Mothertime

by Gillian White

  But perhaps he’s been enjoying himself. Perhaps he’s getting fed up with boxes, and there’s no fun going to Bart’s any more. In Lot’s eyes to go home to Mum, somewhere he’s always sure of a warm and genuine welcome, is an admission of failure. In some ways he hopes he doesn’t find Caroline; he hopes that the house might be empty so that he can continue his search, because it gives him such a definite reason for getting up in the mornings.

  With a torch between his teeth—a tricky business because he finds he can’t swallow and he’s in danger of dribbling—he starts work on the glass. The flakes of paint impede his progress, clogging his fierce little blade, but it doesn’t take long to cut out a square large enough so that he can insert his hand and snip the catch on the window. It’s a jolly good thing the house is not protected by any alarms.

  Lot steps into a twilight darkness. The stale air down here is static, as if it hasn’t been disturbed for a very long time, like in a supermarket where everything’s packaged so nothing smells, nothing’s allowed to age. There’s something tinny in the atmosphere and there, square, at the back of the room stands what looks like a 1950s fridge, glowing softly, dimly lit from within, although when Lot directs his torchbeam he can see that it is made out of wood and there’s a glass window in the front.

  The clouds pass over the moon outside as he crosses the room with stealth, emotionally quite unprepared for the most enormous trauma of his life. He has to stoop to see through the window and then he stiffens with shock; he stifles a groan, because he’s not been expecting anything like this. There before him, draped impassively on a fur-covered seat (and the fur is arranged like you’d see in a famous painting), dressed in ivory, with the light playing silverily with her serenity is a fairy-tale woman. By her side sits a vase full of primroses and violets, and her concentration is centred entirely on her music.

  She’s got headphones on her head.

  Lot’s mind ranges madly over the length and breadth of his experience… films, books, bill-boards, adverts on telly, but he comes back to the same, intolerably sweet sensations… bluebells, wild garlic and soft, silver shawls… never has he seen such a complete woman. Mother, lover, wife and child. A vision. A small smile plays round her gentle mouth. And, as he watches, when she raises a hand to disentangle one of her curls, he remembers the fallow deer browsing under the branches in the park, and the way that they have of flicking their tails at the flies. Human voices scare them.

  It seems like hours, but it’s for only seconds that Lot stands trembling, rooted to the spot. His longing is like a hurricane and he’s going to be blown away by it. And is this the woman he’s come to kill? Shaking with remorse and tenderness, his eyes feel sharp, like a jackdaw’s eyes viewing something shiny that the bird must risk its life to possess. He spies the padlock with alarm: the door is locked! She’s a prisoner here, just as Lot’s been a prisoner for most of his life, and she’s come to terms with her fate just as he has.

  Lot steps back and bursts straight into tears.

  Deep inside himself he experiences a burst of beauty so immense that he feels as if he is dying.

  He must have cast a shadow on the ceiling, or maybe she caught his short, strangled cry, because seconds later she is at the window, staring out into the moonlit gym and her eyes shine a grey-green sea spray.

  ‘It’s all right! It’s all right! It’s quite all right!’ Oh please, please, she must not be afraid of him.

  ‘Who is there?’

  Even his name, given so coarsely, feels like a blasphemy in her presence.

  ‘Well, Lot, what are you doing in this house?’

  He can’t think of anything clever to say save for the straightforward truth. ‘Are you Caroline Townsend?’

  When she nods her head he says, ‘Well, I have been trying to find you.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have come to the front door? Could you be the mysterious Mr Walsh?’

  That’s the second time he’s been asked. ‘No, I am Bart’s brother. What are you doing in there? Who has locked you in?’

  Caroline does not reply. Ignoring his question she says, ‘There’s a key at the top of the basement steps. Perhaps you would be good enough to let me out.’

  Ashamed of his overwhelming desire to keep her locked up, safe in her cage like the rarest, most beautiful of butterflies, like a priceless relic which might crumble and disappear if it was exposed to the air, he overcomes his reluctance to move and leaps to obey her request. Lot, more clumsy than ever, falls over himself in order to obey.

  ‘There’s a light,’ she calls. ‘Put it on. It’ll make things much easier.’ And flaming hot in the chill of the basement, Lot finds the keys and hurries to comply.

  She smiles at her saviour, disarmed, as most people are, by his extraordinarily compelling good looks, not knowing, as most people don’t, about the cruel quirk of nature that has made him so perfect without, so complicated and tumultuous within. When she was little Caroline shuddered at the sight of old women, grimacing through their painted masks at divine young men… she feels herself doing that now. The man looks stiff with shock, and no wonder he’s shocked after so dramatically discovering her here. Caroline doesn’t feel too calm herself, disturbed in her sanctuary by an intruder.

  ‘You let me out and I’m grateful. Let me shake your hand.’

  He winces when she touches him, tongue-tied with wonder. She puts on her negligée, she floats in it, it’s cotton smooth as silk, paler than the moon. She tells him: ‘Well, I frankly don’t care who you are or what you are doing. You can take all the silver if you like.’ She smiles again. He’s like a dog when he follows her as Caroline Townsend takes a deep breath and prepares to return to the rest of her house.

  Lot goes first. She’s determined to see everything, to touch everything, to reassure herself that it’s real and no dream. She moves into her house as if through the foliage of a dark forest and Lot is the prince, chopping through fearful memories—the tangles of shame—leading the way. She reaches the hall mirror and pauses, turns to it and stands staring with fascinated eyes, absorbing her own reflection. A film of tears mists her eyes as she leans towards it and traces the shape of her face… not hard and lean any more but rounded and smooth. The sharp lines she tried to cover have softened as the leanness has left, replaced by a natural fullness. Why has she hidden her hair all these years? She straightens the coils of deep brown, wonders over the few strands of grey, touching it lightly, smoothing it lightly, trying to shape it but it goes its own way. It’s still short, of course, not more than three inches long all over, but it frames her face and it’s shiny clean. She looks so much younger! Innocent even. She seems disconcerted by her own breath on the glass, tries to pull back, appalled, like a mother accidentally smothering her own baby. She tries for that old sarcastic smile but it won’t come and she’s not going to force it. The smile that confronts her is genuine, sweet!

  She whispers, ‘Who can this be?’ And Lot watches her, full of awe.

  It is all happening so fast, too fast for poor Lot to make any sense of it. Caroline turns on the lights and paces backwards and forwards through every room, picking up stray bits and pieces, digesting small details with strokes and sighs. But the house is not like her. He’d never have guessed, having seen her, that her house would be furnished like this—hard, brittle like a glossy magazine, with overpriced refinement, nothing homely here. ‘It’s just as I left it.’ She sounds quite mystified. She turns to him with the whispered question, ‘I don’t know why, but I imagined it would have totally changed, but it hasn’t, has it? It’s just me that’s changed. Nothing else. It is all exactly the same.’

  Her stricken admirer brings himself to say, ‘Well, I wouldn’t know anything about that. It’s just how I imagined it would be, but that’s before I met you.’

  ‘Strange, how I feel so much smaller in it. I suppose it’s all those months locked away in that tiny box. Anyway, why would you be trying to imagine the inside of my house?’

>   ‘Don’t worry, I do that all the time.’ But he’d rather stay silent, afraid to displease her. Falling in love at first sight is the name of this sort of thing and Lot has done this before, but never quite so totally. It’s a curious phenomenon, a chemical process in which billions of atoms rush together and communicate to the heart, brain, stomach, and everywhere else. For Lot the world has turned magical again, just when he thought he was losing it. She must never know about the violence he came here to commit, she must never suspect that he hated her. Oh God, is some deep instinct even now—his breathing, dilated pupils perhaps—sounding a soundless alarm? No, there’s no sign that Caroline is afraid of him, and why should she be? He is determined to protect her from harm for the rest of her life. If she’ll let him.

  She is dismayed to see her own stale room messy and disturbed. There is a violence here, a wasted place, an eerie lagoon of sexual energy gone stagnant. ‘Why do things seem to last forever here?’ She closes her eyes tightly, though trying not to flinch from the pain. The dressing table is strewn with half-used bottles without their lids and, tinted with make-up, imprinted with lips, muddled old tissues fill the bin. Lot does not recognise the large, brassy photograph of herself that’s standing on the windowsill. She sees him staring and smiles. ‘I was pregnant. That was taken just before the twins were born.’ Old clothes, a mess of ruffles and flounces, hang limply on the back of a cream calf-skin chair. Even her bed is rumpled as if she’s just thrown back the duvet and there’s her discarded dressing gown on the floor. There’s pity in her eyes when she exclaims, ‘The children have deliberately kept it like this, haunted by a slatternly old ghost…’

  If Caroline hadn’t told him, Lot would never have imagined the room to be anything to do with her. Anyone could see that she hasn’t been here, anyone could sense that the smell in this room is of dust. What is more extraordinary is that, apart from a few neat toys and bookshelves, there is hardly a sign that this is a house where children live. And just as he’s finished thinking it she puts it into words. ‘There’s nothing of the children in this house. I’m sure you noticed. I wouldn’t let them. You see, I just couldn’t let them.’

  It’s extraordinary, it’s flattering, the way she assumes he understands.

  They come downstairs and it’s as though she has just remembered who he is when she asks, ‘And how is Bart?’

  ‘Bart isn’t very good at all. He’s run out of money and Ruby’s left him.’

  ‘Ruby?’

  ‘His wife. The one you telephoned.’ The one who used to make Lot’s life wonderful but Ruby’s disappeared now, she’s lost behind the haze and Lot cannot even remember her hats.

  ‘Not me. I’ve never even heard of anyone called Ruby.’ And then, slowly, wistfully, ‘I knew he was married, of course, but Bart never mentioned her to me.’

  He must get this right, although it no longer matters much and Lot feels himself delving into one of his baffling distances. ‘But you had an affair with Bart? You were with him on the nights when Ruby was alone?’

  ‘Yes, I had what you call in your old-fashioned way “an affair” with Bart. But that seems like another life now.’

  Lot knows all about other lives. You go into another life each time you change your mind about something big. You have to refocus and start again while your old life settles and forms, once more, around you.

  In the kitchen she heads straight for the cupboard beside the fridge. She’s after the gin, never mind the tonic. She brings out a bottle in the weary, practised way of the addict, in the impatient, brutal way that smokers take their cigarettes out of their packets. She gazes at it for a moment before putting it back with a smile that is wonderful, full of delight, pleased and yet frightened by her newfound composure. ‘Even the booze,’ she says, more impressed than astonished. ‘They have even been pouring the booze away and replacing it in order to fool Mrs Guerney.’

  ‘They fooled everyone. You must be very angry.’

  ‘Angry?’

  ‘They must have kept you locked up for a very long time.’

  ‘Locked up?’

  ‘Yes!’ Lot gapes at her, emotionally electrified, trying to keep control over his emotions while he feels he has strayed into a magnetic field. Why is she being so obtuse? She knows very well what he’s talking about. He’s only just let her out…

  Her eyes meet his and hold them levelly. ‘Nobody locked me up, Lot,’ she says positively. ‘And no, I’m not angry.’

  ‘But I broke into your house and I found you down in the sauna! There was a padlock on the door.’

  He holds his breath and listens hard, trying to understand what she means when she says, ‘If that’s what you think then it’s obvious that both you and I have been dreaming.’

  ‘I suppose we have.’ Baffled, he feels obliged to agree. And then comes the warning. ‘They’ll probably be back soon. Everyone will be back. Look at the time—it’s almost half-past ten.’ Whatever has happened here, and Lot isn’t quite sure what it was, surely Caroline must be dreading the first encounter with her children?

  But she doesn’t seem nervous. Perhaps she realises that Lot is here to protect her. ‘How do you know, so absolutely, the comings and goings of my house? I think you’re probably a private detective.’

  And perhaps Caroline is right. Perhaps Lot ought to agree with that because he quite likes the concept and it’s not quite a lie and he doesn’t want to tell her that he folds boxes. Why should he do himself down? So he’s just about to nod eagerly when she shrugs and says, ‘But it doesn’t matter anyway. What matters is that we’re here, sitting in this kitchen, and I haven’t got a drink in my hand and I’m talking to you quite openly and frankly without being afraid and do you know Lot, I haven’t had this experience, I haven’t been able to relax with people for… years without a sense of suffocation, of being diminished.’ She finishes with brilliant eyes. ‘It’s quite unbelievable. You know, I just can’t remember the last time I felt so natural with anyone. Is it you or is it me?’

  ‘It’s a spell that’s been cast by someone,’ says Lot, who rarely deviates from the truth—his lie about being Mr Walsh proved tremendously taxing—because it’s all too confusing. ‘And when I get home I’m going to wash my hair.’

  Thirty-three

  EVERYONE’S SO EXCITED. SHE wishes they weren’t quite so hyped-up. Before Daddy arrived to collect them, Vanessa had to make Amber calm down. She had to stop her jumping up and down, yelling over and over again, ‘We’re going to let Mummy out in the morning!’ And even now they’ve arrived, despite all the warnings, Vanessa watches how the twins keep nudging each other, breaking into secretive smiles.

  They think it’s going to be wonderful, but what if it’s not? What if it all goes terribly wrong? There’s no way of telling what’s going to happen. If it was only herself then Vanessa could bear it, whatever the outcome. But the thought of the younger ones being hurt again breaks her heart.

  Daddy’s pleased. ‘There’s cause for celebration this evening. Incredibly, Suzie’s mother has managed to sell her house!’

  But Suzie doesn’t seem too cheerful just now. She’s not her normal competent self. Vanessa’s been watching and Suzie’s been weakening for some time lately. She feels she’s been sucking her up, bit by bit, pieces of Suzie sucked up through a straw.

  ‘Whoever’s buying it didn’t even bother to look round it,’ she moans while preparing a nasty, healthily green-looking salad. The stable door to the garden is open and as long as the rain keeps off they’re going to eat their supper outside—first time this year. ‘Probably some rich Yank—all done through a tight-lipped solicitor who refers to the purchaser as “my client” when he’s asked.’

  Daddy is perched on a kitchen stool, watching Suzie’s efforts impatiently. ‘Suzie, you shouldn’t complain. Eileen’s very lucky the house has been sold and with no inconvenience to herself. She hasn’t even had to show anyone round. It’s all been very painless.’

  ‘It’s pro
bably a developer,’ says Dominic slyly. ‘Planning to knock it down and build an estate.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Suzie wails. ‘Please, don’t even joke like that.’

  Robin quickly deflects any trouble. He eyes Dominic warningly. ‘And you’re going to tell me all about the house that your mother has her eye on.’

  ‘It’s much more than that. She made an offer this morning and it looks as if it’s going to be accepted.’

  ‘Did she choose it herself or have you all seen it?’

  ‘Oh, we’ve all seen it.’ Dominic’s lies are always convincing. ‘We’ve been round it several times. We’ve even decided on our own bedrooms.’

  ‘Come on, describe it to me,’ says Daddy. ‘Haven’t you even brought a picture?’

  Sacha, who’s buttering the bread, looks away and nudges Amber, reminding her to keep quiet. They’ve been warned they must leave this part to Vanessa.

  ‘Well, it’s very old,’ their sensible sister starts.

  Daddy has taken the knife from Suzie, driven to take over the task as she seems to be all fingers and thumbs these days. Daddy is quicker, more efficient, and he doesn’t make such a mess. He clears up behind him… he always used to blame Mother for the chaos in the kitchen and the number of unnecessary basins and jugs she used. ‘Yes, go on.’

  Suzie takes a deep gulp of her brandy: it’s a little display of temper.

  ‘And it’s what you would call picturesque.’

  ‘With a garden?’ Suzie asks.

  Is she jealous? Is she already jealous? And are they going to have something that Suzie wants, at dear last? She cannot treat them with the same degree of contempt any longer. Soon they will have all the power…

  ‘Oh yes, it’s got a large, wild garden. Mummy says it’s probably glorious underneath.’

  ‘Mummy? That’s new! And since when was your mother interested in gardening? She managed to make quite a muddle of ours until Mr Broomhead took over, remember?’

  ‘She thinks she might take it up again in all the spare time she’s going to have once she’s finished work.’