Mothertime
Page 24
‘No, but only because I took care of things.’
She watched the chunk of ice creaking up through the gritty red flecks in her glass. He said, ‘In this sick world it’s so easy to get carried away and put money and ambition before anything else, when it’s what’s happening inside you that’s truly important.’
Suzie laughed. ‘Robin! This is terrible! Now you’re beginning to sound just like Isobel!’
And he looked at her gravely as he sat on that red plastic chair with his copy of The Times sticking out of his jacket pocket, his legs crossed and his hand wrapped casually round his glass as if he was discussing something just as mundane as the state of the plastic cutlery.
‘Mummy, I never realised that it was Robin who interfered directly when Caroline was first pregnant. Do you know that he went straight to the director of the play Caroline was going to do, and he managed to stop her from getting the part?’ Her neck feels stiff. Suzie stands up and moves towards the door. She opens it and stands on the step, breathing deeply as she stares out at the untended garden and her voice comes more quietly, mingled with the birdsong and the breeze. ‘Can you believe that? Caroline didn’t know anything about it! He went behind her back and he told them she was pregnant and that it would be dangerous for her to accept the part. He knew the director of the play. Caroline had got it, Mummy! She’d managed to get this fantastic part—even Robin admits she was brilliant—she would have been made… a star for ever! She lived for her acting, Mummy. He went behind her back and ruined it for her. I only found that out a few days ago. He told me. He came out with it as if it was something that was perfectly acceptable, as if it was almost something to be proud of, and just told me. I didn’t know what to say. Eventually I asked him why. He seemed to think the answer was obvious: she could have damaged herself and the baby working long hours, staying in hotels and travelling to different locations. It could have been his dreadful mother talking. I didn’t realise how influenced he was by all that religious crap. I’ve hardly been able to speak to him since. I was trying to discuss our arrangements—you know, after the baby’s born. I’d decided to hire a nanny during the week and come home at weekends.’
Suzie holds her hand towards the garden in a gesture of despair. The grass is high and needs cutting before it gets right out of hand. The garden hedges are festooned and tangled with bellbine, the flowerbeds which Daddy kept with such care are shaggy with dog rose and brambles, and down in the hollows where Suzie played, the willows stand feathery and neglected.
Suzie’s mother is fat and homely and her hair is tangled in kirby grips. Her cosy bun has slipped and hangs precariously on one side of her head. Under her dressing gown she’s not wearing slippers, oh dear, she is wearing wellington boots.
‘Oh Suzie, that wouldn’t be ideal at all.’ The discomfort in the atmosphere grows.
‘I know it wouldn’t be ideal, Mummy, but this is a chance I know that I’m most unlikely ever to be given again.’
‘Couldn’t you have the child with you in Brussels? Just while it’s little? The poor little thing wouldn’t know you!’
‘During the week my life would be far too hectic. I’d be trying to entertain, trying to work, having to contact people in the evenings. Mummy, don’t look at me like that… this new job is going to be terribly demanding and I don’t know if I want a baby with its nanny and all that entails to be around me and interfering, just at the very time when I’m going to be under such pressure, just when I need to try and get it right.’ Suzie stares down at her hands. She sounds subdued when she goes on, ‘And here was I, thinking you would support me.’
Eileen looks uneasy. She doesn’t want an argument, she is anxious to be kind. It is clear that she doesn’t understand. ‘You don’t have enough confidence in yourself, Suzie. A baby is not a raving monster.’
‘I know, Mummy! I’ve been through it, I do nothing else but go through it, over and over. I know what it looks like. I feel guilty and selfish…’
Eileen’s response shows exactly where her real thoughts lie. She keeps her eyes firmly fixed on her daughter as she speaks and she tries to touch her hand. ‘To me it looks as if you shouldn’t have decided on a baby at all!’
Suzie watches Eileen’s hand. She won’t move hers towards it. It’s encouragement she wants, not commiserations. ‘But I didn’t know! How could I tell that this job would come up? How could I have guessed that Robin would take this attitude?’
‘Well, you needn’t have applied for it. You needn’t have accepted it.’
‘Just gone on as I was, you mean?’
‘Why on earth not? You seemed perfectly happy to me.’
Suzie wishes she was not pregnant at all. She wonders why she wanted a baby so badly. She was influenced by Robin’s devotion to his children and yes, she was jealous of that. She suffered as he suffered, during the times he was silent and abstracted, she was quiet and understanding, believing that a replacement of their own would be the answer, and she’s a normal woman, isn’t she, and every woman, deep down, wants a child. Hell, Caroline managed to have five! ‘I was bored! Bored, damn it! Doing the same old thing every day for the last five years! You are taking exactly the same attitude as Robin. I didn’t want to hear this from you. I wouldn’t have come. I can see now that coming here was another mistake.’
‘What does Robin say?’
‘He sulks. He sulks very effectively. It’s quite hard to talk to Robin about anything important. What starts as a reasonable discussion turns into me shouting and screaming—something I’ve never done in my life, drat it. He’s got this knack of withdrawing from trouble but he doesn’t back down like Daddy used to, it’s not at all like that. He puts up a barrier, and it’s strange, I feel that he doesn’t really see me or hear me. He’s got that sad smile; when he smiles at me that way I begin to think I’m going mad. And he stays much longer at work these days.’
‘Oh, Suzie, I’m sorry. But you wanted my opinion. I’ve only told you how I honestly feel. We were lucky, I suppose—we didn’t have these problems in my day.’
Suzie’s voice rises with angry doubt. ‘You think I should do what Robin wants and turn down the job? You think I should tell them I don’t want it, after all this? You are saying that I ought to turn down this chance and spend the rest of my life waiting and hoping that something else will turn up?’
‘I wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to tell you to do anything. You are going to have to make up your own mind. You’re not dependent on Robin—presumably you could ignore him, take the job, install a nanny, do exactly what you want.’
Guiltily, desperately, Suzie pours out in a passionate stream the arguments she has been forming in her head for weeks. But whenever she pauses to look at her mother, Eileen still wears that same look on her face, implacable, the one who knows best. ‘It’s not so easy as that. Robin feels very strongly about this, but why can’t he have the baby during the week? Why can’t he let me go? He knows how excited I am, and why can’t we put a nanny in the flat? It’d make much more sense because all our belongings are there and Robin’s so marvellous with children. Mummy, it just seems so crazy that the baby can’t stay with Robin and I could come home at weekends relaxed, able to give it my proper love. I just fail to understand why it always has to be the mother who has to disrupt her whole life.’
Eileen adjusts the dingy cushion and pushes it lower in her creaking chair. She sighs unhappily. ‘It doesn’t have to be the mother, Suzie. It’s just a fact that most mothers want to be close to their babies.’
‘Well, thank you very much, Mummy, now you have said it all! I wanted your support but instead of that you tell me that I’m abnormal. I’m unnatural. Perhaps I should have been born a man!’ Suzie does not confide to her mother that since she’s been pregnant Robin has not wanted sex with her at all.
‘Oh dear, this shouldn’t be so awful,’ moans Eileen. ‘This ought to be such a happy time. I had thought we might paint some eggs like we used to…’
Twenty-eight
AT LAST! AT LAST, Lot’s endless patience has paid off. He has seen her! He has caught his first glimpse of Caroline Townsend—a tiny little person—and it was only accidental, he hadn’t planned it, he’d arrived at his watching post early because he’d buggered up his alarm.
Most days he comes here now. Back at the workshop they say they’re not happy with his low output of boxes—they say someone else will soon take the record off him and have their name stuck on the top of the chart, but they know he’s busy doing something else so they don’t really mind.
Oh, he spoke to her weeks ago, when he discovered she wasn’t at Broadlands after all his clever detective work… getting the address, travelling there in a freezing cold bus, finding the place, going to the grand reception lounge and asking for her directly. The trip was such a big project in itself that halfway to Sussex Lot almost forgot its purpose.
‘Mrs Townsend is not registered with us at the moment. I’m sorry, sir.’
‘She must be,’ argued Lot. ‘You’ve made a mistake. Check again. Let me have a look at your list.’ And Lot dumped his half-eaten picnic down on the counter.
The alert woman in the white coat grew distant and haughty as if he was having one of his worst crazy spells. She had small ears and she was a woman but she looked very much like Mr Spock. ‘I am so sorry, Mr—?’
‘Dance.’
‘Well, Mr Dance, I would know if Mrs Townsend was here. I don’t even have to check my files, and my list is far too private to be handed over the counter to strangers. We know our clients personally, and there are never more than twenty residents here at one time. We are not a hotel, you know.’
Lot fingered through his picnic. He eased a slice of cheese from a half-eaten roll. He might fancy that on the journey home. ‘But I’ve come all the way, by bus, from London.’
People were staring but Lot’s used to that. He has sometimes been treated with attitudes akin to reverence by people who don’t know him, those that are captivated by his extraordinary, dramatic good looks, his piercing eyes, his perfect features.
‘May I enquire where your interest lies? Are you a relative by any chance?’
‘By marriage I am a relative of a friend of Mrs Townsend’s.’
While the wary receptionist tried to unscrabble Lot’s claim his eyes followed her forehead; he watched as it was gathered up like crisp hospital stitches.
‘I am afraid you have been mistakenly informed, Mr Dance, and I cannot help you any further.’
‘I’m not going back without speaking to the boss.’ And he stood beside the potted palm… used to standing and staring. Her ploy—hoping that leaving him waiting around, untended, would send him away didn’t work. They called the director down in the end and Lot had no alternative but to accept the fact. The director swore, he crossed his heart. Nope, Caroline Townsend was not at Broadlands. Bloody hell.
Perhaps she’d got wind of him. Perhaps, knowing he was after her, she’d gone into hiding.
He fumed all the way back from Sussex and went straight to see Bart, sad to see the familiar house half-hidden behind FOR SALE signs. But his brother had other, more important things on his mind than listening to Lot’s longwinded report. He didn’t seem interested in contacting Caroline again. The bank was taking him to court, and Ruby still wouldn’t speak to him. He’d gone to seek her out but her mother refused to open the door. ‘They wouldn’t even let me see the children. Oh God, oh God,’ cried Bart.
Lot misses the children, too. And he misses Ruby. He can hardly remember what she looks like and trying to remember is a torturing business. When he tries to think of her the shadows in his head turn fluid. His head becomes a dark flooded cave with tides sweeping in and out, and if he manages to catch her it is only for one exasperating second and then bang, she’s gone again. He can see the top of her head, and her hats, but he cannot see her. His love was hopeless and innocent, nothing to be done with it, but until now Ruby was always there, very near and very far away, so close, but just out of reach and he’d thought that beautiful state would last for ever. Doesn’t she ever think of Lot? Lot has done nothing to hurt her.
He knows that Ruby is angry with Bart—he can understand that up to a point—but she’s gone far enough and she’s being very stupid to go on upsetting Bart like this. After all, Bart needs his wife now. He needs her love and support, and although Lot is averse to criticising the love of his life, with her sweet, kind disposition and her chaste nature, although he feels wretchedly disloyal, his admiration slips a little and he has to stoke it to maintain it. Without someone to love he’s afraid he might find himself with no one in sight at all. There’s a great beauty inside Lot and he has to spread it over someone, or he might not find it again.
‘She’s not gone to Broadlands,’ Lot insisted. But Bart looked at him blankly as if he’d forgotten who Lot was talking about.
‘Why did she say she’d gone to Broadlands when she hadn’t gone there at all?’
‘She never said she had.’ Bart was too abstracted to bother with much of an answer. ‘It was one of her children who told me. Leave it alone, Lot, will you? What the hell do I care where Caroline’s gone?’ His voice was laden with gloom, and distant.
And Lot came away from the lost little house with Bart’s agony stooping his shoulders. Just as determined as ever. And on his way home something snapped inside him. There was an empty bottle of lager on a wall and he picked it up by its neck and hurled it. He didn’t wait to see what happened but he heard it crash against stone and he hurried back to the hostel, flung himself on his bed and took out his misery on the bedclothes.
A few days later, disguising his voice, he rang Caroline’s house again and the answerphone told him that she was away. He did not leave a message. He wanted time to think. I mean—why was everyone saying she was away? Where was she?
He tried all sorts of different tactics. Pretending to be a garage mechanic he rang and asked to speak to her personally. He was told that Mrs Townsend didn’t have a car so what did he think he was playing at? He discovered that the phone was always answered by this same gruff voice in the mornings. In the afternoons a foreigner answered—not all there, thought Lot to himself, tapping his forehead, but this girl believed him when he said he had a personal message to deliver. In a lisping voice she informed him that Mrs Townsend would be home at the end of the week. Aha.
‘Where is she?’ asked Lot.
And the girl replied, ‘She’s gone to Broadlands.’
And in the evenings the phone would be answered by one of the children. By this time Lot was beginning to recognise them all.
They said that Caroline Townsend was back, but still nothing changed. She remained unavailable.
He took to watching the house. He knows when the children leave for school and when the older woman arrives… they change places around about quarter to nine. The young girl who looks like Marilyn Monroe is a drifter, you can never be sure when she’s in or out. It’s the same in the evenings. Most of the time the children are left in the house on their own, and the young girl doesn’t get home till the early hours. Lot sees it all, always taking care to conceal himself.
But still no sign of Caroline Townsend. And now the phone calls are telling him that she’s at work.
‘But it’s most important that I contact her,’ said Lot, the last time he rang. An evening call.
‘She’s terribly busy at the moment and I don’t know what time she’ll be home,’ said the child. ‘She might not come home straight after work, she might well go to see a friend.’
‘Well, this is absolutely essential,’ Lot insisted.
‘Are you the same man who’s been trying for some time?’
‘Yes, I am Mr Walsh,’ lied Lot. ‘And it’s private. It’s to do with tax matters.’
‘Can’t you write?’
&
nbsp; ‘No, it’s important that I speak to Mrs Townsend personally.’
‘Well, I’m sorry, I can’t tell you when you’ll get hold of her. She goes to work early, you see.’
‘Hasn’t she got a number at work?’
‘She can’t use the phone at work. It’s against the firm’s policy.’ And then, after a slight pause, ‘If I take your number perhaps she could call you back… if she gets home in time, Mr Walsh, that is.’
Lot is stubborn. He persevered. By that time he knew very well that Mrs Townsend did not leave the house for work every morning, nor did she return home at night. Ever. He would have liked to discuss the situation with Bart but Bart seemed to have no time for him any more, and anyway, Bart would wonder why he was still trying to trace Caroline. Bart would not understand.
Come to that, why is he trying to trace Caroline? What does Lot intend to do once he has finally tracked her down? Well, he spends hours thinking about that, mulling it over in his head, and he’s decided that once he’s got her alone he is going to confront her with what she has done. Apples and serpents. It won’t be any good her denying it. Lot does not intend to be swayed, he’s far too single-minded for that. Protesting her innocence won’t do her the slightest good. He doesn’t particularly want to hurt her, Lot doesn’t like watching pain. He is going to put his hands round her neck, gently and firmly, and squeeze until there’s no life there any more, until the dreadful look of surprise goes away and her wicked eyes close and she drifts to the floor at his feet and all the while he’s going to try and remember Ruby’s face… not just the hat or the chair, but HER FACE.
And then he is going to fold her up and put her in one of his boxes.
‘This is Mr Walsh again. I rang last night, and the night before that, and I also rang last Monday.’
‘Hang on a moment, Mr Walsh. My mother will speak to you now.’
Disbelieving but hopeful, he gripped the receiver. After a pause he heard a cough before the new voice came on the phone. ‘Hello, can I help you?’