Mothertime

by Gillian White

  ‘No, Robin, no.’ Caroline laughs, but softly, sadly. ‘What Vanessa needs is to be left alone to sort her own self out, without anyone interfering.’

  ‘How can you talk this way, Caroline? You were always impossibly stupid and irresponsible as a mother but I never thought I’d see the day—’

  ‘Robin, please don’t! You sound so—’

  ‘Be quiet, Suzie, please. You do not know what you are talking about.’

  ‘But you sound so unpleasant, Robin.’

  ‘I’m grown up now, Daddy. I’m a woman.’

  ‘I know, and you look disgusting!’

  Vanessa’s smile is the smile of the clown under that chalk-white make-up. It is not the smile of a child. She turns away on her two-inch-thick, black rubber heel.

  Caroline flushes. ‘Shall we all have some tea? It’s ready, I think. The children will bring the rest of it out. Sit down, Robin, it’s far too hot for a drama. Just sit down and try to relax.’

  But Robin falls angrily into his chair, glaring at his daughter’s back as she disappears into the cooler shadows, as she stomps through the open door, under the rustic eyebrow of thatch. Is it possible that the sound of that terrible music has now been turned up even higher?

  The hills are silvery in the sunlight and buttercups spread the fields with gold. ‘Well, it’s certainly all very nice. You’ve done jolly well, Caroline,’ says Robin, trying, as he waits for his tea to be poured.

  From the window the drums beat down, there’s an air of voodoo about the heat as Caroline passes his cup and says, ‘It’s a difficult time for Vanessa. She’s changing… Go on, help yourself to a sandwich.’

  ‘How can you talk this way, Caroline? You haven’t changed, have you? Still exactly the same pathetic—’

  ‘Robin, please!’

  ‘It’s all right, Suzie, I’m quite used to this. Vanessa is lovely in her own way, Robin, if you look hard under all the black.’

  ‘I will not look hard—I should not have to look hard. She is my daughter and I was looking forward to taking her out, but I don’t really feel like a burger and chips at some road hut…’

  They look round, astonished, when they see Suzie laughing. Perhaps it’s the heat and the terrible journey, perhaps the fact that she’s in her own garden, combined with the fear of Caroline and Robin’s crass behaviour—maybe these things have helped to unhinge her. But the silent laughter’s infectious. Suzie is shaking, wiping her eyes and Caroline, made nervous by Robin’s fury, can’t control herself any longer. They look at each other as they sit there exhausted, absorbing the feeling of changelessness that comforted Suzie as a child. It’s a healing balm. With the drumbeat pounding down from above and Robin’s cross face, his angry words cutting the breeze, they collapse in their chairs and they laugh, flapping their hands to cool themselves. Suzie finally manages to cry, ‘There’s no competition here, Robin! Your women, your children, there’s nobody vying to be first with you any more!’ She chokes and wipes her eyes again. ‘That’s why you wanted to come, isn’t it? That’s why you made me come with you!’

  Robin, silenced, stares at his wife in clenched amazement.

  ‘Suzie, let’s go inside. Bring your tea, it’s too hot out here and the children can entertain Robin.’

  ‘What about Holly?’ Suzie, still giggling, still hysterical, hangs back nervously.

  ‘Holly is far better off here with me,’ says Robin, tartly.

  ‘Or Lot can look after Holly, or Vanessa might have her upstairs for a while…’

  ‘Vanessa?’ Robin is horrified. ‘You are mad, woman! You must be completely crazed to think that I’d be so irresponsible as to let a child of mine alone with that creature.’ Sweat pours down his face. He waves his arms, making futile stabs at the air.

  ‘But Vanessa is not one of your wives, Robin. She is your loving daughter, made in your own image. Surely you trust Vanessa? Surely there’s someone you can still trust, besides Isobel and God?’

  The younger children have stopped playing. They stand and stare, astounded to see such fury here in this safe place where it is normally only house martins that slice the still summer air.

  Caroline tactfully tries to be cheerful. ‘While I show Suzie inside, maybe you lot would like to take Daddy off for a walk—show him the lake in the trees, perhaps, or the badger set?’

  When no one responds, when they all hang back, Robin hisses to Caroline: ‘I can’t believe it—you’ve done this! You’ve secretly been working towards this and now is your little moment of triumph. That’s it, isn’t it? You have turned my daughter, you have turned all my children against me. Look at them all—just look at them! Running wild like savages!’

  ‘They’re not used to scenes like this, Robin, that’s all. They’re not used to atmospheres of this kind any more. They don’t know how to deal with them. I promise you there’s been no secret scheming.’ Caroline watches his fury for a moment, fascinated, horrified, as you might watch a lion tearing away at its scarlet kill, before she smiles and tells him, ‘Don’t be so idiotic. Suzie, ignore him, come with me.’

  ‘And who is that man, might I ask?’

  Both Suzie and Caroline ignore his rudeness but Robin, hot and bothered, calls out after them, ‘Balls, ball, balls.’

  ‘He sounds as if he has finally gone stark staring mad!’

  ‘It’s the atmosphere—he poisons it!’ Suzie’s whole body is trembling now and she cannot hold back the tears any longer. She wants to hit him or spit in his face. It’s a good thing Caroline brought her indoors, away from the fury, away from the heat. It is cool indoors. Suzie’s bedroom is much the same as it always was. It welcomes her back with its gentle pastels and that same squeak of the bed; there’s that vague smell of new-mown hay or is it ironing? It seems to be part of the curtains, like the red hem of cross-stitch she sewed years ago while she learned to be a woman, and the breeze flutters a welcome familiar and sweet. ‘I don’t want to share this bed with Robin. Not this bed. It’s mine, isn’t it? My old bed?

  ‘It’s such a subtle destruction.’ She sits down heavily on the bed and confesses timidly to Caroline, to the one who was always the enemy: ‘I could have been laughing out there, I could have been crying, it’s all the same. I know how irrational I’m sounding now but whatever he did to you, Caroline, whatever happened, I think that he is in the process of doing the same thing to me. I know it. I’ve been so blind! I didn’t want to see but it was so obvious down there in the garden, staring me in the face. Poor Vanessa! There was only one woman in his life who ever made Robin unhappy, and it wasn’t you, Caroline, it was never you. It was Isobel. I’ve thought about it. I’ve stayed awake nights, I’ve watched so many dawns come in, wondering. What did she do to him, Caroline? Dear God, what did she do?’

  ‘You’re enmeshed in it all, as I was. You need time alone, away from him. You need time to think.’

  Suzie’s face is a picture of misery. She delves in her basket and brings out a packet of cigarettes. Her hand trembles as she lights one. Robin would frown with disgust and say, ‘Oh Suzie, must you!’ ‘I was so strong once,’ she sobs distraughtly, ‘but you wouldn’t think it to see me now! I’m afraid of my baby! She’s never been mine and I seem to have somehow lost everything else. How can I leave him when I’d have to leave Holly behind because, Caroline, I hardly dare touch her! I’m not like a mother, Caroline. I’m not like a mother and yet I love her! Can anyone understand that?’

  Caroline moves to look out of the window. Robin sits in the garden alone, slumped in an attitude of stunned dejection. ‘Vanessa knew. I suppose her childish instinct told her; she knew long before I did. She was always so frightened of growing up. Robin’s never liked women, and when you consider Isobel, is that any wonder? He has to try and reduce them, turning them back into children again. Robin adores his children.’ She goes to sit down beside the miserable Suzie. ‘I’m not even sure he’s aware that he does it. He’s not a cruel man. How he must have been looking forward to t
his weekend, to hearing his children whine to stay with him just as they always used to. And you and me, Suzie, how we would have fought over him once. And I whined in my own way. God, for years, how I whined.’ Caroline turns to survey the woman crying softly on the crumpled bed and there’s a lost sound in her voice when she says, ‘But the trouble is, Suzie, the really awful thing is that I don’t think there is any way out of it. Robin will not let go.’

  Caroline’s eyes are like two wet stones. ‘He would get custody of mine, or yours if you dared to leave him. He’s a powerful man with friends in high places. He would get it!’

  Thirty-six

  SHE IS COMPETENT. VANESSA knows that she is. Well, she managed to carry the weight of a household on her shoulders but what’s going to happen now? The atmosphere’s suffocating! They’d planned a barbecue so at least Robin was busy. The younger children helped him through the sticky twilight, so at least there were things going on last night to relieve some of that terrible tension.

  He and Suzie hardly spoke and Caroline played the motherly hostess, intercepting those flying emotional shards, glossing over the difficulties. In the end she came straight out with it. ‘Suzie might be staying here for a while, Robin. And Holly. She needs a rest.’

  ‘Suzie can stay here if she likes but I’m not leaving Holly in this madhouse if it’s the last thing I do!’ And he went back to turning the sausages.

  And how is Vanessa, crouched under the crushing heat of thatch in her stuffy darkness of a den with her cupboard full of hair gel, a wide selection of acne creams and stubby tubes of coverup—how is she taking this, her old arch-enemy welcomed into the warm bosom of the house? This is not how she planned it during those difficult times, all those months ago.

  She stares at herself in her bedroom mirror, a long, cool, unperturbed look. Neither ashamed nor frightened, she arches her back and places her hands on her hips. Her mauve lips stiffly unstick before they come apart again and form the shape of a whore’s blown kiss.

  Vanessa understands at last. Perhaps she had to reach fourteen before she could see it so clearly—through a glass darkly and all that. She is quite prepared to accept poor Suzie. There was never any point in competing with Suzie… they have both already lost the battle because they are grown-up women. All Daddy ever does is to try and turn women back into little girls again. Perhaps he thinks that little girls are innocent and lovely.

  Vanessa listens to them down in the garden and her stare conveys just a mild distaste. God, why are they all so boring?

  Last week, shifting from foot to foot, Amber asked her, ‘Have we made Mummy happy, d’you think?’

  Vanessa thought for only a moment. ‘No, I don’t think she’s actually happy, but she’s not in love with Daddy any more so I think she’s probably contented.’

  It was Camilla who put their fears into words. ‘Why don’t we say what we’re all thinking? We’ve been as bad as Daddy, haven’t we? Worse, even. Everyone’s been trying to turn Mummy into something to suit themselves.’

  Is Camilla blaming Vanessa? That’s not fair. ‘But at least she’s got a chance now.’

  ‘What kind of a chance?’

  ‘She’s got a chance to find out what she wants to be. Just for herself.’

  ‘But how can she do that when she is stuck here with us?’

  Vanessa scoffed at the ignorant child. ‘She loves us. She has always loved us. She is not stuck here at all—this is where she would choose to be.’

  And what about poor Daddy now? Who is going to save him from himself? He looked so pathetic this morning, sitting bewildered as a sun-bleached gnome, balanced on that spindly chair in the garden.

  Why would Vanessa want to go out for a meal? Why was there such a great fuss? Don’t they all realise that half the world is starving? Anyone would think the world would end if she, Vanessa, refused to change out of her black string vest and into a dress. Nobody in this family has their priorities right. None of them care, like she does, about vivisection and the future of the whales and the shooting of elephants or the scandalous rape of the North Pole by the all those greedy oilmen.

  Jesus, how can there possibly be a God? Vanessa’s not conned by the opt-out clause, man’s free will, any more. Why would you give free will to a vicious animal? So it’s all much easier now, not at all like it was. Sod the lot of them, frankly it’s as simple as that! Let them make what messes they like of their lives. Before she leaves for school each morning Vanessa stuffs tights inside her bra, for she has moved on from God and Sister Agnes, and yesterday at break Carl Baker, hunt saboteur and perfectly bald, told Nicky Morgan that he fancied her. Did she want to go with him on the animal rights march next weekend? If so, could she please make and bring her own banner?

  But with Daddy so upset like this, what’s going to happen to them now? Vanessa does not want her world to change; she’s happy for it to stay as it is.

  It was Dominic who overheard them talking long after the others had all gone to sleep. He reported back in the morning. The night voices from the garden seats drifted, like a mist, through his window.

  ‘I mean it, Caroline. I am not prepared to leave Holly in this household for one day and I feel so uneasy about all this that I’m getting on to my solicitors just as soon as I get back to London. The children need to be with me—there is plenty of room at the flat. You know I would have had them from the start but Suzie was so stubbornly against it.’

  ‘You know I would never agree to that!’

  ‘Caroline, stop and think for a moment. Just let a judge know the sort of unstable woman you are, just give him a hint of your past. He’s only got to read the papers, he doesn’t need to hear it from me.’ Daddy lowered his voice then so Dominic had to strain to hear. ‘He wouldn’t hesitate for a moment.’

  ‘The children would refuse to leave.’

  ‘Their minds have been poisoned! The children will do as I say. And where would you live? You haven’t got a penny of your own. You could never afford a place like this without my total support.’

  ‘Think of the publicity, Robin.’

  ‘There is nothing in any of this that could possibly do me any damage.’

  ‘People will wonder why you didn’t insist on taking your children with you before,’ Suzie interrupted. ‘Your wife was an alcoholic, and I would have headed in the same direction. Why reclaim them now, when everything’s so much better?’

  ‘Better? You call this chaos better? Living in turmoil with a man half her age, running naked across the hills…’

  Suzie seems to realise the magnitude of what she is saying. Her voice stays low. ‘While Caroline was ill you pulled the strings and that is just what you wanted. Your children were so dependent on you they were putty in your hands. You didn’t need to live there to wage your twisted war. It were quite safe to leave her and start on somebody else. It’s so sick, yes—sick. Can’t you see it?’

  ‘Oh good heavens! You talk like that to a judge and he’ll call you raving mad.’

  After a long pause—there’s just the sound of a cricket somewhere, and the soft strike of a match: ‘And if I agreed to go with you, would you leave them alone?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, Suzie. Look what has happened to Vanessa. Think of the others, so young and vulnerable.’ His tone was an easy banter.

  Caroline cried, ‘Suzie, think about what you are saying. I wouldn’t let you make that sacrifice!’

  ‘Oh Robin, why don’t you just go away and leave us all alone?’

  ‘Because I’m responsible, and my children need me, that’s why!’ And in the darkness his voice trailed away.

  Robin slept on the sofa downstairs with his unpacked bag on the floor beside him.

  Caroline cooks breakfast. They eat it in the garden which is breathtaking, hung with cobwebs of dewy lace. But nobody speaks much and the twins are sullen and shy, sensing danger.

  ‘Suzie and I will be leaving soon.’ He must be hoping that she won’t have the courage to contradict him,
too intimidated to cause a scene.

  Caroline says, ‘Your father’s mistaken. Suzie and Holly will be staying here with us for a few days.’

  Robin says, ‘I’m warning you, Caroline!’ and all the children’s eyes are cast down; they are all completely absorbed in their eggs.

  But Mummy just goes on buttering her toast. She shrugs and smiles at him sadly.

  ‘Where is Vanessa?’

  ‘Oh, still asleep, I’m afraid. During the holidays she doesn’t get up much before one.’

  ‘Does nobody want to know why I am going? Does nobody want to know what’s going on?’ he asks on a note of exasperation. But they don’t. It’s awful. Flushed and embarrassed, they don’t even answer. There is nothing more to be said. Eventually Dominic fetches Robin’s bag and it’s like a dismissal.

  ‘Thank you, Dominic,’ his father says stiffly.

  ‘They will ask us, Daddy. They do these days. They ask the children.’

  ‘What?’ Robin’s astonished. ‘They’ve been listening—or you and Suzie have been talking to them already. This is beyond belief! This is nothing to do with you, Dominic, so please don’t interfere.’

  ‘Just go home, Daddy.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  The boy’s soft eyelids don’t even flutter. ‘I said why don’t you just go home, Daddy.’

  Vanessa’s not here, but the four younger children stand in a semicircle to watch him; they form a primitive nursery-rhyme moon, a judgement. Robin sticks it out for as long as he can; he jangles the loose change in his pockets as if he is handling prayer beads. Several times he starts to speak but it’s useless, his words trail off aimlessly, taken up to the hard blue sky which is clear and cloudless and sure of itself.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ he says, inviting contradiction. Straightening. ‘I’m off. Give me the car keys, Suzie.’

  It’s with a kind of lethargic weariness that he starts off down the path, expecting one of his children to follow but there is only the one. He follows his father to the gate. They pass through, one behind the other, and Robin sits in the driving seat of Suzie’s car, fiddling with the keys, while Dominic stands at the door looking down at his father through long, feminine lashes.