Wildest of All

by P. K . Lynch

  Jude stepped out to see Danny holding the broken pieces of a picture frame.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said, forever the defensive little brother. ‘It was already like that.’

  Susan took it from him and shook the shards of glass onto the telephone table. She retrieved the photograph from between the sharp edges of the damaged frame and held it out for Jude to see.

  ‘I put this in a frame for her last time I was here,’ she said. ‘Sure, she’ll be disappointed by this. I wonder why she didn’t take it with her to yours, Jude. I’ll pop it on the side here, don’t let me forget. We’ll get her a new frame easy enough.’

  Susan and Danny returned to their tasks, but Jude was drawn to the grainy, black and white photograph. A petite, dark-eyed Anne smiled laughingly out at her, her delight on this, the happiest day of her life, communicated itself loud and clear through the years. Slim and tiny beside Patrick, who was serious and handsome in his wedding suit, Anne wore a plain, floor-length white gown, which Jude remembered being told had been made from parachute silk, as so many gowns and christening robes were back then.

  Jude missed her father-in-law. His reserved placidity had provided something of an oasis in an otherwise noisy family. She had often found herself sitting alongside him at family parties, while the others dominated with songs and loud conversation. She hadn’t considered them great friends, but allies of a sort. Sometimes she thought her relationship with Peter was a mirror to Anne and Patrick’s. Knowing the older couple had held together through the years, despite such differences in outlook and personality, had given her hope. Patrick’s death had left her feeling unexpectedly alone. Peter, Susan and Danny, despite their grief, had rallied for Anne, arranging themselves around her like scaffolding, making it difficult to see in, reminding her of her outsider status, despite her providing the family’s first grandchild.

  She ran the hoover over the carpets, and between the three of them the bungalow was spruced up in under an hour. While Susan unpacked her bag and Danny checked the garage, Jude took the photograph to Anne, who blanched when presented with it. Jude assured her they would find another frame in no time.

  ‘How is it in there?’ Anne asked, nodding to the house without looking at it, sitting as stiff and ram-rod straight as an aged ballerina.

  ‘It’s fine,’ Jude said, slipping the picture into her bag. ‘I changed the bed and cleaned the bathroom – not that it needed it,’ she added, hurriedly, knowing Anne would be mortified had she left any mess behind. ‘Susan gave the kitchen a wipe, and Danny opened the window for a bit of fresh air. There’s a lot of junk mail, but that’s to be expected. Nothing to worry about, honestly.’

  Anne nodded and returned herself to the view straight ahead of her. Jude had a sense she was seeing something other than the tidy lawns of the inoffensive cul-de-sac.

  That evening, everyone, including Emma and Lucy, gathered at Jude’s. Jude felt a pang as her nieces breezed in and kissed her airily. The lightness of their lips, their soft cheeks against her own – she wanted to catch it and somehow preserve it. They ordered Chinese takeaway and watched a talent show on television. They drank wine and enjoyed Emma’s derisive commentary on the state of television these days. Susan was unusually quiet and, when the opportunity arose, Jude cornered her in the kitchen.

  ‘Is everything all right?’

  Susan’s expression immediately confirmed that everything was not all right. She gripped Jude’s arm, leaned forward and whispered, ‘She’s mad.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Jude, frightened by Susan’s intensity. ‘Who’s mad?’

  ‘My mother, Jude. My mother’s fucking mad.’

  Susan opened her eyes so wide, Jude could see the pink fleshy rim that would normally be tucked out of sight. She began to shake, all of her, her head, chin and arms. She loosed her fingers around Jude’s arm and looked around, as if searching for someone else to pass the news of her mother’s madness on to.

  Reminded of the drunks she occasionally had to manage at work, Jude nodded. Stay calm, she thought, be reassuring, don’t do anything to enflame the circumstances. ‘Okay,’ she said, soothingly. ‘Take a few breaths. Whatever it is, we’ll work it out, okay?’

  A peal of teenage mirth emanated from the living room.

  ‘I can’t,’ said Susan, taking a step back. ‘I can’t talk about it with her just down the hall. But I don’t know what to do. Jesus.’

  Jude continued to nod and soothe, nod and soothe, and, after agreeing they could talk about it later, Susan began to gradually calm.

  ‘Now when you’re ready, we’ll go back through together.’

  Susan nodded and drank some water from the tap.

  ‘Scottish water,’ she said, with a weak smile. ‘Can’t beat it.’

  Jude began to relax a little now they were back on familiar ground.

  ‘How’s Manchester?’ she asked. ‘The boys getting on all right?’

  After finding her in the garden at Peter’s fortieth crying over Phil’s latest transgression, Jude had learned the hard way to keep her enquiries into Susan’s life focused on the children.

  ‘I can’t just leave him,’ Susan had said with derision.

  ‘Of course you can. You’re a grown woman with a job and a family. I bet your mum would love to have you and the boys back in Glasgow.’

  What had been intended as positive support had prompted a fresh outpouring of misery and it all came tumbling out. Anne knew the marriage was in trouble but was unsympathetic. Marriage was a sacrament. A life-long commitment. The Donnellys had never shirked the work of God and they never would.

  Jude was horror-struck and urged Susan to think for herself. ‘It’s not the 1950s, for goodness’ sake. Your mum’ll get over it.’

  ‘You make it sound so easy,’ Susan sneered. ‘What would you know about it?’

  The words stung. After all, it was true Jude was completely free from the same kind of parental obligations, but she didn’t consider it to be the blessing Susan did. She bit her tongue and dug a little deeper to find sympathy for her sister-in-law, who would not be moved from her decision to stay in an increasingly loveless marriage. She’d made her bed and would lie in it, as her mother would say, and as long as she did, she could be sure of her mother’s approval, or if not approval, then at least she would avoid incurring her wrath.

  ‘The boys are fine,’ Susan said, picking up a bottle of wine and pushing past Jude before there was space to ask about her philandering husband.

  As the evening wore on, Susan’s belligerence grew. At first it manifested in her being unusually interested in and helpful towards everyone apart from Anne: did they enjoy their food, need another drink, was school okay, was work? Jude felt powerless to stop it. The only thing she could think to do was drink more quickly – a trick she’d learned over the course of her relationship with Peter – and if she failed in her attempt to keep Susan relatively sober, at least she herself would be tipsy enough to withstand the fall-out.

  If Anne noticed the drama unfolding around her, she gave no sign. At ten o’clock she announced she was going to bed.

  ‘Are you all right, Mammy?’ Danny asked. Anne had always been a night owl so her early retiral, especially when in the company of her children and grandchildren, was unusual.

  ‘Aye, she’s grand, aren’t you, Mammy?’ Susan said, before Anne could respond. ‘Are you away to bed, Mammy? Are you?’

  ‘Help me up, Danny, will you? There’s a good boy,’ Anne said, extending her arm. Danny leapt forward and helped his mother to stand. Emma and Lucy stood and hovered just behind.

  ‘Ah, isn’t that sweet, Jude?’ said Susan, though there was nothing sweet about her tone. ‘Is that you, Mammy? Off to bed.’

  Without acknowledging Susan in any way, Anne made her way across the living room floor on the arm of her son.

  ‘Off to bed to dream of my daddy,’ Susan said, in a provocative sing-song.

  It was such an odd thing to say, and such an
odd way to say it, that the little group paused in their journey and turned to Susan, who looked back at them as though she’d been caught with her hand in their pockets. Anne’s face was stone, Danny’s made of confusion, and Emma and Lucy’s curiously expressionless. Jude remained on the sofa, the wine glass on her lips a feeble buffer.

  After what felt like an impossibly long silence, Anne looked down the length of her nose and said, coldly, ‘Go to bed, Susan,’ then left, still on Danny’s arm. Emma and Lucy followed.

  The room seemed to breathe out. Susan refilled her glass and Jude drained hers.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ whispered Danny, when he returned, having left his daughters upstairs to fuss around their grandmother.

  Susan’s mouth tightened with the effort of pulling her bag over from its spot on the floor. Rummaging inside, she located a plastic carrier bag and threw it down. It landed heavily on the coffee table.

  ‘What’s this?’ asked Danny, picking it up.

  ‘I found it at the back of her wardrobe,’ said Susan, her face dark with anger.

  Danny opened it up and looked in.

  ‘What the hell?’ he said, pouring the contents onto the table.

  From the bag came a cavalcade of paper which caught the air and slid messily among the empty Chinese food cartons.

  It wasn’t until she leaned forward that Jude realised the bundle of papers were family photographs. She recognised Anne, older than in the wedding picture from earlier, and slightly tired-looking now, with a young boy by her side who, she realised with a pang, must be Peter. He looked to be around nine or ten years old. Picking it up, she looked for signs of the man he would become, but the child’s questioning eyes suggested a vulnerability rarely seen in the adult Peter.

  Her gaze wandered to the sturdy baby on Anne’s lap – Susan, presumably – sitting with a serious expression and petted lip, and behind them was an aproned torso, but its head was missing. Thrown by the picture’s odd composition, it took Jude a few seconds to realise the photograph had been torn. ‘That’s a shame,’ she began to say, but she was distracted by Danny falling to his knees, and raking through the pictures like a dog after a rabbit.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ Susan said, and something in the way she said it gave Jude the sensation of entering a new place or time, or returning from some place she would have preferred to remain. ‘They’re all the same. Dad’s been cut out of all them.’

  Wordlessly, they sifted through a range of black and white, sepia-toned, Kodak multicoloured moments. Here was Susan’s sixth birthday, Danny’s Holy Communion, Peter’s confirmation, the day Patrick bought that white Renault, the old shop in Govan. What connected them all was the missing person. A series of rips and cuts had reduced Patrick to nothing more than a jigsaw of limbs, a dismemberment of memories. Some of the pictures had holes stabbed through them, as if the clean slice of a scissor blade wasn’t effective enough for the job.

  ‘I told you she was mad,’ Susan said to the back of Danny’s head as he let the images fall through his fingers. ‘She should be locked up.’

  ‘Not helpful, Susan,’ Danny said. ‘What makes you think it was her? It could have been an accident.’

  But the precision with which the photographs had been destroyed was evident.

  ‘It’s like she’s decapitated him. Killed him,’ Susan said, her voice shaking now. ‘Why? Why would she do that?’

  ‘Has she shown any signs of anything?’ asked Danny.

  They turned to Jude with the earnestness of small children. ‘Dementia, you mean? Alzheimer’s, that kind of thing?’ she replied, uncertainly.

  Danny winced.

  ‘God, no. She’ll outlive us all,’ Jude laughed, and wondered why she was laughing when the situation was far from funny.

  ‘Jude,’ said Susan. ‘You’re the one who spends most time with her. We’re relying on you to let us know if anything’s wrong, you know. We’re trusting you.’

  When Susan first started teaching, she worked hard to disguise her nerves and exert authority. She worked so hard at it, there came a point where her teacher persona refused to stay in the classroom. It followed her home, inserting itself into all of her adult relationships. For most people, Susan’s patronising tone was merely annoying, but for Jude it was a reminder of all the different teachers in all those different schools who had treated her as a special case, lavishing too much praise when she was good, and too many serious talks when she wasn’t. Jude’s learned response to that certain teacher-voice was mortification.

  ‘There’s been no sign of anything like this,’ she said.

  Susan and Danny continued to stare.

  ‘Honestly, I would have told you,’ she said, blushing, wondering why she felt like a liar.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Susan asked Danny. He sighed and collapsed onto his backside, taking a fistful of photos with him and stuffing them back into the bag.

  ‘Why does she hate Dad so much? And our childhood,’ Susan continued, her voice wavering. ‘Was it all a lie? The whole time we were growing up… Did she hate him all those years?’

  ‘Of course she didn’t. Now shut up!’ Danny snapped.

  Emma and Lucy came in.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ asked Emma.

  ‘What are those?’ said Lucy, reaching for a photo.

  ‘Nothing!’ Jude jumped up and placed herself between the girls and the worst of the spill. ‘Give us a hand tidying these plates, will you, girls?’

  ‘Sure, Auntie Jude.’

  They began to tidy the mess left over from the meal, while Susan and Danny gathered the broken pieces of their childhood. Everyone was aware of the girls’ eyes wandering from the plates and empty food cartons, but they didn’t ask any more questions about it, and that suited everyone fine.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Unfamiliar Passion

  The unframed wedding photo remained intact on Anne’s bedside table. Emma and Lucy had cooed over it when they’d taken her upstairs. She looked at it now and wondered what to do with it, mystified as to why she’d let this one survive the cull. Perhaps it was the innocence of it. Perhaps it was because she couldn’t quite believe the fear she saw in the picture now, hiding behind their smiles but announced loudly in their eyes. Perhaps it was simply because she had felt such hope on that day.

  She’d always liked the look of him. A tall, slim man who wore his hair unfashionably long, despite his mother’s protests. Because he was tall, he habitually stooped, which caused his fringe to flap over his eyes. He’d spent a year at Blair’s, studying for the priesthood, but returned home for reasons that were unclear. To still the whispering neighbourhood, Mrs Donnelly let it be known that Mr Donnelly was ailing. Praise be to the Lord, who had sent their only child home in the nick of time. Patrick took over the shop, allowing his mother more time to care for her husband, whose mind was no longer so sharp.

  With the Donnellys taking a step back, Anne had worried for her job. Patrick was the new boss and anyone, apart from his own mother it seemed, could see he wasn’t up to it. So before he could run the place into the ground, she’d set about spotting problems before they arose and dealt with them in such a way that Patrick could claim responsibility. She assumed stocktaking duties as well as cashier work and accounting, all the while working to keep Patrick involved. She’d seen it after the war – men returning to find their roles usurped by the women, and how useless they’d felt, and what harm that sometimes led to – and she didn’t want to run that risk with him, lest word got back to Mrs Donnelly that he wasn’t happy with her. Patrick, for his part, had been impressed by Anne’s quiet capability. He understood she was showing him the ropes and was grateful, though he remained mystified as to her motivations.

  Under Anne’s supervision, the business grew. Mrs Donnelly was delighted. Even Father Murphy made a point of dropping by to congratulate Anne.

  ‘Made yourself indispensable, I hear,’ he said with a wink. ‘Clever lass.’

&n
bsp; What was intended as a compliment communicated as a warning for Anne. Father Murphy might as well have added, ‘They’ll not get rid of you now’. A reminder of her precarious position in the world.

  Before long, Mrs Donnelly was telling everyone what a great team her son and Anne made, and soon it felt like the whole neighbourhood was in on the act. It became a running gag:

  ‘When are you two making it official?’

  ‘Ah, go on, Patrick. Make an honest woman of her.’

  Gradually their relationship was gossiped into existence and could not be refuted. She was twenty-five and, according to some, had missed the boat. Patrick was regarded as an odd fish by most, and so, generally, the entire neighbourhood was quite tickled by their pairing.

  Instead of dancing, Patrick liked to take walks. Anne considered him to be a gentleman, quite different from the few dates she’d had to fight off at the bottom of closes. Restrained, respectful, he barely dared to hold her hand. It was this quality more than any other that Anne admired. She took it as a sign of good breeding. For the first time in her life she surrendered herself to desirous notions. Her days were filled with thoughts of his gentle hands, dirty from cash and groceries, running across her skin. She developed a fascination for the flexing of his forearms as he carried boxes in and out of the shop.

  ‘I’ve never known a woman blush at the sight of a man rolling up his shirt-sleeves,’ murmured Mrs Donnelly, much to Anne’s mortification. As for Patrick, he kept his head down and she assumed it was because he, like her, could barely contain himself. For the first time in her life, she began to feel the possibility of a worthwhile future. She was marrying up. Once she had that ring on her finger, she would be secure. She didn’t yet dare to dream of the family she longed for, though it hovered on the edge of her subconscious; the sense of belonging, the unconditional love she’d been missing her whole life at last within reach.

  If there was an actual proposal, Anne didn’t remember it now, but somehow or other they ended up standing opposite each other at the foot of the aisle. Perfectly, she reached the groom just as the organ music ended. Her dress was of parachute silk. For the first and only time in her life, she experienced elegance. She lowered her head and raised her veil, took a deep breath, and looked into the eyes of her husband-to-be.