by Melvyn Bragg
Afterwards John wondered whether he was doing enough about his own mother’s childhood. Putting together the story of Grace and telling her about it might be a help. But there must be other ways.
He was aware of a fatigue inside his determination. By the time he got to his mother’s bedside from London he would often be tired – the drive, a heavy week, deadlines over the weekend, the usual excuses. But he had to admit he could feel a helplessness, often enough to deplete his effort, even perhaps to infect her with his lack of will. When his children occasionally made the journey they would almost invariably return with bubbly news – and there was no reason to disbelieve them. He had been there with them from time to time, and what did they do? They just seemed to chat away. No agenda. Lots of compliments. Laughter. Happy noise. Teasing. She loved it. She loved it all. ‘I’m very lucky with my grandchildren,’ she would repeat. ‘Very, very lucky! I’m very, very lucky with my grandchildren!’
He could not be them. But he saw her more frequently than they did and yet he could . . . What was the damning phrase schoolteachers used about poor performance in termly reports? – ‘Could try harder’.
He watched her eyes flicker. Was her sleep the same sort of sleep as that of a baby? That was supposed to be dreamless, but was it? Perhaps her mind was like a child’s and floated through new worlds in scarlet and gold, in Persian dyes and sunset pastels, and all the dazzle of an Arabian mosaic – a world in waiting, with sweet scents and sounds, a womb of mind, a rich almost-consciousness, clouds of glory, a private paradise forever longed-for? Or was she in the derelict waste of the world’s end, her own world’s end, with the deep draw of a drugged blank future pulling her into its open jaws? Of what was she aware? Or was it more of a blank slate, as it had been at the beginning of life, but here a closing down, the lights going out, one by one by one until there would be none?
He read. It was difficult to concentrate on a book, let alone be taken over by a novel, so he read newspapers and magazines – sensible articles with a brisk beginning, a clear argument, and a firm conclusion confidently ordering wholly comprehensible worlds. A parallel fantasy, he thought, to the inscrutable dreams of his mother.
‘Are you here?’
‘Yes.’ He put down the magazine and leaned forward to pick up the two-handled pink plastic baby-cup, which held the water. She grasped it with both hands. She took two small bird sips as he tipped up the bottom of the beaker. Her voice was slurred, almost a gurgle, as it tended to be when she woke up.
‘When are we going out?’
‘Soon.’
‘That’s good.’ She leaned forward for another sip, then turned her face away as if he were forcing it on her against her will.
He dived in.
‘Did you ever go to Prospects when you were a little girl? It was a very big house.’
‘Miss Birkett,’ said Mary, and she smiled. ‘There were two Miss Birketts! My one had the biggest house there was.’
‘Prospects?’
‘She was very nice to me, Miss Birkett. Every now and then a man came in a smart pony and trap and took me away for the day to see Miss Birkett.’
‘Came where?’
‘Who?’
‘The man with the pony and trap.’
‘The house. Where do you think?’
Could she go any further?
‘Whose house?’
‘Our house. I loved that pony and trap. You were so proud, you wouldn’t have called the Queen your aunt. And I loved that little pony. Toby. He was called Toby. Trot-trot-trot.’ Her hands took the reins. ‘He pretended to let me drive.’
‘What did you do when you got there?’
‘I played. I watched the peacocks.’
‘Did you see Miss Birkett?’
‘She was very nice to me, Miss Birkett.’
She lay back on her pillow and John assumed she was now in a memory-dream of the magical childhood visits. Plucked from the congested slum centre of the crammed town and whisked away through the lanes to this palace of Prospects – what could there be but good memories? He left her in peace. So Miss Birkett had carried through to the next generation. He did not want to ask her more about Prospects. He did not want her to say, ‘Where?’
A few weeks later, on the same track, he asked, ‘Do you remember Greenways?’
‘Mrs Pemberton!’
‘That’s right. You liked working there.’
‘I loved it! What a beautiful house. Beautiful!’
‘We enjoyed going there, didn’t we? You would plonk me on that little seat you’d had put in front of the handlebars – or when I got older on the pillion at the back – and off we would go to Greenways.’
‘It had two staircases.’
‘Good for games. With Lucy and Arthur.’
‘They were nice children. You could all play together.’
He remembered some of that sharply. Lucy was a couple of years older than he was – about ten; Arthur a year younger than him. Lucy had a beauty John had not come across before: a tangled mane of auburn hair, speckled eyes, something – to John – magnetic about the charm and fun and loveliness of her. Arthur, too, had that look. His mother had been told they looked like their father, who had been killed in the war. In the barn they jumped from high stacked bales on to mattresses of straw. They played hide and seek all around the farm and in the house if it was raining. Mrs Pemberton seemed not to mind the noise they made, the mud they brought in, the rough-and-tumble of it all.
Lucy and Arthur went to the same primary school as John and would stay there until one day, as if a clock had struck midnight, they were spirited away to boarding-schools. John had a moon-calf devotion to Lucy and spent most of his time working out, with some success, games (like going away to war and coming back again) that had a kiss of reward at the end of them.
‘Did you like cleaning?’
‘It didn’t bother me. Not with nice people like Mrs Pemberton.’
‘Were some of the others not so nice?’
‘Not so nice. Not so nice.’
John had a view that his mother actually enjoyed the cleaning and embellishment of Mrs Pemberton’s house. She never complained. In the photographic album of his memory, he saw her polishing the big dining table and imagined her humming to herself as she did it. There was a complete lack of envy. But there was also, quietly expressed, an intransigent sense of equality. She played her part, just as Mrs Pemberton did. She knew, as the richer, socially grander woman did, that an appreciation of the other’s nature was what mattered. Was he being romantic or sentimental? He thought not. He had seen them together later, some way down the years, Mrs Pemberton rather more the worse for wear than his mother, and seen two women walking along a cliff path arm in arm, still comfortable in each other’s company, before retiring to Mrs Pemberton’s seaside villa in which John and his mother spent a short holiday.
He rang up a couple of days later. They would always put him through to the staff nurse on duty.
‘She’s taken to her bed!’ There was a lilt of laughter in the comment. ‘She woke up and had a look at the weather and just didn’t fancy it.’
‘Is she eating much?’
‘We got a bit of breakfast into her. But she wouldn’t touch her dinner. We’ll try again at teatime.’
‘But she’s all right?’
‘Oh, yes. She’s just a frail old lady. There’s days and days.’ And on some days, he knew, she could be very angry, refuse her food, refuse to be washed or dressed, flail all about her. ‘She has her bad days,’ the nurse said, ‘but if we leave her and come back later, odds are she’ll be right as rain.’ But it was getting worse, this resistance.
At present she had a chest infection, which took a fortnight to clear and the nurse advised him not to visit – she was asleep practically all the time.
When he did return, he breezed in, less circumspect than usual, the familiar gift – a box of milk chocolates – and flowers. She looked distracted and fierce.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I came to see you.’
‘Well. You’ve seen me.’
‘I came to say hello.’
‘Hello. So that’s over with. You can go now.’
‘They’re bringing a vase for the flowers.’
‘So that’s done. Ta-ra.’
‘What about these chocolates? Should I open the box?’
‘No.’ She turned into her pillow.
‘They said that I . . . you’ve been ill . . . needn’t come for . . . until you were a bit better.’ But why was he excusing himself? How could she remember his entrances and his exits? Yet guilt boiled up. ‘But when I phoned they told me you were getting better.’
Her silence was unbearable this time. Usually he could bear it. On this hot afternoon, with the slap in the face of ‘You can go now’, he had to dig in. Maybe three score years and ten was enough as the Bible said. Today he felt how he was ageing too.
‘I could read to you,’ he said.
‘What would you read?’
‘The Cumberland News . . . No? I could tell you stories you told me – “Little Red Riding Hood”?’
‘Don’t be so daft.’
That was better.
‘“Goldilocks and the Three Bears”?’
‘I know that one. I know both of them.’
‘What about poetry?’
‘What poetry?’
‘“Daffodils”.’
‘Go on then.’
She was still turned away from him.
‘I wandered lonely as a cloud [he began],
That floats on high o’er vales and hills.
When all at once I saw a crowd . . .’
‘. . . A host, of golden daffodils, [she said, and went on]
Beside the lake, beneath the trees, [she sat up]
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze . . .
. . . Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance . . .’
‘We learned that by heart at school. It was my favourite.’ Now alert, she added, ‘Grace liked poetry. She brought you a book of poetry now and then.’
Where were they? So many moves, so much ‘thrown out’ along the way. Which books had she brought him? Had she written in them? What had she said?
He opened his briefcase. ‘I’ve been writing about Grace,’ he said. ‘Would you like to hear it?’
‘Oh, yes.’ She was eager now. ‘About Grace?’
‘Yes.’ He sat down, the pages to hand.
‘I’d like that. I’d like that . . .’
He began to read.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
He met her at the station and was glad of it when he saw the uncharacteristically tentative way in which Grace stepped out of the train and peered around as if for support. Yet as he walked towards her and she was more fully in view, he felt a smile of admiration push through his lips. What a fine young woman his daughter was! What age would she be? Twenty-one? And there she stood, taller than most of the women, still quite slim, almost proud-looking in a nervous way, a match for anybody, he thought, and just like her mother. It was the dramatic contrast between the blackness of the hair, the marble skin and the eyes. And the smile, of course. That was always where you could tell about a person, his father had said, in the smile. The seed of attractiveness was always in the smile, and if you could trust the smile then you could trust all that lay behind it. Grace thought the same about her father’s smile.
They gave each other a brief, embarrassed almost-hug, then Grace linked his arm like a sister. ‘I thought I would take you to Lowther’s,’ she said.
‘Too posh for me.’
‘I knew you’d say that! But there’s that tea room just opposite . . .’
‘Forster’s.’
‘Is that acceptable?’ she asked, teasing him just a little, excited to be with her father.
‘That would be grand.’ He stopped. They were about to leave the station. ‘I’m so pleased to see you, Grace. I am.’
She nodded. It took very little to move her to tears these days. He squeezed her arm, and their delight in each other’s proximity was obvious to anyone with eyes to see as they walked into the middle of the thriving Georgian mining town.
‘I’m sorry about the last time,’ she said, as they sat at a table located in a quiet corner of the large, rather bare but well-frequented refreshment room.
‘You were in a bit of a state.’
‘You’d come all the way to see me.’ He had arrived in Oulton like a Praetorian guard – to give visibility to his unquestioning support of his daughter.
‘And see you I did. And I’m looking at you now and thinking what a fine young woman you are and I hope there are people about the street who’ll see us and say, “How did that lucky devil get to link arms with a beauty like that?”?’
‘They’ll certainly see I’m your daughter.’ Grace was proud of their similarity.
‘They will. Now then. Let’s tackle this agenda.’ He picked up the menu.
After the first cup had been drunk and the teacakes tasted and the family notices delivered, he said, ‘Has anything changed?’
Grace drew a deep breath. Her choice of a public place was deliberate but she wanted no more of the quayside or park benches. It would be impossible to have a private conversation at the house where he lived. There was the Anglican church – she had thought of that – but it would be too oppressive, she thought, and, besides, would it be appropriate? The Lowther, the grandest tea room in the town, had been part of it, partly a way to thank her father and partly because she thought they would be ignored there. But Forster’s tea rooms was where she had expected to land up. She must not let him down. It was her first venture into any sort of public arena. She could not have done it in Wigton, where she would have felt surrounded by the over-knowing or the over-curious. But she had to start somewhere. She could not hide away for ever.
‘Not much,’ she said. ‘One thing.’
After the child had been with the wet nurse she had been placed with a foster-mother, Mrs Johnston, in Wigton. She had two boys of her own and had fostered before, and she was currently fostering one other child. She had room, she said, in the rather commodious house bought by the council from a bankrupt estate agent. The arrangement was swiftly agreed on. Sarah would pay for the first few weeks, then Grace would take up the burden. She would be on a wage by then and there were her savings over the years, plumped out by the sale of those lambs, every penny accounted for and returned via Sarah from Wilson.
Through Miss Birkett’s connections, Grace had found refuge and employment in the house of a solicitor in the south of the county, in the village of Grasmere. There was a rise in the land, a hill called Dunmail Raise, just before you went down south into Grasmere. It had once marked the boundary line of the kings of Scotland and there was still a sense of cut-off, of the land south being a different country, far from the bloodied plains, the fortified churches and houses and castles, and the foreign intervention of the great Roman wall. Gossip, Miss Birkett rightly guessed, would not reach so far and would not go over Dunmail Raise unless deliberately and maliciously carried. The solicitor and his wife would seal their lips; the live-out maid and the part-time gardener would not be informed of Grace’s past. Grace would be as safe as anywhere she could be while yet being within travelling distance of the child.
Mary did not yet seem to be ‘her’ child. Grace’s life had been organised out of it. Well and thoughtfully organised, sensibly and conscientiously organised, but it was as if she, Grace, the mother, was not a mother but a movable factor in a grander equation. In her physical weakness in the early stages she had had a resigned acceptance, which might have been the oil on the storm of pain that ripped through her. But now that she had recovered physically . . .
‘So I asked for a full day off on the Saturday and caught the bus to Wigton . . .’ she told her father. She wanted to tell him everything. There had to be someo
ne who knew everything about her. It was a journey of about two hours with a change at Keswick. It was a trip furnished with views of memory-staining countryside, mountains, lakes, stone walls, waterfalls, woods steeped in early-autumn ripeness, the ripeness of that subtle pre-death season. Grace was absorbed by it, transfixed by the moving pictures of landscape. The feeling she received from that countryside was somehow healing, even hopeful, and she had arrived in Wigton not only excited but sure that this was the real beginning of her new life, her motherhood.
The short walk from the bus stop next to Tickle’s Lane, past the Victoria Arms and down Station Road to the big cobbled yard in which Mrs Johnston’s house was situated drained some of the confidence of morning hope and the consolation of landscape out of her. Grace felt observed. She felt that her shame was on her like a placard hung around her neck.
Mrs Johnston, a stout, canny, efficient woman of experience in these matters was brisk, believing that sentimentality would invite the sort of emotion she found it too difficult to cope with. Mrs Johnston, from a large country family, was steady, and steadiness was what she wanted from others.
She took Grace upstairs and left her beside Mary’s cot. She stood beside her for a few moments, then went downstairs telling Grace to ‘take as long as you like’. Mary was asleep, tiny hands flopped back beside her ears, breath like the lightest, slowest sigh over a still pond. Grace was reassured, just by her being. This baby had been part of her a few weeks ago. She felt the gap of her as she bent to breathe a kiss across her brow. Soon they would be together again. She could have scooped her up now and taken flight with her, but not this time. She had been told that sternly. Not this time. But how soon?
‘Where would I take her is what they want to know,’ she said to her father – at last able to talk openly and freely about this.
