by Julian Clary
‘You live alone on the forest tree,
Why, pretty thing, could you not live with me?’
She waved at departing swallows, wishing them a safe journey, and stretched her arms skyward to migrating geese. Young and enigmatic, she exuded earthy glamour and heads would turn as we cycled through the village to the shops or to church each Sunday.
I was seven or eight, I think, when I realized my mother wasn’t quite right. Her consistently benign demeanour wasn’t normal. A child needs to find the boundaries of acceptable behaviour, which are demonstrated by parents for the little one’s ultimate good. Dear Mother couldn’t have got cross if she’d wanted to but that wasn’t the Utopia it might sound. I grew up more than a little confused about the difference between right and wrong, and I was terrified when other people were angry because I’d never known anything like it at home. I also had a sneaking feeling that my mother never got cross because she didn’t care what I did. If I ever want an explanation for my later outrageous, exhibitionist behaviour, I won’t have to look very far. I found it so hard to get a reaction from her that, in the end, I became frustrated — bored, almost — with her unchanging pleasantness. It was like living in a shopping centre and having to listen to Muzak twenty-four hours a day.
There was a secret at the heart of our existence, which always stood between us: the identity of my father. I didn’t have a clue who he was. The subject wasn’t taboo, but if I asked about him, Mother would squint dreamily at the sky, say something like ‘You have his eyes, little man!’ and no more. Any prolonged gaze skyward meant that informative conversation must stop.
Specifics were hard to get out of her, and even as a young child I registered the inconsistencies in the answers she gave me, and the picture I had in my mind of my father grew increasingly bizarre. I’m sure she wasn’t deliberately evasive — I’d describe it more as creative ramblings. According to her, my father might be tall or short, black or white, musical or tone deaf, all in the same week. The only thing that never altered was her devotion to him, and his to her. It wasn’t long before I grasped that she said whatever came into her head, never thinking I would absorb every word and dwell on it obsessively as I lay in my little bed gazing up at the ceiling where she had painted the stars and the planets for me, albeit in an order of her own choosing. There was no North Star, for instance, but a lovely green four-leaf clover instead. ‘Much nicer!’ she said.
That was typical of how she rewrote the facts of life to suit herself. In the entrance hall of our cottage, for example, she marked every six months how much I had grown. Except the latest pencil mark was a good three inches higher than I was. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that’s how tall you would have grown if Renata Rabbit hadn’t eaten all of my lovely, healthy spinach, the little minx. It’s only fair. I don’t see why you should suffer.’
It dawned on me that my mother would never reveal the definitive truth about my father, and the picture of him that I had lovingly built up crumbled into dust. I couldn’t even be cross with her — she probably no longer knew what truth was. So, instead of asking for facts, I enquired why he never came to visit.
‘He doesn’t know about you, sweet-pea,’ she answered, ‘but if he did, he’d be very proud indeed.’
After that, I gave up trying and instead made up a new image of him: he was a soldier from the army camp in Dymchurch, perhaps, a brave and handsome man of the kind I read about in my favourite adventure stories. I filled in the gaps with my childish imagination, and if my friends asked about him, I’d say he died in action, fighting for his country, but I had no idea in what battle or country.
There was one person I could rely on to tell the truth: Alice’s mother and my grandmother, Rita. She told me once that my mother had been just nineteen when she had fallen pregnant, and that it had all been ‘most unfortunate’. But she, too, would say no more.
I looked forward to seeing my Grandma Rita. As far as I knew she was my only close relative, and she visited us every month, sweeping down from London in her big black shiny car, which all but blocked the lane outside our cottage. She wore lipstick, powder and chunky jewellery, but the effect was more formidable than glamorous. She’d peer at me disapprovingly, stroking her crucifix, then silently hand me whatever she’d brought for me, something unexciting but practical, the kind of thing it would never have occurred to my mother I might need — a grey jumper or a navy blue winter coat to replace the one that Grandma Rita had noticed on her previous visit was threadbare. She took no pleasure in the act of giving, seeming more embarrassed by it than anything, and I always thanked her politely: her presents were useful, even if they didn’t set my pulse racing.
Grandma Rita never stayed for long. After an hour at the most she would glance at her watch and say, ‘Goodness, is that the time?
I mustn’t catch the traffic. Goodbye, Alice, and goodbye, Johnny — be kind to your mother and work hard at your studies. Show me the flowers before I go.’
This was always a highlight. While my mother stayed inside to clear away our tea things, Grandma Rita took my hand and I led her down the passage to the back door. From there she’d peruse the flowerbeds.
‘Blackfly on the rosebuds. I suppose your mother wouldn’t hear of killing them?’
‘Oh, no,’ I’d answer, shocked. ‘They’ve all got names.’
‘How ridiculous! What’s that one called?’
‘Jeffrey.’
‘And him?’
‘He’s a she. Claudia.’
We’d play this game for a while, until she broke away to point at some bindweed. ‘Pull that out, Johnny. It’ll strangle everything else. Never mind Alice, just do it, quickly.’
And I did. In what felt like an act of defiance to my mother, I tugged at the yards of weed that wove their sticky way among the cultivated plants and shrubs.
‘Do that whenever your mother’s not watching and your evening primrose will soon recover,’ she said, then lowered her voice to whisper, ‘and if you spray the blackfly with rosewater it doesn’t kill them. They just fall into a deep sleep …‘
Abrupt and unbending as my grandmother was, I relished her visits. It was a novelty to have someone stiff and cross to talk to, such a refreshing change after my mother’s Butlins brightness. I would sometimes force myself to misbehave just so I could hear a raised voice.
‘Your shoes are muddy, remove them at once, you mucky pup!’ Grandma Rita would shout, when I tramped in from the garden. My mother would have said, ‘What a lot of mud! You have been having fun outside!’
I worked out later that the purpose of Grandma Rita’s visits was to pay the rent on the cottage and give my mother her small allowance, which we depended on for our survival.
Nothing was ever said, but I sensed Grandma Rita disapproved of her wayward daughter and the bastard grandson she had produced. My mother never indicated that she had disgraced her family by having me, but I began to realize she had made great sacrifices for me — willingly and without condition, but still she had paid a price for bringing me into the world. There was a sense of banishment about our lives. Apart from Grandma Rita, no other family member ever showed their face. Our Christmas cards were few.
The mystery of my father hung round us like a mist, and I could never forget that this secret lay between us. When my mother smiled at the moon, or cried at the beauty of the Kent sunset, or stared for hours into the log fire, I imagined she was thinking of my father. As a child, I had learnt not to ask difficult questions; as I grew older, either my mother or I became a little more perceptive. Either way, I began to doubt the sincerity of her unstoppable, almost unnatural happiness. Maybe, I wondered, a torrent of misery lay behind it, held back with immense willpower. If she saw me uproot a weed or massacre the blackfly, it might come crashing in.
One damp October night when I was twelve everything changed. My mother came into my bedroom to wish me goodnight. She sat on my bed, hugged me to her chest and said, ‘Promise me one thing. Promise you’ll liv
e an interesting life. I don’t care about success, happiness or dignity. Just make it a good story.’
‘I promise,’ I answered, not knowing what she was talking about. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Johnny, my little love, I don’t live my life in the real world. I don’t hold with it. I think it’s for the best,’ she said, as if that explained everything. ‘I tried it once and couldn’t hack it. Goodnight.’
She stood up, and her petticoats rustled as she walked to the door. Then she looked — not at me but at the clover leaf on my ceiling — and spoke:
‘When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree …’
For a moment, I racked my brain but then the next few lines swam into my mind. I answered obediently:
‘Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.’
Christina Rossetti was one of the first poets I had memorized.
Later that night I awoke with a start. As I blinked into the darkness, I could hear my mother weeping. She sobbed quietly and without hysteria, the sound muffled beneath bedclothes but a relentless, soulful cry, pulsing into the night, unanswered and despairing. Then I heard the words she was repeating: ‘I see him, I see him!’
Eventually she stopped and I fell into a disturbed sleep.
The next morning when I woke up for school there was no sign of her. She had started to lay out some breakfast for me, but had only got as far as leaving a grapefruit on the kitchen table with a knife sticking out of it. Beside it there was a note with another of Christina’s couplets:
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
I felt very strange about this but didn’t know what to do other than make my packed lunch and set off to school on my bicycle.
Because my mother was as she was, I had always clung to routine, whatever the circumstances at home. It was a way of making myself feel safe. I could only assume she had gone out early to pick some berries or gather kindling.
That afternoon I was hauled out of class and taken to the headmaster’s office. He was behind his desk and Grandma Rita was sitting stiffly in a winged armchair by the fireplace.
‘Hello, Johnny,’ she said. ‘You’re to come and stay with me for a while. Alice … your mother is unwell. Too much Wind in the Willows, I dare say.’ She tried to sound carefree, but it didn’t come easily to her.
‘It’s just a temporary arrangement,’ said my elderly headmaster, Father Thomas, reasonably. ‘I’m sure you’ll be back here very soon.’ He gave me what was intended to be a reassuring smile, and stood up, bent over like a turtle straining to escape its shell.
There was an air of embarrassment in the room, as if someone had made a nasty smell. I had encountered this before, the previous August, after the parish priest asked my mother to wear something more suitable than a bikini top and hot pants to Sunday Mass. Afterwards, the village’s horror had been made apparent to me whenever I popped into the shop for a packet of crisps on my way home from school. People practically held their noses.
This current situation was very worrying indeed, though.
‘Is she all right?’ I asked, old enough to know that the truth was, once again, being kept from me.
‘One doesn’t often use the words “all right” in relation to Alice, but she is … happy enough. Just indisposed. It would be unwise for her to attempt her motherly duties at present.’
‘My son,’ said Father Thomas (a term of address I longed to hear, if not from him), ‘how was your mother last night?’ He sat down again, indicating that this was no casual enquiry. They both leant forward, waiting for my answer.
By now I was most concerned about my mother. I had no idea what ‘indisposed’ signified, but it sounded grim, and I didn’t want to betray my mother and get her into more trouble by recounting her distressed behaviour.
‘She was fine. Great, in fact. Her usual happy self. We read some Sylvia Plath poems before bedtime. Where is she? Please can I see her?’
Father Thomas and Grandma Rita looked knowingly at each other.
‘Sylvia Plath,’ said Father Thomas, mouthing the name so I wouldn’t hear, although I could see him perfectly well. Then he whispered loudly, ‘Head in the oven. I’ll say no more …
‘Let’s be off,’ said Grandma Rita. ‘We don’t want to get caught in the rush-hour. Thank you, Father Thomas. We shall liaise with the authorities and no doubt be in touch.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Father Thomas, rather formally, rising from his chair a second time and offering an arthritic hand. He shuffled round the desk and his hand now hovered over my head. ‘Bless you, my son. God go with you.’
Grandma Rita leant heavily on me as we made our way out of the school towards the Bentley.
‘Not a word in front of Andrew,’ she said, nodding towards a middle-aged man in a peaked cap who was needlessly polishing the windscreen with a chamois leather. ‘He’s such a gossip.’
As we settled into our seats, she said, ‘Radio Four, please, Andrew. Shall we break into the Murray Mints?’
Apart from this, and the odd tut about the traffic or rude comment about the type of people who lived in Chatham, we travelled to London in silence. We reclined on the back seat, separated by a thick, log-like armrest made of creamy leather. ‘Stop shaking, Johnny,’ said my grandmother.
Until then I hadn’t known I was.
She surprised me by reaching out across the armrest and taking my hand. ‘Worry not. I think your mother will recover, and be able to look after you as well as ever she did. And I’m always here, you know. More of a soldier on guard than a guardian angel, true enough, but here all the same.’ She turned her head to stare at me. Her shoulders faced front. ‘You look so small. But you’ll be fine —you are my grandson, after all.’ She patted my arm, and reached into her bag for another Murray Mint.
At last we reached our destination.
My grandmother lived in a large Georgian house that sat sedately on the edge of Blackheath, like an old-fashioned, rundown hotel looking out to a calm sea. Inside, she showed me to a spacious, rather cold bedroom on the third floor, furnished with pungent, dark mahogany.
‘What an amazing view of the heath,’ I said politely, attempting to replicate my mother’s optimism and say something I thought a grown-up would like to hear. ‘It’s so beautiful!’
‘Beautiful? You don’t know its history, Johnny. Have you any idea why it’s called Blackheath?’ She moved across the room to stand alongside me, eyes darting, scrutinizing every inch like an owl. ‘Most of the people who died in the Great Plague of 1665 are buried here — communally, of course. Something like a million perished. This entire heath was one big graveyard. No one can build on it even now for fear of releasing, once more, the Black Death. Poke a stick in and take the consequences.’
‘Black Death, Blackheath?’ I said, solving the simple riddle.
The view curdled before my eyes. All I could see was the tangled skeletons of those who had died a terrible death all those centuries ago. The fresh blue sky turned yellow and septic.
‘I tell you this because of what has happened today. Think of it as an aperitif. It is time for you to grow up and stop believing in Father Christmas. You need to come to terms with life a little. You and I understand your mother, do we not?’
‘As much as anyone can, yes.’
‘Well, this was once your mother’s room,’ said Grandma Rita, as if that explained everything.
‘Is Mother in hospital?’ I asked. I couldn’t shake my horror at the thought of the plague and its victims buried just feet from where we stood. I felt more anxious than ever about where my mother was and how she was faring. I was confused, feeling displaced and anxious about her situation and my own, but I could rely on my grandmot
her to tell the truth. ‘How is she? Please tell me.’
‘She’s having a rest. Sit down a minute and I’ll explain.’
I sat down obediently on an overstuffed dressing-table stool. My grandmother walked to the fireplace, laid one hand elegantly on the marble chimneypiece and turned to me. She said gravely, ‘There are some mushrooms that grow in the woods called fly agaric or, to give them their full Latin title, Amanita muscaria. They are bright red with white spots, very much as you would have seen in the pictures in your storybooks. The sort of thing a friendly elf would live in, if that helps. I’m not sure what ideas of botany twelve-year-olds have, these days. Anyway, those mushrooms contain hallucinogenic properties and are not recommended for consumption. It seems your mother may have forgotten this.’ Grandma Rita regarded me with cool but intelligent eyes. ‘It’s rather painful for you, Johnny, but it’s best that you hear it from me. The matter is, no doubt, the talk of your village. You’ll have to put up with sniggers and gossip when you go back, but I expect you’re used to that.’
High on nature’s LSD, my grandmother told me, my mother had been discovered at dawn dangling naked from the clock tower of Hythe town hall.
‘Alice has never been inhibited. A blanket was required. The police rescued her and decided that a doctor should examine her without delay.’ Grandma Rita saw the look on my face. ‘She will be fine. The effects of the mushroom are wearing off slowly but she’s not quite right yet. Flashbacks, you understand.’ She glanced at herself in the mottled old mirror and touched her grey hair with an unconscious gesture. It did not move. Like many women of her generation, she liked to have it set once a week into a style so rigid it could withstand a gale-force wind. She sighed, her mind clearly occupied with thoughts of her wayward daughter. ‘It could have happened to anyone. That’s the line I, for one, shall be taking. The countryside is full of dangers. A lamb once exploded next to me. Gas, apparently … But perhaps some of it is my fault. I should never have called her “Alice” — I may have brought it all on. She’ll be getting stuck down a rabbit’s burrow next. Always blame the parents. Now. Dinner at eight.’ She glided out of the room.
