A Kind of Vanishing

by Lesley Thomson

  She wanted to go out with her Mum. Perhaps to the park, or they could take a train to the seaside. She might wander around the supermarket picking out treats with her Mum, like other girls did. Some nights she lay awake horrified by the prospect of her Mum dying alone in the pokey flat on the Old Kent Road. If Chris was to see her own dreams of becoming a forensic scientist come true she had to rescue the Alice of the bedtime stories from her rabbit hole and return her to the safety of the riverbank. At other times Chris would be in dread of her mother’s hidden self. The sexy monster had had nothing to do with being a Mum.

  Chris had seen this monster a few months earlier when she had come home unexpectedly right after lunch. A teacher had been ill and her chemistry lesson was cancelled. She had heard the music from the landing, and assumed it was the people in the flat above with whom Alice had regular run-ins. Chris sighed. Her Mum would have scribbled an embarrassing note and expect her to take it upstairs and wait for a response. Chris had called out in a cheery voice as she shut the front door.

  The music was coming from the living room. It was so loud her greeting was drowned out. The door was open three inches and she saw movement in the full-length mirror on the wall in the living room. Her mother had fixed it there to make her feel she had company when she walked towards it. Now it gave Chris a view of the whole room and she was brought up short. Keeping back in the gloom of the darkened hallway, she gaped dumbfounded. Her mother had kicked back the rug, cleared aside furniture and was dancing. Not the sort of dancing Chris would have expected: the clumsy clumping back and forth accompanied by contorted air guitar playing, but proper dancing. Her body was moving in perfect time to ‘Rebel Rebel’ by David Bowie, a song Chris did not imagine Alice had heard of.

  The woman in the mirror spun around, sashayed back and forth, her movements fluid, her timing exact, as she echoed the rhythm of the guitar riff and with consummate understatement mimed the words. She exuded sex and vigour. Chris blushed, and tentatively touched her hot cheek with the back of her hand. She had never had to undergo the agony of seeing a parent lumbering hopelessly to sounds they were too old for. Her mother’s agoraphobia had spared her that. This was worse. This was a woman Chris was not meant to see. This woman was a stranger evoking feelings Chris was not meant to feel for her own Mum.

  Chris’s mouth had gone dry, and feeling sick she had sneaked away. As she ran out of the flat into the street, gulping in the cold winter air to stop herself throwing up, she felt orphaned. Her Mum had abandoned her. As she could not belong with the bold, statuesque woman upstairs, with whom did she belong? Gary in his oil stained overalls was no last resort.

  She clattered up the stairs to their flat on the second floor, her thoughts past and present stuck to the dingy walls and appeared half soaked on the staircase, like the washed fragments of Pride and Prejudice. She fumbled in her bag for the door key and at last found it swaddled in the tissues her Mum gave her every Monday. The half-empty packet was her Mum. Whenever Chris pulled a hanky out to blow her nose she was both reassured and annoyed.

  She had to lean hard on the door to get it open. Her mother had jammed her brown velvet sausage dog against it. Sometimes the dog stuck, so like now, Chris had to squeeze through the gap. Alice’s stuffed emissary greeted her with an expression of lumpy resignation. Not for the first time Chris inwardly fumed at her mother’s insistence at using a draught excluder in the height of summer. She complained of being alone, but spent most of her time stopping people getting in.

  Chris paused in the hallway. Since the David Bowie nightmare, she’d been entering with trepidation. She also savoured the illusion of being on her own. How different this flat would be if it were hers. She had never been alone in it.

  The short corridor had no windows and depended on one of its five doors being open for light. They were always shut. Chris sniffed. The hall smelled of air freshener and washing and was pleasantly cool despite the heat outside. It was a relief now, but in the winter the hall was a place to avoid. There was no central heating. That was Stage Three of the modernisation of the Victorian estate. Stage Two had been security doors and a bench manacled to the estate office with a dedication plate to a dead councillor around which the information: ‘WP liKEs it up thE aRsE’ had been carved. Also included in Stage Two was a brick trough of dusty soil now populated with browned-eared shrubs and dotted with colour from drinks cans and food packaging. Stage One had been the Norwegian double glazed windows that could be cleaned on both sides without ladders or risk of death by falling. The third stage was on hold because the housing association had run out of money.

  Chris tossed her bag on to her narrow single bed, registering with a stab of fury that it had been made. Now it was a pretend bed, with no creases or folds, a series of straight lines like a prison. Her mother always tucked the duvet in at the sides. How many times had she asked her not to?

  ‘Mum! No one tucks in a duvet!’

  ‘It’s neater, otherwise it’ll slip off the bed.’

  ‘How? Is the bed on a slope?’

  ‘Why do you have to contradict? You have to have the last word.’

  ‘No, you always have the last word.’

  ‘See what I mean?’

  Now Chris snatched at the duvet and wrenched it out from the wall. Discarded and rejected clothes had been folded in reproachful piles on her desk, covering papers and pens.

  Chris lay down, her arms outstretched.

  After a bit she felt between the wall and the mattress and hauled up a square of crocheted wool and clamped it to her nose. Contentment crept through her like a paper slowly catching fire, licking and lapping: spreading heat. The room was hers again. Her mother had knitted the small pink blanket for her cot. She sniffed it, breathing right in. A kind of peace descended.

  The walls were dark red with shiny black skirting. Chris had done the gloss four years ago when she was supposed to be doing her French homework. Nothing had been greater than her buzzing excitement as she left the shop with the tin of paint, a brush and the bottle of turpentine secreted in her bag. Chris had paid for everything with money from her Saturday job at the library. Her Mum had brushes and cleaning fluids, she was an expert on decorating and home improvement. But she would not have let Chris use her brushes, even if she cleaned them thoroughly afterwards. As it turned out, the borrowing of brushes might have been a small crime in comparison with the much larger one of painting her skirting boards black.

  Streaks of cold tea had dribbled down the woodchip wallpaper, mingling with black paint. Even years later, Chris still found flakes of china tucked into the edges of the carpet. She liked this, preferring to think of her bedroom as a preserved crime scene. The next day she had bought her mother a new mug. It seemed her Mum, normally so fiercely tidy, always had to make a mess when she was cross.

  It had been worth it. Now Chris knew every inch of her bedroom, the places where there were cracks and indentations and ominous bulges. She had painted like the bloke in the shop had advised, following the grain of the wood in rhythmic sweeps. Now though Chris regretted the black. But she kept this secret from Alice.

  ‘You’re late. Was the traffic bad, darling?’

  ‘Same as usual.’

  ‘The sun has left the quadrangle.’

  ‘Do you have to use that pretentious word. Yard. It’s a crappy old yard.’

  ‘So what?’ she retorted and too late berated herself; despite the launderette, they might have a nice evening. Chris repeated her usual resolution.

  ‘I will be nice. I will be kind. Just do as you’re told.’

  Leaning against her Mum’s big old armchair, she glanced out of the window at the shaded yard. She wanted to see her Mum laughing with her own friends in some crowded restaurant or sipping a glass of wine in a pub garden decked out with lanterns like other people’s mothers did. Sometimes when Alice tapped her feet to a tune on the radio, Chris spied the girl in the stories, who skipped and pranced and wore her hair in bunches. More recen
tly she was reminded of the woman in the mirror.

  At two in the morning, listening to the flat flexing its limbs: the whimsical trilling of the fridge, groaning water pipes, and the other indefinable sounds of her home, Chris would whisper a wish to the darkness that one day her Mum would be able to go outside and feel the warm sun on her face. She would turn Alice into the carefree girl she was before her parents were killed. She would restore that happy child spinning a figure-of-eight on the ice rink watched by proud parents up in the stands. Then Chris would hear her Mum cough through the thin wall and despair that she would ever get better.

  ‘How was your day?’

  ‘I’ve made you bœuf en daube. With extra wine the way you like it.’

  Chris loved her Mum’s cooking; it was their private language. Alice didn’t cook according to the seasons, but by mood or priority. She had defrosted the fridge, and was working through the contents and then gave her dishes fancy names enunciating the French with guttural enthusiasm. This was a joke they shared. Alice had spent three days over the dish. Chris was impressed that Alice was expert at cooking without going anywhere. She never picked up flavours and smells or ate other people’s food and swapped recipes and tips.

  This flash of good feeling prompted Chris to bring on another high spot in her Mum’s day. She went to get the newspaper.

  ‘Hey Mum, you sit and read. Let me set the table and serve up. Then we can do the crossword.’

  ‘I’ll take you up on that.’ Alice started out of her chair to hug her daughter, but she had gone.

  Chris opened the kitchen door and entered a world where only good things happened. The rich herby smell laced with garlic triggered another burst of love for Alice. As she lifted the lid from the pan and stirred the reddish-brown mixture, Chris called to the living room in a chirpy voice:

  ‘Mind you the news is weird. Some doctor bloke drove his car into a swimming pool and drowned himself at the weekend. Probably killed a patient and couldn’t admit it! There’s a great photo.’

  There was no reply, but Chris was too preoccupied choosing especially tender pieces of meat for her mother to notice.

  The kitchen was warm and bright. The surfaces were gleaming. It could have doubled as an operating theatre. No mistakes were made here. No crimes either. Her Mum rarely left traces of herself in a room, wiping down cupboards and polishing handles after cooking. She left no chance for mould to grow anywhere.

  Alice had put out a tray with plates and cutlery so there wasn’t much for Chris to do. She was surprised her mother had let her serve the food. Alice liked recognition and presenting her culinary feats was part of the ceremony.

  Chris handled the ladle Alice had put out with clinical care, lifting out meat and vegetables without splashing. She made sure to give her mother a bit more potato and lots of juice. She hummed to herself as she lowered the brimming plate on to the tray. She would come back for her own. She manoeuvred with care, concentrating on each step, keeping the gravy from slopping as she walked back through.

  ‘Mum, this looks delic…’

  Chris staggered backwards as Alice shoved against her. The plate slithered across the tray. Chris tried to get her balance, but couldn’t stop gravy and bits of meat splashing to the floor. The room vibrated as Alice slammed the door behind her.

  The settee was still warm where her Mum had been. Chris plonked the tray on the floor and sat motionless. At her feet the rug was a limp animal with gashes of gravy for open wounds. What had she done now?

  After about ten minutes she went into the kitchen and filled the washing up bowl with soapy water. The gravy disappeared as she scrubbed. Then she took the tray with the rest of her mother’s supper back to the kitchen, tipped the food back in the pot and washed the plate. Her own plate had not been used. She put the lid back on the casserole dish and switched off the light. She had no appetite.

  The Evening Standard was on the settee. She looked at the picture of a car hanging from a crane over a swimming pool of some posh country mansion. When she had scanned the paper earlier before getting off the tube, Chris had found the picture funny despite the story. It was a surreal sight. She considered whether her mother was going mad. She would not know how to check, for she was used to her odd ways. Alice would touch five things on entering a room and talk to her draught excluder dog as if he was real. The estate didn’t allow proper pets. On good days Chris even loved Alice more for these eccentricities. The doctor said her Mum was marvellous, coping so well in the circumstances. What would he have said about her tonight? Her Mum had ruined the evening for no reason.

  She read the story properly. It put off doing anything about Alice.

  An internationally acclaimed Parkinson’s Disease specialist was found drowned in his swimming pool on Saturday. Police can find no reason to explain why Professor Mark Ramsay drove his car into the swimming pool of his Sussex home. Despite brave efforts by his 66-year-old wife Isabel and son-in-law Jonathan Cross (46) they were unable to free him from the submerged car. Professor Ramsay, who would have been 74 in November, was pronounced dead at the scene. Lucian Ramsay (42), a pharmacist at Charing Cross Hospital in London, said his father had been looking forward to his birthday. ‘He categorically would not have taken his life. My mother said he fought to escape. He adored his family. He had every reason to live.’ Police are running checks on the 31-year-old Rover. Professor Darius Meeching, a colleague at the National Hospital in Queen Square where Professor Ramsay still worked, said the loss to the UK’s knowledge of Parkinson’s was immeasurable…

  Chris didn’t know anyone with Parkinson’s Disease but swiftly concluded it was obviously suicide and that the son was kidding himself. Children knew less about their parents than anyone. Although she could be sure that Gary would never kill himself using a car.

  Chris admitted that the professor was okay looking for an old man, with no grey hair and a dimple in his chin. She remembered her Mum saying newspapers always had pictures of dead people smiling to show they had been nice when they were alive and to make readers care that they were dead. Apparently the professor had everything, good looks, a successful career, children and a wife described as a ‘glamorous sixties socialite’. Chris reflected that, even dead, Mark Ramsay looked happier than she was at that moment. Wealth might not bring happiness, but it provided better places to kill yourself or be miserable in.

  Whatever his son said, Chris guessed something must have upset the old professor. Parents were unpredictable. Not that she knew about fathers. Her father would be unlikely to ruin a perfectly good car in order to kill himself. She remembered the man in the subway and closing her eyes, she felt the warmth of his tense body against hers. Her body’s memory was better than her own. Chris could not remember what the man had looked like. Only then did she realise that she had not seen his face.

  She left the paper on the glass coffee table. Her Mum might still read it. She would be better tomorrow.

  Fourteen

  Isabel climbed out of bed as soon as Gina had left the room. Her whole body was stiff after the business in the pool and when she stood up her temple throbbed. It was a relief to be alone as long as she knew it wouldn’t last. She had read somewhere that people felt closer to death after both their parents had died, when the buffers shielding them from mortality were removed. Her own parents had died when she was too young to remember them so she had never had that feeling. She felt it now. With Mark’s death Isabel had been shunted forward in the queue, suddenly old, a widow, a dowager.

  Her turn next.

  Isabel’s arms ached as she drew back the curtains and leaned out of the open window into the warm dusk. A pale square of light from the kitchen was like a sheet spread over the grass in the growing gloom. The ghostly outlines of the table and empty chairs under the willow tree were both emblems of the past and finger-posts to a bleak future. The thick bushes and the trees that were now grown as tall as the house rustled in the late evening breeze. She stared hard, but no amount
of looking changed anything. Mark was not there now.

  There were voices, distant enough for her to feel held in a private silence. Did other people have these thoughts, inconsequential, yet integral to one’s self? In a drunken conversation after making love before they were married she and Mark had once confided their most trivial experiences to each other. They discovered for instance that they touched the end of a biscuit with their tongues after biting, to stop crumbs dropping. Tiny expediencies they had seldom acknowledged since, yet she had believed those shared assumptions were always there. Now it was all over.

  The intruders had gone for the day. All afternoon there had been a policeman posted at the gate. He was back there after thirty years. His presence should form a direct link to a lost time, as a blanket of snow can level changes to a landscape, and precipitate the recall of forgotten events. But Isabel felt only disintegration and heavy limbs. A hand clasped her waist. She opened her eyes and preparing her face, gave in to its pressure, turning round ready to speak; she must sound patient and try not to snap at him.

  There was no one there except the half-drunk glass of water on Mark’s bedside table and his reading specs.

  Now only the children were left in the house. She could hear them through the window, talking in hushed conspiracy downstairs, presumably the kitchen. They would have formed a committee around the table, drinking cocoa made by Lucian who had the sensible answer for everything. Lovely, dependable Lucian: boiling the milk to precisely the right temperature, lining up the cups like soldiers, dispensing the exact measurement of powder. He would leave enough milk for the morning in case the milkman failed to deliver. It had never happened yet. Lucian the Pharmacist spent his life working through a computerised list of instructions and descriptions. Isabel had always languidly assumed his work was limited to doling out pills and potions into receptacles; pouring powder into delicate sachets from larger packets, dripping from small bottles on to spoons, slipping syringes into plastic bags, coaxing blobs on to petri-dishes, and tweezering on to microscope slides. All day long, he transferred something to somewhere else, when he had wanted terribly to be a doctor. Isabel knew her son had grown up into a disappointed man. She despised him for his blinkered ambition, so inappropriate for a boy who might have been artistic and created works that changed the world. Isabel sometimes found the sight of her son, so imperturbably stoical in the face of his substituted life, quite unbearable.