‘It was built by the Earl of something in 1890, apparently,’ Mum continued. ‘He wanted something unusual; something different. I believe he committed suicide in the end,’ she added cheerily.
The interior of the school was cool and dim, redolent of floor polish and disinfectant and cabbage. In the main hallway were four huge leather armchairs with a polished wooden table in the middle. There were portraits on the walls, a vase of wilting lilies in a kind of niche, and a glass cabinet containing a collection of fossils. The only movement came from the motes of dust dancing in the shaft of daylight from the window halfway up the curved staircase. Of human life there was not a sign.
‘Should we sit down, do you think, Cass?’ Mum asked, still apparently overawed (the nice man from the chemist had wisely gone off to park the car and do his crossword). ‘Or — ring something?’
‘There doesn’t seem to be anything to ring,’ I said, too wretched to continue my sulk.
‘We’ll sit down, then.’ Gingerly, Mum lowered herself into one of the chairs. She looked very small and vulnerable in her best summer frock, surrounded by all that creaking leather, and suddenly I felt sorry for her. Poor Mum. She was probably trying to do her best for me, but even I hadn’t imagined that a school could be anything like this. My only ideas of boarding schools had come from my long-ago acquaintances with such jolly romps as ‘Fiona of the Fourth Form’ and ‘Penny against the Prefects’, and while I personally had never hankered after midnight feasts and pillow fights in the dorm, I could see that for some it might be fun. But I couldn’t imagine anyone having fun in this joyless place.
‘Ah! Mrs Fitzpatrick, I presume, and this must be Cassandra.’ A tall thin woman with a wispy bun of greying hair appeared as though from nowhere, and we both jumped. After a brief struggle, Mum managed to extricate herself from her armchair, and we all shook hands. ‘I’m Mary Armitage. Headmistress. Do come this way.’
She led us into a small office (more portraits, but no fossils), and after the briefest of conversations, sat me down at a desk laid out with paper and pens.
‘Just a few simple questions, Cassandra,’ she said, handing me a question paper. ‘I’m sure you won’t have any trouble. Your mother and I can go next door and have a cup of tea. I’m sure you could do with one after your journey, Mrs Fitzpatrick?’
Left to my own devices, I realized for the first time that this was of course my opportunity — my only opportunity — to rescue myself from the fate which was closing round me. All I had to do was fail the test! Why hadn’t I thought of it before? If I failed the entrance test, the school would presumably no longer want me, otherwise there would be no point in having a test at all. At last my future was in my own hands. Joy and relief flooded through me. I could stay with Mum and Lucas and everyone else. I could play with The Dog and see my friends and I would never have to leave home again. I would show them! Of course, Mum would be disappointed, but she’d get over it.
I smiled and picked up a pencil. For the first time in my life, I was going to fail an exam.
But I had reckoned without my pride.
I paused, pencil poised, agonizing over my decision. To fail or not to fail. Fail. Failure. Such miserable, condemning, dismissive words. I looked again at the first maths question. It was temptingly easy. How could I — how could anyone — get such a simple question wrong? I sighed, and picking up a ruler, I set to work and drew a neat triangle.
Five
When news of my scholarship arrived, my mother was beside herself with pride.
‘The top scholarship, Cass. Just think! The top scholarship for St Andrew’s, and you’ve won it. I just knew you had it in you!’
This last was almost certainly untrue, for no one could have anticipated that I would acquit myself with such distinction. It was true that I was reasonably bright, but that bright? My only (private) conclusion was that the other pupils at this illustrious establishment must be particularly dim if someone like myself was able to shine among them.
Mum set to work at once to make preparations for the celebration party. In our household, modest as it was, any event was an excuse for a party, since my mother’s idea of heaven was a houseful of people, and what better way to fill a house with people than to throw a party? While others might worry about gatecrashers, my mother welcomed them with open arms (‘such a wonderful way of meeting new people, Cass’), and while lesser mortals concerned themselves with the possibility of spilt drinks and stained upholstery, my mother cared not a jot.
Of course, I didn’t want a party at all. All I wanted was to be left in peace to grieve over my fate, possibly gaining a little sympathy in the process, but it seemed that the preparations for what was after all my party could go ahead quite comfortably without any reference whatsoever to me.
Mum spent days planning and baking, and everyone connected with our household was recruited to help. Greta made wonderful Swiss confections; Richard, it transpired, had a special recipe for sausage rolls (how on earth did a homeless person, never mind a tramp, come by such a thing, I wondered? but I knew I would be considered to be indulging some sort of unspeakable prejudice if I voiced my doubts); the Lodger was commandeered to put fiddly little things on cocktail sticks; and the nice man from the chemist had promised to open bottles and hand things round.
The guest list included everyone from distant cousins (most far too distant to be expected to attend) to ex-Lodgers and some of my own school friends. These last I declined to invite. It was bad enough having to leave them for what they would almost certainly see as posher environs than any they could hope to aspire to; to be seen to be celebrating the fact would be crass in the extreme. My own special gang of lively miscreants would disapprove of what they would certainly see as snobbish aspirations, and little Sally Mayfield, who dreamed of academic opportunities which could never be hers, would be jealous.
‘What about Myra?’ Mum asked. ‘Surely you’d like to have Myra.’
I thought of the girl who had been my best friend since primary school; fiery, red-headed, naughty Myra, who had taught me to smoke when I was nine years old and with whom I had played dubious games of doctors and nurses at the bottom of the garden; Myra, who was privy to all my secrets (except Uncle Rupert), who despite my efforts to dissuade her was already a seasoned shoplifter, and who lived in a run-down house on the most notorious council estate. Not for the first time, I wondered whether my mother ever had any sense of what was appropriate.
‘Myra wouldn’t understand,’ I said.
‘What’s there to understand? A party’s a party. It’ll be fun. Fun, Cass. Sometimes I think you’ve forgotten what it’s like to have fun.’
In this, she was probably right. But then, was it entirely appropriate for someone my mother’s age to spend so much of her time in pursuit of fun? In those years of my early teens, there were times when I felt that I was the adult and she the child, and that because of this unnatural and premature reversal of our roles, I sometimes had to be doubly sensible to make up for my mother’s immaturity.
The party was a success. All my mother’s parties were successes, as she didn’t hesitate to remind me. It seemed as though everyone I had ever known was packed into our house, eating and drinking and laughing, some of them smoking strange-smelling cigarettes, others making uninvited use of the bedrooms to further their new-found friendships.
Richard had brought his ukulele; Greta sang along to an old gramophone record, accompanied by Mum on the ironing board; someone I had never seen before had brought bagpipes; The Dog sat in the cupboard under the stairs and howled. The noise was indescribable.
I found Lucas sitting on the stairs drinking a pale liquid out of a bottle.
‘Vodka,’ he explained briefly. ‘Want some?’
I nodded and took the bottle from him.
‘It doesn’t taste of anything,’ I objected.
‘It doesn’t have to,’ Lucas grinned. ‘Have some more.’
I had some more, and soon discov
ered that Lucas was right. It didn’t matter in the least what vodka tasted like; it was the effect that mattered. Very soon I was singing along to the nearest instrument (the bagpipes, as it happened; not an easy instrument to sing along to, but as I discovered, I simply had to open my mouth and the vodka did the rest).
At half past eleven the neighbours started to bang on the door and talk about disturbed sleep and work in the morning. Mum smiled and apologized and invited them all in, and some of them even went home to fetch more bottles to replenish our diminishing stocks.
‘Just think,’ I said to Lucas, as we walked unsteadily towards the kitchen in search of more food, ‘any of these people could be our fathers.’
‘So they could.’
We rarely discussed our fathers, partly because there was nothing much to discuss, but partly because I think we each minded more than we let on how much we missed having another parent, but didn’t like to tell the other how we felt.
‘I hope mine wasn’t a Lodger.’ This was something I dreaded, because Lodgers — even the nicest and best Lodgers — somehow seemed to belong to an inferior species. This may have been because they inhabited the basement, or simply because I would have preferred my father to be at the very least a homeowner, not reliant on anyone else to put a roof over his head.
‘Or Uncle Rupert,’ Lucas said.
‘Oh, no.’ I shuddered at such a dreadful thought. ‘Mum never fancied him, I’m sure. Besides, he’s an uncle. A relation. You can’t — you’re not allowed to, well, do it with a relation, are you?’
‘What’s there to stop you?’ Lucas grinned unkindly. ‘Besides, he’s only a very distant kind of uncle; probably not really an uncle at all. And Mum was very fond of him, wasn’t she?’
‘Not that kind of fond,’ I said. ‘Besides, we don’t look like him, do we? I’d rather it was a Lodger — any Lodger — than Uncle Rupert!’
We sat on the floor eating slices of Greta’s apple strudel, contemplating the mysteries of our paternity. I was feeling dizzy from the vodka, and depressed by the (albeit unlikely) theory that I might have been a product of the scrawny loins of Uncle Rupert.
Much later, when most of the guests had departed (some were still lingering in odd corners, and at least two were in my bed) and I was being very sick in the bathroom, my mother came in. She appeared cheerful and only mildly tipsy, and smelled strongly of the odd cigarettes.
‘Oh, Cass. You’re drunk. Poor you.’ She sat down on the edge of the bath and held my head while I deposited the rest of my party food down the lavatory. ‘You need to drink lots of water and then go to bed.’
‘I can’t.’ I wiped ray face and rinsed out my mouth. ‘There are people in my bed.’
‘How tiresome.’ Mum stroked my hair. ‘Never mind. You can come and share mine.’
It was years since I had slept in my mother’s bed. In my early childhood it had been a place of refuge when I was ill or unhappy. When I had chickenpox, when I had flu, when my pet hamster died, I had sought — and been given — consolation between those sheets, and I can still remember the musky scent of my mother’s skin and the sweetish spicy smell of the perfume she used to wear.
‘Well, did you enjoy the party after all?’ Mum asked, when we had undressed — I was wearing one of her nighties as I didn’t like to disturb the occupants of my bedroom — and I had settled myself in what I had come to think of as the visitors’ side of the bed (my mother always slept on the left).
‘Yes. I suppose so.’
‘Good. I thought you would.’
‘Mm. Mum —’ I hesitated — ‘was Uncle Rupert my ... my father?’
‘Uncle Rupert?’ Mum let out a peal of laughter. ‘Good heavens, no. Whatever gave you that idea?’
‘Something Lucas said.’
‘Then I shall have to have a word with Lucas, the bad boy,’ said Mum fondly.
‘Then who? Who was my father? I really need to know.’
I had never pressed my mother on this subject before; she had always been so odd and evasive that I hadn’t liked to. But a combination of vodka and the intimacy of sharing her bed had given me new courage.
‘Why do you need to know?’
I felt that Mum was playing for time. ‘I need to know where half of me comes from. I don’t feel whole only knowing about your side.’
But when I came to think about it, I didn’t really know that much about Mum’s family, either. Her father had been something in the Foreign Office, but had succumbed to a heart attack when she was small. Her mother had been neglectful, and had more recently developed some form of dementia and, after Mum’s vain attempts to keep her with us, been committed to an institution some distance away. I knew Mum felt bad about this, and she did contrive to visit my grandmother regularly, but she returned from these visits guilt-ridden and depressed. Her mother no longer knew her. She must have been one of the few people who really did think she was Napoleon (presumably since she was sufficiently deranged to imagine herself to be a French emperor, then the addition of a sex change was a minor detail), and obviously someone like my mother was considered far too insignificant to be granted an audience of any length with anyone so important. Apart from my grandmother (whom we never saw now as Mum thought it might upset us), there was only a sprinkling of cousins, most of them distant, and an aunt in New Zealand doing interesting things with sheep. Ours was not what you would call a close family.
‘I think feeling whole is more about being at home and comfortable with who you yourself are,’ Mum said now. ‘I’m not sure it has much to do with your parents.’
‘I’d still like to know.’
‘Well, I never really knew my father, either.’ Mum stroked my hair, her voice pensive.
‘That’s not the point, Mum. You knew who he was. I want to know who my father was.’
‘Well, there’s a bit of a problem there.’
‘Why?’
‘The thing is, Cass, that I don’t know who he was, either.’
‘How?’ I sat up in bed, shocked. ‘How can you not know who he was?’ It seemed to me inconceivable that anyone should perform that incredibly rude act and not know with whom they were doing it.
‘There were several men —’
‘Lodgers?’ Oh, please not Lodgers.
‘No. We didn’t have Lodgers then. Just men. People I met. People I got close to.’
‘Oh, Mum!’
‘I know. I didn’t behave very well, did I?’
‘So — so you’ve no idea at all?’
‘It was a long time ago, Cass. I did wonder — of course I did — but then life became a bit hectic, and it went out of my mind. I know this may sound odd to you, but I had you, my beautiful little girl, and I reckoned we could all get by without fathers. After all, I did.’
At this point, I’m sure anyone with an ounce of spirit, any real heroine, would have declared that that was the moment when she decided to track down her real father; that nothing would stand in the way of her discovering his identity; that if necessary she would devote her life to the search for this errant — and probably completely unaware — parent. But while I certainly did want to know who my father had been, I was on the whole content with my family, albeit small. My experiences of men hadn’t been particularly positive, and I tended to agree with my mother that we probably didn’t need one in our lives. What did shock me, and probably drove any other thoughts from my mind, was my mother’s undoubted promiscuity. For while I knew she must certainly have slept with a number of men, I had no idea that her behaviour extended so far back into the past and that her memory of her encounters could be so scanty.
We must have drifted off to sleep after this, because I don’t recall that we discussed the matter any further. In fact, the subject of my father was not to be addressed again for many years, and by that time I was able to understand a bit better why my mother had behaved as she had.
We awoke the next morning to find several dishevelled partygoers in the kitchen look
ing for aspirins and breakfast. Mum was in her element, and spent a happy couple of hours frying bacon and ministering to hangovers. One or two people even stayed on to help with the clearing-up, and I was allowed the day off school.
Six
Mum was packing my school trunk, the uniform list at her side, piles of clothes scattered over the bed.
‘Skirts, navy, two. White blouses, five. Five white blouses? Whatever do you need five blouses for? Three should be plenty.’ She ticked them off her list. ‘Long grey socks, six pairs. Six pairs of socks? You’ve never possessed six pairs of socks in your life. What can they be thinking of? I’ll send four.’
We had already been through all this in the uniform shop, so I didn’t take too much notice. After all, no one was ever teased for having only four pairs of socks.
The knickers were another matter.
Typically, my mother had refused to buy underwear at the uniform shop where, it has to be said, the prices had been craftily hiked up to match the prestigious standing of the school. Knickers and vests could be bought anywhere, she reasoned. There was no point in paying the earth for knickers and vests.
‘I’ll get them, Cass,’ she’d said. ‘No need for you to come with me this time.’
She had returned in triumph.
‘Really cheap, Cass. A bargain, and good quality, too. One hundred per cent cotton.’ She tipped out her purchases onto the kitchen table. ‘How about that?’
To this day, I shall never know how my mother managed to find royal blue knickers. School knickers, as everyone knows, come in bottle green, grey or navy. No one wears royal blue knickers. No one (as far as I know) even sells royal blue knickers.
‘But Mum — they’re the wrong colour.’
‘Blue. They’re blue. Nice bright blue knickers.’
‘But the list says navy! I can’t wear those. I’ll get into trouble.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Cass. Of course you won’t. Who’s going to see them, anyway?’
The Frances Garrood Collection Page 4
