The Small Fortune of Dorothea Q

by Sharon Maas

  Mum clammed up palpably. I could almost feel that wall slamming down, the shutters closing. But I wasn’t letting her off the hook.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ she said at last, ‘and I’ll tell you sometime. I know I have to get over it myself. That’s why I wanted her to come here – but it’s harder than I thought. She doesn’t let me in, never did. Even as a child. She didn’t approve of the way I was. We were so different. I was too much a Quint; they were all eccentric, somehow, and I was just another weirdo. We were a big family, you know, several generations living in that big house in Lamaha Street. People were coming and going all the time; aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and relations. I don’t even remember them all.’

  I grew nostalgic for a family, a home I’d never known.

  ‘It must be wonderful, growing up in such a big family,’ I said. ‘Don’t you get lonely, with only me as family?’

  Mum shrugged. ‘You can be just as lonely in the middle of a huge family. That house – it was crazy, sometimes.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ I said. ‘Tell me about that house.’

  And finally, Mum began to talk. I didn’t even notice that she’d changed the subject, away from The Thing that kept her and Gran apart.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  INKY: THE NOUGHTIES

  It was a higgledy-piggledy house, Mum said, all sash windows and white wood jalousies, standing high above the ground on fat white columns. It had balconies and a glass Cupola at the top and staircases up the front to the main door, and up the back, to the kitchen.

  ‘Marion and I used to sit on the back steps eating genips,’ Mum remembered. ‘Sucking the flesh off the stones and spitting them as far as we could. We used to have contests to see who could spit the farthest.’

  ‘What are genips?’

  ‘Next time you go to Brixton market, ask the greengrocer, that Errol. Buy a bag of them. Ripe genips are the most addictive fruit in the world. We used to eat them till our teeth turned furry. We didn’t have a genip tree ourselves, but our neighbours did and they always shared – we’d get buckets of them delivered in genip season. I had one friend … anyway. Me and Marion would pounce on the buckets and gobble them up. It used to drive Mummy crazy.’

  ‘I can’t imagine Gran being young,’ I said. ‘What was she like, then?’

  ‘Just like now. Worse. I had a name for her. Not a very nice name.’

  ‘What was it?’

  Mum chuckled.

  ‘Ol’ Meanie. But I guess that wasn’t fair. She wasn’t actually mean to me, in retrospect. She just didn’t seem to know I was there. I was never good enough for her. I thought she hated me. But I guess she didn’t. I guess in her way she cared, but she just didn’t want to show it. Or couldn’t. And then of course – things happened – and – and – then it was too late.’

  Mum stopped and her eyes turned moist and her voice trembled. I tool her hand to encourage her and it was ice cold.

  ‘What happened?’

  At last! I was on the cusp of finding out. I’d led her right back to The Thing, the knot of discord they both pretended wasn’t there. Not so much a knot, in fact, but a wall, a wall of glass: reinforced glass, thin as a membrane but thick and high as the Berlin Wall. It was subtle, mind you. You had to live with them to notice. Mum did her best to be a dutiful daughter to Gran; there was nothing you could pin to her and say, see, deep inside you’re angry, seething with some ancient rage; let it go. But it was there, a capsule of venom inside her. And Gran: she pecked at Mum and poked her as if trying to lance that abscess, but Mum dodged away as neatly as a Chinese martial artist.

  I felt I had a role to play. The role of mediator, a neutral and wise observer who could listen objectively to both sides, hear out both their stories, and bring about a reconciliation. But first I had to know. There’d never be a better time than now.

  When Mum said nothing, I prompted her.

  ‘There was some quarrel, right? You and Gran fell out and that’s when you ran away and never went back. I know that much. But what happened, exactly? What did Gran do?’

  But Mum turned agitated and evasive.

  ‘That’s all in the past, Inky. No point digging it all up; that’s like inspecting the rubbish you’ve just swept onto the dustpan. What’s the point in analysing it? Just throw it out!’

  ‘But you haven’t thrown it out, Mum! It’s still there, deep inside you!’

  I saw myself in the role of therapist. I would listen, calm and relaxed, to whatever Mum had to say, and Mum would find healing just in the telling. I was sure of it. She was keeping it all locked up inside her and that couldn’t be healthy.

  ‘Mum, I think it would do you good to share whatever pain it is with me. It’s festering inside you; why can’t you tell me? I’m your daughter! Don’t you trust me?’

  I watched her face; it was all closed up now. The easy mood between us all swept away. Some awful memory plagued her. Why couldn’t she confide in me? But then her tight lips parted, and she spoke, her face turned away from me, gazing at some spot on the opposite wall.

  ‘Ask Gran. It’s up to her to tell you what she did.’

  * * *

  A week later, Mum drove back to Birmingham to pick up Gran and our life resumed from where it had left off. Except that Gran had brought back a heightened dissatisfaction with Neville, and an increased regard for Mum. I never learned the whole story, but it seems that Neville’s wife, Monica, had not treated Gran with due respect and their three children not only had no regard for family honour, they had been downright rude.

  Two weeks passed, and Gran decided she wanted to visit Norbert in America. We talked her out of it. In fact, Norbert talked her out of it. (Not that Norbert didn’t want her; of course he did, but his wife, Melinda couldn’t cope. His words, not mine.) And of course the whole logistics of Gran travelling alone to the USA was a nightmare.

  In the course of several long conversations between Gran, Mum and Norbert we established that it wasn’t so much Norbert she wanted to see, but Norbert’s two children – a boy and a girl, cousins I’d never met; and that it would make life much easier if instead of Gran going there Norbert came here, to London, with his brats.

  What shall I say? They came, staying in a centrally located hotel that was up to scratch, and the sooner that visit is forgotten, the better. Brats they indeed were, and if anything was ever to convince me that Mum was right to keep a distance from her brothers, that week in hell did it.

  But Gran’s newly-discovered sense of family did not end there. Next, she wanted to get to know the rest of the next-generation Quints. A whole new house of horrors opened up. According to Mum, two of the original eight Quint brothers had died before they could father children, and one had never married, but the remaining five had reproduced like rabbits.

  One night, I came home from work to find Mum sitting at the dining table, drawing up a family tree, a phone beside her. Across the top of the page she had written down the names of these five Quints, next to them the names of their wives with descending lines leading to rows of yet more names, Mum’s cousins, and down from them, yet more.

  Mum had seventeen Quint first cousins. Though she had known most of these cousins when they were all children, she had lost touch with all but two of them who happened to live in London. Through these two she was making the connections, filling in the blanks. On Gran’s orders.

  I was baffled.

  ‘But why? Why does she care about these people? I can understand her wanting to know Neville’s and Norbert’s children, her own grandchildren, but the other Quints?’

  It seemed to me a family-sense gone into overdrive. What Mum and I had too little of, Gran had too much of, and if she cared that much, so I told Mum, she should jolly well do the research herself.

  Mum sighed.

  ‘No, Inky. There’s a reason for all this. And I think you should know.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It’s that bloody sta
mp. I wish I’d never heard of it. Inky: don’t be hurt, but she’s looking for a worthy Quint to leave it to in her will.’

  I must have looked shocked, because Mum placed a hand on mine. ‘It seems she’d had you singled out as the best of her grandchildren – you were the only one who ever wrote her letters – but your talk of selling the stamp shocked her. She doesn’t want it sold the moment she dies. She doesn’t want all four of her children to inherit it together, because we don’t all get on and it’ll have to be sold; she knows Norbert and Neville well enough. She wants to find a Quint, a third or fourth generation down from these five brothers, who cares about stamps and who will value it and pass it on. It’s a Quint heirloom, and has to stay in the family. According to her. She only told me because I’ve not expressed any interest in it. She thinks I’m neutral.’

  I had to pull out a chair and sit down at that. Tears stung my eyes.

  ‘That’s so – just so – unfair!’ I said.

  Mum shrugged. ‘It’s not,’ she said. ‘Inky, it’s her stamp. She can do whatever she wants with it. If she thinks it’s a family heirloom, then that’s her business, not ours.’

  ‘OK. But to make you do all this research; you, the only person to really care for her – the person who needs money the most – that’s just cruel. It’s mean.’

  Mum scratched her head and looked embarrassed. ‘She’d never leave it to me. Not without resolving the – the issues.’

  ‘Why don’t you resolve the bloody issues then?’

  Mum gave me an accusing look.

  ‘Inky, you’re so mercenary! Of course I want to resolve the issues. But it has to be because they should be resolved, not because I want the stamp. And don’t you see, if I make a step towards resolving them now – and really, it all depends on me – she’ll think I’m only doing it for that bloody stamp. I can’t let her think that. She has to make the first step.’

  Mum is so bloody proud. I told her so. ‘You’re so bloody proud!’

  ‘I don’t think it’s pride. I just can’t stand hearse-chasers. And anyway, Marion has done far more for Gran than I have. If anyone deserves the stamp, it’s her.’

  I had to accept that truth. But there was another thing.

  ‘Mum, have you told her about your debts?’

  Now it was her turn to look shocked.

  ‘Of course not! And don’t you go telling her, you hear, Inky? If anything, that would put her off completely! Mummy can’t stand debts and she thinks that debtors are weak, despicable people. Not a word about it, OK?’

  ‘But it’s not your fault, Mum! It’s Dad’s! He got us into that financial mess!’

  Mum chuckled wryly. ‘She’d say it’s my fault for marrying Dad in the first place. She’d say I should have known his character, seen he was a speculator.’

  ‘That’s just so – not fair!’

  Mum saw how agitated I was and squeezed my hand. ‘Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. And please, please don’t hold it against Mummy. Be as nice to her as you’ve always been, OK? Things will work themselves out. You’ll see.’

  ‘How can I be nice to her, when she’s being so mean? I think she should leave it to you. You need it the most.’

  ‘This is a bad discussion, Inky. It’s poor taste to talk about her will. Mummy is still very much alive. And remember, she has four children, not just me. And it really is her stamp, to do whatever she wants with. We have absolutely no claims to it.’

  ‘Well then, to you and Marion.’

  ‘Neville and Norbert are her sons. She loves them. In fact, she adores then. They were always her favourites.’

  ‘But they’re wankers! And they’re rich! And they’d never lift a finger for Gran!’

  She laughed. ‘Oh, I don’t know. They’re very generous! Think of how Mummy loves her laptop and her potty chair! She couldn’t live without them, and they make life much easier for us!’

  I just could not believe how Mum could crack jokes at a time like this. Without a further word I left her to her family tree and flounced out to the garden where I smoked three cigarettes in quick, furious succession. After that I stormed upstairs. I tried to call Sal for a good rant, but his mobile was switched off. So I put on my headphones, flung myself on to my bed, and listened to Bob Marley for an hour.

  And when the hour was up I came back down and cooked for Gran and was as nice to her as ever. She sat with me in the kitchen, giving instructions on how to make cook-up rice, a dish consisting of rice, coconut milk, black-eye peas and beef. There were moments I longed to slam the saucepan down on her head. But I didn’t.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  INKY: THE NOUGHTIES

  We settled back into our uncomfortable schedule. Life with Gran was never going to be easy, but Mum and I learned to accept that fact and simply get on with it. It was rather like having painful bunions: it’s better barefoot, but you know you have to wear shoes and so you simply take the pain as it comes. That was Mum’s metaphor; I didn’t have bunions but she did, and I have to give her credit for teaching me how to deal with a major pain-in-the-ass. Though Mum never allowed me to call her that, or to speak of her with anything but respect.

  ‘She’s your grandmother,’ Mum always said, the moment I spoke a word of censure. ‘Deal with it!’

  The only person with whom I could let off steam was Sal, who came around whenever he could. We met at Wong’s, usually, and at those times I cursed Gran to hell and back, and when it was over I felt guilty and mean but clean, and Sal laughed and absolved me of my guilt.

  ‘Rant as much as you like,’ he said. ‘Think of me as your personal dumping ground.’

  And so I survived the summer weeks. Mum and I worked out a schedule of sharing the care for Gran. I washed and prepared her for the day during the week, Mum at the weekends. I did all of the cooking, Mum did all of the washing up, and took care of the laundry in her own Mum way, which meant taking items as needed from a basket overflowing with unironed stuff.

  As for Gran, she was as happy as a child in an amusement park. She began to Discover England, and she did this mostly through television. She was at it all day long. She watched everything, channel-hopping at the first touch of boredom. Pretty soon, favourites developed: she loved quiz shows, and, as it turned out, was good at them; I’d never have guessed it but Gran was a walking encyclopaedia. Certain she, too, could win a million, she persuaded Mum to enter her name for all of them.

  She couldn’t stand soap operas; she’d watch a few minutes until a character threw a hissy fit or broke down weeping, at which point Gran would make some scathing comment about bad dialogue and bad acting, and switch away. Once she did that to Mum’s show, Bed and Breakfast, and by the way Mum slapped shut her novel, got up and walked out, I knew that scene had been her invention.

  Gran also loathed reality shows, but watched them all the same. She justified her addiction by claiming them to be educational; these shows, she said, were a window into the contemporary British soul. She clucked her disapproval at society’s downward slide into vulgarity, decadence and coarseness. She delivered finger-wagging lectures on ‘We in Guyana’, who, she claimed, were better behaved than the godless English of nowadays: the colonized more civilised than the colonisers.

  Godlessness, in fact, was her number one theme, and I her number one victim for conversion.

  On Sundays we all went to church. Gran insisted. I only went for Gran’s sake. If it made her happy, then why not; she was the only Gran I had. And again, there was something about Gran’s insistence that made you obey. In fact, it was simply survival. It was less exhausting to ignore Gran’s lectures, bear her castigations in silence and give in to her demands, than to put up a fight. So Mum and I chose the path of least resistance.

  * * *

  From then on, we no longer spoke of the stamp. Certainly, Gran never mentioned it again. In fact, she didn’t even bother to uphold the secrecy of her hiding place. I guessed she kept it under the mattress; that’s where all ol
d people keep their valuables. Then I caught her at it: when I was in the room putting away her clothes, she reached under the mattress, brought it out, and peered at her precious stamp, as if deliberately to taunt me. She all but stroked it, crooning, ‘My precious’. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her watching me for a reaction. I refused to indulge her. I said nothing. To show annoyance would only encourage her.

  And so we lived our lives, carefully tiptoeing around the subject.

  And yet. Despite all the commotion of the passing weeks, throughout the upheavals and the quarrels and the upsets, it loitered, the spirit of that stamp. Strictly taboo, it nevertheless lurked in silence, waiting in the backdrop of our lives, a constant unspeakable presence behind all the cigarettes smoked and all the doors slammed; an itch I couldn’t scratch. And then, one day, it pounced.

  * * *

  It happened on a Sunday, while we were at church, which, the police said later, showed that our house had been watched by those wankers all these weeks.

  Mum’s negligence was partly responsible. She had not trimmed the hedges, nor cut back the bushes in the front garden for years, and the wilderness outside the house provided the perfect hiding place for an intruder. Then, too, Mum never activated our alarm system, so no ear-splitting screech alarmed the neighbourhood.

  We came home in a jovial mood, after a nice lunch at Aunty Doreen’s. The moment I saw the broken living-room window, I knew what had happened.

  That same moment Mum yelled, ‘My laptop!’ She flew into the house and into the living room and up into her room, leaving me to deal with Gran.

  The place was ransacked. Not the whole place; just the living room and Gran’s bedroom.

  Mum’s stupid laptop had always been safe. She could have left it in open on the dining room table and it still would have been safe. That wasn’t what they were after.