Some Girls' Mothers

by Anne Caldwell

  Out on the street I link arms with my mother and try to find a decent café I can take her to. It’s rush hour now and the roads are at a standstill, the air thick with fumes. I could do with a stiff gin but tea is going to have to do.

  ‘I don’t know how you can live in a city like this. Look at all these cars.’

  I grip her by the elbow and steer her down Barlow Moor Road towards Safeway’s.

  ‘Would you like to go for a cuppa?’

  ‘I don’t want any of that herbal nonsense. And find somewhere clean.’

  We sit in the supermarket café for the next hour. Neither of us says much. The red plastic seats are uncomfortable and are riveted so that we are an exact distance apart from each other. Mum has ordered a toasted tea cake but when it arrives she spreads it with butter, then doesn’t touch it.

  I invite my mother back to my house, but can see that she is itching to leave. In the car park she observes the broken glass on the pavement, purses her lips. I watch her climb into her Renault Clio. She has an extra cushion on the driver’s seat so that she can see out of the windscreen. My sisters and I used to laugh about this fact when we were younger. I watch her diminutive figure pull out of the end of the road, into the heavy traffic and nearly run after her to ask her to stay a while, give her a hug, thank her for at least coming to try and sort things out with me. I think of the photograph I have of her when she was little, her red plaits and new bike.

  I stand in the middle of the car park, near some bin bags smelling of sour food, and watch a group of crows jab their beaks at a Chinese takeaway, picking through its contents with their greedy yellow eyes.

  In the following weeks, Mum and I talk on the phone like ice-skaters on a canal that could give way in the middle. We circle round each other; stay clear of deep water. She tells me about my sisters’ successes. People from school I barely remember who have married accountants, or become nurses and teachers. Asks me about the weather.

  *

  Six months later, Mum comes to visit me in Fallowfield and arrives flustered. She’s been lost again trying to get here, and tells me a very rude policeman stopped her and warned her about speeding. Evidently she was doing forty miles an hour on the A34 and missed the sign that says slow down to thirty. She’s lucky not to have been given a ticket.

  ‘It was a dual carriageway, darling, and I was trying to concentrate and remember when to turn left. He was very young-looking for a policeman.’

  I bite my lip and tell her I’m just going to get changed so that we can go and visit the Whitworth Art Gallery. There is a new exhibition of Victorian watercolours on that I think she’ll like and that won’t offend her tastes. She doesn’t want to waste her time on any of that modern stuff. Ten minutes later I come downstairs to the sight of my mum, in her best skirt, on her knees in the kitchen. She has found the dustpan and brush from under the sink. It must have taken some doing because I had pushed it right to the back of the cupboard and hidden it behind a large box of soap powder.

  ‘I’m just giving your floor a quick once-over, it looked like it needed it.’

  ‘Oh for Christ’s sake, Mum, get up. I’d already done it before you came.’

  ‘Well you hadn’t gone right into the corners.’ She struggles to her feet and triumphantly shows me the contents of the dustpan which include a clump of cat hairs and some old cheese.

  I walk into the tiny lounge for a minute so that I don’t completely lose my rag. I have lost count of the number of times my mother has come to visit and I have walked in on her cleaning the windows, floors, moving furniture and dusting underneath or ‘just doing a spot of disinfecting your sink’.

  I sense Mum standing in the doorway behind me, very close to my back. I can smell her ‘Youth Dew’ floral perfume. As I turn to face her, she is still holding on to the dustpan and brush.

  ‘Anne…are you still going for “treatment”? I was just wondering if she was helping…helping you sort out…?’

  We have never referred to The Visit to the Psychotherapist in the last six months. I stare at her for a minute and my stomach’s in knots. Somehow the striped Indian blanket in the therapy room and the candlewick bedspread are all twisted together like tights in a washing machine. I can see my mum’s kitchen table and the cut-glass cruet. The salt and pepper are smashed, washing is on the floor and it’s damp and steaming and covered in bits of broken glass. When I try and pick them out my hands are cut and bleeding.

  ‘Yes…Mother. I’m still going…I’ll be going long after you are bloody dead and gone!’

  The dustpan falls on the tiles. Cheese and cat hairs spill out all over the edge of my carpet and down the side of the sofa.

  I walk towards her and then stand there, hesitating.

  ‘I’m sorry…I didn’t mean to say that. Come on, Mum…Let’s just forget it. I’ll get your coat…let’s go to the gallery, like we said.’

  ‘Well…. Well…’ Mum is indignant. She has drawn herself up to her full height. (Four foot eleven.) ‘I didn’t bring you up to speak to me like that, young lady.’

  ‘I’m sorry…it just came out wrong. It’s a touchy subject.’

  ‘I can see that. What an outburst! Well.’

  She smoothes her skirt repeatedly, then walks towards the window and looks out onto my backyard. There is a long pause.

  ‘I’ll clear up this mess and then I’ll go. I can see I am not welcome here.’

  ‘Mum…Mum. I’ve said I’m sorry. Calm down. Come on. Let’s try and have a nice afternoon together. I’ve not seen you for ages.’

  I grab the dustpan off the floor, sweep all the crap up and shove it hard into the pedal bin in my kitchen. I fetch her coat, and help her on with it, first one arm, and then the other into the silk lining. She’s stiff in her shoulders these days. I retrieve her handbag, which has slipped off my piano stool and is lying on the floor. I dust it down and hand it to her.

  I have no idea where my car keys are, but try and smile brightly.

  ‘Would you like a quick brew before we go, Mum? I’ve got some nice shortcake in a tin.’

  She nods, and sits down on the edge of my sofa.

  ‘I think it’s going to rain again, darling…I should have brought a hat. It’s always so wet in this city. You’ve got a lot of books in here haven’t you? And all these plants. I bet they take some watering. Ah…thank you for the tea. Did you get the shortbread from Kendal’s? I wouldn’t mind a trip down there after the art gallery.’

  I listen to Mum filling the airspace and think for a moment how lonely she must be, living in a small village away from ‘her girls’. I think about her endless cheerfulness and good humour. I think about the fact that she’s been a widow now for longer than she was a married woman. I listen to the sound of the rain on the French doors at the back of my house, and notice that all my pelargonia are blooming bright red and pink and purple.

  I look down at Mum’s feet. Size threes. Impossible to find decent shoes for except in the sales. I will take her to Kendals. We’ll go through the perfume galleries to the fourth floor where designer clothes fill the department store with air that smells of leather and cashmere. I will ask one of the shop assistants to ease Mum’s shoes off and let her rest her feet on a low-level stool. I will buy her a pair of soft, cream sandals for the summer. Refuse point blank to let her pay. We will find calf-skin uppers that will mould to the shape of her toes, leather soles to let her feet breathe.

  The Importance of Tea – and Rabbits

  Char March

  Easter 1995

  I am striding up the hill out of Charlotte Square in Edinburgh – shoving angrily through the freezing Easter air.

  I’d been hoping for some relief – from actually having to ‘be’ with her – by going round the National Trust’s Georgian house in the Square. But we’ve just found out it doesn’t open for another two weeks.

  I am ranting as madly as any Grassmarket down-and-out. Not open at Easter! After all this isn’t a tourist destinat
ion, a capital city, this isn’t a place that derives loads of its income from visitors – is it? This is bloody Scotland!

  Behind me, I hear a gasp, a thud. I look round. Fifteen metres back, my mum has just fallen, full length, onto the granite pavement. She is lying face down. Her arms and legs are making feeble swimming motions.

  There is that sickening split-second when I just want to run the film back – have her leap back through the air, take a few paces backwards on the pavement, then the film to stop, and re-run, without the trip, the fall, the very obvious damage.

  And, of course, it is all completely my fault. If I hadn’t been striding out so fast, if I hadn’t just gone off on one about bloody Scotland, if I had been linking arms with her like an only daughter should, if I hadn’t just… Mum had tried so hard to keep the others, but she’d ended up with just me.

  And then I’m running, my coat blowing round me. Mum is struggling to sit up. I tell her – sharply – to stay still. There is blood all over her face. Her glasses are broken and hang twisted from one ear. Her thin veiny hands are shaking and badly scraped. A lump is already blooming on her left cheek. Her left kneecap has gouged through her American tan support tights, and is bleeding over the hem of her best camel coat.

  My fury with her vanishes. My mum – my insufferable, utterly impossible mum who I was about to walk away from for good – needs me.

  Yesterday I got off the train from the south at Waverley and she was on the platform – suddenly an old lady. I hadn’t seen her for over nine years – since I cut off all contact, sent back all letters ‘Return to Sender’, changed my job, then my address, then my name. She is much smaller than nine years ago. White-haired now. And thin. And with a smile that looks so much like Grandma’s I keep doing a double-take.

  I’ve no idea what she thought of me.

  The first hour or so of us being together, everything had gone fine. We’d talked non-stop about seemingly everything. Then there’d been a show that night so we could sit in the dark, next to each other, with no need to talk. Then a night of my mum’s chainsaw snoring – and me in the twin bed suddenly wondering what on earth I was doing in this claustrophobic hotel room on ‘neutral’ ground. Then a dreadful lukewarm breakfast with businessmen settling their porn channel extras at the reception desk beside our table. The attempt at National Trust distraction had seemed the last straw.

  I kneel down on the pavement, hold her awkwardly, tell her everything will be okay, to just stay still while I check out her legs. Meanwhile, I am looking through the traffic to try to catch a taxi’s eye. I run my hands tentatively down both her alarmingly thin shins.

  What on earth am I checking for? Fetlocks? (Whatever they are.) ‘They Shoot Horses Don’t They’ is thundering through my head.

  I say: There must be an uneven paving slab. And I glare around for the offending edge – something else to blame Scotland for. But the pavement is miraculous – the only billiard-table-smooth section in Europe. There is absolutely nothing she could possibly have tripped on. This makes it, of course, even more my fault.

  I’m sure there was something, dear. I think I felt it shift.

  She rabbits on while I try to assess the damage. I must be getting clumsy. Not picking my feet up properly. Getting slovenly.

  I mumble: I was walking too quickly. I’m sorry.

  Oh, it’s not your fault, dear. I should have got my hands out faster. Besides, Jack says I’m always falling these days.

  I don’t know my mother’s ‘these days’ – she was just into her sixties when I cut off contact. Now she’s a frail lady in her seventies.

  Of course, not that much about her has changed – she still has no intention of doing what I suggest. She does not ‘stay still’, she keeps saying I’m fine, I’m fine. It’s just a bit of a scrape. Just a bit of a scrape. And she tries to struggle to her feet, but can’t. This alarms me. On the one hand I want her to do – just for once in her life, just for this bloody once – what I say: to keep still. On the other, I want her to leap up, dust herself down, say Silly me! I don’t know… whatever was I thinking of! and to stride off to the National Gallery where they do a decent pot of tea.

  Two passers-by – very Morningsidey ladies – ask if they can help. They collect Mum’s handbag from near the railings. This, I realise, is serious – I’ve never known my mum let go of her handbag in public. The ladies offer clean lace-edged hankies, fuss and tut in that very Edinburgh West-Endy way – I want to bellow Bugger off! at them, but I spot a taxi.

  So I let them help me get Mum into the taxi – and all the time Mum’s saying Oh, I’m being such a nuisance. I don’t need a taxi. I can manage. I’ll be fine. She is in her seventies and she still doesn’t believe she is worth something as extravagant as a five-minute taxi ride. Then, suddenly, gripping the coatsleeve of one of the ladies: Thank you so much. Gosh maybe I do need to sit down.

  I tell the taxi to take us to A&E at the Royal, but Mum absolutely vetoes this. She gets so agitated that I relent – tell him to take us back to our hotel. Meanwhile, I take off Mum’s smashed glasses, fold them carefully and put them into her handbag. She looks horribly vulnerable without them. Can obviously barely see me. I know how lost I feel the only time I ever take mine off – at the swimming pool. It suddenly becomes a terrifying place of loud slaps on water and shouts and people running past and no way of knowing how to get back to the women’s changing rooms.

  I hold onto Mum – an arm round her shoulders, and the other gently holding one of her scraped hands – all the way back to the hotel. I don’t know what I say. Probably gibberish. Hopefully it’s slightly comforting gibberish.

  At the hotel I tell the taxi to wait while I get two hotel staff out to help me manoeuvre Mum into the lift. She keeps up her I’m so sorry about all this. I’m sure I’ll be able to manage. Oh dear me, I am causing a fuss. I’m so sorry. I’m putting you all to such a lot of trouble. If she’s not careful, I’ll slap her.

  Then the doors slide shut and we stand quietly in the lift, my right arm firm round her waist. We watch the numbers slowly increase, and I wonder: Am I holding her up…or clinging to her?

  Out of the shush of the lift, I get Mum along the corridor, negotiate the swipe-card door and lower her gently onto the edge of the hotel bed. She gives a big sigh, and sits for a moment, quiet, holding her head in her hands while I grab the phone – tell the receptionist I want extra flannels and towels and a bowl of ice. I stare at Mum while I bark out instructions to the receptionist. My heart is eight times its normal size, it is choking me, it isn’t allowing any air into my lungs, I have to keep swallowing.

  Mum looks up from the bowl of her thin hands. Could you ask them for some tea? I’d love a cup of tea.

  How on earth could I have forgotten that life-giving elixir – the liquid that calms any crisis? I order a tray of tea and biscuits – A big pot, and extra hot water.

  They bring the flannels, the towels, the ice, say the tea is on its way – keep suggesting the hospital. But Mum is adamant, so I become her guard-dog – snarling at them, at the very end of my leash, that she’s not going anywhere and to leave us alone, and to hurry up with the tea.

  Mum’s still perched on the end of the bed in her best camel coat. She’s soaked one of the flannels, and, instead of mopping at her smashed knee, or her bloody face, she is trying to sponge away the blood spatters from the hem of her coat.

  I gently take the flannel from her. Ease her coat off. Give her fresh cold flannels to hold on her scraped hands while I dab-dab at the blood from beside her eye, and hold ice in a flannel against the blue egg lump that is sitting on her left cheekbone.

  And we chat – much more easily and gently with each other than we have managed at any time in the previous twenty-four hours together.

  I help her out of her tights. This is the first time I’ve ever helped my mum in any intimate way. Her silky under-slip slides past the backs of my hands. Her tights are warm, with an almost furry feel, at the top of
her thighs. It is very hard to pull the thick American-tan fabric wide enough to get it over her swollen knee without hurting her more. Underneath, her legs are very very white and thickly varicose-veined.

  Her left knee is a real mess. Cut right through her thin skin to the bone and swelling to well over twice its size. I mention hospital and X-ray and she is suddenly Mum again. Absolutely not! I’m not going in one of those places. I’d know if it was broken. And it’s not. I just need a bit of rest and I’ll be right as rain.

  I back off.

  I put an icepack on her knee. Then soak the flannels again, and carefully clean up the scrapes in her palms. It’s then I remember the little tube of Arnica I’ve got in my sponge bag. When I come back with it, I realise Mum is shivering.

  The room is warm – stuffy almost – but I find her mohair jumper in her drawer, drape it round her shoulders. Tuck her silk scarf round her neck. Sit on the edge of the bed and hold her for a few moments. We don’t say anything.

  Then I sit on the carpet at her feet and squeeze out some Arnica and start to very gently work it into the unbroken skin of her knee – to try to help with the bruises. I am concentrating – desperate not to press too hard. But then I see tiny splashes appearing on Mum’s skirt. I look up – she’s crying. I can’t remember ever seeing my mum cry before – except at Grandma’s funeral, and then, only very very briefly.

  I’m sorry, Mum – I’m doing it as gently as I can.

  It’s not that. It’s that you’re doing it with such…love.

  There is a tentative knock on the door – the tray of tea has finally arrived.

  Never has tea tasted so good. We munch through the thick biscuits – Scottish shortbread which we both hate. It’s like eating sugary paving slab, Mum says.

  Well, you’re the world expert on paving slabs, I say, and I suggest using the ‘complementary sewing kit’ (we both tut at the mis-spelling) to create a fashionable multi-teabag head-poultice. That’ll soon have you right, Mum.