by Louisa Young
And how was I so certain it was true? I was certain. Knew it. I knew she had it in her.
She always had boyfriends, or at least boys to get off with if she wanted, when I didn’t – not that that proves anything. She never, as we termed it, went all the way, not until Colin, but she’d be in the parents’ bedroom at other people’s parties, snogging, or pretending she was going to but not actually letting him, while I’d be sitting in the sitting room with the other three unpairable-off social cripples: the fat boy, the spotty girl, the little brother who wasn’t really meant to be there, and me. Janie was off tormenting a big brother, a boy from sixth-form college, someone with a bumfluff moustache and platform boots and a greatcoat from Lawrence Corner. Someone who smoked and drank Newcastle Brown. Someone with an earring. I’d be waiting till 11.30 when the hosts’ parents would come back and we could go.
‘What a great party,’ Janie would say, her eyes huge under their gleaming eyeshadow and her lip-gloss (flavoured) smudged. I’d tell her to tuck her shirt in. I couldn’t not go to parties because it upset Mum.
Was it when I went away? I knew everything about her before that. She didn’t quite know everything about me. But I knew everything.
She liked rich people. Liked comfort. But she wasn’t luxurious. Couldn’t afford to be. The banker disappeared and Jim appeared. Then Harry and I broke up. Then I went away. Then I came back and she and Jim weren’t getting on. She wasn’t a runaround, but she had admirers. The dinner dates and the married men who emerged from the woodwork when she started work (PR! I ask you! She went to work in PR!). Lots of men she would have nothing to do with. How we laughed about them! She’d ring me almost every night when she got in, to mock them. We were cruel, actually. Young, good-looking and cruel.
Perhaps after I went away. I wouldn’t have known what she was doing then. Couldn’t have known.
She wasn’t wildly rich. She wasn’t on the street. Was she lying to me all along?
What about after I got back? There were three-odd years, before she was pregnant. But we were friends, sisters. Her moaning about Jim, me with my pathetic attempts at a lovelife without Harry. Her with her job that I laughed at, me dancing and biking, turning up at her office on the Harley to have lunch with her, and her pretending that she didn’t notice that her colleagues were impressed … Her and me on the phone at all hours, analysing what had become of our university friends – she always knew, I didn’t because I was running round with my ‘Swarfega friends’, as she called them, my post-Harry dim-but-beautiful biker boyfriends. ‘When did you last sleep with a man who didn’t have a motorbike?’ she’d ask. ‘No, don’t try to remember, I’ll tell you. It was George, 1983. That nice Greek boy.’
How could I not have known then? Or did she stop it then? When did she stop? Did she stop?
How could she do it? Why did she need to?
She never lied before. I was the liar. I’d lie quietly and gently to make things seem right. Rewrite history, subtly to my own advantage. Deny things. That infuriated Janie; when she would say that the parents had ruined our lives by sending us out of our own class, by experimenting on us, and I would say what’s the problem? Everything’s fine!
What have I rewritten about her?
She wasn’t on drugs. That I would have known. But then you’d think I would have known she was selling herself. You’d have thought.
It’s a very curious sick feeling to realize that you know nothing.
I made myself a cup of tea and pulled a chair out on to the balcony in front of the front door. The petunias gleamed at me in the dusk. A few late big children called to each other from the courtyard below. Someone somewhere was cooking a fragrant meal: ginger and garlic and hot oil. I could hear cutlery clinking through an open window; voices from a television, the bong bong bong of the nine o’clock news. Still quite light. The last western sun catching me. I wanted to go and get Lily, just to hold on to her. Better for her, though, not to be my comforter tonight.
And if I didn’t know, who knew?
Oh. Harry knew.
And thinks I knew too.
*
The telephone went. I answered it before thinking that I didn’t want to talk to anybody. It was Mum. I took the phone out on to the balcony, dropping my cigarette because Mum doesn’t know I smoke.
Did I get her message, she wanted to know. Oh, yes, sorry.
So what did I want to do?
About what?
About the things.
What things?
The things she’d said about.
Sorry, Mum, what things are they?
Things of Janie’s, in the box, in the attic. Honestly, girl, where’s your brain?
Things of Janie’s.
Now of course I immediately read this as a communication from beyond the grave. Sitting here asking the wide blue yonder what the hell was going on three years and more ago, and suddenly there is a box, with things in.
‘I’ll come and get them. What’s in there?’
‘I don’t know, love. I haven’t looked.’
‘Do you want to go through them together?’
‘For me personally I’d like to throw them away. But I knew you wouldn’t think that way so it’s here if you want it.’
‘If I find anything do you want to know?’
‘Find what?’ she said.
‘I don’t know … anything.’
‘There’s nothing … but I knew you’d want to look.’
‘I’ll come on out then.’
‘What, now?’
‘Yes – why not?’
‘Where’s Lily?’
‘She’s staying the night with a friend.’
‘At three? For God’s sake, girl …’
‘It’s OK, Mum, she’s just around the corner and she’s fast asleep. I’ll be round there before she’s awake in the morning. It’s OK.’
It was OK.
*
Enfield. What a godawful place. They had a nice little place, though, a leftover vicarage from the days when it was a village and not just a section of the AIO. It was easy getting up there at that time of night.
Dad opened the door, and gave me a glass of wine and a big hug. Loves me so much now he’s lost the other half of me. Loves me for bringing up Lily, because otherwise he and Mum would have to and he likes his quiet life. Loves me for being brave and strong and never asking him for money, which he always offers even though I know that they don’t have much now.
Dad was a journalist. Sports. When we were kids he scurried around the world reporting, interviewing, Rome, Brazil, World Cup, George Best, Carnaby Street. Mum just taught all day, but Dad had shaggy hair and a leather jacket, and stories. Dad in his thirties in the sixties. He bought into a bar and a football company with a retiring footballer. Did all right. Groovy Dad, neat resigned sensible Mum. Not without humour.
Now he watches cricket all day and night because they’ve got satellite. Mum wishes they hadn’t. She sits up in bed reading modern feminist literature until he comes up. Her bedside table has Angela Carter, Maya Angelou, Jeanette Winterson. She says it’s nothing to be surprised about, she taught English and read The Well of Loneliness when she was fifteen, and knows all about Rebecca West and H. G. Wells. She says that emotions are all very interesting. She doesn’t like them in reality though. She likes life quiet. Like Dad. They do the garden. Twine their wistaria.
There is a big picture of me and Janie on the sideboard, looking young and excited, dressed up to go to a May Ball. They did have our graduation photos but Janie took them down saying we looked horrible and hysterical, which we did. So there we are in 1984 make-up and 1984 party clothes, clutching each other in that same early evening early summer sunshine. She’d come over to Cambridge for May Week, then I’d go over to Oxford for Eights Week. Darling parents disguising their pride in their own ways. Dad taking the piss because his dad worked the market at Spitalfields (‘Lucky none of us’ll be going to heaven because I tell you your gra
nddad wouldn’t know what he’d helped to produce here’). Dad made the money, but he was never quite happy with what he’d paid for, for us. Mum acting like it was the least you could expect, if you educate girls right and take them on camping holidays to France in the Ford Anglia to broaden their minds, and bring them up right with all the opportunities and work hard to pay for them they’ll do right by you too, and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t. Because Mum, of course, didn’t know the half of what we got up to. And she will not know about this.
Mum was in her dressing gown. ‘You didn’t have to come all this way now,’ she said.
‘I wanted to.’ It wasn’t ten yet. Dad looked settled in but he turned down the sound on some fuzzy sporting fixture from a long way away.
‘Have you eaten anything?’
I laughed. Mum looking after me. Sooner you than anyone. Normally I laugh at it, tonight I just think how nice, how kind, how lucky I am that I love you and you love me.
‘I’ll have a look in the fridge.’
‘There’s some chicken on the stove.’ She always has too much food in the house. Lettuces going slimy, hotpots unfinished, because she still can’t quite take it in that the two hungry girls don’t turn up with all their hungry friends any more.
I foraged a plate of chicken and potato salad and went off to find the box. It was on the landing upstairs: just a dusty old tea-chest, standing there looking as out of place as the Tardis.
‘Are you going to open it here?’ It was Mum’s voice behind me, discouraging.
‘I’ll take it home.’
I ate my salad and got half-involved with the match on television. This is a model self-improved middle-class home, and there is a dark secret even behind the tragedy over which we have triumphed. Mum picked up her book: Isabel Allende. I may have come all this way but her duty was done now: inquire, feed, that’s it. No need to converse. That’s all right.
Only it wasn’t.
‘Mum,’ I said.
‘Hmm?’
‘I’ve heard from Jim.’
Dad picked up the remote without looking at me and switched the television off. Mum put her book down and stared at it.
‘And?’ said Dad.
‘He wants her.’
The silence hung, palpable, unavoidable.
‘Bang go the savings, then,’ said Dad.
I felt I should apologize. ‘Sorry,’ I said.
‘No one’s shooting the messenger,’ said Mum. ‘When can we see Neil?’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Whenever,’ said Dad.
‘Tomorrow afternoon, then. His office. I’ll give a ring with the time.’
Dad grunted. Mum had closed her eyes. I kissed them each on the cheek, and I left.
When I got home there was a message from Eddie, full of sweet nothings.
TWELVE
Flowers from Eddie
I woke at seven and could hardly move. After the previous afternoon’s unexpected dancing my abdomen felt like half-set cement and my legs had seized up. I sprayed the length of them with Ralgex and popped an arnica tablet, then pulled on some loose clothes and went round to Brigid’s. Lily was still asleep, tucked in among the fair heads of Brigid’s boys in Brigid’s big bed. Aisling was just getting up in the sitting room. Brigid emerged from the boys’ room, where she had been sleeping on one of the bunks. ‘They all came in with me,’ she said. ‘So I had to go in there. Musical beds, I ask you.’
I climbed in beside Lily and the boys and fell asleep again for about two seconds. Lily woke me, telling me I smelt funny. It’s the Ralgex for my legs, I told her. Why do my legs want Ralgex, she wants to know. Because they’re stiff, I explained. ‘Stiff as a three-legged dog,’ she said, and then she wanted to be a puppy, and I had to be the mummy puppy, and then everyone woke up and we all ate rice krispies.
I took them all home and crawled into a hot bath while they started to build a pirate ship in the kitchen. My legs were loosening up a bit. I longed to get back into bed but I tried to do some work instead. Concentration nil. I called Neil and arranged to see him at two. It was Saturday but he’d go into his office specially for us. Indebted indebted indebted.
Once the subject was raised in my mind I couldn’t let it go, so I started to write my affidavit, child voices ringing through from the kitchen.
‘Lily Gower was born prematurely, as a result of a crash in which her mother died …
‘Lily Gower has lived with me for three years and two months, since her mother’s death and her birth …
‘Lily Gower’s mother, my sister Janie, was killed when …’
‘Lily Gower has lived with me since she was born, when her mother died in a motorcycle crash. The police report of the crash is attached herewith. No blame was apportioned and no prosecution suggested or pursued …’
Why am I using words like herewith? The law speaks a different language, writes yet another one. I can’t pretend to understand it just by flinging in a couple of those words that only ever appear on paper. Apportioned, suggested or pursued. Oh, Mrs Pompous.
‘Lily Gower has lived with me since she was born, when her mother died in a motorcycle crash. The police report of the crash is attached. It was an accident and there was no prosecution.
‘Lily was born by Caesarean section and her mother, my sister, died soon after. My parents and I took responsibility for Lily. Hearing nothing from James Guest we – her grandparents and I – felt that he had abandoned her. We heard nothing from him for the next three years, except when he asked to be registered as Lily’s father on her birth certificate, which we agreed to do because we believe that a father, even an absent one, is an important figure in a child’s life.’
No point in mentioning how Dad said he’d sooner shoot him, or how without even discussing it we gave her our surname, not his.
‘She has met her father once, on x May this year when at his request he and his wife came to tea at our home. She was not told that he was her father, as not knowing Mr Guest’s intentions I did not want to upset her.
‘If Mr Guest wants to have contact with her, we will do everything in our power to help and make it a constructive thing for Lily. For Lily’s sake we would make genuine efforts to forget the past and help her to build a good relationship with him.
‘Lily has a full and happy life. She knows that her mother died, that I am her mother’s sister, and she treats me in all respects as a mother. As she grows older and asks more questions I will do my utmost to be honest and kind with her regarding the fact and circumstances of her mother’s death.
‘Her relationship with her maternal grandparents is close and friendly. It helps her to place herself, and to see that her mother being dead does not mean she is without a close and loving family. We all visit each other regularly and take holidays together.’
Well, we do.
‘They and I have shared parental responsibility for her since her birth, and there has never been any difference of opinion. Her vaccinations are up to date and her development is normal for her age. She suffers from eczema, and has treatment for it constantly in the form of special bath oils and creams, and attention paid to keeping the flat dust-free.
‘She attends a local Montessori nursery school for twenty hours a week, which she enjoys very much. She has friends there and is attached to her teachers. When not at school she is cared for by me and occasionally by our close friend and neighbour Brigid O’Hara whose family of small children, particularly the daughter Caitlin, are devoted friends of Lily’s. The children are constantly in and out of each other’s homes. As Lily is an only child, I would be loath for her to lose these friendships.’
They are at this moment destroying my kitchen. I went through to sort out a dispute about the dustpan.
‘As I work from home and am relatively well-paid, I am able to make a decent living and spend a lot of time with Lily. Her well-being is my only responsibility and commitment. I work only enough to keep us reasonably off. We cannot a
fford expensive habits, but we do not need them. Ours is a happy and secure home.
‘Those who meet her see a normal and happy child. Since the trauma of her birth and the loss of her mother she has lived a very steady and secure life, with a gentle routine, constancy of relationships and no major disruptions. Going to a new home with different people would, I believe, be very damaging to her, both in the short and the long term. Losing the person she thinks of as her mother, having lost her blood mother, would cause her untold unhappiness. My own unhappiness at losing her would be as deep, but of secondary importance.’
Oh, God. Is this the sort of stuff they need? Is it too personal? I just want to give them facts, but it reads as if I am laying it on thick. All that hoovering and self-sacrifice. Well, is Jim going to do it? Is Nora going to stop high-flying to do it? Or are they intending to hire someone to love and care for her?
It is all facts. I’ll ask Neil.
*
The doorbell rang. It was a small Birnam wood of madonna lilies, star-gazers, roses, tuberoses and greenery, wrapped in an acre of sparkly clean cellophane and crimson satin ribbons. It reeked of rich flowers and expense. The delivery man was invisible behind it.
‘Miss Gower? Flowers,’ he said, unnecessarily.
The card – about a foot square, heavy vellum – said: ‘I hope my marvellous girl is feeling better. See you later. EB’ The writing was not a florist’s loopy biro with a circle over the i instead of a dot. It was squiggly, very black, very small. Each letter seemed to be having trouble deciding what direction it was meant to be taking. If I hadn’t doubted his sanity anyway, I would have at the sight of his handwriting.
I took them in and suffered a quick ontological crisis. They were so gobsmackingly beautiful. I don’t get sent flowers very often – like never in the past five years. But I hated him and hoped never to have to see him again.
I got the big plastic bucket and put them in it, on the kitchen table. I would leave them there while I decided whether or not to throw them out with contempt, and by the time I decided they would probably be dead. It’s not their fault who sent them.
