by Morag Joss
***
I was under instructions to look through the post, bin the obvious junk mail, catalogues and so on, and leave anything else in the desk in the library. The owners had arranged matters, Shelley said. They had given their forwarding address to all the important people, banks and all that, so anything that came to the house could either be chucked out or could wait. I hadn’t given it a thought. I’ve done enough houses not to be curious about other people’s arrangements, but I began to think what a cheek to put me to that trouble. Why hadn’t they re-directed everything via Royal Mail? Or left a stack of printed labels with a forwarding address, so that I could simply stick them onto things and give them back to the postman, when I remembered? Actually, I thought, why don’t they correspond by the internet or e-mail or whatever they call it? It irritated me to have to think about them at all.
In fact the only reason I didn’t jam the entire post into the kitchen bin without looking at it was because I had begun to wait for my own letter. The post came early. I watched for the van before I was properly awake, and when I heard the bump and fluttering of envelopes coming through the door I would be down at once, still in my pyjamas, my hair in a dreadful mess. It was quite long now, and it took me a while to learn how to manage it. I frequently forgot to brush it and tie it back at night, and although I found clips for keeping it up in the daytime, they took some time to master. Still, there was nobody to see, not yet. Every day I scanned every envelope but my letter didn’t come and didn’t come. It was awful to wake each day with such excitement, feeling sure that it must be today, to pick up the post, to read envelope after envelope that was not mine, then to realise that I would have to spend another day waiting, another night hoping. With every day it didn’t come I got more convinced that it must come the next. And when it didn’t, I would wonder what I was going to do with all the rage and disappointment I felt, where would I put it? For it seemed like somebody’s fault, my letter failing to arrive.
But even on those bad days, by the time evening came I would be quite calm, because from the moment I had finished scanning envelopes for my name, the house would begin to quieten and soothe me. It was like breathing in a kind of incense, a faith that since the letter had not come today, the day when it would arrive was drawing closer. After dark, when I had settled in front of the fire with my tray and bottle- wine with supper, I had discovered, made proper cooking worthwhile- my mind and body seemed to be ticking. I ticked with an optimism that had been entering me little by little over the hours of the day, as if with each heartbeat. So the passing of the day turned into hope for the next; not yet, not yet, not yet, it ticked through me, but soon.
The money was running out. After the car battery, the electric, some rent, a bit towards his fines (not enough), gas and food, there was hardly anything left. Michael had bought and sold a couple of things and made a bit, but there wasn’t enough for the next deal. He told Steph this, over their toast one morning, with tears of apology in his eyes. But he did not look away from the fixed look in hers. Nor did he pull away when she suddenly got up and put her arms round his neck and drew his head onto her shoulder. Instead he put his arms round her, gently so as not to squash the baby but also because he was not sure if he had permission. He held on but he did not cry. He simply breathed in the scent of shampoo and female skin, the newness and privilege of closeness to her.
Drawing slowly away from him she said, ‘OK, then. So we got a problem. We need to do something about it then, don’t we?’
She sat down again. She was so tiny, really. Except for her stomach she was tiny, and he marvelled that so much courage seemed to fit in so small a container.
‘Okay then. We will, yes,’ he said, trying out what confidence sounded like.
It was Steph’s idea. It was something she’d thought up ages ago but never done, and she considered it far cleverer than Michael’s escapades with church treasures or his little deals among the stallholders in Walcot Market.
‘With your church stuff, you’ve got to sell it on, haven’t you? If you ask me,’ she said, ‘that’s where you fall down. My idea needs two of us, so it’d be you and me, in it together.’
Michael smiled.
‘What do we do?’ he asked, stabbing at the toast crumbs on his plate with one finger.
She smiled back, cleared a space on the table, brought over the backpack that was leaning against the wall under the shelves and sat down again.
‘You take the backpack, empty, right?’ She handed it to him. ‘So, you’ve got the backpack, I’ve got nothing. We go into a shop, but separately, right? A big shop, a department store or something, as long as there’s loads of people and more than one floor? So I go and get something off the rail, right, and I go and try it on, then I buy it and I pay for it-’
‘You pay for it? I thought you said-’
‘Listen. I pay for it, right? You’ve given me a bit of cash, right, and I go and pay, and they put it in a bag and I get a receipt and all that, okay?’
‘Yea-eh,’ Michael said uncertainly.
‘Then- I meet up with you somewhere in the shop, only miles away from the till and where I tried the thing on, on another floor or something, or in the cafй or somewhere, and I give you the thing I’ve bought and you get it in the backpack and then you leave, okay?’
Michael nodded. He would understand it in a minute. Probably.
‘Only I’ve still got the bag and everything, right? Then I go and get another exactly the same as what I’ve bought, I take it off the rail and I put that in the bag, right? I’ll pretend I’m trying something else on or something. So then I go to leave the shop with the second one in the shop’s own bag and- right- beep beep beep, off goes the alarm at the door. OK? So, then, I go all surprised, and show them the receipt, the receipt, right, from the one I bought that you’ve already gone off out the shop with, and they go oh sorry, we didn’t take off the security tag. So they take it off, and off I go, right?’
‘But then you’ve got two things you didn’t want, haven’t you? Shop stuff’s hard to get anything for, there’s a couple of pubs but it’s dodgy. I haven’t got the contacts. I specialise, see, I do old stuff. It’s hard. You wouldn’t believe.’
‘No, no, no-listen. First off, we only take stuff we do want. Like I need a tracksuit or something you need, a jumper. Doesn’t matter what it is as long as it fits in the backpack and we can get it in a big shop, like M & S, Jolly’s, Boots, whatever. And second, yeah we’ve got two, so next day I take one of them back and say it don’t fit, and I get a refund. See? We can get all the stuff we need plus we’ve got our money back.’
Michael frowned. ‘But you still paid. And what about food, and the gas, and the rent?’ His throat puckered with the effort of keeping down panicky tears. ‘There’s the fucking fines and all. And what if we got caught? I’d do time. Straight off, no questions. We need money, not stuff. How’re we going to get money?’
‘Look,’ Steph said, taking the backpack again and pulling out the two magazines from inside it. If Michael was unimpressed it must be that he had not quite grasped the brilliance of it. ‘Suppose I buy one of these, pay the cash and I got a receipt, okay? I shove it in here and you leave. Like this. Then I get another one off the shelf,’ she waved the second magazine at him, ‘and then I try and leave and the alarms go off. I just go, look, I’ve got the receipt. So they let me go with the magazine, and then next day I go in and say oh I don’t like this I’m returning it, can I have a refund. So then you’ve got, one, the thing you wanted, and two, you get your money back so you can go off and get something else you want, like for free. Now do you see?’
Michael shook his head. ‘They don’t put those tag things on magazines.’ There was a pause while Steph groaned. ‘And you can’t take a magazine back and say you don’t like it, neither.’
Steph sighed, and to stop herself saying something unkind, she opened the magazine in her hand. ‘What is this Lady crap, anyway?’ Oh God, she was thinking, is
he gay after all? ‘What is this, it’s not porn, is it? Oh, it’s all ads.’ She leafed through. ‘Hey, look. We could always get a job,’ she said, beginning to read. There’s stuff here for couples, looking after places. With accommodation and a wage. We could do something like that,’ she said, idly.
‘Need references,’ Michael said.
But Steph was not listening. She was stabbing at an advertisement.
‘Christ! Christ, this is you, Michael. Listen. This has got to be you.’
56 Maynard Terrace
Bath
9th March
Dear Madam
This letter is in reply to the ad in the Lady, concerning your son. My mother couldn’t keep me and so I was given away. I have brown eyes, I am 6 foot 1 and a half inches with dark hair and I would like to meet up with you. If you are my mother, there’s a lot of things to talk about obviously, to see if you are her, but it sounds like it, it all fits together. I have always wanted to know about my family especially my father who he really was etc. Due to the circumstances I do not know if he is still alive, maybe you will be able to tell me about him, in addition to yourself.
Yours sincerely
Michael Hunter
ps This is only the name I was given in the home, as I was told you did not give me one (if it was you) or maybe it just didn’t get passed on.
Pps I do not have very many papers either, hopefully we will not need them to find out the truth.
Steph wrote out the letter from Michael’s rough draft, while his mind lurched between possibilities and impossibilities, starting with the idea that anybody who could be his mother could be living, as the advertisement said, in a ‘country house’. He did not try to curb Steph’s sudden crazy faith that his mother had been found by pointing out that while he did indeed have brown eyes, he had been born in 1961, not 1955; it seemed unkind to disappoint her. Besides, what if it was just a mistake, a misprint, an oversight? He could miss finding his own mother because of a clerical error! It could do no harm to look into it.
Jean’s reply came at once. She invited Michael to come to tea on the following Friday, 15th March, at four o’clock. ‘I do not go out, so I hope it will not inconvenience you to come here. The house is not hard to find.’ There followed directions.
In the days between the arrival of Jean’s letter and the day of his visit Michael worked on the bare fact that his mother had not been heard of since around 1971 until it seemed almost plausible that she should have changed her name, kicked the drugs, married a wealthy man, be living in a country house, and miscalculate her son’s birth by six years. By the day of the visit he was ready to forgive her, quite ready to overlook the shortcomings of the drug-raddled teenager, on and off the game, who had given birth to him and then disappeared.
***
I will admit to misgivings about the whole thing after his letter came. And it was only after I had replied to him that I realised it had been a mistake to invite him for four o’clock, because it would give me nearly the whole day to wait feeling nervous, and worrying. That was why I deliberately gave myself lots to do that day, so that my restlessness could be directed into preparing a proper welcome. It started with food. The immediate problem of what to give him to eat became, almost before I knew it, an obsession with feeding him that I can only describe as maternal. And although to begin with it felt hardly natural (for after all, the last person I had provided food for had been Mother) I gave in to it. I had never until that point bothered much about what I now consider to be proper cooking although since the day I pulled out the buddleias I had found myself looking forward to supper each evening, more than I ever had before. I had been eating more and things were beginning to taste better. I suppose, in the same way that I was now paying new attention to bathing, dressing and sleeping, I had begun to enjoy the little acts of care that I bestowed upon myself when I cooked. These things start, I think, with oneself. Only after I had begun to make myself comfortable (in every sense) did I find myself inclined- qualified, you might say- to care for anybody else. Poor Mother, really. I cared for her in a way, of course, the best way I could at the time, mimicking the manner in which she had cared for me when I was a child. My caring was as perfunctory and spiritless as hers was. Not that that makes it my fault. I wasn’t myself.
Anyway, having the whole day to fill before Michael’s arrival was the start of it. Thinking first about giving him tea when he arrived, I baked a cake, and standing in the kitchen beating it all up by hand, I tried to remember when I had last made one. It must have been for Father; he liked cake, anything sweet. I had a light hand with a cake, he said. I had forgotten that entirely, and it was nice to remember again. Not that I made many cakes even for him, certainly not as many as I wanted to because although Mother did not bake, it annoyed her if I turned out too many things he liked. She said it was bad for him but the truth was she hated to see him delighted. When she saw him happy, especially if the source of it were anything to do with me, she must have felt she was being done out of something that should have been hers.
While the cake was baking (it was a Madeira cake and I used the electric oven to be certain of the temperature; the Aga has its virtues but I wouldn’t trust it for a Madeira) I realised that that would be just the start. Because if things went well over tea he would stay, and I would have to give him supper, and I did not think my usual fry-up would quite do. I looked in the freezer and found fillet steaks. There were broad beans and runner beans, packets of smoked salmon, strawberries and raspberries from the garden, and ice cream. My mind filled with possibilities; in fact I think I permitted myself an anticipation close to greed. Of course they didn’t have anything like chips or potato croquettes but I had a few potatoes that I thought I could manage to do something with. That was what led me to the recipe books, because I remembered seeing Delia do something once with a few potatoes and cream and garlic. Well, I had to tear myself away in the end, from those books. The pictures! Not to mention the wonderful-sounding recipes, and all the advice and things to learn. I felt so excited at the thought of reading these books properly, and even put Larousse Gastronomique by my bed. But I had so much to do. There was a string of garlic hanging in the kitchen that I had not touched until that day. I even found one or two usable onions in the pantry, while I was getting olive oil and vinegar and mustard and so on, and outside in the garden there was any amount of thyme, rosemary and sage in the borders, and a bay tree. It amazed me, that in the same way that those cookery books were filled with wonders, all these good things were just here, waiting until I should notice them and have use for them. Such quiet gifts.
The woman who opened the door was not his mother. Yet Michael felt, even as he was calculating that she was at least ten years too old, that there was something about her.
‘It’s me,’ was all he said. Her face crumpled, he opened his arms and folded them round her. He liked her lemony warm scent and the smell of her clean hair, that was like a white wire brush tickling the side of his face. As they drew apart Michael scanned her face again for a similarity with his, and he found it in her long, blue eyes. Outwardly they were quite unlike his own, but he saw in them a shade of supplication. Even while her mouth was smiling and producing ordinary, conventional words in a frenzy of flustered politeness- had he found the house easily, he must come right in, would he like to sit down- her eyes were imploring him to belong to her. They held a dignified plea that he not disappoint her, perhaps also a warning that she would be unable to bear it if he were about to deny that she could mean anything to him. Michael recognised it. He returned her gaze and said nothing. It seemed to him suddenly that neither of them could withstand indefinitely, or even for much longer, the dull ache of not mattering to anyone else, and in their wordless acknowledgement of this they were related, conjoined.
***
I want to write about my first impressions of him. Since he’ll never read this I can, can’t I? I was terrified, of course, in case he was going to turn up with
all sorts of documents, even photographs perhaps, that would prove I wasn’t his mother. And even if he didn’t, he would be bound to have bits of information about his natural parents that I might not be able to keep up with. I imagined him saying something like, ‘So, tell me about my father’s time in Australia. He did go to Australia, didn’t he?’ Or even worse, my time in Australia, I mean suppose his real mother had been brought up there or he knew she’d gone there after having him or something? If the questioning got too dangerous I could always claim a bit of senile memory loss, but only up to a point. All these worries, which I was trying so desperately to hide, almost stopped me from noticing what he looked like when I first opened the door. I was so frightened that he was just going to look at me in disgust, accuse me of fraud or some terrible thing, and leave. But I did notice at once how tall he was. And I could see he was good-looking, although very thin. I realised that when he hugged me. I could almost breathe his hunger, and I immediately felt glad that I had thought so much about food for the visit. It was as if I had instinctively known what he would need, in the way mothers are supposed to. But the most striking thing about Michael was that he looked so tired. Tired in the mind, I mean. His eyes darted round a bit to begin with, taking in me, the house and everything, and then he looked at me and did not move his eyes from mine. There was a mildness in the look he gave me, but also a kind of film over his eyes that made them seem too bright, as if they were concealing, not very successfully, some terrible fatigue. Would it be fanciful to say that I saw straight in to the weariness of his soul? I don’t know. The point was that he let me see it, his eyes did not leave mine.
