by Anna Legat
I felt bad I had found out. Nobody was supposed to know about it. Dad wasn’t supposed to know – he was to think she was a virgin when they did it for the first time, a few months after the rape. The least I could do was to stay with her, keep her warm – if only in her mind.
THE SENTENCE …
Meekly, Mother submitted to the carer, who pulled her beige tights over her knees and clad her in a skirt and the immortal – though badly crumpled – cardigan, over her flimsy nightgown. It clearly expedited matters at bedtime.
‘Having a visitor, Celia.’ The carer peered into Mother’s eyes. ‘It’s a man! We’ll have to get you nice and tidy, won’t we?’ The woman was short but brawny. Her ankles were swollen, growing out of her shoes like rising dough. ‘Shall I comb your hair? Looks like you’ve been through a hedge backwards!’ She took a brush from the bedside table and went for Mother’s locks.
Mother blinked rapidly as soon as the brush made contact with her scalp. She tried to wave the carer off, swiping blindly over her head. ‘Go away! Away!’
‘Go on, Celia, don’t be a baby. It won’t be long …’ The brush turned against the back of Mother’s head. There was a knot there: a dry lump of greyness. ‘What do we have here?’
Mother was stronger than I imagined, stronger than her carer expected. With one powerful ram of her elbow into the woman’s side, she managed to make her double up in pain. ‘Go away! Don’t touch me!’
‘Bloody hell, Celia,’ the carer groaned, massaging her left kidney.
Mother glared at her, her fists clenched, menace in her eye. Suddenly, she shut her eyes and screamed. It was a piercing sound that could shatter glass. The door swung open. Rob stood in it, gaping.
‘Everything all right?’
The carer thrust the brush into his hand. ‘Her hair wants combing. You try it. She’s a bloody pain if you ask me!’ she told him, and abruptly left him in the room, alone with Mother. And with the brush.
‘Celia?’
Mother opened her eyes and swallowed the scream. She stared at Rob and at the brush in his hand. There was a severe warning in her eyes. Rob got the message. Slowly he walked to the window and deposited the brush on the windowsill. Until that point – until the point of parting with the brush – Mother watched his every step; then her eyes glazed over and remained fixed on the view outside the window. I was used to that; Rob wasn’t.
‘Celia? Do you recognise me? It’s Rob. Georgie’s husband. Remember?’
The view outside still had more to offer; Mother gazed serenely, as if the incident with the brush had never happened. Rob looked lost. He probably regretted coming here. Actually I wondered why he had.
‘I … Well … It’s about … I thought you should know, Celia,’ his eyes followed hers towards the window, and outside. It seemed he found it easier to talk to the view than to Mother. ‘It’s about Georgie – you shouldn’t expect her to visit this Tuesday. Maybe not for a while yet. It may be a while, definitely a while … She’s not well. She’s in hospital.’ Mother’s lower lip began to tremble. It was her usual routine, but Rob didn’t know about that. ‘No, she’s not ill. Not that way,’ he assured her.
Mother muttered something inaudible.
‘She is … convalescing. It was an accident, you see? Hit and run. I thought I should let you know in case you were wondering.’ It was slowly becoming obvious to Rob that Mother hadn’t been wondering – that she couldn’t have been doing something as demanding as wondering. He tore his eyes away from the window and looked at Mother briefly, somehow relieved she had taken it so well. He bent over her and whispered into her ear, ‘You’re so lucky, Celia …’ He squeezed her hand. ‘I’d better be going, then. I’ll visit, I’ll try.’
He got up. Our wedding picture, propped on a shelf, caught his eye. He picked it up, touched it. His finger picked up some dust and left behind a curved line which revealed both our faces with greater clarity. ‘I may have to make a decision about Georgie I don’t want to make. I want her to live, but not like that. Do you understand? I hope you do, Celia. Georgie wouldn’t have wanted –’
‘Georgie would have been better off being a boy.’ Mother wasn’t looking at him, but her words were clear. There was an eerie lucidity in them that contrasted with her blank face. Rob stared, dumbstruck.
‘When she was born – a girl – I cried. I was so disappointed. Not for me – for her. A girl … a girl … poor thing …’ Mother’s voice trailed off. It sounded frail, wailing. ‘But it isn’t her fault. She didn’t ask for it.’ She looked straight at Rob. ‘Georgie’s a good girl. Don’t hurt her.’
Rob was still staring while Mother had suddenly lost interest in the matter, and turned towards the window. Her lower lip quivered.
‘No, I won’t. You’re right: she didn’t ask for it,’ Rob said in a low voice. ‘Thanks, Celia.’ He left.
Mother didn’t acknowledge his departure. She was ten again. She was in a wood: thick undergrowth, knee-high ferns. She was frightened. Lost. I could hear her heart beating very fast, and her shallow breathing. Through the low hanging canopy of tree branches she was looking for the sun to guide her out, but the sky was overcast. She was a brave little girl. She told herself she had to keep her hair on and keep going in the same direction. Whichever direction it was, she was bound to reach the end of the forest. It was not boundless. She started walking.
Mark was sleeping on the couch – a sizeable three-seater, yet his thin legs were still too long for it, and were bent over one side of it, dangling lifelessly like the wooden limbs of Pinocchio. Part of his body was elevated so that his head rested high on the back of the couch; the rest of him was convoluted and twisted on the seat. He looked extremely uncomfortable, even for a wooden puppet. Yet he was fast asleep, his head thrown back, his mouth gaping open, producing self-indulgent, contented snores. There was an empty bottle of something – no doubt alcoholic – on a small table by the couch. Two tumblers stood next to it. Other than that the room was immaculately tidy. I should say it was worryingly tidy: it was tidier than I would’ve cared to make it myself, and that was saying something. The girl was either bordering on obsessive-compulsive, or we were talking serious cultural diversity here. She was in the corner of the room, folding bed sheets into neat squares and putting them in a large drawer under a sleeper-sofa. She glanced over her shoulder at my sleeping son. She held him with a steady gaze, listening to his jolly grunts. Once she was sure he was truly immersed in full-blown slumber, she slipped out of her pyjamas (yes, she had been wearing sensible striped PJs). Her body was tiny and perfectly formed; it wasn’t toned, like Paula’s, but there wasn’t an ounce of fat on her – everything was smooth, in clean lines. She was a character from a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. You would trust that girl with your life.
She stepped into the shower in a small, windowless en-suite by her room. I scanned her room: there was very little to rest an eye on. The floor was wooden boards, scrubbed to the bare bone. I could find no family snapshots anywhere, but there was one picture propped on the mantelpiece. It depicted an orange-red sky, a black outline of hills, or a forest, and the white silhouettes of trees. Next to it was a statue of a sitting Buddha, or some other Eastern deity. In a square glass, half-filled with water, swam several white daisies: quite a pleasant sight, I liked the idea though I couldn’t be too sure if I would ever use it in my lifetime.
Fresh out of the shower, Chi got dressed in a pair of linen trousers and a body-hugging orange top. Her wet hair soaked into it. She glided barefoot across the wooden floor, without making a single sound. A kitchenette was built into her room. She went about boiling the kettle and making coffee. Mark didn’t stir throughout the entire procedure even though the kettle whistled and two mugs clanked loudly against each other when she took them out of a cupboard. You would think he was dead …
She took the mugs to the table, put them down, and gently brushed Mark’s shoulder with her elfish fingers.
‘Wake up,’ she chim
ed in her tiny, five-year-old’s voice. Mark twitched, gave out a startled grunt and opened his eyes. ‘You drink coffee?’ she asked.
‘For you I’ll drink anything, but it so happens that coffee is my beverage of choice.’ He bravely reached for the mug and downed the steaming liquid in one go. I say ‘bravely’ because I knew for a fact Mark detested coffee; he had been brought up a proper English Breakfast tea devotee. But that didn’t matter anymore – he was head over heels in love. It was clear they hadn’t had sex yet and at this point he would drink boiling lava to get into the girl’s knickers. I wished they had got on with it so he could get his perspective back. As it were, he was far from having any sense at all.
‘Chi, I don’t think I can let you go,’ he said. ‘In fact, I know I can’t.’
‘And I don’t think you have a choice,’ she smirked, ‘my shift starts in an hour. We both have to be going.’
‘I don’t mean that. I mean – you are it. For me, you are it. That’s it. I’m sunk. I can’t let you go. I’d be a fool if I did.’
I never knew my son commanded such flair at expressing emotions. It was certainly the first time I had heard it.
Chi shook her head with mock exasperation. ‘You are a stubborn man, Mark Ibsen!’
‘When I know what I want – I am. You’ll have to give in to me.’
‘I can’t stay here. I am stubborn, too. I don’t believe in your queen, I won’t pray in your church. I am a communist, you know? I am dangerous, and I am going home.’ She picked up their mugs and drifted away to the kitchen. She was washing them under the running tap whilst Mark watched. She dried them and put them in the cupboard. It was as if they had never had that coffee.
‘I am going with you.’
‘To Vietnam?’ Her almond eyes rounded.
‘I was always going to Vietnam. It’s always been my plan.’
‘What do you know? Such a small world! We may even be travelling on the same flight!’ Chi laughed – little chiming notes bounced in the air. She was laughing – she was trying to laugh it off – but I sensed she was flattered, and hopeful. She wanted him to go with her, and now she was beginning to believe he would. Was this Mark’s destiny moment, I wondered, his own Edinburgh Festival?
‘I watch my parents. I don’t like what I see, and the thing is, I’m halfway there – halfway to repeating their life. I don’t want their life, I want my own! I just didn’t quite know how to break it to them. Well, how to break it to Mum … Dad would’ve been all right with it, but Mum … You don’t know my mother. I couldn’t do it to her. I was planning to leave anyway – just without telling her … well, in not so many words … It would’ve been a gap year, then … I’d think of what to say next. But now –’
‘Now that she can’t stop you?’ Chi interrupted him. There was an undertone of condemnation in her voice.
‘Now that I met you!’ Mark approached her and took the tea towel out of her hands. He put it away, cupped her face in his hands and kissed her. He came out for breath, looking childishly elevated. ‘Now I know where I’m going with it! That is it. You are it! I am going with you whether you like it or not. I’ll live next door to you if you don’t let me in. I’ll become a communist!’
They were both laughing: stupidly, loudly, and drunkenly. He was kissing her. She was kissing him. Before I knew it, before I had the presence of mind to get myself out of there, they were tearing each other’s clothes off, Mark was lying stark naked on the hard floor with his back arched and his eyes rolled into the back of his head, and his temptress was sat astride him, bouncing up and down like a bunny rabbit. So I stayed, averting my gaze and closing my ears to their impending full Technicolor orgasm. I collapsed in an emotional pile of my own and marvelled at how, until now, I had managed to prevent my son from being his own man and living his own life, without ever realising what a burden I had been for him.
Mark broke it to his father as soon as he got home. Rob had only just got back himself after a night out with the warm-blooded Olivia, followed by a half-decent conversation with my mother. It seemed to me they were all getting on with their lives without me rather well. Rob had just put the kettle on. It was the same kettle he had carried to my side when I was lying on the pavement with my brains pouring out of my nose; the same kettle that had kept me company by my hospital bed until he took it home and lovingly restored it to the kitchen worktop.
‘Mark! Just in time for a cup of tea! I’ve just put the kettle on.’
‘Coffee, Dad. I’ll have coffee.’ Mark sat down at the kitchen table. Rob gazed at him, puzzled about the coffee, but made no comment. Unshaven, dishevelled, and pale, they both looked seriously shagged out, and at least one of them truly was.
‘Had a good night out?’
‘Yes. Very good. The best night of my life.’
Rob was looking increasingly alarmed. ‘How’s Charlotte?’
‘Charlotte?’ It was Mark’s turn to look puzzled. It appeared he couldn’t recall any person by that name.
‘Yes, Charlotte. Are you all right?’
‘Yes, like I said, couldn’t be better.’
‘So, where were we? Charlotte …’
‘We got engaged, but I need to talk to you about something-’
‘Engaged? Well … congratulations are in order?’
‘Dad, I want to talk about something. It’s important.’
‘Your engagement would be important, wouldn’t it? Mum would like that.’ Rob attempted a fond smile at the mention of me, but all he managed was a twitch. ‘Well, well, engaged … Last night? You got engaged last night?’
‘No, no … last night I was with someone else.’
‘Riiight …’
‘Her name is Chi. It’s Vietnamese for a twig. She’s Vietnamese and I am in love with her. I’m going to Vietnam. With her.’
‘Um.’ It was a short statement even by Rob’s standards, but I didn’t expect much more under the circumstances.
‘You know I always wanted to go to the Far East …’
‘Um … Yes, for your gap year!’
‘Dad, this is it. For me, this is it. After the exams, I’m off. I’m going to apply for a job with Amnesty International or the Red Cross, or something or other. Hopefully –’
‘Well, it’s your life …’
‘Dad, I always wanted it – I just didn’t know I did. This is my chance to break away from this … this … this vicious cycle! And, like I said, I’m in love and Chi is Vietnamese, which obviously plays a big part in it –’
He was spluttering words. He was drunk on it. Intoxicated with excitement. Had I ever seen my son so out of control? In my perverse way, I was enjoying it. Knowing my boy had blood – not water – flowing through his arteries. Go, Mark! I shouted as if all my money was on him. Go, Mark!
And then came the anti-climax. Rob said, ‘What about Charlotte? Haven’t you just got engaged? Or was it to Chi, I get confused …’
‘It was to Charlotte, but it was a mistake. I got muddled up, Mum in hospital … just muddled up. She’ll get over it when I’m gone.’
‘Who will? Mum or Charlotte?’
‘Charlotte, of course!’ It went without saying that I would never get over it, and they both knew it.
‘So you haven’t told Charlotte? She doesn’t know?’
‘Is there a point telling her? It’ll only upset her.’
‘Don’t you think she should know?’
‘She will! Once I’m gone she’ll realise.’
‘She should be told.’
‘Do you want to tell her?’
Rob stared. He wasn’t one for rocking boats. ‘No, I don’t. I wouldn’t know where to begin.’
‘Neither would I. Now you can see my point.’
Rob nodded. They drank in silence. Nothing else was to be said about the matter now that it was all clear and straightforward in their heads. Like father, like son … A thought occurred to me. They could have both spent lifetimes tied up to people they didn’t
want to be with, unable to bring themselves to get away, unable to hurt anyone’s feelings. They could both conform, against their will but in agreement with their conscience, until circumstances released them from their obligations, almost by accident. In Rob and Mark’s case it was the accident that had befallen me which could set them free. It wasn’t the most pleasant or self-indulgent thought I ever had, but it was the closest I had come to knowing my husband and son.
Brandon shook Emma awake. ‘They’re downstairs,’ he whispered, greatly agitated. ‘Your father and your brother! How am I gonna get out? If they know I spent the night here …’
Emma smiled at him dreamily. She threw her long, skinny arms around his neck. ‘I’m happy,’ she told him.
‘Em,’ he smiled back, and then confessed against his better judgement, ‘you’re trouble, but I bloody well love you.’
‘It was magic. Last night,’ she stretched and purred like a fully domesticated black panther, ‘our first time was magic …’
‘It was …’ He lay next to her and she put her head on his chest. ‘But I’ll have to go home some time,’ he sighed.
‘Don’t worry. They won’t come here. No one comes to my room. Except Mum, but Mum …’ Emma picked on her nails. She was chewing the cuticle of her forefinger, a tortured grimace on her face. ‘I miss Mum, even though she’s such a pain in the arse, I wish she was home.’ I could swear tears welled in her eyes. I felt defeated by those tears. My daughter, who had never given me a second glance, a second thought, a second chance, was wishing me back and I couldn’t make her wish come true. What sort of mother was I?
‘She’ll get better. Believe in it.’ Brandon kissed my daughter’s forehead. I should be saying that; I should be offering her that kiss. I should be making her feel better.
Emma nodded, but couldn’t say a word without letting those tears roll. Her lips were pressed together tightly.