by Judy Astley
‘How sad,’ Margot sympathized. ‘I still miss mine. We were more like sisters, told each other everything.’ This reminded Heather of her own schoolfriends’ mothers, the ones who’d tried to recapture their own youth through their daughters, or hold on to being important in their escaping lives for as long as they could, insisting with teeth-gritted desperation in the face of sullen teenage self-centredness, ‘Of course, we’re best friends, you know.’
‘I can’t imagine Kate telling me absolutely everything,’ Heather said, ‘and I hope she’ll realize, when the time comes – God if it hasn’t already – that some things I might prefer not to know!’ Who was it, she tried to recall, who’d said that when mothers and daughters are mistaken for sisters, it’s only the mothers who are pleased?
‘But surely you talk to your mother, you know, when things are going wrong at home?’ Margot asked.
‘Absolutely not. We talk about the weather and what’s for lunch and how the girls are doing at school and that’s about it. Information is power with my mother. If I tell her I’ve had a row with Tom, perhaps over how much vodka he can put away, then six months later when Tom and I are four fights further on about everything and anything, she’ll still be sending me cuttings from the Telegraph about AA meetings and counselling services in this area.’ With Margot she could laugh about it, but Delia had a terrier-like tendency to hold on fast to snippets of personal information and re-use them against her, like evidence in a police court. She then thought briefly about Kate and Suzy and their spats of mutual hostility, realizing that, if she went by Margot’s ideal standard, she certainly hadn’t managed to produce a pair of even compatible sisters.
Heather had spent a resentful couple of days tidying the house to a standard not usually achievable during the growing season, even with Mrs Gibson’s twice-weekly help, at the same time asking herself, also resentfully, why she bothered when there were beans to be picked and delphiniums to be staked and a garden in the next village to be redesigned. But she knew really. From forty-one years of experience, she knew how wearing it was to be on the constant wrong end of criticism. It was far more restful to eliminate the things that could be criticized. Back in her teens this had been organized by dodges like waiting till she had left the house and found a phone box with a mirror before applying her preferred full amount of make-up, ghost-white lipstick and sooty black Dusty Springfield eyeliner. Huge batwing false eyelashes could be whipped off as close back to home as the garden gate, with her mother having no clue that her daughter had spent the evening looking very much as if she’d been haunting the churchyard. ‘Very high standards your mother has. It’s being your only parent. Wants you to reflect on her with credit,’ Uncle Harold had explained to her, with an extra helping of knee-squeezing, on one of the gold-doily Sundays when an appalling history exam result had produced a two-day maternal sulk, unmollified by otherwise excellent grades.
‘Come to the station with me Suzy, I’m sure Gran would love to see you,’ Heather pleaded cravenly, finding Suzy sprawled untidily on one of the sitting-room sofas reading Swallows and Amazons, and making notes in an old exercise book.
‘Do I have to? I mean she’ll see me when she gets here,’ Suzy protested, reasonably.
‘Yes but she likes to be met. It shows you’re really looking forward to seeing her,’ Heather cajoled, shoving Suzy’s long bony feet off the freshly-laundered apricot silk cushions.
‘But I’m not,’ she heard Suzy murmur.
‘Suzy!’
‘Oh, OK, OK. I didn’t mean it. It’s just that she picks. Though maybe I could come if – would you buy me something? Please?’ Suzy, the possibility of a reward making her suddenly compliant, leapt off the sofa, ran her fingers through her hair as her gesture towards making it look tidy, and tucked her Manchester United T-shirt into her shorts. ‘It’s only a small something, but I do need it.’ Suzy produced a warmly persuasive smile. ‘Just an oil lamp, for camping over on the island with Tamsin. They don’t cost much.’
She made it sound very much already decided, Heather thought, wondering if this was something Suzy had made her agree to in one of the absent-minded moments between an early evening vodka and tonic and the cooking of dinner. She plumped up the sofa cushions and took a last look round the unnaturally tidy room, trying to see it with the sharp eyes of her mother. Books on the shelves were all neatly spine-out and lined up, and videos were filed away in the cupboard instead of lying abandoned across the floor. The curtains, lavishly patterned with enormous foxgloves, were prettily scooped into their silky rope tie-backs and fluffed out at matching angles, and surely no-one, not even Delia, could find fault with the glorious view from the French windows, down across the sloping lawn past the swimming pool and box-hedge-bordered herb garden, to the river with the willows and fields and hills beyond the opposite bank. The carpet still showed tracks from Mrs Gibson’s loyally fervent vacuuming, and the air smelled deliciously of the rich cream-and-yellow roses picked that morning from the pergola that sheltered the cars. She hoped, suddenly, that her mother wouldn’t ask what the names were, realizing that some kind of serendipitous accident had led her secateurs straight to both ‘Wedding Day’ and ‘Schoolgirl’. She stifled a chuckle that would have had Suzy thinking she’d gone crazy, and turned her attention back to what her daughter had said.
‘I’m sure this is the first I’ve heard of camping, and a lamp does rather imply night. I don’t like you being on the river in the dark, you know that,’ Heather pointed out as they headed for the Renault.
‘But we wouldn’t be,’ Suzy argued. ‘We’re going to row there in daylight in the afternoon and sleep in Tam’s tent. We’ll have a little fire, cook something, like being in the Scouts. It’s all arranged.’ Her voice rose, seeing her plans threatened, especially now she’d stupidly mentioned the trigger-dread word ‘fire’, about which even she had her usual fearful qualms, and she just knew that her mother’s veto would invoke Tamsin’s shaming scorn. Tamsin could do anything she liked, she’d bragged, Margot never made rules. Heather drove slowly along the High Street, avoiding a group of ambling day-trippers.
‘And the island is only yards away. You could probably hear us if we shouted, or I can take your mobile phone,’ Suzy continued.
Heather’s attention was wandering by now, as she noticed the yellow-and-white fabric that she’d admired at Margot’s cottage, draped over what looked like a rusty old iron spear, but which must surely have been a highly chic curtain pole in the window of ‘Inside Story’. Shame how being part of a window display somehow diminished its desirability. Everyone in the village would have seen it. She could just imagine Julia Merriman, round for the Help the Aged envelope (conveniently at the gin hour) banging noisily at the new cushions and booming, ‘Wasn’t that hanging in the shop for simply ages? You got a jolly good ex-display discount I suppose?’
‘I hope she doesn’t bring Jasper,’ Suzy said later as the car pulled into the station car park. ‘He bit me last time, and Gran didn’t believe me. She said I was imagining things.’
‘I’m afraid she’s always said that,’ Heather told her with a sympathetic smile. ‘I think it’s something of a habit. It was her generation’s way of stopping us all being feeble. When you think of the war and what they could have been wimpish about . . . Anyway, tell me if the dog tries to bite you this time and we’ll suggest it might be better if Margot puts him up in her kennels.’
Delia didn’t like the way her heart raced when she gathered her luggage as the train pulled into Reading. It wasn’t just the heat, she was sure. Her coat was a light summer one, though smart (Delia believed in dressing well for travel – even though she’d only come from Putney via Paddington), and she was hardly conscious of her hat, her favourite cream straw with a pair of pink roses. She’d worn it so often that it had become cosily shaped to the outline of her pale grey curls. Had it always felt like this, this babyish fluttery panic that the train would pull away before she’d had time to get off, that
she’d leave her bag behind, or the dog, or not be able to open the door? For the last minutes, even while she’d looked out as usual for the landmark of poor Oscar Wilde’s gaol, she had felt a real anxiety that she would be the only one getting off, and that no-one would help her, or notice her struggling, the old being so invisible somehow, and she’d be trapped in the train all the way on to Bath. Perhaps she should have travelled on the other line, the shabby suburban stopping train that called at every dreary station along the endless wasteland behind Heathrow airport before terminating at Reading. That way, safely up against the buffers, there’d be plenty of time to organize herself. But then there was the risk of rowdy home-bound schoolchildren. It was so hard to resist telling them off for their appalling language and litter habits. When she did, they just swore. And they were so huge, which she put down to fast-growth hormones in all the chicken everyone ate these days. She told herself briskly not to be so silly, forcing herself not to try getting to the door while the train was still moving and risk being catapulted by a sudden stop into the lap of the oily young man with the phone sitting opposite. As usual, though, half the passengers seemed to change at Reading and the oily young man kindly carried the wriggling Jasper down the steps to the platform. Jasper, a jumpy West Highland terrier, yapped over-excitedly and Delia hoped that the greenish smear on the man’s jacket was not the dog’s fault. Smears like that, along with generous moultings of white fur, so often were.
‘There’s Gran’ Heather said, pushing forward through the exit-bound crush.
‘And Jasper,’ added Suzy glumly.
‘Suzannah! How lovely! Kiss for Grandma?’ Delia enfolded slender Suzy to her ample bosom like a great bear gathering up its tiny cub. To Heather she simply said, ‘Hello dear, looking quite well, aren’t you.’ Smiles but no hugs, no kisses; neither could quite remember when that kind of thing had actually stopped, and they weren’t now likely to start reviving an easy intimacy where they could begin analyzing it. ‘Her hair could do with a cut. It’ll get all split-endy,’ Delia said, looking at Suzy as they walked to the car.
Suzy, tugging the reluctant Jasper’s lead, shook her head and glowered. ‘I want it as long as Kate’s. And then I’m going to dye it even blonder than hers,’ she declared, ‘or maybe pink,’ she added, looking back at them and grinning provokingly. Heather, unlocking the car, gave her a warning glare across the Renault roof.
Delia caught the look and smiled knowingly. ‘It’s all right, I know what she’s up to, heard it all before haven’t I?’ Both Suzy and the dog growled quietly and Heather flopped into the overheated car. Oh this is going to be such fun, she thought, all it needs now is for Tom to come home for a bad-tempered jetlagged stopover, and we’ll all have a really jolly time.
Tom dashed through the staff immigration channel at Gatwick, running away from a member of the crew who had turned him into an object of adoration, a position Tom was needing time to wonder if he could get used to. Sometimes, jokingly, as he left for a work trip, Heather would say, ‘Don’t go making any new friends!’ almost like a witchy charm to ward off possible adultery. So far the incantation had worked. The thought of leaving Heather and the girls to set up home with a comely purser within kerosene-sniffing distance of Heathrow made Tom shudder at the upheaval that would be involved. Sex with a stewardess would be career-suicide. She’d be crowing down the phone to Heather before the damp patch had dried; those who hadn’t been snapped out of First Class by Texan oilmen all wanted to marry pilots, in the same way that nurses were all assumed to aim to end up as Mrs Consultant.
Tom always liked to escape from an airport as quickly as possible. If he wasn’t flying the things, he didn’t want to hang around close to aircraft. It had started with a repulsion for the smell of the planes themselves. Somehow inside them there was always the underlying hint of vomit in the air, even on brand-new planes. He wondered if it was something deliberate in the cleaning fluid, if it was sprayed on to the carpets to reassure queasy passengers that it was all right, absolutely fine, they weren’t the first to feel sick. Maybe they even sent a severely drunk stewardess on ahead to throw up on the upholstery before the planes were put into service. It was the same smell he’d noticed in the kind of country-club hotels that did a lot of wedding catering, with cheap overnight rates for those who couldn’t quite make it to their cars without falling over, and who turned out to be incapable of quite making it to the bathroom too. Not an atmosphere you wanted to linger in.
And then there were the air-crashes which, rare though they were, he knew perfectly well, happened most often on taking off or landing, and he had recently started only to feel comfortable at least twenty miles from Gatwick or Heathrow. He was absolutely fine up in the sky – like most people with a car they’re driving, it had somehow never occurred to him that a plane he was piloting could actually fail to get safely to its destination, however distant, however hazardous the clear air or the lightning. It was other people’s skills that worried him. Watching the planes juddering ready for take-off while he waited in his car at the traffic lights on the perimeter road, they seemed lumberingly huge. There was so much and so many packed into each and every one. One of them, full to bursting with Tenerifebound holidaymakers, or four hundred sales executives off to a conference in Cyprus, could land on him, shatter its overloaded weight up there just above Crawley, and scatter suitcases, seats, sickbags and stewards all over the county. He collected his car from the staff enclosure and drove fast towards the motorway and away from his admirer, trying not to look at the nearby runways, and certainly not glancing up at the sky, not even to see what the weather was doing.
‘Nigel from the nursery phoned, said your camellia order was in!’ Kate called to Heather as she got out of the car, then she added, welcomingly, ‘Hi Grandma, you’re looking very summery.’ She was at her smiling teenage best – clean hair, ripless dress, a faint fresh perfume of Body Shop roses.
Delia beamed at her and stretched out her arms for a hug as Kate strolled across the gravel from the front door. ‘Lovely Kate, getting so beautiful. How were the O-levels?’
‘It’s GCSEs now, Gran,’ Kate corrected gently. ‘And they weren’t as bad as I’d expected, which probably means I’ll have done really terribly. I think they’re meant to be hard.’
‘Nonsense, clever girl like you . . .’ Delia was saying as they all went into the house
Suzy, glad to be left alone now her grandmother’s attention was on the adored Kate, dashed into the kitchen and pulled her new oil lamp from its box. Tamsin would be so jealous, it looked just like a real hurricane lamp. She held it up and swung it, imagining it hanging and swaying from a tree above their camp, lamplight flickering wildly and making lurid shadows in the bitter wind, wind that was blowing harder, much stronger, swirling the water and whipping up waves – impossible and too dangerous now to row home . . . She shivered and prayed quickly for a still, calm night for their camping. It was such a curse, always imagining the worst.
Her mother’s head was this way and that, Heather could see from behind her on the stairs, taking in the new pink paint – National Trust’s Ointment Pink, on strict ‘in keeping with the property’ instructions from Marco at ‘Inside Story’ – that had been chosen to warm up the hallway, and she wondered how long it would be till she caught her peeking under the Kelim rug to see if something had been fixed to stop it sliding on the dangerously polished wood floor. I don’t like myself thinking like this, Heather realized, trying to see objectively that the person she’d brought to her house as a guest was not just a parent with a lifetime’s excess baggage of wilful misunderstanding, but an ageing, slightly nervous woman, becoming frailer and reluctantly conscious of it. If we don’t resolve the past soon, though goodness knows how, it will be too late, Heather thought sadly as she carried her mother’s case into the spare room.
‘Not too much sun in the morning I hope, dear,’ Delia said, looking anxiously out of the mullioned window and searching the sky for the dire
ction of the sun.
‘Same amount as last time, Ma,’ Heather told her. ‘You said you liked it then.’
‘It wasn’t high summer then. It’s been quite a time since my last visit,’ Delia countered. ‘Still, these curtains are properly lined, I expect I’ll be all right. You don’t sleep as well when you’re older. You’ll find that yourself one day,’ she predicted, not without satisfaction.
Tom walked into the kitchen during supper, not particularly surprised that he didn’t seem to be expected. ‘I left a message on the machine,’ he told Heather as he kissed her. ‘Any lasagne left?’ he asked, suddenly starving for real home cooking. That was another thing he was tired of: flavourless hotel steak with shake-on Bar-B-Q essence. Airline dinners reminded him, even the first-class ones, of mini-portion baby food. He picked at Heather’s salad: the homegrown rocket, mange-tout and cucumber.
‘You didn’t say Tom was coming home,’ Delia accused Heather, as if she might not have come to stay if she’d known.
‘Well he does, you know, most weeks, if only for a couple of days,’ Heather told her patiently, just as she had many times before.
‘Hong Kong and back doesn’t take that long. We’ve come a long way since eighty days was a fast time for round the world, and everyone sat in wicker chairs and got put to bed on the upper deck with pure linen sheets,’ Tom joked, unsuccessfully, at his mother-in-law who stared coolly back at him.
‘Did you bring me anything Daddy?’ Suzy cut in, smiling at him, then prodded at his guilt as the constant family absentee, ‘Seeing as you missed Speech Day.’
‘I heard you got a prize. Well done Suze. I’ve got a couple of those baggy silk shirts you like in my bag – you and Kate can squabble over which ones you want.’
