Sorrow and Bliss

by Meg Mason

  They stopped talking, then started again when I left the room. I stood outside the door and heard Winsome telling my mother that perhaps she ought to try and muster up a suggestion of gratitude since home ownership was generally beyond the reach of a sculptor and a poet who doesn’t produce any poetry. My mother did not speak to her for eight months.

  Then, and now, she hates the house because it is narrow and dark; because the only bathroom opens off the kitchen via a slatted door, which requires Radio Four to be on at high volume whenever anyone is in there. She hates it because there is only one room on each floor and the staircase is very steep. She says she spends her life on those stairs and that one day she’ll die on them.

  She hates it because Winsome lives in a townhouse in Belgravia. Enormous, on a Georgian square and, my aunt tells people, the better side of it because it keeps the light into the afternoon and has a nicer aspect onto the private garden. The house was a wedding present from my uncle Rowland’s parents, renovated for a year prior to their moving in and regularly ever since, at a cost my mother claims to find immoral.

  Although Rowland is intensely frugal, it is only as a hobbyist – he has never needed to work – and only in the minutiae. He bonds the remaining sliver of soap to the new bar but Winsome is allowed to spend a quarter of a million pounds on Carrara marble in a single renovation and buy pieces of furniture that are described, in auction catalogues, as ‘significant’.

  *

  In choosing a house for us solely on the basis of its bones – my mother said, not the ones we were guaranteed to find if we lifted the carpet – Winsome’s expectation was that we would improve it over time. But my mother’s interest in interiors never extended beyond complaining about them as they were. We had come from a rented flat in a suburb much further out and did not have enough furniture for rooms above the first floor. She made no effort to acquire any and they remained empty for a long time until my father borrowed a van and returned with flat-pack bookshelves, a small sofa with brown corduroy covers and a birch table that he knew my mother would not like but, he said, they were only a stopgap until he got the anthology out and the royalties started crashing in. Most of it is still in the house, including the table, which she calls our only genuine antique. It has been moved from room to room, serving various functions, and is presently my father’s desk. ‘But no doubt,’ my mother says, ‘when I’m on my deathbed, I’ll open my eyes for the last time and realise it is my deathbed.’

  Afterwards, my father set out to paint the downstairs, at Winsome’s encouragement, in a shade of terracotta called Umbrian Sunrise. Because he did not discriminate with his brush between wall, skirting board, window frame, light switch, power outlet, door, hinge or handle, progress was initially swift. But my mother was beginning to describe herself as a conscientious objector where domestic matters were concerned. Eventually the work of cleaning and cooking and washing became solely his and he never finished. Even now, the hallway at Goldhawk Road is a tunnel of terracotta to midway. The kitchen is terracotta on three sides. Parts of the living room are terracotta to waist height.

  Ingrid cared about the state of things more than I did when we were young. But neither of us cared much that things which broke were never repaired, that the towels were always damp and rarely changed, that every night my father cooked chops under the grill on a sheet of tinfoil laid over the piece from the night before, so that the bottom of the oven gradually became a millefeuille of fat and foil. If she ever cooked, my mother made exotic things without recipes, tagines and ratatouilles distinguishable from each other only by the shape of the capsicum pieces, which floated in liquid tasting so bitterly of tomato that in order to swallow a mouthful I had to close my eyes and rub my feet together under the table.

  *

  Patrick and I were a part of each other’s childhoods; there was no need for us, newly coupled, to share the particulars of our early lives. It became an ongoing competition instead. Whose was worse?

  I told him, once, that I was always the last one picked up from birthday parties. So late, the mother would say, I wonder if I should give your parents a ring. Replacing the receiver after a period of minutes, she would say not to worry, we can try again later. I became part of the tidying up, then the family supper, leftover cake. It was, I told Patrick, excruciating. At my own parties, my mother drank.

  He stretched, pretending to limber up. ‘Every single birthday party I had between the ages of seven and eighteen was at school. Thrown by Master. The cake came from the drama department prop cupboard. It was plaster of Paris.’ He said, good game though.

  *

  Mostly, Ingrid rings me when she is driving somewhere with the children because, she says, she can only talk properly when everyone is restrained and, in a perfect world, asleep; the car is basically a giant pram at this point. A while ago, she called to tell me she had just met a woman at the park who said she and her husband had separated and now had half-half custody of their children. The handover took place on Sunday mornings, the woman told her, so they both had one weekend day each on their own. She had started going to the cinema by herself on Saturday nights and had recently discovered that her ex-husband goes by himself on Sunday nights. Often it turns out they have chosen to see the same film. Ingrid said the last time it was X-Men: First Class. ‘Martha, literally have you ever heard anything more depressing? It’s like, just go the fuck together. You will both be dead soon.’

  Throughout childhood our parents would separate on a roughly biannual basis. It was always anticipated by a shift in atmosphere that would occur usually overnight and even if Ingrid and I never knew why it had happened, we knew instinctively that it was not wise to speak above a whisper or ask for anything or tread on the floorboards that made a noise, until our father had put his clothes and typewriter into a laundry basket and moved into the Hotel Olympia, a bed and breakfast at the end of our road.

  My mother would start spending all day and all night in her repurposing shed at the end of the garden, while Ingrid and I stayed in the house by ourselves. The first night, Ingrid would drag her bedding into my room and we would lie top and tail, kept awake by the sound of metal tools being dropped on the concrete floor and the whining, discordant folk music our mother worked to, carrying in through our open window.

  During the day she would sleep on the brown sofa that Ingrid and I had been asked to carry out for that purpose. And despite a permanent sign on the door that said ‘GIRLS: before knocking, ask self – is something on fire?’, before school I would go in and collect dirty plates and mugs and, more and more, empty bottles so that Ingrid wouldn’t see them. For a long time, I thought it was because I was so quiet that my mother did not wake up.

  I do not remember if we were scared, if we thought this time it was real, our father was not coming back, and we would naturally acquire phrases like ‘my mum’s boyfriend’ and ‘I left it at my dad’s,’ using them as easily as classmates who claimed to love having two Christmases. Neither of us confessed to being worried. We just waited. As we got older, we began to refer to them as The Leavings.

  Eventually, our mother would send one of us down to the hotel to get him because, she said, this whole thing was bloody ridiculous even though, invariably, it would have been her idea. Once my father got back, she would kiss him up against the sink, my sister and I watching, mortified, as her hand found its way up the back of his shirt. Afterwards it wouldn’t be referred to except jokingly. And then there would be a party.

  *

  All of Patrick’s jumpers have holes in the elbows, even ones that aren’t very old. One side of his collar is always inside the neck, the other side over it and, despite constant retucking, an edge of shirt always finds its way out at the back. Three days after he has a haircut, he needs a haircut. He has the most beautiful hands I have ever seen.

  *

  Apart from her recurrent throwing-out of our father, parties were our mother’s chief contribution to our domestic life, the thing t
hat made us so willing to forgive her inadequacies compared to what we knew of other people’s mothers. They overflowed the house, bled from Friday nights into Sunday mornings, and were populated by what our mother described as West London’s artistic elite, though the only credential for getting in seemed to be a vague association with the arts, a tolerance for marijuana smoke and/or possession of a musical instrument.

  Even when it was winter, with all the windows open, the house would be hot and heaving and full of sweet smoke. Ingrid and I were not excluded or made to go to bed. All night, we made our way in and out of rooms, pushing through throngs of people – men who wore tall boots or boiler suits and women’s jewellery, and women who wore petticoats as dresses over dirty jeans, Doc Marten boots. We were not trying to get anywhere, only as close to them as possible.

  If they told us to come over and talk to them, we tried to sparkle in conversation. Some treated us like adults, others laughed at us when we were not meaning to be funny. When they needed an ashtray, another drink, when they wanted to know where the pans were because they had decided to fry eggs at three a.m., Ingrid and I fought each other for the job.

  Eventually my sister and I would fall asleep, never in our beds but always together, and wake up to the mess and the murals spontaneously painted on bits of wall that had not been Umbrian Sunrised. The last one ever conceived is still there, on a wall in the bathroom, faded but not enough so that you can avoid studying the foreshortened left arm of the central nude from the shower. When we first saw it, Ingrid and I feared it was our mother, painted from life.

  Our mother who, on those nights, drank wine out of the bottle, plucked cigarettes from people’s mouths, blew smoke at the ceiling, laughed with her head tipped back and danced by herself. Her hair was still long then, still a natural colour, and she was not fat yet. She wore slips and scraggy fox furs, black stockings, no shoes. There was, briefly, a silk turban.

  Generally speaking, my father would be in the corner of the room talking to one person; occasionally, holding a glass of something and reciting The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in regional accents to a small but appreciative crowd. Either way, he would give up and join my mother as soon as she started dancing because she kept calling him until he did.

  He would try to follow her lead and catch her when she had spun herself beyond standing up. And he was so much taller than her – that is what I remember, he looked so tall.

  I had no way to describe the way my mother looked, how she seemed to me then, except to wonder if she was famous. Everyone drew back to watch her dance, despite the fact that it was only spinning, wrapping her arms around her own body, or waving them above her head like she was trying to imitate the movement of seaweed.

  Worn out, she would sag into my father’s arms but seeing us at the edge of the circle, say, ‘Girls! Girls come here!’, excited again. Ingrid and I would refuse but only once because when we were dancing with them, we felt adored by our tall father and funny, falling-over mother and adored, as the four of us, by the people who were watching, even if we didn’t know who they were.

  Looking back, it is unlikely our mother knew them either – the object of her parties seemed to be filling the house with extraordinary strangers and being extraordinary in front of them, and not a person who used to live above a key-cutter. It was not enough to be extraordinary to the three of us.

  *

  For a while, when I lived in Oxford, my mother sent me short emails with nothing in the subject. The last one said, ‘I am being sniffed by the Tate lot.’ Ever since I left home, my father has posted me photocopies of things written by other people. Open and pressed down on the glass, the pages of the book look like grey butterfly wings, and the fat, dark shadow in the centre like its body. I have kept them all.

  The last one he sent was something by Ralph Ellison. With a coloured pencil, he had highlighted a line that said, ‘The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.’ Next to it, his tiny handwriting in the margin: ‘Perhaps there is something in that for you, Martha.’ Patrick had just left. I wrote across the top of the page, ‘The end is now and I can’t remember the beginning, that is the whole point’ and posted it back.

  It came back days later. His only addition, ‘Might you try?’

  3

  I WAS SIXTEEN the year I met Patrick. 1977 + 16 = 1993. It was Christmas Day. He was standing in the black and white chequered foyer of my uncle and aunt’s house with Oliver, their middle child, wearing full school uniform and holding a duffle bag. I had just had a shower and was coming down to help set the table before we left for church.

  My family never spent Christmas anywhere other than Belgravia. Winsome required us to stay the night on Christmas Eve because she said it made things more festive. And, she didn’t say, it meant there would be no issues with lateness on the day – the four of us arriving at eleven-thirty for breakfast that was scheduled for eight a.m. BST, my mother would say, Belgravia Standard Time.

  Ingrid and I slept on the floor in my cousin Jessamine’s room. She was Winsome’s late-in-life baby, five years younger than Oliver, who used to call her The Accident when adults weren’t around and The WS, Wonderful Surprise, when they were, until he grew up enough to realise he was also a surprise – his older brother Nicholas is adopted. Why four years of marriage to Rowland had not produced the baby my aunt longed for was never discussed, possibly unknown. Whatever the reason, my mother said, after that length of time, the legal rigmarole of adoption must have seemed preferable to both of them than any more toil in the bedroom.

  Nicholas, who is the same age as me, was called something else when they got him and his origins were never discussed, beyond being referred to as his origins. But I have heard my uncle say, in his son’s earshot, that when it comes to adopting babies in Britain, you can have any colour you like as long as it’s brown. I have heard Nicholas say, to his father’s face, ‘If only you and Mum had ground away at it a bit longer you’d just have your two white ones.’ By Patrick’s first year with us, Nicholas was already going off the rails and has never got back on them.

  Oliver and Patrick were both thirteen, at boarding school together in Scotland. Patrick had been there since he was seven. Oliver, who had been there a term, was meant to arrive on Christmas Eve but had missed his flight and been put on an overnight train. Rowland went to Paddington to pick him up in the black Daimler that my mother called the Twatmobile and came back with both of them.

  As I was coming down the stairs, I saw my uncle, still in his coat, telling his son off for bringing a friend to bloody Christmas without bloody asking. I stopped halfway down and watched. Patrick was holding the hem of his jumper, rolling and unrolling it while Rowland was talking.

  Oliver said, ‘I told you already. His dad forgot to book his ticket home. What was I meant to do, leave him at school with Master?’

  Rowland said something sharp under his breath, then turned to Patrick. ‘What I want to know is what kind of father forgets to book his own son a flight home at Christmas. To bloody Singapore.’

  Oliver said bloody Hong Kong.

  Rowland ignored him. ‘What about your mother?’

  ‘He doesn’t have one.’ Oliver looked at Patrick who kept going on his jumper, unable to say anything.

  Slowly, Rowland unwound his scarf and once he’d hung it up, told Oliver that his mother was in the kitchen. ‘I suggest you go and make yourself useful. And –’ turning to Patrick ‘– you, what did you say your name was?’

  He said, ‘Patrick Friel, sir’ in a way that made it sound like a question.

  ‘Well you, Patrick Friel sir, can skip the waterworks since you are here now. And put your bloody bag down.’ He told Patrick he could call him and Oliver’s mother Mr and Mrs Gilhawley, then stalked off.

  I started walking down the stairs again. They both looked up at me at the same time. Oliver said, ‘That’s my cousin Martha blah blah,’ grabbed Patrick’s sleeve and pulled him towards the staircase that went down to the
kitchen.

  *

  Months earlier, Margaret Thatcher had moved into a townhouse on the other side of the square. Winsome worked it naturally and unnaturally into every conversation and on Christmas Day, it was mentioned twice at breakfast and again as we were getting ready to walk to the church at the top of the square, towards a corner that made it nearer my uncle and aunt’s house than the prime minister’s.

  What people notice, then eventually stop noticing about my aunt, is that whenever she is addressing a topic of importance, she speaks with her chin lifted and her eyes closed. At her crux, they spring open and bulge enormously as if she has been shocked awake. Ending, she sucks air into flared nostrils and holds it for a period that becomes worrying, before slowly expelling it. In the instance of Margaret Thatcher, my aunt always opened her eyes at the point of saying our lady prime minister had chosen ‘the less good side’. It infuriated my mother, who wondered aloud on the way to church why it might be that, instead of walking straight there, Winsome was leading us around three sides of the square.

  As soon as we got back, my mother carried mince pies out to the policemen standing in front of Margaret Thatcher’s house and returned with an empty plate. Winsome makes her own mincemeat, in April, and just smiled and smiled as my mother told her that the policemen had not been allowed to accept them, which was why she slid the whole lot into a rubbish bin on the way back over.

  *

  Before lunch I got changed into a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt and black bicycle shorts and came into the dining room with bare feet – I remember because when we were finding our places Winsome told me that I had time to go upstairs and change back since Lycra clothing wasn’t really de rigueur at the Christmas table and perhaps I’d like to pop shoes on while I was up there. My mother said, ‘Yes Martha, what if Mrs Thatcher is trotting across from the less good side of the square as we speak? Then where will we be?’ She took a glass of wine from Rowland.