Postcards From Berlin

by Margaret Leroy

  There in the darkness, my certainty seeps away.

  I take the ashtray downstairs — carefully, with my hand across it, so the ashy scraps of paper won’t blow everywhere. I go to the kitchen and wash the ashtray out in the sink. I see myself reflected in the window: My eyes are narrowed, my face is relaxed from the drink and somehow wary; for a moment my face reminds me of my mother’s. I rinse all the smudges of ash from the sink, so no one could ever guess what I have done, as though this is a crime I have committed.

  Chapter 21

  I TAKE DAISY SOME TOAST to eat in bed. She’s sitting up watching television, with Hannibal tucked in the crook of her arm. She’s only just woken; she has a bewildered look. Her blue eyes follow me as I put out her school clothes on her chair, and her face crumples a little, but she doesn’t say anything. Today I am determined to get her into school.

  I drink my coffee in the kitchen. Outside, there’s a sepia water-laden light and a pearl of rain at the end of each twig of the silver birch and tense white buds on the pear tree. Through the half-open window I hear the shiny song of a blackbird.

  Sinead is cramming felt tips into her pencil case and trying to make space in her bag for her Weimar Republic project, which she’s covered in red paper. She smells of hair mousse, a sugary chemical smell. She’s frowning.

  “What if it’s mufti again?” she says. “I’d die.”

  “It won’t be mufti,” I tell her. “They’d have sent a letter home if it was mufti.”

  “It’s a Friday; it could be. Maybe it is, and they didn’t tell me.”

  “Sinead, it won’t be. Trust me.”

  She goes off, looking doubtful.

  Eventually, I hear Daisy coming downstairs. She’s dressed for school. She holds on to the banister and puts both feet together on each step, moving cautiously, seriously, as though her shoes are heavy, as though a line has been drawn around her that she must move within.

  “My legs are all stiff,” she says. “They feel funny. My kneecaps feel funny.”

  “You’re my brave girl.”

  I give her a hug as she gets to the bottom of the steps. She resists a little.

  “Megan will be so pleased to see you,” I tell her.

  She shakes her head. Her eyes mist over as she pulls away from me. “Sometimes I wish I had someone else’s life,” she says.

  I brush her hair. Her eyes are wet and full. I keep up a stream of bright chatter, trying not to leave her any space to say how ill she feels. Her hair is tangled because she’s been off sick for two days and I haven’t brushed it: I always forget to do it when she stays in bed, though it’s probably the kind of thing that sensible, ordinary women do routinely. I’ve brushed out the tangles and I’m holding a clump of hair in one hand and a scrunchie in the other, poised to fix her ponytail, when the phone goes. I curse whoever it is in my head and fix the hair in a hasty, lopsided clump and hurry to the phone, unable to let it ring — though it’s probably just someone wanting to sell me a kitchen.

  “Could I speak to Mrs. Lydgate?”

  “Yes. Speaking.” My voice is curt: I’m waiting for the sales pitch.

  “Ah. Good morning, Mrs. Lydgate. It’s the surgery here.” I place her then, the brisk Glaswegian accent. “I’m sorry to bother you. Dr. Carey tells me she gave you a letter to read in reception yesterday — a letter from the hospital.”

  She stops there, waiting, requiring something of me.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “The letter seems to have gone missing, Mrs. Lydgate.”

  “Oh.”

  “Are you quite sure you handed it back?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “We were just wondering if you had perhaps taken it by mistake.” Her voice is silky.

  “No.” I try to remember, to think up something plausible. “I gave it to the other receptionist — the one with the blue cardigan.”

  “Carolyn? Well, I’ve asked her, of course. She says she’s sure you didn’t.”

  “No, I did, really. Maybe it got put back in the wrong folder.”

  “We’ll have another look,” she says. “But perhaps you could also have a look at home. We can easily get a duplicate, of course. It’s just that Dr. Carey is very keen to find out what happened to the original.”

  “I gave it back,” I tell her.

  “Right, then, Mrs. Lydgate.”

  There’s a knowingness to her voice. I can tell she suspects me.

  Daisy is sitting on the sofa, hunched over, her head in her hands, the way an old person might sit.

  “Shall we do your hair again?”

  She shakes her head dully.

  “I can’t be bothered,” she says.

  We put on our coats and I take her hand and we go out to the car through the brownish light. It’s raining more heavily now. There are smells of petrol fumes and wet lilac.

  “You’re shaking, Mum,” she says. “Why are you shaking?”

  “I’m all right,” I tell her.

  The traffic is heavy and sluggish, everything slowed by the rain. At the gate, she wants me to stay with her till the bell rings, but then goes in without protest. I wait there for a moment once she’s left me, my eyes holding on to her as she walks in, poised and careful, through the gate.

  The bookshop is in the shopping center. There’s a fountain lined with turquoise tiles and smelling faintly of chlorine, and jazzed-up Vivaldi over the sound system, and cheerful shops selling flimsy, exuberant clothes to teenage girls. Last time I came here it was to do the Christmas shopping. I spent hours hunting for perfect things, presents for the girls’ stockings, beaded bags and Viennese truffles and tiny soaps smelling of flowers. It seems so long ago now, that world of pleasant ordinariness — when I thought myself unfortunate if the queue was slow in the Body Shop and I got a parking ticket.

  Inside the bookshop it’s warm and bright and hushed, with the thick, slightly scorched smell of new carpet. I wander round the shelves with a rather deliberate nonchalance. There are few people here: some women with protesting children in buggies, one or two older people in taupe mackintoshes. The medical section is near the back. It seems well-stocked; students from the hospital must come here. There’s no one else in this part of the shop except an elderly man in a jacket the color of mud, who’s looking at military history. The other side of the bookshelf, a man I can’t see is talking into his mobile. “Of course I love you. Why would I say it if I didn’t?” A private voice, but irritated. “Well, there you are, then.…”

  The books are mostly weighty looking, substantial. I read through the titles on the spines: Half of them contain words I don’t understand. It seems there’s nothing here that will help me. Perhaps I was stupid to come. I’m just about to go when my eye falls on a book called Trust Betrayed. It’s a gray paperback. I pull it out. The subtitle takes up half the cover: Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, Inter-Agency Child Protection and Partnership with families. I open it. It’s obviously written for professionals, but the print is quite big and it doesn’t look too technical and it seems like a book that I could understand.

  I come to a list of Manifestations of MSBP — the sorts of things they say these mothers do. This is shocking, strange to read in this bright, bland, pleasant place. “Starvation or interfering with parenteral nutrition or withdrawing stomach contents through a naso-gastric tube. Administration of salt solutions, laxatives, diuretics, sedative drugs, warfarin or anti-epileptic drugs. Altering blood pressure charts, temperature charts or interfering with urine testing …”

  I can hear the music from outside in the mall. The man on the other side of the bookshelf is still talking into his mobile. “We’re not having the tone-of-voice argument again, are we?” I glance back over my shoulder like a thief. The frail old man is immersed in a copy of Stalingrad.

  I turn to the back of the book and start flicking through. Bullet points catch my eye. “Table 5. Confirming the diagnosis. Check on personal, family and social details with relatives,
the GP and social services. The perpetrator is often an inveterate liar …”

  The conversation with the receptionist comes into my mind. I realize I am sweating. I leaf back through the book.

  “Table 3. Clues to the diagnosis of MSBP. The mother is unusually knowledgeable about medical problems and treatments. Treatment is ineffective …” My pulse is fluttering in my wrist. I try to work out what it means to be “unusually knowledgeable.”

  I turn back a bit further, and the book falls open at “Table 2. Features commonly found in perpetrators.” So this is what I’m meant to be like, I think. “Usually the birth mother,” it says. Well, most mothers are. “The mother is the child’s exclusive carer.” That’s not so unusual either. “Previous paramedical training. “That’s OK: I don’t have any paramedical training. “Previous contact with a psychiatrist.” I think of my sessions with Lesley at The Poplars: the thin carpet, the smell of disinfectant, the self-esteem tree with the fruit that I couldn’t fill in. I don’t think that qualifies. I’m beginning to breathe a little more easily: So far, this isn’t too terrible. Then, at the end of the list: “In local authority care during childhood (children’s home and foster care).”

  The rushing in my ears is like a roar. I close the book abruptly, as though it could hurt me.

  There’s a hand on my arm: the man in the mud-colored jacket.

  “Excuse me, but are you all right?”

  He smells pleasantly of cigars, and his eyes are mild.

  “I’m OK. Thank you.”

  “I could get you a glass of water,” he says.

  “Please don’t worry.”

  “I thought you were going to faint for a moment there,” he says.

  “It’s probably just the flu,” I tell him.

  “It’s nasty, that flu,” he says. “They say it comes from China. I take echinacea, myself. You ought to try it.”

  “Thank you. Yes, I will.”

  “Well, if you’re sure you’re all right …”

  He goes off to the desk, with Stalingrad under his arm.

  I take the book. I half expect someone to stop me, to ask why it is I want to buy this book. I go toward the cash desk through the children’s section. It’s soothing here, all the little bears and dazzling colors, the gorgeous multiplicity of things. I choose a book for Daisy, something from the mythology shelf: a book of Celtic folktales, with a white stag in a blue mist on the cover. At the cash desk, I put the folktale book on top. The assistant treats me as though I am perfectly ordinary, but my face is hot as I pay. I leave the bookshop hurriedly, with a rush of relief.

  But when I get home with my bag of books, this stupid thing happens: I can’t get my key in the lock. The tag of metal that falls down over the keyhole has fallen sideways and got stuck into the doorjamb, and it’s blocking half the keyhole and can’t be moved. I try to push it up, but I can’t do it. To look at it, you’d think it would be easy, but somehow it’s got wedged. It’s ridiculous. I’m standing there with the key in my hand and I can’t get into my house. I feel conspicuous, up at the top of the steps, the thin rain falling on me, unable to open my door. If someone was passing on the pavement, they’d think I was breaking in.

  I push yet again at the tag with my finger: Nothing happens. I hit it with the key, and it finally swings round and I can undo the lock, but I’ve broken the skin on my hand. There’s just a single drop of glossy blood, as richly red as the vermilion in my paint box. It hurts a lot for such a little cut.

  ______________

  Richard is home earlier than he’s been for weeks, early enough that we’ll be able to eat together. He’s brought me flowers — purple arum lilies, sculptural and exquisite. They are to cheer me up, he says, because I was upset. I think how thoughtful this is.

  Daisy hears and comes downstairs, her stilted walk, one careful step at a time.

  He hugs her.

  “How’s life, munchkin?” he asks.

  “My stomach hurts,” she says.

  “You poor old thing,” he says.

  “Dad, can we do something?” she asks.

  I think he’ll tell her he’s tired, that he needs to read his paper. But he says, Of course, and they go to look through the stack of board games in the living room. We have Monopoly, Cluedo, a game with jumping frogs — most of them presents from Gina and Adrian: Gina likes to say how very valuable it is to have family time together away from the television. We used to play these games in the evenings sometimes, but we haven’t done it for ages and I don’t know when we stopped. Sinead has so much homework now, and Richard works so late. Something slides away from you, and for a while you don’t even notice its absence.

  They choose Cluedo and open up the box on the living-room floor. I heap some cushions for Daisy to sit on and make her a hot-water bottle.

  “Mum, you could play.”

  I shake my head; I have to cook the dinner. But Sinead is persuaded to join them, pleased to have an excuse to postpone her cross-section of the Aosta Valley.

  Daisy tips out the weapons, and the little gray figures on their colored bases. She wants to be Miss Scarlett.

  Sinead is reading the book of instructions. “They even have birth dates,” she says. “Wow, these people are old.”

  Daisy shoots Sinead with the tiny silver revolver. Sinead dies extravagantly. Richard starts to deal.

  “Do that funky thing where you shuffle them,” says Daisy.

  He shuffles them with panache. She watches with admiration.

  I go to the kitchen, still half-watching through the open door. Daisy is intent, leaning a little forward. When Sinead suggests it was Reverend Green and Miss Scarlett in the broom cupboard, Daisy is outraged. “You’re so immature, Sinead. You’ve got to play it properly.”

  But Richard is playing seriously, just as Daisy wants. I love to see this. It’s how he used to be when the girls were younger — untangling puppets, gallantly losing at cricket, entering into their world. I wonder if something has changed in him, after what I told him yesterday, and at last he sees how much we need him here.

  “I want to win,” says Daisy. “I really want to win.”

  He ruffles her hair. His face is softer, tender.

  I breathe our a little. Trust Betrayed is still in its carrier bag, hidden in the makeup drawer in my bedroom. I need so urgently to talk about it with him, for him to see the danger we are in. But I’m sure now he will listen.

  There’s a sudden silence: Richard is about to make an accusation. I go to the door to see.

  “It was Miss Plum in the library with the candlestick,” he says. He’s relishing the moment; his voice has an edge of melodrama.

  Daisy holds her breath. Her eyes gleam in her white face.

  “If you’re wrong, you’re out, Dad,” says Sinead.

  Richard looks in the envelope that holds the answer. He says nothing for a moment, his face a caricature of regret.

  “Oops,” he says. “Well, at least I was close.”

  Daisy laughs, her fat, happy laugh that I hardly ever hear now. I wait for a moment, listening. I love him for making her happy.

  “Now I can win,” she says.

  After the meal, we wash up while the girls are watching Brookside in Sinead’s room.

  “There’s something I need to talk about,” I tell him.

  The flowers he brought are in a vase on the table, their stamens dark and powdery as soot. I focus on them, clear my throat; I know what I will say.

  “There’s something I want to talk about too,” he tells me.

  “Oh.”

  He’s washing a casserole in the sink, wearing the rubber gloves he always uses to keep his skin smooth for violin playing. Now he turns toward me. He hasn’t finished the washing up, but he’s peeling off the gloves.

  “Darling, I’ve been thinking. I mean, I know how tough it is for you. With Daisy at home so much, and having to care for her and everything.”

  “I’m all right.”

  He shakes
his head a little. “Well, I hope so. You seemed quite overwrought yesterday. I’ve been wondering if you could do with a bit of help,” he says.

  “You mean like going to a therapist or something?” This irritates me, yet I know he’s only being caring. “It’s sweet of you, but really, I’m OK.”

  “I didn’t mean that exactly. I meant help in the home.”

  “What’s wrong with our home? I thought I was coping fine. It still looks OK, doesn’t it?”

  “Of course,” he says. “You always run the house beautifully. That isn’t quite what I meant.”

  “Really, it isn’t necessary.”

  “I’m not so sure,” he says again. “Anyway, I rang an au pair agency today. It seems an ideal solution.”

  I put down the saucepan I’m drying.

  “No. I don’t want an au pair.”

  “It really doesn’t cost a lot,” he says. “And there might be spin-offs: It might help Sinead with her languages.”

  “And where were you planning this person would live, exactly?”

  He isn’t looking at me; he turns a little away. “There’s masses of space in the attic.”

  “No.” A sudden hot anger flares in me. “No. The attic’s my place. She couldn’t live there. Richard, I don’t want this.”

  He sighs. “This always happens. Whenever I try to help, you just get so emotional.”

  I sit down heavily at the table. I rub my face with my hands.

  “No, Richard. I couldn’t share the house like that. I couldn’t. I don’t know how people do it. I’d hate to have some other woman here all the time. Hate it.”

  There’s really no shame in having help,” he says. “Most people have someone living in — a nanny or au pair or someone. They couldn’t manage without it. Even your mate Nicky has an au pair.”

  “Nicky’s different from me.”

  “Sure,” he says. “Well, thank goodness. I’d rather have you.” He’s smiling, trying to be mollifying. “But all the same — I’ve never quite understood why you haven’t wanted those things.”