Without Her

by Rosalind Brackenbury

  Melissa is angry with Hannah for not being the mother she wanted, the grandmother she ought to be. Piers feels the remoter irritation of the son who wants to be in control, to know always where his mother is. Yet they both managed to throw off their old feelings with their clothes and swim with me; we all came close in those few moments to living quite happily without Hannah. Philip, who has loved her and tried, I really believe, to let her be who she is, must be feeling a sense of bitter failure: she has not been able to trust him enough to tell him, to let him know. All of them are volatile, easily moved from one extreme of feeling to another. I have to tread carefully with all three of them, not impose my own portrait of Hannah that after all is decades out of date. I have to wait, for them to ask, to want to know: the only thing I can provide them with is my patience, and a certain hope, based in my knowledge that she has always—until now—come back.

  “Claudia,” says Melissa, ruling in the kitchen, “will you do the salad?”

  “Sure.” I get busy with oil and vinegar, in a huge olive-wood bowl. I think, she wants me with her, now. I turn the salad carefully, leaf after leaf. Piers is outside, keeping an eye on the barbecue. Men like barbecues, I remember, because there is always something to control: fire, meat, the original things. They will even put on aprons for the ritual. Philip is out there too, opening a bottle of wine rather too energetically, as if he wants to look busy too.

  “About Hannah,” Melissa goes on. Not “Mum” this time, but Hannah. “I was thinking about what you said, that she might have wanted some time off. Do you think there is possibly someone else in her life? A man, I mean. Could she be having an affair? I know she had boyfriends when she was younger, before they were married, she told me, but Dad doesn’t like talking about it, surprise, surprise. It would be one reason she couldn’t tell him.”

  “I honestly don’t know,” I say. “It’s possible. If she ever had a lover since she was married, she didn’t tell me.”

  Melissa says, “I think she may have done. I saw her open a letter once, and blush, and hide it away in her desk. I asked what it was, and she was quite snappy, said it was private. I was only about fifteen or sixteen, and I never asked again.”

  “I think she would have made some excuse, wouldn’t she? I mean, not just vanished without a word. Mostly, if people are having affairs, they make up too many excuses.”

  She says, “You do that beautifully. The salad, I mean.”

  “Hmm, thanks. What about you, Melissa, are you happy, what’s going on for you?” I hardly know her, this younger woman, this married mother of Hannah’s grandchildren.

  “Well, my life is fine. My husband, my kids, my job. But you know, Mum’s been a hard act to follow.” She glances up at me, checking my attention. “So good at everything, so complete. And hard to know. She’s so private. I’ve had a hard time not being like her, yet being like her too. She never really let me in, somehow. Piers was closer, when we were young. I know, twins are a lot of work, but it always felt as if she was exasperated at having two of us to deal with. She looked after us, she did what she had to; but I always felt it. As if she couldn’t wait for it to end—our childhood, her obligation to us, I don’t mean life—and for something else to happen. Do you know what I mean?” She’s getting lunchtime’s plates out of the dishwasher, she straightens to glance at me again: are you really on my side, do you really want to know, do you understand?

  Yes, I know. I too have seen that Hannah. That sudden cold look: well, what do you want now, haven’t I given you enough? I try to imagine the effect this would have on a child. My own mother, similarly faced unexpectedly with twins, always said cheerfully that it was two for the price of one. I think of Margaret Thatcher, of whom people said, trust her to get it all over with in one go. But neither of them was Hannah.

  “And what about your father?” He’s still out there with his bottle, sniffing the cork. The glass between us makes us safe in here, to talk for at least another five minutes before Piers, aproned, summons us out to eat his flaming chunks of meat.

  “Daddy was always sweet. He always had time for us, as if he realized that she didn’t. Couldn’t, maybe.”

  I remember being angry with Hannah, and not telling her so, because as soon as I expressed it, she would have already been charming, lighthearted, she would have moved on. Nothing sounds more petulant than going back to the scene of yesterday’s crime.

  Oh, Claude, isn’t life exciting? Guess what? I can hear her now, coming in late at night, waking me up, alight with the evening she has spent with some boy, the cold touch of outdoors and autumn upon her, her coat still on but flying open. After climbing in to college through that girl Fiona’s window? After hours of kissing and maybe more in a parked car, out there in the dark of a lay-by on the Huntingdon Road? And I, sleepy, annoyed, wanting to say, where were you, you could have said, I waited for ages. Not saying it. Doing what she wanted me to do, instead, saying, wonderful, yes, terrific; agreeing with her, having to, life is exciting, yes! Life, as we had designated it, was an adventure or it was nothing. And for the great adventure to unfold as it should, nothing must get in its way. No, I would not have wanted to be Hannah’s daughter. I would have loved her hopelessly, as perhaps Melissa did, and longed to be her equal.

  Melissa and I carry trays outside and set them down. Grilled lamb, with rosemary and thyme from the garden, smells good in the slight chill of a June evening. Philip, his bottle wrapped in a napkin as if he were a waiter, pours our wine. Under the willow and between the bushes of lavender and oleander, a few dark butterflies flit and settle. There’s a thin moon, its sliver just visible in the sky. Everything is as it should be, except that Hannah is not here. We are peaceful at last, the four of us, going about our preparations, sitting down to eat. We have not forgotten her, or forgiven her, but life does have its own onward momentum, adventure or not. A family meal, without the main member—it’s as if she’s only just walked out for a minute, maybe to fetch a sweater to knot around her neck against the slight chill; it’s also as if she is never coming back.

  At what point do you know that someone isn’t coming back? Do you need a body, a certificate, a final note? I don’t know. This mystery that Hannah has dealt us is making us all ponder the unknowns of life. Will she return quite suddenly—a taxi at the gate, a flurry of her getting out with perhaps a small bag, perhaps not, a rush to greet us, a question, what’s all the fuss about, of course I’m here, did you really think I would not be? We have tried, with all our plans and arrangements and assumptions, our smart phones and social media and tools of surveillance of each other, to pin down what can’t, in the end, be pinned down. The desires of an unpredictable and finally unknowable human heart.

  We clear away the plates and stack the dishwasher, we put food away in the refrigerator, bread in the bin, napkins in the cupboard

  “A digestif?” asks Piers, holding up a bottle of Armagnac.

  “Mm. Why not.” Another ritual in an evening of rituals. We don’t want to let go of each other yet. Melissa goes outside to smoke a cigarette, scolded by her father. But, Dad, I only smoke two a day. As if she has to placate him still. I see the thin line of her smoke rising in the still air. Bats flap across the garden. Philip goes to water his vegetables, the ones that have been awaiting him here, tomatoes, zucchini, lettuces, all tiny and just about existing in the cracked earth of this summer. Piers and I sit in deck chairs and he hands me the small glass of Armagnac and leans forward to see me better in the growing dusk. It’s his turn now.

  “Dad mentioned that she hadn’t been well. Did you know? Do you know if it was anything serious? I can’t believe he didn’t ask her, but you know him. Or, I do. Anything wrong with her and he panics, he can’t stand it. So the result is, we never get to hear. It’s very worrying. I don’t know how it will be when they are really old.”

  So, he is thinking of his parents when really old—not just on the way to
being old, as they and I are now. A good sign, I think. He thinks that everything will go back to normal, after this crisis, whatever it is, has been sorted out.

  “To some extent, you have to let them do things their way, even if it feels worrying.” I’m beginning to feel like the resident therapist. “People aren’t rational, often, about stuff like that.”

  The Armagnac goes down, burning my throat, warming my stomach. Flies dance under the fruit trees at twilight. The bats zigzag, one, two, and away. The mountain is huge and tawny at our backs and the sun won’t disappear completely for half an hour, but all the colors are changing, the sky turns greenish, the earth black. The wild boars are snuffling up there in the bushes, among the broom and stunted pine trees, preparing their raids.

  Philip comes and stands uncertainly before us.

  “Dad, a drop of this good stuff?” Piers asks.

  “No, I’ve had enough. I’m tired, I’m going to bed. It’s been a long day.”

  He leaves us, shoulders hunched and long thin legs, going into his house. We see the light snap on in the upstairs room that he has shared for so long with Hannah, with the en-suite bathroom he’s so proud of, the freestanding bathtub, the glass handbasin, the last addition he has made to this house to please her. I noticed earlier that he has left his car abandoned in the middle of the gravel drive, as if he simply could not bear to drive it for a minute more; this, more than anything, tells me how upset he is.

  “I feel sorry for him,” says Piers, “He’s lost. Claudia, talk to him. Reassure him. You are the only person who really can.”

  “All right, if I can find something to cheer him up, I will. I don’t want to give him false hope, though, and really, I haven’t a clue what she is up to. Or where she is, or anything.” Sensing his easily renewed despondency, I add, “But of course, we did a lot together, and I do know a side of her he probably doesn’t. Okay, Piers, I’ll do my best.”

  Covering for Hannah, bringing her anxious family some hope, is turning out to be more challenging than I’d imagined. Damn you, Hannah, I think, going up the stairs to my room under the eaves—come back, come back now. The game’s over. It’s tiring. Come out of hiding. It’s gone on long enough.

  I dream of her in the small hours. I’m waiting outside a locked house, I’ve tried various keys and none of them fit the lock, or I can’t turn them. Then I hear a window open and look up. Alexandre is there and throws me down a bunch of keys. I have had the wrong keys all along. Is Hannah with him, in an upper room? I’m not sure. I fit the new key to the lock and the door opens, and I wake up.

  I’m thirsty, and reach for the glass of water beside the bed. For a moment, I don’t know where I am; the shape of the room in the half-dark is unfamiliar, my body has been removed from one continent to another, my mind hasn’t caught up. Then I remember; as if pieces come together in my brain. This house. This time. The shutter is half open and creaks on its hinge, and the sky outside is already paler than night. It’s nearly midsummer, in France. I’m in Philip’s house. Hannah is not here. I get up and lean out of the window, as far as one can on these windowsills, where there are bars to stop people climbing in. I see the outlines of trees, blots against the pale gray of the sky. I can hear the fast passage of the canal, as it passes the house and goes on—where?—to join the canalized Durance. I hear the rustle of some animal in the bushes, perhaps the fox that comes to raid the garbage bins if you don’t fasten the lid down. Night here is different, wilder than the daytime. I lie back on my bed, spread out on the white sheet, after plumping up the pillows. The room glimmers with predawn light. I can’t sleep. I sleep again.

  I get up again hours later and cross the cool tiled floor to the bathroom, sun poking at the shutters, a hose running somewhere outside, perhaps filling the pool. Everybody must be up and about except me. I open the shutters and look out, and see Marie-Laure’s small red car parked on the gravel. Someone has put Philip’s car in the garage and closed the doors. Things are being moved around, without me; this is normal—why should it matter? At night, are memories rearranged, resorted as dreams juggle with them, use them, let them fall differently, into new patterns?

  You were closer to her than anybody, Claudia; don’t you have the key to the mystery? What are you holding back?

  14.

  Telegrams arrived: urgent and succinct, the first we’d ever had. During the same week, we were both summoned to Cambridge for interviews. We met at King’s Cross and went up on the train with a girl called Mary, who wore a hat and later became Education Secretary in a Labour government. We were not in school uniform, but in another sort of uniform that our mothers had thought up for us, based on what they wore themselves: tweed suits, nice blouses, nylons, sensible shoes. We looked like middle-aged social workers. Mary had added the hat, as if she were going to a wedding. We all wore gloves. It was already the sixties, but nobody could have guessed that if they had seen us setting out, embryonic suburban matrons with Pan-Stik makeup and a dab of our mothers’ Chanel for luck.

  When we arrived, there was a thick fog. We found the bus to Girton, the college that had summoned us both, based on our exam papers in which we had quoted lavishly from all the authors we had been reading, from Machiavelli to Montaigne (me) and Langland to Eliot (her). The college was gothically spired and pointed like something out of a horror film, hidden behind trees and fog. It was miles from the town. We gave each other the glance: if we hate it, we won’t even try. We went in through the high red-brick arched doorway and saw students shuffling or sliding past in the corridors in various versions of the Girton slouch—the polished floors meant that there was no point lifting your feet, apparently, so everyone walked as if on ice. They wore black, these girls, they had long hair and pale faces, their gowns flapped from their shoulders like blackbirds’ wings, they wore furry bedroom slippers and carried armfuls of books. The tiled corridors smelled of floor polish and gravy. It was altogether far too much like school. Hannah and I gave each other the look, eyebrows raised, mouths pursed. We thought it looked French, or at least sophisticated. What now?

  In her interview, she told me later, she had talked about Yeats and Irish liberation and Maud Gonne, and the woman who questioned her had given her a glass of sherry, on account of the cold and the fog. She came out with pink cheeks, laughing. My history don was a kind woman in mothy wool and tweeds, who, after asking me briefly about the implications of the Peace of Westphalia, showed me photographs of her large family—I didn’t know that history dons had families—and we ended up talking about film. I would love it here, she said, as the Arts Cinema was showing all the new films from France and Italy, at least three a week, though of course there was more to Cambridge life than the cinema; and had I seen the new Polanski? She got me to admit that my real desire was to be a film director—the first adult who had even asked, the first person who had ever let me know that it was possible for a woman—and told me about a friend of hers in Paris who was making films; a woman, yes, of course.

  In the hall, as we met to eat cold meat and lettuce with salad cream under the high ceilings and portraits of stern and regal women, we glanced at each other a little differently, allowing our new excitement to show. This was not boarding school. The dons were not dried-up sticks. We had already been given something, a mirror in which to glimpse our future selves. Mary, in her hat, joined us. Had the wedding hat brought luck? She admitted it was her mother’s idea that she should dress up, but that now she wanted to get rid of it. After lunch we found a row of bins at the back of the kitchens and buried Mary’s hat deep in garbage. All three of us now wanted only one thing: to be allowed to come here, to spend three years in this place that seemed to want for us only what we desired most ourselves. When we met the Mistress, as she was called, we were greeted as competent adults who might only want a little guidance or practical help from time to time as we settled in. She was vague, with prematurely silver hair; we’d heard that she was
a pure mathematician, and she made jokes about it, “I wouldn’t know, I’m only a pure mathematician.” Years later, reading an interview with her after she received a Nobel prize, I discovered that her method for choosing new students was based on putting a bunch of variously interesting girls together, as you might arrange a random bunch of flowers. Our essays, our voluminous name-dropping, had got us there, but it was apparently our eccentricity—the very thing that had given us the most trouble in life so far—that had allowed us to stay.

  At Cambridge, there was no real need for escape; we were both so thoroughly enchanted by the life it gave us, with its relative freedom after boarding school, no need to go to lectures, no need to get up in the morning or go to bed at night; and of course, young men everywhere. You could spend most of the day at the cinema—and I did, for a whole year, until my tutor called me in to complain about my sketchy essays.

  The only regular rule-breaking we had to indulge in was climbing in at night. Students were supposed to be back in college by ten-thirty in the evening, and men were supposed to be out. You heard the tramp of male feet down tiled corridors at ten-fifteen and then the great doors shut, and Girton girls were supposed to be in their rooms, if not in their virginal beds. A few girls had ground-floor rooms with no bars on them. The Scottish girl on our wing, called Fiona, had just such a room; it was her window that we, among others, used for getting in to college after hours. We’d stow our bikes in the undergrowth and creep across the grass, through the flowerbed beside the rosebush, to Fiona’s window. We’d tap, and she’d open. We would heave ourselves over the sill, drop into her space, land on the rug and pick ourselves up, mutter thanks and goodnight, and be off to our own rooms. I doubt that she got much sleep, with all the traffic coming through, but she was a good-natured person and rarely complained. Och, nae bother. When the men visiting college—boys, really, but we called them men—had to get out late too, they went through Fiona’s window, to sprint across the expanse of lawn to where their bicycles were hidden, and pedal away down the road to town.