She did not blame Miranda for her untimely pregnancy or, indeed, her father for his role: “I mean, that would be a bit rich, given that I was the outcome.” No, Miranda’s failing had been her slide into what Chloe referred to as the alternative lifestyle, and moreover one which flouted every kind of aspiration or regularity.
“I’d take a more kindly view if something rich and rare had been the product. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—I bow to none in my respect for art. But what her chums were into was the style alone. All you ever saw was batik and macramé. I grew up wearing tie-dyed shifts.”
Chloe’s refrain about taking control of her life was not just an exhortation: she felt strongly that this can and should be done—a belief that did not spring solely from her rejection of the laissez-faire circumstances of her upbringing. Her education had taught her that people are pitted against misfortune and ever have been: poverty, disease, and history itself with its malevolent strikes. Well, if you have a war flung at you, that is indeed a major set-back, but even so a degree of manipulation is usually possible. You cannot sidestep the cancer cell, admittedly, but whereas market forces are the undoing of many, there again expedient action can keep you buoyant.
People are themselves the central problem, of course. Other people. Here, Chloe drew upon experience, starting off with the rich seam of her childhood and all those fly-by-night associates of Miranda’s—the creators of batik and macramé and aromatic candles and herbal soaps, the families who lived in tumbledown out-buildings down muddy lanes, the craft market stallholders and the traveling theatrical groups. Plus the shifting cast of boyfriends, live-in and live-out. Here were people who operated according to whim, who seldom made plans, who lived in the moment. Which is all very fine provided that you do not have to deal with them if you yourself are of a different persuasion. Chloe had been able to break free of all this as soon as she had grown up and was her own woman, but then the people problem rears up again in different guises, she discovered. The trouble with them is that they are not always going to do what you want them to do; they will persist in their own opinions and intentions, they constantly obstruct your carefully designed route. Employers, colleagues, subordinates—none could be relied on for absolute cooperation. Friends must be judiciously selected.
People management was therefore a prime consideration, a central feature of this business of exercising control. Chloe considered that she had got pretty good at it. There were occasional failures of course—irreparable differences of opinion with work-mates, unfortunate collisions with some teaching associate—but on the whole she usually managed to achieve her aims without running into altercation or causing offense. Perhaps it was a matter of personality as well.
That was working life. Private life was another matter. John was never a major obstacle; a naturally compliant man, he was usually prepared to come to an agreement so long as there was no interference with certain sacrosanct areas, mainly to do with Saturday-afternoon fishing and rugby matches on television.
Children were something else.
Confronted with her first baby, Chloe was stopped in her tracks—scuppered, floored. This was the most intransigent being she had encountered, bar none. She faced anarchy, on a daily basis. Nothing she had learned or experienced had prepared her for this—this collapse of all expectations of order. Sophie performed as babies do, and had her mother on the ropes, glassy-eyed.
Second time round, Chloe was grimly prepared. She knew the battle lines, she knew the limits of her endurance, she knew that even in this ultimate test of the human spirit there is a little room for maneuver, even for some travesty of negotiation. When the third baby arrived, Chloe was ready and waiting—trained, hardened, a combat veteran. She knew how to do babies, insofar as that is possible.
But this was only the beginning. Beyond the intransigence of infants there lies the guile of childhood—the awesome powers of manipulation, the tenacity, the volatility, the flight from anything approaching consistency or rationality. Chloe saw that a successful parent required the skills of an industrial arbitrator—the patience, the craft, the ability to identify and push forward a cohesive argument. Along with qualities of leadership and a taste for coercion. Well, she could supply all of that, given time and practice.
It is of course an uneven contest, in every way. Adults dictate, in the last resort, but children hold the insidious card of vulnerability. Chloe had normal maternal instincts: she beheld her offspring at their most appalling moments, and loved them, quite against her better judgment.
There thus ensued a precarious balance of power, with the upper hand swinging from one side to the other depending on the age and capacities of the child in question or on Chloe’s stamina at that particular moment. And, indeed, as time went on, it seemed to Chloe that although she would sometimes have to concede an individual battle, the long-term offensive had on the whole been won. She did not like to think about parental life in those terms, but they seemed distressingly apt.
She came to see her own contests with Miranda in a different light. Except that “contest” was not the right word. Since Miranda had made no rules and set no behavioral parameters, there was nothing to fight about. And Chloe had not wanted to ride a bike on the main road, or consort with undesirable friends, or stay at a disco till after midnight. She wanted regularity, on a daily basis; she considered her mother’s friends undesirable. There had been a sense in which the situation was reversed, with Chloe the sweet voice of reason and Miranda the force of anarchy.
Nevertheless, by the time the children were all into adolescence Chloe felt that it was possible to be fairly confident that home life would proceed on an even keel. The children might be occasionally mutinous, but by and large they did what was expected of them. Their school performances were entirely adequate; the boys were into sport but not to excess, Sophie played the violin rather well and was wondering about music college.
Miranda parted from the Spanish woodcarver and came back to England, where she set up in a tiny terraced cottage in a Cornish fishing village inhabited almost exclusively by painters and potters.
“Wouldn’t you know?” said Chloe, on a visit. “Get me out of here! The sense of déjà vu . . . I feel as though I were ten again.” John had been rather enjoying the local fish restaurants, but piled uncomplaining into the car and drove her back to normality. Miranda had given them a cheery though slightly abstracted welcome; she was much involved with the local community arts group and was learning how to weave. She asked tenderly after the children but had rather forgotten their ages. She was quite shocked when told. “I have grandchildren that old! Ssh . . .” She was in her late sixties and resented the fact.
By now, Chloe regarded her mother as simply a part of life’s complexity. She could still be mildly irritated by Miranda but saw her as, essentially, the crucial directive element in her own struggle for fulfillment. “I mean, in a sense I should actually be grateful to her. If she hadn’t been the way she was, would I be who I am? Look at it this way—maybe I needed that sort of kick-start. It’s an old story, isn’t it? Making good. I didn’t exactly claw my way out of the gutter, but there’s an analogy, don’t you think?”
John, who knew what was expected of him, would say that indeed, yes, that might well be so. But since he did have views of his own he would tell his wife—fondly enough—that she was a born coper, in his opinion, and would have pursued much the same course, whatever.
“That’s as may be,” said Chloe. “Possibly. I’m a total believer in control over one’s own destiny, to be grandiose. Well, you haven’t lived with me for all this time without being aware of that.”
John would agree, heartily.
“But, that said, I will allow that circumstances are formative. It may well be that my mum’s deficiencies set me going, as it were.”
The children, growing in articulacy, would put political interpretations upon their mother’s attitudes: “Mum, you’re just so right-wing.”
> “And you are being simplistic,” she would tell them. “Politics don’t enter into it. Though, as it happens, all politics are about control, anyway—whether it’s the left or the right. My opinions aren’t political, they’re to do with how a person is to deal with life. And I vote pragmatically, I’ll have you know.”
The lives of children are mysterious, opaque even to those who know them best. Parents, existing cheek by jowl with their offspring, feel them to be almost an extension of themselves—their bodies, their habits, their speech and mannerisms so familiar that they seem to require no further consideration. This is not so, of course; much is going on there that would be startling and alarming if decoded. Mercifully, this alternative existence of children is also impenetrable.
Chloe had been aware of this problem, and so, in the early days of motherhood, she had boned up a bit on developmental psychology, which did not seem to get her very far. She learned about the limitations of spatial and temporal perception in infants, and that small children have difficulty in conceiving of a point of view other than their own, which perhaps accounts for some of the intransigence, but when it came to explaining the more baffling practices of nine- and ten-year-olds, let alone of adolescents, the experts were not much help. Like most mothers, Chloe came to accept that there is an uneasy duality with one’s young: they are indeed those beings so intimately familiar to you, but these are shadowed by others who are away on business of their own which you would not understand even if you knew what it was. To dwell too much on this uneasy situation is to find your parental confidence corroded. Accordingly, Chloe did not, and got on with the practicalities of family life.
The boys were pretty unfathomable, as teenagers. Chloe decided that much of this otherness was to do with the gender divide, and did not get too concerned; after all, if you have never been a male adolescent yourself, there are going to be certain experiences that are a closed book. Sophie seemed considerably more transparent. Chloe knew—just—what it was like to be worried about your bust development or the shape of your legs; admittedly, she herself had been rather less focused on such matters than most girls, being principally concerned with the escape and advancement plan that she had already drawn up. Sophie was altogether dreamier, less applied and more susceptible to distractions. But nothing to get exercised about; she was doing fine.
Chloe’s own career was in full swing, at this time. She was a busy woman, locked into a demanding schedule of meetings, school visits, desk work. It was a relief to feel that the children were nicely on course now, that they did not need the full beam of her attention, that you could allow the week to pass with only routine checks that all was what it should be. No need to be breathing down their necks; better, indeed, to allow them some space. The careful nurturing of the early years had paid off, she told John; they’re motivated, they’re as sensible as anyone can be at that age. Not much longer and they would be out on the open sea of adult life, for better or for worse. We’ll have done our bit, she said, we’ve pointed them in the right direction, we just have to hang in there a while more, that’s all.
Sophie’s school reports suggested that she was perhaps under-performing, but she’d never been exactly a highflier, and looked set to get three A levels, if modest ones. Her eighteenth birthday was coming up, and Chloe planned an indulgent party, as encouragement. The boys, on the other hand, had become interestingly competitive—no bad thing, in Chloe’s view. Trying to outdo one another would keep them on their toes.
Sophie announced her pregnancy over breakfast, one Sunday morning. “I’m going to have a baby,” she said, and smiled modestly round the table.
It seemed to Chloe that the entire room swayed and heaved. She was unable to speak; she simply sat there staring at her daughter. The room swung around her; the faces of her husband and her sons lurched from side to side. Over the next couple of minutes Sophie spoke again, in a kindly way, and still Chloe could say nothing, and John was looking worriedly toward her, and the two boys had mumbled some excuse and left the room, taking their breakfasts with them.
At last Chloe found her voice—a low, shaky voice. “We can sort this out,” she told Sophie.
And Sophie shook her head vaguely and said don’t worry, Mum, I’ve been talking to people, everything’s going to be fine.
“Fine?” cried Chloe. “Fine?”
Yes, Sophie had seen the doctor, and yes, there had been discussion of abortion and the doctor was entirely sympathetic about Sophie not wanting that. Forget it. Not an option. The doctor had put her in touch with counseling people and clinics, everything was taken care of, Sophie knew where to go and what to do, she had diet sheets and an exercise program. And of course she would do her A levels, she could fit them in before the baby came. Sophie had talked to the Head and she had been really nice about everything.
No, she didn’t want to talk about the father. He was someone she wasn’t going out with anymore and she didn’t want him in the picture.
Chloe was beginning to feel more stable. The room had ceased to swing. She could plan; her mind was racing—making arrangements, lining up possibilities.
“We can sort this out,” she repeated. “We’ll see what’s the best way to go about it. We’ll talk to people, find out about agencies, which are the best ones. . . .”
No way, said Sophie.
John cleared his throat and said that this needed thinking about, there was no need to do anything in a hurry, Sophie had to think this through, they must all take it calmly.
Chloe was silenced, poleaxed. For moments she just sat, staring at Sophie. Then she went into overdrive. “People are crying out for babies these days,” she said. “There’s a national dearth of babies for adoption. People go to Romania and Russia and South America for babies. They’d line up for this baby. This baby could have a perfect home, lovely parents who’d been yearning for it.”
At which point she remembered suddenly that this baby would be her grandchild, and fell silent.
And there they sat. Sophie poured herself a glass of orange juice. She said that her diet sheet recommended plenty of vitamin C. She told her parents that they mustn’t worry, everything would work out okay. Of course she’d been pretty shattered when she realized, but she’d come to terms with it now, she felt quite positive about it. People had been just so supportive. She looked rather hard at her mother, at this point. She thought it would probably be best if she and the baby moved out, eventually, but there was no need to start making plans yet—after all, there were months and months to go, plenty of time.
Chloe eyed her daughter and saw someone she did not entirely know—whom she hardly knew at all, perhaps. She saw that she herself had been knocked aside by the onward rush of things, this unstoppable process whereby your careful construction of order and progress is swept away by the malign hand of contingency. The too-careless conjunction of two adolescents, to be precise.
“Music college . . . ,” she whispered.
Sophie said that she hadn’t been absolutely fixed on music college, anyway. Perhaps. Perhaps not. We’ll see. She finished her orange juice and said she had to go and wash her hair now—she was meeting people later and she needed to do some revising first. She avoided the eyes of her stricken parents. Upstairs the boys had their sound system on too loud, with the door open, and Chloe knew that she lacked the fiber to do a thing about it.
Over the next few weeks Chloe assembled herself again—gradually, painfully. This had come about, and must now be confronted. She told her friends, in a matter-of-fact, take-it-or-leave-it sort of way. The friends said that well, there you go, that’s life, and exclaimed to one another—with perhaps a touch of satisfaction—that you wouldn’t expect this in that family, Chloe of all people.
She found that she tiptoed around Sophie. At night, she lay awake rehearsing a scene in which she sat Sophie down and they had a good talk. Let’s just look at the . . . the other option, she said to Sophie. Let’s weigh up the pros and cons . . . awfully young
still . . . your whole future . . . best for both you and—and it—in the long run. To which Sophie would say, these are just pros, Mum, where are the cons? And Chloe would contemplate the cons and fall silent. A silence that obtained in the clear light of day, as she tiptoed, asking Sophie if she had any washing that needed to be done, or if she would fancy risotto for supper.
There were other adults in Sophie’s life now—benign, concerned people in pseudoparental roles, or so it seemed to Chloe. She had been elbowed aside. There were the counselor and the lady at the clinic and the Head, who was being so really nice and helpful about everything. Chloe saw that, in fact, society had taken over. Sophie was a child of her time, and society was ready and waiting for her, equipped with professional advisers and advocates and benefit provisions. Sophie was a social statistic; she was expected, the arrangements were already in place. She had made her choice of the alternatives that were on offer for one in her circumstances, and that was fine with everyone; there they all were, standing by to hold out the safety net.
Miranda turned up unexpectedly, as ever. She called from the local bus station to say that she was on her way home from a trip to see friends and had suddenly realized where she was: All right if she came to stay for a day or two?
When told about Sophie she was surprised. “Ooo . . . I say! I thought they were all so clued-up nowadays.”
Chloe replied tightly that they were, apparently. Everyone was. Sophie was getting a lot of support. She found that she did not wish to look Miranda in the eye.
Miranda lit a cigarette, unchastised. “Well, I hope she’s being allowed to have her say. No doubt they’ve been going on at her about adoption.”
Chloe became busy pouring coffee. She fetched Miranda a saucer for her ash.
“They always do,” said Miranda. “First thing that springs to mind.”
Chloe gazed out of the window. She sounded very casual, when at last she spoke, except that she couldn’t seem to find an ending for her question. “Did anyone . . . I mean, back then . . . Did people back then . . .”
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