Her Mother's Daughter

by Alice Fitzgerald

  I tell the children to say sorry to the dead for stepping by their graves, so all the way through the graveyard all I hear is, ‘Sorry, sorry.’ Michael is at it, too, and I wish we were somewhere else, somewhere far away from here. Maybe then I would say sorry with every step I took and laugh at us all, acting the eejit.

  Clare and Thomas lay flowers at Granny’s grave, and I pull out the weeds that have grown around the headstone.

  ‘What was she like?’ asks Thomas, his eyes scrunched up, the way they do when he’s being inquisitive and thoughtful.

  ‘She was a lovely lady,’ I say. ‘She was like a mother to me.’

  ‘But you already have a mum,’ says Clare. Such an observant child.

  ‘She was more of a mum than my own,’ I say, gazing at the headstone, tears filling my eyes. ‘But don’t tell her that.’

  ‘Shall we head off?’ says Michael. Always on hand to calm the storm, even before the storm has hit.

  I clean my mother, I clean the house, change the sheets, dust, mop. I count the minutes until we are free of this place and curse myself for ever coming back. It’s beyond me why she asked to see me. Maybe Siobhan was lying, just to get me to look after her for a few days. It looks like no one has been here to do any housework in a while. I do not talk to my father. I tell the children to stay outside.

  My father has Michael wrapped around his little finger. ‘What’s your poison?’ Drinking partners. He’s an entertainer, all right. Great craic, altogether.

  Everyone comes round for a night of drinking and it’s all wonderful. The games, the games. With their smiles and their hugs and their laughing and their jokes, and it’s lovely to see you, and it’s lovely to meet you. And, Josephine, why didn’t you bring him over to us before? What a lovely man. Didn’t you do well? When they don’t call or write, and take my money without a word of thanks, year in, year out.

  I smile and nod, the tick-tock, tick-tock going in my head.

  CLARE

  26TH JULY 1997

  Mummy goes in after Granddad. I tiptoe behind Daddy, and Thomas follows me. There’s a mirror on the wall beside the door and I try to look in it when I go past, but it’s too high so I can’t see myself, only the wall on the other side. We pass a door that’s a little bit open and I can see the nice fluffy chair and I know that’s the good room where guests go, but we don’t go in there. Me and Thomas will have to sneak in later. We have plenty of time anyway, because we’re staying here for three whole days.

  We go into the kitchen and sit down. Mummy tuts at me when I sit at the table with Sooty and I don’t know what to do. I put him on my lap, so no one can see him, and hope Mummy forgets about him and doesn’t make me put him outside.

  ‘Tea?’ asks Granddad.

  ‘That would be great,’ says Daddy in a happy voice, rubbing his hands together. He puts his arm across the back of my chair and stretches.

  ‘It’s a long drive, isn’t it?’ says Granddad. His voice is so big it fills the room, it’s much louder than Daddy’s. He is funny even to look at. He has loads of black and white hair that sticks up, and his cheeks are big and round. I bet when he was a baby all the women pinched them. He doesn’t look anything like Mummy. She has lovely big eyes, but his are small and funny-looking. She doesn’t have fat cheeks, either. And he’s fat and she’s slim. And he’s tall and she’s short.

  ‘It is indeed,’ says Daddy.

  ‘Tea would be lovely,’ says Mummy. ‘Do you need any help?’ She goes to stand up and stops halfway, like she doesn’t know what to do.

  ‘Not at all. Sit down and make yerselves comfortable. And what will the two little ones be having?’

  ‘Squash!’ shouts Thomas.

  ‘Shhh,’ Mummy says. ‘Quieten down, like a good boy.’

  ‘Not a bother on you,’ says Granddad. He turns to Thomas.

  ‘There’s no squash, now. A nice glass of cold milk?’

  Thomas scrunches up his face and his nose goes all wrinkly, like he’s an old man. I laugh, but Mummy shoots me an evil look and I stop.

  ‘That would be lovely, thank you,’ I say in my good-girl voice.

  Granddad nods and says, ‘Two glasses of cold milk coming up.’

  We never have milk at home and I don’t want any, either, but I’d better be a good girl or Mummy will give me a slap across the legs when we’re alone. I can tell by her face. It’s so straight and her lips are so thin when she smiles that she looks fuming, which is even angrier than angry.

  I turn to Granddad. ‘Are you Mummy’s daddy?’

  ‘Clare!’ Mummy says in her warning voice.

  I huff and rub Sooty, who is being a good little boy on my lap. I can’t say anything.

  Granddad laughs and his belly moves up and down, up and down, and then he coughs into a white square hankie that he pulls out of his pocket. He wipes his mouth and nose and I scrunch my nose up, but then un-scrunch it when I remember that I have to be a good girl or else there will be consequences.

  ‘I am indeed.’ He smiles when he has put the white square into his pocket again. ‘I’m her daddy, which makes me your granddaddy!’ He comes over with two glasses of milk and puts them on the table, one in front of me and one in front of Thomas. He ruffles my hair and it falls all over my face and that makes me laugh. ‘You’re the spitting image of your mother, so you are,’ he says to me.

  I smile up at him and Mummy laughs, ha-ha-ha, out loud. ‘Really?’ she says. ‘Would you say? Everyone says she looks like Michael.’

  I shake my head. ‘No, they all say I look just like you.’ Everyone always says I look like Mummy. Even she says it. I take a sip of milk. It’s cold and it tastes good. I gulp it down because I’m thirsty.

  Thomas copies me, like he always does, and gulps it down, too. Then he puts the glass down on the table and I burst out laughing because he’s got a milk moustache all over his top lip, almost up to his nose. He laughs, too, and starts pointing at me and I point at him and we laugh out loud.

  ‘That’s enough out of you two,’ Mummy says. ‘Clean yerselves up, please.’

  I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and so does Thomas. We look across the table at each other and keep laughing, but silent laughing. I can see his chest going up and down and that makes me laugh even more and I think, Oh no, I’ve got the giggles, and I try to hold them in and then a big snort comes out like a pig is in the room, but it’s me and that just makes me and Thomas laugh even more.

  ‘Clare and Thomas, that is enough, right now,’ Mummy says in her I-mean-it voice.

  ‘Come on, now,’ Daddy says.

  ‘Ah sure, leave them,’ Granddad says, chuckling. ‘They’re fine.’ He brings over two cups of tea for Mummy and Daddy, and another one for him, and sits at the end of the table, which is between me and Thomas. ‘Ah, I forgot the sugar,’ he says and starts to heave himself up, with his hands holding on to the table.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ Mummy says, and she goes over to cupboards and starts opening them up. She opens one after the other and giggles and then turns round. She is a bit pink and bites her lip, like I do when I’m embarrassed. ‘Sure, I don’t know where it is,’ she says.

  ‘It’s in that one, there.’ Granddad points at the one she hasn’t opened.

  ‘Typical,’ she says, smiling. But it’s one of those tight smiles that make her lips go white. It reminds me of when she was on the phone to Aunty Maura, saying, We’d have to see the lot of them. I wonder now who ‘they’ are. They can’t be Granddad, because he’s a ball of laughing and coughing with his sticky-up hair that waves from side to side when he coughs.

  ‘When was the last time you were home?’ asks Granddad. Mummy takes out the sugar and brings it over to the table.

  Granddad takes some and she stands waiting until he’s finished: one spoon, two spoons, three spoons.

  ‘Three spoons of sugar!’ I say. ‘That’s sooooo much. Mummy never lets Daddy have three. He’s only allowed one and a half.’

  ‘I�
��m sure she’s right, too,’ nods Granddad, then he leans towards me and says in a quiet, hush-hush voice, ‘Your granny doesn’t let me have any, either, but what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.’ He winks and when he does, he moves his whole face to the side. I will have to learn that, I think to myself. That reminds me. Where is Granny? I want to ask but I don’t dare.

  ‘It’s been a few years now, sure it has,’ Daddy says. ‘Time flies when you’re having fun, isn’t that what they say?’

  ‘It certainly does, and they certainly do,’ Granddad says.

  The way he talks is funny. I like it.

  Mummy drinks her tea.

  ‘So ye liked the milk in the end, did ye?’ Granddad says, looking from me to Thomas.

  We both nod. Sooty squeals and is turning round in circles on my lap. I go red. Mummy won’t forget about him if he makes noise like this. He already weed a bit in the car, but Mummy doesn’t know yet and I hope she doesn’t notice. He wants to get off my lap, but I can’t let him because he’ll run around and Mummy will go fuming.

  ‘What’s the little man’s name?’ asks Granddad.

  ‘Sooty,’ says Thomas.

  ‘Ah, Sooty. Will we give him some milk, will we?’

  I nod.

  Granddad puts his hands on the table and heaves himself up like he’s moving a mountain. He goes over to the cupboards and gets a bowl out, and then gets milk from the fridge and pours milk into the bowl. He carries the bowl of milk past the table and over to the back door, which is closed and isn’t the door we came through, and leans down to put it on the floor but he gets halfway and can’t go any lower.

  ‘Here, let me,’ says Daddy, getting up and taking the bowl off him to put it on the floor. Then he beckons me over with a nod of his head.

  I get up and carry Sooty over and put him down. I can feel Mummy’s eyes on me. Thomas comes over, too. We all stand and watch Sooty. He turns round and starts sniffing Granddad’s slippers and then Daddy’s shoes, and then wanders over to the table where Mummy is sitting.

  ‘Sooty!’ I call him, but he doesn’t hear me because he carries on under the table. ‘Naughty boy. Sooty!’ I go over and crawl under the table and carry him out and take him over to the bowl and dip his nose into the milk. He licks his lips. I push his face towards the bowl. ‘Come on, Sooty.’ But he turns round. Thomas crouches down and watches, and Mummy and Granddad are still watching. I push his nose into the milk again and he licks his lips, so I push his nose in again. I decide that’s what I’ll do because it’s the only way to make him drink, and all babies need their milk.

  ‘Would ye look at that,’ Granddad says and Mummy laughs a little laugh. ‘I’d go back to that age in a second, so I would.’

  ‘No worries, no hassle, no nothing,’ Daddy says.

  Granddad goes back over to the table and Mummy sits still, her arms folded, looking down at us and watching me and Thomas take turns in dipping Sooty’s nose into the milk.

  After a while she tells us to go outside and play. Granddad opens the back door and we take Sooty out and they close the door again, which means they want to talk in private. Closed doors always mean talk in private, and mind your own beeswax. I know what they’re talking about anyway, so I don’t mind. And it’s better to be outside because it’s boring inside. The only thing is I want to go for a snoop around the house, but we can’t do that because we have to go through the kitchen and then they’ll see us. We’ll have to wait until we need the toilet. That won’t be long anyway, because Thomas always needs to wee right after having a drink. Mummy says it goes straight through him.

  We play with Sooty in the big garden around the back of the house. It’s a huge garden, much bigger than ours, and there are no flowers so we can run anywhere we want. A hedge borders it along the end, and the first thing Sooty does is run to the hedge and try to eat the twigs. Then he does a wee and a poo, and I’m so happy he waited until we got outside. I don’t know what to do about the poo, but don’t want to disturb their private conversations, so I move it to the corner with a twig and forget about it.

  We run around and Sooty follows us and then, when we get tired of that, we play Hide-and-seek. We go through the gate and walk around the house until we choose a spot for Thomas to count. He faces the wall and covers his eyes with his hands and counts to ten. I pick Sooty up, so he won’t give me away, run through the gate to hide behind the corner and watch Thomas. He takes his hands off his eyes and turns round and looks my way and then the other way, but he doesn’t see me, and Sooty is being super-quiet. He’s tired after running around. He’s still a baby, so he gets tired really easily.

  Just when I think Thomas is going to come towards me, he turns and walks the other way. When he turns the corner, I run as quiet as I can, holding Sooty close to my chest like I’m his mummy and he’s my baby, and I go back through the gate, past the back door and over to the next corner and peep round the edge and see Thomas walking along. When he goes round the next corner, I peep around the corner I’m at. It’s the front of the house where Daddy’s car is parked, and there Thomas is, walking round the car and looking underneath and I have to put my hand over my mouth or I’ll laugh out loud.

  He walks around the front garden all the way over to the big gate we drove through when we first arrived, and I think he’s going to see me, so I have to run back a bit. I hide in the shade of the house as close as I can to the wall, and stand still like we’re playing Freeze. I hold Sooty in my arms nice and tight. I think he’s asleep.

  That’s when I hear voices and I think the grown-ups are coming from around the back of the house and they’re going to ruin our whole game and Thomas will discover me, but I turn and no one comes. I look up and I can see a window, but even on my tiptoes I can’t see into it. I listen and I can hear Mummy’s voice speaking softly. Then there’s silence and then there’s another voice. It’s soft like a murmur. I’m sure they are saying words, but I can’t tell what they are. I stay still and listen. That’s Mummy. Then there’s the other voice. It’s a woman, and it sounds like she’s whispering. I listen as hard as I can. She sounds a bit like Mummy but smaller. And then I understand. It’s Granny. So that’s where she is. I smile. I’m glad Mummy is seeing her. I imagine they’re hugging really tight.

  I remember the time I heard Mummy talking to Aunty Maura, and I hope Granny isn’t too ill because I won’t know what to do – not like Mummy knew what to do when she was little. I wonder when we’ll meet her. I wonder what she looks like. I wonder if she’ll be as nice as Granddad. I wonder, I wonder, I wonder.

  I remember I’m supposed to be hiding from Thomas. I tiptoe over to the corner, where I saw him go over to the front gate. I can’t see him. I run along the front of the house, past the pebble drive and the front door and the flowerpots on either side of it, and I look round the next corner. He’s not there.

  ‘Found you!’ shouts Thomas from behind me.

  I jump and Sooty squeals.

  ‘Ha-ha-ha-ha,’ he laughs. ‘Scaredy-cat, scaredy-cat.’ He comes over and rubs Sooty. ‘Can I have him now?’ he asks. ‘And will you look for me now?’

  I give Sooty to him, because Mummy says we’re brother and sister and we have to share. ‘Be careful to hold him tight,’ I say. He is big in Thomas’s small arms and I’m scared he’ll wriggle and fall.

  Thomas wraps his arms tight around Sooty and starts walking away from me.

  I turn to face the wall and fold my arms and put them round my face. I start counting. ‘One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine…’ I pause and then shout, ‘Ten!’ I take my arms down and turn around and look left and right. No Thomas or Sooty. I set out to find them.

  CLARE

  26TH JULY 1997

  ‘Clare and Thomas, can you come here, please?’ I hear Mummy call in her I’m-not-messing-you’re-in-big-trouble voice. I don’t know why she’s using that tone, we’ve done nothing wrong.

  ‘Come on, Thomas,’ I call, and he appears from around t
he corner and we start walking towards the house.

  Mummy is at the back door. She closes it and steps down onto the grass. ‘Right, I’m going to bring you in to meet my mother now. She’s not feeling too well, so be nice and quiet, okay?’ Her voice is soft and her face is white and sweaty. She’s not having as much fun as we are. It must be true, then. Her mum really is dying. I hold Sooty close and rub him under the ear; he leans his nose in close to my chest.

  ‘Are you okay, Mummy?’ I ask. I don’t think she is. I don’t think she’s been okay for a while.

  ‘Of course I am, munchkin,’ she smiles, and taps my chin playfully. She hasn’t called me munchkin for ages. I smile.

  ‘I need to go to the toilet,’ Thomas says in his whiny voice.

  ‘You go on ahead, love, it’s the first on the left after the kitchen,’ Mummy says.

  ‘Can’t you and Clare come?’ Thomas tugs at her hand.

  ‘We’ll be right behind you, darling. Go on, you’re a big boy.’

  After Thomas looks from Mummy to me and Sooty, and back to Mummy, he decides that he’ll have to go on his own. He goes up the steps and pulls the handle downwards and manoeuvres himself around the door.

  Mummy pushes it closed after him. ‘Do you like it here, Clare?’ she asks. She sits on the step and taps it beside her, so I sit down, too.

  I put Sooty down to have a little run around. ‘Where’s Daddy?’ I ask.

  ‘You know you don’t answer a question with a question.’

  ‘Yes, I like it,’ I say. We’re not allowed to answer a question with a question, but Mummy is allowed to do it, and she does it all the time. ‘I like the house and the garden. And Granddad – he is really funny!’

  ‘He is, isn’t he?’ Mummy smiles. ‘But he’s old now, Clare, and I don’t want you disturbing him, do you understand?’

  I nod, but I don’t think I do understand, so I shake my head instead.

  ‘I mean, I want you to leave him alone. I don’t want you bothering him or going near him. He gets tired. He needs to rest. And under no circumstances are you to be alone with him. I want you to stay where Daddy and I are. And don’t get separated from Thomas, under any circumstances.’ All the time Mummy keeps looking straight ahead, over the hedge at the bottom of the garden to the fields.