pen out of the drawer in the sideboard, signed the will and then your aunt and I signed it. Afterward, your aunt tried to persuade me to do some gardening work for her. I explained it wasn’t practical for me to take on the job because she lives too far away, but she was very persistent.”

  It all sounds so innocent, so spontaneous, doesn’t it? I asked him what Edward knew about the contents of the will before it was signed by my mother.

  “No idea. He never mentioned it to me. But like I say, I’d only just got back from abroad. The first I heard about the contents was just before you came up for the funeral. Ed got a letter from the solicitors after breakfast. Apparently, it said he was allowed to stay in the house for as long as he liked, and that it wouldn’t be sold until he decided to move out. He was made up, but he knew you wouldn’t be happy. Said something about putting the cat among the pigeons.”

  “What’s he said about the will since then?”

>   “Sorry, Susan, but I’m in a bit of a difficult position here. I want to be open with you, but I don’t want to be disloyal to Ed. All I can say is he knows you’ve done something at court to stop the solicitor dealing with the estate. He says you haven’t got a leg to stand on, that you’re wasting your energy. Says he’ll just bide his time until you run out of steam. I don’t think I’ve said anything out of turn there. I’m completely neutral in this. How’re you planning to fight the will, anyway?”

  Another award-winning speech: feigning total ignorance of the conspiracy, while giving away just enough information about Edward’s thoughts to make it seem as though Rob, himself, is open and honest. I’m not that naive; I ignored his question.

  By this time, the ornaments and trinkets were wrapped in newspaper and packed away in boxes. I was feeling frustrated by the lack of useful information I’d so far managed to winkle out. I turned my focus away from my brother and toward my mother. Closing the lid on the last box, and gathering together the unused newspapers, I asked Rob, casually, how she’d appeared in the last few weeks before she died. He rubbed the stubble on his chin and was silent for a moment, no doubt concocting a story.

  “I suppose I’d say she wasn’t 100 percent her old self,” he said eventually. “She came across as a bit, sort of, distracted. As if her mind was elsewhere. She’d trail off midsentence, like she’d forgotten what she wanted to say. But all old people get like that. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, nothing anyone would’ve worried about. Anyway, you spoke to her on the phone every week. What did you think?”

  “I thought she was getting increasingly confused. I should’ve followed my instincts and brought forward my next visit. I could’ve protected her from Edward’s scheming.”