The Bad Mother's Handbook

by Kate Long

  I’m a grazer and don’t like sitting down to meals. I eat yoghurts by piercing the lid with my thumbnail and drinking them down in the light of the fridge door. Makes no mess, you see. You’d think Mum would be grateful for this low-maintenance approach, but no. If I want a biscuit I have to go through all the palaver of extracting a plate from under a tower of cups or bowls – quite often I’ll have scoffed the biscuit by the time I’ve got the plate down – and then there’s the washing up and putting away again for what would have been a twenty-second eating experience. As if a few crumbs mattered. If she had a life, then they wouldn’t.

  So we all sat round and ate fruit nicely. And apart from a few sly looks from elegant Mrs Gale, the meal was great.

  ‘Coffee?’ she asked at the end.

  ‘Not for Charlotte, she’s gone off it.’

  ‘It’s true.’ I didn’t tell her what I’d told Daniel, though, that I thought it tasted of piss. ‘I’ll have another grape juice, though, if that’s OK.’

  Daniel moved round to pull my chair out for me. ‘And I’ll have some more of that wine. We’ll take it outside.’

  It was still nearly as light as day but cooler out on the patio. I breathed in the evening and felt rejuvenated. Banana-baby rolled and wriggled inside me, making strange shapes I could feel under my palms. The greens of the lawn seemed to glow under the evening sky and my eyes fixed and unfocused on a cloud of midges swaying over the pond near the hedge. It must be so much less stressful being this far up the social scale, to have the space and the cash and the knowledge about the world. I thought of Mum and wished I didn’t have to go back home.

  ‘It’s a lovely garden. God, that heady scent . . . Makes me think of Keats: I cannot see what flowers are at my feet. Although presumably that wasn’t because he was straining to see over an enormous bloated belly.’ Baby heaved, a blackbird began singing near us and for a moment I felt as though I was on a film set. ‘You’re so lucky, you know.’

  Daniel helped lower me onto the steps and sat down beside me. ‘Yeah, I suppose so.’

  ‘No supposing about it.’ I wondered whether to count his blessings for him – nuclear family, pots of money, social poise – but decided it might be in bad taste. In the end I said: ‘Your house is incredibly calm.’

  ‘Is it?’

  I looked at him but he was gazing at the horizon.

  ‘Oh, yeah, amazingly. Well, compared with my place, it is. So is Beirut, probably.’ The bird finished singing and flew away, a cut-out black shape across the streaky sky. ‘Don’t you like it here?’

  ‘Not much.’ He rested his chin in his hand. ‘Actually I was quite happy in Guildford.’

  ‘Why did you move?’

  He sighed. ‘Dad got an offer he couldn’t refuse from an old university chum. He wanted to start up a practice with my dad as a partner. Dad said it was Fate and went off to see, and liked the place. So we all upped sticks and followed. If it had been one year earlier or later we probably wouldn’t have gone, they wouldn’t have wanted to disrupt my education, but I’d just finished GCSEs. Conveniently.’ There was a bitter note to his voice. ‘I’d chosen my options for Year 12 and I was looking forward to a great year dossing with my mates – I had some, down there. Miles and Toby. We used to have some great laughs. And they weren’t like those geeks I sit with in the common room; God, they’re so boring they even bore themselves.’

  I moved away slightly and stared at him.

  ‘I had no idea you were so fed up.’

  ‘We email each other, but Miles has got a girlfriend now so I don’t expect I’ll be hearing much from him for a while. Anyway, it’s not the same.’

  ‘Maybe you’ll move back there,’ I said, ‘if your dad’s job doesn’t work out.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ He picked up a piece of gravel and flicked it out over the grass. ‘You see my mum was having an affair, so we won’t ever go back.’

  I drew in my breath. ‘God.’

  ‘He was one of her Relate clients. She broke every rule in the book. She’d have been chucked out pronto, but luckily for her everyone involved decided to keep their mouths shut. He went back to his wife. We had a family conference about what to do, not that anyone was very interested in what I wanted. Then this job offer came up. Dad reckoned it was the only way to keep the family together. But he’s still really angry, and so’s she, for different reasons. Mad! In some ways it might have been better if they’d split up. I don’t know. It hacks me off the way we pretend, like this evening.’

  It was shocking to see him like this. I’d not thought of him having his own problems, he was just someone who supported me through mine. I edged nearer again and put my arm round his shoulders.

  ‘It’s the wine talking. No, it’s not the wine talking, it’s me.’

  ‘Oh, Daniel.’

  ‘You’re the only thing that keeps me sane, I think,’ he said, and in a swift movement turned his head and kissed me on the mouth.

  I didn’t stop to consider, it wasn’t a conscious decision, but I pushed him away and put the back of my hand to my lips. The sour tang of wine and guilt. He jerked backwards and stared, then dropped his head down so I couldn’t see his face.

  ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry. Stupid—’

  I couldn’t make out the rest.

  ‘No, I’m sorry, Daniel. I really am. Sorry.’

  Behind us the French windows slid open, then we heard the click of his mother’s heels on the patio. A chill breeze passed over my shoulders and at the end of the garden the leaves of the beech tree stirred suddenly.

  ‘Have you two finished with your glasses?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Daniel. ‘We’ve definitely finished.’

  *

  THEY PHONED ME at work, on the last day of term. The kids were all high as kites, clearing display boards and turning out drawers. Year 6 were running round the building trying to find drawing pins to prise off the walls because Mr F had promised a Mars Bar to the child who brought him the most.

  Sylv took the message, so she was beside herself with importance by the time I hit the office at morning break.

  ‘Social services have been on. They want you to make an appointment to see a Joyce Fitton as soon as you can. Here’s the number. Is it about your adoption?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I didn’t have the energy to lie.

  ‘Oh, Mr Fairbrother, Karen’s found her birth mother.’

  Mr F, who had just popped his head round the door to ask for the stapler, looked at me in surprise.

  ‘No,’ I corrected. ‘Sylv’s a little ahead of herself. I’ve got an appointment with social services, that’s all. They might have some information, then again they might not. A lot of it’s talking, you know, assessing.’

  ‘Assessing what?’ asked Sylv.

  ‘Can I break in here and ask you to find a file on the computer?’ said Mr F. ‘Only it’s quite urgent. See you later, Karen.’

  I backed out gratefully and went to ring from the staff room.

  I HADN’T SPOKEN to Joyce on the phone, it was another woman who took down my name in the diary, so I didn’t know what she’d found out. Surely, this time, she’d have the address of my mother. The desk was a sea of papers and there was a plastic carrot stuck on the computer next to the gonk. It didn’t look very professional to me. Someone had had a go at the blinds, though.

  Joyce put her glasses on and opened a cardboard folder with my name on the front.

  ‘I’m not able to disclose the address of your birth mother today, Karen,’ she began.

  ‘Fucking hell! What do we pay our fucking taxes for?’ I felt like shouting. Fucking social workers! What do you do all day, sit round and drink coffee? ’Cause you don’t do any fucking work, that’s obvious.

  ‘What’s the delay?’ I managed.

  ‘Are you disappointed?’ Joyce inclined her head sympathetically.

  ‘I seem to have been waiting for ever.’

  ‘It’s hard, isn’t it. Well, what I can
give you now is a contact for your mother, someone who does know where she is and, if you like, can act as an intermediary.’

  ‘Why? Doesn’t she want to be found?’

  ‘It’s a little complicated.’ Joyce put the file down and leaned forward, elbows on the desk, hands clasped. ‘After she left the mother and baby home she went to stay with this lady, who was like a kind of foster-carer. She offered the girls who didn’t have any support in the area a halfway house, until they’d got themselves set up with a job and lodgings, or decided to go back home. When your mother left she kept in touch over the years – I don’t believe she had anything more to do with her own family back in Wigan. She settled in London and, er, changed her name.’

  ‘You mean she married?’

  ‘You need to speak to our contact, Mrs Beattie, Mary Beattie. She’s expecting you to call and arrange something.’

  ‘Right, well. You’d better give me her address.’

  Joyce handed over a sheet of paper.

  ‘What you can do, as I said, is use her simply as an intermediary; you don’t have to meet your mother at all if you don’t want to. You could just exchange letters through Mary without giving your own address.’

  ‘Why would I want to do that?’

  ‘I’m only telling you your options, Karen.’ Joyce folded her hands over the closed file. ‘And obviously I’m here if you feel you want to talk it through afterwards.’

  All this bloody mystery, what a fuss over nothing. They make a job for themselves, social workers. Still, at least I could sort things out myself now, and we’d get on a damn sight faster too.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, standing up and putting the paper in my handbag. ‘I’ll have to run, I’ve got a date.’

  ‘Good luck,’ said Joyce.

  I walked out under a grey sky and hurried off to the municipal gallery to meet Mr F.

  IT WAS A collection called Dogs In Art.

  ‘I like paintings to look like something recognizable, not a chaos of splodges. I don’t know if that makes me old-fashioned.’ Mr F, Leo-Since-We’re-Not-At-Work, was standing in front of a large picture featuring a woman in a white nightie holding a cocker spaniel. ‘I don’t particularly care, either. Have you seen this little fellow? We used to have a spaniel when I was a boy.’

  ‘What was it called?’

  ‘Kipling. My father named him.’

  ‘We had a black cat called Chalkie. My dad named him too. The funny thing was, he went missing the week my dad went into hospital for the last time. Neither of them came back. Chalkie wouldn’t have known what to do with himself without my dad for company anyway; he used to sit on the workbench while Dad tinkered about in the shed. Dad used to say he was teaching him how to hold a nail in his paws.’

  ‘He sounds like a nice man.’

  ‘Oh, he was. He really was.’

  We walked on in silence and saw a dachshund on a riverbank and a gundog lying next to a pile of pheasants.

  ‘And how did the interview with social services go? If you want to talk about it.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, there’s no problem. Well, at least I think there’s no problem. They’re being a bit cloak-and-dagger about making actual contact, but I’ve got the address of a woman who knows her so it’s up to me now.’

  ‘So you’ll be off down to London?’

  ‘Ah, well . . .’

  We walked on past a St Bernard standing silhouetted on a mountain ridge and a medieval whippet sitting at the feet of a knight.

  ‘It’s weird, but I feel . . . almost scared now the end’s in sight. No, maybe not scared, but kind of reluctant to take that final step. I keep thinking about my childhood; memories I thought I’d forgotten have started popping into my head, some of them in dreams. Nan on a picnic with a caterpillar stuck to her tights. The time she helped me win the Easter bonnet competition at school. I wonder if – if I’m kind of rejecting all that by looking for my real mother. Because they weren’t all unhappy times.’ We stopped in front of a Great Dane standing over a tiny baby. ‘In fact, the more I think about it, I actually had quite a nice childhood. Before Dad became ill, the most frightening event I experienced was Dr Who fighting the Sea-devils. The only betrayal I can remember was finding out the label on my teddy bear’s blanket said Pure New Wool and not Mr Fuzzy’s. It only went sour between me and Mum after Dad died. And some of that was probably my fault. See, within her limitations she’s been a good mother. We just weren’t matched, that’s all.’

  ‘Are you feeling disloyal?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Come and have a cup of tea and a bun.’

  Leo led me out of the gallery – ‘Unashamedly populist but very enjoyable nevertheless,’ he told the woman at the desk – and across the road to the Octagon.

  ‘This is something I remember.’ I stirred the sugar round in the bowl with a teaspoon. ‘Did you believe in sugar stealers when you were little?’

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

  I started to smooth out the granules with the back of the spoon. ‘Those floaty seeds – dandelion clocks and such – we all thought at primary school that they were insects, or something, and they lived on sugar. I was always finding them in our larder. I really thought it was true for ages.’

  Leo laughed. ‘No, I can’t say I’ve heard that one. Tell me another.’

  I chopped patterns in the smoothed-out grains while I thought.

  ‘OK, what about those green glass chips you get on graves.’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Well, if you take even one of them home with you, the ghost of the person whose grave it is will come and haunt you in your bedroom until you put it back.’

  ‘Did you ever try it?’

  ‘No way. Too scary. But a boy in our class did and he swore he was woken in the night by an evil old woman. He lived with his grandma, though, so that was probably it.’

  Leo was chuckling and wiping his eyes. ‘Stop, stop. You’ll have me choking on my bun.’

  ‘And there was a big craze for giving yourself love bites on the arm, of course we were only eight, we didn’t know what they were. Some lads had completely purple forearms. I’m amazed nobody contacted the NSPCC. Then a girl called Sharon Dawes said her mother had caught her doing it and told her it would give her cancer, so we all stopped overnight. Except for Christopher Flint, but he was mad. He got sent to a special school in Little Lever.’

  We were both giggling now.

  ‘Sounds like Gavin Crossley,’ said Leo. ‘I can’t see him being with us much longer, the rate he’s going.’

  ‘Oh, he was much worse than that. He pushed a wardrobe on top of his brother once, and fired an airgun at Mrs Porter from the newsagent’s when she refused to give him a paper round.’

  ‘Village characters.’

  ‘Happy times.’

  ‘So do you think you’ll go to London or not?’

  ‘God knows. I’ll toss a coin. No, I won’t; I’ll count the currants in my bun. Evens says I go, odds I stay.’ I took a knife and began to saw. ‘I can always change my mind later.’

  *

  I NEVER had no new clothes when I was a girl except for the lace-up shoes I wore on a Sunday, it was all hand-me-downs. So at Field Days, Walkin’ Days they’re called now, I used have to go at t’ back o’ t’ line even though the only time I ever missed church was when I broke my arm. I’ll tell you who allus walked under the banner, it was Annie Catterall in her fancy white frock, an’ she never went to Sunday school nor nothin’. It was only ’cause her parents could afford to kit her out. One time my friend Lily Alker was on a ribbon off a banner, I don’t know how she managed it ’cause her father was an invalid. She’d perhaps lent a frock off someone. Anyroad, they were gettin’ to th’ end of the procession and this ribbon broke. Annie pocketed it, took it home an’ made hair braids out of it. When she got found out she was stripped and sent to bed, besides gettin’ a good hidin’. So perhaps I was best off marchin’ at the back.

&n
bsp; The worst whippin’ I ever got was when I took all my mother’s buttons to play in t’ street. We used make a circle in t’ dirt an’ try an’ flirt these buttons in, an’ if you got a button inside you could have your pick of all the others. I got in a row many a time for it, but you don’t think when you’re young. They used play piggy too, an’ cock-on-big-or-little. Piggy were t’ best, though I don’t think they play it now. You used put your piggy, which were a fat peg of wood with a whittled end, on a brick on t’ floor so as snout was hangin’ ovver th’ end. Then you got a stick and you walloped it so it flew i’ th’ air. Some big lads could mek it go right along t’ street. They used guess how many strides away it was. Sometimes the Co-Op held races down the Chantry, but I never won owt. I could never run, me. I got a doll once, but that was only ’cause everyone did; I still finished last.

  But they were poor days. When times were good Grandma Florrie made parkin an’ barm cakes, steak puddings and cow heel with a crust on top. A tripe man used come round t’ streets too, shoutin’. But in the years after the war, when I was still only little, my mother had to go to the church for charity loaves, you could have two a week. An’ there were allus people singin’ in the streets, beggin’, an’ miners squattin’ at street corners ’cause they had no work.

  My mother was marvellous, now I think about it, because me an’ Jimmy never felt it, all that poverty, not really. I wish I could have known her longer.

  *

  Anya had phoned up to say she was going into school for her module results and did I want to meet her there.

  ‘The twins are going for a picnic in the park after, if it’s not raining. They’re dying to see you. So am I. Come on, shift yourself.’

  I thought I was too miserable to lift my head off the pillow, but I went in the end. Missing Daniel was like a pain; worse than splitting up with Paul, which had been a series of stabs to the chest. This feeling was a deep, dull ache all over, as if I was about to come down with flu.