Mothertime

by Gillian White

  Daddy bought them their kilts from the Scotch House. At times like these Vanessa’s chin quivered, hurt to hear Mrs Guerney say that, and angry with her because what does she know about anything with her arthritic-y knees and her ugly, misshapen fingers? ‘You’re okay,’ she’d tell the twins, very aware of how awkward they were, of how they lacked the attraction and poise which other children possessed. As she did.

  ‘Sometimes I don’t know why I try,’ complained Mrs Guerney, ‘if I’m always going to be taken literally, and attacked when I give an opinion.’

  Vanessa has her own ways of thinking about Daddy, pure ways. She does not like to think of him ‘scattering his seed,’ as the nuns put it. Daddy is at his absolute best when he comes on TV, so very seriously, in a brilliant white shirt and a dark grey suit. With his eyes large, soft and deep.

  Mrs Guerney comes in every weekday morning to clean. She’s been coming for as long as Vanessa can remember—she has a photograph of Mrs Guerney pushing her along in a pram in the park. She brings the daily groceries with her in her push-along tartan trolley. As she says herself, ‘Why not, I have to pass the deli anyway.’ So Mrs Guerney chooses what food they eat. If it is a pie or a casserole she’ll prepare it and put it in the oven, timed, before she leaves, with a badly stained instruction note Sellotaped to the tray. More often than not, Mother is not home by seven o’clock, or she isn’t hungry, or she’s planning to go out for a meal. In any case, concerned as she is with controlling her weight, Mother eats like a bird. She’d much rather open the fridge and pick at the pieces—she does not approve of Mrs Guerney’s sturdy cooking. Vanessa is the one then, sometimes Ilse, who prepares and cooks the vegetables, lays the table in the kitchen and dishes up the food. At the weekends they have salad, quiche, or cold meat and cheese, cold apple pies and trifles which Mrs Guerney has thought to provide.

  ‘Dear Mrs Guerney is a perfect boon,’ says Mother, when Mrs Guerney is nearby so that she will overhear her. Vanessa thinks the word boon describes Mrs Guerney exactly—comfortable, well-worn and pushed out of shape, like her ancient, down-at-heel slippers. Without Mrs Guerney their lives would be even more wrong, they’d be even more different from other families. At least, although she calls Vanessa ‘standoffish’, Mrs Guerney continues to treat them like children.

  ‘Mother’s wig has slipped over. Someone had better take it off. And it’s got ash on it.’

  ‘But don’t wake her up! Please, please, please try not to wake her up!’

  From her place down on the hearthrug Vanessa looks up at Amber. The fretting child is balanced on one leg, nervously pulling at her bottom lip.

  ‘Mother is not going to wake up. I don’t think she’ll wake up till this afternoon.’ Vanessa isn’t sure if she wants Mother to wake up, ever. Vanessa knows that God hears her thoughts. Mother, corrupt, contaminates everything. Mother drives her to a wickedness that is too extreme to confess. Such violence. To want someone dead is as bad as killing them. Vanessa secretly reads fairy tales like The Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid; she fights against the bestsellers, the frightening books which she forces herself to read because she ought to. She wants her breath to smell forever innocent—of tinned rice pudding and Bird’s custard and the house ought to smell of freshly baked bread and sweet peas in china-blue vases.

  ‘She might have hit her head on the firedogs, and split her skull open. She might have fallen into the fire.’

  ‘But she didn’t, Dom, did she? And now we’ve got to move her to somewhere more comfortable.’

  It is at that precise moment that Vanessa makes up her mind. It is something akin to a miracle because one minute her brain is dead, the next she has decided exactly what they should do, a blindingly golden idea, more like a vision. And it is so simple! It means that everything will work out okay and in some ways it will be kinder for Mother. She will not have to endure Christmas, or wade through any more agonies with Bart. She will not have to torture herself over what to wear or worry about presenting herself at any more tormenting auditions which leave her a little uglier every time, a little more spiteful, a fraction more angry. Blaming. Blaming. Blaming the children. Blaming poor Daddy for the destruction of her talent, her looks, her mental abilities, driving her into a black depression so the magic goes out of everything.

  Vanessa is only twelve. A child still, she should not have to cope with this. Isaiah said, ‘Prepare a way for the Lord; clear a straight path for him.’ Okay, then I will. Mother’s mouth is clean now, and most of the make-up that stuck up her eyes is on the flannel. She looks pale and thinner than usual, as if she’s been very ill. Slowly, without dripping, Vanessa replaces the cloth in the bowl. She stands up, staring down all the while at Mother, fearful that she might wake and move before the plan can be put into practice.

  ‘We must make her comfortable. Yes. Somewhere where she’ll be quiet and not have to put up with interruptions. We can move her more easily if we wrap her up in her coat. We don’t want to bump her.’ Vanessa is breathless. Her words tumble over each other. She sounds hysterical.

  ‘Where will we put her?’ Camilla asks, interested.

  ‘In Daddy’s gym. It’s the perfect place.’

  ‘Brrr. It’ll be cold down there in the basement.’ But there is a glint of excited expectation behind Sacha’s glasses.

  ‘Not if we make up a bed. Cover her with lots of blankets.’ Stubborn, knowing she is right, Vanessa refuses to yield now.

  ‘Mother would not like that. Mother would want to be put on the sofa, or carried up to her bedroom.’ Camilla looks as uneasy as she sounds. ‘Daddy’s gym is a spooky place. Vanessa, I think you’ve gone mad.’

  Vanessa, defiant, doesn’t care. ‘In the sauna.’

  Where, as children, have they all gone wrong? The mourners at this ceremony are all dry-eyed, faced with the death of love. They stare, baffled, unsure if they understand what is happening. Then Dominic licks his lips; staring down at his fingernails he says carefully, ‘We could lock her in the sauna. Just until after Christmas.’

  ‘But what about when she wakes up and sees what we’ve done?’

  Nobody answers Camilla’s question. They are all quiet, imagining the look on Mother’s face, imagining her fury, the violence, the curses.

  ‘If we kept her down there for long enough maybe we would be able to talk to her. We could explain why we’d done it. She wouldn’t be able to drink. She’d be sober,’ Dominic reminds them all. When he tries, Dominic can make anything he says sound reasonable. He is good at steadying nerves, Mother says. ‘She’d have peace. And it’s peace she always moans that she wants.’

  ‘She would have peace, but no dignity. What about Ilse?’ Camilla has crossed to the window to watch the snow. Against the dark night they can all see the flakes, drifting dreamily down past the window, cutting out sound as it sinks, closing them off from the rest of the world, from grief, wrapping the house in white blankets.

  ‘Ilse won’t know anything. Ilse is asleep and she’ll be off before breakfast. She won’t come back until late tomorrow night and by then everything will be all right again. Mother must not be allowed to spoil Christmas.’

  ‘But what if Mother starts screaming?’ The idea takes on a nightmare quality.

  ‘No one will hear her down there.’

  ‘What about when Daddy phones?’

  Vanessa sneers to cover her fear. ‘He won’t expect to speak to Mother. We can say she’s still in bed. He’ll be relieved if he doesn’t have to speak to Mother. He always is. He tries to avoid seeing her. Suzie doesn’t like it.’

  ‘What if Bart comes round?’

  ‘It’s Christmas Day. Bart won’t come. Anyway, they argued last night. We all knew that Bart wouldn’t last.’ Vanessa’s heart beats faster. She fights to stay cool.

  Mother lies prone while they discuss her, prone and gross, still as a dead body, wearing her shaggy fur coat and one shiny black boot. Vanessa shudders, unable to help it. ‘She was too damaged,’ she says of
Mother, throwing the first clod of earth because no one else dares. ‘She should never have had any children.’

  ‘Who said that?’ Camilla asks.

  ‘Suzie. She told Daddy. I overheard her.’ There is a new hardness to her voice. A flat certainty.

  ‘That’s easy for her to say,’ says Camilla.

  ‘Get her ready,’ Dominic says suddenly, ‘while I go and find the keys.’

  And so the decision is made and the first tentative actions taken. On his way out Dominic turns on the light and for the first time, the children see the position clearly. The room is still beautiful, startlingly bunched with Christmas colour; tinsel twists softly, the paper chains twinkle above the mirror, over the fire. The only ugly thing in it is Mother, lying there with her head thrown back and her wig askew and her skirt rucked over her knees. There is something terrible about her limp, jewelled fingers. Rank all over, gin and nicotine, but still, one of God’s creatures.

  ‘There is no option,’ says virginal Vanessa in her white nightgown, simply, disposing of all doubt. ‘There is nothing else for it. We have to do it. Let us prepare her.’

  So they follow her instructions obediently.

  Four

  DEEPLY UNCONSCIOUS, YET MOTHER is resistant to movement; a rubber bendy doll coated in tight black lace, her arms and legs keep springing back. And she is heavy.

  When Vanessa removes the chestnut wig—a smooth, silky bob that reaches Mother’s shoulders, she passes it to Camilla who passes it to Sacha who gives it to Amber who drops it. Smelling of dry skin and unwashed brushes, it is warmer than Mother herself, as if all her energy has left her body and gone up to her head and onwards through her hair. Vanessa knows that Mother’s false hair comes from poor people, like transplant kidneys and donated blood and starving babies.

  ‘I keep thinking she’s dead,’ cries Amber. ‘Perhaps we should put her wig back. She looks… awfully rude… without it.’

  ‘She looks as if she’s been radiated.’

  Baffled, they turn to Camilla who quickly explains, ‘Radiation treatment, for cancer. Perhaps Mother was secretly ill and never told us.’

  ‘That’s nonsense. If Mother had cancer everyone would know. We know when she’s got a sore throat, or a headache, or aching feet. If Mother had cancer Daddy might even come back.’ This is Amber’s greatest hope. She lives with it night and day; she carries it around with her everywhere she goes, poking at it occasionally, treasuring it, like a baboon carries its young. She never leaves it out of her prayers and whenever she sees Daddy, she asks him. She asks him when Suzie is out of the room, she arranges herself like a kitten on his knee when she asks him, she plays with his silver watch-strap—although Vanessa has warned her often enough to leave the subject alone.

  ‘It’s a waste of time. It is difficult enough for Daddy at the moment without you adding to the pressure,’ she says. ‘He is not coming back, Amber. Daddy loves Suzie. And if you were Daddy, would you ever want to come back to Mother?’ She remembers the flaming rows: Daddy’s strained face, the broken porcelain, the food on the walls, hysterical, drunken laughter when Daddy’s friends were round, the head-in-hands humiliation of Daddy’s life with Mother.

  His new flat is calm and peaceful. Suzie is neat and contained. Suzie has Daddy and Suzie has everything. Vanessa hopes Suzie is barren.

  When Amber asks Daddy her awful questions he leans back his head and his eyelids seem huge as they drop down to shut out the pain in his eyes.

  Vanessa… all of them secretly strain to listen. ‘Oh poppet,’ he says, sighing deeply. ‘If only you were old enough to understand.’ Daddy always makes sure his children have money when he takes them back home again. He tries to drop them off without coming in. He went so quickly, he visits so rarely, that after Mother’s furious bonfire his smell soon left the house.

  So Amber asked Vanessa, ‘Well, why didn’t he take us with him? If he loves us so much?’

  ‘There are too many of us. And Daddy lives in a flat.’

  ‘Only because he’s a Catholic. Mother says that’s his fault.’

  ‘I don’t think that any of this is Daddy’s fault,’ Vanessa said firmly, in a cold and unreasonable voice, an intolerable pain in her heart. ‘I think, like the rest of us, he is a victim. Don’t you?’ Yes. Snivelling victims who don’t fight back.

  If they long for love none of them know it. Mother is quieter since Daddy left. She goes out a great deal more—some days they never see her—and of course, she has her little job.

  When the fur coat is off they lay it flat on the floor and roll Mother so that she lies in the middle. Once, she opens her eyes wide. The children gasp, backing away from her, terror-stricken. Vanessa’s heart almost bursts… the sound of beating fills her ears, blood pounds before her eyes, her head is about to burst open. No! No! No! She wants to suffer for Jesus’ sake but not like this! Murder would be a mortal sin, making her loathsome in the sight of God. Her frightened eyes fix on the poker but she knows that she could not hit Mother with that. Could she? Would she? She never finds out, because Mother slobbers slightly, her nose twitches, then her eyes leer into her skull before drooping closed again. Wretched, faced with the danger of hell, Vanessa will do penance for her wicked thoughts afterwards.

  ‘Phewee! I thought we’d had it.’ Amber giggles, then whimpers.

  ‘If she woke up now she wouldn’t know what we were doing. We could say we were only wrapping her up so she’d keep warm.’ Sacha is much more afraid.

  ‘Perhaps we should tie up her hands.’

  Camilla says no, but Vanessa gets up and makes straight for the Christmas tree. In spite of her smile she is almost crying. She kneels by the pile of presents, scanning the labels. She picks out hers for Mother. She tears off the wrapping so beautifully done, she rips off the bow, she tugs at the bright red scarf to test it for strength. Mother would not have liked it anyway. Camilla is still saying no when Vanessa carefully brings Mother’s arms from her sides, across her chest, and, gritting her teeth, she binds them. She stares down at Mother intently, at Mother, at what she has done to her. The lambswool is soft, it won’t hurt, even if Mother strains against it. ‘We can’t go back now,’ she tells Camilla, softly, earnestly. ‘From the moment we first decided, we knew we must not go back. Mother must be disposed of.’

  ‘Just until Christmas is over,’ says Camilla, almost pleading, but Vanessa does not answer.

  ‘It’s cold in the gym.’ Dominic returns with his dressing-gown sleeves purposefully rolled up. ‘I have taken the electric fan-heater down there, but we’re going to need blankets. Are you ready?’

  ‘Are you sure Ilse is asleep?’ This is not a serious question because everyone knows there is no threat from that quarter.

  The brown fur coat makes an efficient sledge. Dominic rolls the rug up out of the way and the children pull Mother along by her coat hem. She rides with a melancholy dignity over the wooden floors, while the children pull like a team of puffing husky dogs. The process is quiet, the only noise over the sound of their breathing is a thin sheeting sound as the fur slides softly along, and the squeak of the odd floorboard. Mother’s head is propped up on a Liberty cushion. When they turn round it looks as though she is directing them, calling out orders.

  In this same manner they slide her downstairs; Dominic holds her head up and the thick carpeting makes movement easy. ‘Always the considerate one,’ Mother says of Dominic. ‘He will make some woman a wonderful husband one day.’ In happier times sliding down the stairs on Mother’s fur coat would have made a fantastic game. Down in the hall they are back to the wood once again. The time on the grandfather clock says half-past two, and yet Vanessa feels no time passing on this, the morning of the Holy Child’s birth. They slide Mother towards the basement door which Dominic has already unlocked. It stands open, inviting them in. Mother does not groan, or stir. Mother is well out for the count. ‘She must have drunk one helluva lot,’ says Dominic. And then he adds, ‘Bitch!’ The curse, so plac
idly spoken, coming from someone usually so mild, is startling.

  The cold streams up, its frosty breath disturbing the fussy paper bell they have pinned high up on the hall light. The cold and the stark of the atmosphere are beamed up from the basement together on shafts of fluorescent lighting. Vanessa is glad it is cold down there, for cold is clean, but her own face feels wickedly hot.

  This just has to be done. When this is all over, Vanessa will go to her room and sing a solemn Te Deum in thanks. But God must stay with her now, just for a little while longer. Manhandling Mother down the spiral iron staircase which drops so steeply to the basement is a different matter entirely. Now they have to work hard, half-dragging, half-carrying their load, making sure the coat does not slip through the gaping, tapering, tinny steps. They have to force her to bend. Her skin is cold and clammy like clay. Vanessa’s eyes fasten on Mother’s face, but it keeps that same sozzled look, slack, unaware, as if the mind has temporarily abandoned the body. Perhaps Mother’s soul is already in purgatory. As a good Christian Vanessa ought to be praying for her, not hiding her away. She feels dizzy, sickened with guilt. She has to hang back, she stops helping for a while. Somehow, eventually, with as much effort of will as of body, the five of them manage it.

  Mother slides down the final three steps with her arms crossed over her chest, like a corpse on its final journey for consummation in the crematorium fire.