Unbecoming

by Jenny Downham

  What was she talking about? Of course Mary recognized her. It was just that she had so many faces. This one was lovely though, this one right now. It was soft and vulnerable and looked like it was telling the truth.

  Caroline shuffled her feet. ‘Anyway, you kept leaving the flat every morning and running off. I don’t know if you remember any of this?’

  Mary remembered putting slippers over her socks and holding the banister all the way down the stairs and finding a coat on a hook by the door. Sometimes, there’d be a hat that had no head to wear it, or a listless scarf with nothing to do, so she’d stick those in her pocket. And every morning, like a miracle, the girl would come dashing to meet her.

  ‘You were looking for Victory Avenue,’ Caroline said, ‘but I didn’t know that. I just thought you were trying to get away, that you couldn’t bear to be with me.’ She bit her lip, a terrible habit that made her look afraid. ‘If I’m being honest, which I’m trying very hard to be, I was jealous of how much time you spent with Katie. She seemed to have a way to reach you. Maybe she just listened to your stories, maybe that was it.’ She stroked the book lying on her lap. ‘I’ve learned a lot about you both from here.’

  ‘Ah,’ Mary said, ‘she’s always scribbling away in that thing.’

  ‘Yes,’ Caroline said, ‘my daughter certainly has a way with words.’

  ‘I like words,’ Mary said. ‘Although I don’t know as many as I used to.’

  ‘Oh, Mum.’

  ‘I think I might have a hole in my head.’

  ‘Is that how it feels?’

  Jack coughed over by the curtain. ‘Stick to the point,’ he said. ‘It’s your blue blank you want to know about.’

  ‘Blue blank?’ Mary echoed. ‘What about it?’

  Caroline opened the book, slid something out and handed it to Mary. ‘Here – this is a photo of you and Katie. It was taken a long time ago.’

  Mary felt her throat tighten. This was the photo she kept with the wolves in the mountain. They were the guardians of this. How had it got out into daylight?

  Caroline said, ‘You came to look after Katie and Chris because I’d gone away. My husband, Steve, wrote to you. You stayed for nearly eight weeks and I need to tell you what happened when I got back, because Katie says you can’t remember and it’s causing you pain.’

  Here was a garden, a sunny day. Here was Mary laughing. Here was the child with hair like burnished copper, her arms wrapped round Mary’s neck. Here was the scent of warm, sweet skin. Here was the sound of a blackbird singing.

  Mary’s throat hurt, a dry panic. She didn’t want to cry. Swallow. Swallow it down.

  ‘Focus, sweetheart,’ Jack whispered. ‘You can do this.’

  Here was the paddling pool, the watering can, the heady perfume of wet soil, the grass like silk beneath naked toes.

  ‘Ask a question,’ Jack said.

  Mary blinked at him. What kind of question? Nothing she could say would be right. All she could do was nod and smile like a buffoon as she tried to push the grief back down.

  ‘Go on, beautiful,’ Jack urged. ‘Anything you can think of will be fine.’

  Mary took a breath and tapped a finger at the photo. ‘Is this true?’

  ‘All true, Mum. And I’m sorry if this is going to make you sad and I’m not sure how much you’re going to remember, but it feels very important that we try and go back there. I think Katie’s right that keeping everything hidden isn’t good for anyone’s health.’ She sighed and stroked the book again. ‘I’ll call her, shall I? I’d like a witness to this story.’

  Mary didn’t like the sound of that. She pointed at Jack, needed Caroline to know he was listening to every word. He nodded and waved, but Caroline ignored him.

  ‘Photo!’ Jack hissed. ‘Wave it under her nose. Flap it about.’

  Mary did as she was told. ‘You going to tell me about this?’

  ‘Yes, Mum.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me now?’

  ‘Just as soon as I pluck up the courage.’

  Courage? But this daughter was so certain of things, so full of words. How right she always seemed when she said those words out loud. Although looking at her now, it was true she was different. The word for it evaded Mary’s mind. Unwrapped, was it? Unlocked? Like that door earlier. Ajar?

  ‘We’ll just wait for Katie,’ Caroline said. ‘She’ll be here in a minute.’ She took off her glasses and rubbed at her eyes.

  Mary flapped the photo. Jack had told her to and she was going to keep doing it until things began to make sense.

  ‘Sorry,’ Caroline said, putting her glasses back on. ‘She really is on her way. Let me check Chris is OK outside and then I’ll give her a call.’ She got up and went out onto the balcony. She brushed right past Jack, didn’t notice him at all. He beamed at her, didn’t seem at all offended.

  ‘That Katie’s a right old dawdler,’ he said.

  Dawdler. That was a good word. Mary liked the sound of it. It made her think of girls in summer dresses dragging their feet on the way home from school.

  She could see the bones at the top of Caroline’s neck as she craned to look over the balcony wall. Imagine tracing each vertebra with your finger? Imagine the spine like a rope of pearls. A baby has over three hundred bones, and as she grows cartilage is replaced, smaller bones join together and she ends up with only two hundred and six.

  So many things get lost as daughters grow.

  She smiled at Jack across the carpet. He was lost too, she knew this. There was no coming back from where he was.

  ‘Don’t worry about that now, darling,’ he said, winking at her. ‘You just focus on one thing at a time.’

  ‘He seems quite happy out there,’ Caroline said, coming back in. ‘I’ll just leave these doors open, then at least we can hear him scream if the other kids turn on him.’ She raked a hand through her hair. ‘Why did I say that? That’s not even funny.’

  She opened the lounge door and called for the girl. While they waited for her to come, Caroline sat down next to Mary and they looked silently at each other and it was the strangest thing, as if years tumbled away and within this woman, Mary saw all the layers, like the rings of a tree exposed, all the people this daughter had been.

  ‘You are my heart,’ Mary said. ‘I miss every single one of you.’

  Caroline ran a hand across her face. ‘Don’t say that, you’ll make me cry again.’

  ‘I’ll keep quiet then.’ Mary found her daughter’s hand and curled their fingers together. ‘I’ll just do this.’

  Mary could feel Caroline’s pulse trembling. The skin at her wrist was thin and pale. There it was again – a fluttering, like something trapped. How fragile we all are. It never stops.

  The girl arrived and waved at Mary. She settled herself on the chair opposite. She looked very serious.

  ‘She’s going to write everything down,’ Caroline said, handing the girl the book. ‘I want her to do that.’

  The girl nodded. ‘I’ll give it back to you when you need it, Mary.’

  ‘Katie tells me to think of you as a time traveller,’ Caroline said. ‘So, I guess this is the bit where we get in the time machine.’

  Mary felt a churning in her belly. She both longed for and never wanted this. She touched the photo with their joined hands. It was all she was sure of.

  Caroline smiled at her rather sadly. ‘Hopefully it will give us a new start. I don’t want to lose you. You’re my mum and I should never have let you go in the first place.’

  ‘You let me go?’

  ‘Well, yes – although strictly speaking, you did it to me first.’

  Over by the curtains, Jack chuckled, a soft sound. ‘Like getting blood from a stone.’

  Mary frowned at him. Caroline was scared, that was all. But she was also soft, as if her edges were smudged. Tender, that was the word. Like a bruise.

  ‘Guilty,’ Jack said. ‘That’s a word too.’

  Mary shushed him and he laughed
again. ‘All right, you win,’ he said. ‘Just tell her to get on with it.’

  ‘Come on then,’ Mary said. ‘Before we forget where we’re going.’

  ‘We have to go back thirteen years,’ Caroline said. ‘It was a Thursday evening and I’d just got off a plane. I was expecting to come home to my husband, but instead you were there – fast asleep on the sofa.’

  There was a noise, like the blades of a windmill turning far away. Something to do with light and shade. A breath of air stirred the room and Mary felt a chill at her neck. She looked over at the girl, her legs curled up on the chair, all that hair tumbling round her shoulders. ‘Were you there?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mary. I’ve never heard this story before.’

  Mary turned to Caroline. ‘Where was she?’

  ‘Asleep upstairs.’

  ‘And the boy?’

  ‘Oh God,’ Caroline said. ‘This is so hard. I can’t believe we’re doing this.’

  ‘Was he upstairs too?’

  ‘They both were. You’d put them to bed and then fallen asleep yourself. Steve was away on some conference, but I didn’t know that. I thought he’d be there to greet me. When I saw you on the sofa, it was such a shock.’

  Somewhere, deep inside Mary’s skull, a memory stirred. ‘You woke me up. You were very brown.’

  ‘I’d been to Spain.’

  ‘That’s right. You had an armful of bangles.’

  How strange, Mary thought, that this was the moment. She’d dreamed of this moment for so many years, played it over in her mind, all its possibilities, and here it was. She was living it right now, it was really happening.

  ‘You woke me up,’ Mary said, squeezing her daughter’s hand. ‘And what happened after that? Please do carry on.’

  2000 – Blue Blank

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  Mary opens her eyes and there’s Caroline, standing at the end of the sofa glaring down at her. Is this a dream?

  ‘Where’s Steve?’

  ‘You’re back.’ Mary struggles to sit. ‘I can’t believe it. Did you just get off the plane? Goodness, you’re brown.’

  ‘I asked where Steve is.’

  ‘Um, let me think … He’s on a trip, just some overnight thing. I can’t remember where now. Colchester, is it? Chichester? Back tomorrow. Does he know you’re here?’

  ‘Where are my children?’

  ‘Upstairs. I put them to bed. Sorry, I must’ve fallen asleep.’ She runs a hand through her hair. It takes a while to wake up to reality these days. Sometimes if feels as if she’s waking up through mist. But this is definitely her daughter. She’s becoming more vivid by the second.

  Caroline says, ‘Are you drunk?’

  ‘Of course not. I was just having a little rest.’ Words too take a while to grapple with. She wants to say something profound, but all she can think of is the kettle. ‘Shall I make some tea?’

  ‘No, you need to leave.’

  ‘Now?’ Mary feels vulnerable sitting there in just her T-shirt and shorts, half asleep, like she’s done something wrong, like she’s been caught in flagrante. She shakes that thought away. Ridiculous. She’s got nothing to feel guilty about. ‘It’s the middle of the night.’

  ‘It’s half past nine. Trains will be running for hours.’

  ‘Please, Caroline, don’t do this. Steve wrote to me. I was happy to help.’

  ‘I bet you were.’

  ‘He didn’t want to leave the children with strangers.’

  ‘You are a stranger.’

  ‘No, no … I was, but I’m not any more.’

  Caroline gives Mary a long look. Mary returns her gaze, but it makes her feel uncomfortable. She should say something, but she doesn’t know what.

  ‘I’m going upstairs to see my children,’ Caroline says. ‘Please pack your bags.’

  Mary puts the kettle on. She thinks about phoning Steve, but decides against it. He’ll be home tomorrow, and perhaps if she and Caroline have space to talk tonight, they might resolve things. How wonderful that would be. Katie would love it. For a brief minute, Mary allows a narrative to unfold in her head – one where Caroline is grateful, where Mary lives close by and comes round every day to look after the children while Caroline’s at work.

  Mary closes her eyes, aware of a dark space in her head that seems to be expanding. It’s fear, panic, something of that nature. She rubs the back of her neck to ease the pounding. Caroline is here and she isn’t ready yet.

  She can’t bear to lose the girl.

  Mary gives up on the tea and opens a bottle of wine instead. She gets two glasses and a bowl of olives and spreads some cheese and crackers on a plate and arranges everything on the kitchen table. She opens the back door. She feels as if a wild creature has come into the house – a she-wolf looking for her cubs and she needs to give her an escape route, to show she’s on her side and means no harm.

  She drinks a glass of wine and feels more like herself. She eats three olives and half a cracker. She worries Caroline has fallen asleep, thinks perhaps she should go and check, but stops herself. If she goes upstairs, Caroline might remind her to pack her bags. She’s on her second glass of wine when Caroline finally comes down. She stands in the kitchen doorway looking at all the things Mary has put on the table. She shifts from one foot to the other.

  ‘Chris has grown,’ she whispers. ‘I hardly recognize him.’

  Mary pours her a glass of wine and slides it towards her.

  Caroline doesn’t move. ‘Can you believe I left them? I walked out the door and I went to the airport and I got on a plane and left my children behind.’

  ‘You had your reasons.’

  Caroline flicks her a look. ‘Where does Katie think I was?’

  ‘Steve told her you were on holiday.’

  ‘Without her? Is that the best he could come up with?’

  ‘She didn’t need a grand explanation. Children are very forgiving.’

  ‘Is that right?’ The way Caroline clenches her jaw reminds Mary of the times she’d watched her sleeping all those years ago. That little Caroline used to have a recurring nightmare about falling planes.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ Mary asks. ‘Why don’t you come and sit down. There’s cheese and crackers if you fancy it.’

  Caroline shakes her head. ‘Why are you even here? What are you doing in my house offering me food? You know nothing about domesticity. You can’t even boil an egg. What was Steve thinking of, getting in touch with you?’

  ‘He thought I might know where you were.’

  ‘As if I’d tell you anything!’

  ‘He thought your leaving had something to do with the past, so he wrote to me.’

  ‘And then what? You inveigled your way into my home?’

  ‘I phoned him, we got talking. He was struggling on his own and asked if I could lend a hand. I said yes because I wanted to help you.’

  ‘Don’t pretend you did this for me,’ Caroline hisses. ‘Not on my account. I didn’t ask you to come and I had no idea Steve would be so stupid.’

  ‘I don’t expect you to be grateful,’ Mary whispers, ‘but there’s no need to be cruel.’

  ‘Cruel?’ Caroline leans on the doorframe and narrows her eyes. ‘Exactly how close have you and my husband become?’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘I wouldn’t put anything past you.’

  ‘Well, put that past me, because that’s you being angry and has no basis in reality. You think Steve would look at an old woman like me? You think either of us would do that to you?’

  Maybe it’s raising her voice. Maybe it’s the certainty with which she says it, but Caroline seems to lose her fire. She sort of crumples. Her shoulders sag first, and then she looks suddenly pale. She walks over to the table, kicks off her sandals and pulls out the chair. ‘I’m sorry, that last remark was out of order. I’m tired. I don’t know what I’m saying.’ She picks up the glass and takes several long gulps.

  Somewh
ere outside, not far away, a fox barks. It sounds eerie, painful.

  Caroline says, ‘I rang Steve yesterday. It was the first time we’d spoken since I left. Did he tell you?’

  Mary shakes her head. Quiet, quiet.

  ‘I had this fantasy he’d have taken time off work, that over these last weeks he’d been caring for the kids himself. I thought he’d finally understand something about my life.’ She chews on her lip, another gesture from childhood. ‘But he got you to come and look after them instead.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘When he told me you were here, I went nuts and slammed the phone down. I thought he’d know I’d come straight back. I thought he’d ask you to leave.’ Caroline pours herself more wine, then curls her hands tightly round the glass. ‘I have no idea what to do now.’ Her hands are shaking. She can’t stop, not even when Mary puts her own hand on top of them.

  ‘You don’t have to do anything. Just sit here. Eat if you’re hungry, talk if you want to. I’ll leave tomorrow if that’s what you want.’ Mary butters some crackers so that things will seem ordinary, so that Caroline won’t feel watched. She cuts an edge off the cheese.

  Caroline leans her head to one side and gives Mary the strangest of looks, as if she’s weighing something up. She says, ‘Have you found Chris a handful?’

  Mary feels a soft wave of sorrow flood her body. ‘He’s a beautiful child, but I see how he could wear you down.’

  ‘He doesn’t sleep much, does he?’

  ‘No.’ Mary smiles, wants her daughter to know she understands. The boy wakes several times a night. He also has to be coaxed to eat, can’t bear to be left alone, cries at nothing.

  ‘An undiagnosed disorder,’ Caroline says.

  ‘Yes, Steve told me. I wish I’d known.’

  ‘And what would you have done?’

  ‘Anything you asked of me.’

  Silence. Mary thinks Caroline is about to dispute this, and for a second she wishes she’d kept quiet. A retrospective offer to help sounds just like a lie.