by Freya North
‘Well, dear,’ she said and she started to wring her hands.
‘Is everything OK?’
‘Well, dear – I.’ She looked up. She had eyes like those of a rag doll, glistening and black and sewn deep into her soft, doughy face. ‘I’m ever so sorry for your loss.’
I have to ask her in, don’t I? I have to invite her in.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
Mrs Mawby came into the house, treading carefully, as if Frankie’s pamment flooring was completely unlike her own, as if Frankie’s home was on a whole different planet rather than bang next door. But once in the kitchen, Peg took charge.
‘I’ll make the tea, dear. You sit down.’
So Frankie sat. The tiredness had lifted but in its place that numbness, as though she was stuffed with cotton wool. When Peta and Steph had been staying here, cooking and cleaning and organizing the children and just letting Frankie be, it had been the same sensation. Nothing inside her but soundproofing.
She sipped. The tea was very sweet, very hot, not too milky. It tasted like nectar. ‘Gosh that’s good.’
‘Tea is always good.’
Frankie looked over at Mrs Mawby sitting on her kitchen chair so politely, as if she was at church. ‘I mean – you make a very very good cup of tea. Thank you.’
‘So sorry, dear, to hear. Keith and I – so sorry.’
Frankie nodded.
‘We lost our eldest. Our Bri. When he was twenty. Many years ago now. But just as – present.’
Frankie’s eyes filled. She had no idea. What a totally corrupt place the world was, taking good people when they were loved and needed.
‘Don’t go upsetting yourself now,’ said Peg.
So there they sat, quietly, until Frankie couldn’t stop yawning and Peg Mawby remembered that, she remembered the engulfing tiredness and she said to Frankie, I’ll be on my way now dear, but you know where I am. Just next door. If ever you feel like it.
Ruth truly became something of a beacon to Frankie. It was overwhelming to put her body in someone else’s hands, someone she trusted.
‘Grief is not different to physical pain,’ she told Frankie, holding her head while she lay on the treatment table. ‘We have to accept it and understand that it comes in waves. You have to allow yourself to let it come and let it go. You will learn to let it walk alongside you, Frankie. You will absorb it as part of you.’
‘Mum? Mum! There’s someone at the door. Mum!’
‘Mum! Sam says there’s someone at the door.’
‘Jesus you two – I’m in the bloody shower. Why didn’t you answer it?’ Frankie had felt utterly fractious the last couple of days. This wasn’t helping.
‘You told me never to answer the door.’
‘Annabel – you know I meant –’
‘– you always change your mind about what you say. I hate you!’
‘Annabel!’
‘I’ll answer the door.’
‘Thanks Sam.’
‘Mum?’
Christ – can they not let me get dressed in peace?
‘Yes Sam.’
‘It’s Grandma.’
At first, Frankie thought Sam meant she’d died.
Like when Steph came into the kitchen three weeks ago and said it’s Scott.
But Sam’s brow furrowed and he motioned with his thumb over his shoulder.
‘Seriously Mum – she’s downstairs. With a suitcase.’
* * *
‘I thought I would come. I thought I might be needed.’
Margaret looked around and, with dismay, Frankie suddenly saw her home through her mother’s eyes. The tumble of shoes and the scrunch of clothes, the scatter of mail and the pile of plates, the decaying fruit and flowers long past their best. There was a muddy footprint right in the middle of the floor. There was a sock on the kitchen table. Margaret’s expression said, not a moment too soon.
‘Mum – honestly –’
Frankie did not want her mother there. Her mother had this ability to make her feel small and ridiculous and, consequently, helpless not to behave like a petulant teenager. She was out of sorts enough as it was, she didn’t need her mother exacerbating her mood.
‘I was just in the middle of tidying up, actually,’ Frankie mumbled, scooping up the heap of god-knows-what on one of the kitchen chairs.
‘I think you ought to dry your hair first,’ her mother said.
‘It’s fine – I let it air dry.’
‘You have the type of hair that needs the shine to be blow-dried into it.’
And so it would be.
After taking Annabel to school the next morning, Frankie wanted to pop in on Ruth but she was with a client so she dawdled her way home, stopping in Stiffkey at the stores, for a coffee she just held and didn’t drink. What she craved was to lie on her sofa in a numb, tired-out stupor. That’s what she’d been doing whilst the children were at school and it was working very well for her.
But when she arrived home, the radio was tuned to Classic fM and Margaret was trilling to it, setting Frankie’s ears on edge. There were three piles ascending the staircase, one for Sam, one for Annabel, one for her. To Frankie, it was as if their bodies had vaporized and that’s what was left. Socks, tops, a pair of boxers, a toy, a book, a pair of headphones.
La-la-ing along to Elgar.
Frankie stood in the hallway and thought if she tiptoed upstairs, her mother might not know she was back. She could creep into Annabel’s room and sneak into her bed for a sleep.
‘Frankie? Is that you?’
Reluctantly, Frankie went through to the kitchen.
The table was devoid of all clutter and had been scrubbed and oiled. Margaret was on her hands and knees. The sight of her supremely irritated Frankie. She thought, it makes me feel like shit.
‘For God’s sake, Mum. Please – can you just get up.’
Margaret looked surprised. She looked as though she was saying charming! under her breath.
‘Please,’ said Frankie. It was ridiculous. Her mother was seventy-two. But obviously, she wasn’t going to listen to her daughter with the kitchen that needed such a scrub with so much elbow grease, so Frankie went through to the living room and slumped on the sofa, vexed.
‘Cup of tea?’ Margaret called.
‘No!’ But Frankie suddenly thought of Mrs Mawby’s tea and how medicinal it could be.
Margaret made tea anyway and brought it through. Frankie couldn’t focus on the taste, only on the sound of the tea hitting the back of her mother’s throat as she swallowed it down. It made her feel nothing short of murderous.
‘I need to work,’ she muttered. She left the house and went to the outside office, sitting there remembering the day after Boxing Day when Scott said, come on kids, let’s go fumigate the office. It took them a long morning to rid it of Peta’s boys. Frankie looked around her. It was a cold, sterile place. She thought, it was the sort of place where she could probably do her accounts, or banish one child or other for time out, but despite the views and the privacy, it was not a place for creative endeavours. She thought about her work, the first Just My Luck book she needed to be working on now. Her publishers had been amazing, telling her to take as much time off as she needed. Somewhere, deep down, Frankie knew that what would do her good was to write. But on the surface, she also said, maybe when I’m less tired. Maybe next week.
Then she thought, I’m going to stay out here until the children are back from school. She thought, I can zone out here for a few hours. She thought, then it will come to me that Scott’s dead. And I’ll hit the floor.
She had a terrible night’s sleep. The dreams. She didn’t want to talk about the dreams, not even to Ruth. The type of dreams you don’t want to wake up from but, once you do, they’re the dreams you don’t want to remember. She was late taking Annabel to school and she was snapping at everyone. Margaret made porridge.
‘When have I ever eaten porridge?’ Frankie said. She saw her mother bristle and then she watche
d the colour rise in Annabel’s cheeks as her daughter tried to shrink down into the collar of her school shirt. Sam was all of a clatter and slammed the door on his way out. All Frankie could think was, more ammunition for my mother, no doubt. Rude children, she’ll say. She’ll say, my daughter lives in squalor and her children are terribly rude.
Back from the morning school run after another circuitous and dawdling route home. Frankie thought how her house looked so pretty from the outside with the tulips and the daffs and the climbers in bud. But inside, it didn’t look like hers any more. It’s gone all minimal with my mother’s obsessive tidying. She always wears an apron as if the dirt is everywhere.
‘See –’ Margaret was showing Frankie a drawer in the dresser – ‘a place for everything. Welcome to your official Bits-and-Bobs drawer. I combined it with the contents of that chaos in the bottom drawer of the kitchen. You won’t need to go hunting in hundreds of different places ever again – whenever you need a bit or a bob, you’ll find it in here.’
Frankie thought the best thing she could do was to leave the room. She’d nod politely and go upstairs. That’s what she should do. That’s what she intended to do but when she reached the door, she stopped.
‘Do you do this to Peta?’ she said, casting it over her shoulder as though it was spilt salt.
Her mother didn’t respond.
‘Do you do this to Peta?’
‘No.’
‘No – oh! Silly me. Peta runs such a spic household – I quite forgot.’
‘Frankie – I’m just trying to help you. I’m just trying to be useful.’
‘You’re not. You’re making me feel shit about myself – like you always do.’
‘I beg your –’
Frankie knew she was ranting but, in that moment, if felt cathartic so rant she would. ‘You do. You disapprove of everything to do with me. I don’t need another bits-and-bloody-bobs drawer. My little household functions on my children and me tearing around saying where oh where oh where do we keep the spare staples, the AA batteries, the plasters. We chase around like a family of otters and we don’t mind if we can’t find things. It’s our dynamic. It’s the way we are. It works.’
‘Frankie – really.’
‘No – you listen to me.’ Frankie paused, suddenly aware that actually her mother hadn’t said Frankie listen to me. ‘You favouritize Peta and you favouritize her hideous offspring and I hate it. And now you’re going to say that favouritize isn’t a word, it’s slang. Who cares! I know I’ve fucked up, Mother. I know my choices in men were – unwise. I know my kids are being brought up in a single-parent household much to your dismay and I can tell you, I wish they weren’t.’
Frankie paused. Her mother was looking a little ashen, her hands tight on the back of a kitchen chair.
‘And Scott’s gone.’ The constriction in Frankie’s throat, so painful it felt like tonsillitis. He had gone. He had died. She would never ever see him again. ‘And I know you didn’t approve of me being with him. But I’m telling you something, the joy and contentment he brought me, and Annabel and Sam – it was worth the wait. However long it was to last, it was worth it. Now I understand what real love is. And now it’s gone.’
Frankie bowed her head and wondered how life would ever feel all right again, for any of them.
An arm around Frankie’s shoulders. Another turning her slightly as she was brought against a body familiarly fragranced by Yardley.
She thought, it’s my mother. I’m standing hopelessly unstable and she’s ramrod straight and she’s keeping me close while I cry.
The dribble and snot streamed out but Frankie was only aware of it when her racking sobs subsided and she saw how her mother’s nice pully was now creased and slimed with her daughter’s sorrow. She didn’t object to Margaret guiding her over to the sofa, she desperately needed to sit.
And then Frankie woke up unaware that she’d slept. Her mother was looking at her with an expression Frankie wasn’t sure she’d ever seen before though she found it surprisingly easy to read. Patience and pity.
‘I only didn’t approve of Scott because of the Canada issue,’ Margaret began. ‘It seemed such a preposterously long way to maintain a relationship and brought you all sorts of logistical and financial complications – you juggle so much in your life as it is.’ She paused. She could see her daughter was too depleted to speak. ‘And when I met him – well, when any of us met him. When one met him, darling. Well! It made perfect sense. He was just super. I liked him enormously. And he was perfect for you.’ Her voice wavered and her eyes were soft. ‘Happy,’ Margaret said. ‘I could see – we all could – how happy you made him.’ Frankie’s mother always kept a handkerchief up her sleeve, and often criticized Frankie for not ensuring her children did too. Fine cotton with edging and a little embroidery. ‘I’m truly sorry for your loss, Frankie,’ Margaret said. ‘I hate seeing you like this. Hate it! That’s why I’m tidying. I’m trying to make a smooth surface wherever I can. It’s all I can do. I – never had a love like yours.’
And Frankie realized just how much she wanted her mother to keep talking.
‘I’m a bitter old bag, Frankie – I know I am. I’ve been bitter and old since your father left me – and he left me when I was younger than you are. I thought it was love – I thought that’s why I hurt. It wasn’t. It was rejection – and that’s why it hurt.’
Margaret smiled a little sadly. ‘I asked Scott, at Christmas, if he might come and visit when he came in February to work.’
Frankie didn’t know that.
‘He didn’t make it. I’m sure he was very busy – commuting between London and Norfolk. But I should have liked him to have visited though.’
And then Frankie remembered Scott saying, hey baby, why don’t we load up the kids and go visit your ma? And she remembered saying, are you mad?
It had been February back then. Short days, cold weather; the perfect opportunity to hunker down at home, light the fire, and not think of anyone other than the tight little unit they were.
‘I was dearly hoping there’d be a next time,’ Margaret was saying. She looked at Frankie levelly, drawing her daughter’s eyes to hers. ‘But my hopes for a next time can’t be anything like yours must have been. And my sadness and shock cannot be measured against your agony and despair.’
That feeling of tonsillitis again. No tears. All dry.
‘As a parent,’ Margaret said, patting Frankie’s leg to ensure she listened, ‘we only want that our children should be happier than we’ve been. It’s that simple. Frankie – I pray for the day when you will feel a little less raw. But don’t dread that day, darling. Don’t keep it at bay. It won’t compromise your love for Scott – it will just signify that in your own muddled way you have accepted that your life must go on.’
The words trickled all the way through Frankie, warming her blood, steadying her heartbeat, taking the edge off that thumping headache. The beauty of her mother’s words struck her, underscored as they were with so much feeling and a wisdom she had never before credited her with.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Frankie.
‘You needn’t apologize.’ Margaret looked perplexed. ‘You have it very wrong about Peta, darling. I’m not harder on you, I’m just rather pathetically soft on her. An expensive house with all the trimmings in Hampstead does not a successful life make. She’s the opposite of you. She has the most alarmingly compartmentalized bits-and-bobs drawer – and I hope you know I speak metaphorically as well as literally.’
She looked out of the window. Two birds having a scatter in the birdbath, making Margaret smile.
‘Peta’s always been neat on the outside and a terrible mess under the surface. Her husband is a dimwit oaf – he’s decent, yes, in that he provides financially. But a good husband? Is he there for her? Is he even interested in her? And those boys of hers are absolutely dreadful. There really is no better way to describe them than hoodlums. It’s not her fault, she tries her best. She’s been
dealt a ghastly hand and I just hope, somehow, they shape up.’
She looked straight at Frankie.
‘You have courage. Your poor sister has none. You have determination and talent – you take the odds and you do battle with them. Look at what you’ve achieved! Not just your career – but also your children. All by yourself. How brave you were to move here, how right you were, but how difficult it must have been. All this is yours. And in there – in that pretty head of yours with the hair that needs a colour, cut and blow-dry – that’s where your true might is. You have a strong head and a big heart – there’s nothing you can’t do. All your poor sister has in her life is mounds of stinking washing that her children seem to excrete, a husband who’s as conversant as a doorpost and far too lardy to be attractive, and a book club once a month where frightful women gather around her and make her feel thick. Poor Peta.’
It struck Frankie then that her mother was absolutely right. She thought of Philip being as conversant as a doorpost and far too lardy to be attractive. She thought of her ungrateful and pungent feral nephews. She thought of her older sister. She considered how, since Peta was little and Frankie even smaller, Peta always tried to keep everything neat and peaceable. And Frankie wondered, how often do I actually say hey Peta, how are you doing? Are you OK? Are you happy?
And Frankie thought, I love my family.
See. I’m holding my mum’s hand.
Ruth had Frankie on all fours; the movement was to crawl and she spoke about spirals, about muscles and bones and something or other that was quick firing. She spoke about energy and release. Frankie didn’t take it in but her body was happy to oblige and, set into position by Ruth, off she went. Suddenly she thought what she must look like; crawling around at forty-one years of age struck her as so preposterous it was hilarious. In hysterics, she rolled around the floor laughing and wheezing, much as she had with Jenna when she remarked how strange Scott’s house was without Buddy there. And when the laughter peeled away, Frankie just lay there, with her head in Ruth’s lap, feeling raw and exposed but somehow just a little more peaceful too.