Meadowland

by Alison Giles

  It was Nan.

  ‘The warden called … they found her in her chair … she’d been taking an afternoon nap … just slipped away, he said …’

  ‘Oh Mother, I’m so sorry’

  And within moments, as the news sank in, guilty too. It was ages since I’d last been to visit my grandmother. Usually I’d driven over with Mother every two or three months or so; taken Nan a box of sweets, tucked her shawl round her shoulders and listened with only half an ear to her ramblings while congratulating myself with the other half of my mind on a duty patiently performed. I winced. But even that had been better than forgetting her entirely as I had done this summer.

  ‘It’s such a shock,’ Mother was saying. ‘Such a shock.’

  I calmed her as best I could. I checked the time. Realistically it made no sense to rush down now. ‘I’ll come over straight from work tomorrow,’ I promised.

  I did, and found Leah there; though on the point of departure.

  ‘I think we’ve sorted out most things,’ she said.

  I went with her to the door.

  ‘Your mother’s taking it very hard,’ she whispered.

  I nodded. ‘And what about you? Are you all right?’

  ‘Maybe I’m more pragmatic. It was bound to happen sooner or later. And anyway, I’ve got Harold.’

  After she’d gone, I shut the door and leaned against it. So true, what Leah had said. Dammit, why wasn’t Father here to bear the brunt? Why did I always have to cope? And I wasn’t just talking about now. I glared up at the ceiling, mentally piercing it to the ether above. ‘Huh,’ I said, directing my remarks there. ‘Whatever happened to perfect parents?’

  You’d have thought my grandmother had been one, the way Mother talked about her. I listened, and forbore to remind her of the many moans I’d heard over the years. But then, I supposed, one does prefer to remember only the good things. To hear Mother speak of Father these days you’d think he’d been a saint. Come to think of it – Mother’s monologue allowed plenty of opportunity for my thoughts to wander – hadn’t I been doing much the same thing where he was concerned? Was it hypocrisy or charity? Maybe just self-protection.

  And which, or what combination of the three, was Mother displaying now in conveniently forgetting her fury with me? ‘She doesn’t want to lose you,’ Leah had said. Any more, I conceded, than, whatever her faults, I wanted to lose her. Any more, it suddenly hit me, than she wanted to lose her mother. And she just had. I shifted closer on the sofa and put an arm round her. ‘I’ll make you some cocoa,’ I said.

  There’s something oddly unreal about funerals, I assessed as, early the following week, I steadied my mother into the front pew and took my place beside her. On her far side, Harold had brought himself stiffly to attention while Leah and Elspeth fidgeted with bags and gloves, uncertain whether to put them down or hold on to them. Mother stared straight ahead.

  That sense of time standing still while the rituals are performed seemed even more pronounced on this occasion than it had done at Father’s funeral. Then the church had been packed and the black, grey and brown winter coats pressing behind me had somehow absorbed the vaulted echoes.

  But there was only a handful of mourners for Nan. Mother had insisted on ‘seeing her off’ from home, and I’d spent the weekend with my sleeves rolled up in the kitchen helping prepare refreshments.

  Who for, I wondered now, as the vicar strove to personalise the traditional phrases. Only one carload of the more mobile of her fellow residents had felt up to making the journey across London and out through the south-western suburbs. The numbers, such as they were, had been made up by various of Mother’s acquaintances attending in a gesture of support.

  It was a sad little ceremony, I thought as we trailed up to the crematorium and stood again in solemn, unnerving silence as the final farewells were intoned. Outside, afterwards, Mother and Leah were led off to choose a spot for the ashes to be scattered. Elspeth and I stood to one side as Harold led the perusal of cards on the laid-out wreaths.

  ‘I hate these places,’ said Elspeth.

  ‘Can’t say I’m too keen on them myself.’

  I stared across the Garden of Remembrance to where our mothers were paused beneath a lilac tree. Mother was using her stick, still kept to hand for less steady moments, as a pointer.

  ‘Come with me?’ I whispered to Elspeth.

  She raised an eyebrow in query, but followed me.

  I skirted right and through a gap in the hedge, halting at one corner of a rectangular rose bed. ‘Father,’ I explained.

  Elspeth’s arm slid round me; she tipped her head briefly against my shoulder. I stared upwards. And suddenly I felt tall; reassuringly tall.

  Back at the house, when all but family had departed, Elspeth and I excused ourselves to clear up in the kitchen.

  ‘Glad that’s over,’ observed Elspeth, tearing off a length of cling-film to wrap left-overs.

  I collected glasses on to the draining board and turned on the tap. ‘How long are you staying down?’

  ‘A couple more days, I expect. I have to admit,’ she confessed in a tone of self-mockery, ‘there’s a lot to be said for checking out home comforts once in a while. I suppose my parents aren’t such bad old sticks when it comes to the point.’

  I let the acknowledgement pass. ‘And how’s Perry?’

  We brought each other up to date on our love lives.

  ‘So is your mother reconciled to Andrew yet?’

  ‘Hardly. There’s a mutual stand-off on the subject.’ I sighed. ‘The Flora connection just makes the whole situation impossible.’

  Elspeth polished a glass thoughtfully. ‘I suppose there isn’t any more to it than that?’

  ‘Like what?’

  She shrugged. ‘Like being afraid any man’s going to take you away from her; turn you against her.’

  I dunked a glass; watched the bubbles rise, one or two of them escaping and floating up over my wrists. I was in the garden again with Father, Mother standing in the doorway. And I was on the stairs with Mother glaring up at me. ‘You never loved me,’ I heard her say.

  Elspeth’s words continued to hang in the air – Mother’s fears; fears which were in danger of proving self-fulfilling. Forced, as I’d seen it, into choosing between her and Andrew – and Flora, Cotterly, everything – I had chosen Father’s world. This time. Last time she had been in control. Kept me away from my father – turned me against him. And, yes, I was afraid – had been afraid – she’d do something similar where Andrew was concerned. Not that, contrarily a good wedding wouldn’t delight her. But then what? Whoever I were to marry. Would she and I be back in competition – but this time for my man?

  ‘She really doesn’t realise, does she,’ I said, ‘that you can love people in different ways, that there’s room for all? It’s as though if she hasn’t got your undivided love, attention, loyalty, she’s got nothing.

  ‘And she can’t see,’ I carried on musing as Elspeth inspected a smudge and rubbed at it with the teatowel, ‘that her demands are eventually so constraining that people burst away. My father; now me. Why –’ my voice rose with the frustration of incomprehension – ‘is she like that?’

  Elspeth lined up the glass she’d dried next to the others. ‘Insecurity, I guess.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Upbringing? With all due respect to the recently departed … you have to admit Nan was something of an embittered old harridan.’

  I frowned. ‘Bit of an exaggeration, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, a permanent whiner, anyway. Hardly an all-loving mother.’

  I acknowledged it.

  ‘And of course neither of them ever knew their father. Not to remember him, that is.’

  The reminder jolted me. No wonder … Seeing me with Dad must have recalled for Mother what she’d missed. Not that that was my fault, but still …

  ‘But Leah … your mother; she’s not like that.’

  ‘She might be; if she didn’t h
ave Dad.’

  As if cued by the mention, Uncle Harold appeared. It was time, he apologised, they were leaving.

  Mother and I stood by the porch as they climbed into the car. Elspeth held the door for Leah; smiled; exchanged a cheerful comment with her father. The threesome departed.

  ‘And I suppose you’ll be wanting to be off soon?’ said Mother, as we turned to go back inside. She looked, I thought, more weary than hard-done-by.

  On the spur of the moment I reconsidered my plans. ‘I could stay and go up first thing in the morning,’ I suggested.

  The lines around her eyes eased the merest fraction. ‘That would be nice,’ she said, as though – was I imagining it? – she had decided to stop, or perhaps was too tired to carry on, fighting me.

  While she went up to have a bath – ‘Good idea,’ I’d agreed – I curled up in Father’s Minty armchair, just as I used to as a teenager: shoes kicked off, feet tucked up under me. Above, I heard water running, then stop. Somewhere in the system, residual gurgles protested feebly. I’d been aware of them that night Mother was in hospital and I’d been here on my own. I was glad I’d decided to stay and keep her company this evening – now wasn’t the moment to leave her with her loneliness.

  I was, I realised, all she’d got left – apart from Leah. And I saw again, perhaps with Mother’s eyes, that image of her sister, with her husband and daughter, driving away.

  I stirred myself. By the time she came down, I had everything ready to whip up an omelette. She was grateful.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ I ventured after we’d eaten.

  She gave a wan smile; shrugged.

  ‘It’s been a tough year, hasn’t it?’ I knew I was referring not only to my father’s death, and now her mother’s, but to my own behaviour.

  ‘I’ll survive.’ She sounded resigned rather than belligerent.

  She would too, of course. Hadn’t she always? ‘She’s well able to look after herself,’ Harold had said.

  Yes, but at what cost? And how well in the overall scheme of things? Strange that she hadn’t fought harder against Flora.

  Why had she settled, almost complacently, for the appearance only of marriage? Had there been some other compensation – over and above the one Elspeth had, some months ago, so bluntly identified, and which even Andrew had acknowledged?

  I baulked at the direction in which my deductions were driving me. Surely – but even as the thought took shape I recognised it, inescapably, for the truth – she couldn’t have welcomed the opportunity Flora afforded to sour my feelings for my father. Subtly, with her uncomplaining martyrdom. Better, had she decided, to lose him than – as her irrational jealousy must have persuaded her – to lose us both? To each other. And how much greater must her fear of being sidelined by the pair of us have become as I grew older? Hadn’t the thought crossed my mind – I recalled the occasion: here, alone, rousing myself in my sprigged bedroom upstairs – that Mother maybe preferred him to find the companionship, the intellectual rapport I might have offered, with Flora than with me? That way at least, in her tattered perception, she retained the means to hold on to me, to exact my loyalty.

  Maybe, in the years before he turned to Flora, she had been paving the way – by the withdrawal, to whatever extent that was, of bedroom intimacies – for his departure, emotionally, from the family scene. Or had that withdrawal been, in itself, a cry of protest at having to share his affection with me; a cry which Father had presumably failed to recognise or, if he had, had been either unable or unwilling to respond to? In which case, Elspeth’s version of Mother’s attitude to such closeness was over-simplified to the point of misconstruction.

  Who was to say? And looking at Mother now – exhausted, defeated even – I doubted if even she, were she of a mind to explore her motivations, could unravel them. Moreover – I continued to study her, leaning back in her chair, eyes half-closed, her hands for once idle in her lap – whatever she’d done to me, I couldn’t believe she’d consciously intended me any hurt. Any more than Father – or indeed Flora – had. Though they, at least, had been aware of it. Whether that was a plus or a minus on their account I was none too sure.

  Mother was still motionless. What good would it do, I reflected, to confront her? In the name of survival, she too had lost out. Perhaps the most.

  ‘Coffee?’ I suggested quietly.

  Mother opened her eyes. ‘That would be lovely.’

  The strip-lighting in the kitchen buzzed as I switched it on. Its fluorescent glare accentuated the gleam on the work surfaces and cupboard doors. Impossible not to compare the harsh reflections with the softness of wood and glow of lamps of Flora’s kitchen; or even with Ginny’s where the modern units were at least mellowed by the clutter of living. I found myself wondering how Andrew would design his at Lucke Cottage. Would he invite me to take a hand? Did I hope he would?

  I reached for cups and coffee. Maybe, though I had dismissed the idea of confronting Mother with the past, it was time to face her with the future. Now; before she retreated behind those hostile barriers again. Flora had become an unassailable part of my life. If Mother could accept that – however unwillingly – she could accept Andrew. Only one way to find out if she was prepared to do so.

  I carried the tray through, passed Mother the milk, added my own, and sat back against the firmness of the upholstery.

  ‘Next weekend …’ I said as she sipped.

  ‘Your birthday.’

  I nodded. ‘Andrew’s coming up to London on Friday evening.’

  We’d arranged it over the phone. A crowd of us, at Clare’s suggestion, were planning an evening out to celebrate: a drink, a meal, maybe go on somewhere afterwards. ‘And we all pay for ourselves,’ I’d explained firmly to Andrew. He’d laughed. ‘Whatever you say, ma’am.’

  ‘I was just wondering,’ I said now to Mother. ‘We’ll be driving down to Cotterly on Saturday.’ I decided not to mention that Flora had promised to make a cake, and Ginny to ice it. ‘We – Andrew and I – could call in on the way.’

  I lifted my chin and gave her a straight look. ‘I’d like you to meet him,’ I said.

  Her mouth pursed into a tight line, her eyes focusing somewhere behind my head. ‘I wouldn’t want you to—’

  ‘Mother …’ I warned.

  There was a pause while she steadied her cup in its saucer. Then: ‘I’ll rustle up some scones,’ she said.

  CHAPTER 25

  If any apprehension about the meeting had tinged my overall comfortableness at a decision well made, it needn’t have done.

  Andrew greeted the proposal equably, and we drew up in front of the house, on the Saturday morning of my birthday, only a minute or two after the pre-arranged ten-thirty. Mother, dressed up for the occasion, opened the door before we reached it.

  Over the promised scones, she exuded charm – so much so that I began to wonder whether Andrew was withstanding it. But as she turned to lift the coffee jug, he winked at me. Reassured, I hid my smile in my cup. Later, in amusement, I watched her dimple prettily as, on our departure, he kissed her proffered cheek.

  We waved out of the car window as we reached the end of the Avenue. Once round the corner, Andrew allowed his face to crinkle. ‘So much for the dragon I was expecting,’ he said. ‘You could have warned me I was to be introduced to a good old-fashioned flirt.’

  I supposed she was. Hadn’t I seen it in her fluttering helplessness recently with Jack Webb? ‘You seem to have handled her without too much difficulty,’ I remarked.

  He laughed, and I settled back, enjoying the novelty of being driven along this particular route.

  ‘So where’s that present she gave you?’ Andrew interrupted the daydreaming into which I’d happily drifted. ‘Let’s have another look at it.’

  I reached into my bag and took out the slim box. I eased off the lid and held up the gold necklace for Andrew to glance across at.

  He gave a nod of approval.

  ‘It matches that bracelet,’
Mother had pointed out unnecessarily as I’d unwrapped it and recognised the etching on its links. The bracelet Father had chosen and Mother had considered, granted at the time, to be too sophisticated for me. Was there some acknowledgement which even she was unaware of in her selection today of its companion? The hug of thanks I’d given her had been for more than the delicate gift itself.

  ‘And what,’ I teased Andrew now, ‘have you got for me?’

  He turned back from checking over his shoulder as we joined the motorway. ‘You could try the glove compartment for a start,’ he said.

  I clicked it open and pulled out a roughly wrapped parcel. I explored its feel – something soft, but with a hard circular object, a box perhaps, beneath.

  ‘Go on, then. Open up.’ The corners of his eyes and mouth twitched in amused anticipation.

  I folded back the paper to reveal a yellow duster. ‘What the …?’ From within it I unearthed a jar of polish.

  ‘For the sundial,’ he explained with a sideways grin.

  I laughed. ‘Does that mean …?’

  He confirmed it was just a matter of tying up the paperwork. I leaned back contentedly, closing my eyes. ‘And what else,’ I asked, ‘might you have in store for me?’

  I felt his hand against my cheek, lingering there for a moment. I put up my own and brushed it briefly against his. ‘You’ll just have to wait and see,’ I heard him promise.

  I smiled. ‘By the way,’ I said, the light shimmering through my eyelids, ‘do you think the boys would like my father’s old fishing rods?’

  Later, as we crested the rise above Cotterly, I turned to Andrew. ‘Pull in for a moment, will you?’

  He drew on to the rough and looked at me enquiringly.

  The track stretched to my left. ‘I’d like to walk along to the meadow,’ I said. ‘No …’ I put out a restraining hand as he made to turn off the engine. ‘On my own. If you don’t mind.’

  I checked my watch. It was just gone one. ‘Why don’t you go ahead; round up the others? I’ll meet you all in the pub in, say, half an hour.’

  ‘If that’s what you’d like.’ He seemed neither surprised nor put out.