You Be Mother

by Meg Mason

  He looked stricken.

  ‘Thought we’d give you a surprise,’ Stu said as he lifted Jude out of the car and held him face down under his arm, like a football.

  ‘You’ve given me enough surprises lately to last a lifetime thank you Stuart. We won’t be able to eat until 12.15 now. Hello Abi. You look tired. Well, don’t stand around out here. We’ll all get cooked.’

  Abi followed the others inside. The air in the hallway had the cool, stale quality of an unused guest room. Along both walls, glass-fronted cabinets displayed expensive-looking china figurines, apple-cheeked children kneeling in prayer, wistful mimes, very realistic forest animals. Abi could not imagine someone with Stu’s energy growing up surrounded by so many breakable things, and such a volume of potpourri. The hallway led through to a tidy kitchen and conservatory dining area looking out to the back garden. Roger and Stu took a wicker loveseat that let out a startling crack as it received their weight. Jude’s arms and legs shot out with fright and Stu let Abi take him.

  She remained standing, unsure where to put herself, until Elaine motioned towards a peacock chair that Abi assumed was only for show due to its careful arrangement of cushions. They were embroidered with sayings she could not imagine coming from Elaine’s own mouth. ‘A mother holds your hand for a day and your heart forever.’ ‘Perfect mothers have dirty ovens and happy children.’

  Elaine’s oven turned out to be fairly spotless, she discovered, when Roger asked to hold Jude, and Abi wandered into the kitchen to make offers of help that were reluctantly given in to. Elaine allowed her to take a salmon quiche through to the table but yelped audibly when Abi missed the trivet by an inch and earthenware met glass.

  ‘Well, don’t wait. The pastry will lose its crunch,’ Elaine said in lieu of grace as they all sat down.

  Roger raised his glass of Appletiser towards Abi. ‘Your first week in Australia, eh? Good on you, dear.’

  With Jude back in her arms, Abi tried to reach her glass and knocked a tall pepper grinder into a bowl of shredded iceberg. ‘Gosh, I’m so sorry.’

  Elaine winced. ‘Abi, give the baby to me so you can eat properly.’ For the rest of the meal, she stood on Abi’s periphery, rocking Jude. Every so often, Abi heard her sigh and say, ‘Goodness me Jude. What are we going to do with you?’ Abi felt like her throat was closing up and swallowing each mouthful of creamed salmon filling became an act of will.

  When they finished eating and Elaine had reprimanded Roger in a whisper for scraping at the table, Stu was sent outside to help his father move a heavy pot. Elaine followed to supervise, taking Jude with her. Left alone in the conservatory, Abi felt like a cord connecting her to Jude had stretched to breaking. She could see him out the window, and longed to take him back.

  Abi dared not start the dishes, so instead found the loo and after washing her hands, folded what looked like one of Elaine’s good handtowels back into the shell-shape she’d found it in. Unable to think what to do next, she returned to the peacock chair and sat down, trying not to touch a scratchy bolster that said ‘Home, where friends are family and family are friends.’ Feeling distinctly that she belonged in neither group, Abi yawned and closed her eyes.

  Somewhere between awake and asleep, her mind returned to the pool and the woman she’d met there. This time, Abi called out to her before diving confidently into the water. Snatches of their conversation replayed themselves, but Abi heard herself saying much cleverer things.

  Sometime later, Abi woke to the sound of Roger carefully wiping his feet at the back door. ‘Do you like Chinese chequers?’

  Abi sat up straight. ‘I love them. But I might need reminding of the rules.’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘I mean, if you want to play. Or were you just asking in general? Sorry. I think I might have nodded off just then.’

  Roger found an old set from inside a lace-trimmed ottoman with a lift-up top and took the seat opposite Abi.

  ‘I expect you’re still feeling a bit upsy-down town, eh?’ he said, opening the faded box.

  ‘I suppose I am. I didn’t think it would be this different. The food. The telly, your plastic money. I keep having to work things out in pounds so I know if they’re expensive or not. Maybe that’s why I’m so tired, from so much long division.’

  ‘No doubt,’ Roger said. ‘I went to America for a conference in ’92 and I was the same. Did you know that when you flush an American lavatory, the water comes right up to the top? You think it’s about to overflow,’ he paused, pensively, ‘and then it doesn’t. I was very glad to get home.’

  ‘I bet. I do like it here though, the weather especially.’

  ‘And you’ve got the ferry. Jude will love the ferry when he’s bigger.’

  ‘I saw one called Friendship yesterday. You’d not get a Hammersmith & City train called Friendship. More like The Verbal Assault. Or The Fatal Stabbing.’

  ‘When Elaine and I lived where you are as newlyweds, I used to get the Sirius into town. It often ran late, and I’d say, you’re not Sirius!’ Roger paused again and his look became grave. ‘Jude’s lovely, Abi. A very good little boy and I think you’re lovely with him.’ At that, he fell back in his chair, as though he’d finally let go of a secret too enormous to contain.

  Abi could say or do nothing. No one had said such a nice thing about her as a mother.

  ‘Sometimes, I feel like I’m not good enough for him,’ Abi said when Roger began to look worried, as though he’d been inappropriate. ‘I almost expect someone to come and take him and give him back to a real mum. That probably sounds weird, it’s like he’s too good to be true.’

  ‘No, no. I understand. I feel like that about Stuart, still now. And I probably shouldn’t say this, dear, but I know how Elaine can be. She’s always wanted a daughter, you see. And now here you are, but she sometimes takes a bit to warm up.’

  Because she was beginning to love Roger so much, Abi smiled as though she really believed him.

  As Roger finished setting up the board, Elaine returned, still holding Jude and followed by Stu. ‘You ought to get going shortly if you want to avoid traffic coming back from the Coast.’

  Roger poured the counters back into the box and went off to get the car keys.

  At the door, Elaine gestured towards a stiff paper shopping bag, tucked behind the umbrella stand. ‘It’s baby clothes from the St Luke’s Mother’s Union. Pre-loved, but there’s some very nice things in there, which you can return for bigger sizes when he grows out of them, so please keep them nice.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ Abi said, taking it by one handle and hoping that whatever was inside would not make Jude look like an orphan who needed sponsoring for as little as a dollar a day.

  ‘Hey, Mum said she’d babysit for us next Saturday night,’ Stu said, on the train home. ‘That’ll be fun, eh?’

  Abi gave a weak thumbs-up, and went back to kissing Jude’s cheeks, which had absorbed the synthetic lilac scent of Elaine’s perfume.

  15.

  Absolute steel

  Her name was Phyllida. ‘But no one’s called me that since my games mistress,’ she said, holding out her hand to be shaken. ‘Phil. Very nice to meet you, Abigail.’

  They were sitting on a striped cotton towel that Phil had tossed over the slats of the bench. It was Monday again and as soon as Stu had left for work, Abi set off with the pram in the hope of finding her there again.

  Abi went to correct her, but decided it was better not to seem fussy about her name. They performed a funny half-shake, laughing at the formality of a proper introduction now, when they’d been chatting for nearly an hour and Abi was up to the getting pregnant part of why she’d moved here.

  Phil found it all delightfully unconventional. As she listened, she glanced occasionally towards Jude, who was lying on a towel in the shade, turning circles with his fists and blinking up at the dappled green above him.

  Abi tried to explain, as delicately as she could, how contraception-wise she probably believed on some level
that she had credits owing, having managed not to get pregnant right up until she did. ‘But it doesn’t work like that, does it? It’s like the Tesco ad, “every little bit counts” but with . . .’ Abi stopped. ‘I mean . . .’

  ‘I know quite what you mean, thank you,’ Phil said, amused. ‘I never really mastered the precautionary arts either, dear. I found it easier simply to get married.’

  ‘It probably would have been better if I could have told Stu, that’s my, um, partner face to face, and a bit sooner as well, but he’d already come back here, so I just had to do it on the computer.’

  Phil threw her head back and released a high, operatic laugh. ‘Don’t speak. How extraordinary.’

  ‘There probably aren’t that many people who’ve found out they’re going to be a dad on Instant Messenger, I suppose.’ Abi bit her lip, recalling the ribboning thread of message saved somewhere on her laptop.

  As the sun began to creep across the bench, Phil shuffled closer and listened rapt, a hand to her cheek. Abi told about Jude coming three weeks early so that Stu missed it, of giving birth in the foyer, the mini-cab home, and coming out here to have a go at things.

  ‘Well, that really is tremendous, Abigail.’ Again, Abi thought about correcting her, but Phil kept on. ‘Nobody seems to do it the old way anymore, do they?’

  At that, she stood and took off her robe, casting it over the pickets. Abi moved to sit beside Jude, who was pedalling his tiny purple feet in the air. She picked him up and felt the warmth of his back through his little vest.

  ‘Are you coming in?’ Phil called from the ladder. ‘It’s very fresh.’

  ‘Oh probably not,’ Abi answered quickly. ‘I think I forgot my bathing suit.’ Although it was true that she had rummaged one out of the off-season bin at the TK Maxx on Hammersmith King Street before leaving London, the price tag was yet to be removed.

  ‘Surely your little shorts would suffice. There’s not a soul around. Come on, slip off your sandals and have a paddle at least.’

  Abi laid Jude over one shoulder and took a few nervous steps towards the edge. She peered into the depths.

  ‘What about you cool your toes on the step there? Jude looks not long for this world, don’t you think? You can sit and let him have a zizz in your arms.’

  Phil motioned towards a platform running along one end of the pool, creating a long shallow strip of warmer water. Abi stepped down onto it and felt the water rush around her ankles.

  ‘I must say,’ Phil said, watching her progress, ‘you do have the most fetching little figure, dear. I could feel like farm stock beside you.’

  Abi looked down at her thin, white legs, knock-kneed and shivering like a child’s. ‘Oh my gosh. Fudge, it’s really freezing, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, we must be brave. Although clearly you’re made of absolute steel. Having a baby and emigrating all on your own. Really, truly Abigail, you’re a wonder.’

  ‘Not really. I mean it was all an accident really. A happy one, I hope. It’s just all a bit mental at the minute.’ She laughed awkwardly as she peeled Jude away from her shoulder and laid him along the length of her thighs.

  He had, she thought, only today stopped looking so newborn. Where there’d been soft wrinkles in his skin, thick, creamy rolls were forming and a whole extra chin had appeared, needing to be wiped clean of milk and fluff that somehow collected there. No longer could she span his entire tummy with one hand. ‘I didn’t realise about the love. I really, really love him. Sorry, that’s so soppy.’ She glanced towards Phil, embarrassed.

  ‘Well I’m not one for sop generally, but I rather accept your excuse.’

  Phil waded over and with one brisk movement underwater, hoisted herself onto the platform so they were side by side. ‘And of course you love him, my dear. Babies are never accidents. They’re born when they jolly well feel like it and we mothers simply make a fist of whatever circumstances they find us in.’

  Warmth, like hot blood, spread through Abi’s chest, down her arms. We mothers. Is this what absolution felt like? Was this why people went and did religious confessions, for the exquisite release of being let off by someone so obviously good?

  ‘I’m sorry about your husband,’ Abi said. She wanted to return the kindness. ‘You said he passed on?’

  ‘Ah. An awful blow, yes. He hadn’t been ill you see, so the children didn’t know to come home. They did not get the moment of saying goodbye, only that dread phone call, and I really mind that for them. As for me, well I feel other people’s sympathy might be the really deadliest bit of the whole business. And I’d rather not have got a dog out of it.’

  She let out a sharp little laugh and began moving her hands back and forth beneath the water, sending ripples out from where they sat. ‘I hear myself saying, last year. My husband passed away last year, but it was only November, do you see? Still I wake up most mornings having simply forgotten. Polly keeps telephoning to see if I’ve done his wardrobes and for a minute I can’t think what on earth she means.’

  She fell silent, still working her hands below the surface. Abi watched, mesmerised by the way the blue stone of her ring dissolved against the water. ‘My dad died when I was little,’ she said, without shifting her gaze. ‘And my sister. Louise.’

  It was a moment before Abi realised she had spoken. She rarely talked about it. Not even Stu had heard about it exactly. Now to Phil, she couldn’t stop, as though she had coughed up the tip of a soggy silk scarf and had to pull it all the way out, colour after grubby colour. ‘I was nine. We were only thirteen months apart. My mum and I went out to get me new trainers and Louise wanted to come but she changed her mind before the bus came and my mum let her run back. When we got home, it was freezing inside but the telly was on and Dad was lying face down, halfway up the stairs, like he’d tripped on his way up. Then I ran up and my sister was on the floor between our beds.’

  Phil had turned to look at her, her face set in quiet horror.

  ‘Her eyes were open,’ Abi went on, putting herself close to tears. ‘So I didn’t click at first. I thought she was just being an idiot and I was like, “Louise, I can see your pants!” It turned out the gas fire in our front room had gone off and they said my dad had probably realised too late to save them. Sorry.’ She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. Abi saw Louise on the floor with her arms above her head, as though she had fallen from a height. As always, she willed her sister to get up and be all right. To point her finger and say, ‘Ha! I was only joking, innit!’

  ‘I didn’t mean to go on. I always used to hope it would make me a bit mysterious and tragic, you know like someone in a sad novel. But people get bored of feeling sorry for you and decide you’re just a weirdo. Or probably that was just the girls at my school.’

  She exhaled roughly, and tried to smile it off. ‘In the end I’d just make up all sorts of different versions of what happened. Not lies, but you know . . . less full on.’

  Abi lifted Jude off her lap. Phil said nothing. ‘I just wish Mum had made her come with us. Sorry.’

  Below the water, Phil placed a weightless hand on Abi’s knee. ‘No. You mustn’t apologise, dear. Not to me anyhow. I also had my darling James, you see. My first boy. It was his last year of school and one day, he came off the rugby field and took himself to bed saying he felt off colour. I should have suspected.’ Phil’s eyes reddened at the rims. ‘I thought I’d let him sleep until tea. He’d been up there for hours, you know, when I – he wasn’t quite eighteen. I should never have let him play that awful game. And like you say, people almost become afraid of you afterwards. They can’t bear it for you, I suppose, so they all remember there’s somewhere else they need to be, or spout some tosh about time being the great healer. Well, we are thirteen years on and frankly, it is fresh every morning.’

  ‘Same. It’s the same with me and Louise.’

  ‘Although you know,’ Phil went on. ‘I listened to a radio programme the other week and there was an author on, whose name escapes
me, but he said when a loved one dies, for the first few years you can still see them walking into the room, hear their voice and such like. But at some point you can’t anymore and it makes them somehow . . . deader.’

  Abi nodded. She had tried so hard to keep Louise alive in her mind but the real girl slipped further away as each year passed. ‘And you can’t really imagine having them around now. Like, if they did walk through the door, because their clothes start to be all wrong, and their hair. They’d look a bit old-fashioned, wouldn’t they? Like they’d got trapped in their photos.’

  Louise was not a real girl anymore. She was a long ago person, flat and unreal in her velvet newsboy cap and denim overall with the bib pinned all over with badges. It wasn’t the Louise who laughed and swore and talked too fast, who took money from Rae’s purse without asking and tried on her bra whenever they were left home alone. She wasn’t Abi’s protector, her good, bossy mother, the divvier up of KitKats and holder of the bus money.

  Phil heaved out a deep sigh and hauled herself back up on the platform. ‘What about your mother, dear?’

  ‘Oh,’ Abi stuttered. How could she ever describe Rae to somebody as vivacious and full of life as Phil? Even in her mind, the contrast between them was overwhelming. ‘No. I mean, unfortunately she . . . my Mum’s no longer . . .’

  Phil dropped her head to one side. ‘Surely not!’

  Abi could tell she had misunderstood.

  ‘No, no . . .’ She cast about for a way to explain that after the accident, Rae had entered a tunnel of grief and never emerged.

  But Phil fixed Abi with a look of such deep affection, Abi froze. ‘You needn’t say any more, Abigail. You suddenly look quite wrung out. So much loss, dear, too much loss for such a little thing as you.’ She slid off the platform and began to tread water.

  Abi had not meant to lie. And she hadn’t, not on purpose. The only movement now was the slightest sealing of her lips.