The Frances Garrood Collection

by Frances Garrood

‘We wouldn’t, Mum. How could we have managed?’ I reasoned. ‘What with your work and — everything else.’

  ‘But she should have come first. I ought to have put her first.’ Mum reached for another handkerchief. ‘What kind of daughter was I? You tell me that, Cass.’

  I could have said that she was the sort of daughter who couldn’t possibly have coped with an ageing incontinent Napoleon with tendencies to violence and sleepwalking, but my words would have been wasted. Mum had to grieve, and since it appeared that guilt was an integral part of the process, we had to allow this cocktail of emotions to run its course.

  The funeral was fixed for the following week. Call Me Bill made most of the arrangements over the phone, since Mum was in no fit state to organize anything, and I was allowed to stay off school for a further two days in order to attend it. I myself was not especially affected by our loss, since I had scarcely known my grandmother and had had little recent contact with her. Even when I was small and she was in control of her faculties, I had been well aware that she looked upon children as an inconvenience at best, and so I had never had the chance to establish any sort of relationship with her. I did, however, wonder that a woman who appeared to be so cold and at times even ruthless could have produced a daughter as open and affectionate as my mother.

  We travelled to the funeral by rail, a journey involving several hours and two changes of train. The weather was cold and our carriages unheated, and Mum alternately railed against herself and wept. Lucas and I consumed quantities of the sandwiches we had brought with us (Mum refused to eat anything) and spent our time reading or playing battleships and hangman on scraps of paper. It was not a happy journey.

  The funeral itself was conducted in a small parish church by a wild-haired vicar with a beard who looked, I thought, exactly like John the Baptist. He had the appearance and the air of someone who might well have blazed a trail on a diet of locusts and wild honey, and he conducted the service with energy and humour. Our grandmother was then laid to rest in the pretty churchyard, and we all adjourned to the parish hall for tea and cakes (there had been no one to organize a proper wake, much to Mum’s distress).

  Here things became more interesting, because we encountered relatives whom we had barely heard of (although they all appeared to have heard of us), and for almost the first time in my life, I had a sense of family. I also got the distinct impression that Mum was the black sheep of that family, and that it was unlikely her present condition would do much to redeem her.

  But as next of kin to the deceased (my mother had been an only child), Mum was deserving of some sympathy, and having miraculously recovered her composure, she milked the situation to the full.

  As I watched her kissing the pale powdery cheeks and embracing the frail bodies of the friends and family members who came up to offer their condolences (why was everyone so old?), I was bowled over yet again by Mum’s charm; her smile, the tilt of her head, the way she listened to people as though there was no one in the world she would rather be with. These were rare traits, and although they were genuine enough, she was not above using them to her advantage. This, I suspected, was how she tempted willing Lodgers into our damp basement and even more willing lovers into her bed. At her best, my mother was quite simply irresistible.

  ‘There,’ she said, after we’d taken our leave and set off on our walk back to the station. ‘I think I’ve managed to stave off the worst of the gossip. At least for the time being. They might even manage to overlook the — well, the baby now.’

  ‘Does it matter?’ I asked, for after all, we rarely had any kind of contact with these people.

  ‘It’s a good point, Cass. But yes. It does matter. In spite of everything, I mind what people think.’

  ‘Why? Why do you mind?’ For quite often it seemed as though my mother couldn’t have cared less what people thought of her.

  ‘Because I haven’t made much of a success of my life, have I? I haven’t done anything particularly clever. I haven’t really achieved anything. But if people like me, well, that’s something, isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course people like you. Everyone likes you. My friends think you’re wonderful.’

  ‘Do they really?’

  ‘You know they do. I’ve told you.’

  ‘I don’t deserve it, though, do I?’

  ‘Oh, Mum! Of course you deserve it.’

  ‘At the moment I don’t feel as though I deserve anything.’ Once again, the tears were very near the surface. My mother thrived on people and attention, and now that the attention had ceased and we were on our own again, she seemed to wilt like a plucked flower.

  ‘Come on, Mum,’ said Lucas, as anxious as I was to get her onto the train in one emotional piece. ‘You’ve done really well today. Keep it up just a bit longer, and we’ll soon be home.’

  But it was too late. Once again, the tears were pouring down Mum’s cheeks, landing in bright splashes on the red wool of her scarf.

  ‘I miss her,’ she sobbed, fumbling in her pocket for a handkerchief. ‘I’m going to miss her so much. I know she’s not been — herself for some time, but she’s my mum. My poor little mum,’ she repeated, stumbling on the kerb and clutching at my arm. ‘And she’ll never see the baby now, will she? My poor baby will have no grandparents at all.’

  Somehow, we managed to get her home, steering her on and off trains, mopping her up and patting and soothing her as best we could. By the time we got home we were all exhausted.

  Greta had stayed up in her dressing gown to welcome us back, although it was well past midnight.

  ‘Nice-cup-of-tea?’ she said, as Mum fell through the front door and into her arms.

  And for once, I could have kissed her. Greta might have been a fusspot — she was often infuriating — but she was kind, and most of all, she was one of us; in her own way, far more a member of the family than my late grandmother had ever been.

  ‘Oh, Greta!’ I said, as I took off my coat and peeled my gloves from my frozen hands. ‘What would we do without you?’

  Fifteen

  I made the decision to stay at home until the following week, for I was worried about Mum. She was in a bad state, and while to a certain extent this was to be expected after her bereavement, the signs were ominous. She took to her bed, eating little and subsisting on cups of tea, and when she wasn’t asleep, she spent her time weeping or simply gazing out of the window, leaving her room only to go to the bathroom.

  We had been down this road before. Mum never did things by halves, and her depressions were full-blown and frightening; and while they didn’t usually last long, everyone dreaded them. It was these (mercifully rare) occasions that brought it home to all of us how central Mum was to the mood if not the running of the household, for everyone relied on her cheerful good humour, her hospitality, her knack of making people laugh and her sheer kindness.

  The house fell suddenly quiet, and we all crept around speaking in whispers as though someone much closer than my grandmother had died. The wireless was silent; there were no noisy recitals on the ironing board; even The Dog, who it seemed could do depression almost as well as Mum, lay outside her bedroom door and whimpered miserably.

  ‘Mum, what can I do to help?’ I asked, bringing in yet another cup of tea and setting it down on the bedside table. ‘There must be something we can do for you.’

  Mum looked at me as though noticing me for the first time.

  ‘Why aren’t you back at school, Cass? You shouldn’t be here at all.’

  ‘I stayed on to help. I can’t leave you like this.’

  ‘But do the school know?’

  ‘Of course they do. Call Me Bill rang and explained.’ It had seemed more appropriate to ask an adult to phone on my behalf than to ring the school myself.

  ‘But you can’t miss school, Cass. You must go back.’

  ‘I can. I’ll be fine. I’ve got some reading to be getting on with, and I can easily catch up next week.’ I paused. ‘Mum, shouldn’t you see a
doctor? Get some — pills or something?’

  ‘If you like.’ Mum patted my hand absently. ‘Though I’m not sure pills will help.’

  Dr Mackenzie, a wholesome no-nonsense Scotsman who knew our family well, was duly summoned, and having run the gauntlet of The Dog — who seemed to have appointed himself Mum’s guard dog — he was reassuringly down to earth.

  ‘Now then, Mrs Fitzpatrick —’

  ‘Miss.’

  ‘Miss Fitzpatrick, then. What’s all this about?’

  Mum shrugged and gave him a wan little-girl smile. Dr Mackenzie sat down on the bed.

  ‘You’ve lost your mother, and of course you’re upset. But you’ve your new little one to think about. You can’t go starving yourself and worrying your family like this.’

  ‘I’m not starving —’

  ‘Cassandra here says you’ve hardly eaten anything in the past week. Isn’t that right, Cassandra?’

  As Mum’s female next of kin, I had thought it appropriate that I should be present at this interview, and as it turned out this was just as well.

  ‘Just cups of tea,’ I said. ‘And a bit of toast.’

  ‘A bit of toast? Have you no sense, woman?’

  Mum looked startled. She wasn’t accustomed to being challenged in this way.

  ‘You may well look shocked.’ Dr Mackenzie got out his instruments and took Mum’s blood pressure. ‘A bit on the low side,’ he said. ‘You need to eat, and take exercise, and get some fresh air in your lungs. What kind of a bairn are you going to produce if you go on like this?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought.’ Mum looked down at her hands.

  ‘No. I daresay not. Now, I shall be round tomorrow morning, and I want to find you out of bed and dressed.’

  ‘No pills?’ Mum asked.

  The doctor patted her shoulder kindly. ‘There’s no pills for what you’re suffering from, my dear. It has to take its time. But while it’s doing that, you’ve a life to get on with.’ He stood up and closed his bag. ‘A life and a family.’

  ‘Is there anything we ought to be doing for her?’ I asked, as I showed Dr Mackenzie out.

  ‘Yes. A good deal less than you’re doing now. Wait on her, and she’ll never leave that bed of hers. She’s not had it easy, your mum, but she needs to get back to normal. To start functioning again. And you can help her do that.’

  ‘Is it all right if I go back to school?’

  ‘Back to school? Of course you should be back at school! You’ve your own life to lead, lassie. You need your friends, too.’

  His kindness brought tears to my eyes, and I suddenly realized how tired I was.

  ‘You’re a good daughter, but don’t you try to be too good a daughter. It’ll not do either of you any good. Away with you to that school of yours. Get back to normal. I’ll keep an eye on your mum.’

  ‘Doctor?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘When — when’s the baby due?’

  ‘Has she not told you?’

  ‘I suppose I just never got round to asking.’

  ‘Oh — about June time I think. Not so long to go now.’

  ‘June!’

  ‘Aye. June.’ He laughed. ‘Don’t they teach you anything at school nowadays?’

  ‘Not — that. They told us all about — well, you know — but not how long.’

  ‘Not how long, eh? Then it’s a bit of a shock for you?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Don’t you worry. It’ll be all right. Your mum’s a strong woman. She’ll manage.’ He looked at me and smiled. ‘And so will you. But you’ve to remember, this is her bairn, not yours. She’s done it all before. You get on with your schooling and enjoy being young, Cassandra. It doesn’t last long, let me tell you. Don’t you go taking on your mum’s problems. You’ll have plenty of your own, soon enough.’

  If only he knew that I felt I had quite enough problems as it was. I would have loved to have been able to talk to this good kindly man, and I wondered what it would be like to have a father like him; someone strong and sympathetic; someone who would go out to work every morning carrying a briefcase, and come home with a nice safe pay cheque at the end of the month; someone who would protect me from people like Uncle Rupert and Alex.

  After the doctor’s visit, Mum made an effort to pull herself together. She got up and dressed the next day, and made arrangements to return to work the following week. She even baked a cake.

  But she was not herself, and I was worried. I knew it made no sense to stay at home, but it also seemed wrong to leave Mum to Lucas and Greta. I thought of the disparate collection of relatives who had attended my grandmother’s funeral, and wondered where they all were. Would any of them come to our rescue, if we needed them? I very much doubted it.

  I returned to school on the Sunday afternoon by train (no car was necessary as I only had a small suitcase). Call Me Bill drove me to the station and waved me off, and while I felt uneasy at leaving everyone else to cope with Mum’s precarious mental state, I also felt a guilty sense of relief. After all, Dr Mackenzie had told me to get on with my own life, and so that was what I should do.

  Sixteen

  The rest of that term passed uneventfully, and I managed to achieve my aim of coming top overall in the end-of-term exams. I returned home for the Easter holidays with an excellent school report and feeling more confident than I had in a long time.

  Mum seemed almost back to her normal self, and insisted on organizing the annual Easter egg hunt in the garden, although Lucas and I tried to tell her that we were far too old for such frivolities.

  ‘Nonsense! No one’s too old for Easter eggs, and this makes them more fun,’ said Mum, undeterred, but she invited some neighbours’ children round to join in and salvage our dignity.

  Mum’s size had increased considerably since half-term, and it was with a kind of horrified fascination that I observed her swollen body and breasts. I had never had any close contact with pregnancy, and hadn’t realized that the human body could expand so rapidly and in such an astonishing way. It did nothing to change my feelings about all things sexual, for I certainly never wanted to look like that. What must it feel like to be inhabited; to have someone else conducting their own small separate existence inside you, with no apparent reference to your own? There’d been a time when I had assumed that one day I would be a mother; now, I was absolutely determined it should never happen.

  But Mum seemed to be enjoying her pregnancy, and was looking forward keenly to the birth of her baby. Richard had decorated the box room, and courtesy of Greta, who was in her element, the baby had enough knitwear to last it until it started school.

  ‘Won’t it be a bit hot?’ I asked, fingering shawls and matinee jackets, bonnets and bootees. After all, there had to be a limit to the amount of warm clothing a June baby would require, even in the coolest of British summers.

  ‘Do you think so?’ Mum picked up a little jumpsuit knitted in a startling shade of purple. ‘Maybe you’re right, Cass. Perhaps I should get some cotton things as well.’ She put the jumpsuit back in the drawer. ‘I’ve forgotten what they need. It’s been a long time.’

  Other things Mum appeared to have forgotten included a cot and a pram, although she had purchased a plastic bath, a matching potty and enough nappies for a small army of incontinent infants. Mum’s memory wasn’t so much bad as selective. The rest of us did our best to help her fill in the gaps, but my knowledge of babies was scanty and Greta’s non-existent. Call Me Bill was helpful in the field of fringe pharmaceuticals, and brought home liberal supplies of baby powder and nappy cream, most of them with suspiciously faded labels.

  But Lucas showed little interest in the baby. Having recently shed the worst of his spots and caught up with his new bass voice and gangling limbs, he had suddenly become popular. He spent a lot of time in the bathroom doing interesting things to his hair and spraying himself with pungent smells, while the telephone was kept busy with breathy female voices asking to speak to him. He seemed una
ware that the journey upon which he was embarking with such enthusiasm was the same one whose benefits — if that’s what they could be called — our mother was about to reap. When it came to it, I concluded sadly, everything seemed to come down to sex.

  I managed to divert Mum from her prenatal trance long enough to get her to buy me my school summer uniform of, among other things, ‘blue checked dresses, four’ (Mum sent me back with three), ‘white ankle socks, six pairs’ (I had four) and ‘white tennis dresses, two’ (‘Whatever do you want with two tennis dresses?’ Mum cried. I was grateful that she saw the point of even one tennis dress). And Call Me Bill drove me back to school for the new term.

  Looking back, I remember that summer term as a magical time. In the forgiving light of early summer, the main school house seemed to shed its air of menace and looked almost inviting, while the gardens really came into their own. Smooth lawns were edged with a variety of shrubs and shaded by two large cypress trees, and beyond the main garden there was an outdoor swimming pool discreetly concealed behind a high hedge. There was also a large meadow which became a carpet of the kinds of wild flowers so rarely seen these days. Bees and butterflies busied themselves among drifts of cowslips and buttercups, which later gave way to pale purple orchids, scabious, vetch, harebells and a myriad other flowers.

  Occasionally, when the weather was unusually hot, we were allowed to have our lessons out of doors, and we would sit on the grass under one of the cypresses, making notes in exercise books propped on our knees, the sound of the teacher’s voice interrupted only by the calling of wood pigeons and the distant sound of a cuckoo. To this day, I shall never be able to hear a cuckoo without being taken straight back to the smell of newly mown grass and the sound of Miss Kennedy reading the poetry of Browning: ‘God’s in his heaven. All’s right with the world.’

  One evening towards the end of June, I was summoned to Miss Armitage’s office to receive news of the birth of my new sister.

  ‘Mother and baby are both doing well,’ she told me. ‘I’m sure you’d like to speak to your mother. You may use the office telephone when she comes out of hospital next week.’