Whatever You Love
Page 17
*
Not long after her ninth birthday, Betty and I were alone together at the kitchen table, one Sunday morning. Rees was out at football practice. It was just me and my girl. It was autumn and the kitchen was full of weak, pale sun, honey light. Betty was writing a story for her literacy homework and had been bent over it for some time. Her teacher was a Mrs Cavanagh, a strict woman. Betty liked her. She liked pleasing authority figures.
I was sitting at the table reading clothing brochures from which I never purchased anything but whose contents had to be browsed before they could be discarded, just to confirm that I would never want to buy anything from them. Somehow, I had got myself on a mailing list for women in late middle-age and I seemed to receive an inordinate amount of catalogues advertising trousers with elasticated waistbands. I liked looking through them because they made me feel better about myself. The models they used were slim young girls but with the hairstyles and make-up of much older women. Although they were smiling they looked tense, as if they were gazing around thinking, how did I get here? I’ve wandered into the wrong photoshoot. And what am I wearing? Ugh.
I was gazing at a particularly hideous blouse and cardigan ensemble when Betty said, without raising her head. ‘Mu – um…’
I looked at her. ‘Yes…?’
She stopped what she was doing and gazed up towards a ceiling corner, frowning as if she had just spotted a cobweb. It was a pose she adopted whenever she had a big question to ask.
I braced myself. Why did Dad not love you any more? I had had a lot of those sorts of questions recently. How does the seed get inside the mummy’s tummy? We had already done that one. Willow says she’s got a bird’s nest inside her and that we all have to have one or otherwise we can’t be ladies. That one had taken a bit of deciphering. I only worked it out after I asked Sally, who had explained periods to Willow by drawing a woman’s torso and saying that the woman’s tummy was getting ready to grow a baby all the time and that it was building a nest for it, just like a bird, except the nest was made of fluid to hold the baby safely, like a cushion. Once a month, the mummy’s tummy realised that there wasn’t a baby coming just yet, so it let the fluid drop out and started building a new one. I thought it was rather a good analogy, actually, a lot more coherent than what my mother had said to me. ‘The womb is sad it hasn’t got a baby and it weeps!’ Willow, however, had passed on a slightly less coherent version to her classmates, and they all thought that growing up meant growing twigs and branches inside. Betty had wanted to know if it would hurt.
She had always been of a philosophical bent, Betty. One of her first sentences to me at the age of two or three was, ‘I can’t see my eyes.’ Her tone at the time was both thoughtful and declarative. It wasn’t a question.
So when she said, ‘Mu – um…’ in that meandering fashion, I was expecting something similar. What’s the universe made of? or Where was I before I was born?
Instead, she asked, solemnly, ‘If an octopus was stung by a jellyfish, would it be all right?’
*
Betty, you were only nine. You weren’t my ally or my angel or my friend. You were a child. It was my job to keep you safe. I failed.
12
In the habitual trajectory of these things, that point – my meeting Chloe and realising she wasn’t a monster – that would have been the point at which I got a life, or at least a haircut. I would start going to the pub with friends, join the dance class that my involvement with David had prevented, all those years ago. After a few months, I would meet a man in a similar situation to my own, recently parted from his wife and still shaky. He would be living in a flat in town and the first time I cooked him a proper dinner at my house he would become moist-eyed and talk at length about how difficult he found the separation from his children. Later, I would take him upstairs, creeping on the creaky wooden staircase, to show him my two asleep in their beds, and he would smile at them from the doorways of their bedrooms, and say of Betty, ‘She looks like you.’ As we turned to go back downstairs, he would stop me on the landing and embrace me, hesitantly, kissing me on the mouth in a small, gentle way that would feel like being nibbled. The sex that followed – not that night, but some weeks later – would be satisfactory rather than spectacular. We would become great friends. After a few months, we would begin to talk, tentatively, about whether we should move in together and then maybe have a baby so we would end up with two of mine and two of his and one together. Those around us would breathe a collective sigh of relief.
I could see the rationale in this scenario – I could admire the neatness of it, which was why I would rather burn in hell than participate in it. But I could also see how there was more mileage to be had from magnanimity than victimhood.
As an experiment, I tried being cheerful to Chloe the next time I met her, on their doorstep when I went to pick up the kids.
‘Hi, how are you?’ was all I said, when she opened the door. I was slightly surprised it was her and not David answering, which was what allowed me to be brusque and polite with her. I wondered if David had persuaded her to answer the door, or if she had insisted on it.
She gave me a hesitant glance and I saw that she was used to the idea that I was something to be afraid of, pitied. She was trying to work out what lay behind my friendly tone. ‘Fine,’ she replied, glancing behind her to see if the kids were coming.
At the far end of the corridor, David was kneeling in front of Rees, buttoning his coat. He was talking to him softly in their own little patois, his English heavily accented and the odd word of Welsh. Rees loved it. He could boyo with the best of them. Then he looked round and saw me. ‘Mum!’ He broke free from his father who, turning to me, raised his hand in greeting. Rees and Betty both pounded past Chloe without a word to her and flung themselves at me.
‘What do you say to Chloe?’ I asked as I embraced them. I looked at her. She gave a thin, disconcerted smile.
*
Three days later, I received another letter. This one came in a cheap yellow envelope of the sort you have left over from packets of notelets and cards bought in stationers that sell balloons and outsized teddy bears. There was nothing written on the envelope itself, not even my initials, and that angered me because the children were both at home when it arrived and one of them could easily have picked it up and opened it. It looked like the sort of thing one of their friends would send. Fortunately, they were playing together in Rees’s room, some loud game that involved shouting at each other. I think they were pretending to be head teachers.
The envelope was only partially glued down, which gave the impression it had been sealed in haste. Inside was a folded piece of lined paper, roughly torn from a notepad. This was the first handwritten one. I unfolded it. It contained only three words, written in neat, sloping capitals: BULLY FOR YOU.
There was the pounding of feet above me. I slipped the envelope and piece of notepaper into my cardigan pocket.
‘Mummy, what’s that?’ asked eagle-eyed Betty as she reached the bottom of the stairs.
I turned to her, my lips dry of explanation, but was saved by Rees jumping the last three steps and shouting, ‘Charge!’ as he thumped into Betty’s back. By the time I had calmed the row that ensued, Betty had forgotten her glimpse of yellow.
For the rest of that afternoon, I kept the note in my cardigan pocket, glowering away in there. It gave a slight rustling noise as I moved around the kitchen, making tea. I forgot it during the meal, then my fingers encountered it when I pushed my hand absently into the pocket in search of a tissue.
After I had put the children to bed, I went downstairs, sat at my kitchen table, pulled the note out of my pocket and looked at it. BULLY FOR YOU. What did that mean? Bully for me, why? Because I had seemed visibly recovered from the hysteric she had thought me to be? Because I had consented to her and David having the children back to their bungalow? Had I asked to be congratulated on either of these developments? Had I asked for her opinion at all?
I thought about it long and hard that evening, as I cleared up the teatime mess and the kids’ toys, as I settled in front of the television with a mug of tea in the same way that I did most evenings. I thought about it that night, when I lay awake in the small hours. It was a cold night and I had put an extra blanket on top of my duvet. After lying awake for half an hour or so, I decided to get up, use the loo, check the children.
Betty was breathing with her usual sweet heaviness. She always slept with her long limbs flung wide and splayed about her in improbable contortions. She tossed and turned a lot as well, her friends told me. When they had sleepovers, none of them would share a bed with her. Human origami, I called her. I smiled down at her as she lay, spread all over the bed in a tangle of hair and limbs. I extracted her duvet from beneath her legs and pulled it up gently, over her shoulder. She murmured and turned. I could imagine how Chloe would be making a great play of liking Rees; easy, open Rees, younger, and a boy, but what about my girl? How would Chloe feel about her? Everybody said Betty looked like me but then people always say that about mothers and daughters. Chloe would be making an effort towards her at the very least. David was as fiercely protective of Betty as any father. Chloe would surely know that in a straight choice, David would pick Betty over her any time. That alone made Betty a threat.
I felt uneasy for Betty as I looked down at her – I didn’t think Chloe capable of harming her but I felt as if some of her malevolence towards me could somehow spill over on to my daughter, as if yellow slime were creeping underneath the door of Betty’s bedroom. What should I do? If I raised it with David, would he even believe me? He hadn’t believed me over the phone calls. I hadn’t shown him the letters. If he accused me of sending myself hate mail then I would never forgive him and whatever tentative moves we had made towards a working rapprochement in the children’s interests would be thrown into violent reverse. How could I trust him, or be civil to Chloe, with this going on? How could I not trust him, or not be civil to Chloe, when my children’s long-term welfare was at stake?
I bent and kissed Betty’s soft head. I went to the bathroom. As I washed my hands, I looked in the mirrored door of my bathroom cabinet. The bathroom lighting did not flatter my skin. I could not rely on David as an intermediary, I decided. He was not capable or trustworthy when it came to handling Chloe.
*
The opportunity came a fortnight later. I had agreed to let David pick the kids up and take them back to the bungalow. ‘We are going to do arts and crafts together,’ he said proudly, as he loaded them into his car. I sensed a new resolution in his voice, a determination to prove to me that his access to the children would be beneficial to them as well as to himself. I had planned an exciting afternoon clearing out the under-the-stairs cupboard. Bully for you, I murmured to myself as the car pulled away from the kerb, Betty and Rees waving frantically from the back seat. Bully for both of you.
*
I had agreed to pick the children up at 5 p.m. The new housing estate that David and Chloe lived on was at the end of a long, curving road on the cliff side of town. It was one of those strange estates where the houses are very open at the front, no fences between the neat squares of garden, no way to get from your own wavy-glassed front door to the car in the tarmac drive without being seen by at least half a dozen neighbours. Such openness implies an idealised view of family life, I suppose, wifey waving hubby off to work each morning while kids smile from a window, happiness in full public view. Maybe that’s why people buy those houses, because they realise there will have to be less screaming at each other. Not for me: give me my narrow terrace and the tall scrubby hedge in front of it and thick walls between me and the neighbours. Let me do my screaming in peace and privacy.
I parked on the immaculate kerb outside their house and looked at their immaculate tarmacadam drive, and lost my nerve. I had been planning on saying I wanted a word with Chloe in private but how to manage that without prompting questions from David? Maybe I should write a few threatening letters of my own.
David answered the door. ‘Hi,’ he said distractedly, running a hand through his hair, which had a lot of something sticky in it.
‘Busy afternoon?’ I said, nodding at his head.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said, as his fingers met a gluey tangle. He tugged at it and winced. ‘They’ve been making something.’ He looked at his fingers and frowned. ‘Want to come in?’
I shook my head. ‘Better get them back.’ Rees had recently joined some miniature football league for boys like him who were too small for the school clubs: nine o’ clock on a Sunday morning.
David turned back into the bungalow and there were sounds of commotion from inside, beyond the hallway, where I could just glimpse a brightly lit white kitchen. I stayed waiting by the open door, although it would have made more sense to step inside and close it behind me. Eventually, the children emerged followed by Chloe, who chased them smilingly down the hallway towards me. They had their coats and shoes on already and were both clutching droopy drawings on large pieces of black sugar paper. Rough paper and crayon, I thought, a nonparent’s idea of what children like – arts and crafts are a lot more sophisticated these days. I had an unwelcome image of Chloe in a stationer’s shop, buying old-fashioned wax crayons because she thought my children would like them – and a packet of notelets with yellow envelopes.
Chloe and I had exchanged a neutral nod, the children and I had already turned to walk back down the path, when Betty suddenly shrieked, ‘My angel!’ and darted back inside the house.
‘Betty!’ I called after her.
Rees paused for a minute, then ran after his sister.
They scooted past Chloe, back down the hallway and into the kitchen. I could hear Betty shouting at her father, ‘Where is it? Where is it?’ and David replying, ‘Where’s what?’
‘My angel!’
Chloe and I were left on her doorstep. She gave me a half- smile and a shrug, and I saw that this might be my only chance. ‘Chloe,’ I said, quietly, tonelessly. ‘I think it should stop.’
She stared at me. I stared back. I wanted her to see that I was not looking for a fight, that I was giving her this chance, privately, to admit what she had done, apologise maybe, or at the very least say it wasn’t going to happen again.
She could not hold my gaze. ‘What…?’ she said, glancing anxiously back into the house, clearly hoping David or one of the children would come to her rescue. She was dressed in trousers and a clingy polo neck sweater that revealed the neat bump of her pregnancy. The tight curls of her hair bounced as she moved her head. Her hallway felt overheated to me, in my coat and hat and scarf.
I knew that if I was too abrupt or indignant, I would lose. My strength lay in my rationality in the face of her behaviour. ‘I can understand the phone calls,’ I said calmly, in a low voice. ‘David probably does too. I haven’t told him about the hate mail but if I get another one then I’m going to have to show them to him.’ I paused for effect. ‘My other alternative is to go to the police.’ She stared at me, her expression wide, her face effortfully still. ‘You know, I am sorry to say this, but you’re lucky I haven’t been to the police already. It is a criminal offence. I’m not going to make a big deal out of it but I want it to stop, whatever you think of me. I’m the mother of David’s children and that’s not going to change.’
She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. ‘Oh God…’ she said.
When she opened her eyes again, she could not meet my gaze. There was still commotion from the kitchen behind her but we didn’t have long.
Despite myself, I felt a rush of sympathy for her. I remembered how difficult my pregnancies wer
e, emotionally that is, how skewed life seemed. She had been as obsessed with me as I had been with her, and here was the simple truth: I would one day move on to a new life, if not a relationship with the suitable divorcee I was destined for then some other sort of love perhaps – whichever it was, it would be a life and a love in which she and David would play no part. But I would always be a part of their lives. She and David would never escape me. Had that dawned on her yet? Did that explain the letters?
‘Chloe, it’s time to stop,’ I said, still speaking gently but with a slightly more insistent tone.
At that moment, Rees came charging out of the house and crashed against my legs. ‘I HATE PURPLE!’ he shouted. I took a wild guess that whatever Betty’s angel was made of, it was purple coloured. David was in the kitchen doorway, kneeling down and talking to Betty who was on her way out, consoling her over something. We had seconds. I stared at Chloe hard.
Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes wet. She raised a hand and placed it instinctively on the small rise of her abdomen. I guessed her to be around five months. She bit her lip and looked into the middle distance behind me. ‘It will stop,’ she said, so quietly I could hardly hear her, then slightly louder, ‘It will.’ She looked directly at me and nodded once. There was resolution, rather than regret, in her gaze.
‘Good,’ I said, again careful to keep my tone neutral.
As I walked down the immaculate tarmac driveway, I swung Rees up into my arms. Betty was bouncing beside me waving her angel – a toilet roll painted purple – in the air.
‘Baked potatoes!’ I said cheerily. I had put them in the oven before I left home. Betty loved nothing more than golden pools of melted butter, a puddle of mayonnaise and the droop of warm grated cheese.