Bad Mothers United

by Kate Long

  As for me, I was right outside the competition because I’d spent the Ultimate New Year’s Eve sitting in front of the TV watching Goodbye to the ’90s with my parents. I’ve checked in the Encyclopaedia of Sad and it doesn’t get any sadder than that. ‘Mum, what were you doing as the millennium dawned?’ Will is going to ask me at some point in the future. And I’ll have to say, ‘Arguing with your grandma about whether or not you should be allowed to stay up.’ And he’ll say, ‘Whose side were you on?’ And I’ll say, ‘Yours, of course, because I am the best mum ever.’ And we will high-five, or whatever it is twenty-first-century youth do to express solidarity.

  In the end I’d got my way and carried him back downstairs in his pyjamas, but by nine o’clock he was conked out on the sofa so Mum sort of won that one. At five to midnight I jiggled him awake, and at 12.01 a.m. Daniel rang the front doorbell and brought a lump of coal across the threshold, which Will then tried to eat. Afterwards, while Mum put my son to bed, I went out on the lawn and watched the fireworks explode over Rivington Pike. Daniel said, ‘I wonder what the next thousand years will bring?’ and I said, ‘Mortgages, wrinkles and death.’ When we went back inside, Dad was trying to kiss Mum although he pretended he wasn’t. Daniel left, and I lay awake till two, listening to a woman in the street shouting, ‘Please, Barry, please,’ over and over. In the morning our front garden was full of silly string.

  ‘Why don’t you ring your mum,’ Daniel was saying now, as we pulled into St Paul’s Street. ‘Let her know you’ve arrived safely.’ Sometimes I suspect he’s a forty-year-old man trapped in a twenty-year-old’s body.

  ‘Yeah, all right. Well.’ I was patting my pockets, shifting bags with my feet. ‘I would if I could find my phone.’

  ‘You haven’t left it behind?’

  ‘I don’t know. No. I had it when I got in the car.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Not sure. No, I didn’t. Oh, it’s no good. Give us your mobile. I can ring myself and then we’ll hear it.’

  He passed it across and I keyed in my number. An ominous silence followed.

  ‘Maybe you’re out of signal range.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Your mum’ll pop it in the post for you.’

  ‘Yeah, and have a trawl through my texts while she’s at it.’

  ‘She wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Shows how well you know her, Daniel. Honestly, the less you tell her, the nosier she gets. It’s really infuriating.’

  ‘She’s only trying to watch out for you.’

  ‘Stop bloody defending her, will you? Oh, hang on, here she is.’

  I held the little phone to my ear and she went, ‘Mum? Mum?’ all cross, as though it was somehow my fault she’d left her mobile sitting in Bank Top.

  I said, ‘You put it down by the landing mirror. I can post it first thing tomorrow.’

  ‘Not this afternoon?’

  ‘The health visitor’s coming. You know that.’

  There was some muttering, then she said, ‘All right. But while you’re here, can you check if my Dryden notes are in my bedside drawer? I meant to clip them in my file but I don’t think I did. I need them as well.’

  ‘What, you want me to go and look now?’

  Obviously. Everything always has to be right that minute with our Charlotte. I handed the phone to Steve, who took it off me as though it was a live scorpion. ‘Say hello to your daughter,’ I ordered.

  After Mum had rung off I had to stop myself flinging Daniel’s phone down and grinding it into its component parts with my boot heel. ‘Are you still remembering to take your pill?’ she’d asked me. For fuck’s sake. ‘Are you remembering to take yours?’ I should have said.

  ‘Sorted?’ Daniel enquired.

  ‘Uh-huh.’ I took some deep breaths. I needed to remember it was Mum I was angry with, not him. An effort was needed. ‘Look, do you have to get straight off or can you come in for a brew?’

  He switched off the car engine and sat back, his brow furrowed.

  ‘No, I’ll pass. I have to get back to Manchester. There’s a lot of stuff to set up in the lab before term starts. And I need to check in with my mother—’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘So I’ll give you a hand with your bags but then I’ve got to be straight off. ’

  Rain dribbled down the windscreen in jagged paths.

  I said, ‘Dad’s there. Round at ours.’

  ‘Thought the conversation sounded a bit stilted.’

  ‘I suppose now the coast’s clear they’ll be all over each other again. It’s ridiculous at her age. She should be past it. And what does she think she’s doing, raking up the marriage when it died bloody years ago? I mean, either she wants him or she doesn’t. She should make up her mind. The worst thing is this ludicrous pretence that nothing’s going on between them. Does she think I’m stupid, or what?’

  ‘Put her out of her misery, then. Talk to her.’

  ‘About her sex-life?’ I mimed extreme horror. ‘Oh, yeah, top idea. Tell you what, I’ll book us on The Jeremy Kyle Show and we can have it out in front of a live studio audience.’

  Daniel closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Give it a rest, hey, Charlotte?’

  We sat side by side with the water drumming on the car roof. The drainpipe between our house and next door was sputtering onto the pavement furiously.

  I said, ‘I’m really sorry. It’s not you. You get that, don’t you?’

  I just feel as if my insides were fish-hooked to a bungee cord, and the further away from Bank Top we drive, the more it pulls my guts to ribbons. And I’m sick of feeling this way and not being able to keep saying it for fear of boring everyone.

  He sighed, pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. ‘Look, go and see your tutor, Martin Whatshisface. He always straightens you out, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Martin Eavis. Yeah, I will.’

  ‘Tell him to read poetry at you or play you Telemann till you cheer up.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘OK, then.’

  ‘Do you really have to go?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Why the hell do you put up with me, Daniel?’

  He only leaned across, kissed my forehead, and opened the driver’s side door.

  As soon as Steve left I got the mobile back out and began to fiddle. After all, if Charlotte was in bother, I might be able to help her. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I decided I had a right to know. Where was Contacts on this phone? Where was Call Log? Why did they have to make every model different? Mine was a Nokia too, but nearly twice the size. Fiddly bloody buttons, teeny screen. Right, Messages, that would do. You see, if my daughter talked to me, if she was more open, I wouldn’t be forced to snoop around like this.

  The last text she’d received was from me, asking why she hadn’t got her phone switched on. Message two was from Daniel: Abidec Toddler Vitamin Drops, his father recommended. Well, his dad was a doctor, he’d know. Another message from Daniel: running a half-hour late because his mother had banged her head. From Daniel again: Big kiss for Will. Bigger kiss for you.

  Such a lovely boy.

  Raft of messages from before Christmas, mainly indecipherable rubbish from her flatmates, Gemma and Roz. None of them seemed to be able to spell, for all they were at university. Also, how many hours a day did Charlotte waste answering these nuggets of gibberish when she should’ve had her head down, working? That wasn’t what we got her the phone for. God, if she veered off-track now, in her second year, after all that effort, I’d never forgive her—

  Wait, what was this one now: Soz abt lst nt. Cn stll b frnds? My heart speeded up and I scrolled down quickly to see the name at the bottom: W, it was signed. Dated a week before she came home.

  I could guess who W was: Walsh, or Walshy, or Walshman, she called him, the other member of the house. Not Roz’s boyfriend, because he was called Gareth Thomas, like the rugby pla
yer. Walsh was Charlotte’s landlord, if you please.

  I’d said over the summer, ‘One man sharing with three girls? What’s going on there?’ And she said it was his house and he could let it to whoever he liked. And I said I didn’t like the sound of that either. What was a lad of twenty doing owning property? What would happen if any of them couldn’t pay their rent – what would he ask for in lieu? And she said I had a nasty mind and that he was nice and a mate of Gemma’s. ‘You don’t know what it’s like to share a house. It’s a different relationship with flatmates,’ she’d said.

  You know nothing, Mother, is what she meant. I knew enough to count one man and three girls.

  I read the text again. Soz, was he? For what, exactly? I navigated back to Sent Messages to see if she’d replied, but there was nothing. No, well. I may not be on top of my Text Speak, but I’m not a fool. I get what sorry about last night means when it comes from a lad. And it proves I was right to check her phone. Call it mother’s instinct: I knew she was unsettled. I pick it up like a radio signal.

  So now there’s Daniel, our smashing Daniel, a GP’s son, always available, always accommodating. Wonderful with Will, super-polite with me, comes into the house like a ray of sunshine. I’ve told him he needs to stand up for himself more, but he’s not made that way. Love seems to have filleted him.

  Then there’s this Walshy, wide boy, stirrer. Once went to a lecture so hungover he fell down the theatre steps, apparently. Famous for catching a seagull under a towel and letting it loose in Woolworths. He’s a show-off and a twit, the last kind of male I want anywhere near our Charlotte. I bet his dad’s not a doctor, either.

  Always there’s this destructive streak in her, always she manages to scupper her own chances. Where in God’s name does she get it from?

  NAN: What have you got there, Karen?

  KAREN: Hang on a minute, Mum. Is it working? How can you tell it’s working?

  CHARLOTTE: There’s a red light.

  KAREN: Oh, I see. Right. And it’s this button to pause, is it? Which one do you press to play back?

  CHARLOTTE: Did you hear about the businessman who asked his boss if he could use his dictaphone? And his boss said, ‘No, you can use your finger like everyone else.’

  KAREN: You’re not helping, Charlotte.

  NAN: Is it a cigarette-lighter?

  KAREN: Ah, right, I see now. I get it. You hold both buttons down at the same time. OK, Nan, we’re ready to go. This is a tape recorder, only it’s a lot smaller than the one we had before. I’ll pop it here on the chair arm, OK? And then you just forget about it. And we’ll carry on chatting, yes? About the family, the past, whatever you remember.

  CHARLOTTE: Can I ask Nan something?

  KAREN: No one’s stopping you.

  CHARLOTTE: OK, Nan? Nan? Can you tell us about how you met Granddad?

  NAN: Oh, well. Your granddad. Aye. Well, I were carrying a basket o’ washing back to t’doctor’s – my mother did his laundry for him – and it were blowing about and I were worried it’d end up on t’ground and get mucky – because it were all day of a job, washing then, and hard work – and Bill come over, crossed t’street and laid his coat on top. Then he took a handle and walked alongside me. It were a lot easier to carry wi’ two.

  CHARLOTTE: Aw, that’s lovely. And what happened then? Did he ask you out? Did he kiss you?

  NAN: He went off to t’convalescent home in Blackpool. He had TB. I didn’t see him for months.

  CHARLOTTE: Oh no! How awful. Could you not go up and visit him on the train?

  NAN: (laughs) I were only nineteen, I’d never been further than Harrop. We hadn’t the money to be getting on trains.

  KAREN: No, and you couldn’t even speak to him because you had no telephone in those days.

  NAN: Aye, so he met this girl there—

  KAREN: Alice Fitton.

  NAN: That were her name, a bonny woman. Older than him. From up Chorley way – her father ran an ironmonger’s.

  KAREN: And you were working at the mill.

  NAN: At Jarrod’s, aye.

  KAREN: And then what happened? She had an accident, this Alice Fitton, didn’t she?

  (NAN laughs guiltily.)

  KAREN: What happened, Mum?

  NAN: It were a shame. She’d come t’have her tea with Bill’s mother – now she was a fierce woman, old Mrs Hesketh. Very religious, wouldn’t even knit on a Sunday. Did I ever tell you about her?

  CHARLOTTE: What happened to Alice, Nan?

  (NAN laughs again.)

  KAREN: Didn’t she come a-cropper by the butcher’s?

  NAN: Aye, well, what happened was, she were walking past t’shop door and t’butcher threw a pail o’ swill all over her legs.

  KAREN: That’s the water they use for wiping down the surfaces at the end of the day, Charlotte. Water with blood and scraps of meat in it, basically.

  CHARLOTTE: I know.

  NAN: All up her dress, it went, over her stockings and shoes. So when she got to Bill’s house—

  KAREN: I don’t suppose his mother was very impressed when she turned up in that state.

  CHARLOTTE: Oh my God. Bet she stank!

  NAN: It were a shame, aye.

  CHARLOTTE: So why are you smiling?

  (NAN laughs.)

  KAREN: And it finished? They had a row and she broke off the engagement?

  NAN: Aye.

  KAREN: So you and Granddad started courting.

  NAN: We did.

  KAREN: And he was cured of TB by then?

  NAN: Well, he allus had a weak chest. That’s what killed him in t’finish, his lungs.

  KAREN: But he played the tenor horn in the pit band.

  NAN: Oh aye. For a bit. He’d a beautiful tone.

  KAREN: And you were married how long?

  NAN: Forty years. He died in seventy-nine.

  CHARLOTTE: That’s amazing. So how did you know he was The One?

  (NAN laughs.)

  CHARLOTTE: Seriously, Nan, how did you know you wanted to marry him? What made you wait?

  KAREN: Don’t pester her if she doesn’t want to answer.

  CHARLOTTE: I just wanted to know.

  (Sound of knocking on the door.)

  CARE ASSISTANT: Mrs Hesketh, it’s time for your – oh, I didn’t realise you had visitors. Can I just get these tablets down her? Is that OK? Won’t be a tick.

  KAREN: It’s all right. We were only really experimenting today.

  CHARLOTTE: Shall I switch the tape off?

  KAREN: No, I’m nearest. I’ll get it.

  CHARLOTTE: Oh, have you brought that photo of Will, Mum, or did we leave it on the—’

  CHAPTER 2

  On a day in February

  Yorkshire sun streamed through the window of my student room, making even the shabby wallpaper look cheerful. Nan’s kittens-in-a-basket picture, which I’d hung over my desk next to a sheet of Will’s mad daubs, was positively illuminated. Shards of light from my hanging crystal crossed and re-crossed the duvet, my planner, my waiting backpack. Thank God the night was over. The dark hours.

  And I was getting ready to see Martin again. Not that I was due for a tutorial, but I wanted to ask about extending my reading and also for some thoughts on the next essay title. I doubted he had any idea what a treat it was for me to sit in his office, inhaling the wood polish and admiring the shelves of books. He’d pour me a cup of real coffee which I thought tasted disgusting but drank anyway so as not to appear common. He might ask – I hoped he would – how things were going, four weeks into the new term. Then I could tell him about the Will-dreams: how quashing thoughts of my son during the daytime only made them resurface later, in super-horrible form. Because in these dreams I’m never doing any normal activity with Will. No squirting woodlice off the entry wall, or building towers of custard creams. No making hedgehogs out of mashed potato. Instead it’s always some really sinister, upsetting scenario such as last night’s special, which was that Will was trapped on a rolle
rcoaster on his own and the man who owned it wouldn’t pull the lever to make it stop. And it was Mum’s fault – that’s right, now the detail was coming back to me – Mum had paid for him to go on the ride even though the rules were that you had to be over six and accompanied by a parent, but she’d stuck him in a seat, pulled down the bar and then buggered off to buy some Vim. And I had to fill in some kind of special form before the man would let Will off. I can’t remember what happened next, just it was the morning and I was awake.

  Martin, I knew, would listen to these ramblings and be sensible and kind. He understood about being apart from your child because his wife had left him last year and taken his nine-year-old daughter with her. He had a picture on his desk (of the girl, not the mother) and in the past I’d pretended to admire it and said how sad it was when families broke up. I’d told him about Dad living at the other end of the village, and how Mum and I had managed to muddle along without him OK. For Martin’s sake I’d stressed how, although things were sometimes tricky, e.g. with money, I hadn’t been in any way damaged by growing up in a dad-free home. I didn’t really feel I’d missed out in any way. Dad was only at the end of the village if I wanted him. And I think Martin appreciated my telling him that. He wasn’t just a brilliant tutor, we really talked to each other, adult to adult.

  Which was important because, although the student house was fun, there wasn’t a right lot of serious discussion went on. Roz was good for a chat but she could be a bit silly, especially with a drink inside her. Her parents were Methodists and very strict; Lord knows what they’d have thought if they could have seen her on a Saturday night outside the union, so wrecked she had to lean against a wall to keep from falling over.