by Alison Giles
My grandmother – that is to say Father’s mother – had given her to me. ‘I used to play with her when I was a little girl,’ she’d told me.
I had been over-awed; Mother impressed. ‘You take great care of it,’ she’d admonished me.
Grandma had chuckled: ‘Yes, but not so much that you can’t enjoy her.’
In a way I was surprised that Mother continued to give prominence, in her tidying and reorganisation of my room, to a gift from Father’s side of the family. Yet in another way, not. Father’s solid professional background had been for her a conflicting source of both pride and envy. While bemused by many of their attitudes and regularly disparaging them within the privacy of the family – ‘those dreadful old chairs, the rows of musty books, that wilderness of a garden’ – nonetheless she would lose no opportunity to mention outside it ‘my father-in-law, a retired professor, you know’. With studious offhandedness – I recalled from my childhood – she would refer to ‘their place in the country’ as though it were some aristocratic family seat. I’d always regarded Mother’s … pretentiousness, you could only call it, as one of her foibles. Now I cringed in hindsighted embarrassment.
Why, I wondered, had Father married her? She’d certainly been very pretty, beautiful even – indeed, she was still an extremely good-looking woman – and an efficient home-maker. No doubt about it, she could certainly cook. But what about his other appetites; and I wasn’t just meaning … in deference to her, I found myself, even in my own head, taking refuge in the euphemism ‘marital bed’. I guessed all that had stopped years ago. Maybe long before Flora? Who could tell.
It was far from being only that, though. Mother wouldn’t even have recognised, let alone understood, his other needs – the stimulation of companionable discussion, the shared enjoyment of music, poetry, art. It wasn’t that she was unintelligent; merely blinkered. And it was just at that point when I might have begun to be able to offer him such companionship … Maybe – the thought skimmed almost unread across my mind – she preferred him to find that with Flora than with me.
In the distance a church clock was striking. Reminded of the time, I threw back the bed covers, and was out of the house within twenty minutes. Who’d be a commuter? I should have called the hospital; I’d do so as soon as I arrived at the office.
When I rang a second time towards the end of the afternoon, they confirmed the damage to her knee was no more than a sprain. But they were – to my relief – willing to keep her in a second night when I pleaded the predicament of my job commitments. I relaxed, and on my way back to the flat made a mental list of things I needed to do that evening.
The light on the answerphone was flashing when I walked into the flat. It was Andrew. He’d tried to get me at work, he said, but … True, I’d been in and out of meetings all day. He was sorry to hear about my mother; he hoped she was all right.
I poured myself a hefty gin and settled down with it before returning his call. I gave him a quick run-down of the situation. ‘She’s going to be on crutches for several weeks. I’ll just have to go down at weekends and give a hand.’
‘I suppose now –’ whimsically – ‘isn’t the moment to introduce myself?’
‘No.’
‘You’re probably right. Not when she’s got a pair of sticks handy to clout me with.’
I laughed.
Andrew assumed a self-mocking tone. ‘I think I hate her.’
‘Join the club.’
There was a surprised silence at the other end of the line. My response jolted me too. For a moment I had an image of Andrew, at ease in his garden that first time, looking up into the chestnut. ‘I hadn’t realised,’ he’d said of my father, ‘how angry you are with him.’ And now with Mother?
‘Cheer up.’ He’d recovered and was speaking again. ‘I’ll just have to find an excuse to come up mid-week.’
Comforted by the prospect, I washed my hair and started packing a bag. At least I might have the chance to catch up on some reading.
Ticking off my list, I tried ringing Leah – I should have done so yesterday – but there was no answer.
CHAPTER 18
I tried hard to remember, as I fetched and carried for Mother, that my incarceration with her was not the result of some devious plan to prevent me being with Andrew; and that, moreover, she was genuinely in pain. It was tough going at times, but I fixed a smile on my face and made a conscious effort not to allow her repeated apologies – which served more as reminders of her dependence – to irritate me. After a while, both became less forced as though the outward show of cheerfulness actually diffused, in part at least, the resentment it was covering.
With the aid of a nurse and a hospital porter, I’d eased Mother into the back of the car on Friday evening, feeding the crutches into the well as she settled her leg across the seat. ‘Now make sure you don’t put any weight on it,’ she was instructed. Smiling complacently in my direction, she assured them she’d rest it. ‘After all, my daughter’s here to look after me.’
Getting her out at the other end was more of a problem. In the end I summoned help from next door and together, amid a mass of contradictory instructions, we manoeuvred her into the house and on to the sofa.
I brewed tea while Mother held court. ‘Of course,’ she was pointing out as I re-appeared with a tray, ‘I can’t see how I’m going to get up the stairs.’ I supposed I should have anticipated the difficulty.
Meg Webb took over. By the time the spare-room divan had been bumped down to the dining room, the table lifted to one side to make space, and eager helpers departed, it was already half past eight. Mother feigned little interest in food.
‘Well, I’m starving,’ I insisted. And no doubt Mother should be grateful, I thought, as I returned from fetching a take-away for us both, that I hadn’t taken her at her word.
Later I steadied her to the downstairs cloakroom to which I’d already transferred her toiletries, and hovered outside the door. The sounds of her struggling with her crutches mingled with those of the cistern flushing and taps being run.
There was a thud, dulled by the carpeting.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I’ve dropped a jar.’
One of those heavy glass ones by the sound of it.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll pick it up.’
She became more adept at moving around as the weekend progressed; particularly after I’d heaved and shoved furniture to give her clearer passage.
I contacted a home-help agency, whose number I’d managed to obtain from the local surgery. Yes – to my relief – they could arrange for one of their ‘girls’ to come in each day. I jotted down details and handed them to Mother. Later, as I pushed a trolley round the supermarket, stocking up with ready-meals, it occurred to me to wonder why she hadn’t made the calls herself. It wasn’t as though she’d lost her wits or her voice.
‘Why don’t you ring Leah?’ I suggested on my return, recalling that I still hadn’t managed to get through to her.
‘They’ve gone to Brittany for a fortnight; not due back till next Saturday.’
‘Really?’ Mentally, I registered that Uncle Harold’s tomatoes must be over for Leah to have succeeded in dragging him away; also that it cut off the only possible source of reprieve from next weekend’s duty.
By Sunday, the novelty for Mother of reclining on the sofa – relieved though it was by a string of lengthy phone calls advising all and sundry that she was, so regrettably, out of action – was beginning to wear off. She lumbered after me into the kitchen to supervise my preparation of lunch.
‘You never were very domesticated,’ she observed as I opted for the easy way of chopping carrots – into circles rather than the appetising slivers she would have created.
‘True,’ I conceded. I made a joke of it. ‘But then, I couldn’t possibly hope to compete with you.’
Mother frowned, ignoring my comment. ‘Spent far too much time with your head in books.’
‘Oh, c
ome on …’ I flipped the saucepan on to the stove, shook in salt.
‘You’ll never catch a husband if you can’t cook.’
‘Is that how you caught Dad?’ It was out before I’d considered.
She heard it as repartee only. ‘He certainly appreciated my culinary skills.’
I didn’t doubt he had. Though I experienced no difficulty visualising him tucking into Flora’s sturdy meals either. The plain roast I was about to serve up – plenty of cold meat left over for Mother tomorrow – was more akin to what he’d become used to at Cotterly than here.
I opened the oven door and peered in. The meat was, in my view, sizzling satisfactorily. Mother’s face registered doubt that my cursory check could be sufficient.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘We’ve time for a drink.’ I preceded her and poured as she negotiated herself back to the sitting room. I adjusted an occasional table at her elbow. ‘Cheers,’ I encouraged.
It wasn’t until after we’d eaten – from trays on our laps – that she got around to what was really on her mind. She adjusted her leg, supporting it with both hands as she did so, and smoothed her skirt down over it.
‘This man you’re seeing …’
Mentally I sat up, on guard.
‘… aren’t you going to tell me anything more about him?’
‘There’s nothing to tell.’ I felt much as I had done as a child when parental enquiries about some private quarrel in the playground demanded self-protective stone-walling.
She pressed.
I gave in at last. ‘OK, he’s thirty-three, he’s a solicitor.’ Then in a defiant rush: ‘Single, heterosexual, and as far as I know has no convictions for either murder or rape.’
Mother’s eyebrows jerked primly upwards. ‘I wasn’t suggesting—’
‘Good.’
‘And does he have a name?’ She’d recovered.
Schoolgirl again; resentful; and at the same time irritated: ‘Andrew.’
‘Andrew what?’
‘For heaven’s sake, Mother, you’ll be asking me next what his father does.’
‘My, we are cross.’
Yes. And all the more so for letting her rile me.
She allowed me time to calm down.
‘So how did you meet him?’ Her sweet reasonableness was all the more threatening, the temptation to fling the truth in her face almost overwhelming.
But not quite. I thought frantically, resorting to fabrication. ‘Through work.’ That surely was innocent enough.
She opened her mouth to probe further.
‘For crying out loud, Mother, will you stop cross-examining me?’ I got up. ‘How about some coffee?’
As I made for the door, her complaining tone pursued me. ‘I just don’t understand the need to be so secretive.’
I switched on the percolator and stared out through the kitchen window. She’d been right, the garden was looking lovely – a disciplined mass of early autumn colours. Next door, the other side from the Webbs, Mr Potter’s head was just visible above the hedge. The click of his shears was almost – though jarringly not quite – in synch with the bubble of the gradually darkening coffee. Somewhere a lawnmower was humming. I wasn’t sure whether the ordinariness, the predictability of it all, was comforting or confining.
Attempting conciliation when I rejoined Mother, I picked up my parents’ wedding photograph. ‘You’ve never told me,’ I invited, ‘how you and Father met.’
Mother demurred. ‘It’s such a long time ago. You wouldn’t be interested.’
I teased it out of her piecemeal: his firm’s annual dinner; he, a junior partner overseeing the arrangements; she, as assistant to the catering manager at the hotel they’d chosen, deputed to agree the menu with him. Somehow, since by the time they’d finished discussing it in the bar she was off duty, they’d moved on to the dining room. ‘To do some advance sampling, he said – and insisted I join him. I was,’ her expression challenged me and her hand went up to titivate her hair, ‘more than … averagely attractive in those days.’
‘You still are.’
‘You think so?’ Mother preened.
Don’t you dare, I thought, say it’s a pity I haven’t inherited your looks. She had done once. It had taken me a long time – had I yet? – to get over the image of myself as a gawky teenager.
‘He complimented the hotel food. I said I could do even better.’ She gave a girlish trill. ‘So he invited me round to his flat to prove it. I keep telling you, the way to a man ’s heart…’
I could just imagine the sort of cynical witticism with which Elspeth would have greeted that comment.
‘We were married less than six months later. Look.’ She picked up the photograph I’d put down on the coffee table and summoned me to study it with her. ‘Such a beautiful dress; and my bouquet – a mass of Easter roses, with …’ She listed, largely from memory now the detail was faded, the various additional flowers that had gone into its creation.
‘Father looks pretty good too.’
The irony was lost on her. ‘Yes he does, doesn’t he. Such a handsome man. And so much more mature than some of the boys I’d been out with. All my friends envied me.’
‘So when,’ her determination as she turned her attention back from the memories was irrepressible, ‘are you bringing this Andrew to meet me?’
‘Mother.’ Exasperated. ‘If you’re anticipating wedding bells, forget it. I’m not thinking in those terms – about him or anyone else. Marriage isn’t the be-all and end-all.’
She looked affronted. ‘Marriage is everything, and you’d do well to remember that. Why,’ she demanded, ‘do you think I put up with—’ She broke off.
I held my tongue, waited.
‘I’d made my marriage vows. In church,’ she added self-righteously.
And he his, I thought.
‘If your father bent them a little …’ She began to look flustered. ‘Men have different needs …’
I let her escape; passed the TV Times, flicked on the set. ‘I think I might go for a walk,’ I said.
Three houses down, I was waylaid by Mrs Mackenzie. Mother was doing fine, I assured her. Yes, if she could ‘pop in’ now and then, Mother would certainly appreciate it. ‘And I’d be very grateful.’
I wandered on, debating at the end of the road whether to turn left or right. Head in the direction of the call box, ring Andrew? But there was no point; I could speak to him tomorrow.
In the end I walked up to the recreation ground and leaned on the railings, watching children on the slides. It was here that I’d come a cropper from my bike. I recalled recounting the incident to Flora, and her response. Well now it was indeed a different wound receiving an airing; but how to get the grit out of it when I could do no more than sense the irritants still chafing under the skin?
Andrew was as good as his word and found a reason – or at least an excuse – to come up to London for an evening.
‘I’ve told my secretary I have to look something up at the Law Library tomorrow morning,’ he said.
‘And have you?’
‘No.’
I giggled and snuggled up to him on the sofa.
He looked indulgently down at my upturned face. ‘Difficult, at this moment, to imagine you commanding your troops at the boardroom table.’
‘Not quite the boardroom.’
‘Whatever.’
‘I change character with my clothes,’ I offered.
Andrew leaned away from me, considering my about-town-girl’s casual, but well-cut, leggings and expensive silk shirt, in favour of which I’d discarded my daytime suit.
‘No party frock; no Alice band,’ he teased.
I pummelled him playfully.
He caught my wrists. ‘How about a thoroughly adult kiss …’
He got his breath back before I did. ‘So how is Mother?’
Firing on all cylinders, I remembered. ‘She’s fine. That is to say, managing. Has a good moan about the home help every time I ring, of
course: missed a bit of dust here, muddled the magazines, left a smear on the silver. You know.’
‘Not really.’ He was amused.
‘Had a go at me over the weekend about being so undomesticated.’
Andrew looked around him. ‘I wouldn’t say that.’
‘We’re talking about her standards,’ I said.
He eased himself against the cushions. ‘But you get on well with her?’
I hesitated. ‘I used to,’ I said cautiously.
Had Andrew picked up the disconcerting habit of saying nothing at moments like these from Flora, or was it his lawyer’s training?
‘She’s changed, though,’ I volunteered eventually. ‘Or maybe I have. Since Father died. Since I got to know Flora. I don’t know –’ I waved the subject away – ‘we just don’t see eye to eye in the same way any more.’
If I thought, even so, that Mother would have the sense, or at least the restraint, to leave the subject of my ‘extra-mural’ activities alone, I was wrong.
The second weekend started off well enough. Balanced on her crutches, she was watching for me at the window as, after what seemed a particularly short respite, I turned into the driveway. I waved, pulled on the handbrake and disgorged myself. Smiling, I held up my house key – no need for her to bother hobbling to the door to open it.
‘The kettle’s just boiled,’ she announced as I greeted her in the sitting room.
I dumped my bag on the floor, then, seeing her expression, picked it up again to take it back into the hall.
‘I’d rather have a drink,’ I said. ‘The traffic—’
‘There’s only sherry.’
‘That’ll do fine.’
She did most of the talking that evening. I marvelled at the fact that, housebound as she had been, she nonetheless found so much to relate. Patiently I sat through discourses on Mrs Mackenzie’s nephew’s difficulty in selling his house, on an upset between the vicar and someone I made the mistake of owning to not recalling – ‘Yes of course you know who I mean, they live at … she had a son who …’ – and on what the world was coming to when young lads break into the newsagent’s in the High Street and rifle the till. It was, if I were honest with myself, not so very different from the village chatter I found so absorbing at Cotterly.
