Being Committed

by Anna Maxted

  ‘I’m teasing you, Jase. Really, I swear, after dinner suits me great.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. ‘I thought it might.’

  He was just about to put down the phone, when I said, ‘Jason.’

  ‘Yes?’

  Now I’d started, I didn’t know how to say it.

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘I’m sure you know this, but as someone who has seen you … quite frequently in the last five years, I wanted to say, just in case no one else did, that –’ shit, how do people do this? – ‘even though your mother is dead –’ great, Hannah, could you be a little more blunt? – ‘I’m sure she will be looking down on you –’ Angela believed her mother was looking down on her, disapproving, but looking down all the same, so looking down had to be a good thing – ‘and just fucking bursting with pride at how well her boy turned out. She must have done a bloody great job in the time she had. OK? That’s it. Just so you’re aware.’

  There was silence on the end of the line. Then Jason said, ‘Thanks.’

  I was embarrassed. All I knew was, I had my mother back. I wanted everyone to feel a bit of what I felt. I hoped I wasn’t turning sentimental in my old age. Next thing I’d be signing ‘Hannah Lovekin’ with a little heart over the ‘i’.

  I hadn’t changed my name when I married Jack, more out of laziness than principle, even though I preferred the name Hannah Forrester. ‘Hannah Forrester’ carried more weight than wimpy old ‘Hannah Lovekin’. My mother’s maiden name was Black. I thought that was rather cool – ‘Angela Black’, the gold of Angela contrasting nicely with the darkness of Black. ‘Lovekin’ was for sissies. I suspect my mother didn’t like it either, but had no choice.

  If Gabrielle was right, and all mothers want for their children what they never had themselves, then what Angela felt she lacked was choice. She was desperate for me to make the right choices. Practically jumping up and down about it. She hadn’t thought Jason was right for me, and so when she heard about our Second Try, in her own, Women’s Institute way, she’d tried sabotage. Plainly, Roger had not been right for her. Still wasn’t. And yet, she thought she had no choice but to stay with him.

  I hadn’t even asked her if she loved Jonathan.

  Even if she didn’t, this wasn’t an issue of manhopping. It was about deciding what she wanted, regardless of what everyone else thought. I guessed she thought it ‘too late’ because she’d been married to Roger for forty years, and if she left, he’d make it nasty. But also perhaps she’d lived so long with a man who refused to let her be her that her real personality, opinions, desires had been suffocated by his, and when she looked at her tired, ageing face in the mirror, even she no longer knew her real self.

  My mother had energy and fire for me, but none for herself. And I wondered where this apathy came from. She was not indolent, and yet she’d sat back and let her husband rob her of her daughter. Why, when there had once been something of the Gabrielle in her, an appreciation of the little things that make life fun? For goodness’ sake, at the age of two, I was drinking freshly squeezed orange juice for breakfast – the oranges squeezed before my eyes – because my mother wanted me to, 1: see that orange juice came from oranges, not cartons, and 2: have that luxury hotel feeling every day. (I say again, I was two.)

  It didn’t make sense. Angela wanted to spare me the details of and the reasons behind their marriage’s deterioration to avoid causing me further anguish – I no longer doubted the purity of her motives – but I needed to know everything. For so long I had been precious about facts, sneering of emotions. How could I not have realised: the facts of all our lives are borne of emotions.

  My mother claimed you could make a decision to set yourself free of your past, and yet she was pinned to the ground by hers. Today had the potential to be the start of something amazing. Or, not. If I accepted her capsule explanation (he wanted ‘happy’, she had ‘unchartered moods’, whatever that meant) we would never move beyond a surface understanding. And, suddenly, that wasn’t enough.

  I owned a silver £250 Panasonic microwave, and the only setting I ever employed on this fine machine was HEAT. This miracle of technology could grill, defrost, bake, and no doubt iron, but I was too idle to go to the trouble of investigating the full majesty of its brilliance. I made do with a hundredth of its capacity, all the while feeling guilty and wasteful and not very bright. Same with my Flash Harry laptop. I refused to let the same thing happen with my newly acquired top-of-the-range mother.

  I was going to have to play detective.

  Chapter 41

  I didn’t know where to begin. The cardboard box, my legacy from Grandma, I’d dropped in the hallway, and there it had stayed. It was the obvious place to start, but I felt a bit The Mummy Returns about it. Grandma Nellie and I hadn’t been on good terms when she died, and I feared that if I opened it, hoards of black beetles would scuttle out and devour me. I exaggerate (about the beetles). But I was afraid. Most families look bad close up, which is possibly why I preferred to keep mine at a distance. I’d had enough unwelcome surprises. I didn’t want to open the box and find a skull and a lilac-scented note:

  Hannah,

  I am at long last dead, and the time to reveal the wretched truth is woefully upon us. You were once possessed of an infant brother. When you were three, you put him in the washing machine (mixed fabrics, 60 degrees), where he met an excruciating end. Your parents did not wish you to grow up tainted with the name ‘MURDERER’, so reference to the incident was banished from speech. Oliver had hypnosis, to drive all thoughts of the tragedy from his mind. Although the hypnotist was hard of hearing, and we fear he only caught ‘drive all thoughts … from his mind’. Alas, grief and rage sent your mother mad. The woman you believe to be your mother, is, in fact, her twin sister. Your true mother rants in an asylum, under lock and key. Your father could only escape his deep despair by throwing himself into panto. I know you would wish to discover the horrid truth in order to make your peace with God, and I enclose this skull, etc. etc.

  I stamped into the hall, kicked the box back into the lounge, and ripped it open. I’m not ashamed to say that if there’s a scary scene in a film I watch it with eyes half shut and from behind splayed fingers. I employed that same heroic technique here. Naturally, I could see nothing, so I removed my hand from my face and peered into the box, heart thumping. And saw … a mess of old photographs. Not so much as a jawbone. No bugs, not even a ladybird. No envelopes, lilac or otherwise. I sighed, and picked out a photo. It wasn’t even black and white.

  A group of alarmingly seventies-looking people stood in a stiff row, in the thick of which was a big, fat, plain baby boy. The baby was sat in the lap of a small woman. Hey, it was Angela. She didn’t look robust. Her smile was wan. Presumably, that buck-toothed toddler leaning his pumpkin head on her arm was Ollie. The baby boy must belong to a cousin. It was ugly enough. So where was I? Not yet born? Ollie was two years older than me. I was nowhere! And my mother did not look pregnant. This was the secret! I was adopted! But … I looked so like my mother. I stared suspiciously and unwillingly at the non-bonny baby. Oh yeah. He was me.

  Grandma and Grandpa stood stiff and formal either side of my mother, staring into the camera lens like it was a gun barrel. It struck me again how good-looking my father was: skinny, collar-length hair, bit of the mod about him. His square chin jutted and one large hand rested on my mother’s shoulder. She all but sagged under it. His expression said, ‘All this is mine.’ He even looked proud of his Halloween offspring. The camera lies plenty, but my mother wasn’t a beauty. As with many people, she’d improved with age.

  So.

  What did this picture tell me? I felt a professional recoil at making assumptions. I already knew that my father required all of us to be happy, even when we weren’t. I suppose that figured here. He was a lot about show, was Roger. He cared too much for what other people thought of him, of his achievements. His expression challenged you to pick fault with
his masculinity. Although, as a trophy family, we weren’t great. My mother looked half dead and we children were, at least aesthetically, monsters.

  I’d just had this – not uplifting – thought when the phone rang.

  My heart thumped. Jack was in LA for five days. All I’d said was, ‘Don’t get your head turned,’ but I was hoping he’d call. He hadn’t, yet.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Smee.’

  My heart seemed to swell like a blood blister.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Me, Martine!’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘I’m calling to see how things are, what with all the to-do at Roger’s show. Oh my God, like, what did Jack think he was doing, bringing that man along—’

  ‘You must think I’m stupid.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You make out you’re my friend, when all you are is a grass for Roger, because you fancy him. It’s perverted. I tell you anything, it goes straight to him. You have no loyalty, no dignity, no knowledge of who you’re dealing with, or the circumstances that you’re messing in. Roger got you to beg Jack to come to the play, because he had this moronic idea that Jack would snap him up, next stop Hollywood, because his vanity makes him deranged and a liar! He’s using you, dear. He’s not your friend. What did you think you’d get out of it? A sympathy sh—’

  I was ready for shock, tears, or the dial tone. I did not expect Martine to reply, in a calm, soft voice. ‘No, Hannah. You think I’m stupid.’

  I was silent.

  ‘When,’ she continued, ‘have you ever treated me with respect? I know what you think of me. Fat Martine, works for a dentist, reads trash. Well, love, least I read. You watch telly. You have affairs with characters off crime dramas, insteada real life. I tried to be your friend, but what was the point? You never would treat me as equal. You’re patronising, rude, only ever turn to me to unload whatever crap’s in your head, you don’t care what I have to say, you patronise me, you think I don’t have feelings, don’t talk to me about not being a friend, you treat me like I’m rubbish. Roger pays me attention, treats me like a valid person in my own right, and I’m pleased to do things for him, it goes both ways, we have brilliant discussions about teeth, and fame, he’s not sure if he should get his capped or whitened and he respects my opinions and expertise, which is more than I can say for you, you’re a lot of fun to be with if you put your mind to it and I would of loved to of been your friend but then I got sick of my efforts being thrown back in my face.’

  When she cut off, my first thought was that Martine was surprisingly eloquent. My second was that she was surprisingly right.

  A devout believer in revenge, if I were to uphold my religious principles I would be forced to sanction Martine’s behaviour. However, my piety did not extend to ringing her back and apologising. I needed a distraction from my conscience, so I rang Gabrielle, who ordered me round.

  ‘I would have rung,’ she said, throwing open the door as I thundered up the path, ‘but Jude’s not well. Ollie called me home just after you left the play.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Gastro-flu. We were in casualty all yesterday afternoon, he kept vomiting then went all listless and lethargic. I thought it was meningitis. He’s fine, though. He’s sleeping. He vomited up spag bol over my Diane Von Furstenberg wrap dress.’

  ‘Rap dress? What’s a rap dress?’

  ‘A wrap dress. It wraps around you.’

  Raps around you? I would never understand fashion. ‘Poor Jude. So is it all good with Ollie now?’

  Gabrielle laughed. ‘Oh, you,’ she said. ‘No wonder it all went pear-shaped with Jack. You don’t get relationships.’

  I laughed myself, out of hurt. That’s an extreme accusation to make of someone, particularly to their face. Anyway, little did she know.

  ‘Who does?’ I said coldly.

  ‘Ollie and I,’ said Gabrielle, ‘are … up and down. Ollie doesn’t like there to be problems. He is trying to be nice and, I am trying to be … up, and maybe it will be OK. Anyway, bore, bore, bore. God, Wednesday night! Poor, poor Angela. I’ve left messages on her mobile, I haven’t wanted to ring the house. I don’t suppose you’ll know if she’s OK? I was hoping to go round there and check, when Ollie got back from his shoot.’

  ‘He’s at a shoot?’

  Gabrielle allowed herself a brief smile. ‘Photographs of nails and screws for the dummy issue of a DIY magazine.’

  Neither of us said the obvious: that this was work he’d have spat at a month ago. Good news, but I had that same feeling that I got every time I talked to Gabrielle – that I was missing something. Not a life-size china leopard guarding her fireplace, but something just as obvious.

  Gabrielle had once said that after Jude was born she was sure her memory developed little black holes. It was pure luck as to whether or not information rolled down a little black hole to be lost for ever. I didn’t have the baby excuse, but my mind was not dissimilar. I likened it to an Advent calendar. All the information was there, except it was in compartments, behind lots of little doors, and if you didn’t chance to open the correct door, the information would stay hidden. If I was lucky, one of the little doors would swing open at the appropriate moment and the information would reveal itself:

  ‘You came into the kitchen to find your chequebook.’

  ‘One of the main reasons you drove to the supermarket was to buy kitchen roll.’

  ‘You wanted to see Gabrielle to discuss the pathology of your parents’ marriage.’

  If I was unlucky, however, the little door would only swing open when it was too late – when I was halfway to the bank, or at the front of the checkout queue … But, as my sister-in-law and I stood in her hallway, the little door opened on cue. The cue was, ‘He didn’t want to see there was a problem. He wanted me to be fine.’

  I don’t know about all that stuff – wanting to be like your parents, wanting to rebel against your parents, being like your parents whether you want to be or not – it made me uncomfortable so I mostly avoided thinking about it. Although now I did think about it, it seemed you couldn’t win. If you’re unlike your parents, people can say ‘you’re rebelling’; if you’re like them, people can say, ‘aha, copycat’. Or whatever the clinical term is. Either way, you can’t escape their clutch.

  All those years ago, I accepted I was a cheat, like my mother, and emergency-braked there. Now I heard my brother’s wife speak – ‘Ollie doesn’t like there to be problems … I am trying to be up’ – and her words echoed Angela’s: ‘It has always been important to Roger that … we were happy, even if we weren’t.’

  I had an expert witness standing in front of me.

  ‘Gab,’ I said, ‘do you think that Ollie is like Roger in wanting his wife to be fine … no matter what?’

  She stared. ‘Well, Hannah, they’re two different people.’

  I nodded, humbly.

  ‘Ollie is not spiteful like his father,’ she added. ‘Sorry. I know you think the world of that man. But, I mean, if your mother even hints at having any emotion that isn’t positive, Roger blanks her. He can’t cope with any of you expressing misery. He seems to think it reflects badly on him. Ollie said he was so cruel to her after her affair. And probably before it too. Why else would she have it? Ollie isn’t cruel. Ollie’s very different from his father. As a child Ollie was scared of Roger. There’s no way Ollie would ever be like him. Ollie just … finds it hard to see me upset.’

  ‘Ah!’ I said. ‘Right.’

  But to be honest, I was having a little trouble seeing the distinction.

  Chapter 42

  The Woman in White is not a ghost story, but at first you think it might be. By the time you discover it isn’t, you’re hooked. You read it, eyes a-boggle, gasping ‘Agh! agh!’ and ‘Oh my God!’ Wilkie Collins wrote it in the nineteenth century, and it was serialised in a magazine. All of England was hooked, the prime minister-to-be cancelled a theatre visit to read the next
installment, and you could buy Woman in White capes and Woman in White perfume. I thought that was the coolest thing. Walt Disney stole brand merchandising from the Victorians.

  Fred had recommended it, and I’d hesitated because it was a classic. ‘I don’t usually read books like this,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure I’ll understand the language.’

  ‘Darling, if you don’t like it,’ he said, ‘I’ll give you your money back, and a free copy of Bravo Two Zero.’

  ‘And if I do like it?’

  ‘Say marvellous things about me and the store!’

  After I’d finished it, I recommended it to friends – Greg, Gabrielle, my father. (They were all interested anyway in why I was using words like “malevolent”.) I think that recommending a book has a dual purpose. It’s about power (allow me to pass on my superior experience …), but it’s equally about seeking approval (I have something here that will please you).

  It was gratifying when Gabrielle announced, ‘Wilkie Collins has given me hours of pleasure! More than I could say of any man in a long time!’

  And when Ron had knocked on Greg’s door and he’d barked, ‘Not now! I’m busy on a case! … Walter Hartright’s!’ I was as proud as if I’d written the book myself.

  My father, the last time we’d spoken, had still been ‘meaning to get round to it’.

  I hadn’t bothered to recommend The Woman in White to Martine. And right now, that seemed like an indictment. I didn’t care about her approval, her enjoyment. I felt so greatly superior towards her, I didn’t even bother with power play.

  I left Gabrielle in Belsize Park and bought a copy of the novel from the nearest bookshop. Then I drove to the office of Marvin Van De Vetering (‘DENTIST, SPECIALISING IN CHILDREN’), rang the bell, and was buzzed in.

  Martine did not look pleased to see me. ‘Do you have an appointment?’ she said.

  ‘Martine. You were right. I’m sorry about how I’ve been. I value your friendship.’ I stopped. I remembered what Martine had said to me when I’d told her that Jack and I were divorcing. Before she’d suggested a divorce party. She’d said, ‘That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard,’ and her eyes were round and watery. ‘Like, you and Jack … you’re like, this golden couple. I look at you two and I think it was meant to be. If you can’t make it what hope is there for the rest of us?’ She’d wiped her nose and added, ‘It makes me feel very insecure.’