*
A rest, I think, a break, before we get on to Things Really Going Wrong. A long gap. Mother must be wondering why I have turned suddenly into such a dutiful daughter. Never away, am I, now there’s all this secret entertainment. In and out of this room like a cuckoo in a clock and about as silly. I don’t even pretend any more that I’m looking for photographs. I say I’m scribbling some notes and she says, ‘It’s a nice little room to write in, isn’t it?’
*
— Rosemary disappeared. There was no official leavetaking. She telephoned from Gatwick airport but that was all and, with the pips going every third sentence, it was not easy to take in what was happening. All she said was that she was off to America with Tony and that they were going to ‘travel around’. She would write. I panicked and kept asking, stupidly, where she could be contacted if necessary. The pips went and she screamed over them that she did not know. I did not even say goodbye or wish her luck, and it was this that distressed me most afterwards. My last words were that I thought she was being rash. It was shameful. I so badly wanted to have been the sort of mother who could reply, ‘How lovely, darling, what fun, bon voyage, good luck.’ Instead, I was aggrieved and grudging. So when, after a month or so, Rosemary again rang up (in the middle of the night) to say she was in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and having a great time, I was so eager to play the right part that I did it too well. How marvellous, I said, what a wonderful journey she must be having. I was all hearty cheerfulness and encouragement. After I had put the telephone down I felt wretched. I had not asked anything I really wanted to know. I had not found out where she was going next. I had not said how I missed her and loved her and thought about her all the time.
That was the pattern of the next eighteen months. When Rosemary rang, I was filled with such a tumult of emotion that it took days for me to return to normal. Her voice seemed to excite me to inexplicable tears. Face to face, Rosemary was formidable in any confrontation but her disembodied voice was light and gentle and even tremulous. She sounded defenceless and helpless, and instantly my imagination created pictures of her forlorn and dejected, in need of me. It was foolish. If she had written, and I could have replied, I think I would have behaved better. I know I would have loved to write to her, but she never gave me the chance. The last thing she wanted was a letter from me. No address was ever revealed, no destination suggested.
It was difficult to piece together, from Rosemary’s rare and fragmented phone calls, exactly what she was doing and whether she was enjoying herself. I never asked about how her trip was being financed because obviously she was spending her inheritance. Sometimes in the middle of the night I found myself doing experimental calculations: if she and Tony were driving round America spending, say, £10 a day, then in a month they would get through about £300. On top of that there were two air fares and, presumably, the purchase of a car, say, £5,000 minimum. What she had would not last more than a year at a frugal rate and six months at a more comfortable level. I told myself that I must see it as a Grand Tour of old, an excellent way to spend one’s inheritance, seeing the world before settling down. But was she seeing the world? She spoke of long, exhausting drives, of being ‘shattered’. There were no comments on any of the places from which she telephoned. San Francisco? Haven’t really looked at it yet, it’s great, though. Washington? Didn’t really see it, it was pissing down. Mexico? The roads were bad. She spoke a lot about people, though, endless lists of meaningless names. Sometimes it sounded as if she and Tony were travelling in a circus and of course I found myself, inevitably, wondering how generous my feckless Rosemary was to them. My £10 a day for two people seemed ludicrously insufficient when she mentioned giving great parties for what sounded like hundreds. I asked her once if she had been drawing or painting and she was exasperated. Why? That was what she said, why, and when I replied so that she could keep her hand in for when she returned and was looking for a job, she burst out laughing.
She never asked how Celia or Emily were, though she always inquired politely about me. If I passed on some bit of family news she would say, oh really, or that’s good/bad/a pity, and then pass on. I excused her on the grounds that there was no room in a transatlantic telephone call to go over everyone’s lives but it upset me all the same. I would have liked some sign from her that she knew she had two sisters. She did once send Emily a card, a month late, for her birthday. I allowed myself to think that, as the card had been posted in New York, perhaps Rosemary was on her way home. But no. The next call came from Australia and plunged me into despair. Australia was just too far away, and the cost – I hated to think of it. From then onwards Rosemary seemed to recede in my mind. I had difficulty conjuring up her exact expressions. The snaps we had taken in Portugal seemed lifeless and flat. She was gone. Once, I had had a daughter and now she was gone: that was how I felt and it bewildered me.
One afternoon Emily came home from school and she had met Tony. The hurt leapt up in me when I thought Rosemary had not at once come to see us. Emily said, looking at me oddly, that Tony was back. Not Rosemary. Rosemary was still in Australia. I had made her go over exactly what had happened very carefully. She had been walking along Camden Road when she saw Tony. She asked where Rosemary was and he smiled and said still in Australia. He hadn’t liked Australia, it was boring really, so he’d come home. He’d been back in London a week or so. Emily had had the wit to ask where he was living but, predictably, he’d just said ‘around’. She’d also asked how Rosemary was. It seemed she was fine. The bold Emily’s last query had been was she on her own? Yes, Tony had said, as far as he knew.
We went over it, the three of us, all night. For once even Celia was intrigued enough to speculate. What none of us could decide was whether it was a good or a bad sign that Tony had returned alone. I was filled with hope that Rosemary had tired of him and that she might have found someone kinder and more suited to her. I felt it was a sign of maturity that she had let Tony return on his own and not come running after him. But Celia thought Tony might have abandoned her, Rosemary might have been left high and dry and would not come home until she recovered from the blow. Instantly, my image of a triumphant, independent Rosemary, happily striding some Australian beach alone, vanished and was replaced by one of her lying on a bed in one of the big cities, weeping and distraught, too distressed to be able to get herself home. Emily told me not to be silly. She was sure Rosemary would come home soon.
In those last few weeks before Rosemary came back, it was strange how vividly she returned to my mind. The shadowy creature of the six months before grew flesh again. I would have liked to seek out Tony and talk to him, but I did not, and of course he never came to see us, and yet, in spite of no further news, I felt released from the worst of my anxiety. It was ironic, really, and unbearably naïve. I was simple minded enough to think that with Tony’s ‘bad influence’ removed, Rosemary’s life must have become calm again. I told myself I would not be surprised if the next we heard was that she had got a job and fallen in love with a new man. I practised accepting that she might settle in Australia. I even looked up the names of her Grandfather Butler’s relations, who I knew had descendants living there still. And I could see her as Australian, she fitted in with my concept of the country. She was forthright and daring and could not stand artifice of any sort. She would do well there. I was determined to face up to it bravely. Perhaps I could go out to see her every other year, and she could come to us; perhaps once she was permanently settled, she would like writing letters. I found myself going round the house, smiling, just thinking about it. Then, in the early hours of one April morning in 1959, Rosemary returned home and reality exploded like a bomb destroying all my absurd fantasies. I heard the doorbell ring, looked at my watch, saw it was four o’clock and could not imagine who it was (we had no lodgers by then, and Celia and Emily were both safely in their beds). I got up, wrapped a dressing gown round me and went downstairs. When I opened the door, there was Rosemary, paying off
a taxi.
It was dark, of course, and she was some distance away when I first saw her, but even so I did not recognize her. The huddled shape bending down meant nothing to me. I peered out, shivering in the cold early morning spring air, apprehensive and vaguely alarmed. A strange memory came back to me of Oliver arriving in just such a way on his last leave. She picked up a bag in each hand and walked slowly towards me. Even then, I did not recognize her, did not go forward and fling my arms round her. Instead, I drew back, my hand on the catch of the door, ready, I suppose, to protect myself by shutting it if necessary. ‘Hello, Mo-ther,’ she said, in the old way, teasingly, stressing the last syllable. I said her name, faintly. We embraced. Almost at once she began to weep. My heart raced with distress and shock. I led her into the kitchen, murmuring all sorts of inanities and fussing about with kettles and coffee pots. Why did I not just hold her, hold her . . . I put the light on, turned anxiously to scrutinize her and was appalled. She had changed beyond belief. I felt almost hysterical, wanted to tell her to take that face off, put her own back on, be herself. What I was looking at was not my daughter but a middle-aged, drawn, exhausted, ill woman. I suppose it all showed in my expression. She sat down, put her head in her hands and said, through her tears, that she was just tired, it had been a hellish flight. That helped. It gave me something to cling on to, something to justify her appearance, and, even though I knew no flight in the world could account for this transformation, I took refuge behind it. I was soothing and then masterful. I filled a hot water bottle and gave her a hot drink and some aspirin. I urged her to go now, at once, to bed, not to say another word. She let me lead her upstairs, to her old room. In no time at all she was in bed, only her coat and the sweater underneath, a great bulky hairy thing, and her boots removed. I pulled the blankets over her and kissed her wet cheek and said – I’m afraid, I remember I did actually say – ‘It will be all right in the morning.’
She slept until just before midnight the following evening. I did not even try to go back to sleep myself. I dressed and sat at my desk, writing my diary for an hour, and felt steadier for it. When Celia and Emily came down I told them what had happened but did not say anything about how their sister had looked. Emily accused me of not seeming very excited and I said I had not taken it in yet. All day I tiptoed about the quiet house waiting for some sign of life from the back bedroom on the top floor. Up and down the stairs I went, pausing, listening, flying to answer telephone or doorbell, so that Rosemary would not be disturbed. Her luggage still lay in the hall. I eyed it speculatively, trying to read significance into its very size and shape. I thought of opening it: there would be dirty clothes I could be washing. I did unzip the side pocket of the larger bag and took out the wallet inside it, feeling guilty. All it had inside were old airline tickets and some money, English, Australian and American. When the girls came home they were amazed I had not woken Rosemary. They both thought I ought to. But I insisted sleep was what she needed and must have, a natural deep sleep for as long as her body needed it. They were cross that she had not appeared by the time they went to bed themselves.
Usually, I went to bed with them, sometimes before. I was never a late night bird – the morning was always my best time. But I felt quite alert as the evening went on, keyed up as I was. I settled down in the sitting room, consciously arranging myself for a long wait. I lit a fire once the central heating had switched itself off, and put only one lamp on. My mind could not concentrate on a book. What I did in the end, to stop myself fidgeting, was arrange photographs. I had stacks of them in cardboard boxes, filling the drawers of my desk, all ready to put into albums. All the time I was sorting them, I was listening and, when I finally heard footsteps coming down the stairs, I admit I held my breath and my fingers trembled. What I most wanted was to be natural but what was, what is, natural? There was nothing natural about the situation. I had no idea how to behave and that in itself upset and inhibited me, not to know how to behave with one’s own daughter.
She said hello as she came in, asked the time, kept well away. I got up and said I would get something to eat and she said irritably she did not want anything, just a drink, something cold, like orange juice, would do. I flew to get it. Once she had the glass in her hands, she seemed calmer. I did not know whether to start asking her things or wait for her to tell me, and there was an awkward silence before, inevitably, she started talking at the same time as I did. We both told each other to go on which produced more confusion. There was so much that needed telling, that was the trouble. I did not want to sound accusing. Finally, I said that it was lovely to have her home, to see her again, but that I was so surprised I really had not got used to it. That started her off. Out came a long, rambling account of her journey, of all the things that had gone wrong, of how good her intentions had been about phoning to say she was on the way. All the time she was describing her misadventures with airlines, I was studying her closely. There were certain dramatic structural changes that accounted for my failure to know her but these did not explain everything. Her hair had been cut off, cut badly. The long, thick tresses had been viciously cropped to within half an inch of her ears. She had put on weight. Always slim, she now looked hefty, almost Junoesque, and her bone structure had disappeared under a layer of fat. Her complexion, which she had inherited from me, had mysteriously vanished. Nobody would have believed she could possibly have had healthy red cheeks or that she had been in the great outdoors for so long. It seemed neither Californian nor Australian sun had ever touched her. But, worst of all, was seeing that the transition from child to woman had been irrevocably made and that it was to her disadvantage. I never saw Celia or Emily age. I look at them now and, of course, I see that they look different, but I never saw the time at which it happened. With Rosemary, I did. She had gone away, aged twenty-two, young. She had come back, twenty-four that month, not really young. Something had gone, something not accounted for by the changes I noted. It is not too sentimental to say that I sat there silently saying goodbye to a child of mine.
When she seemed to have come to the end of her account of her travels, I made sympathetic comments. There was another hiatus. She suddenly said she knew she looked awful but she felt awful and then in a great rush out it came, I might as well know, there was no point in hiding it, she would need help, she hated asking, it was not fair, there was no one else she could depend on – she was pregnant. She was nearly four months pregnant and she felt like death and she would have to move fast and that was why she had come home, for an abortion. Then she started to cry, softly, not trying to hide it or deal with her own tears. I do not remember what I said, nothing much. I did not move. I felt frightened. Hiding my own fear was the hardest part. I was frightened not just for Rosemary but of her, of her whole predicament. Abortion was a terrible word to me. Today it is bandied about so easily and often that the fear has gone but then, more than twenty years ago, it was shocking to most people. I felt faint and sick. Dully, I was aware that something more than comfort was expected of me. Rosemary had come to me so that I could take over. While half of me rejoiced that she had such faith, that I was not, as I had sadly imagined, a person on the periphery of her life now, the other half rejected the role she was giving me. She was grown up, an adult, with an adult’s problems. She could not return to being a dependant. It was unfair, she was asking too much. Yet all my concern was to suppress that reaction and advance eagerly towards doing what she wanted.
She kept saying she was sorry, she did not know how she had got into such a mess, she knew it was an awful thing to do, to come back like this but she had not known what else to do and she felt so ill. Over and over she said those last two things, and over and over I assured her she had done the right thing, that was what homes were for, that was what family meant. I said she must not look on it as some kind of disgrace or defeat that she had had to come back to us – we would always want her to. Then I tried to be practical. I said she must eat a little or she would feel even worse and
never get her strength back. I made her have some soup and bread and then, when her eyes began to close with fatigue, I once more led her back to bed, but said I would wake her at nine in the morning, and that she must get up and we must start thinking. She was docile and unprotesting, falling back into bed with obvious relief. Before she fell asleep, I asked if it was all right if I unpacked her bags and found some clean clothes for tomorrow. She smiled faintly and nodded, smiled, I suppose, at my absurdity, worrying about cleanliness. Before I went to bed myself, I sorted out the contents of the bags and loaded the washing machine. As soon as I unzipped those bags, the smell of stale tobacco seemed to permeate the whole house, the stench was dreadful. And, oh, what a sorry heap of soiled and stained clothes came tumbling out! It was a kind of torture dealing with them, grieving over fine waistcoats matted with, with I do not know what. Why had she bothered to bring any of it back?
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