All the Daughters

by Penny Freedman

  ‘So, when did you have the fall?’ I ask, bewildered.

  ‘Oh, a couple of days ago. Tuesday.’

  I am furious. Furious. I am a dutiful only daughter: I ring my mother twice a week without fail, I take an interest in her well-being, I worry about her. I know her determination to be independent is a good thing; I know she was a doctor and doesn’t react to illness and injury quite like the rest of the population does, but all the same – to wait for two whole days before she thinks to let me know? Keeping my voice admirably even, I say, ‘I wish you’d let me know sooner, Mother.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I could have been with you.’

  ‘And what use would you have been? You weren’t planning to insert the intramedullary nail for me, were you?’

  I breathe deeply. ‘No,’ I say carefully, ‘but I could have brought you grapes and books and a clean nightdress, just like other daughters do.’

  ‘Well, that’s why I’m calling now. I could do with some things from my flat.’

  I perform a rapid mental scroll through my timetable for the day and say, ‘I’ll come up this afternoon. I haven’t any teaching after twelve. I’ve got tutorials this afternoon but I’ll rearrange them. Where are you?’

  ‘The Nuffield, Dulwich.’

  ‘Private?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good Lord!’

  There is a silence. Then she says, ‘Ring me when you get to the flat and I’ll tell you what I need,’ and rings off.

  As I’m leaving my office just after midday, I pick up my mobile and realise that I have two missed calls – both, it turns out, from Ellie. I hope she’s not having another bad day. I decide I’ll ring her from the train during her lunch break and set off for the station.

  It’s fifty miles from Marlbury to London and the train takes a good hour. It’s dirty and smelly but the view from the window is good: September sunlight spreading its blessing on fields and trees. I get out my phone to ring Ellie but am alerted by disapproving looks to the sign that tells me this is a quiet carriage, so I send her a cheery text, switch my phone to silent and abandon myself to thought. I think about my mother. The truth is, she has never been able to see the point of me really. Her job was all-absorbing to her and all she expected of me was that I should be as little trouble as possible. If I’d wanted to follow in her footsteps and become a doctor myself, I suppose she might have been pleased and proud. As it is, I don’t think she has ever been proud of me. But this is all old stuff and I have dealt with it, as the therapists say. What really worries me, the thought that lodges in me like severe indigestion, is that she won’t be able to go back to her flat when she gets out of hospital and I shall have to ask her to come and stay with me. Neither of us will want this – my mother will fight it furiously – but I suspect that there is no alternative. Four generations of Sidwell females living under the same roof; the prospect terrifies.

  I grew up in South London and during my early married life in Marlbury I used to play the city slicker, mocking Marlbury’s provincialism. I’m not a Londoner any more, though. I feel a complete bumpkin as I step off the train into the clamour, the vigour, the sheer force of London. I steel myself to take the underground to get to my mother’s flat in Clapham and follow her instructions about what to bring: clean nightie, reading glasses, sudoku puzzles, garden diary, chocolate digestive biscuits. Then, because I have no idea where to find The Nuffield Hospital in Dulwich, I take a cab.

  The cab driver wants to talk about immigrants. Don’t they always? The only surprising thing this time is that he’s black. He wants to have a go about the Muslims, of course. I’m usually up for a good argument but I haven’t the heart for it today, and even if I had the heart, I’d have difficulty engaging with the soggy incoherence of my driver’s discourse. His target is “Them” – that much is clear –and They seem to encompass anything from al-Qaeda to kebab shop owners. Even President Obama gets a look in. I gaze fixedly out of the window, volunteering ambiguous murmurs only when challenged with a direct question. I am delighted when we draw up outside the Nuffield Hospital.

  The hospital has an imposing stuccoed front and a flight of white steps up to glossy doors. The reception area inside is like a hotel foyer, and a smiling receptionist welcomes me in. I feel a sharp pang of regret for those snappy women who man the reception desks in NHS hospitals. They are neither helpful nor friendly, but I like their air of irritation, the implication that you are probably wasting everyone’s time and they have really sick people to worry about. It has always comforted me; all the time they treat me and mine as malingerers, I reason, we can’t really be ill, can we? The woman facing me now, though, is only too eager to help, so I approach and say, ‘I’m here to see Dr Sidwell.’

  A frown forms between her nicely plucked eyebrows.

  ‘Dr Sidwell? No, I’m afraid we don’t –‘

  I spot the problem. ‘She’s a patient,’ I say.

  Relief irons out the frown and she gives me directions. As I trail off down a corridor, I’m struck by the absence of that all-pervading hospital disinfectant smell. They must keep the place clean, obviously. Is there some special, expensive, odourless disinfectant designed for exclusive use in places like this? When I find my mother’s room, with its little card saying Dr Jean Sidwell, I tap lightly on the door and go in. My mother is sitting in a chair by the bed, listening to the radio and looking out of the window at the little courtyard outside, so I’m able to take a look at her before she sees me. She looks small and old and her face, unguarded as it is, is yellowish and etched with pain. What did I expect? Was I actually taken in by her brisk tones on the phone? She’s eighty-seven years old, for God’s sake, and she’s just suffered a serious injury. All my life people have told me that my mother is a wonder, but she is not, after all, indestructible.

  I should say something warm and kind and comforting, but instead I hear myself say, ‘This is very posh. What made you give up on the NHS after all these years?’

  I see her mouth purse itself into an irritated little smile before she says, ‘Have you seen the MRSA and C difficile stats for London hospitals? I decided that’s not the death I’d choose. Do you think I should have risked it?’

  Good start, Gina. Thirty seconds in the room and you’ve already started a row. ‘Sorry, sorry!’ I say, hands up in surrender, and I unload onto the bed the things I have brought from her flat. ‘I’ve brought you some grapes, too,’ I say, and go through to her en suite bathroom to wash them, giving myself a moment to recover.

  ‘How very conventional,’ she calls through to me. ‘Not like you at all.’

  ‘There’s a time for conventions,’ I retort. ‘Cards at Christmas, cakes on birthdays, champagne at weddings, grapes in hospital.’

  At this point a nurse appears with a tray of tea and runs off to get another cup for me. As we sip, I ask, ‘So, how are you? Give me the latest bulletin.’

  ‘As well as can be expected,’ she says. ‘Temperature normal, BP up slightly, pain manageable, appetite good. And I walked a few steps with a frame this morning.’

  ‘That’s a bit soon, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not if I want to avoid a thrombosis.’

  We drink our tea in silence until I gird my loins for the fray and ask, ‘Have you any idea when you’ll be able to leave?’

  ‘Early next week. I’ve booked myself a few days at Hapworth Hall – it’s a convalescent place in Surrey – just to get back on my feet, and then I shall be ready to go home.’

  I take the plunge. ‘Come and stay with us,’ I offer, with all the conviction I can muster. ‘You shouldn’t be on your own when you’re still wobbly on your feet. We’d love to have you.’

  She snorts. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Virginia. You’ve got a house full as it is. Annie, Ellie, Freda. Where are you going to put me?’

  ‘Annie will be off to Oxford the weekend after next. The timing’s perfect. As she goes, you arrive.’

  ‘Well, it’s no good
putting me in Annie’s room. I shan’t be up to stairs. I’ll be much better off in my flat.’

  ‘I have thought of that, Mother. I’m not completely stupid. I can make the dining room into very comfortable room for you. Since the girls stopped learning the piano and I stopped giving dinner parties, it only gets used at Christmas. It’s got French doors to the garden and it’s near the downstairs loo. Couldn’t be better.’

  I am almost convincing myself but she is mustering counter-arguments. ‘What am I going to do all day? You’ll all be out at work.’

  ‘You can do whatever you do at home.’

  ‘I can’t garden.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be able to garden anyway! And you’ll have company in the evenings.’

  ‘That would be a mixed blessing. We don’t have the same taste in television. I can’t share your devotion to fiction.’

  ‘You can see Freda, though. You’ll like that.’

  I have caught her unawares and her face changes before my eyes: all its hard edges dissolve into a smile that can only be called beatific. ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘I’d like that.’

  She was an indifferent mother and a half-hearted grandmother, but her devotion to her great-granddaughter never ceases to astonish me. I’ve got her then, I think miserably. She’ll come. I’ve won. A pyrrhic victory if ever there was one.

  I know better than to press home my advantage now and I’m casting around for a new topic when I’m rescued by a nurse, who bustles in to check her blood pressure and temperature, write things on a chart, give her a couple of pills and tell her she’s doing very well but it’s time to hop back into bed in a tone more patronising than I would ever dare to use to her. My mother accepts all these attentions graciously, however, and settles back into bed with evident relief.

  ‘Would you like me to go?’ I ask. ‘Do you want to sleep?’

  She rouses herself. ‘No, no. Tell me about the girls. How is Annie feeling about going up to Oxford?’

  ‘It’s hard to say. I hardly see her. She’s on a non-stop round of farewell parties in the evenings and goes shopping for clothes during the day. Andrew is so cock-a-hoop about her going to Oxford – and not just going to Oxford but doing law at Oriel, just like him – he seems to have handed over his credit card to her.’

  Andrew, I should explain, is my long-divorced husband: human rights lawyer, scourge of the over-mighty state around the world, dysfunctional husband and father. He was never what you’d call a hands-on parent when we were married and his attentions to his daughters were sporadic at best after we parted, but since Annie got a place at Oriel, they’ve become inseparable. And I’m as sour as hell about it.

  ‘And you’re out of the loop, as they say,’ my mother comments wryly.

  ‘Oh, completely. I’m the doubting Thomas, the one who didn’t think she could get in and didn’t think she’d be happy there if she did. Mind you, I could still be proved right about that,’ I mutter darkly.

  ‘And Ellie? How is she finding teaching?’

  ‘Challenging, I would say, but I think she’ll survive.’

  ‘And Freda?’

  ‘Freda’s fine. She loves the day nursery and is talking her head off. You’ll notice a big difference since the last time you saw her.’

  She doesn’t argue. It’s a fait accompli. I take my leave.

  I hit the rush hour on my homeward train and spend the journey pinned into a corner by the obese man who shares my seat. I rummage in my bag for my phone as we’re leaving London, intending to let the girls know where I am, and find I have missed five calls while the phone has been set to silent. When I ring home, Annie’s outraged tones assault my ear.

  ‘Where are you? Where have you been all day? Ellie’s kept ringing you and so have I. When are you going to be home? I’m having to cope with everything here.’

  ‘Why? What’s happened? Where’s Ellie? Is Freda all right?’

  ‘Freda’s all right. I’ve given her tea and everything. It’s Ellie. It’s horrendous, Ma. A girl from her class has been killed and the police think it’s Ellie’s fault.’

  ‘Annie, for God’s sake. Stop over-dramatising and tell me what’s happened. Better still, put me on to Ellie.’

  I hear a muffled conversation and Annie is back on the line. ‘She doesn’t feel up to talking now. She says she’ll tell you everything when you get home. How long will you be? Why aren’t you at work?’

  ‘I’m on a train back from London. Granny’s in hospital.’

  ‘Oh God!’ Annie’s voice is a dramatic wail. ‘What’s happened? She’s not going to die is she? I can’t cope with all this!’

  ‘Annie,’ I say through gritted teeth, uncomfortably aware that about twelve people are now taking an unashamed interest in the drama of my family life, ‘get a grip. Granny is fine. She had a fall, that’s all. Now cut the drama queen act and tell me, calmly, what happened to this girl at school and how it involves Ellie. Was it an accident in a drama class?’

  ‘No. She fell down the stairs.’

  ‘At school?’

  ‘No, at home. Yesterday.’

  I draw breath in a huge gulp of relief. At home, yesterday. Nothing to do with Ellie then. Now I’m furious. ‘So why the hell did you tell me the police think it’s Ellie’s fault? Honestly, Annie, why do you have to talk such nonsense? You’ll say anything for dramatic effect, won’t you? You’re so irresponsible. Why don’t you grow up?’

  My fellow-passengers are riveted by this, of course, but I don’t care. There is a silence at Annie’s end and then I hear her voice again, quite changed: she is no longer the hysterical teenager but the fledgling lawyer. ‘I think you’ll find, Mother,’ she says, ‘that I’m not talking nonsense. Ellie was questioned for an hour by two police officers this morning and they say they’ll want to talk to her again. And the headmaster’s sent her home. She tried to ring you but you weren’t answering, so I’ve been taking care of her. Now, perhaps you wouldn’t mind answering my question and telling me what time you expect to be home.’

  I get home at six-thirty, taking a taxi from the station to hasten my arrival. Annie is hovering on the doorstep with Freda in her arms as the taxi draws up. ‘I have to go,’ she hisses. ‘I’m late. I should have been at Monks half an hour ago.’ Monks is the smart wine bar in town and it’s not a place you can go to with toddler dribble on your cashmere jumper. I receive Freda and dismiss Annie to her pleasures.

  In the sitting room, Ellie is lying on the sofa looking flushed and swollen-eyed. A bottle of rather good whisky is sitting on the coffee table alongside two empty glasses – Annie’s remedy for shock, presumably. Freda struggles to climb on top of her mother, so I distract her by giving her my briefcase to empty while I kneel down by the sofa to talk to Ellie.

  ‘Oh, Ma,’ she whispers, ‘It’s Marina.’

  ‘Marina?’

  ‘She’s dead.’

  ‘No!’ We stare at each other and I can feel the tears welling up in my eyes, mirroring hers.

  ‘How? Annie said a fall down the stairs. Was that it?’

  She nods, a picture of misery. ‘Yesterday, when she got home. Her mother wasn’t there after all and it’s my fault because I let her go home. You’re supposed to ring before you send them home and I didn’t read the thing and I’ll never forgive myself.’

  I give her a hug and let her weep and tell her it’s not her fault and she’s not to blame herself, and that I’m sure it will turn out to have been just a terrible accident, but she struggles out of my arms and shouts, ‘No! It won’t. It won’t, Ma. They told me – the police – they told me they think someone pushed her down the stairs. They think it was kids from school – the ones who were bullying her – and I knew she was being bullied and all I did was pass the buck.’

  I stare at her. ‘Oh, Ellie,’ I whisper.

  She stares back at me. ‘It’s the worst thing,’ she says.

  ‘Yes, it is. Tell me everything,’ I say.

  She knows no more about the d
eath itself than she has already told me, but I hear about the sarky woman detective who went on and on at her about the regulations; I hear about DCI Scott, who was nicer but very serious; I hear about Tom Urquhart, who sat in on the police interview but didn’t stick up for her and then, she thinks but isn’t sure, suspended her.

  ‘So what did he say, exactly?

  ‘He just told me to go home.’

  ‘What were his exact words?’

  ‘Oh Ma, you always ask that!’

  ‘I’m an English teacher, Ellie. Words are my thing. It makes a difference what words people use.’

  ‘Well, I don’t remember exactly what he said. I think he said something like, “In the circumstances, I think you’d better have some time off. I’ll arrange for someone to take over your classes.”

  Well, that doesn’t sound good, and my encouraging words sound feeble even to my own ears. ‘Maybe he could see that you were in no fit state for a day’s teaching and needed time to recover. Perhaps he was being kind.’

  ‘No, he wasn’t. You do words, I do tone of voice. His was a pissed-off,you’ve-screwed-up-big-time-and-don’t-think-because-I’ve-known-you-since-you-were-a-little-girl-you-can-expect-special-treatment tone.’

  ‘It still doesn’t mean he was suspending you.’

  ‘I don’t know what it means. I don’t know whether I’m supposed to go into work tomorrow or not.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think you’ll be in a fit state to go in tomorrow anyway. Look at you. You’ve had a terrible shock. A day off wouldn’t hurt.’

  ‘But I have to know what’s happening.’

  ‘Well, there’s a simple answer to that. I’ve got Tom’s home number. Give him a ring and find out.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she wails, tears spurting again. She wipes them away with the soggy ball of tissues in her hand. ‘I just can’t. I shall start blubbing, I know I will.’

  ‘Do you want me to ring him?’