Motherlove

by Thorne Moore

  ‘I’m fine. Really. Never a day’s illness. I can cope with one kidney. Wouldn’t that solve everything? Wouldn’t that make her better? Having one of my kidneys?’

  He was calming her, a hand on her shoulder. ‘Even if that were the best solution for your mother, it’s not an automatic option. You might not be a suitable donor. We would have to see if your blood and tissue are a match, but first we would need to consider whether your own health would allow it.’

  ‘I told you, I’m fine.’

  ‘This type of diabetes is hereditary. Any child of a parent with MODY has a fifty per cent chance of inheriting the condition. You are, what, twenty now?’

  ‘Twenty-two.’

  ‘You should sign up with a GP, Kelly. A doctor to help you deal with any symptoms, or with any other medical complications in your life. Yes, conventional medical help, but I’m sure you can see the sense of having the option of both worlds.’

  ‘Yes. Maybe. I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Think seriously. Meanwhile, there is a simple predictive test that we can do, to establish whether you have inherited the gene from your mother. That has to be the first step.’

  The first step, so innocent. A simple blood sample, almost forgotten by the time the results came back. Roz was home, being nursed and bullied by her daughter, having good days, sometimes almost back to her old self, tramping the fields and counting lambs, talking to her herbs, serenely meditating. But having bad days too. While Roz had still been too weak and vulnerable to object, she and Kelly had signed on with the local surgery. As Kelly had explained, it didn’t mean they ever had to see a doctor unless they chose to.

  Free will. It was enough for Roz to allow Dr Matthews to call once or twice to check on her.

  The surgery notified Kelly that the results of her test were back.

  ‘I’m clear,’ she said, bursting in on her mother who was pottering gently in the kitchen. ‘No trace of your naughty genes.’

  Roz sat down heavily on the farmhouse chair, dislodging the disgruntled cat. ‘You mean – what did they say? That you and I—’

  ‘It means I haven’t got this MODY mutation. It was fifty-fifty, and I got the right fifty. Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ve passed on plenty of other nasties to me.’

  ‘I have?’

  ‘Who knows? Do you have any more nasties you haven’t told me about? Sudden baldness at forty? We’ll find out soon, won’t we.’ Kelly filled the kettle, feeling light as a feather herself, and baffled that her mother wasn’t similarly elated. ‘Anyway, this test was just for the one gene, so I may never know about the others.’

  ‘Oh.’ Roz was smiling at last. ‘And you’re clear. Oh, Kelly.’ She was up and hugging her, with a small wince of pain.

  ‘Come on, sit down again. What sort of tea do you want?’

  ‘The nettle and parsley? Kelly, I am so pleased. But I knew that you would be all right.’

  Kelly smiled. Back to normal – her mother sublimely confident again that things would sort themselves out. ‘The best thing is that maybe I can help you.’

  ‘You do help me, sweetheart. All day and every day. You help me too much.’ There were tears in Roz’s eyes as she reached out for her daughter’s hand. ‘You shouldn’t be here, stuck with me. You should be away, at college, getting that degree, making a life for yourself.’

  ‘I am making a life for myself. The life I want.’

  ‘But you don’t want to be nursing me for the rest of my life.’

  ‘Yes, but maybe I won’t need to. That’s the point. Now that I know I’m not going to get this moddy noddy thing, there’s nothing to stop me giving you one of my kidneys.’

  ‘No!’ Roz looked appalled. ‘No! I won’t hear of it.’

  ‘I’ve got two, you know, both as healthy as the rest of me. I’ll be just as good with one and if you have the other, you’ll be back to normal. See?’

  But Kelly knew that look on her mother’s face. She didn’t want Kelly to have a needless operation. The mere mention of it was filling her with an undefined fear. Kelly could feel it. She could read every fleeting nuance of her mother’s feelings; the telepathy of their lifelong closeness. ‘Surgery doesn’t kill, Mum. It’s all safe these days. You won’t lose me on the operating table.’

  ‘You can’t be sure of that.’

  ‘I am sure.’ It was important to be firm and confident when Roz’s anxieties took hold. ‘Look, nothing’s going to happen any time soon. I’m not rushing off to hospital tomorrow. But we can be prepared. They can at least do tests, to see how well our blood and tissue match. Then—’

  ‘Don’t, Kelly.’ Roz stood abruptly. She leaned on the sink, staring out of the window. ‘Don’t let them do any more tests, please.’

  ‘It would just be a simple test, Mum.’

  ‘Don’t do it, please. I don’t want to lose you.’

  ‘A test isn’t going to kill me. An operation won’t kill me. Nothing will kill me.’

  Roz turned, tears streaming down her face.

  Kelly hugged her. ‘I promise; it’s just a test to see if there’s a match.’

  Roz’s breast was rising and falling like a stormy sea. ‘What if there is no match?’

  ‘Then they can’t use my kidney, that’s all. But I’m hoping there will be a really good match.’

  ‘And if there isn’t?’

  ‘I told you.’

  Roz pulled back, covering her face with her hands. ‘I don’t want tests. I don’t want to know.’

  ‘Mum?’ Kelly took her hands, lowering them from her face. This terror wasn’t about kidneys or operations. It was something else. ‘What’s the matter? What don’t you want to know?’

  ‘I don’t want you to give me a kidney.’ Roz’s blurred eyes were wandering, looking at anything but Kelly.

  ‘No, that’s not what you meant. What don’t you want to know?’

  For a second, she could feel the great wall of resistance in her mother, straining for survival, before it crumbled like a collapsing dam.

  ‘I don’t want to know if you’re not my daughter!’

  Kelly stared at her, aghast at the terror engulfing her mother. Then she absorbed the words. ‘What do you mean? Of course I’m your daughter. Why on earth—?’

  ‘Because.’

  Roz returned to the chair. She sat, looking at her hands.

  ‘When I was in hospital, in the maternity ward with you… They put labels on all the babies. I woke up one night. There was some row going on outside the room. I went out, stopped a nurse, asked her, what was the fuss about. She told me that someone had muddled up some of the labels. On the babies. She said it was all right, I wasn’t to worry. I tried not to worry, Kelly. I tried. But I always kept wondering, what if they’d mixed up your label and given me another baby? I kept looking at you, looking into your eyes and I was so sure I knew you. But I couldn’t stop worrying. I tried to tell myself it didn’t matter. As long as I didn’t know for sure, they couldn’t take you away. I didn’t want to know. But now… If you have these tests, I’ll have to know. Don’t you see?’

  Kelly took this in, automatically tending the kettle and the tisanes and the mugs, mopping up spilt water. It explained so much – her mother’s neurotic fears for Kelly, her perpetual anxiety. A seed of terror planted in a young girl, in hospital, in a state of hormonal riot. A girl not capable of understanding that it didn’t matter.

  That was Kelly’s sole thought, without a moment of doubt; it didn’t matter. But then she was already much older than her mother had been then. More mature, less mentally chaotic.

  She waited for Roz’s eyes to focus on her. Eyes full of desperation, awaiting the executioner. Then Kelly smiled, as only she could smile. A broad beaming smile. ‘Mum. Of course you are my mother. You’ve been my mother all my life. In every way that really counts. So maybe, supposing there really had been a mix-up, someone else had a claim on me for a few hours. But you’ve been my mother for twenty-two years. Nothing can change
that. It’s all that matters. Did you think, if I found out, that I’d stop loving you?’

  Roz was looking at her like a child, waiting for reassurance. Wanting to believe.

  Then the first worm of doubt in Kelly… ‘If there was a swap, would you stop thinking of me as your daughter? Is that it? You’d want to find the other girl and claim her instead?’

  Roz shook her head. ‘No! You could never stop being my daughter. When I looked at you, when you were just a wrinkled red bawling baby, you were mine, all I wanted. But I’ve always been so scared that if you found out, you’d want to go and find her. Your real mother.’

  ‘You are my real mother. Whatever. I promise you, whatever the tests show, I am your daughter and you are, always were, always will be, my mother.’

  ii

  Vicky

  ‘I like it when they’re unconscious. So much more co-operative.’ Zoe Tyler’s laugh distintegrated for a second on the laptop screen, as the Skype connection threw a hissy fit. ‘I don’t mind getting really hands on. Not nearly as squeamish as I thought I’d be. It’s when they start talking I go to pieces.’

  Vicky Wendle smiled. ‘Maybe you should go for forensic pathology. They’ll never answer back on the autopsy slab.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that! Brill. Except I really wanted obstetrics.’

  ‘Perfect. Babies can’t talk at you.’

  ‘No, but their mothers can.’ Zoe shuddered. ‘I don’t know how you coped in oncology. Doesn’t matter what we’ve been taught, I just sound like I’m talking by rote. Mitchelson said you were a natural.’

  ‘Did he?’ Vicky knew she was far more communicative with the patients than with her lecturers and fellow students, but she hadn’t expected anyone to notice. She felt quietly flattered.

  ‘But then you’re his star, you and James “Actually My Uncle” Danvers. Drew says – oh yes, Drew’s party, Saturday, are you going? I thought, if you were—’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Vicky, slowing the words so her haste wouldn’t be too obvious. She was four years into her course, and her classmates still hadn’t cottoned on that she didn’t do parties. ‘Think Mum’s got something planned here. Look, she’s coming. Better go. Talk to you about that Harper lecture this evening?’

  The door of her tiny bedroom opened, and Vicky switched off. In every sense.

  ‘Thought you’d like a cup of tea.’ Her mother, Gillian, bustled in with a tray.

  Vicky moved her books and files from one side of her miniscule desk to make way for it. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Not studying too hard, I hope. We want to see something of you. But I suppose there’s such a lot of work for your course.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh.’ Gillian frowned at the tray. ‘I brought you biscuits. I suppose I shouldn’t have done. Shall I take them away again?’

  ‘Might as well.’

  ‘All right. Well then…’ Gillian hesitated, picked up the biscuit plate and an empty mug from the windowsill and added in a library whisper, ‘I’ll let you get on.’

  The door softly closed. Vicky sat back with a sigh and picked up her fresh tea. Zoe was right, she could sit and listen to dying cancer patients with compassionate interest and discuss their most intimate issues with calm professional concern, but she couldn’t speak to her mother about anything. Not properly. Not anymore.

  It didn’t matter. She had work to do.

  And she should collect her medication. She could do that now, walk down to the chemist’s. She needed some exercise, some air, even if it was only the air of Marley Farm.

  Downstairs in the kitchen of her former council house on the Marley Farm estate, Gillian’s mother Joan was topping up the teapot and coughing over her cigarette. Gillian watched the dangling ash about to drop off into the box of tea bags. There was absolutely no point in saying anything, but she did. ‘I wish you wouldn’t smoke in the kitchen.’

  Joan coughed again and flicked the ash, just in time, in the direction of the bin. It missed. ‘My bloody kitchen, remember? No one’s going to stop me smoking in my own home. Bloody Nazis, telling us what to do. We fought a war against that. Look at your father! And now they’re bloody telling us where we can and can’t fucking smoke.’

  Gillian wanted to argue that smoking bans and the Final Solution weren’t in the same league, but she held back, biting her tongue. ‘I just want to keep the kitchen clean.’ She wanted the house smoke-free too, but no chance with Joan there. Gillian had smoked, too, once. Long ago, before cigarettes became one of the many resolutely embraced sacrifices of her life.

  Joan watched her slip Vicky’s empty mug into the washing-up bowl and return the biscuits to the tin. ‘I suppose you’re going to be waiting on that girl hand and foot for the next month. Spoilt bloody princess, if you ask me.’

  Gillian turned on the hot tap and washed plates with concentrated vigour. Concentration on something else always helped her keep her temper. ‘I want her to be able to get on with her studies.’

  ‘A bit of proper work wouldn’t do her any harm for a change. Instead of all that messing about with books. Not what I’d call work.’

  Gillian took a deep breath. ‘Most of Vicky’s course is done in hospitals, not with books. None of it is messing about, and she works a bloody sight harder than you ever did!’

  ‘Ha! You don’t know what hard work is. Slave labour in that factory. Keeping a house, and you brats, and a crippled husband on next to nothing. And what thanks do I get? This lot today—’

  ‘Don’t know they were born,’ Gillian completed the sentence for her. Did Joan really believe a word of what she’d just said? She had spent her factory years happily slagging off the management, flirting with the overseers, skiving off down the Blocker’s Arms with her mates. A slave to housework? Gillian would come home from school to find a ten bob note thrust into her hand to buy fish and chips, while her mother, without bothering to look at her, filled in the Pools coupon. A husband crippled enough for a scant pension, disappearing each night down the dog track.

  Gillian thought of her daughter, diligently, obsessively working eighteen hours a day for her medical qualifications, and though it was pointless she had to say it. ‘Vicky is a clever dedicated girl, who is going to make something of her life, and you should be bloody proud of her.’

  Joan stubbed out her cigarette before it burned her fingers. ‘Don’t see why she’s extra special just because she’s got a few snotty exams. I’ve got seven grandchildren, and five greats. Proper ones, my own flesh and blood, not like her. Thinks she’s so smart, but when’s she going to get herself a man, eh? Not so clever in some departments, is she? I don’t suppose you give a toss about grandchildren. Wouldn’t be the same for you.’

  Gillian stared at her, a chill in her stomach, realising, as Joan spoke, that they were not alone.

  She turned her head to the kitchen door, where Vicky was standing.

  ‘Vicky, darling, I thought you were working.’

  What had she heard?

  ‘I’m going out. To the chemist.’ The girl’s voice was as emotionless as her face. Showing nothing, even when her grandmother glanced challengingly at her. ‘I’ll see you later.’

  ‘Yes. I’ll have lunch ready.’ Gillian smiled, that bright, determined false smile that she had mastered over the years. ‘Take care.’

  Vicky left. Gillian stood still, tea towel clasped to her until she heard the front door click shut. Then she turned on Joan. ‘Why can’t you shut up? Why can’t you ever bloody well shut up?’

  Joan shrugged. ‘Don’t know what all the fuss is about. Well, I can’t stand here gossiping all day. Meeting Bill at ten. You want this tea?’

  Vicky walked. The one good thing about the Marley Farm estate was that if you wanted a walk, you could walk for miles, without getting anywhere. Only five hundred yards to the chemist on the Parade, but she took the long way round. And round. Walking fast. It was good exercise. She made a point of exercising every day. It was some
thing that she could control. Drown out the past.

  Drown out Joan. Surely she had learned to do that by now? She’d thought she’d reached the stage where the old witch was invisible to her, her snide comments nothing but the faint drone of distant traffic.

  But Joan could still sting like a viper’s fangs. ‘Seven grandchildren…proper ones…my own flesh and blood, not like her.’

  Gillian always called her ‘Gran’, as if endless repetition would make it true, but Joan would never be ‘Gran’ to Vicky. She had never behaved like other people’s grans. This explained why not. Joan wasn’t really Vicky’s grandmother.

  Vicky walked. Past the half-hearted multi-storey block at the end of the Ring, through the equally half-hearted industrial estate that clustered round the link road.

  Joan had never said it outright before, but there’d been ample hints about ‘gratitude’ and ‘burden’. Snide remarks about Gillian and Terry’s inadequacies in the baby-making department. In her teens, Vicky had thought she understood. Gillian and Terry must have had trouble conceiving. They’d spent – wasted, according to Joan – all their money on fertility treatment. Vicky had assumed sperm donation, meaning Terry wasn’t her biological father. That made sort of sense. Terry had never rejected her in any way, but he never seemed to know what to do or say, to be hoping for someone to tell him. Once, when she’d asked him something, he’d reached forward and ruffled her hair. Like an experiment, to see what would happen. Then he smiled and shuffled away. It hadn’t shocked her to think that he wasn’t genetically connected to her.

  But now she realised she must have it wrong. The egg must have been donated, not the sperm. Why was that so much more disturbing? Distressing. How could it hurt her to know that Gillian wasn’t related to her? She had stopped relating to Gillian so it shouldn’t matter.

  It shouldn’t matter.

  Of course it didn’t. Vicky was an adult now; she could cope. She wasn’t a thumb-sucking infant needing maternal hugs.

  She half-marched, half-ran across the link road, through a gap between the thundering lorries, to the bridleway onto the downs. Gillian used to hold her hand when she crossed roads. A loving mother, she’d thought. She didn’t think it any more – but it didn’t matter. She couldn’t be hurt. Not by them. Not by anyone. She could look after herself.