After the reading and book signing – pre-released copies, available before the book launch – I make my way past the stages and through the fields and wait for a cab on a wooden walkway by a hedge in the gloom. Fall asleep on the train, jump into a taxi at King’s Cross and arrive home – entering the family melodrama – around 1 a.m.
Pay the babysitter, check all the doors and windows are locked, tiptoe into Vida’s room, give her a kiss, whisper, ‘Mummy’s home,’ hoping my voice will register subliminally and she’ll know she’s safe, but she scowls, mutters something and rolls away from me. I watch her sleep. A crowd of sensations – tenderness, gratitude, guilt, love and anxiety – have a punch-up in my chest. Anxiety wins.
At 7 a.m. I contemplate calling through the partition wall to ask Vida if she minds making her own breakfast. (We lie head to head either side of the wall. Sometimes we drum rhythms to each other to communicate, as if we’re captives in adjoining cells.) I manage to haul myself up at the last minute, make breakfast and have a conversation about Vida’s school and friends. I want her to have no doubt she’s loved; her GCSE exams are looming, her grandmother’s dying, she needs support and reassurance. Fifteen is a vulnerable age.
My time with Vida anchors me, but the other two worlds don’t feel real. Not the garish colours, music and camaraderie of the festivals or the sped-up, double-time ageing of my once sparky, opinionated mother, who seems to be crumpling into a smaller papery pile every time I see her.
* I was led to this quote, and to Agnes Smedley, by Vivian Gornick, The Situation and the Story, 2002
14 We ran out of the Lexington, hair, coats and bags flapping, dodged around the cars and lorries on Pentonville Road and jumped into a cab. We were thrown backwards as it accelerated off, but we didn’t put our seat belts on. I can’t remember if we said anything. I think there were little bursts of conversation. Lamp posts and brightly lit shop fronts flashed through the window, washing Vida’s face in orange, green, red and blue, all the neon colours of a city at night. Familiar streets whizzed past but I felt separate from them, like a ghost peering back at the real world while I was being spirited away from it. I tried to convince myself that this was it, the moment I’d been scared of since I was a child, but a voice in my head kept cutting in. No, it hasn’t happened yet, there’s still a chance she’ll pull through, that she won’t die tonight. But which part of ‘Your mother is turning blue, we have one more tank of oxygen left, it will last twenty minutes and then she’ll be gone’ sounds like she won’t die tonight?
What Do You Want a Man for?
It was a blessing and a curse that my mother was so smart. The blessing lies next to the wound, as the old African saying goes. She was the only person I laughed until I cried with (until Vida). We laughed about words and expressions and human-interest stories in the newspaper, not at scripted comedy on the television. She was so sharp that her advice was unerring until she was ninety. She was good at maths and spelling – I love that in a person, don’t know why, it’s not a deal-breaker but I feel safe with a good speller – and I tried to keep her up to date with current thinking so her advice stayed relevant. After she turned ninety she couldn’t keep up any more. Not that it stopped her. I can still picture her propped on a stack of pillows in the hospital, correcting my adding up (numbers don’t change, they’re reassuringly reliable) and commenting on my appearance. ‘Not enough on the eyes and too much on the lips,’ she said when I arrived with a new look – lots of mascara, no eye shadow and a slash of red lipstick. The one thing she could never understand about me was why I wanted another relationship after my divorce. ‘What on earth do you want a man for?’ she’d ask with an appalled expression, as if I’d said I wanted to kneel down in the dirt and eat mouthfuls of shit. In Mum’s opinion there was no way a man was going to make my life any better. She thought I’d got off lightly, being divorced, buying my own home, doing interesting work and bringing up my daughter. But as I looked around at other people in couples it occurred to me that they weren’t together for all the right reasons like Mum wanted me to be. They weren’t with the perfect person or someone who loved them unconditionally and treated them kindly all the time, they were just with … someone. Someone good enough.
They may be your rock, but someone who’s taught you, who knows you and loves you so well, can also be oppressive.
Soothsayer
If I didn’t immediately drop a boyfriend who was careless with my feelings, Mum would say, ‘He’ll do it again.’ And she was always right. I’d come back to her a couple of months later and say, ‘You were right about him, Mum.’
Not long after my divorce we were in Waitrose together. ‘I’ve met someone,’ I grinned. I was happy that my emotional life wasn’t over. I came out of my marriage with so little confidence that I didn’t think I’d ever have a partner again. I was pleased I could still attract someone. ‘Be careful. He’ll end up hurting you.’ First thing she said, straight out of her mouth. Sucked the pleasure right out of me.
‘How do you know I’m not going to hurt him?’ My voice wavered.
She pulled a tattered tissue from her sleeve and started sniffling into it. People stopped and stared, probably thinking I was a horrible daughter for making this sweet little old white-haired lady cry. I think Mum cried to cover up her mistake. She could see she’d upset me. I must admit I’ve sniffled a few times myself after I’ve said something clumsy and hurtful to my daughter. It’s not straight-out manipulation when mothers do this; you’re genuinely sorry for your mistake and annoyed with yourself.
The man I’d met who Mum said would hurt me – I’ll call him Pig, not as an insult but because it resonates with the name he’s adopted and makes me laugh – was in the music industry. After we’d been on a few dates Pig invited Vida and me to stay at his holiday villa in Spain for a week. I knew it was too soon to introduce Vida to a new relationship but we needed a holiday, I was broke, and the children from his first marriage would be there so I thought she might enjoy it. Vida and I arrived at the villa late at night and Pig introduced us to two women, quite a bit younger than me, draped in sarongs and skinny vests, who were also staying with him. We had a quick chat and a mint tea and then everyone went to bed. Vida shared with the children, I had a room on my own. Next morning, after rifling through my suitcase trying to find clothes that matched the rich-hippy type of thing the other two women were wearing, I wandered through the whitewashed villa looking for the others. I glimpsed a bright blue swimming pool with bashed-up sofas dotted around it shimmering through the window of the open-plan living room. Hearing voices coming from a side room, I popped my head round the half-open door. Sitting on the bed was one of the young women, naked, playing with my daughter and two other children. My mouth dropped open. I stuttered hello, ducked out before I gave myself away, and stumbled into the kitchen. Sitting at the kitchen table was the other woman, naked except for a thong, chatting to Pig, who was puffing on a spliff. Vida was nine. I hadn’t told her anything about spliffs or naked women sitting at kitchen tables.
That evening, after the children had gone to sleep, Pig ran a bath for me in his en suite bathroom and I hopped in while he lounged on the bed and rolled himself a spliff. Lying in the hot water, the warm breeze from the open window rolling over my face and shoulders, I looked out at the Spanish sunset and thought, He’s not so bad. I was drying myself with a thick white towel when he rushed into the bathroom naked, penis jiggling, hands flapping, spliff dangling from his mouth, hissing, ‘Jack [his son] can’t sleep! He’s here! I’ve put him on the balcony. Quick! Go to your room, he mustn’t see you!’ Pig hustled me out of the bathroom, through the bedroom, onto the landing and pushed the door shut behind me as if we were in a West End farce. I stood on the terracotta flagstones, wrapped in the damp towel, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Why didn’t he just tell Jack (who was ten) to go back to his room? Or go to Jack’s room with him and read a story? Or all three of us could have hung out in Pig’s roo
m for a while. Jack knew I was his father’s girlfriend. Why was it OK for him to see naked women and spliff-smoking but not to see his father’s girlfriend in his room? It was too weird and illogical. I stormed through the villa – not easy to do with wet bare feet – pulling all the oriental rugs, draped artfully over the wrought-iron bannisters, onto the floor as I went.
Pig went on to exhibit even more peculiar behaviour during the week’s holiday and I thought Mum must be clairvoyant predicting so early that he was a wrong ’un. But it’s more likely that she’d lived long enough to know a woman is vulnerable so soon after a divorce and will potentially make inappropriate choices. Telling her his name was Pig and that he was in the music business probably helped her gain insight into his character too. Same with any fortune teller or gambler, it’s all about the ‘tells’.
She did it again with my album, The Vermilion Border. As soon as it was finished I rushed round to her flat and played it to her, but she looked up halfway through the first song, went all misty-eyed as if looking into the future and said, ‘I feel like there’s something else you’re going to do. Something more is in you that you haven’t done yet.’ I was crushed. It had taken every ounce of my energy over the last three years to make the record and here she was saying I wasn’t there yet. I still hadn’t done enough. Another challenge was around the corner, another impending goal for me to aspire to. If Mum hadn’t had a solid grasp on my life and the world in general, I could’ve dismissed her comments, pecked her on the cheek and scuttled off home, but she was so often right. Sometimes you just want to find things out as you go along, not have this bloody soothsayer in your face all the time.
Six months later I started writing a book.
15 Vida and I sat close to each other and held hands the whole time we were in the cab. After a few minutes it occurred to me to ask the driver how long it would take for us to get to Hendon. I knew Vida was watching me but I couldn’t stop my face from collapsing when he said forty minutes.
‘My mother’s dying, we’ve only got twenty,’ I said.
For Vida to hear the word ‘dying’ spoken aloud was not ideal but it was more important we got to Mum in time. The driver put his foot down – taxi drivers know about life-and-death situations. I called ahead to the care home, told the receptionist we were on our way and asked her to unlock the entrance doors. I’ve stood outside those doors ringing the bell for fifteen minutes sometimes, waiting for someone to come downstairs and open them. My mind was working like a machine. We needed every second we could get. I took off my shoes and told Vida to take hers off too, her little heels and my expensive boots. We scrunched everything we were holding – coats, scarves, bits of paper – into our bags and tied back our hair. It was like we were preparing for a race. Or a fight.
Sarah Connor vs Terminator
Since I was thirteen I’ve only dated boys, and later men, who I wanted to learn something from. Knowledge was the only currency I was interested in. I couldn’t think what else a boyfriend was for. I didn’t have a sex drive exactly, more of a conquest drive. For me sex was bound up with control. I was more excited by the thought of having power over the annoyingly privileged oppressor, or possessing the handsome boy, than any kind of tender communion, although I didn’t realise that’s how I was behaving at the time.
I didn’t have orgasms when I was younger. I couldn’t relax and let go enough for them to happen – not helped by the fact that this was a time when girls didn’t know their own bodies and were told that ‘nice girls’ don’t make noise during sex. I only felt near orgasm once in my early twenties. A sound came out of my mouth that I wasn’t in control of, not one of those fake sighs you do that you’ve picked up from films to make the other person think you’re enjoying yourself, but a deep moan. The boy on top of me clapped his hand over my mouth to shut me up – a guitarist in a radical band he was. I didn’t get close to having an orgasm again for another twelve years.
The 1960s and 70s were such restricted times for women that I didn’t want to do what I saw girls doing, that’s why I copied and learned from boys. (It’s the opposite for me now, women interest me more and I learn from them.) There was no feeling of wanting to be a boy, and I didn’t want a penis, was very glad I didn’t have one. I just wanted to have the freedom and opportunities boys had: to hitch-hike without fear, to rough and tumble and play-fight when we all went to the park, to be looked in the eye when I spoke, ordinary stuff like that. I thought if I assimilated male thoughts and emotions, I would be respected and have an interesting life too. As soon as I found out about art school, rolling spliffs, jazz, forming a band, how to polish my DMs, immerse myself in work and be an emotionless cunt, I moved on. The boys I couldn’t conquer or understand exasperated me. I would persevere with them for a while but eventually give up on them and force the ‘relationship’ to end by being unpleasant.
When I was in my thirties I met a man I wanted to live with. I thought he was mysterious because he was so emotionless. He was such a cold fish my nickname for him was ‘Termie’, short for Terminator – I wanted to be like that. I was frustrated that Termie took too long thinking about whether he wanted us to live together or not, and I discussed with friends how to get him to commit. From the day he said ‘Yes’ I never had an orgasm with him again – which was annoying as he was the first person since the ‘radical’ guitarist that I’d experienced a proper orgasm with, including myself.
I tried, but I don’t think I ever truly loved anyone – not even my mother – until I gave birth to Vida. She taught me how to love. That’s my daughter in the water, everything she knows I taught her,* I used to sing to her. Now I humbly acknowledge it’s the other way round.
Hairy Knob
… the amount of maintenance involving hair is genuinely overwhelming. Sometimes I think that not having to worry about your hair any more is the secret upside of death.
Nora Ephron, I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman, 2006
As a child, I often wondered what kind of woman I’d grow into. Squinting into the steel knob on the radiator in the bathroom every time I sat on the loo, I’d look for answers in my face. Examining my distorted reflection, bug-eyed, pug-nosed, cavernous nostrils, mouth dragged down at the corners, I imagined this was what I’d look like when I was old. I couldn’t envisage being older when I was twelve. It didn’t occur to me to look at my mother in her shirt and slacks, lace-up shoes and short, functional haircut and guess I’d look something like her. That was too great a leap of the imagination. We weren’t that similar physically and I never took much notice of her appearance. She was just Mum. Apart from my teachers and my mother, I didn’t have a picture in my head of a woman I could aspire to be.
Now I’m older than I thought I’d ever be, and look better – on the outside, I’m a mess on the inside due to the cancer treatment and other illnesses and operations – than I thought a sixty-year-old could look when I peered into that chrome bobble. It takes a concerted effort for me to look good dressed, but it’s nothing like the amount of work it takes for me to look good undressed. And that’s mostly because of The Hair.
I have lots of hair on my head and people often comment enviously on it, but what they don’t realise is that it’s also all over my body, like Mr Tumnus, the faun with the legs of a goat from C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. Except I’m more like a goat with the legs of a faun. The older I get the more unmanageable The Hair becomes. I dream about hair every night. Eyebrow hair, face hair, underarm hair, arse hair, pubic hair. I dream the hair on my legs is as long, straight, black and shiny as liquorice bootlaces, and the bootlaces trail out of the bottom of my jeans, dragging along the ground as I walk down the street. The strands are so long that people can’t help stepping on them. In another dream I have one long, thick, dark brown hair sprouting from under my nose which reaches down to my boots, and try as I might, I can’t pull it out. Or the hair on the backs of my fingers is so long and brown that I plait it and the plai
ts swish about as I wave my hands around when I talk. Last night I dreamt I didn’t have time to go home before I went out, and by the end of the evening the hair on my upper lip and chin had grown into a thick tussock of pale-brown sea-grass and I had to hack it off with secateurs. I am seriously unhinged about hair. I’ve instructed my friend Trace to pluck my chin hairs, wax my moustache and stick a bobble hat over my grey roots as soon as I’m dead. (Now she has nightmares too.)
Body hair, for many of us, is a constant micro-aggression, attacking us from within, no matter how many times we rip it out from the root, no matter how much we convince ourselves that it’s really not that deep. It exists as a mental burden …
Aisha Mirza, ‘On Being Mad, Brown, and Hairy’, 2016
I was even too embarrassed to say my father was from Corsica when I was young, right up to my thirties, because the name had the sound ‘coarse’ in it and I thought it would draw people’s attention to the thick brown hair on my face and my legs.
To Throw Away Unopened Page 6
