Mothertime

by Gillian White

  ‘It is like the arched window in Playschool.’ Amber lines up breathlessly behind Sacha with the menu rolled up in her hands like a scroll. ‘Only it’s not big enough to see anything through it, not quite, just the floor.’

  Vanessa, who has no gift to bring except words, touches her crucifix as she raises herself to the level of the clouded window. She takes a deep, troubled breath, murmurs a silent prayer and then:

  ‘Mother, are you all right?’

  Mother has removed her tight black dress and you can see her ivory petticoat peeping out from the flaps of her fur coat. Where is the dress? Screwed up over there in the corner along with her tights where it looks as if she has thrown them. Mother is screwed up too, all in a huddle with her arms wrapped round herself, shivering, with wet, spiky hair as if she’s just come out of the shower, and they can’t have removed all the make-up because her eyes look bruised and black—dead eyes in a crumpled face. The rings on her fingers flash. When she smiles it is hideous. Even her skin, something has happened to her skin! Her skin has gone the wrinkled brown of a Choc Chip Cookie.

  But Mother’s attention is fixed on the wig as it slithers across the floor and comes to a halt not inches from her bare feet. Her toes curl. She watches the wig as if it’s a deadly spider, while horror spreads over her like a sheet and she hunches completely into herself, bringing up her knees, hiding her head in her arms. She is like those pictures of unborn babies tied up in knots in women’s wombs.

  ‘We looked for peace but no good came: and for a time of health, and behold trouble!’ Dear God, what have we done to her?

  ‘It’s the black wig, Mother,’ Vanessa is quick to explain. ‘We thought you might feel better if you…’

  ‘More worms crawling out…’

  What? The shock of Mother brings on that dreamy, floating, unreal sensation and for a moment Vanessa forgets where she is. She feels a crushing kind of exhaustion as if someone is pushing a pillow down on her head. She cannot make out exactly what Mother is chattering through her clacking teeth.

  ‘MORE WORMS.’

  The waiting children start violently. They glance at each other with round, startled eyes, terrified by the harshness of Mother’s scream which reverberates and pings off every piece of apparatus.

  ‘Quick! Quick! Try the menu!’

  But Amber’s hand is trembling as she pushes the scroll through the hole.

  Vanessa comes back down for a moment. Her shoulders droop. She stares at Camilla. ‘Oh dear, I think there’s something the matter with her.’

  ‘Let me see.’

  All in a flurry they bring the small, round trampoline and push it in place underneath the window. Vanessa and Dominic hold Camilla’s hand, steadying her, as she balances on the springy surface with her waterfall of golden curls gushing down over her face. Camilla is still in her tutu although now she’s wearing an almost knee-length mohair cardigan over the top. As she rises and bends forward she looks rigid as a plastic ballerina on the top of a cheap musical box, easy to snap off if you weren’t careful. She takes a quick look through the porthole with a fascinated expression on her face before one hand flies to her lip. She needs help to climb down, her hand, with its chewed fingernails, feels bony and icy-cold. She has always suffered from chilblains because of her poor circulation.

  ‘She is shaking like a jelly. And huddled up.’

  ‘Let me look.’ Dominic climbs on the trampoline and everyone switches their attention to his face. He watches Mother for as long as a minute, his two palms flat on the door. His brow clears and hardens. ‘Mother?’ he calls, unexpectedly so the children jump. And then he repeats more loudly, ‘Mother, can you hear me?’

  ‘What’s she doing now?’

  ‘There is no need to whisper, Camilla, she can’t hear you.’

  ‘But what was she shouting about worms?’

  Dominic peers through the window again. His camera dangles round his neck. ‘She’s not shouting now. I can’t see her face at all now, she’s got it completely covered up.’

  ‘I want to look!’

  Vanessa snaps, panic rising. ‘No, no Sacha, not now. Next time we come, perhaps.’

  ‘That’s not fair!’ The child’s voice quivers.

  ‘Don’t start, Sacha. I’m not Daddy, and I’m not in the mood to be bothering with you.’

  ‘I can ask!’

  Dominic’s report lacks real concern; he uses the same crisp air of authority that Daddy does when he talks about terrible things on the television. Whenever Vanessa questions Daddy he says, ‘What I am saying is bad enough, they don’t want me to break down in front of them as well. That’s not my job, darling, and nor would it help anyone.’ Dominic says, ‘She is huddled in the corner with her coat right round her. But she’s still shaking all over. I think the sudden appearance of the wig must have frightened her. Perhaps we should have knocked first and told her what we were doing. Maybe we should have given her some warning. And I think she is still cold.’

  ‘How can she possibly be cold?’

  Dominic takes another look. ‘Well, we don’t know that the heating controls are working. It must be ages since anything down here has been serviced. It can’t be working. If she was hot she’d be red in the face but she isn’t, she’s sort of pale and crinkly.’

  ‘But we daren’t turn it up any higher, Dom. It is seventy-eight degrees already.’

  His reaction is as cool as the stainless steel that surrounds him. As if he is nothing to do with any of this, he says, ‘It won’t hurt. And anyway, I think she might be trying it on. Hang on a minute, I’ll see how she reacts to the flash.’ And he brings his Instamatic to his eye, pausing briefly before clicking the shutter.

  ‘No reaction, nothing at all,’ he reports, the film whirring on. ‘But I still think she’s trying it on.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ All this would feel so different if they had chosen a warm, sunny room.

  ‘She wants us to open the door and this is her way of trying to frighten us. She might well be pretending she’s ill. If we give her another burst of heat she’ll learn that behaving like this won’t work.’

  Reward and punishment? Can this be the gentle, sympathetic, softhearted Dominic, Mother’s considerate child, who would give his last coin to a beggar?

  ‘I told you she would be ill.’ Sacha puffs up with glee.

  ‘But she’s not ill, Sacha, that’s just it. She wants us to think she’s ill so we open the door. And then what do you think will happen?’

  ‘She’ll go mad.’ Sacha’s mouth goes down and tightens. Her chin sticks out in a knob like a little old woman’s.

  ‘Something bad will happen to Vanessa.’ Amber is close to tears. Mother’s scream has frightened her badly. ‘You heard what Mother said last time we came down—don’t you remember, Sacha? Vanny will be taken away and they won’t even tell her for how long. To a special unit. We might not see Vanny for years, probably not until she’s grown up. All wrinkled and old and not even knowing who we are any more.’

  Sacha gives her bullfrog pout. Her bottom lip trembles as she throws out the shrill accusation, ‘And I suppose Mother won’t even want her clean knickers now.’

  Camilla stares aimlessly down at her carrier bag. ‘No, I suppose not now.’

  ‘We have to start as we mean to go on, don’t you see?’ Dominic is the only one to remain unmoved by the drama. His impatience shows. His breathing becomes more laboured as he presses his point home. ‘Mother has got to know where she stands. When we go back to school this house will be empty during the day, apart from Ilse and Mrs Guerney. We won’t be around to keep an eye on things down here. So that’s why we’ve got to teach her who is in command in the few days we have left.’

  ‘This isn’t Dungeons and Dragons, Dom, and she doesn’t look as if she is pretending.’

  ‘Vanessa! Mother is an experienced actress!’

  ‘Well, I think she looks ill.’

  ‘All right, so are you prepared to take the chan
ce?’

  Unconvinced, and yet it would be such a relief to believe that Mother is merely misbehaving. Vanessa can’t argue any more, and why should she, anyway? Why should she spring to Mother’s defence? Why should she feel responsible?

  Dominic says smoothly, ‘Why don’t we give it a little more time? There’s no need to make any decisions yet. We’ll keep coming down to see what’s happening but I think I’m right. She’s not ill. Mother is never really ill. Even when she says she’s got a migraine she’s up there reading or watching TV in her room. Guzzling chocolates. She gets better quickly enough if someone asks her out. It is important that we don’t become over-emotional in all this.’

  ‘You are talking as if this will go on and on. We can’t keep her down here for ever, can we?’ Vanessa’s heart flutters as the thought strikes her, as she asks the unsettling question, as she is engulfed by the brief, unpleasant vision of the years that threaten to follow… Herself, unable to move away from this house, forever living with this terrible secret, waiting for the police to find out, knowing that one day she will be taken away with a blanket over her head and cameras outside the front door and furious old women knitting and spitting. Her life in ruins… and all because of Mother. ‘Move away a minute, Dom, let me have another look.’

  Mother raises her head, frowns, and disconcertingly slowly her narrowed eyes focus on the face through the window. She can see Vanessa, it’s as if she failed to recognise her before. She looks—ravaged, with clenched teeth. It’s horrible. And then, much worse than that, she slowly acts out a parody of the mime she uses when she is on the telephone, the mime she uses to attract the children’s attention when she wants a drink. Vanessa cannot remove her eyes no matter how much she wants to. In awful slow-motion Mother’s shaking hand comes up to form a claw round an invisible bottle. She watches it to make quite sure the final effect is correct. Then she turns her head to concentrate on the other hand which snakes out from the furry depths of the coat in order to cup a fantasy glass. Vanessa stares at Mother’s eyes. Here they go… they open wide to communicate urgency, but they’re not like Mother’s eyes any more. Empty of command, they are lost and far away and more like the eyes of a terrified child. Begging eyes. Begging hands. Like someone starving might pray in a famine, kneeling in rags beside the walls of some biblical city.

  Her coat slithers off her shoulder. The shoulder-strap of her slip follows the trailing fur, exposing those bony hollows in her chest and then…

  ‘One of Mother’s bosoms has come out!’

  ‘Oh no!’

  ‘Let me see!’

  ‘No, Sacha! And you certainly should not be giggling!’ Vanessa backs away, pale, trembling, clutching her magic crucifix.

  Dominic looks furiously disgusted. He gasps, ‘She is doing this on purpose, can’t you see!’ He is nearly in tears. ‘Let’s go upstairs. I need my puffer. Let’s just leave her. When she’s had enough she will settle down.’

  ‘Has she got enough water? She will die without water but you can go without food for days.’

  So Vanessa must look through the porthole again. She rises in trepidation only to find Mother still holding her terrible pose, imaginary bottle in one hand, glass in the other, begging for a drink with her clothes half off her like people you see in shop doorways. Oh, poor, poor Daddy.

  ‘Yes, the bucket is still almost full but that old water must be stale by now.’

  ‘We can’t help that,’ says Dominic, very upset but still able to think more practically than anyone else. ‘Next time we come down we can push more water through the pipe-hole. We can push it through in a sealed ice pack.’

  ‘She’s not going to want any turkey, is she, Vanny?’

  ‘No, Amber.’ Vanessa remembers that steaming white bird. ‘And I don’t think I’m going to want any either.’

  Dominic turns the sauna heat to ninety-five degrees, muttering as he does so: ‘That’ll fix it,’ and in the face of Mother’s shocking behaviour, no one can contradict him.

  Fifteen

  THE TELEPHONE RINGS AS they are sitting, picking listlessly at the turkey—they didn’t bother to carve it, they just pulled the crispy bits off—round the kitchen table, smiling at Vanessa while eyeing the mushy frozen sprouts and pushing them around on plates made wet with Oxo gravy. ‘Ugh! There’s still blood in the middle of it!’

  ‘There is more cranberry sauce,’ Vanessa urges, her green paper hat giving her a plumpness she does not possess. It makes her look like a motherly cardinal. ‘Just help yourself.’

  It is always a bell that signals alarm. Amber is right—they should ring a bell the next time they pay a visit to Mother.

  ‘We’ll have to answer it. It might be someone who’s been trying all day.’

  ‘We can say that Mother is out, or asleep.’

  ‘That depends on who it is.’

  ‘Leave the machine to answer, then we can decide what to do.’ The urgency of the bell is driving them mad. It grows louder and louder until the click of the answering machine brings temporary relief. ‘Caroline, don’t worry, it is only me!’

  ‘That’s Charlotte!’ Camilla’s heart sinks. ‘You’ll have to answer it, Vanny.’

  People are more like their bags than their dogs; you can tell an awful lot about people by the favourite bags that they carry. Mother most often carries a flat zip-up purse made out of crocodile skin, brown, crisscrossed, dotted and snappy. Charlotte is a large, messy, disorganised woman and she chooses a sealskin shoulder bag crammed full so the flap won’t close, while Mrs Guerney, who has seen the Queen in the flesh, and Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother, uses a plastic Union Jack holdall and her things are packed away neatly inside. Vanessa picks up the kitchen extension, leaning against the wall fiddling with the pen just as Mother does. She presses the machine to the off position and it feels like diving off a high board because now there is no turning back.

  ‘Hello Charlotte.’ But her frightened gaze rests on Camilla.

  The tinny voice on the other end grazes the silence of the kitchen. ‘Is that you, Vanessa? Happy Christmas, darling, and are you having a wonderful day?’

  ‘Yes thanks, Charlotte. Mother is upstairs at the moment.’ She wipes one sweaty hand on her dress. Should she say she’s asleep?

  ‘Well, be a dear and call her for me, will you?’

  Mother always talks to Charlotte. She would never shout downstairs crossly as she does for so many people, ‘For goodness sake, Vanessa, you know by now how to say that I’m out!’

  ‘I’ll just go and get her.’

  Vanessa can hardly see for the throbbing behind her eyes. She covers the receiver with her hand and beseeches, ‘Camilla, do you think you can handle this yet?’

  Dominic the perfectionist protests hysterically, ‘But she hasn’t had a practice!’

  ‘I know she hasn’t, but what else can we do?’

  ‘We could say that Mother is in the bath and will call back later.’

  ‘And then what, Dom?’ Vanessa’s heavy sarcasm goes unnoticed, there just isn’t time.

  ‘Well, then we could just leave it and see if Charlotte calls back.’

  ‘That’s just putting it off. We’re going to have to do this at some time, you know that.’

  ‘But Charlotte is going to be difficult—a long conversation talking about all sorts of personal things.’

  ‘It needn’t take long. Mother could say that she’s not very well.’

  With a face completely devoid of expression Camilla steps forward deliberately as a rehearsed ballerina, and she takes the phone. She clears her throat before she speaks, her determined eyes fixed on Vanessa’s. ‘Oh Charlotte, I wondered if you’d call.’

  ‘I’ve been trying all day, darling, where have you been?’

  ‘I can’t have heard it. The kids have been over at the Dude’s, wined and dined by the Lady who is doubtless even now sobbing into her pillow as she contemplates the damage…’

  Vanessa stares hard at her feet,
at her two splayed feet, overlarge, strapped into what Mother calls ‘a lady cellist’s shoes. And you sit like a lady cellist, too. Do try and be more modest, Vanessa.’ Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

  Charlotte is coy with sympathy: ‘Oh sweetie, and they left you there all on your own?’

  Camilla answers brilliantly: ‘Since when has anyone round here given a thought to my feelings? Charlotte, you know better than that. I have been enjoying myself in my usual solitary fashion…’

  ‘Where’s Bart? Stuck with the little woman in Potters Bar, I suppose, playing Santa Claus?’

  ‘Charlotte, I’d far rather not go into that at the moment…’

  ‘Nothing has happened, surely?’

  ‘Well yes, I’m afraid a great deal has happened,’ Camilla replies with no hesitation, ‘and I’ll tell you about it when I’m more up to par. But I had rather a skinful last night and it’s taking its toll. My head feels like a number one runway and my mouth tastes like an ashtray. I was lying down with a mask on my eyes when you called and I think I’d rather return to that prone position as soon as poss. I know you’ll understand.’

  The children listen open-mouthed as, not only does Camilla sound exactly like Mother but she looks like Mother, pouting, pointing to the crumbs on the floor with the toe of her ballet shoe, flinging her hair back every now and then and running her fingers distraughtly through it, just as Mother does. Her voice is low and confidential, exactly the right tone for talking to Charlotte. She sounds as if she might be disturbed at any moment, she talks quickly and tightly, telling great secrets which might be overheard. But those are tiny bumps of fear on her arms.