The Perfect Mother

by Margaret Leroy

  ‘That’s what they always say.’

  ‘No, Mum. You should see to the child first,’ she says sternly.

  ‘But the mother has to look after both of them, and if the mother can’t breathe she isn’t much use to her child.’

  This doesn’t satisfy her. ‘I think she should help the child.’

  The plane speeds down the runway. She watches through the window, relishing the thrill of take-off, as I used to do. I remember the very first time I flew, when Richard and I went to Venice for our honeymoon, and how he loved my ignorance and my delight in everything; and, when he saw how charmed I was by the inflight meal with all its cups and packets, how he smiled and pulled me to him and pressed his mouth to my hair.

  The light through the window glosses over Daisy’s pallor; her eyes shine with pleasure. She looks for a moment like a healthy child. I peer across her as the land opens out beneath us, the patterning of fields, green and brown and bleached-blond, the scribble of wood and hedge. The plane tilts and banks. Daisy grins, unafraid.

  We cross the bright white line at the edge of the land, and the sea is spread below us, placid and gleaming. The waves near the shore are white and still, as though sketched with chalk by a child; or as they might have been drawn on some faded sepia map, fabulous with dragons, at the rim of the charted world. Through the window of the plane it is all blue and silver, and suddenly my heart is light, as though we are set free.

  CHAPTER 35

  Tegel Airport seems quiet after Heathrow. An official takes our passports and studies our faces to see if we match our photographs. I try to breathe and look at ease. But then he waves us through.

  We buy a travel card and take the bus to Charlottenburg Station, just as my mother told me. We are tired now; we stare silently out of the window at the cobbled side streets, the canal, the hoardings; at Charlottenburg Castle, pale and splendid, that I recognise from one of my mother’s postcards. Daisy is intrigued by the foreignness of everything: the street names and the hoardings, the German posters for Hannah Montana.

  At the station we take a train with red and yellow carriages, which seems to have come straight out of an old spy movie. Through the window we glimpse vast city vistas, building sites and distant opulent buildings and the shining glass on massive office blocks, all the glamour and frenzy of the city. Alongside the track there are graffitied walls and flats with sun-awnings, and from a balcony at the top of a block of flats someone has hung a sheet that says ‘Tuck Capitalist Overkill’ in shaky black letters.

  At Hackescher Markt we find the tram stop out of the back of the station. It’s hot, waiting here. The sky is white, hazy, and it’s hushed for a city, only a handful of other people waiting. The tramlines sing at the approach of the tram.

  Our carriage is almost empty. Behind us a man with a ponytail and guitar, who has guessed or overheard our Englishness, announces, ‘Ladies, I play some things for you.’ He sings Bob Dylan, Shelter from the Storm, his voice reedy, mournful. The tram swings round and starts to climb, and he comes down the carriage and asks for money for the music, though with the air of one who has few expectations. I give him a handful of coins—perhaps because we are strangers, feeling a need to be generous, to placate.

  We chunter up the hill, up Prenzlauer Allee. I’m unsure exactly where the Wall used to be, but it’s easy to tell we are now in what once was the East. There is an air of neglect, a lot of boarded-up buildings. We pass what looks like a public park with many tall trees and darkness under the trees, where nothing has been tended: the brickwork is crumbling in the perimeter wall; the intricate iron gates are red with rust. The sense of hopefulness I felt in the plane has all seeped away from me.

  When Knaackstrasse shows on the indicator at the front of the tram, we get up at once, long before the stop, as you do when you are travelling to a place you do not know. And we step out, and the tram pulls away up the straight line of the street into the glimmery white distance. It is completely quiet. Daisy grips my hand.

  We cross the road, walk down a side street. The road is cobbled, and the pavements are broken and uneven, and tawny flowers with a musty smell grow up through the gaps in the paving stones. The blocks of flats here are five stories high. They have metal shutters across the ground floor windows, and all have been floridly written over with rainbow graffiti as high as the reach of a hand. You can tell these buildings were splendid once. Some of the façades have been done up with fresh stucco the colour of clotted cream. But there are many buildings where the stucco has peeled off entirely, as though the façade has been flayed. These buildings have an injured look, the brickwork worn and soot-blackened. You cannot believe that people live in such ruins. Above us, a little girl steps out onto the balcony of one of the ruined blocks. She is wearing a long dress, perhaps a party dress, rose pink, sprigged, and she has her hair elaborately piled up. She leans on the railing next to a bleached wicker birdcage with no bird inside; she is still and serious, looking down into the street. She and Daisy are instantly aware of one another: they stare with open curiosity. Daisy turns to me, gives me a quick complicit smile. We look up again, and the little girl has gone, as though we dreamt her.

  We pass a patch of waste ground where there are very tall trees, far too tall for the city, as though they’ve been left to grow wild, like trees in a forest—chestnuts, and planes with blotched bark, and limes that litter the streets with the pale question-marks of their seed-cases. Small dun-coloured birds scatter in front of us, casual, light as leaves, and the pavement is dappled with sunlight yellow as butter. There are no cars on the road, and hardly any people. A blind girl in a short gold dress walks past us, her male companion guiding her, his hand on her arm. She has a festive look; they are going, I think, to some celebration; her eyes, which are like slits, scarcely opened, are elaborately painted with shiny make-up. Ahead of us a young man crosses the street, walking through a slice of yellow light, holding a bunch of gaudy sunflowers wrapped in green tissue paper.

  I’m so convinced she won’t be waiting for us that I’m planning what to do when we ring her bell and there’s no answer—where will we stay, what will we do, adrift in this strange city?

  Daisy is tired now, pulling at me. ‘Is it much further, Mum?’

  ‘Not much further,’ I tell her.

  She trudges on. She says her feet have blisters.

  We come to a square where the ground floors of some of the flats have been turned into cafés and bars. On the corner a sign says Café Esposito. A young man with silver bracelets is sitting there under the lime trees. As we pass a woman with a clear bright fall of blonde hair comes up and greets him, and he stands and kisses her, running his hand down her side, resting his hand on her hipbone: they have the melded gestures of long-time lovers. I want so much to be that woman, so casual, so at ease. Here in the still hot afternoon street, nearing my mother’s door, my fear is a taste in my mouth, a chill on my skin. My steps are slow, our bag is very heavy. Daisy tugs at my arm.

  The block where my mother lives looks out on a children’s playground. The door is faded as though salt winds have blown on it and graffitied with many colours. Daisy points to where someone has drawn a smiley sun, its chin resting on top of the intercom panel.

  CHAPTER 36

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Trina, darling. I’m on the fifth floor. Come right up.’ Her voice crackles over the intercom. ‘There’s a light switch but it’s on a timer. It won’t last very long.’

  I push at the door.

  It’s dark in the hall, just a square of sunlight falling through the glass in the door at the back. We glimpse a courtyard, where there are bicycles and a rusting fire escape and a wall that has that peeled decrepit look and is covered with plastic sheeting, and a hydrangea bush with milk-white flowers. We find the light switch and start to climb. My body is heavy, as though my limbs are drenched.

  Just as she said, the lights go out before we get there.

&n
bsp; ‘Shit.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ says Daisy. ‘You can feel your way in the dark.’

  Above us, a door opens and there’s a line of light down the stairs. You have to put your head right back to see up to the door. I hear her voice.

  ‘Not much further now.’

  Her shadow falls across us as we climb the last few stairs.

  ‘Trina, my darling.’

  I try to smile, but my mouth feels stiff and strange.

  ‘So you made it,’ she says.

  ‘Yes.’ My voice is shaking a little. We don’t know whether to touch each other. The air between us feels shimmery and thin.

  ‘You’re looking well,’ she says.

  ‘Thanks, I am really. And you…Are you OK?’

  ‘Not so bad today, darling. Mustn’t complain…’

  But her appearance shakes me. She’s dressed as she always dressed—capri pants, high-heeled sandals, lots of jewellery—but her skin is thin and worn, stretched over the bone, and her eyes are hooded with shadow. I see how the years have washed over her and started to wear her away.

  ‘So this must be Daisy,’ she says. She bends to her. ‘Goodness, how pretty you are. Your mum and dad are going to have trouble with you. You’ll only have to flutter your lashes and it’ll be raining men…And look at this hair.’ She reaches out and takes a strand of Daisy’s yellow hair between her finger and thumb, lifts it and lets it fall so it catches the light. Her hand with its many glistening rings is trembling. ‘She’s got your hair, Trina.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, why are we standing here?’ she says. ‘Come on in.’

  There’s an entrance lobby, then a sitting room with windows looking down into the street. The room is cluttered, full of heavy old furniture—a dark varnished dresser with painted flowers, a sofa with red velour cushions, a lamp with a beaded shade. Daisy walks round the room, touching the lamp, the cushions, with the tips of her fingers, as though these things are hers.

  In the window there’s a table with carved clawed feet and upright chairs. I sit with my mother at the table, breathe in her smell of nicotine and lily of the valley. I realise I’d had some shiny tentative hope that things would be different between us, that everything would be changed or reconciled. And now I’m finally here with her, and we’re being so careful and polite with one another, yet I feel the insect-crawl of all the old resentments across my skin.

  She pulls a carrier bag towards her.

  ‘Look, I got you something, darling,’ she says to Daisy. ‘Just a little present. I was going to wrap it, but I didn’t have any paper…’

  It’s a jointed bear with denim paws and a solemn face and a gauzy blue-green bow. I think of the presents my mother brought me at The Poplars, the rabbits with stitched-on satin hearts that she always intended to wrap. I feel a brief cold repulsion. But Daisy knows nothing of this. She smiles and hugs the bear.

  ‘He’s dead cute,’ she says. ‘Thank you.’

  She has an easy confidence here; she knows how to behave.

  I start to say, ‘Really, you shouldn’t…’

  But my mother misunderstands. ‘There, your mum’s feeling all left out now,’ she says to Daisy. ‘We don’t want your mum to feel left out, do we? I ought to give your mum something, shouldn’t I? So, Trina, what would you like? Would you like some money? I’d love to give you money.’

  ‘No, no. Of course not.’

  ‘I’d love to, really, darling,’ she says. ‘I’m not so badly off now, you know. Things have changed, things have turned around…’

  It’s as if she refuses to hear me.

  ‘I could write you a cheque,’ she says. ‘Everyone needs money. Some money of your own.’

  ‘No, really…’

  She lights a cigarette. Her hand is shaking a little; the flame trembles. She takes a deep inbreath; smoke catches at her throat. She starts to cough, a gasping, choking cough that’s like a violent struggle, that threatens to overwhelm her. Daisy edges away, alarmed. I sit beside my mother, not knowing how to help her.

  At last the cough subsides. She wipes her face with a tissue.

  ‘So was it a good journey?’ she says then, as though the cough never happened.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You flew into Tegel?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I’m very aware of her deliberate, thought-out politeness, that is so like my own. There are certain questions that always have to be asked.

  ‘Now, really, I’m forgetting,’ she says. ‘You must be hungry. After your journey.’

  She has food for us, sausage and bread and sauerkraut. There is flowered crockery in the china cabinet. She lays the table fastidiously, just as she always did—back in the days when we still managed some kind of life together. I eat greedily, realising I am famished. Daisy has some bread.

  ‘Eat up, my darling,’ says my mother to Daisy, tipping a piece of sausage onto her plate. ‘You need your food, a growing girl like you…’

  She’s too insistent. Daisy turns to me.

  ‘Daisy’s been ill,’ I tell my mother. ‘That’s why she can’t eat more.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ says my mother. There are mannerisms I’ve forgotten, like the way she frowns when everything seems too much for her, the sharp little vertical lines that are etched between her eyes. ‘What seems to be the matter?’

  ‘No one can give us an answer.’

  ‘Poor Daisy,’ she says. ‘A pretty thing like you shouldn’t ever be ill.’

  For dessert she brings in a cake in a box of expensive white card.

  ‘Now look at this, Daisy. Sachertorte. You’ll love it.’

  She unfolds the box around the cake. It’s magnificent: it has glossy chocolate icing and marzipan flowers.

  ‘There,’ she says. There’s an air of triumph about her: this is a moment she has waited for. Her eyes have a febrile brightness. She cuts into the cake, her many bracelets rattling on her wrist.

  A shadow seems to pass over her.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ she says. ‘It’s still a tiny bit frozen in the middle.’

  She stands there with the cake knife in her hand. Her face has collapsed, her eyes are full of tears. I see that this sachertorte has some profound significance, as though she’d intended that it should be the answer, the reparation: that it could heal everything. A brief rage flares in me—that she abandons me for years, then seeks to be loved and forgiven because of some trivial gesture, some cake she’s bought.

  ‘Never mind,’ I tell her, the way you might speak to a child. ‘We’ll eat the outside now and we’ll have the middle tomorrow. I’ll cut it if you like.’ I take the knife from her.

  Even the outside of the cake is brittle and cold, its sweetness muted.

  There are smudges under Daisy’s eyes, her head is heavy, she’s almost asleep at the table. I tell her it’s bedtime.

  My mother looks across at her, the lines in her forehead deepening, as though it’s all a mystery. And I realise then that she can’t see Daisy’s exhaustion, can’t see the most obvious signals. That she looks at people and somehow cannot read them, can’t see the things that the rest of us so effortlessly interpret—the arched brow of contempt, the smile that doesn’t reach the eyes—can’t even read the tiredness in a child.

  ‘She could sleep on the sofa, you thought?’

  My mother gets the duvet.

  I unpack Daisy’s pyjamas and she changes in my mother’s bedroom, where there are chairs heaped up with velvet scarves and filmy, complicated blouses, and, on the dressing-table, gloves in silk or cotton, pale apricot and lavender, with ruched wrists. I remember how she always wore them because she hated her hands. I tell Daisy not to clean her teeth, in the hope that she won’t start retching, and she curls up on the sofa under the quilt, with the bear and Hannibal precisely placed beside her, and to my relief is instantly asleep. My mother turns off the overhead light. The lamp with its shade of beads casts broken fantastic shadows. We take the plates to the kit
chen.

  ‘Now, Trina, what do you say to a little drink?’ says my mother. There’s a gleam in her dull eyes: a schoolgirl look, unnerving on her worn face.

  ‘Are you sure you should?’

  ‘Darling, I know I had a problem,’ she says. Brisk and impatient, a bit cross with me. ‘But that’s all in the past. I’ve done the Twelve Steps. I know my limits now. Anyway, I got a nice Moselle in specially.’ She goes to the fridge. ‘It would be a sin to let it go to waste. Get me some glasses, would you, darling?’

  I take two glasses from the cabinet in the living room. The heat has gone from the day; the blue cool air from outside brushes my face like a hand as I pass the window. I look down into the street. The sky is deepening above the lime trees, and the bars are opening, waiters spreading tables out on the rough cobbled pavement. The Café Esposito is filling up with young people in studenty casual clothes, combat trousers and T-shirts; their easy talk and laughter float in through the window. And there are musicians—a guitarist, and a singer with a tambourine that he slaps against his thigh. The singer has a pleasant tenor voice; he sings Simon and Garfunkel in heavily accented English.

  My mother fills our glasses to the brim. When she bends her head, I see how sparse her hair is, the skin of the scalp showing, pink and somehow vulnerable.

  We sit by the open window, drinking quietly, suspended in this waiting summer stillness, hearing the laughter of strangers and the singing from the street.

  CHAPTER 37

  My mother clears her throat.

  ‘She’s such a pretty one, your little girl…You were like that, Trina, the spitting image. Well, you’re still looking good, darling.’ She touches the silk of my sleeve. ‘This is beautiful,’ she says. ‘I can see you’ve done really well for yourself.’

  I shrug a little. I don’t know what to say.

  ‘Don’t be modest,’ she says. ‘I’m so happy for you, Trina. I so wanted you to do better than me. And you’ve certainly done that, haven’t you? That’s such a comfort to me…What does he do, your husband?’