by S. E. Lynes
We made short work of the bottle and the just one more large glass each for the road. Once home, once the nanny had left, I was still tipsy enough to tell the girls that their grandma had died without making too much of a mess of it: delicately normal, not scary, amounts of crying. We huddled together on the sofa and had what my mother would have called a right good weep. They didn’t see their nan that much, but they loved her and spoke to her every week on the phone. Seb went for fish and chips. And that was how the immediate aftermath went: a good weep; fish and chips; Carol anecdotes and teary laughter. It was exactly what Mum would have wanted.
And now here I am a week later, at the pine table of my mother’s kitchen, in the silent aftermath of her wake. Seb and the kids are at home in south London – we decided that the girls were too young to face a funeral – and so now, alone, prompted by more than a few drinks in her honour amidst cheap sharp suits and signet rings, set hair and firm bosoms, I find myself thinking about that night in Blackpool in 1968, the year my parents decided it was a good idea to get married. And remembering my mother – I have done little else since I heard – I feel an overwhelming, indescribable, almost eerie connection to her. Something not of the mind but of the body.
Stage one, stage two, stage whatever, grief is the same yet different for us all. Perhaps what I mean is that the specifics of grief are individual. For me, raw and new as I am to it, Carol is knocking at the doors, asking to be let in. My mother is a spirit – not bad for an atheist like myself, for a woman of reason, of the law – and I am the medium. She’s here, she’s everywhere, inside and out, in the air, in the water, in the things she left behind. In her spotless kitchen, I open a drawer at random and find the red-and-white-checked tea towels that she favoured, the cloth napkins she never used because they were too posh, and, here, a handkerchief, laundered, pressed, initialled in bright blue cotton: TW. Thomas Wilson. Tommy. I know this handkerchief. Its whiteness is marked with an old, old stain. How that stain came to be there is the story of the night she bundled a few scant belongings into bags and took me and my older brother with her out of the fear and violence that was her life.
And here, now, this night, my mother’s bravery strikes me perhaps harder than ever. So much I witnessed as a child, only understanding its meaning many years later. So much I only knew on some foggy, intangible level. But now that she is irreversibly gone, I realise I want to piece the whole thing together. Because nothing brings home our adult status like the loss of both parents. I want to understand. Graham told me some of it, but only after the years we spent estranged from one another. My mother filled in other parts much, much later as we sat up together, two women talking – dry-roasted peanuts, cheap box of red, me cadging one of the cigarettes that ultimately killed her.
That I will never see her again, never feel the warmth of her next to me as we chat for hours on her soft old sofa, never hear her laugh when I say something clever or mimic someone we both know is as unbelievable to me as God. All that I have left of her, beyond the material remains, is this need to be with her, and to make final sense of her life. Call it survivor’s guilt, some vague desire to make amends for my career, my lovely home, my kind, boxer-nosed husband and my two children: well dressed, well fed, safer than I ever was. Call it the familiar floral scent of this bloodstained handkerchief that I press to my nose; call it the maudlin after-effects of too much fizzy wine drunk in toasts to her; call it, quite simply, love – for my mother, Carol, who one night in 1984, with no qualifications, no possessions and no home, struck out alone with her children into the unknown.
Three
Carol
Runcorn, 1984
Carol is in the hallway, putting on her make-up before Pauline and Tommy’s wedding. It is the last day of her marriage, but she doesn’t know that yet.
The bulb in the hall is dim. Carol Watson, née Green, has read in Woman’s Own that you’re supposed to have bright light when you apply make-up, but at this moment she can’t for the life of her imagine why. You’d never go out again if you did that, she’s thinking as she rubs a blob of foundation as thickly as she can over the bruise under her left eye. She pats at it with the ends of her fingers. In Woman’s Own there are never any tips on how to cover a shiner – this is a technique she’s invented all on her own. She tops the look off with her new red lipstick: Soldier Soldier by Avon.
‘Ted,’ she calls into the lounge. ‘Better get off soon, eh, love.’
She ducks her head into the cupboard under the stairs. Her jacket is stuck under Nicola’s anorak. Nicola, her princess, her too-clever-for-me girl. She lifts both coats, puts her daughter’s back on the hook and pulls her own free. Behind her comes Ted’s rattling cough. She steels herself and turns to face him, the war between dread and hope burning its usual hole in her chest.
His eyes go straight to her lips. Dread wins out. The lipstick. A mistake.
‘It’s only for the wedding.’ She covers her mouth with her fingers.
He knocks her hand away and grabs her chin. His fingers press hard on her jaw. In the dining room, the kids fall silent – an alarm system in reverse.
‘What is that?’ he says in his low, quiet voice.
‘It’s only from the catalogue,’ she says. ‘I got it with my points.’
‘Take it off.’ He lets go and heads through to the kids, who are eating sandwiches at the table. ‘Right, you lot, there’s two Lion bars in the sideboard,’ she hears him say as she wipes the lipstick from her mouth with a cotton wool ball and some of the Anne French cleansing milk she keeps on the phone table. ‘They’re not for you,’ he jokes. ‘Just keep an eye on them for us till we get home.’
‘Aw, Dad!’ The children laugh, and she tells herself that if the kids are laughing, then things must be normal. This is family life. Every household has its ups and downs. Women complain about their husbands’ bad moods the same way men talk about football, don’t they?
She steps out into the garden and lights a ciggie to calm her nerves. In the flower bed, the funny faces of her violet pansies shimmer in the breeze. Behind them, rooted by concrete posts, the green wire fence runs along the back of all the gardens, hemming everything in. If you were to lift it up, this fence, all the little strips of lawn, the wooden pickets and the gardens and the houses would dangle from it like washing on a line. On the other side of the fence, the field stretches away – out of the estate and beyond, to the railway track, to the expressway, to who knows where.
With no Pauline to talk to over the fence today, she smokes quickly and stubs her fag out on the wall. Inside, Ted is saying ta-ta to the kids. Once she’s sure he’s gone out to the car, she hurries back so she can say goodbye to them herself without him hovering over her.
The two of them are still in their pyjamas, watching Saturday Superstore, their weekend treat. It’s nearly midday.
‘Get dressed straight after, all right?’ she says. They nod, blank-eyed, chewing. She picks up the empty squash jug. ‘I’ll just get you some more juice before I go. Your dad’s waiting.’ She turns to make her way out to the kitchen to find Ted filling the doorway of the dining room. ‘Jesus.’ She almost drops the jug on her foot.
He throws his arms up against the door frame. ‘For Christ’s sake, I live here, don’t I?’ He glares at her like she’s mad, a fool to startle like that.
‘Sorry. Thought you’d gone to the car, that’s all. Do you want a sarnie? Don’t know when the buffet’ll be, do we?’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘I’ve made boiled ham and salad cream. Or there’s tongue.’
‘I said I’m not hungry, didn’t I?’ He heads back into the hall, shaking his head. The chink of keys as he lifts them from the phone table, another phlegmy cough. She hopes he’s not over the limit already. She smelled mint on his breath just now. He’s checking himself in the mirror, turning his head this way and that. Finding himself marvellous. He has on his best shiny grey suit from C&A, the sky-blue shirt she ironed for him yes
terday and a new paisley tie she picked up in Burton’s in the Shopping City. The skin of his neck overlaps his collar in an oily fold. He’s taken trouble over his hair for once, combed a duck’s arse at the back. Usually he just does the quiff at the front and leaves the back flat, as if he’s run out of energy halfway through, but today, with it being next-door’s wedding, she guesses, he’s made an effort. He looks like a ruddy throwback. It’s 1984, for pity’s sake. Thirty-three years old and he still thinks he’s Elvis.
‘Are we going then or what?’ he calls to her.
‘Yes, love. All set.’ She bustles round the children, kissing both of them on the cheek. ‘Be good now, kids, all right?’
‘M-Mum, stop f-f-fussing.’ Graham speaks with his mouth full.
‘Graham Watson,’ she says. ‘Mouth. How many times?’
He makes a great show of swallowing. His hair is thick and black like his dad’s. ‘B-beautiful M-Mother, please may you stop f-f-fussing?’ He opens his mouth wide, to show that it’s empty, making Nicola giggle.
‘Don’t be cheeky.’ Carol gives him a wink, lays her hand on her daughter’s cheek and smiles at them both: her world, her two reasons to keep going. ‘Nicky, be good for your big brother, all right? I don’t want any nonsense.’ Holding on to the door handle a moment, she charges the batteries of her heart with the sight of them. They’re getting older, bigger, living proof of time passing. ‘Right, troops,’ she says. ‘I’m off.’
‘Carol,’ Ted shouts from the front door.
‘Coming!’
‘Mum,’ says Graham.
She turns back to her son. Quick, love, she wants to say, but she can’t, of course – that’ll only make him worse. ‘What, love?’
He gives her an awkward smile; his eyelids hover, almost close with the effort of speaking. ‘Y-you look really n-n-nice.’
* * *
The waiting room of the register office is packed, the smell of shoe leather and cigarettes just about held at bay by a medley of perfumes and aftershaves. Ted still hasn’t come back. He said he needed the gents, but Carol knows better. He’ll be outside, smoking, swigging, looking common.
Tommy and Pauline, the happy couple, are over on the far side, by the entrance to the wedding suite. Carol’s brother, Johnny, is chatting to them, waving his hands about as he does. He hasn’t brought anyone by the looks of things. Shame, Carol was hoping he might have a date. There’s a chap she doesn’t recognise next to a green plastic plant on a pillar, chatting to Trevor from Trev’s Tyres. He’s fair, very tall. He has to bend forward to hear what Trevor is saying.
From behind the closed door, music drifts into the foyer. The previous wedding finished, the newly married couple will be on their way out through the back. This place is a conveyor belt, she thinks, waiting for one couple to tie the knot before the next can go in – a sausage factory, twisting links.
For a few minutes then there’s no music at all, only chatter bubbling in the air, before the far door opens and a song plays out: ‘How ’Bout Us’, Pauline’s favourite. She and Tommy go ahead into the wedding suite, laughing. ‘Some people are made for each other,’ Carol whispers, allowing herself the smallest private moment of something like bitterness or regret.
The crowd follow the happy couple, surging in through the double doors. Still no sign of Ted. Carol has to go in with the others, she knows that. She’s chief witness. But if she doesn’t wait for Ted, that might make him cross, and his anger will write itself on her body later, invisible ink that reveals its black message by degrees. Where the heck is he, though, really? A frantic scan of the foyer, a quick look out onto the car park at the front – but nothing, no sign. Pauline will be waiting. It’s not right to keep her hanging about, not after all she’s done.
After another few seconds, Carol steels herself and goes alone into the wedding suite to find Pauline looking preoccupied at the front, standing next to a little table with a red ghetto blaster on it. Two silver-haired women fuss over paperwork. When she sees Carol, Pauline’s frown breaks into a smile.
‘Here she is,’ she calls out, waving, and to Carol’s horror, everyone turns to look at her.
A last glance over her shoulder in case Ted has returned, then she pulls at the shallow brim of her hat and makes her way over to her friend. In a cloud of Poison, Pauline throws an arm around her, presses her to her ample bosom and plants several kisses on her cheek. She’s wearing the pillar-box-red suit with short sleeves that Carol helped her choose in John Lewis, and a small matching beret with black netting at the front and a little dove-grey feather.
‘You look lovely.’ It’s true, she does. Carol glances down at her own flowery blouse, long-sleeved, elasticated wrists; her ancient blue skirt already creased across the tops of her thighs. ‘Ted won’t be a minute.’
‘Never mind Ted.’ Pauline takes Carol’s hand and squeezes it. ‘Bloody Tommy only forgot the money for the registrar. Can you believe it? I had to borrow twenty quid from me dad.’
‘Pretty cheap to get rid of you once and for all, I’d say.’
‘Cheeky cow.’
The two of them snigger, bump hats and snigger some more.
Pauline turns away then to fix Tommy’s tie. Adrift, Carol searches for Ted along the rows, her stomach a fist. The tall, sandy-haired man is sitting at the back. At that moment, the woman in front of him bends down to fish something out of her handbag, and Carol sees that he’s wearing a kilt. That explains the frilly white shirt. Scottish, then. Either that, or he’s wearing the whole lot for a bet.
He meets her eye, gives her a broad smile. Without thinking, she smiles back and then, flustered, turns away and sits down next to Pauline. She’s never seen a kilt in real life before. It makes him look hearty, she thinks, like he could carry a wench under each arm or something; tear the meat off a ham bone with his teeth.
Out of nowhere, in a pungent cloud of smoke, Old Spice and cold air, Ted slumps next to her. Whisky, not vodka; she can smell it on him now. How must he have looked standing outside, propped against the wall, his red face glistening, ripe. His hip flask pushes a square bulge in his pocket; his double chin presses on his chest. The bloody shame of him. Not that he’s completely out of it yet, just dazed. But she knows that once they get to the reception, he’ll be worse, much worse; that this is just the start.
Four
Nicola
2019
‘Nick?’
‘Seb! Hi, honey.’ I pour the last dregs of a bottle of fizz into my flute.
‘You OK? Funeral go all right?’
‘God, yes. Graham did a great job. Seb, he made a speech.’
‘Graham? You’re joking! Wow. Good on him.’
‘I know. He seemed to want to do it so I … well, what could I say?’
‘So did you do yours as well?’
‘No! It’s still in my bag. Don’t tell him.’
‘Of course not, why would I? It’s great that he did it. That must have been a big deal.’
We both know what we’re saying. Graham hardly stutters these days, but public speaking is another thing. With my confident barrister’s rhetoric I would have walked it, but it was better that my brother did it. Sometimes the less polished speech is the more affecting. And by the time Graham had finished his halting, heartfelt tribute, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
‘Thanks for the bouquet, by the way,’ I say. ‘That was a lovely thing to do.’
‘Oh good, you got it.’ Down the line, I hear him sigh. I wish I could summon him to me. We could sit in the almost darkness, hold hands and say nothing at all.
‘The others have gone to the pub. I didn’t … I just needed to be on my own, you know? How are the girls?’
‘Good, yeah. Took Phoebe to violin, and while we waited in the car, Rosa chatted me to near catatonia. Wow, that girl can talk.’
‘She can.’ I smile. My cheeks feel like they’re under a fine face mask, which is cracking; the edges of my eyes are sticky.
‘T
hen nothing much, really. We went to Pizza Express for dinner.’
‘Tea, you mean.’
‘Don’t go all Northern on me,’ he says mock-gravely. ‘You’ve been there less than twenty-four hours.’
He has managed to make me laugh. Although, thinking about it, I have laughed a lot today. My family are very funny, their friends a hoot. To be perfectly honest, there have been moments when I wasn’t sure whether I was laughing or crying. Eventually I just gave in and let my eyes leak.
I chat to Seb a little longer, let him soothe me until he yawns, making me yawn, and we say goodnight. He’ll kiss the girls for me, tell them I love them, he won’t forget Rosa has hockey practice in the morning, he loves me, he’s with me in spirit. I ring off and think about what a lovely husband and father he is, how safe our girls are with him, how safe I am. I chose him through love, yes, but there was something else in there too, always, some seed of determination for history not to repeat itself. Like much of history, mine doesn’t bear repeating. I needed a different kind of husband. And whatever children I had, I was going to make damn sure they had a different kind of father.
In our separate careers, Seb and I deal with people like my father all the time. It saddens me to say that we also deal with people like my brother. If you meet me in my professional capacity, it probably means you’ve made some poor choices. It will be a low point in your life. You will be sharing details with me that you wouldn’t tell your closest friend. Grubby secrets, bloody facts. And regardless of whether I like you or not, whether I believe you or not, you have a right to a defence in a court of law. You will be relying on me to give you that to the best of my ability. What you will never know are my reasons for entering into this career and how utterly I give myself to it. I have made some poor choices too. But I try not to think about that. It isn’t, as they say, helpful.