by Alison Giles
Not that we attempted to hide the change in our relationship entirely. If I’d thought that maybe we should do so, Andrew made it clear he had no such intention, greeting me in Flora’s kitchen and under her enigmatic eye with an obviously delighted hug. At the cricket ground too – it was the important bank holiday return match against Chadham which had decreed, any other considerations apart, our, or anyway Andrew’s, presence there – he showed no inhibition, steering me around possessively. Ginny responded warmly to the new situation, and even Philip deigned to extend a muttered ‘Hi’ as he strode past.
But that was hardly sufficient to prevent our eagerly anticipating another opportunity to be alone together. Next weekend, we agreed, Andrew would come up to the flat.
I mentioned this to Flora over breakfast on Monday morning. She was spreading marmalade on a slice of toast. ‘You know,’ I added, ‘don’t you, that I am aware that I’ve been treating you a bit like a hotel recently?’ I gave a little grimace of apology.
The corners of her mouth twitched. ‘Just a touch maybe.’
‘I’m sorry. I’ve been more than a little self-absorbed, haven’t I?’
She gave a hint of a smile. ‘Oh? I thought it was Andrew your attention was fixed on?’
I grinned back. ‘I suppose it comes to much the same thing. Anyway –’ I didn’t give her a chance to interrupt – ‘I just wanted you to know I appreciate it. Everything.’
Flora picked up her cup and stared deep into it. Then she looked up and directly at me. ‘It’s my pleasure having you here.’
Those eyes, which at times had bored uncomfortably into me, were now softer than I’d ever known them. They reminded me of the deer, regarding me over the heather. Impulsively I pushed my chair back, rose and, skirting round the table, leaned over and hugged her. ‘Oh, Flora,’ I told her, ‘you are lovely.’
She reached up and patted my arm. ‘You’re your father’s daughter,’ she said simply. Then she disengaged herself, got up, and started clearing away the dishes.
Later, on the way back to London, I thought about that remark of hers. It had so many interpretations … and I liked them all.
I was still in a first-rate mood when I sought Mother out in Dickins & Jones’ restaurant. She had already settled herself at a central table from where she could watch for my arrival, and was surrounded by Oxford and Regent Street carrier bags. She lifted her cheek to accept my greeting.
‘Had a successful morning, then,’ I observed as I sat down.
‘Wonderful. And I’ve just seen a marvellous little dress downstairs. A red one. Maybe we can look at it on the way out?’
‘Good idea.’ I surveyed her mustard two-piece with the toning yellow and black patterned scarf tucked in at the neck. ‘I’m glad you’re feeling able to break out into bright colours again,’ I approved.
‘You don’t think it’s too soon?’ She reminded me for a moment of a rather anxious hen.
‘Of course not.’
Reassured, she sank back and we ordered. As we ate, she chatted on, just – I thought – as she always had done over those bland, emotionless meals with Father. I listened patiently, attempting to pay constructive attention to the diary of her day-to-day events.
‘But of course,’ she said suddenly and unexpectedly, ‘you’re not interested in any of this.’
‘Mo … ther.’
‘You have your career to think about, I do realise—’
‘You’re being unfair.’ Though I knew she wasn’t.
She reached into her bag and extracted a tissue. Delicately she dabbed at her nose.
‘Even so, that doesn’t explain …’ Her tone became plaintive. ‘You haven’t been home for ages. The garden’s looking lovely; I’d hoped …’ She straightened. ‘But that’s not the point.’ She stared at me accusingly. ‘There’s something going on. I know there is.’
‘No—’
‘You can’t fool me. Why all the secretiveness about what you’re doing at weekends? You’re … involved with some man, aren’t you? And if you can’t tell me about it –’ her voice rose in triumph – ‘it can only be because he’s married and it’s some surreptitious affair you’re having.’ She’d clearly spent time arriving at this conclusion.
Relief – or partial relief – caused me to laugh. That and the irony of the half truth.
‘No, Mother, I promise you …’
I’d expected her to be reassured. But she wasn’t. It was as though she were speaking from some pre-determined script and wasn’t about to be deflected.
‘I don’t believe you. It is a man, isn’t it?’
I stared at her. Her face was pale.
‘OK,’ I compromised. ‘Yes, there is a man, but—’
‘I knew it!’ She glared at me, and delivered the coup de grâce I realised, in a flash of clarity, she’d been working up to: ‘You’re just,’ she pronounced, ‘like your father.’
The clink of knives and forks and the burr of normal conversation from other tables accentuated the silence as I took in Mother’s remark.
‘Do you realise,’ I said at last, surprising myself by my calmness, ‘that’s the first time you’ve referred to … Flora … since … well, since the very beginning?’
Mother dropped her gaze, discovering a need to adjust her napkin. ‘It was better not to.’
‘How was it better?’
‘I really don’t think we should talk about it.’
‘I think we should. Tell me, what do you know about her?’
‘That tart!’
I bit my tongue. ‘Are you so sure?’
‘What else could she be? All your father wanted was –’ she gave a shrug of distaste – ‘well, you know.’ She turned on me. ‘And I suppose that’s all you’re after too. Your generation with your high-flying careers and liberated ideas. You think you can have it all, think you’re so clever …’
‘I can’t believe –’ I could hear an evenness in my tone as I ignored her attack – ‘that was all Father thought of.’
‘Oh, can’t you?’ Her voice was rising again.
‘In that case,’ I said, putting to her the question that had teased me so much recently, ‘why did you choose to stay married to him? Why didn’t you divorce him?’
‘And let him get away with it!’
I looked at her.
‘Anyway, there was you to think of. I wasn’t going to let you anywhere near that … female.’
‘You certainly managed to prevent that.’
I leaned back to allow our plates to be removed. Mother waved away the dessert menu. ‘Just coffee,’ she instructed.
I downed mine as quickly as I could.
‘This man …?’ said Mother.
‘He’s not married. And that,’ firmly, ‘is all I’m going to tell you about him at the moment.’
Mother looked hurt. ‘I’m only concerned for your welfare.’
‘I must be getting back.’ I gathered up my things. ‘I’ll settle up,’ I said, and departed.
I wondered afterwards whether she’d bought the red dress.
I went over the conversation as I lay in my bath that night. Only concerned for my welfare! That’s what she’d always led me to believe. It just didn’t ring true any more; hadn’t done for some time, I realised. Probably why I’d been able to stand up to her; and why – it dawned on me now – I felt no guilt at having done so.
I submerged, allowed my hair to float, felt the water rise over my ears, cheeks, eyes, nose. I sat up again and reached for the soap. I foamed it over my legs, arms, shoulders, body, then slithered down into the warmth once more and lay there, contemplating.
I’d always done – and been – what she wanted. Now I was branching out. And she didn’t like it. Well, tough.
Wouldn’t let me near ‘that female’, wouldn’t she? But Father had known … had cared … I saw again the parcel of books; his thinned face. ‘Return them to Flora. Yourself. Please.’ That final surge of effort on my behalf. Although I c
ould wish he were here, now, to advise how to extricate myself from the complications it had led to.
I got out of the bath, rinsing off under the shower as I did so, and towelled. The mirror over the basin was steamed up. I wiped a window in it and stood staring at what I could see. Down to waist level only. I thought of Andrew, his hands travelling over me; except that for a fleeting moment what I saw, in my mentally enhanced reflection, were not his hands but my father’s. Appalled, I thrust off the fantasy and hurriedly threw on a dressing gown.
Later, I managed to laugh. No doubt Freud would have read something into it; I was damned if I was going to. My more down-to-earth concern, nagging intermittently over the next few days, was whether Mother, if I let her, might somehow mess up my relationship with Andrew. His connection with Flora, should it ever come out, was the obvious reason to keep my guard up, yet instinctively not the only one.
Even so, my wariness didn’t extend to supposing she’d go so far as to fall off a ladder in order to put a spoke in my wheel.
It was a week to the day after our lunch together that her local hospital rang. Over the intervening weekend, in the shelter of Andrew’s good humour, I’d brushed my misgivings aside. On the Saturday morning I’d dragged him round the Portobello market which, despite his spending time in London, he’d never visited, and in the afternoon we strolled through Hyde Park. It was one of those days when showers threaten but, apart from a few tentative drops now and again, never quite materialise. Nonetheless, a September edge to the wind reminded that summer was effectively over. Glad of our jackets, we lounged for a time on the bank of the Serpentine, then cut across the grass to Speakers’ Corner and wandered between the orators before hailing a taxi home.
At lunchtime on Sunday, after a second heady night in bed, we met Clare and Leo for a drink. I’d been apprehensive about it, but Andrew skilfully fielded any conversation that could have led to Flora. ‘Dishy,’ Clare pronounced when she rang me afterwards for a post mortem, ‘and didn’t he and Leo get on well?’ I remarked that it was pretty much guaranteed when two guys discover a mutual passion for rugby. ‘Men!’ we laughed.
The call on Wednesday jolted me from my sense of well-being. It came late in the afternoon, at that point when I was assessing how much I could hope to deal with before packing up for the day and what would have to be left until tomorrow. I was irritated at being thwarted in the completion of one task by repeated apologies from a secretary that the person I needed to speak to was ‘still in a meeting’. Knowing him, more likely taking an extended lunch in some hotel bedroom, I thought viciously.
‘This is the Accident and Emergency Department,’ a voice announced.
My pencil automatically completed the word I was writing, then held itself poised above the reminder note I’d been jotting.
‘We have your mother here.’ Then, swiftly reassuring: ‘Nothing too serious.’
An exchange of questions and answers elicited the information that she’d fallen, and a cautious diagnosis that she’d probably only sprained a ligament in her knee. They wouldn’t know until someone had a chance to look at it next day. But yes, since she’d banged her head in the process, they’d certainly be keeping her in overnight. ‘Just to be on the safe side.’
‘I’d better come down and see her,’ I said.
There was sufficient pause to suggest it wasn’t absolutely essential before: ‘I think she’d probably appreciate it, if you can.’
Promptly at five-thirty, I made my way to Waterloo. I’d debated whether to go back to Fulham and get the car, but decided that since the hospital was only five minutes’ walk from the station it wasn’t worth the rush-hour hassle. As we clattered towards Surbiton and beyond, I reflected on my previous rail journey, less than three weeks ago, and the contrast in my destination.
By the time I arrived, Mother had been moved to a ward. She sat propped up in a hospital nightie, looking pale beneath the remains of her make-up. There was a noticeable bruise on the side of her head.
‘Well,’ I said, over jolly, ‘what have you been up to?’
A large nurse turned from adjusting the covers on the next bed and busied herself puffing Mother’s pillows. ‘We’ve been climbing up ladders when we shouldn’t, haven’t we?’
‘It was only the stepladder. There was a blockage in the garage guttering …’
I almost said, shades of Father, ‘You should have waited and let me do it.’ Then remembered – guiltily – that I’d made it clear I wouldn’t be down for a while. ‘Why didn’t you pop next door and ask Jack Webb?’ I substituted.
‘I should have done.’ She reached out and clutched my hand. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Well, there we are. We all live and learn.’ The nurse, satisfied, turned away. I watched her move across the ward, a bustling Florence Nightingale dispensing tolerant maternal reprimand at every bed.
‘What actually happened?’
Mother explained happily.
‘… luckily Mrs Mackenzie was walking that Pekinese of hers – I was really quite dazed, you see … think maybe I knocked myself out – and she called an ambulance. Of course it caused quite a stir in the Avenue …’ Mother perked up no end as she recalled the collection of neighbours gathering round solicitously as she was stretchered on board.
‘I expect it’s very painful?’
Mother touched her forehead and winced.
‘And your knee.’
She pulled aside the bed covers to show me how swollen it was. ‘Of course, I’m afraid I’m going to be a terrible nuisance. I shan’t be able to move around much for weeks. They’ve told me so.’
I soothed away her apology. No need to concern herself. We’d sort out help during the week and naturally I’d come down at weekends.
‘Oh, but you have so much on these days.’
‘It’s OK.’ I softened the unintentional edge in my response: ‘Just one of those things. After all,’ I laughed, hoping it didn’t sound as mirthless as it felt, ‘you hardly did it on purpose.’
I directed her attention to more immediate practical matters, apologising for my short-sightedness in not bringing the car. Gallantly she insisted she could manage with the minimum and I caught the hospital shop just as they were about to lower the shutter. Toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush, face cream, I ticked off; and for good measure some light reading.
‘Lemon barley?’ suggested the volunteer helper.
I hesitated. ‘Why not.’ Though why Mother should want it here when she never drank squash at home … Still; all part of the hospital ritual. One might as well conform.
Mother was duly appreciative when I reappeared, and expressed contentment with my reassurance that I’d ring next day to monitor progress. ‘Though I should be grateful,’ she said, apparently in all innocence, as I gathered up my bag and jacket, ‘if you’d just check the house before you go back to London.’
‘But …’ I suppressed a sigh. ‘OK. Fine.’
Back at the house a taxi ride later, I stowed the abandoned stepladder in the garage, then toured the empty rooms, ensuring all the windows were firmly latched. Everything was, as I knew it would be, firmly in its place – apart from a used cup and saucer on the draining board. I rinsed and dried them while waiting for the kettle to boil for coffee. It was already gone nine, and I hadn’t eaten. I found some Edam and tomatoes in the fridge and made myself a sandwich. My bed, as always, was made up. No point, I decided, in trekking back to London tonight.
I slumped down in a sitting-room chair with what was going to have to pass for supper, aware as I munched of odd creaks and occasional gurgles in the water system I’d never noticed before. But then this was the first time I’d been alone in the house – anyway in the evening or at night. I switched on the fire, more for the companionship of its flicker and gradually reddening glow than out of any real need to supplement the central heating.
Even so, I suddenly felt despondently isolated. So much for my expectations for the coming weekend. I had pl
anned with Andrew that he’d come up to London again, that maybe we’d drive out to some stately home or other, go to a bar or a club in the evening perhaps – someone at work had mentioned a new one just off Shaftesbury Avenue. It had been left vague – on the assumption that time was our own. That easiness was now placed on hold; and, it seemed, would remain so for some time to come.
I supposed I’d better warn him. Reaching for the phone, I dialled his number. But it wasn’t either he or Ginny who answered.
‘Flora?’ I queried, the unexpected making me uncertain.
‘Uh, huh.’
She was sitting in with the boys, she explained. Andrew and Ginny were out to dinner with friends.
It was not the moment to remind me there were other people in Andrew’s life. I even had to jerk myself around to the re-recognition that Ginny was his sister, nothing more.
‘You sound disappointed.’
‘It was just that I wanted to explain to him …’ Matter-of-fact to start with; then spilling out.
‘Very inconvenient of her,’ observed Flora when I’d finished. I imagined her face and dry smile. ‘I expect you’ve decided she did it deliberately?’
I laughed, relaxing. ‘I wouldn’t put it past her.’
If Flora was raising an eyebrow, I couldn’t see it.
‘So will you ring Andrew tomorrow, or shall I pass on a message?’
‘You could tell him I called,’ I said. ‘Give him the gist.’
I put the phone down and leaned towards the friendliness of the fire. I could almost feel Flora in the room with me. If I turned my head, she would be sitting there on the sofa, resting comfortably, her hands folded softly in her lap. I stared into the flames for as long as the sensation lasted. Even when I roused myself at last and got up, the sense didn’t totally desert me.
For a moment when I woke I was confused by the wallpaper, the sprigs on it dancing before my still unfocused eyes. I reached out a hand to silence the buzz of the alarm and found I had turned the wrong way; the bedside table was on the opposite side. Beyond it – I was now fully awake – my china-headed doll, whose clothes Mother had so meticulously washed and pressed, stared back at me. The eyes had once been deep blue in a rose-cheeked face; now the glaze had faded and cracked, giving her a weary look.
