Ribbons in Her Hair

by Colette McCormick

  As we followed the coffin into the crematorium, ‘Amazing Grace’ came out of the speakers on the wall. I’d once heard Miriam singing it to Mary when she was a baby and the memory brought more tears to my eyes. They just fell down my cheeks and off the end of my chin until Louise handed me a tissue and I wiped them away.

  Miriam’s coffin was placed on a stand inside an alcove at the front of the building. A man in a suit seemed to be directing proceedings and when the pall bearers had disappeared back down the aisle he turned to us and welcomed us to what he called a celebration of our ‘dear friend’s life.’ To be honest, it wasn’t much of a celebration because he’d said all he had to say in less than five minutes, the curtains had closed in front of Miriam’s coffin and a song about eternal love was coming out of the speakers. Louise did tell me who it was singing but I’d never heard of them – never heard the song before either.

  The ladies from the bingo nodded their goodbyes to us and walked away. The rest of us stood around like none of us knew what to do next.

  ‘We should do something to remember her by,’ Dan said, ‘give her a bit of a send-off.’

  In the end we decided to go to the café that she and I had visited just a couple of weeks earlier. Miriam wasn’t a drinker but she did like her tea and Louise said that she’d visited that café at least twice a week for years. It seemed appropriate.

  ‘Miriam’s usual for five,’ I said to the girl behind the counter and no one disagreed. We sat at the same table that Miriam and I had and I couldn’t help but wonder if that had been her usual table. I decided to believe that it was.

  The tea’s came along with a portion of Bakewell tart for each of us and we all tucked into Miriam’s usual. We chatted about how we all were. They asked how we liked it over on the estate, how the girls were doing, that sort of thing. We asked how they liked their new neighbours and were they all keeping well. After another round of Miriam’s special it was time to say our goodbyes.

  Dan and Bob were already out the door with Mandy close behind them when Louise grabbed at my arm to hold me back.

  ‘You all right?’ I asked.

  She looked through the door to where the other three stood on the pavement talking before she turned back to me and took a deep breath. ‘Miriam said that I was to tell you something if I ever saw you again,’ she said.

  ‘Oh?’ I was very curious.

  ‘Just a couple of days before she died she came into my kitchen when I was making the tea and told me that if I ever saw you again I was to tell you to think on what she had said.’ I wasn’t looking at her but I could feel her eyes on me. ‘She didn’t say any more than that so do you know what she was talking about?’

  Oh yes, I knew what she was talking about.

  After we left the café, Louise, Dan and Bob went one way and Mandy and I went the other. We all promised not to let it be so long next time.

  ‘What was all that about with Louise?’ Mandy asked

  ‘All what about?’ I said, trying to act dumb, but Mandy just raised an eyebrow at me as if to say you know fine what I’m talking about.

  She knew me so well. ‘Miriam talked to Louise a couple of days before she died,’ I said, ‘and told her, if she ever saw me again, to tell me I had to think on what we had spoken about.’

  ‘But Miriam knew your story, didn’t she? She knew about your mum wanting to send you away and have Mary adopted.’

  ‘Yes, she knew all of that.’ We’d reached the bus stop by then; there were just the two of us there. ‘But like I’ve told you, she said that there wouldn’t be a day goes past that my mum wouldn’t think about me, wouldn’t wonder where I was, or how I was. She said that she thought of her son and daughter every day. She asked me how I would feel if it was Mary that had run away.’

  Mandy isn’t often lost for words and I think that was the first time that I saw it happen, so I took advantage of it and carried on talking.

  ‘The thing is Mandy that I know if it was Mary I would never stop thinking about her, not for one second of one day. I would always wonder where she was, if she was safe, what she was doing. I don’t think that I could live without knowing all of those things.’

  ‘But that’s you and Mary.’

  ‘I’m still her daughter Mandy, and if Miriam was right, she really was only trying to do what was best for me, or rather, what she thought was best for me.’

  ‘Well she had a funny way of going about it.’

  ‘She was a very funny woman.’

  We both laughed.

  ‘But do you know what, Mandy?’ It was time to admit the truth. ‘There’s hardly a day goes by that I don’t think about her too.’

  ***

  I did think on what Miriam had said. I thought about nothing else all afternoon. I also thought about Miriam’s children. Did they even know that their mother was dead? Surely someone had contacted her son? Maybe not, because surely if they had he would have come to his own mother’s funeral, no matter what had happened between them over the years. New Zealand wasn’t the moon; there were planes. Louise had said that Miriam had organised and paid for her own funeral, it was as though she was resigned to the fact that there would be no family to take care of such things. But how could there be if they didn’t know she was dead? I was going round in circles around myself and the only thing that I knew for sure was that I could be that daughter, the one that wasn’t at their own mother’s funeral because I didn’t know they were dead. I didn’t think I wanted to be that person.

  The deal was clinched that afternoon when I picked Mary up from school. She came running across the yard clutching a parcel wrapped up in pink tissue paper.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked her.

  ‘A present for you,’ she said.

  For me? Why? Of course. It would be Mother’s Day in two days’ time.

  She held on to it all the way home and then put it on a shelf and told me that I couldn’t have it until Sunday. She looked at it every now and then as though making sure it was still there.

  ‘Have you got a present for your mummy?’ She asked later on, when we were sitting at the table eating our tea. She just came out with it, there was no warning and her question took me by surprise. What was I supposed to say to her?

  I settled for: ‘No.’

  She looked at me across the table with her knife and fork held upright in her tiny hands. ‘Why?’ And then, as she went back to attacking her spaghetti hoops on toast she asked, ‘Where is your mummy?’

  She’d never asked about my parents before but I guess school was opening her up to lots of things, like family for instance. Oh, sod it. I took a deep breath.

  ‘My mummy lives in a different town and I haven’t seen her for a long time. Not since before you were born.’

  She didn’t look up from her task of getting as many hoops on the fork as she could. ‘Why?’

  Oh well, in for a penny and all that. ‘We fell out.’

  Now she looked up. ‘You fell out?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘With your mummy?’ It was as though it was beyond her comprehension, which to be fair, it probably was. She stared at me with those big eyes of hers and for the first time I realised that they were my mother’s eyes. How had I never seen that before? Maybe I had just not wanted to acknowledge it. ‘You won’t ever fall out with me will you?’

  I pushed myself away from the table and so did she. I fell to my knees on the carpet and let her run into my arms. ‘No, my darling,’ I said to her. ‘I will never fall out with you.’ I hugged her and felt I never wanted to let her go.

  That night when she was safely tucked up in bed I got the bus timetable out of my bag and scoured it. There was one bus to my home town on Sunday and it left at eleven o’clock. I would be there on Mother’s Day. I was going home.

  JEAN

  I thought about Susan a lot, and not just Susan; I thought about her daughter Mary too. Sometimes I wondered how I could possibly have a granddaughter that I had never
seen. I wondered who she looked like. That Tim Preston had had a baby with another lass a couple of years earlier and when I saw her baby there was no denying it was his. Is that what my granddaughter looked like? I hoped not because I still couldn’t stand the sight of Tim Preston and if I did ever see him I would walk in the opposite direction. He’d stopped me once and asked after Susan. I’d said that she was all the better for having him out of her life.

  But she hadn’t just got him out of her life, had she? We’d gone from her life too.

  I tried to tell myself that no news was good news and that if anything was wrong we would have heard. Surely she would have had something on her that would have directed the police to us if anything was really wrong. It helped to think that.

  Julie got a phone call from her in the September that Mary would have been about five. ‘What did she say? Is she all right?’ Me and her dad couldn’t get the questions out quick enough; it had been so long since she’d called. But Julie couldn’t answer our questions because she’d been at the doctor’s. Susan had left a message saying that they were all right, that Mary had started school and that she liked it.

  ‘Was that it?’ I don’t think I hid my disappointment.

  Apparently Susan had said that she would call again soon and I hoped that she would. Mick told Julie that if Susan rang again to ask her to ring us too. I hoped that she would because it had been such a long time since I’d heard her voice, and even though I could still hear it in my head I wanted to hear it with my ears. I missed her more than I could ever have imagined I would so I couldn’t begin to imagine how Mick felt. To me she was my daughter but he hadn’t seen or spoken to his princess in over five years, and it was starting to show on him.

  I knew he wasn’t getting any younger but he looked older than his years and I knew that was down to Susan going away. He missed her so much. And so did I.

  I’d been so angry with her at the beginning, for getting pregnant in the first place and then for running away when all I was I trying to do was what I thought was best for her. But she hadn’t seen it that way and over the years I’d started to question if I had been right. Had there been another option? Could she have kept her baby and stayed at home? Could she have been another of the unmarried mothers that were popping up all over the place? I wouldn’t have liked it, of that I was certain, but maybe I could have got used to it. Could she have got used to the comments and the looks? What was the point in asking questions that I would never know the answers to?

  I imagined that she was still on her own. I’d told her she’d struggle to find a man to take on another man’s child. I know it did happen now and then, but not often and I hadn’t wanted Susan to risk her happiness on being one of the lucky ones. Luck wasn’t big in our family.

  I would sit some nights and wonder what sort of mother I was. I’d tried my best. I’d kept a clean house and my girls were always well turned out but somehow I’d ended up with one daughter who was divorced and another who had run away from home. Not the perfect family that you saw on the television.

  ***

  Celebration times were the worst – you know, Christmas, birthdays that sort of thing. I didn’t even know when my granddaughter’s birthday was. I thought it was some time in October but I didn’t know for sure. The year before I’d bought a card with ‘Granddaughter’ written on it and kept it in the bedside table. I’d written, ‘With love from Gran and Granddad,’ on the inside and I looked at it every day. I know its silly but I was getting sentimental in my old age.

  At least the other two seemed all right and I didn’t have to worry too much about them. I was concerned for Julie because she was terrified that she would lose this baby as well but once she got past the point that she lost the first one she calmed down a bit, and the doctors all told her that everything seemed fine this time. Helen was busy with wedding plans of course. She and Richard wanted to be married quickly and at first I thought that she might be pregnant too but it turned out that they were just in love and wanted to be together. We saw a lot more of her now that she wasn’t worried about what Robert’s mother might think and I was glad of that. I liked Richard, he was good to Helen and to James and that was all I could ask. His family were nice too; more our kind of people.

  They were going to get married at the register office, which wasn’t my idea of a wedding at all but what could you do when they had both been married and divorced. At least it would be legal. There would be no white dress and fancy reception this time, just the register office and then a meal in a local restaurant. Hopefully this one would last.

  So Helen was getting a second chance with marriage and Julie was getting a second chance at being a mum. I hoped and prayed that I would get a second chance with Susan.

  Like I said before, celebrations were the worst, and worst of all by far was Mother’s Day. It was just around the corner and Julie had suggested that we go out for dinner. I didn’t want to sound ungrateful but I didn’t fancy it. I wasn’t one for shows like that and to be honest I’d never had a Sunday dinner out that was a patch on mine. I offered to cook for them instead and they agreed it might be for the best. Helen wouldn’t be able to make it for lunch but she said that they would be round later. Richard would be away in Swansea that weekend visiting his grandma and Helen and James were going with him.

  At least my nest would be partly full and I would have to make do with that.

  MICK

  Appearances were everything to Jean – always have been, always will be – it’s just the way she is. It’s not her fault really; it’s how she was brought up – how we were all brought up, it’s just that Jean didn’t move with the times.

  I mean, when she fell wrong with Helen there was never any doubt that I would marry her. I knew that I had to face up to my responsibilities and I also knew that, if I hadn’t, her brothers would have found me and rearranged my face. I’m not sure that we’d have got married if she hadn’t been pregnant but she was and we did and to be honest, things could have been a lot worse.

  She has always kept a clean house, always fed me well and looked after the money and she gave me three beautiful daughters, which is a miracle because if she’d had the choice I think we’d have stopped after one. Helen was an accident, Julie was a surprise and I think she looked at Susan as a bit of a disaster. She was a good wife who didn’t deny me but she was never very keen on the physical side of our marriage. She did what she thought was her duty and the girls were an unwanted bi-product of that.

  But that was us, in our day. If you got pregnant, or you got a girl pregnant, you got married, simple as that. I knew what was expected, she knew what was expected, so we did it and once we had done it we were married for life. We didn’t expect marriage to be easy, nobody did; it was something that had to be worked at and you took the bad with the good.

  But things could have been different for Susan.

  I know that there would have been some talk from the neighbours but we could have got through that. Yes, they’d have been talking about her but that’s what they do and they’d have got over it and gone on to something else soon enough. Jean didn’t see it that way though. In her mind there was no way that Susan could have kept her baby. I should have seen that. I’d agreed to ring my cousin to ask if Susan could go and stay with her but I’d told Jean to tell her that she wouldn’t have to give her baby away. I shouldn’t have done that; I should have told Susan myself.

  I should have known that Susan would find a way of keeping her baby because I knew she would be more interested in facing up to her responsibilities and doing the right thing than in what the neighbours thought – she was like me in that respect. Jean had seemed surprised when Susan ran away but I wasn’t. I hadn’t expected it but once she had done it I realised that there was nothing else she could have done. She knew that if she’d stayed, her mum would have found a way of getting her own way. Jean was like that. No matter what any of us wanted, Jean always managed to get her own way. Susan wasn’t going
to let that happen this time so she had done the only thing she could and I was proud of her – though I had to keep that to myself.

  I saw her that night, the one she ran away. She was sitting in a café at the bus station. She was right at the back and she looked straight at me. I think she probably expected me to walk in there and drag her home, but I didn’t. Her mum would have but that’s the reason I made sure it was me that went out looking for her. I didn’t know what Susan’s plan was but I trusted that she was doing the right thing and I had to give her the chance to get on with it.

  I almost went inside to talk to her but I knew that if I had I might not have been able to let her go. For her to save her baby, I had to let mine go. I blew her a kiss and walked quickly away and as I did my heart was breaking. I had to walk around for ages before I went home just to make sure that the tears had stopped.

  I didn’t tell Jean that I’d seen her. Well, I did later on but not right then, not that night. No, I saved that until one night when we were having a row about Susan and what had happened. I hadn’t meant to say it but it was out before I knew it and once it was said there was no taking it back. I was hurting and I blamed Jean for that. I wanted to hurt her too. If I’d brought Susan back that night Jean would have found a way of controlling the situation, like she always did. I wanted her to know that I had stopped that from happening. I’ve never really stood up to Jean, there’s never been much point, but I wanted her to know that, when it really mattered, I had.

  We found a way of living together, we had to, and it wasn’t always easy. It was just the two of us at home so we didn’t have to make the effort to pretend that everything was all right. Things got better after that first phone call from Susan. She’d phoned Julie to say that she’d had the baby, a daughter that she’d called Mary though none of us knew where that name had come from. Susan had said that they were both all right but she didn’t say where they were.

  After that phone call, I relaxed a bit. Before that, I’d just had to hope that she’d known what she was doing and that she was safe. I still didn’t know where she was and we only had her word that they were all right but I believed what she’d told Julie because Jean might have thought she knew Susan, but I knew her better and I knew that if there was a real problem, if that baby of hers was in any danger, she would have asked for help. She’d risked everything to have that baby, after all.