This is just the kind of sentiment I would expect from a management consultant. Practical, and to the point, and just a teeny bit dull. And then I remember the angular, waxed leg. And how difficult it had been not to reach out and touch it. An image of Clive’s airbrushed limbs in stockings and suspenders rears up to revolt me.
‘Well, some of us don’t have to worry about work, because I’ve been made redundant,’ I say quickly, tearing off a piece of flapjack. ‘No, really, I’m fine about it,’ I add. Everyone’s faces are rouged with well-meaning concern. ‘Well, I’m a lot more fine about it than I was, let’s put it that way!’ And everyone laughs, as I hoped they would, so we can drop the subject.
‘Well, I think that Bea woman ought to be shot,’ says Serena abruptly. ‘I don’t care if she’s Dylan’s friend, or colleague, or whatever. She had no right reducing Nicole to tears.’
‘She was just trying to instil some discipline,’ says Harry, licking his fingers.
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘but there’s a time and a place. We are amateurs, after all.’
‘“Very amateur”, she called us. Remember?’ says Jenny, picking at the burrs of stray flapjack that have stuck to her jumper. We all nod.
‘Well, all except you, my darling,’ says Clive. ‘You’re her favourite.’
Jenny blushes, and reaches into the flapjack tub. ‘I’ve just got big lungs, that’s all,’ she says, chewing.
‘But, I mean,’ says Serena, ‘fancy making Nicole stand while we were singing—’
‘It’s all about breathing—’
‘Yes, Harry, thank you. I’m well aware of the theories. You think after giving birth to five kids I don’t know where my diaphragm is? Or how to breathe effectively? Dylan should have told her that Nicole’s pregnant and has just lost her job. She’s hardly showing yet, lucky thing,’ Serena added.
‘What should I have done?’ asks Dylan, as he approaches us, his smile too bright to convince me. Serena explains at length, snapping the lid shut on her tub as she does so.
‘Well, I— It’s a bit tricky you see, because—’
‘Believe me,’ cuts in Serena, ‘there is nothing more tricky than having to function normally when you feel like throwing up all the time, and your back’s killing you and your breasts hurt and you just want to curl up and sleep for ever. Can you really imagine what it’s like to be pregnant?’
‘You know I can’t—’
‘Right. So don’t try and tell me—’
Harry takes hold of Serena’s arm and urges her to calm down. The rest of us stand in silence. I’ve never seen Serena so vexed.
Dylan stares at the floor. ‘I just came to tell you that Bea wants Harry, Serena and Jenny for their song. So perhaps we can talk about this another time, eh?’ And he turns on his heels.
‘She’s hormonal,’ mouths Harry over his shoulder as he escorts his wife to the piano.
‘Does he mean she’s pregnant?’ I say, almost to myself.
I hadn’t meant to engage Clive in conversation. Now that he and I are effectively paired off, I am left with an obscure sense of unease. I stoop to sweep nonexistent flapjack crumbs into my hand, to obliterate persistent thoughts of waxed legs and suspenders.
‘I didn’t mean to offend you,’ Clive murmurs, crouching down beside me. He touches my arm. ‘Don’t be cross with me. I know why you’re no longer working.’
I stand up and, once again, in a silent square dance, his movements echo mine.
‘Yes, it’s all very odd,’ I say, briskly.
‘Not,’ Clive says, reaching into a carrier bag for two cans of diet cola and offering me one, ‘for a woman your age.’
I don’t care to reflect on what he means, but I suddenly feel rather hot. I accept the drink, and take a long swig, staring into middle distance, as if expecting to see Rex there, gloating.
‘And I’d like to help you, if I may.’
If Clive had been an employment lawyer, I could have understood his proposal; as a management consultant, he’s unlikely to be offering me a job. Perhaps he plans to ‘define a strategy’ or ‘devise a rebranding’, or whatever it is that management consultants do. I turn. His eyes have an odd glaze to them, and only one side of his moustache smiles. I look away again, barely able to swallow the liquid in my mouth. ‘Let me help you,’ he says.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I say, stepping back.
‘Oh, I think you do,’ he replies, taking a step towards me.
He stands so close I can see the droop of his eyelids, smell the glucose on his breath. There are droplets of drink on the hairs of his skunk’s tail of a moustache. I’d think him drunk, were it not for the fact that he and Jenny are infamously teetotal. I move to place my can on one of the stacks of chairs along the wall, but he grabs my arm.
‘Believe me. I’m the man to help you.’
I glance over at the piano. Harry, Serena and Jenny are scrutinising the score. Bea stands with her hands at the place where her waist once was. I shake my arm free.
‘And I know what you and Matt must be going through.’
‘Don’t drag him into this. Leave me alone.’
‘It’s OK. He need never know.’
I turn to face him. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ I can guess, but I want to hear him say it. Or to prove myself wrong – presumptuous, even.
‘I can give you the baby you want. That’s why you’re leaving work. Yes?’
‘No,’ I reply, coldly. ‘Rex has done a bunk with the firm’s money.’
Clive ignores my denial. He is smiling. ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Lots of couples try for years. You and Matt are not alone. I would guess Matt is firing blanks—’
‘Clive!’ I seethe. This is not the man I thought I knew. ‘Shut up.’
‘—because, you know, you need someone to make you relax. Matt’s a great guy, but hey! Who ever heard of a laid-back shrink?’ He laughs too loudly. Maybe he doesn’t get much laughing practice in his office.
‘Have I missed the joke?’ asks Jenny, approaching us.
Jenny and Clive stand side by side, the gap between them the shape of an empty wineglass.
*
Matt is sprawled on the bed, the TV remote on his stomach and his soft penis in his hand. He finds my account of Clive’s proposition hilarious. Matt is especially tickled by the idea that he is thought uptight. Somehow the fact that another man thinks he’s firing blanks bothers him not at all. Matt knows he’s not, and that’s the end of it.
I stomp into the bathroom. My husband’s quiet self-confidence can be bloody annoying. I want to shake him, and say that his ability to body-swerve might be an asset on the rugby pitch of life, but could he just try to imagine once in a while what it’s like being me, head down in the scrum, covered in mud and constantly losing control of the ball. In the bathroom, I slam the cabinet door shut. All the lipsticks inside topple over.
Matt comes to me, switching off the television. I could hear the commentary – his team was about to score an equaliser. ‘Heyyy!’ he says, and slaps one of my buttocks. Our row the other day is but a mouse’s breath in history; Matt has an enviable ability not to bear grudges. He opens his robe and envelops me, and we stand for some time inhaling each other’s good scent. Outside, the familiar timbre of Big Ben spreads its tonal security blanket across slumbering central London. He wraps his arms around my naked waist and leans his chin on my shoulder. We stare at us in the bathroom mirror. Matt is tanned, his sandy hair bleached by the sun. I am shorter, and my brown roots are showing. Isn’t it warm? Isn’t it rosy, Side by side, By side? Ports in a storm, Comfy and cozy, Side by side, By side?
Chapter Twenty-seven
MOTHER’S FEATURES hover inches from my own. She is so close I can see the crossed wires of broken veins on her cheeks. Her mouth is a fish gasping for air, opening and closing without sound. I wince.
‘Your solar plexus is gritty this morning,’ says Ginny, brightly, as she grinds her thumb knuckle into my r
ight foot. The image of my mother is replaced by the sight of my own feet.
‘Yeah, well, my life’s full of what you might call grit at the moment.’ Still, I think, pearls are made from specks of grit, aren’t they?
Ginny looks at me wryly. ‘And how is your mother?’
There’s no fooling Ginny. She knows exactly why I’ve asked for a session outside of our usual routine. I like to think that time spent with her is an inoculation against a particularly virulent disease. Ginny says that my being here is an avoidance tactic.
‘Still not well enough to reveal why she was in London.’
This is my major preoccupation. Perhaps Mother is ill, and requires tests unavailable in provincial hospitals. This in turn implies something atypical, or even terminal. Or maybe she’s involved in espionage. It can’t be shopping – as a child evacuee, mother takes thrift to the point of obsession. The alternatives fly round and round my head. I’ve not been sleeping. Ignorance is not bliss – it is torture.
*
Mother lies on her back, asleep. A yellowing oxygen mask is still clamped to her mouth. Beneath it her skin is as ashen as clay-slip. I can’t help thinking that this is all a charade; that once I’ve left, Mother will open her eyes, leap out of bed and laugh with the nurses at the practical joke. But this is ridiculous. Not only is she clearly unwell and therefore unlikely to be leaping out of anywhere, but she is not someone I associate with frivolity. If I came home from school with a new playground joke, Mother always made a point of beating me to the punch line; her ensuing smirk not of humour, but of triumph. If I do now remember Mother’s laugh, it’s because the sound was so chilling, the cackle of Snow White’s witch passing off the poisoned apple.
‘You can stay if you like,’ says the nurse. She reaches under the counter and offers me a recent copy of Woman and Home.
‘I’ll come back later,’ I say, feeling as though I’ve won a reprieve.
*
Bunting, limp from a recent short shower, flops over the front fence. Blurred, photocopied arrows direct people away from the front porch to the garden gate. As I turn the corner, the doleful sound of a single calypso drum slopes over the flint wall.
‘Darling. Thank God you could come. I prayed for prolonged rain, but it did no good. The fête must go on!’ We kiss on each cheek.
‘That is your fate!’
‘Very droll. See what daytime fun you’ve been missing by having a job.’
‘I see you’ve got half the parish out manning the stalls.’
‘And half of General Synod has arrived to conduct surveillance.’
The air is filled with the sounds of forced hilarity. Well-heeled retired couples, mothers with buggies, and men in purple shirts: the spiritual elite. Dylan follows my gaze.
‘Oh, Christ! The Bish’s about to win at Pin the Mohican on David Beckham for the third time. I’m convinced he’s working to a system. Could you be a star and escort him to the cake stall. Mrs Beaumont’s in a filthy mood because no one’s buying her Chocolate Nemesis.’
‘And there was I thinking I’d never work again.’
‘God will reward you, my child,’ he replies, pushing me in the appropriate direction. ‘Now, I’m off to don waterproofs for my stint in the stocks.’
‘The stocks?’
‘A fiver to throw wet sponges at me and the team ministry. It’s one of our biggest money-spinners. And I spend the following fortnight in bed with bronchial pneumonia.’
‘That’s what my mother has—’
But Dylan isn’t listening to me. ‘I’d pay twice that to throw sponges at David,’ he growls.
‘David’s here?’ I ask.
Dylan shoots me a look that says Don’t be daft.
*
The last child has been hauled in tears from the bouncy castle, trestle tables are being folded, and I am helping boys from the local prep school fill black sacks with rubbish. Dylan is steering the Bishop to his official car, and loading into its boot the numerous carrier bags bulging with prizes.
A spider, abseiling from a branch of honeysuckle, catches my attention. It winds itself down, swaying in the breeze before landing on the tip of a blade of grass. I admire the effort of it all; the unsung heroics of the animal kingdom. God’s creatures, no less. It makes me imagine I could endure anything. Or is that just a function of the walled garden, a retreat keeping the chaos of the world at bay?
Dylan approaches, his face framed by a halo of damp curls. He carries glasses of elderflower cordial. Having tested the grass for moisture, we sit cross-legged on the ground. He rips off his dog collar.
‘Delicious. Home-made?’
‘Courtesy of Mrs Etherington, over there with the paisley kaftan and the Lhasa Apso. She makes it every year. Imagines it absolves her from contributing to the weekly collection plate.’ Dylan chews slowly on a slice of lemon. ‘And you’ll be pleased to hear that the Bishop’s finally deigned to fix a meeting. Wound down the window as his car pulled away, as if the matter had only just occurred to him.’
I feel a spasm of guilt in my stomach. In what might be called my current solipsism, I’ve lost track as to whether Dylan is or isn’t leaving the church. ‘Did he say—?’
‘Nothing. Although he did frown at my latest marketing message on the noticeboard outside the church—’
‘Which says?’
‘“Jesus Responds to Kneel-Mail”. In letters eighteen inches high. Which I rather like. A friend in the States gave me the idea. And I thought, if it’s sufficiently reactionary for a bunch of fully paid-up neo-Christian Martha Stewart Republicans, my slightly right of Attila the Hun parish will love it. But the Bishop has other ideas.’ Dylan begins pulling at grass.
And when I next stop thinking about my mother, he is saying ‘—and I’m simply not prepared to become a national martyr.’
Christ, as Dyl would say. I hadn’t before thought such elevation likely. And it occurs to me that Dylan has spiked his own cordial with something stronger.
‘It’s the hypocrisy that gets me. I hoped the Church could be more inclusive. That it could widen its arms to embrace a changing world. But some people don’t want to do that. And I know it’s my job to be tolerant of them, and of the fact they disapprove of me, but frankly I’m out of my depth.’ And he wrenches up a handful of grass.
‘I heard on the radio this morning that Bishops in America have agreed to exercise restraint over gay issues, whatever that means.’
Dylan rolls his eyes. ‘To avert a split they’ve agreed not to consecrate gay bishops or bless same-sex couples. But at what price? Discrimination is still alive and well.’
I finish the last of my cordial. ‘But what about people who have sex before marriage? Or who are divorced? Why do only gays get it in the neck?’
‘Because we’re an ethnic minority historically susceptible to persecution. Good old-fashioned bigotry. Sometimes I think the church has been hijacked by the Taliban.’
‘I think they’re scared of people like you,’ I say. ‘I think change makes people nervous. They hide behind what they know, what they’ve been taught. Lots of rules, not much thought. But really, you know, they can’t hurt you.’
Dylan stops tugging at the grass and rests his hands on my knees. ‘And neither,’ he says quietly, ‘can your mother hurt you.’
*
I haven’t been at the nursing station a minute when Mother wakes up and calls for water. Before I know what is happening, the nurse, a different one this time, is by my side holding out a plastic jug. It’s heavier than I expect and some liquid slops on to my shoes and the floor.
The room is silent except for stray beeps from ominous machines. Their dials glow a sickly green, the room’s only source of lighting. Blinds cover the window. I move to the bedside table and pour a glass of water. Then I ask Mother if she’s able to sit herself up. It doesn’t occur to me to announce myself; that Mother won’t recognise me.
A sudden scream pierces the gloom. As Mother screeches th
at someone is trying to poison her, I feel paralysed, expecting to be told off, and guilty that all the matricidal tendencies of my youth have been exposed. She claims not to know me, but her shrieks are hurled in my direction. Her eyes never leave my face.
She starts to cough, and by the way she shakes her head I can tell she is furious to be so incapacitated. She is almost choking for someone to blame. And looking down at her face I have that feeling I always get in her presence, which is that I must get away.
The nurse hurries into the room and sees me standing away from the bed, a jug in one hand and a glass in the other.
‘What’s going on here?’ she says to the bed. ‘Is this how you treat your only visitor?’ Before long, she has calmed my mother down. She nods at me to draw up a chair. And, once Mother’s breathing has evened out, and the nurse is satisfied that the dials register nothing untoward, she says she’ll be just along the corridor, and slips out.
I perch on the edge of the chair, the balls of my palms pressed into the seat. My forearms are locked and my wrists bent backwards. I see the congealed blood where the line is plugged into a vein in Mother’s bony hand, and I’m reminded of Dad, and of William, and of how tenuous life can be. I see the wild flutterings of Mother’s eyes beneath their flimsy lids.
Suddenly they open, without any flicker of adjustment or recognition. They are calm and blue – bluer than I’ve ever seen before. They fascinate me, and so I shuffle my chair closer to the bed. Mother is murmuring. I reach for her hand. It feels bony. I want to speak, but my throat is tight. Finally I manage to croak, It’s me. There’s no response. Under our joined hands I see that the crochet of the blanket is unravelling. ‘It’s Amber.’ Still nothing. ‘Your daughter.’
Just as I clear my throat to say something new, she appears to focus. Her eyes, now the colour of skies after rain, widen slowly. Mother’s grip tightens, trapping the webbing of my thumb.
‘I don’t think so, dear. You see, my daughter is dead.’
I go completely cold.
‘Please hold my hand,’ she goes on, her voice now a whine. ‘I’m afraid to do this on my own.’ And she keeps repeating that she’s all alone and very afraid. More worryingly, she then calls out for her baby, and starts to cry. I watch the tears trickle sideways across her cheeks and into the pillow. She closes her eyes.
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