Private Papers

by Margaret Forster

  In fact, the whole business was managed with amazing speed, thanks to Simon, Rosemary’s godfather. I never contacted him again after that date and he never contacted me: the minimal contact we had disappeared. He was not censorious, but only concerned for his professional integrity. The affair had to be handled properly, all the correct channels gone through. His value lay in knowing which gynaecologist to send Rosemary to and then which nursing home to select. We paid, of course. It turned out that she was not as pregnant as she had estimated: she was thirteen weeks when the abortion was performed. For some reason, quite apart from the fact that it made it safer, that helped me. All those charts of babies in the womb swam before my eyes and I was relieved to realize how small a thirteen-week foetus is. Rosemary could not have felt it move. It was possible, with an effort of will, to regard it as mucus and blood. But there was no need to point this out to Rosemary. She had no sentimental notions about her unborn child. All she fretted about, as we drove in a taxi to the private nursing home in Surrey, was having to be in any kind of hospital at all. It was the thought of white walls, white beds, white uniforms, of disinfectant and steel instruments and polished floors which terrified her. And she was afraid, too, of the pain, though I had assured her there would be virtually none. She would go to sleep and wake up in half an hour or so, feeling slightly sore and bleeding. It would be no worse than a heavy period. She said that in that case she wanted to go home straight away, but I put her right. She had to stay in for two days, at least, so that the danger of septicaemia and of haemorrhaging was past. She turned green at the mention of these and was half fainting when we got out of the taxi.

  I stayed during the operation. I didn’t weep, nor did I feel unduly anxious. I had faith that Simon would have sent us to somebody competent. I sat there, watching the pale sun make patterns through the slatted green blind, and thought about how things went wrong in the most unexpected ways. How many times had I looked forward to grandchildren? How many weddings and happy sons-in-law had I seen in my imagination? How many phone calls had I taken in fantasy land announcing, it’s a boy, it’s a girl, both well? And now I was sitting waiting for a scrap of unborn flesh to be incinerated. I did not feel bitter, only regretful. It was Rosemary’s life but it felt like mine. When they wheeled her in she looked so childlike, with all her hair covered and only her face showing above the sheet, that I could not believe what had been done to her. I sat beside her until she came round and held her hand. ‘Is it over?’ she murmured and I nodded. I told her to sleep, not to think about it. ‘I want to think about it,’ she whispered, ‘it’s such a lovely thought. Thank God. Never again.’ I went away feeling bowed down and old. Most of all I felt —

  *

  I, on the other hand, got up the next day feeling wonderful. There was, as Mother had correctly divined, not the smallest shred of remorse about it all. (Later, I had an abortion Mother never knew about, when I did feel destroyed, but that first time I felt euphoric.) I was annoyed at having to stay in that place a minute longer than the abortion took, but I saw sense and managed to last the statutory two days. Then, unfortunately, I had to go home again because I’d nowhere else to take myself. I was horrible to everyone, selfish, nasty, cruel even. Most of all to Emily who was, at that stage, fifteen I think, particularly beautiful and still so close to Mother. Everything about her annoyed me: she was so acceptable, so bright and that loathsomely apt word ‘trendy’. She had to wear the vile, bottle-green Camden High uniform but, whereas I had flaunted all the things I wore which were not part of regulation kit, Emily was much more subtle. She was one of those girls who could wear uniform but wear it differently, so that teachers would be exasperated because it appeared correct but somehow wasn’t. She had cunning little tricks, ways of tying belts, of tucking up skirts or tucking in jumpers, which made her stand out. She was so pert with it, too. Bandbox fresh. She made Celia look dowdy, but then old Celia, tiller of the soil, was dowdy. Yet I noticed that some kind of rapport existed between them. They were fond of each other. I hoped Mother was gratified.

  I honestly can’t remember how long I stayed there. A couple of weeks maybe, every day hell. The house could not contain me, I had no place there. Every time my mother referred to ‘my’ room, I could have screamed. There was nothing mine about it. But it took a while to find myself a bed-sitter and also a job. Now that pleased Mother: I actually got a job. It wasn’t a very good job, but it was something. Well, I had to. I only had a hundred pounds left after paying for my return from Australia and the abortion. I got a job in a design team, a small firm, started by two friends from Central, designing anything they could get their hands on, from taps to Christmas cards. I did the graphics for them and got paid according to what we made (not much). I took a room in Fulham to be near them, a tiny, top-floor room with a spectacular view over Chelsea. And so I moved out of the family’s cosy little life again, apologizing for disturbing them. It was a shame they had to hide their pleasure at my departure. Mother told me to come and see them, often, I was always’ welcome.

  Mother thinks that was the worst ‘phase’ in my life (she is fond of dividing time up into so-called phases). She might be right, I don’t know how to measure these things. Lying in that house in Sydney, knowing Tony had gone and I was pregnant, was certainly rock bottom. But there have been other rock bottoms, some of them more prolonged. The difference is that next time I didn’t involve Mother. I managed on my own and got going again. My family could not be a wonderful warm blanket wrapped round all my angles, fitting me snugly, protecting me effortlessly when the storm outside raged. They were simply people to whom I was related, who were kind to me, whom on the whole I liked and even loved and would always want to know about, but they were indisputably not a part of me or me of them. I didn’t know whether acknowledging this made me happy or sad – a bit of both. From the age of twenty-four, I didn’t choose to stand on my own feet. I just looked down at last and saw that was where I was.

  *

  — felt empty. I felt that in spite of being unable to fault what we had done we had rejected her. We three, Celia, Emily and I, were ashamed of how comfortable we were together, how easy and effortless in all our dealings. We could not give Rosemary what she needed and wanted. We had been like a friendly hotel to her, nothing more. We wanted to be more but she would never let us: we would not do. The idea of sitting all evening, chatting to us, horrified her. She was not remotedly interested in us, then. I would have said with certainty that as she drove away in the summer of 1959 she was, this time, really leaving us, consciously getting out. ‘I don’t feel I’ve got another sister,’ Emily said. ‘She doesn’t mean anything to me any more. She doesn’t even like me and I don’t think I like her’ —

  *

  God, I’m popular. I hadn’t realized Em decided so early she didn’t like me. Lucky I didn’t really appreciate this then. Oh, I wouldn’t have cared, people not liking me doesn’t bother me. What’s ‘liking’ anyway, feeble emotion in my opinion, but I would probably have been influenced by my little sister’s openly avowed dislike. I wouldn’t have tried so hard later, and I emphatically did try. I didn’t with Celia, not ever. Mother asked me to, but I wouldn’t.

  Now why does she interrupt herself here?

  May 16th

  COULDN’T NOT GO to the Pre-Raphaelite Exhibition, but went with misgivings. All those historical paintings, all that mythology, not to my taste. Stared helplessly at Hunt’s Rienzi Vowing to Obtain Justice for the Death of his Young Brother Slain in a Skirmish between the Colonna and the Orsini Factions . . . dear me. Quite unable either to admire or to make anything of it. Sat and rested in front of The Children’s Holiday, showing a Mrs Thomas Fairbairn and five children. Not a friendly family. Heavy gilt frames on most of the pictures irritated me. Pictures ponderous enough without them. Thought, when I reached the end (and saw Chill October, now that I could enjoy) that I’d walk round once more in case I’d missed anything. I had. No. 21, a portrait by Ford Madox Brow
n of Lucy Madox Brown, painted in 1849. A head and shoulders study of a child about seven years old. A round, apple-cheeked face, a sturdy child, rather plain and solemn. A wilted rosebud tucked into the neck of a navy blue garment. Immediately I saw it, I thought of Celia: her exact image except for the colouring. Remorse and panic both at once. Wanted Celia back, as she was then. To treat differently. Lucy, Celia, looked at me accusingly. I am too serious, I am too grave, she said, what are you going to do to help me?

  I did not enjoy the exhibition. I don’t wish to write any more about it.

  *

  Last time I was here, a whole week ago, I stayed with Mother’s every golden word. It has its advantages. At least at the end of her account of my infamous abortion I did feel she’d given me more insight into certain aspects of it than I’d had before. It didn’t give me the courage to walk out of the room later and tell her what I thought, but it shifted my perspective slightly. I can feel it shifting all the time now. It makes me feel queasy, as though I was wearing someone else’s spectacles for driving and looking at a road which I know to be straight but which suddenly appears to tilt.

  But Mother is bound to be finished with me, for the moment. She’s out there in the garden with Celia. Every time I look up she waves. Celia is helping Mother ‘tidy’ the garden. It looks painfully tidy already to me – they’re both mad. It makes me smile, remembering. How devastated Mother was that Celia didn’t become a doctor, like dear Daddykins, how she’ll pour her heart out, but I don’t know if it’ll be interesting enough to arrest my attention, until we get to Andrew Bayliss, that is.

  *

  — was academic. She had a natural mathematical, scientific aptitude. I needed no one to tell me she was Oxbridge material. I suppose all the way through her schooldays I automatically assumed, the way parents of such effortlessly gifted children do, that Celia would go to University. In fact, I assumed more, I assumed she would become a doctor. She seemed to accept my assumptions, even encourage them. And then, the summer she did so spectacularly well in ‘A’ Levels, Celia made her announcement. She was not going to try for Oxbridge. She was not going to try for any University.

  It was like that: an announcement. Celia stared at me steadily and said she was not going to go to University, in spite of these results. She was glad about them, but they were irrelevant. She was going to be a gardener. Not a horticultural expert, but a real gardener, starting at the bottom. She was sorry, she knew I would be disappointed. Perhaps I surprised her by being more violently angry than disappointed. I surprised myself by the force of my rage and bitterness. It was so stupid, so apparently affected, even though I knew Celia was the least affected and the most straightforward person in the world. But I did not move her. She became, absurdly, a gardener, on the staff of the Royal Parks. For three years she picked up paper, cleared out drains, swept paths. Eventually, she was promoted to tying up roses, raking, hoeing and other menial jobs. She said she was learning all the time. She could tell when plants needed attention, she had the knack. She was officially appointed a Grade II gardener, the lowest grade, on her twenty-first birthday. Her first real gardening job was propagating geraniums in the Hyde Park greenhouses. I could make no sense of her life. Her wage was tiny and her satisfaction difficult to see. The main excitement seemed to be watching the building of Duck Island in St James’s Park, a subject she lectured us on again and again. To become an assistant to the Bird Man became her greatest ambition. She made no friends, belonged to no group. Yet she maintained she was ‘quite happy’. Every day she came home at five, had a bath, helped me cook, watched television, helped Emily with homework. She no longer played her oboe, nor did she belong to any sports club. Occasionally, she played tennis or swam, but not regularly. Emily’s friends treated her like an aunt, although she was only four years older, and I could not bear it. But what could I do? I could not be cruel and point out to her what she already knew: that it was unnatural for a girl of her age to live so sedately, that it was not good for her, that life was meant to be more fun. I could not organize her, force her to join clubs to replace those she had left at school. Once, when I was pushed into worrying aloud about her lack of pleasures – pushed by my own exasperation – she said, ‘You don’t do anything either. I’m just like you.’ That was what frightened me. She is not in the least like me. And, at her age, I had met Oliver. But Celia, living as she did, was never going to meet anyone. And then Andrew Bayliss came along, the answer, it seemed, to all my prayers. But he turned out to be an evil, selfish, arrogant man. He always knew what he was doing which was quite the worst part about him. There was no question of him falling helplessly in love with Celia. There were no excuses, I accept no extenuating circumstances. And, once he had wormed his way into her affections, he made no attempt to protect her from the realities of his position. He never mentioned that he was still married, nor that he still visited his wife nor, later on, that she had had his baby. He presented himself to Celia as a lonely, much wronged divorcee. He was the original schemer, cruel, calculating, corrupt —

  *

  All that is absolute rubbish, a clear case of paranoia. Andrew Bayliss was none of those things. I only met him a few times but that was enough to show me he was just a dull, boring, harmless jerk. But Mother had to build him up into this sadistic figure because she couldn’t bear the thought of the shabbiness of it all. She wanted Celia to be involved in a great drama, instead of a squalid little affair, which is what it was. Everything had to be Andrew’s fault. As if the fact that he ‘waited a year’ before he asked Celia out was a sign of plotting and scheming – my God. All it was a sign of was his doggedness, his stubbornness. He looked a policeman in or out of uniform: big, solid, square, but not so much powerful as immovable.

  He wasn’t very nice, Andrew Bayliss. I’ll grant Mother that. He wasn’t thoughtful or kind, though she forgets he appeared so at first. Probably his greatest virtue was his patience and I expect it was this that appealed to Celia, who was herself pretty patient. She had a horror of people like me, always rushing, never finishing things, never able to queue or stand still. I imagine it was Andrew’s ponderous quality that first attracted her. Mother may, as ever, have had the best intentions in the world when she put Celia up to buying a flat with her inheritance, but she made a big mistake. The night Mother suggested to Celia that she should buy a flat for herself, Celia came to see me. It was probably one of the two or three times in her life that she’s ever done that and I was so surprised, when she rang up asking to come, that I kept saying what, what, in the most offensive way. I invited her round and she pedalled all the way to Fulham on her bike, there and then. She hadn’t been to my bed-sitter before, though Emily and Mother had, and she was nervous about it, which made her even more inhibited than usual. I did think of doing a quick tidy up on her behalf but then I thought, Christ, how stupid, so I did nothing and she saw it in all its glory, mess and everything. She couldn’t take her eyes off the mattress, piled with grubby covers, just as it was when I’d crawled off it. I knew she wanted to put a sheet on properly and smooth it straight, and plump up the pillows, and make it look like a sofa. The place was littered with open packets of this and that, which upset her too, and the general grime offended her. She tried so hard not to make any comment, to keep her eyes on my face and not to look anywhere else, that I felt sorry for her. It was quite a small room, so we couldn’t help being close to each other as we talked, which was a weird sensation. Celia repelled me physically. Mother would be so upset if I confessed that to her and it upsets me to admit it even to myself, but it’s true. My sister’s marble-like flesh repels me. I want to jump up and run away, and yet I feel no animosity towards her: it really is a physical sensation. I don’t dislike or disapprove of her any more. In lots of ways I admire her, especially for not going to University which Mother had programmed her for, for choosing to be something crazy like a jobbing gardener and not a doctor. But sit me beside Celia and I am almost beside myself.

 
She asked me if I liked living there, what it was like. It was such a dumb question, I couldn’t think how to answer. Finally I said that if she meant did I prefer it to home, she didn’t need to ask because she already knew the answer. Anything was preferable to home, as far as I was concerned. She stared at me a long time, unnerving me even more, and then she said, ‘Do you think I’m abnormal?’ I so badly wanted to burst out laughing that it hurt to control myself, and I’m sure I must have gone scarlet in the face. It’s impossible to tease Celia out of that sort of question. It wouldn’t have helped to mimic her and tell her not to be such a loony. I knew that, for once, I had to reply with equal seriousness. So I said, no, of course not. Loads of people lived at home and weren’t in the least abnormal and it would be absurd of her to think there was anything wrong in liking to live with her own family. Then I added, very carefully, knowing each word would be deliberated upon, that all the same her situation was a little out of the ordinary. It wasn’t entirely normal .for a twenty-one year old to be so deeply devoted to her mother and sister. Maybe a break would be a good thing, maybe she would enjoy a little freedom. Then out it came in a long, rambling stream of only half coherent words – how she was afraid to leave home, afraid to be on her own, afraid she would never be able to make a life for herself. She hated change, loved routine, didn’t ever want to do anything she wasn’t already doing or be anywhere else, but Mother wanted to be rid of her, she liked Emily better, was easier with her . . .

  I interrupted her there, said she was being silly. I told her Mother worshipped her family and would never want to be rid of any member, not even me. Celia calmed down and said she supposed so but it didn’t really help. She still didn’t want to do what Mother wanted her to do, but she supposed she would have to. I saw suddenly how little confidence Celia had. She seemed so capable and organized, and indeed she was, but in herself, in what she was, she was a mess. But what could be done? It was like pushing a baby out into the cold. I spent the rest of the time she was with me flattering her, telling her how proud Mother was of her using her inheritance sensibly, unlike me. I tried to get her to see how much fun it would be choosing and preparing her own nest and how thrilled Mother would be to help her – all that curtain-making and painting and carpet-laying. She smiled rather sadly and said she supposed so, and then she thanked me for listening. I said what else were sisters for, trying not to sound sarcastic or like a parody of Mother.