Night Waking

by Sarah Moss

  ‘If Giles wants the floor washed, he knows where the mop is,’ I said, although actually I doubt either of us could find the mop and suspect that it would turn out to be mildewed and smelly if we did. I do not think I have ever bought a mop.

  ‘I found plumbers and electricians and made them cups of tea and talked to them. I researched and booked all the holidays and then worried about whether he’d like them. I packed for him when he went to conferences and took his suits to be dry-cleaned. I knew when the cars needed servicing. But mostly I cooked and shopped and looked after the children. I took them to piano and painting and ice-skating and I made costumes and cakes and spent eight years running the PTA because no one else wanted to and I listened to reading and I helped with homework right up to A-level, I even taught myself German because Zoe was doing it, and I drove them to university interviews from St Andrews to Sussex and – and this is how she repays me. Trying to kill herself.’ Her hand shook. ‘Hating me.’

  What must it be like, to be the object of twenty years of someone’s daily work, left overnight under wet cloths, sculpted, smoothed, adjusted, polished until you are found ready for display? I find much for which to blame my mother but at least she never took me to a piano lesson. Perhaps I shouldn’t have tried to make Raph join the chess club. I thought about the silence of the Hôtel de la Mère, the way the beds are smoothed flat and the books lie waiting to be read and footsteps in the corridor are muffled, because mothers must be protected from disturbance more assiduously than any Victorian invalid with straw on the road outside. ‘Judith, I don’t think she’s trying to kill herself. There are more direct ways.’ And I have counted them out like hoarded coins. ‘Whatever she’s doing, she’s doing to herself, not to you. Maybe you need to find ways of letting her go.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have any problem letting her go if there were any signs that she could or would look after herself. She’s no readier to leave home than Moth is. At least he’ll eat when he needs to.’

  There was a bump upstairs, the screech of wood on damp wood as the old sash window in the attic opened, and, at least in my mind, the flutter of wings across the dark garden and out into the starry night.

  ‘Giles,’ I said. ‘There was a bird stuck in the chimney.’

  ‘Brian was never around to deal with things like that.’

  My tea cooled. When she went, I would get the wine out again. ‘Birds are Giles’s thing. The idea makes my skin crawl.’

  The window banged closed again.

  ‘Have you thought about counselling?’ I asked. Anna Freud blamed mothers for ‘feeding disturbances’, which were resolved by institutional care, but she was also keen to liberate adolescents from their parents. It sometimes seems that the best thing mothers might do for children is to stay away. They will have enough trouble, the next generation, without us misshaping their minds.

  ‘Brian says it’s nonsense. Pseudo-science.’

  ‘Brian doesn’t have to do it.’

  ‘I suppose not. He’d disapprove.’

  She had not struck me as someone who cared much for anyone else’s views.

  ‘And you can’t discuss it with him?’

  Giles came in with a newspaper parcel in his hand. ‘Oh, Judith. Hello.’

  He glanced at me, a question.

  ‘Judith came round for a cup of tea,’ I said. ‘What’s in the newspaper?’

  He grimaced. ‘Dead bird, I’m afraid. Been there a while. I let the other one out.’

  I felt sick. Raph’s ghost, a bird dying slowly in the dark, fluttering and fading in the wall above his sleeping head. Are birds intelligent enough to resign themselves to death? Or does instinct keep them battering dulling feathers against the wall, scrabbling yellow feet on the stone hearth, until they can no longer move? And the second bird, trapped like the victim of a Gothic novel with the rotting corpse of its fellow.

  ‘It’s only a bird, Anna. You should put guards on the chimney if they bother you that much.’ Judith looked restored by the bird’s death, or by my horror.

  ‘Back in a minute,’ said Giles.

  ‘It hasn’t happened before.’ I turned my mug so the handle pointed into the corner of the envelope, which had IMPORTANT, ACT NOW printed across the corner in Her Majesty’s typeface. ‘Raph heard it. He thought it was a ghost.’

  ‘It must have happened before. This place is full of birds, they always nest in chimneys.’

  ‘Not in August.’ I stood up. ‘Judith, I’m sorry, I’m very tired. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you more about Zoe.’

  She stayed where she was. ‘I worry about her so much. You’ll find out. You think it’s hard when they’re little but getting up in the night is nothing to this. You’ll see.’

  I picked up the mugs, hers still half full. ‘Maybe you should talk to someone who’s been through it. There must be support groups.’

  She tossed her head. ‘I don’t need a support group, thank you.’

  ‘OK. Good. Judith, I’m going to bed now. Good night.’

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘Oh, sorry. Good night.’

  I went upstairs, and when I peered down over the banisters she was still sitting at the table, head bowed, holding on to a brown envelope as if it would keep her afloat.

  ‘So did it fly away? Mummy, have we got peanut butter?’

  I squatted down to rummage in the cupboard, and knocked my head as I saw Moth climbing over the bar of his highchair and down its stylish Scandinavian steps (made from sustainably harvested wood by people who may not own the means of production but enjoy better parental leave entitlements and childcare subsidies than anywhere else in the known universe).

  ‘Moth helping find it jam.’

  ‘I don’t want jam, I want peanut butter.’

  Zoe took a second slice from the toaster. ‘In Canada people put jam on peanut butter.’

  Moth pushed against me. ‘Hello, jam! Hello, syrup!’

  ‘Mummy, can we have syrup instead?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve found some peanut butter. It’s out of date, though.’

  ‘Moth have a date?’

  ‘Not that kind of date, love.’

  ‘Can we eat it anyway? Can I try it with jam?’

  ‘Moth have a raisin?’

  ‘It was grape jelly, in Canada. Not really jelly, though.’

  ‘Was it nice?’ asked Raph.

  ‘The first American conference I went to I ate peanut butter on bagels for five days.’ I stood up, jar in hand. ‘I had a grant for the hotel but it didn’t cover food.’

  ‘Not as nice as peanut butter with Marmite,’ said Zoe, chewing. ‘Though not much is. Mum says it’s disgusting.’

  ‘I can see that that would make it desirable,’ I said. I opened the peanut butter. It smelt quite ordinary, and the oil on top should be preservative. ‘I can’t see why we shouldn’t eat this. I can’t imagine peanuts are very corruptible.’

  ‘Moth up and see!’

  I picked him up. ‘But I think the only jam is Julia’s gooseberry. You can try it if you like.’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘Moth try a gooseberry!’

  ‘Mum makes gooseberry jam. With elderflowers.’ Zoe’s nose wrinkled as if she’d smelt a bad nappy. ‘She puts it in jars with like frills on them and gives them to people.’

  ‘How kind,’ I said firmly.

  ‘Why?’ Raph swirled his milk around in the cup with his finger.

  ‘Don’t do that, love.’

  ‘Moth try it jam!’

  I gave Moth a spoonful of jam, which surprised him so much he stopped talking. We heard the bluebottle buzz of Giles’s phone.

  ‘I’ll get it!’ Raph flung himself off his chair, as if he’d been in hourly expectation of a job offer or marriage proposal for some days.

  The peanut butter had the texture of clay, but held together the bread, which had been dry and crumbly to start with and was now also stale. I smeared brown jam on top.

  ‘Can I have some?’ a
sked Zoe.

  ‘Moth have some!’

  ‘Zoe, of course. Moth love, you’re too little for peanuts. Would you like more jam?’ Recent research suggests that toddlers who encounter peanuts are less likely to develop allergies than those protected in accordance with current policy, but the consensus is still that the good mother should deny peanuts to the under-threes, presumably because despite increasing the risk of anaphylactic shock in small children this deprives mothers of one of the few sources of protein to involve nothing more housewifely than opening a jar.

  Moth stiffened on my hip. ‘No. Some of Zoe’s.’

  Zoe looked up, toast in mid-air.

  ‘Oh, all right then.’ Would you rather be bad in the eyes of an imaginary Health Visitor or in those of your wrathful toddler?

  Raph came back, holding the phone out in front of him like rotting fish. ‘It’s that policeman. You gave Zoe my toast!’

  ‘Actually, it’s my toast,’ said Zoe. ‘And I’m sharing it with Moth anyway. Which policeman?’

  I took the phone and looked at her. ‘Raph, yours is here.’

  I put my finger in my other ear and went out into the hall, trusting Zoe to call me in the event of anaphylaxis.

  ‘Mrs Cassingham.’

  ‘Dr Bennet, actually.’

  ‘Mrs Cassingham, we’re closing the file on the remains from your garden. I thought you would like to know that the remains are indeed historical.’

  Of course they’re bloody historical, even I could see that they’re not prehistoric.

  ‘Oh. Do you have a date for them?’

  ‘They are historical,’ he repeated. ‘I regret the oversight, but I’m sure you understand that we have more urgent business. We won’t need to trouble you any more. Unless, of course, there should be any further concerns about the boys.’

  There was a small crash from the kitchen. ‘Oh bugger a milk. Zoe mop it.’

  ‘Further concerns?’ I was, I found, not scared of him any more, maybe not as scared as I should be.

  ‘Let us hope not. Goodbye, Mrs Cassingham.’

  I went back to the children. It was only what I’d known all along, but I felt as if there were more room in my ribcage, as if the clouds were clearing from a rainy sky. As if I’d been absolved of some of my sins.

  Zoe looked up from the floor, where she was blotting spilt milk with an old Guardian. ‘Moth’s milk fell. There doesn’t seem to be any more.’

  I sat down and lifted Moth on to my lap. ‘There probably isn’t. Raph, Ian MacDonald was phoning to tell us about the baby.’

  He froze. Moth reached for Raph’s toast and then pushed it away.

  ‘That Raph’s toast,’ Moth told himself. ‘That not Moth’s toast. No.’

  ‘We were right, Raph. She’s from long ago. Way back, when things were very different.’

  He pulled at his toast and the peanut butter glue along the faultlines failed. ‘She still died. Even long ago.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Nothing will change that. Everyone long ago died.’

  ‘And one day we’ll be long ago and we’ll be dead.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We will, one day.’

  Moth rubbed his jammy face on my top. ‘Moth be dead?’

  I stroked his satin hair, his sticky cheek. ‘One day. Yes. Not for a long time.’

  Raph picked up some peanut butter. ‘When you’re old and you come to the end of your life. And Zoe. And Mummy and Daddy. And Grandma. Like Grandpa Hugo.’

  Zoe was circling her forearm with the thumb and finger of the other hand. ‘Like my grandma, too. Anna, what’s this about? Which baby?’

  ‘Raph and I found an infant skeleton when we were planting apple trees.’ I kissed Moth’s head. ‘People do turn things up, round here. It was much more densely populated than it is now for most of recorded time. But of course you still have to call the police when it’s human remains.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. She finished her toast. ‘But it’s all sorted now. Can I have another cup of tea?’

  I poured it for her.

  ‘Anna?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Uh, Anna, look. Can I ask you something?’

  I looked up. How much I weigh? Why Raph’s clothes are tattered? ‘Probably.’

  She ran her forefinger around the top of the mug. ‘Could I, I mean, if I do go to Austria, could I maybe like kind of stay with you until then? I mean, just for an extra couple of weeks or something? And then I’d go home and pack and everything. I mean, sorry. I probably shouldn’t have said. Dad told me not to ask you.’

  ‘Yay!’ Raph beamed at her. ‘Zoe staying with us!’

  Moth waved damp toast, from which he had licked the jam. ‘Hooray.’

  ‘Oh, Zoe. We’d love to have you, of course. But – listen, we can’t rescue you from your parents. As far as your mum’s concerned, we’re just the people who run the cottage. Isn’t there a friend you can stay with? You don’t know that you’re going to Austria yet, do you?’

  She bit her lip. ‘It’s going to work out. I know it is. But – please don’t make me go back with Mum. I mean – please.’

  She sniffed. Raph was watching her unblinkingly, as if she were demonstrating some skill that he believed to be vital to growing up.

  ‘I thought things were going better.’ I scooped peanut butter off Moth’s chin with my finger and offered it back to him. ‘I thought she was trying to be more understanding. She was scared, you know, when you collapsed.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Raph. ‘Why was Judith scared?’

  ‘Because Zoe was ill.’

  Zoe drank some tea. ‘Not really. Come on, Anna. Understanding? Understanding someone else? My mother? She doesn’t do understanding.’

  No, I thought. No. I am not good enough at this, at relationships and nurturing people and giving of myself. And in fact, really, when I have to take sides, when push comes to shove, I’m not willing to betray Judith, to steal the daughter she’s worked on all these years. Zoe needs to leave, not to be rescued by a proxy mother. Having parents may not be in anyone’s best interest but we all must do it. And it is Giles’s job, not Zoe’s, to look after our children while I work, a fact which he may at last be coming to recognize.

  I touched her shoulder. ‘Zoe, in lots of ways it would be lovely for me too. I enjoy your company and of course I’m grateful for your help with the children, it’s the only way I’ve managed any work at all since you came. But, look—’ I glanced at the children, Raph listening as if memorizing every word for later analysis, Moth scraping peanut butter off his toast with his finger. ‘Look, let’s just say yours isn’t the only family with some – some aspects that need addressing, OK? There might be other people who are also – well, negotiating responsibilities.’

  ‘Oh.’ She wilted over her tea. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Mummy, what are you talking about?’ asked Raph.

  ‘Zoe’s plans for the rest of the summer.’

  ‘We’re going home at the weekend.’ She picked crumbs off her plate with a licked finger.

  ‘Zoe, have some more if you’re hungry. And come and see us in Oxford, OK, when you’re back for Christmas? Who knows, maybe we’ll make it out to Vienna. For the Christmas market or something.’ Maybe, though since we have discussed this plan at least twice in each of the eight years the Friedmanns have been there and never got as far as looking at flights, I doubt it. We will be in Oxford, our horizons physically bounded by the railway, the river and the M40, but in fact seeing no further than the walled college gardens, for the rest of our lives.

  I went up to the anchorite’s cave when Moth went to sleep, leaving Zoe and Raph assembling a toy airport and taking Giles’s phone. There were at least three books I should have been reading, and one I should have been writing, but I wanted to stand where she stood and see the sea and sky through her holy eyes. I thought on the way up there that it couldn’t have changed much, that a thousand years were less than the flight of a sparrow in the geological life of ro
ck and water, but when I got there I saw that I was wrong. There were three cargo ships between Colsay and the horizon, the red and white-striped lighthouse on the Shepsay skerries, the jetty with our fibreglass boat poking out into the grey sea in front of the ruined village. I sidled down the grassy slope to the entrance of her cave, which is really more of a crevice. No Stone Age family would have contemplated it as a desirable residence, and I cannot quite convince myself that she never went home for Christmas or at least – mindful of my own experiences of going home for Christmas – retreated to a nearby sheepfold or one of the stone igloos, grain cists, which the islanders used as food stores for most of the last millennium.

  I sat where she would have sat and peered down between my feet. The cliffs were spattered with birdshit, and white flowers waved like bunting from some of the ledges. A few gulls drifted past, but the tenements of nests were deserted, whether through seasonality or ecological mishap I could not tell, and there was no cacophony of birds, no calls between mates or infant demands or maternal upbraiding. The anchorite, I realized, had not lived alone but, at least in spring, in the middle of an avian city. Rubbish and bits of driftwood crawled like insects through the waves washing the cliffs’ feet. The cave was damp, though supplied with enough fresh air that it was never going to smell of anything. She must have slept on heather, which is almost certainly more comfortable than the ancestral Cassingham horsehair mattresses, and if she wasn’t supplied with the heaviest wool blankets I doubted she’d have lasted long enough to form the basis of a legend.