Mothertime

by Gillian White

  ‘Vanessa’s the oldest. Vanessa’s in charge.’ Vanessa sent the supportive Camilla a grateful look.

  ‘Who said so?’

  Vanessa replied reasonably, ‘It’s not a question of anyone being in charge. It’s to do with sticking together so that everything turns out all right in the end and we all want that, don’t we?’ But she didn’t feel reasonable. She felt like screaming. And she didn’t feel hopeful either, nothing like her calm voice sounded.

  ‘How can it be right? You’re all so silly sometimes! How can anything ever be right any more, can’t you see?’ And he stood up and marched through the door. They heard him take the stairs two at a time. They heard him shutting himself in his bedroom.

  There is something the matter with Dominic and for this, and so many other reasons, the sooner they let Mother out the better.

  But is she ready? What will she do? Oh dear God, Vanessa wishes she had someone at hand with a voice, someone more substantial than God, to tell her, to help her, to hold her.

  Thirty-one

  VANESSA WOKE UP LAST night with pains in the palms of her hands. This was not stigmata, it was her fingernails, because of the tight fists she’d been making in her sleep.

  Is Mother really ready, or might she be only pretending? It is all up to Vanessa because there is still no one else.

  There is one more extremely important thing they must do before they let Mummy out, and Amber knows it. She should not have suggested the possibility, she ought not to have raised Mummy’s hopes like that until they had carried this last task through.

  Time is against them now, especially if that Mr Walsh really is a policeman and if Mrs Guerney’s unease hasn’t been calmed by yesterday’s little performance. She’s been nagging on lately; like a dog at a bone every time they meet her she worries. ‘It doesn’t seem possible but I’ve been thinking about this and I realise that I haven’t seen Mrs Townsend for months now.’ When she said this, she sucked in her cheeks and whooshed as if she was going to blow up balloons. ‘Yes, it has been months… not since before Christmas!’

  ‘But you’ve had her notes. She’s apologised to you in her notes. She’s explained about this new job.’

  ‘I know that, Vanessa, but it still seems queer. Something around here’s not right but I can’t for the life of me put a finger on it.’ The cleaner lifted her heavy tweed skirt and scratched at her garter marks before hoisting her pop socks over her knees. Even her clothes had the vague smell of her tin of polishing rags. ‘But you’ve spoken to Daddy on the phone. Daddy knows there’s nothing wrong. He told you that when you last rang him up. And Ilse’s perfectly happy. Ilse has seen her.’

  But Mrs Guerney wrinkled her nose, shook her head and said dismissively, ‘Oh, Ilse.’ So they dressed Camilla up yesterday in an attempt to reassure Mrs Guerney. She didn’t want to do it. ‘All you’ve got to do is come out of the house and walk down the road…’

  ‘But I’m much too small. I don’t look anything like Mother!’

  ‘That’s why we’re going to make sure you come out when she’s still miles away. You can’t make out sizes from a distance, Camilla. And it won’t even cross her mind that Mother is somebody else. You’ve just got to get the walk right, and do the little wave, that’s all.’

  It seemed to work.

  Everything they’ve done so far seems to have worked. Even when they rang DOTS to say that Mother had taken a temporary but profitable acting job and wouldn’t be coming in for a while, there wasn’t much of a hassle. ‘Tell her that’s real fine, honey, we’re quiet at the moment anyway.’ All this is not merely good luck but the result of Vanessa’s prayers. God is on her side because what she is doing is right. She is doing it, not for herself, but for Sacha and Amber, Camilla and Dom. Mother is growing quite beautiful, gracious, with her rich brown curls and her fresh skin; even her voice has gone smooth and gentle. It is hard to stay upstairs when you know that she’s down there, all on her own. Now, all of them want to be with her but it’s important they regulate the visits so she remains eager to see them.

  Ilse had to be threatened, of course. That was one of the hardest parts because none of them was quite certain that their methods were going to work. They lied. Even Ilse, however desperate she was to remain in this country, to be near the love of her life—it was obvious the boy didn’t want her—even Ilse would balk at the thought of her employer being kept as a prisoner so they told her that Mother had gone away but she didn’t want anyone, even Mrs Guerney, to know.

  ‘Sorry? Tell me again. I do not quite understand. I thought you said that Mrs Townsend was now back from Broadlands.’ They caught her one night on the stairs, late again. They caught her on the hop.

  ‘Ilse, Mother came back from Broadlands but she had to go away again, in a hurry. She asked us to explain this to you; she was in too much of a rush to tell you herself. She’s had to go away…’

  ‘For reasons of her health?’

  ‘Yes, for reasons of her health. But it’s essential that nobody else knows, not even Mrs Guerney, and you are going to have to assure Mrs Guerney that Mother is still here. You are going to have to make sure Mrs Guerney believes you when you tell her you’ve seen her.’

  Ilse narrowed her eyes. ‘But why? Why should I do that silly thing?’ She looked totally bewildered.

  ‘Because we’re asking you to, that’s all. And because Mother herself would have asked you but it all happened in such a hurry.’

  ‘It sounds most strange to me. I do not know if I want to be part of this very odd arrangement. What are you really up to, you children?’ She stared at them with incredulous eyes. She looked very foreign all of a sudden, and alone, as if wasn’t on the stairs but standing in the middle of a big cold space.

  Dominic gazed hard at his fingernails. ‘Ilse, I think Mother has been quite worried, lately, about the hours you spend away from work.’

  ‘What hours?’ Her pretty face flushed. Her eyes widened, horrified. She looked more of a fool than ever and the children stood round in a hard little circle and watched her.

  ‘The nights you’re supposed to be in when you’re not. The times you go creeping off down the back stairs. Those hours, Ilse, and if we told her the truth you’d be sent back to Sweden without even being allowed to say goodbye to Paulo.’ Hah, let her wriggle out of that!

  Vanessa pushed on, dangling the carrot. ‘While Mother is away we won’t need you here in the evenings. We wouldn’t worry if you went out—we wouldn’t even care if you stayed out all night, as long as you were back by the time Mrs Guerney got here in the morning. And the fact that your work permit is about to expire doesn’t disturb us at all, does it, Camilla?’

  ‘But where is Mrs Townsend?’

  ‘She’s gone to a clinic in Switzerland.’

  ‘And how long will she be there?’

  ‘For as long as it takes her to get well—or as well as she can. Poor Mother. I should think she’ll be back by Easter.’

  ‘I shall need to think.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t take too long about it if I were you,’ said Dominic, significantly, and they were able to watch as Ilse’s natural resistance wavered.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said, and again, ‘oh dear.’

  But now is the moment for which Camilla has been practising long and hard. Speaking to Caroline’s friends—Mother was ever a fair-weather friend so it’s easy to brush them off—acquaintances, people at work, is one thing, but this is going to be quite another. She’s got to telephone Daddy and pretend to be Caroline, and she’s got to convince him of something so big, so essential to the overall plan that, if she fails, they might as well not have gone through all this heartache; they might as well have not started. They gather round the phone in the drawing room like robbers round a safe.

  ‘I bet he’s out. That would be typical.’

  Camilla, shaking, moans, ‘I don’t know that I could attempt it a second time.’

  ‘You’ll be fine. You know exactly what to s
ay and you’ll be fine.’

  ‘Yes, but what if Daddy brings up something personal, something that we could not know about? What if they have a special way of speaking?’

  ‘Well they don’t, we know that they don’t. You are getting yourself into a state. Stop it before you ruin everything.’

  Sacha steps forward and plants a kiss on Camilla’s pale cheek. ‘Please, Camilla. You’re going to be brilliant. And you’re not only doing it for us, now, you’re doing it for Mummy’s sake, too.’

  They rig up the telephone so the conversation can be heard in the room. Daddy answers, surprised when he hears Caroline’s voice on the other end of the line.

  ‘Caroline? I haven’t heard from you for so long I thought you were going through one of your anti-telephone phases.’

  ‘No, Robin.’ Camilla is calm. ‘I’ve just been amazingly busy, that’s all. So busy that I’ve worn myself out completely. And I’ve not only been busy working, but I’ve been spending a lot of time lately searching for somewhere else to live.’

  ‘Oh yes, the children mentioned something about that the last time they came over.’

  ‘Yes, they are excited about the idea. We all are. And now we’ve made our decision so I’m ringing to say that I’m ready to sell this house. I’ve seen somewhere I like and want to make an offer.’

  ‘This all sounds terribly amusing. I never imagined you’d ever want to move. Tell me more…’

  ‘I need to get out of London,’ Camilla adds a little belligerence.

  ‘Well, lots of people are trying to do that.’

  Dominic gazes out of the window but sees nothing. There’s a hole in the sock that has fallen down.

  ‘And I’ve settled on a cottage in the West Country.’

  ‘Say again?’

  ‘You heard me, Robin. There’s no need to be facetious.’

  ‘Well, the children were suggesting… but I put it down to their imaginations. They’ve been listening to too many stories about Suzie’s childhood. Suzie’s mother’s been forced to put her house up for sale, you know. Can’t really cope. It’s all very sad, because a house is much more than a house when you’ve been brought up in it. Poor Suzie, she’s very dejected. She even tried to get me to buy it as a holiday home. But you—buried away in the middle of the country! Hours from the clubs and the theatres, without a car…’

  ‘I am not a child, Robin. I am quite capable of making my own decisions without expecting to be grilled by you.’

  ‘I’m sorry. It just seems so sudden.’

  Sacha’s got her eyes tight shut and her fists are hard balls at her side.

  ‘It’s not sudden at all, I’ve been mulling it over for months. It was only a question of finding the right place. Well, now I’ve found it! I’m not ringing for your approval, Robin. I am ringing to ask you to start the ball rolling. I want to be able to make my offer and I need to know that everything this end will go smoothly. There’ll be no problems as far as selling this goes. Mr Morrisey next door has often told me that if we ever move he wants to be informed. He’s had his eyes on this house for years because of the garage and the larger garden. So Morrisey needs to be contacted and the solicitor needs to be instructed.’

  ‘I think we should meet…’

  Vanessa wills Camilla on with all her heart and all her soul.

  ‘Not interested, Robin, I’m afraid. Far too much on my plate and anyway, there’s nothing else to be said. My mind is made up.’

  ‘And you want me to make all the arrangements?’

  ‘No, I just want you to deal with this end of things. That would be easier for me. You just clear the way and I will cope with the purchase. I imagine you’ll be glad to see me out of London.’

  He’s taken aback, yet there’s nothing Daddy can do but agree. ‘You’d better make your offer and tell me when you want to put Camberley Road on the market.’

  ‘I’ll do that tomorrow morning. I will also arrange for a survey.’

  ‘Is everything all right, Caroline?’

  ‘Why should it be otherwise?’

  ‘You just sound… firmer than usual, I suppose. More purposeful.’ Funny, Daddy sounds rather sad when he says that. ‘Are the children still coming over tomorrow evening?’

  ‘As far as I know, Robin—why? As you know, I prefer them to make their own arrangements. I am far too busy to bother.’

  When she has finished Camilla falls into Vanessa’s arms. She is trembling all over and she can’t stop laughing. It’s infectious. The magazine they haven’t dared leave open, the Country Life, is quickly found through their wild tears and shrieks to be thumbed through yet again. And there it is, the cottage that every child draws, the cottage of every child’s dreams, the fiction and fantasy tangled up in its five-acre paddock, its thatched roof, the trickling stream and the diamond-paned windows. It beckons with love from a fragrant valley, half-hidden there with its wriggling staircase, its old cream Aga and its ancient beams.

  And only Vanessa knows whose house it is. She’s been buying magazines for weeks, not entirely sure which one Suzie mentioned. ‘Don’t let it be sold, God, oh please don’t let it be sold. Don’t let it go to anyone else.’ Only Vanessa, who hasn’t had a childhood, understands the effect this is going to have on poor Suzie.

  They will no longer be different. They already have Daddy in a way that she never can. They’ve nearly got a mother like hers and now they’ll have her dreams and her happiest places. Let his new bitchy wife hate Daddy’s children properly. Let her despise them on equal terms.

  They’ll be able to invite her down—Suzie, and Daddy and the new London baby. They’ll be able to picnic on rugs in the garden and when Suzie’s baby gets older they’ll be able to play hide and seek and leave it, crying, on its own… or be terribly nice to it, be sickly kind to their stepmother, rubbing in the fact that she is the stranger.

  Suzie will see them so happy together, so will Daddy. He might even want to come back, but Vanessa’s not too sure about this. Let things stay as they are for a while—they’ve been through hell to get hold of a mother, perhaps things should slide for a while.

  Fresh eggs, hens and sponge puddings. Log fires, ponies and daisy chains—all these combine to give Suzie her superiority, her confidence and her arrogant nerve. Anyway, they have to move Mother out. Mother can’t stay in the sauna but nor can she survive in this house. Not now. She has to live somewhere else and before they saw it, everyone knew exactly what it would look like.

  Vanessa stares at the picture of the house, so frightened to let herself believe, scared of hoping too hard.

  ‘Let’s take it with us tomorrow and show it to Daddy!’

  ‘No! No! He might think it strange that Mother has chosen a place so secluded. He might start interfering… the price is too high or the roof looks dodgy. And we don’t want Suzie mauling it, making her bitchy comments. No, not yet. It’s not time yet. We must keep this, as we are keeping everything else, strictly to ourselves.’

  ‘So when are we going to let Mummy out?’

  ‘Not tomorrow, because we’ll be out all evening and I wouldn’t want to leave her alone. You do realise, don’t you, Sacha, that once she’s out of the sauna and roaming free in that basement we can’t put her back?’

  But the longing in the small child’s face is so poignant—it’s a yearning of years and years—that Vanessa is moved to commit herself.

  ‘What does everyone else think? Shall we let her out on Saturday morning when we’ve got the whole weekend to stay with her? The solicitor will make an offer tomorrow and if it’s accepted we’ll know about the house. We’ll be able to tell her about the house and watch to see how she behaves.’

  No one but Sacha and Amber seem brave enough to make a decision. They have made such a sweet dream, it’s tempting just to let it continue. Breaking it feels such a violent act.

  Dominic says very carefully, ‘I suppose that if she hasn’t changed by now she isn’t really going to. We’ve got to face tha
t. It’s been a long time, nearly four months, and there’s nothing much more we can do.’

  ‘I want her to be with us. I don’t want to be cruel to her any more.’

  ‘Have we been very cruel, Camilla?’

  And then Sacha puts in, ‘Oh yes, we have, but only to be kind.’

  Thirty-two

  FRIDAY NIGHT, AND THE evening clouds are darker than the distant pines. Flocks of London starlings fly low over the park in wild arcs and eclipses before coming to rest in a neat line on the telegraph wires, settling like an audience to watch him.

  Lot Dance prepares for entry. This is better than he ever could have hoped. There is nobody home except, of course, for the mysterious Caroline Townsend.

  Damn it, she’s in there somewhere.

  Dressed all in black he flows like a beardless wizard. There is nothing Lot can do to camouflage himself, although he alone doesn’t understand that. His night-black hair and his angular cheekbones are the first anomalies to attract attention, and after that no one can help but focus on those brilliant, startling navy-blue eyes. Crouched in the shadows, stealthily smooth and intensely purposeful, in a different part of London, in a different age, he might be mistaken for Sherlock Holmes. But luckily for Lot there are no pedestrians about when he crosses the road and slinks down the basement steps with his precious glass-cutter in his pocket. He wants to do this properly. He doesn’t want to make a mess. He bends back one of the rusty old bars and he sticky-tapes up one of the panes. He should have done this long ago, and not wasted so much time making stupid telephone calls and hanging around.