by Louise Beech
‘What?’
‘We made him leave; he can’t have done those things!’
‘What do you mean, “he can’t have done”?’ I felt like she was squeezing my windpipe. ‘He did.’ I paused. ‘You sent him away? Why did you send him away? I don’t understand.’ I didn’t want to be asking the questions. I had all the answers now and I didn’t want any more.
She looked at me, her face full first of shame, then of panic, and then, strangest of all, guilt. ‘That bastard,’ she said. ‘That bastard. Coming into this house, invited into this house, violating this house. I should have killed him.’
‘Stop, Mother. I don’t want you to shout or swear. I want you to understand. He hurt me.’ I knelt at her feet, the tiles cold against my legs. Something burned in the oven. ‘Look at me. He hurt me. Don’t be angry at him or at yourself; be sad for me. Be a mother. Just be my mother – even if you didn’t give birth to me, you signed up to be my mother. You’re not a standin.’
She stood up and brushed past me, knocking my arm.
That’ll bruise, I thought, and they were Christopher’s words. ‘That’ll bruise,’ he’d said of his shin. His words, so right. I had confessed for the wrong reasons. I wanted her love. I should have waited.
‘Wait until I tell your aunt Mary.’ She held her head. ‘Wait until I tell her we were too late.’
‘Mother, no, I don’t want you to.’ I got up and grabbed her arm; it was hot – she was fire. The burning oven was contagious. ‘You can’t burden Aunty Mary with this when she’s ill. You’re scaring me. Sit, have a drink, talk to me.’
‘Graham!’ she called, trying to pull out of my grip.
‘Mother!’ I cried. ‘Stop! I don’t care about Aunty Mary right now and who knows and who doesn’t and him going and your anger. This is about me. It’s always you. If you love me, you’ll sit with me.’ Tears tickled the corners of my eye, warm, tempting.
Graham came in. ‘Are you OK?’ He looked at her, then me.
‘That animal,’ my mother snarled.
‘What animal?’ he asked.
‘Henry. Her uncle Henry.’
Graham went to her and wrapped her hot body in his arms and she flopped there, the fire finally fading. My knees were stiff from the cold floor. I turned all the cooker’s knobs to off to save whatever was crisping and stop the vegetables bubbling.
Mother whispered into the folds of Graham’s Rudolph jumper that they had been too late.
‘I don’t understand.’ He looked at me, but I was all out of answers.
‘Remember,’ she said to him.
Remember, I thought. Come on, Graham, it’s not that difficult.
‘I told you years ago about what we found.’
‘Oh. Yes. But why were you too late?’
‘He’d already been…’
‘Been what?’
‘Abusing Catherine.’
Graham looked at me, and I felt ashamed, like a naughty child.
His eyes filled with tears. ‘Catherine,’ he whispered. ‘No.’ He let go of my mother and told her she should hold me, not him.
‘I can’t deal with this, I just can’t,’ she said, not moving.
‘What did you find?’ I asked her.
‘Disgusting,’ she mumbled.
‘What the fuck was it?’ I yelled.
‘I just can’t deal with it.’ She pulled away from Graham and ran from the kitchen.
‘Someone had better tell me what you found.’ I shivered. Graham approached me, but I held up my hand. ‘Don’t. I don’t want your affection right now, Graham; I wanted hers. Just tell me what you found before I leave.’
He looked at his feet. ‘Mary and your mother found some … pictures.’
‘Of what? Where?’
‘In the room Henry had. They found pictures of children.’
‘What do you mean? Whose children?’ I shook my head.
‘No one’s children. Just children. Posing. You know … pornographic images.’
‘No one’s children,’ I said.
‘I’m sorry. I meant children of no one we know. Your mother was trying to hide a Tiny Tears doll she’d bought you for Christmas. There was a walk-in cupboard that locked in the room where Henry slept. They were there. Your mother was sick on his bed. She and Mary made him leave that day. They threw his things in the drive and told him that he was never again to come back or contact them. Your mother said she was glad they found out before … before he … acted upon his … perversion.’
‘I’m someone’s child,’ I said.
‘I know.’ Graham’s voice was a croak. ‘Catherine, all this time carrying that. Why didn’t you tell someone?’
‘Because I’ve only just remembered,’ I said. ‘And now I wish I hadn’t.’ I pushed past him. ‘Where did she go?’
‘Let me talk to her,’ he said.
‘What good has that ever done?’
I slammed the door and looked in the lounge. Celine was reading a copy of Vogue near the smaller gold tree. The gifts beneath it had been arranged according to size so they appeared as steps leading up to the branches.
‘Shit.’ She closed the pages. ‘He told you? I didn’t realise it would upset you this much. I was wrong, OK? I should never have done it. I didn’t think they’d fire her. I just thought it would be funny to have her come clean in the column. That’s all I thought would happen.’
‘What?’
‘Didn’t Graham tell you?’ Mauve eye shadow had smudged near her left eyebrow.
It dawned on me; it might have done sooner if I hadn’t been working for a crisis line and didn’t have a derelict house and a friend who had deserted me and if I hadn’t been dealing with a childhood memory that had taken twenty-two years to emerge. ‘You were the one who rang Fern’s editor,’ I said.
The tree’s string of multicoloured lights was set to flash. Though the flashing seemed random it had a pattern if you were patient enough to figure it out. Flash, flash, not; flash, flash, flash, not; flash, not.
My head pounded.
‘So you admitted it to your dad. Pretty big of you, Celine. I’m surprised.’
‘Um, no … Not really. He overheard me the on the phone, telling Stephen about it. I’m sorry.’ Celine folded and unfolded the corner of the cover page.
‘You’re not,’ I said. ‘You’re just embarrassed you got caught, but that’s fine. I only wish I’d figured it out sooner.’
She stared at me. ‘So what’s up with your mother?’ She looked through the French doors and I followed her gaze – Mother stood on the lawn, by the shed.
I went outside. Fresh, untouched snow covered the garden. The only footprints led to her. I followed them and remembered the verse Nanny Eve had on her kitchen wall about there only being one set of footprints because Jesus carries you in your darkest hour. I tried to stay within my mother’s imprint but my feet are bigger and I ruined the shape. She must have heard the crunching grass but she didn’t turn. I stood behind her, cold. Her cardigan was grey, bobbled where her elbows had rubbed.
‘When your dad died,’ she said, without looking round, ‘I asked Uncle Henry to come and stay. I knew you’d taken the death hard. I knew you loved him more than you did me; it’s understandable. He was your blood. So I wanted to have another kind of father figure in the house for you. Who better than your dad’s brother? And he was great with you. He gave you all the attention I thought you missed; he even kept your dad’s promise by buying you that damned rabbit.’ She glanced over her shoulder. ‘So can you imagine how I feel right now?’
‘Of course,’ I said gently. ‘I’ve imagined it all morning. I’ve dreaded this, and I wasn’t sure why I wanted to tell you. I suppose I just wanted you to understand why I’ve been so difficult all these years.’
‘I wish you hadn’t told me. I don’t know what to do with it.’
‘Me neither,’ I said.
Snow began to fall again. Soon it would cover our footsteps.
‘I nee
d time,’ she said, still giving me only her back. ‘I can’t deal with it.’
I walked around in front of her, disturbing the undisturbed snow. ‘Mother, my uncle assaulted me. Not you: me. In that shed. Look at it – look at me.’
She did both, but her eyes were full of resistance, and her breath hung in the air.
‘Don’t you care how I feel?’ I asked.
‘I’m in pain,’ she said. ‘Physical pain. Couldn’t you have just told your crisis people?’
‘They’re for people who have no one else.’
‘They’d know what to do.’ She began to shiver.
‘You might feel guilty that it happened, but you don’t have to.’ I thought about touching her arm but she was too distant. ‘How could you have known? This isn’t your fault; I don’t hold you responsible. At all. I know about the photographs, Graham told me – how sick they made you, that you did what you felt best. I came here with no judgement, only sadness for the pain I was bringing.’ The tears that had teased earlier now streamed a hot trail down my cheeks. ‘But you’re guilty of failing me today,’ I said. ‘Guilty of turning your back on me now, when I’ve come to you. You ask me if I can imagine how you feel but you’re not considering how I feel. How do you think I feel? You’re not the victim. I was. I came to you as a daughter today, but you’re no mother.’
My hand rose before I knew it, and I saw it in front of me. Felt the jolt through my arm as it made contact with her cheek. I had slapped her. But I knew instantly that it hurt me more. I remembered her clifftop slap. I was as bad now. We were equal.
‘You’re a cunt,’ I said. ‘When you’re not, come and say sorry to me.’
I left her in the ruined snow by the shed. Soon my footprints would not even be there either. I went inside, up the stairs, to the room at the back where Uncle Henry had slept.
Now it was a storage room with unlabelled boxes stacked against the wall and a single bed without covers. It held no particular memory; Henry had never taken me into the place where he ogled no one’s children.
I opened the door in the wall, half expecting piles of faded images to spill out. But those nameless children were no longer in the cupboard. It housed only Graham’s fishing magazines and old towels and Christmas wrapping paper. The nameless children were long gone. I only hoped they were free now. Had their true names.
As I finally did.
24
Learning from Fern
After climbing the flat’s metal stairwell, shutting the door behind me and closing my eyes to block out that solitary line of footprints leading through the snow to my mother, the words ‘You look like total shit’ surprised me into reality. My eyes snapped open and ‘Huh?’ jumped out of my mouth: a verbal sneeze.
I scanned the room for the voice.
Fern sat on our sofa, a golden creature with olive skin and freckles and sun-lightened hair. A red suitcase spilled multicoloured bikinis and sarongs all over the coffee table, and duty-free bags covered the floor. That corner of the room shone brighter than the kitchen’s fluorescent bulb. She wore new shoes.
She was home.
I waited for the joy to fill me.
‘How’d you get in?’ I had her keys; they hung from a cup hook, awaiting her claim.
‘Victor.’
‘Why are you here?’ I asked.
‘What kind of a hello is that, woman?’
She uncrossed her tanned legs and waited for me to respond, but I couldn’t. Anger burned away any joy at seeing her; her quick judgement of me darkened that too-light corner.
‘I knew as soon as I got to the airport,’ she said, and paused as though I might ask what she’d known.
But I didn’t. I wanted her to leave again. I was still trembling from the exchange with my mother. I couldn’t deal with this too.
‘Once I’d calmed down I knew that you’d never do a thing like that,’ she said. ‘I never even really thought so. I was just pissed off. Blinded by the bad news and desperate to blame someone. And there you were. Your name.’
She looked at me. I held that gaze without a smile.
‘There’s no excuse,’ Fern admitted.
Still I couldn’t say anything. Why should she have it easy? Why should she hurt me and go away and expect to walk in here like nothing had happened in between?
‘So I sat on the plane with my double vodka,’ she said. ‘Some guy called Leonard paid for it. And I realised how ridiculous even the idea that you’d ring my editor was. Like, you’d never do it. I tried to call you as soon as I landed but I couldn’t find my bloody phone. I think Leonard stole it. I was flinging stuff all over the airport, searching my case, my bags, my pockets…’
I hung my coat on the door but I didn’t go over to the sofa. She watched me with watery eyes, gauging my response to her explanation. I didn’t feel she deserved my words. The radiator clicked into bubbly action; some things never changed.
‘I was cursing at the airport officials about bloody thieves,’ she went on, her waterfall of words fast and invigorating, willing me into forgiveness, ‘and I couldn’t understand a thing they were saying, though I reckon I could have got with one of them – slicked hair and tight trousers. I desperately wanted to ring you, but all my numbers were in that phone. You know numbers and me. I never even remember my own date of birth. May … fifth?’
‘Sixth,’ I grunted.
She nodded. ‘What would I do without you?’
If she wanted an answer I couldn’t give it. What would she do without me? What had I done without her? I’d hurt. I’d been lonely. I’d worn a stupid watch until it chafed my wrist.
‘It was no holiday,’ she went on. ‘I was forever turning to tell you something – every day. There was this guy on the beach wearing a leopard-skin thong, must have been eighty, and I actually said aloud, “Would you do him for a thousand quid?” I was so frustrated I couldn’t call you. I rang my mum every day to get her to pass on a message to you, but she never picks up when it’s an international number. Thinks it’s those people selling stair-lifts. But I thought, Catherine will know. She knows how temperamental I am, and she’ll realise that deep down I didn’t think she’d done it. She’ll know I’m stupid and wrong and that I’m coming home. You knew, right?’
‘That you’re a stupid cow?’
‘Yeah, that too.’
But too much truth filled the room; I couldn’t lie and say I’d known. It was just like with Celine’s deception, I thought: if I’d had less going on I might have guessed.
‘Sit with me,’ said Fern.
‘No,’ I said.
So, she came and hugged me, smelling of a hundred different fragrances. Her body was warm, so unlike how my mother’s had been. I was desperate to give in and have the simplicity of our relationship again, but I couldn’t. I pulled away.
‘It’s good to be back,’ she said, uncomfortable. ‘I could murder a proper cup of tea; that stuff in Spain tastes like piss.’ She looked at my face, at my dirty hair. ‘Been arguing with your mother, as usual?’
My heart ached. I ignored her and put the kettle on. I didn’t want to tell her about my memory, my past. She hadn’t been here while I’d gone through the ordeal of remembering; that was what hurt most of all.
‘Nothing changes, does it?’ she said, clearly trying to fill our awkward silence. ‘It’s Sunday, so you’ve been at your mother’s. I should be hungover in bed, ignoring texts from some guy and never learning my lesson with drink. I could go away for a year and come back and nothing would really change.’
‘Things do change,’ I said gruffly. ‘The tap’s fixed.’
‘Is it?’ She glanced over at the sink as though willing it to leak.
‘Listen, I…’ I tried to find the right words. ‘Right now, I need to be alone. I just can’t be all fine and normal with you, because things aren’t fine and normal. You hurt me, and I can’t just get over it because you’re here again. I believe you’re sorry, I do. But a lot happened while you were go
ne. Stuff I could have … well … used a friend for.’
Fern’s eyes filled with tears. She nodded. ‘You’re right. It’s wrong of me to expect anything. Look, I have stuff to do, so I can make myself scarce. I can stay the night at my mum’s. We can, you know, catch up soon, when you’re ready.’
‘Sleep here,’ I said. ‘It’s fine.’
She put on her coat. ‘OK. Well, I need to see my mum so I can give you space and come back later.’
When she left, I had never felt more alone.
I must have fallen asleep on the sofa because when I opened my eyes it was dark. Fern sat at my feet, her head on the sheet that had tangled around Christopher and I only that morning.
‘What time is it?’ I asked her.
‘Time you got a watch.’ She paused. ‘Only seven pm.’
I sat up. At least Fern seemed sorry. My mother had only been cruel, given me the cold shoulder. Maybe I should be kinder to my friend.
‘I know I hurt you,’ she said, as though hearing my thoughts. ‘And I’m sorry. It sounds so lame, but I am.’
I shrugged.
‘You had a man here, didn’t you?’ she said, and I could just make out her smile in the dimness. ‘And not just because the tap is fixed. I can tell. I turn my back for one week, and you have the whole British army over. How many? Come on, give me the juicy details.’
‘There are none,’ I said.
‘Who is it?’ She leaned closer, further creasing the sheet. Had Christopher been here only hours ago? I felt sure Fern would smell us, what we had shared. I blushed.
‘Just someone from Flood Crisis,’ I admitted.
‘I’m so happy; you so deserve it. Does he have a name, then?’ She clapped her hands like I’d won the jackpot on a game show.
‘Christopher,’ I said. ‘And it was only…’
‘Only what?’
‘Well, it’s nothing, really.’
‘You’re blushing,’ smiled Fern. ‘And you don’t want to talk about him. That means you like him. Come on, what’s he like?’
‘Never mind,’ I said coolly. ‘I’ll make tea and you can tell me about your holiday romances.’
I went to the kitchen and switched on the kettle. She rummaged through a carrier bag. I needed her light and fluffy tales.
