Bad Mothers Brilliant Lovers

by Wendy Perriam

  As the mother dabbed a fleck of ice-cream off her turquoise satin blouse, Debs was suddenly conscious of her own mother. By now, she would be worrying Big Time; imagining her daughter lying battered and bloody in some North London alleyway, or already in the mortuary, laid out on a slab. Guiltily, she dialled her parents’ number, only now aware of just how late it was.

  ‘Oh, Debs, thank heavens you’ve rung! Dad was getting frantic.’

  ‘It’s OK, Mum. I’m still in one piece!’

  ‘Thank God for that! And no problems with the flat?’

  Debs fiddled with her hair. The pause seemed ridiculously long.

  ‘Debs, are you still there?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She glanced across at the family, united and secure; exchanging jokes and banter. ‘Well, actually, there is a problem.’

  ‘What do you mean? What’s happened? Oh, I know the kitchen’s tiny, but you said that didn’t matter, because—’

  ‘It’s not the kitchen, Mum. It’s… .’ What the hell was she saying? The flat had seemed near-perfect, on all three viewings.

  ‘Well, what?’

  She couldn’t explain. It would sound pathetic, utterly uncool. But only now had it struck her that you could miss a mother – terribly. No one to care whether you were OK, or in a heap. No one to cook you proper porridge in the morning, or have your supper waiting when you came back, knackered after work. No one to make you a hot-water-bottle, if your period pain was bad, or sew new eyes on your old, balding teddy bear.

  ‘Sweetheart, have you lost your tongue? I asked you, twice, what’s gone wrong with the flat?’

  ‘Nothing’s gone wrong. And it’s not exactly the flat, Mum. It’s the, er, whole idea – you know, me leaving home and everything.’ You could even miss a brother, she realized, with a jolt. OK, Roddy drove her spare by leaving the top off her Clearasil, or playing his drum-set when she was trying to have a lie-in at weekends. On the other hand, a flat could be deathly quiet. Isolated. Lonely. Maybe even dangerous, if her parents happened to be right about the perils of North London.

  ‘You mean you’ve changed your mind, love?’ She couldn’t fail to hear the relief in her mother’s voice.

  ‘Yes. No. I’m not exactly sure.’ No one to call you ‘love’, or ‘sweetheart’, or their ‘favourite little girl’.

  ‘Well, you’d better decide as soon as possible, because Dad plans to give the sewing-machine a right old going-over tomorrow. But, if you think you won’t be wanting the curtains, I’ll tell him not to bother.’

  ‘I will be wanting them, Mum.’ Perhaps they would do for her Tolworth bedroom. There was nothing really wrong with pelmets, not in Tolworth, anyway. And making curtains for someone was like giving them a present: a gift of time and effort – as was slogging up to London to decorate a daughter’s flat. Presents meant a lot; meant someone cared and bothered. ‘Let’s discuss it when I get back, OK?’

  ‘But when will that be, darling? You’re much later than you said, you know, and we were getting really worried.’

  ‘I’m on my way!’ Without waiting for her second coffee, she flung a fiver on the table and strode towards the door; smiling openly, unabashedly, at that loving, caring – completely essential – family.

  Lost

  ‘Oh, no!’ cried Primrose, as the tube doors hissed shut behind her, at the very moment she realized she’d left her handbag in the carriage. She stood, horrified, incredulous, watching the train rumble out of the station, taking with it the keys to her flat, her travel-pass, her credit card and all her money, and several treasured possessions. She experienced their loss like a physical assault on her body – stomach churning, heart beating frighteningly fast – curdled with a sense of mortifying guilt. How could she have been so careless and so stupid?

  Easily, it seemed. Exhausted by the long and tedious film, she had nodded off on the journey back from the cinema and only jerked awake in the nick of time, as the train pulled into her station. She had made a grab for her walking-stick and for the old canvas bag that held her travel-cushion, but, in her flurry to get out, must have somehow missed her handbag, which was now winging its way to the end of the line. Should she catch the next train in pursuit, ask the staff here for advice, or…?

  Indecisive in her present state of shock, she tottered over to a bench and sat unmoving, feeling frighteningly denuded. In the absence of keys, cash and travel-pass, she was grounded and inoperative, not to mention shut out of her home. Worse, she seemed to hear Violet reproaching her from some realm beyond the grave, since it was Violet who had given her the bag – a luxurious one, real crocodile-skin, silk-lined – along with the matching leather purse and a tortoiseshell powder-compact, now both lost, as well. Her own bag had been shabby, cheap and shinily synthetic, but Vi had always been generous, paying for shared treats, or passing on barely worn clothes, and, during her last illness, had pushed the almost-new, designer bag into her hands and asked her to keep it in her memory.

  Primrose and Violet: two small, shy blooms, reared in adjoining flowerbeds, growing up together and remaining close ever since. The loss of Vi herself had been painful enough, without losing an object of such great sentimental value and one that still retained faint traces of her friend’s floral eau-de-cologne. Indeed, she felt so prostrated, she simply didn’t have the energy to go chasing off to Walthamstow in the fragile hope of finding the bag. So expensive an object would doubtless have been nabbed the minute she had shambled off the train, still half-asleep and dazed.

  Two or three people had now joined her on the bench and others were flowing on to the station, but to them she was invisible, of course; just a sad old crone, easily ignored. Leaning on her stick, she eased up from the seat and limped towards the exit, mounting the escalator with her usual caution. A broken leg, on top of everything else, would hardly improve the situation.

  Only when she reached ground level did she realize that, without her travel-pass, she couldn’t even get out of the station. However, having explained her dilemma to a swarthy, turbaned fellow, standing by the automatic gates, he kindly let her through. In fact, he seemed so affable, she found herself pouring out the whole story, her voice rising in panic as she realized the full implications of her loss.

  ‘Try not to worry, my love. There’s just a chance your bag might have been handed in.’

  ‘Already?’ she asked, seizing on the smallest grain of hope. ‘I assumed it would have been stolen.’

  ‘Not necessarily. Some people are good-hearted and do the decent thing. Tell you what – let me ring the next three stations down the line and make a few enquiries.’

  He led the way to a small, glass-fronted booth and, having disappeared inside, began talking on the phone. His obvious kindness and concern were like a soothing salve laid on a raw, smarting burn. Since Arthur’s death, kindnesses were rare. And he had called her ‘my love’, which also touched her deeply. She had been no one’s love for years.

  As he continued his phone-calls, she watched his face for any signs of hope, wondering what nationality he was. Indian? Pakistani? Bangladeshi? Throughout her rural childhood, she had never seen a black or Asian face and, after her marriage and the sixty years in Sidcup with Arthur, things hadn’t been markedly different. And, although here in Seven Sisters – where she’d moved to be close to Violet, who lived in neighbouring but more salubrious Highbury – she was surrounded by Africans, Jamaicans, Kurds, Turks and a whole host of other ethnicities, it had proved hard to get to know such a person – or, indeed, anyone in the area. Why should younger folk be interested in an outworn ninety-three-year-old? When Vi was still alive, they’d had each other, of course – two fellow nonagenarians united against the world – but her dearest, longest-standing friend had died six months ago, and the pain of her passing still throbbed like an open sore.

  ‘No luck yet,’ the man reported, ‘but don’t lose hope, my dear. It often takes a while for things to be handed in. You need to contact the Lost Property Office and they’l
l do a proper search. Do you have email?’ he asked, passing her their brochure.

  She shook her head, feeling her usual shame at owning neither a computer nor a mobile, both of which seemed more crucial in the modern world than owning a heart or head. But the long years of Arthur’s illness, followed by his dementia, had closed her own life down. Acting as his carer had proved a fulltime job, and, when she was finally forced to move him into residential care and sell their house to meet the ever-mounting costs, she was busier than ever, dealing with estate agents, showing prospective buyers round their neat little Sidcup semi, trying to find herself a new place, as well as fit in twice-daily visits to her increasingly incapacitated husband. And, after his sad and sparsely attended funeral, she had simply lost energy and heart. The once-enticing sounding IT courses for the over-sixty-fives had now lost all appeal. How could computers be of interest when her childhood sweetheart and life’s companion had died incontinent, fighting for every laboured breath and failing even to recognize his wife of sixty-seven years, as she sat clutching his scrawny hand, her tears falling on his age-blotched skin?

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t even have a computer,’ she admitted. ‘I know it seems awful in this day and age.’

  ‘Not at all. My wife’s the same. She refuses even to touch our laptop and just leaves all the online stuff to me.’

  ‘Well, she’s lucky to have you,’ Primrose observed, noticing his lustrously black, long-lashed eyes. Arthur had been resolutely English in his looks: fairish hair, pale blue eyes and over-sensitive skin that flared up in the sun.

  ‘She doesn’t think so!’ The man gave a big, booming laugh. ‘But back to your lost bag. Don’t worry about email, because you can call in at the Lost Property Office in person. All the details are here in this leaflet.’

  ‘But how can I go anywhere without a travel-pass, and with no credit card or cash to buy a ticket?’

  The man looked baffled for a moment, before passing her another brochure. ‘You’ll need to report their loss, as well. Here’s the number to ring for lost or stolen Freedom Passes, and they take calls on Sundays, up to eight o’clock, so you can do that right away. You can also phone the Lost Property Office, if you can’t get there in person, without shelling out for a ticket, but they won’t be open till Monday morning, eight-thirty. As for your credit card, that’s more important than all the rest, because if you don’t cancel it immediately, someone else may use it and start running up huge bills on your account.’

  She shuddered at the very thought, having always been scrupulously careful not to overspend.

  ‘There’s bound to be a customer helpline, and those are usually open twenty-four hours a day, three-hundred-and-sixty-five days a year. So I strongly advise you to phone them the minute you get home.’

  ‘I can’t ring anyone,’ she said, feeling more and more distressed. ‘My only phone’s a landline, you see, and without my keys, I’m locked out of my flat. I do keep a spare set with my neighbour, but she might be out and, anyway, she’s always rather fierce.’ Faced with the prospect of wandering the streets all night, not to mention being landed in debt because some stranger was using her card, it was all she could do not to break down in tears.

  ‘Do you have your neighbour’s number? I can give her a ring, if you like, to check she’s in.’

  ‘Yes, please,’ she breathed. This man was a veritable saint, doing everything in his power to help her out.

  ‘We’re not allowed to make calls indiscriminately but, since this is an emergency, there shouldn’t be a problem. So, if you come with me to the office, I can get an outside line there.’

  Fortunately, it wasn’t far – just a few yards from the booth – although, once inside, she felt awkward about disturbing the three members of uniformed staff, all sitting at computer screens and clearly hard at work. But, like the majority of people, they gave her little more attention than if she were a discarded chocolate-wrapper tossed into the waste-bin.

  ‘So what’s your neighbour’s number?’

  She fought panic for a moment, fearing she’d forgotten it. It was written on a piece of paper, stowed safely in a zipped compartment of her purse – useless in the present circumstances. She had once attempted to learn it off by heart, in case of just this sort of mishap, so, shutting her eyes, she summoned up her full powers of concentration. And, falteringly and slowly, the digits began to creep back into her mind: the seven and the three fours at the end, followed, more swiftly, by the prefix. Thank God her memory was still more or less intact, whatever else was failing. Having jotted down the number – along with her neighbour’s name, Mrs Cronin – she passed them both to the man, watching in an agony of apprehension as he dialled out on the office phone.

  ‘Good afternoon. It’s Mohammed Ahmed here, from London Transport… .’

  How exotic his name sounded! She tried to imagine being married to a Mr Mohammed Ahmed, instead of to a Mr Arthur Simpson.

  ‘Ah, Mrs Cronin, you’re in… .’

  She could have hugged the woman in sheer relief, just because she was there, yet she also felt a surge of dread at the thought of her irascible neighbour’s wrath. ‘Did she sound cross?’ she asked, once the obliging Mr Ahmed had rung off.

  ‘Well, not exactly a laugh a minute!’ The man gave her a complicit grin, which she did her best to return. In truth, though, she felt infinitely fatigued, not just from the stress, but from the prospect of all the calls required to regain her vital access to trains, buses, shops and even films. She relied increasingly on the cinema, these days, as a way of passing the empty hours, with free heating thrown in, as a bonus, and special discount rates at some of the chains; even free tea for pensioners.

  Aware that two other passengers were waiting to speak to Mr Ahmed, she apologized for taking up his time and thanked him profusely for his kindness.

  ‘No problem, my love. It’s all part of the service.’

  As she left the station, she stored that final ‘my love’ in the savings-bank of her mind, to provide some credit and comfort during the lonely evening ahead, then exited the station and turned into the High Road, surprised to see it was dark. The clocks had gone back a fortnight ago – a fact she kept forgetting, until each oppressively endless evening reminded her again. The High Road was as busy and noisy as usual, with buses roaring past, and a sense of being dwarfed and deafened in such a major thoroughfare. Everything in Sidcup had been on a smaller scale: quieter, safer, less anonymous and overwhelming.

  It also never failed to strike her how hugely Sundays had changed. In her young days, everything was closed and you stayed peacefully at home – cooking the roast, of course, but never breaching God’s designated Day of Rest by hanging out the washing or cleaning the front step, let alone indulging in any whoopee. Indeed, people rarely ate out on any day of the week, except for special celebrations. Whereas folk flocked to restaurants nowadays at all hours of the day and night – pizza chains, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Café Nero. They even breakfasted in cafés (which did seem a step too far), shelling out a fortune for tiny bowls of porridge her mother used to make for ha’pence. And here, in the High Road, were people eating, drinking, shopping, travelling, regardless of the Sabbath.

  She turned right into Broad Lane, taking the path across Page Green Common – or what was left of it. Vi had told her once that, a century or more ago, it had been considerably larger, with a pond and seats and a proper fence enclosing it, instead of just a small open space. Still, nice to have a patch of green at all, and some tall, attractive trees.

  Despite her deep anxiety about her lost bag and credit card, she stopped, as usual, by Arthur’s tree, sending up a silent prayer that her husband was now totally at peace and had regained his former health and mental clarity. He had always had a passion for trees – knew all the different species and even their botanical names – and, although they had never had a garden, their weekend walks in the various Sidcup parks had kept him contented enough, with occasional longer forays to
Elmstead Woods or Beckenham Place Park. So, immediately after her house-move, she had hunted for a tree that might appeal to him – something as strong and sturdy and singular as he was – so she could adopt it, so to speak, as they’d once planned to adopt the children they had never, sadly, managed to conceive.

  ‘Miss you, Arthur darling,’ she whispered, looking up into the tangled network of branches. ‘Your leaves are beginning to fall, my sweet, so be sure you don’t get cold.’

  Autumn was always a challenge – season of loss and decay: loss of warmth, of light, of leaves, of growth. Simply being old brought losses enough, without nature shrivelling and dwindling on such a melancholy scale. Still, at least Guy Fawkes Day was over. The noise of the fireworks seemed to shake the very foundations of her flat, and she felt awkward being pestered for a ‘penny for the guy’ when it was a struggle to give generously to every child who asked. She jumped as a lone firework suddenly whooshed into a shower of sparks high above the houses. One or two had been going off sporadically, during the last few days, always startling her with their mini-explosions. And, when she peered down at the grass, she could see some of their burnt-out carcasses, lying sodden and blackened right here by Arthur’s tree.

  She shambled on, passing the little primary school, then turning left into Hanover Road, glancing at every person who went by, in the hope of some acknowledgement. In Sidcup, there’d been a constant stream of ‘Good mornings’ or ‘Good afternoons’, friendly smiles, doffed hats. Now, no one wore hats and everyone seemed in such a tearing hurry, there wasn’t time to stop and chat. Also, she felt cut off from all the black and foreign faces. However much she might want to get to know them, they inhabited a different world that seemed to bar her entry. Once, she had stopped outside the local Apostolic Church, peering through the open door and astonished by the sight that met her eyes: people in colourful robes and exotic headgear singing and dancing on a stage, to the rhythmic, jazzy sound of a live band, and the entire congregation shimmying and jigging in the pews. She had felt a secret longing to join in, if only as an antidote to the severely silent Methodist services she had attended as a child, yet there hadn’t been a single white face among that exuberant throng, so she had simply slunk away, feeling intimidated, excluded.