Copycat

by Gillian White

  Martha laughed at the way Stella tried to potty-train Poppy at one week old.

  ‘It’s the cold plastic feel on their bottoms that does it,’ Stella said, looking pained, stung by Martha’s criticism. She used a special apron whenever she handled Poppy; it matched her hands, so white, so starched. ‘It triggers them off. Mark my words, Poppy will be dry in no time.’

  ‘But the poor little mite can’t sit up yet.’ Martha laughed, unaware of the tensing effect on Stella. ‘It’s just a waste of time. She’ll be dry in the end whatever you do.’

  Stella sniffed and made her point with a flaring of eyes and nostril.

  Martha and I would try to relax while Stella slopped around, moving a bucket of nappies to the washing machine, dragging the next load forward, puffing and damp with urgency and her tight brown hair frizzy from the effort.

  ‘You just sit there,’ she told me and Martha, and the thing is she honestly meant it. ‘Leave this to me, you need your rest.’ And then, over-politely, ‘Mrs Frazer, another cup?’ How many times must Stella be told to call her Martha? And one cup of coffee took so long; it meant rattling sounds from the kitchen and sighs, as if a full-blown meal was being cooked. The suffering that went into the process! Presentation was all-important. If the saucer was wet, it had to be wiped. But Stella’s kindness was double-edged; no gift could be freely given.

  ‘Goodness knows how you’d cope if I wasn’t here.’

  Of course I preferred Martha’s house.

  Watching Martha with Scarlett was like taking off a tight pair of shoes after a long and painful walk.

  Yet when Poppy was asleep, we were made to creep round the house. It felt like a morgue, a place for the dead rather than a home for one newly born baby, and the smell of disinfectant could well have been formaldehyde.

  But Martha mostly flopped like a whale on her shabby kitchen sofa, reading or watching some junk daytime programme, smoking and slurping coffee. Scarlett was never far from her side, at her feet in that lumpy carrycot or propped up dangerously on a nearby cushion, while Poppy, at Stella’s insistence, always slept in her crib in her bedroom. No noises, sudden or otherwise, appeared to disturb the slumbering Scarlett and nor did Martha seem even slightly concerned about the skulking cats.

  She always seemed pleased to see me and disappointed when I left Poppy behind. But I would rather leave Poppy at home; I was frightened by her fragility and I dreaded her waking up, that mewling wail and the way it began with a series of warning snuffles.

  Martha’s house was full of people who came and went without fuss. Martha would call, ‘Wine in the fridge if you want it, coffee on the side.’ And she could throw a lunch together, just tuna and cold potato, in five minutes flat at her breakfast bar. To her, numbers never mattered.

  At our house sudden visits were frowned on. ‘How thoughtless to call like that, unannounced,’ Stella would say after the visitor left. ‘How rude. What’s the price of a telephone call?’ Not that unexpected visitors were a common event when I was small.

  And my own early experiences must have made me the mother I was.

  My own mother didn’t bother with friends.

  When I told her how it was next door, she tutted and mentioned railway stations.

  Next door was a brand-new world to me, where the word mending was unknown and babies were hardly mentioned. But could I ever step across?

  I used to watch Martha, bright-eyed and beautiful even in Sam’s overlarge torn sweater, and marvel.

  I mostly left when Sam came in from work. I would sit at home remembering how hard it had been to fit in when I was still in my mother’s house. ‘There must be more suitable people round here who you could make friends with, Jennie,’ Stella would say to me, her listless daughter.

  ‘Well, there aren’t.’ I was being defiant.

  ‘What about the girls at the bank?’

  How Stella annoyed me when she went on like this. Didn’t she understand? Until I was twenty-three years old I lived with her in Walthamstow, and after we married Graham and I spent those difficult months with Ruth and Howard. I never had much opportunity to bring friends home. As a child I would play round at my friends’ because Stella was so unwelcoming when I tried to bring them home, except on special occasions such as birthdays, when she went over the top. Other people had parties with hot dogs and beans, chips and mayonnaise. I had hundreds and thousands, balloons and games, and Stella worked very hard, of course, what with all the extra mess and expense to cope with.

  The bullying went on for around two years but I hadn’t dared to bunk off like Poppy. It was partly for my mother’s sake that I set my face and went on going to school, half blind with misery, sitting alone in the playground or at the front of the class, pretending to be happy to read and have lunch on my own in the noisy canteen.

  Those varicose veins. What else was wrong? Packed lunches instead of school dinners. White socks instead of black tights. Oily hair in a childish style. Bad at catching. Bad at batting. Hairy legs. Unable to swim. Nylon shirts instead of cotton, and I had been seen in church on a Sunday.

  It was the worst phase of my life until now.

  I yearned to make things right for my mum and for me.

  I wept distraughtly every night.

  I learned to make myself small, to live on the outskirts of life, observing. To walk close to walls with my head down but still able to see around me, alert for the next crisis. I hated myself more than they hated me and oh how I longed to gain favour. I used to dream I would do something brave, rescue someone, go blind or be chosen as Child of the Year. Or my father would suddenly turn up and turn out to be Richard Branson.

  But best of all – Stella would die. I saw it all so clearly. The secretary would call me out and take me off to her office where the lilac-scented headmistress, waiting with a box of tissues, would gently break the sombre news.

  I would be escorted home while the class was informed. Some of the girls would sob for my sadness and when I returned three weeks or so later they’d be falling over themselves to get near me, to comfort me, to be my best friend.

  But Stella refused to die for me, and I, brokenhearted with sorrow for her and for my wicked fantasies, knew how much she would suffer if she knew how badly I was being treated. And all this in spite of her hard work, her efforts, her daily trials and tribulations. I had failed her by not making friends. If I caught sight of her anxious face while walking home from school, I would edge towards the nearest group and pretend to be one of them for her sake. And when Judith Mort stole my purse and removed my scratchy photo of Stella, when she ripped it in half and trod on it, it was as if she had torn out my heart.

  So I could relate to my bullied daughter and was so relieved that Poppy, now her suffering was out in the open, felt she could talk to me about her unhappiness. To me this meant she did not feel responsible, not in the way I had felt about Stella. At least we’d got that the right way round; she hadn’t failed me and she didn’t need to protect me. And I went to see Mrs Forest because my daughter’s torment did not stop. Poppy protested that taking it further would make things worse, so I went to the school during lesson time when I knew she would not see me. This bullying had to be stopped at all costs. I had to have words with her teacher.

  My chat with Martha proved fruitless. And it was hard to catch her these days, insistent as she was on working full time, even though the Frazers were not short of money.

  ‘Poppy’s looking ill,’ I told Mrs Forest, who looked too young to be a sixth-former, let alone a class teacher. I wasn’t there to have a discussion: I was there to tell her just how it was. ‘And she eats like a bird. There must be something you can do to turn this situation round. Scarlett lives next door to us and that makes the whole matter much worse.’

  We sat in an empty classroom decorated with fern and leaf and behind us two fat hamsters chomped through their paper shavings. I sat on a miniature chair while Mrs Forest perched, birdlike, on the edge of the nature table.
It felt like this should be a happy place and I was angry to think of my daughter’s pain. Childhood doesn’t last long.

  ‘This awful bullying.’ The situation was unforgivable and I could not accept excuses. The school was responsible, they ought to have known; this was not my fault. I was not a carrier, Poppy could not be infected by me. ‘You must have seen something was wrong before it got this bad. Poppy tells me this trouble started right at the beginning of term.’

  I noticed how clever the plaiting was of Mrs Forest’s braided hair. She looked Swiss, like Heidi, with a fresh and rosy alpine complexion. She smiled faintly before her defence began and I smiled back from politeness. ‘This is difficult… I don’t know how… if anything, I would have said Poppy was fine. I would have said Scarlett was more upset by the rift, and the animosity, subtle though it is, seems to have come mostly from Poppy.’ She paused to check my reactions before she went on in the same vein. ‘I did notice the turn of events and, in many ways, poor Harriet is merely the catalyst for something that was bound to happen. The truth is, Mrs Gordon, that for some time now Scarlett and Poppy have been growing apart. They have different interests. They are both growing up, individuals with varying needs…’

  Suddenly I felt nauseous, with pinpricks of alarm that tickled my back and underarms. I had not bargained for this. ‘So you are trying to tell me that Poppy will not accept this? You are saying that Harriet Birch has nothing to do with this behaviour, that it’s all Poppy’s fault?’

  ‘Mrs Gordon,’ she went on gently. ‘As you must know, Scarlett is a lively and popular little girl. A happy-go-lucky child. Poppy finds making friends harder and until now she has tended to shelter under Scarlett’s wing. This worked fine through infants’ school and in the first years here, but at ten years old socializing takes on a more complex form…’

  ‘Yes?’ Why the pause?

  ‘We ought to have acted earlier, that’s true. We should have split the two girls up to allow this transition to happen more naturally. Poppy has been under too much pressure trying to keep up in Scarlett’s group.’

  ‘Oh?’ I continued to listen, dismayed and distracted as Mrs Forest droned on. So between the two of them, Harriet and Scarlett had concocted a believable tale. It’s always the prettiest, most popular children who get the teachers’ approval and I’d even heard that attractive names could influence attitudes. But her name, Poppy, was attractive. I could have understood matters more if we had called her Janice or Sue.

  I don’t know how I got home that day.

  Graham was insufferable, no support at all, told me I was paranoid and why would Scarlett suddenly turn nasty? I should get the two girls together in a non-threatening atmosphere and talk to them both about finding a way out.

  But to me, this was the day when Poppy would be left behind in the race. No longer one of the chosen, but the one left behind to pick up the chaff.

  It was so unbearably sad.

  I saw this as the day when she would be sent to a slower, less challenging class. She would mix with less able pupils. She would lower her own expectations. One day soon she would wake up feeling cheated; she would suffer that raw awakening that comes when you face mediocrity and watch the privileged ones move ahead – not because of superior abilities but because of their natural appeal, and their cunning.

  The day when your dreams are betrayed.

  It was all so unfair, UNFAIR, UNFAIR.

  I was ashamed of the strength of my feelings.

  Like my daughter, Poppy, like my mother before me, my unhappiness was making me vicious.

  And this after everything else that she and I had been through.

  SIX

  Martha

  AND THIS AFTER EVERYTHING else that she and I had been through.

  Jennie got pregnant with Josh because I was pregnant with Lawrence. When I first said this Sam called me paranoid, but there were other clues that I failed to mention – and not just buying strappy sandals or getting a furious urge for Pot Noodles. It was illnesses, unbelievably – not just ours but our children’s.

  This wasn’t like Munchausen’s Syndrome; it was no straightforward cry for expert attention using Poppy as bait. And I haven’t yet seen a label put on these particular symptoms, but after the initial shock there was no doubt left in my mind – she was copying.

  It beats me how Jennie conceived in all the dire misery of that Italian holiday. I can only presume that their Friday night date was too much of a habit to break.

  Of course, she had known that I was ‘carrying’, ‘with child’, ‘up the spout’. When I first suspected, panicked, cursed Sam’s loins and his creeping hands, she hurried straight round to the nearest chemist to pick up a pregnancy testing kit.

  Positive. But please, please, could it be wrong? We hadn’t planned this. This was too soon.

  Every morning, expectantly, she would enquire into my condition, and then take my dramatic reaction at face value (it was more the response of a shocked prima donna). She was at her most priggish when I said I’d get rid of it.

  ‘But you can’t. You can’t possibly.’

  My arguments were with myself. ‘Why not? There are too many kids in the world already.’

  ‘It’s murder,’ she said, ‘taking a life.’

  ‘Bollocks. Don’t come round here spouting that mumbo-jumbo. I’m not a pro-lifer and nor are you.’

  ‘You don’t have to be a fanatic to know what’s right and wrong.’ And that little self-righteous nose tilted at the sharp end. ‘You have no reason to have an abortion. You should have behaved more responsibly.’

  ‘Oh yes? Like you and Graham?’

  OK, that was unkind, and Jennie was taken aback. ‘What d’you mean by that?’

  I got up to rescue Fishcake the cat from Poppy’s inexperienced maulings. She treated my cats as if they were toys; I was glad I didn’t own a pet Rotty.

  ‘Jennie, I know you’re on the pill and that’s very commendable, but I am too fat to do that and that’s why we use a more hazardous method.’

  ‘Yeah, your repulsive old cap. No wonder it failed, it must be rotten. And you never keep your appointments, so that must mean you subconsciously wanted this baby.’

  Jennie was right; my cap was disgusting and I felt uncomfortable wearing it. And I do mistreat the stuff I dislike. My jug kettle in hearing-aid beige, a wedding present from an old aunt, is stained and unpleasant and handled roughly because I want one I can use on the Aga. Same with my torn, brown ironing board. Same with my shoes: I prefer my old Scholls or I would rather go barefooted. Oh yes, my cap was a nasty sight and I shouldn’t have left it out in the upstairs bathroom, but then I didn’t expect my friends and neighbours to be up there rooting about.

  Once Jennie asked, ‘Have you got piles?’

  Surprised, I said, ‘No, but Sam has. Why?’

  ‘I just wondered.’

  Now that was a lie, I knew. She had been in my bathroom cabinet. ‘But he’d hate anyone to know – his health image. His vanity.’

  And another time she gave herself away. ‘Why does Sam use an old-fashioned razor?’

  ‘Because he’s like Esau, an hairy man, and nothing else will do the job properly. Why?’

  Jennie shrugged.

  ‘For the record, I use his old razor blades.’

  At that time her questions weren’t too out of line, as we frequently discussed more personal matters than those. What really baffled me was why she was interested. I rarely bit back whatever she did. Already, a level of consciousness warned me that I must be careful with this sensitive friend, who was flattened by crudely gesturing drivers, floored by brusque checkout girls, felled by rude ticket collectors and fatally wounded by frosty doctors. She rolled all these tiny insults up and threw them into the air and they fell back around her in clusters and stuck like she was a figure, trapped, in a glass-ball snowstorm.

  I understood how reliant on me she was growing. She didn’t attempt to disguise this need and I did feel the first s
tabs of unease. Sometimes she made small attempts to explain, but I hated to hear her demeaning herself and I worried because she sounded so vulnerable. ‘I wish I was more like you, Martha.’

  How little she really knew me.

  ‘I feel so alive when I’m with you.’ And her voice was tremulous, almost religious. Perturbed by this as I watched her finger moving over my table squiggles, I busied myself looking for a missing sock which Sam had raged about that morning. I delved around in the empty washing machine. I sorted through the ironing pile. I had promised to go to Marks and buy him a new triple pack. ‘I miss you so much when you’re not around.’

  Tears threatened behind her voice.

  ‘What would I do without you?’

  It was after this curious episode that she started being offhand with my friends. Again, it was hard to nail this down. It wasn’t outright rudeness, but she was cold, she was abrupt, in a way I hadn’t noticed before.

  I wished I could talk all this over with Sam, but he was the type to misconstrue it. ‘Dyke’ would be his gleeful reaction. Sam was hysterically heterosexual; he had no time for gays and he made a point of staying up late to watch any film with an adult warning in the corner. Mostly, they sent him to sleep.

  Sexual preferences should be kept private, Sam maintained, while happy to broadcast his own smutty wit with the lads, given the chance.

  And anyway, this wasn’t a problem with Jennie. There were no sexual undertones here – it might have been simpler if there had been. I could have just told her that wasn’t on.

  For the second time Jennie was pregnant and I was pregnant, so once again we were thrown closer together. We passed going to and from the clinic. I started the iron pills, she finished hers, I was over the morning sickness while she still spent hours with her head down the loo.

  We bought our daughters baby dolls in an effort to lessen the sibling blow and encourage that helpful, motherly instinct that I was certain I had missed out on. Poppy poked the eyes out of hers and Scarlett buried Rosebud in the sandpit.

  I got up one morning and, sick with horror, discovered bloodstains on my sheets. How? Why? I was never ill. My body was a perfectly functioning machine despite the smoke that was dragged down its throat.