Motherlove

by Thorne Moore

  Twenty-seven years later, when she and Terry moved back in with widowed Joan, to help buy the council house, the Marley estate had sunk into weary hopeless disrepute. Graffiti festooned the unkempt Marley Junior School, with its leaking Portakabins. On the Parade, barred windows protected seedy off-licences and video rental shops. Two houses had gone up in flames in the ’81 wave of rioting. Shady deals were done on every littered corner.

  Gillian simmered with quiet resentment about the house. Her wedding had been the most wonderful day of her life, not because she felt so beautiful or because Terry was the Romeo of her dreams, but because it meant escape from Drover’s Way and from Joan. Now she was back, and trapped once more, because they had no choice. Council accommodation was no longer being allotted except to the most desperate, and with their savings all gone and rents rising, helping Joan with the mortgage was the only way they could keep a roof over their heads. If it meant living with Joan, then she’d just have to deal with it. Somehow. It was bad enough that the address would never impress an adoption agency. Joan’s presence was a far worse blight, though Gillian had remorselessly painted it as a blessing, to anyone who’d listen.

  She turned off Drover’s Way into Ashley Close. Number 7. Sid Walker’s house. Two cars parked up on the concrete, neither of them roadworthy. Gillian automatically went round the back. Only the police entered through front doors round here.

  ‘Hello?’ she called, into the cluttered, grease-smeared kitchen.

  ‘Eh?’ Sid appeared, unshaven and bleary-eyed, in string vest, a copy of the Sun in his hand. ‘Oh, er, Gill, right.’ He leaned back to call up the stairs. ‘Joanie!’

  An irritated, gravelly reply.

  ‘Your girl’s here.’ He turned back to Gillian. ‘Best come in then. She’ll be down. Want a cuppa?’

  ‘No thanks. I’ve just had one.’ She was parched, but she wasn’t going to sit drinking tea with Sid and her mother among the detritus of last night.

  Flop, flop, down the stairs. Joan, hair on end, last night’s heavy make-up smudged, her bony frame wrapped in a flowered dressing gown. ‘Oh. It’s you. Are you going to the shops? Get us some fags, will you?’

  ‘I came to tell you we’ve had the letter. We’ve been approved.’

  ‘Approved? Approved for what?’ Joan was busy lighting her last cigarette, coughing over it. Deliberately obtuse.

  ‘Approved for adoption. Terry and me.’

  ‘Fucking hell, another bleeding brat around the house.’ Joan opened the fridge and took out a bottle of sour milk. ‘You got the kettle on then, Sid?’ No love, of course, but no outburst of irate complaint either. It was as good as Gillian was going to get.

  ‘Philip thought you’d be delighted for us.’ When had she learned sarcasm?

  ‘Oh the God Botherer, tell him before you tell your own mother, do you? But then that’s you all through. Always thinking of yourself first. Must have a baby. Never mind what anyone else wants. It’s Terry I feel sorry for.’

  Gillian took a deep breath. All her life she had been taking deep breaths. Gillian the appeaser, holding her tongue, not snarling back.

  Joan slopped tea into a mug and shuffled back towards the stairs. ‘Don’t forget the fags.’

  Sid scratched his belly. ‘Well, it’s good news, right?’ He was never going to win prizes for charm – or cleaniness or grooming or humour – but he did have a grain of humanity in him. Not the worst of the men Joan had semi-permanently shacked up with since her husband’s death.

  Gillian forced a smile. ‘Yes, it is good news. For me and Terry at least. I hope Mum will see it that way.’

  ‘Oh she’s all right,’ rumbled Sid.

  How exactly was she all right? wondered Gillian, walking home. What had Joan Summers ever done that was right?

  She had come through the interviews with Claire, came the reply. What miracle had made Joan come across as a good-humoured rough diamond of a granny, offering all the support that Gillian would need? It must have been the hand of God, because it couldn’t possibly have been intentional on Joan’s part.

  ‘My mother lives with us,’ Gillian had explained, trying to sound positive. ‘That’s not a problem, is it?’

  ‘It could be a big plus,’ Claire had assured her. ‘She’s in good health?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Gillian was able to say, quite truthfully. Not a hope in hell that some kindly plague would carry her mother off.

  ‘If you were looking after an elderly invalid, someone housebound maybe…’

  ‘Oh no, she’s fighting fit.’

  Claire had beamed. ‘That’s excellent. As long as she’s enthusiastic about an adopted baby arriving in the household, of course.’

  ‘Oh she is,’ Gillian had rushed in, almost beating Claire about the head with her assurance, as if saying it with enough conviction would make it true.

  But Claire had smiled, that official smile that always lurked behind her friendliness. ‘Well, I’ll be able to confirm that for myself when I meet her.’

  Gillian’s hopes had plummeted. Had she really thought she could get through all this without Claire meeting Joan? She was doomed.

  And then, against all the odds, the worst had been evaded. On the first visit, Joan had just won on the bingo and was in an almost generous mood. A mild mocking of her daughter’s urge to be a mother, no more. The second time, she had merely been silent. Bored probably, waiting for Claire to go. Gillian had spent three hours in advance making the house spotless, hiding the gin bottles and the cigarettes and the dozen ashtrays. Joan had pattered off in search of her fags without Claire noticing. The third…ah, of course, Claire had come with that man, Hugh someone. A man made all the difference to Joan. She had chatted and joked with him in an easy, mischievous sort of way. He’d actually been amused by her flirtation, probably thought she was the humorous spark that would lighten the household.

  Well, however it had happened, that stage of the torment was over now. Approved. Not the end. Not nearly the end. But if Gillian could only hold out, if she could only receive a child into her arms, she could prove herself as the perfect, devoted, adoring mother she knew she was destined to be. Surely there was nothing Joan could do now to spoil it?

  ii

  Heather

  Madonna and child. Some old master’s idea of perfect womanhood – smooth serene face, small smile, soft doe eyes fixed on the plump dimpled child on her knee. Heather Norris blew a raspberry at the card and opened it. From the Library. Merry Christmas from all of us, and wishing you a bumper harvest in 1990. Hell, had she remembered to send a card to her old colleagues? She could ransack the bureau, hope there were still one or two charity cards in there somewhere.

  The Madonna and child went onto the teak fire surround, between a glittery stagecoach scene, and an inflated cartoon robin. That was closer to the truth, Heather felt, easing herself onto the sofa; a big fat bird. A stuffed turkey. She’d put on weight after Bibs was born, and now she was like a barrage balloon. That serene Virgin had never suffered from swollen ankles and constipation.

  ‘Brm, brm, brm brm brm.’ Clatter, bang, scratch. Bibs came along the hallway with the plastic car they had bought him to keep his mind off the presents he wasn’t allowed to touch until Christmas Day. How much paintwork had he taken off the skirting board this time?

  ‘Bibs. Come in here, to Mummy,’ she called, too heavy, too weary to get up and go to him.

  Bang. The car hit the living room door, which swung open, sending a pile of magazines to the floor. She didn’t want to have to bend and pick them up.

  ‘Brm brm brm.’ Tousled fair hair, and a bottom in blue shorts, up in the air.

  ‘Not on my feet, Bibs!’ Why did her son think it funny to run a toy car over her toes? Giggling, he did it again.

  ‘I said no, Bibs. Do it again and I’ll take it away.’

  He looked up at her, his three-year-old face an open book – clear eyes, pursed lips parted, trying to make head or tail of those complicated adult re
sponses. A little boy now, becoming his own person, no longer the helpless unformed scrap of herself that Bibs the baby had been.

  And now she was going back to the start. Like landing on a snake and sliding back to the beginning, but this time without the novelty factor. No excited calls from relatives asking how she was doing, no aunts bombarding her with advice and horror stories, no parcels of hand-knitting. Even the midwife seemed less interested. Or maybe it was just her. She’d been there, done that, bought the t-shirt and now it was just plain boring.

  The plastic car was thumping against her toe again. Bibs pushing his luck. He caught her eye, decided against it and swivelled round on the mat, busily motoring off to the window. A very quiet ‘brm brm brm’. Had she quashed him? She didn’t mean to. She loved him, adored him, sometimes she felt something burst inside her when she looked at him. Maybe she had never looked like that picture of the Madonna and child, but she had felt it, when he was born. For nine months she had sailed through the world, so intensely conscious of him within her that she had felt enclosed in a bubble of love. She hadn’t needed him to be born to bond with him. It had happened the second the test showed she was pregnant. Or maybe even before.

  Was that why she felt so equivocal this time round, she wondered. Was she feeling sibling rivalry on Bibs’ behalf? Resenting this interloper who was waiting to come between her and her darling boy.

  Well, it would sort itself out. It would have to. She hauled herself up and went into the kitchen to make Bibs some lunch. Fish fingers and baked beans. He was going through a faddy phase and she felt she ought to be doing something about it. Give him something bright and imaginative, but weighed down and aching, she didn’t think there was much imagination in her at the moment. Certainly no brightness.

  An hour later – the kitchen strewn with the pulverised beans that Bibs had refused to eat, the boy still snivelling after their screaming match, and the living room in gloom because the light bulb had blown – Martin arrived home to find her on the sofa with a wet flannel on her brow.

  ‘Another of your heads?’

  ‘Yes.’ She peeled the flannel away and looked at the clock. ‘You’re early. What’s happened? They’re not cutting back again!’

  ‘No, still got my job.’ Martin looked in through the kitchen door. ‘Shit. Bibs not eating again?’

  ‘Yesterday he’d only eat beans. Now he won’t touch them.’

  ‘You being a bad boy then, my son?’ He had Bibs up in the air, and the child was shrieking with delight. ‘Giving your mother a hard time? Yeah!’

  Oh yes, make a joke of it. She watched the two of them disappear into the kitchen then called after them, ‘So why are you early?’

  Martin was back at the door, his mouth full of fish fingers. ‘Tie i lshiw.’

  ‘What?’

  He swallowed. ‘Time in lieu – for Boxing Day?’

  ‘I thought… Oh God, is it Christmas Eve tomorrow?’

  ‘You wanted a last minute shop, remember.’

  ‘Oh Christ, I don’t want to go shopping. I just want to go to bed.’ This time last year she had actually chosen to go into London for the day for a bout of girly retail therapy – as pleasure! This year the thought of squeezing into the local newsagent’s made her want to lie down.

  ‘Do we actually need to go?’ Martin was hopeful. ‘Are we desperately out of anything?’

  ‘Yes of course we are! Vegetables. Milk. Endless stuff.’

  ‘Okay, so we’d better go then.’ Willing to make the effort and take her, just not willing to do it for her. If he did, he’d get all the wrong things. ‘Den needs stuff, I suppose. Have you got a list for him? How was he this morning?’

  ‘Knew who I was.’ She struggled up, resentfully. ‘Still hid the housekeeping though. But at least he didn’t flush it away this time.’

  Martin chuckled. Her father had senile dementia and he could chuckle about it. But then Den wasn’t his father and he wasn’t the one having to deal with it every day. That was down to Heather, of course. Her mother had died years ago, when she was in her teens. No one to cope with Den’s funny ways except her. Like dealing with Bibs, day in day out. No bloody end to it.

  She was snarling as she pulled her coat on. Straining to do it up. What was it she was carrying? A baby elephant? Not that things would be any better in a couple more months when it was out. Weeks of screaming and sleepless nights and frayed nerves and sore tits and mopping up, and Bibs having tantrums and Den having to be rounded up and Martin’s firm hovering on the brink, and Martin being lovely to everyone because he didn’t have to lift a sodding finger. Peace and goodwill on Earth. Christmas spirit? Sod Christmas. Sod the lot of them.

  Next, the battle to get Bibs into his seat in the back of the car. Cramming herself into the front, grinding her teeth with irritation knowing that Bibs was trying to kick the back of her chair, even if she could feel nothing because he couldn’t reach. She had been dwelling on her superhuman love for her son a few hours back. Right now, she just wanted to shout.

  ‘Sainsbury’s then?’ asked Martin, edging the car out of the drive. ‘Don’t need anything in the High Street?’

  ‘If we do, we can go without.’

  Trapped in a car five sizes too small, bracing herself for every speed bump. The Hopcroft was an intricate maze of mini-roundabouts, closes and pedestrian alleys, coiling into itself on what had been farmland little more than ten years before. New-build timber-frames that had not yet warped, picture windows that had not yet let in the draught, compact porches that did not yet leak, clipped shrubs that had not yet died; the aspirational British at their surburban best. Young families, drawn by the sparkling new primary school, the closeness to the new out-of-town supermarkets, and the semi-rural Marsh Wood station for that convenient commute to London. The would-be middle class, first generation professionals and white-collar workers, triumphantly escaping from council housing and greasy overalls. People exactly like her, she supposed. She recognised them as a mass, a type, but she knew none of them.

  Her father was her closest connection here, in his so-called sheltered accommodation just across the roundabout from the Hopcroft; but most days he no longer seemed to know her, and when he did he was only interested in talking about the woman two doors down, who was trying to steal his photographs, or his tea caddy, or the pigeons he had ceased to keep twenty years ago. Nothing to say about Heather, but still it was almost the sum total of her social life now – the daily visit to see that Den hadn’t wandered off, left the gas on or the taps running, or set the place on fire.

  No one else to talk to. There were a couple of mothers at the nursery that she had chatted to briefly, but her friends were all three miles away, on the other side of Lyford town centre, in the grid of 1930s terraces where she and Martin and Bibs had lived until six months ago. She had thought she couldn’t wait to leave, to move up in the world, to escape from the miserable pensioners, the loud football fans and the corner shop that had been boarded up since the Pakistani owner had been burned out by the National Front. Now she just wanted to be back there, with friends always ready with a cup of tea whenever she dropped in.

  They shouldn’t have moved here to Hopcroft. They’d been planning it since before Bibs was born as a distant project, but then, when Martin miraculously walked into a new job after the shock of redundancy, worry exploding into relief had prompted them to take the plunge.

  They couldn’t really afford it. Even with Martin’s increased pay, they would be stretched with the mortgage, and just because he had a job today, who knew what would happen tomorrow? House prices were falling now and they were saddled with it, no chance of trading down as easily as they had traded up. In a couple of years, they’d thought, with Bibs safely at school, she could think about going back to the library, part time, earning a little extra to help them eke out the budget, but of course the new baby would put that timetable way back.

  They hadn’t planned this second child. One day, yes, but not yet.
It was only after they had exchanged contracts and were committed to the move that she’d discovered she was pregnant again. Suspected, dreaded and then finally confirmed on the day when the Marchioness pleasure boat collided with a dredger on the Thames. She’d felt she was part of the disaster, drowning. A month later, the Duchess of York was crowing over the expected arrival of her second child. Heather had always liked the Royals until that day. Now she resented them and their bloody palaces and their nursemaids and their hand-picked gynaecologists. Let Fergie deal with a house move, a mortgage and a new bloody baby without any bloody help!

  ‘Look on the good side,’ Martin had said. ‘We’re going to be a mile nearer to the hospital.’ It hadn’t helped. He knew, as well as she did, that this second baby had come at the worst possible moment. Why hadn’t they taken more care? She had even toyed with the idea of an abortion but didn’t dare to raise it with anyone. You couldn’t have an abortion just because you were moving house and you were terrified of not being able to pay the bills in a year’s time. Martin hadn’t shared her concerns. After an initial hour of grumbling, he had decided to delight in the idea of another child.

  Out of the estate onto the dual carriageway, two more roundabouts and into the tarmac sea of Sainsbury’s. Fairy lights, a luminous Santa, Christmas trees in their stocking wraps still piled up hopefully at the door. The car park was packed. The 23rd of December and everyone was out, spending money because that was what Christmas was all about. Spend, spend, spend. Alcohol that she wasn’t allowed to touch. Food that would sit slowly decaying in an overfilled fridge. Presents that would be glanced at with a show of enthusiasm and then discarded. Toys that required a second mortgage. They couldn’t afford all this. If other people thought they could, they were just insane.