If Only You Knew

by Alice Jolly

  Rob opened a plastic bag and produced a bottle of Soviet champagne. He’d also been to Stockman’s and bought a readymade lasagne, chocolate brownies, proper coffee, sliced white bread. ‘We’re celebrating – a fond farewell to tinned pilchards.’

  He put the lasagne in the oven and popped the champagne. We moved our chairs out on to the balcony. The sides of our glasses clinked together and, when Rob leant to kiss me, his mouth tasted of champagne. ‘Is it awful of me to take this job?’ he asked.

  ‘No, you deserve it. It isn’t about money, it’s about being valued. You deserve that as much as anyone else.’ We gulped a glass and then another. From a window below, a poor quality recording of a Beatles song played. When the lasagne was ready we started to wolf it down, but after so many months of sparse food, we both felt sick after four mouthfuls. So we put it back in the fridge, and, taking the remains of the champagne, we went out on to the balcony again.

  ‘Rob, there’s something … Before we leave. I’d like you to invite Sasha round sometime. I know you were angry with him, but he just wanted something more, something he’s never been allowed. It’s not really such a crime, is it?’

  ‘No, I suppose not. You’re right – I should patch things up with him.’

  The champagne was gone and we started on the vodka. ‘To Yugoslavia.’ Rob raised his glass in a drunken toast. Then he burrowed with one hand in his trouser pocket. ‘Actually, I’ve got something for you.’ He held up a ring made of blue moulded plastic, with a flower on it. ‘It came out of a cracker at Christmas and I put it in my pocket, then I forgot about it. I thought you might like it.’ I reached out to take it but he caught hold of my left hand and held it up. I watched as he slid the ring on to the fourth finger. ‘Not exactly the ring I’d have chosen, but I suppose it’ll do for now.’

  And that was how it was decided. All so easy. Rob was right really. It was time to leave Moscow. Belgrade or Zagreb, or wherever it was, would be a new beginning. And if we were going there, then we should get married. That would enable me to look for a proper job. I’d start doing some research now and get Rob to help me with my CV. I stared at the ring on my hand. We put on a tape but we didn’t have any dance music. Most of Rob’s tapes had been stolen in the various burglaries. So instead it was Vivaldi. We shuffled around the room to it, laughed, then collapsed on the bed.

  Rob asked whether I’d be sorry to leave Moscow. I mumbled regrets about never seeing much of Russia. Rob said we could still do that. When the college closed in a week’s time I could go back to England to see my mother and get my visa renewed. Then we could go off on a trip somewhere.

  ‘And while you’re home,’ Rob said, ‘you’ll be able to get a dress and invitations and all that stuff.’ Those words sounded strange. Rob and I had always had a contempt for the whole business of weddings. But still we discussed whether we’d get married in the local church, what kind of party we’d have. We agreed, stretched out on the bed, that we’d get married on Twelfth Night because we’d anyway be in England for Christmas. And the honeymoon? Somewhere really exotic. Bognor Regis? Yes, Bognor. We were suddenly talking like guests in our own lives.

  Rob poured himself more vodka and decided that he’d ring his father. He booked a call with the international operator, not expecting to get a call back for several hours. But then, surprisingly, the operator rang back after only five minutes and Rob was put through. After he’d put the phone down, he did the usual impersonation. “‘Married? Oh hum. Yes. Jolly good. Might be best to do the exams for the Foreign Office. Must get back to the Hungarian subjunctive. I’ve put a cheque in the post”.’

  I realized then that Rob often made me laugh. Jack had never done that.

  Rob then rang the operator again and, a second time, the response was rapid. He passed the phone to me and a voice babbled in Russian. Then I spoke to my mother and heard the tears in her voice as I told her the news. ‘A dress? Of course. Something straight, I think. I’ll start on a pattern and you can look at it.’ Then I rang Maya as well. I’d had so much to drink that I hardly heard what she said. But she was pleased, of course, and took care to express no surprise. It was as though there’d never been any question about it – and really, there never had.

  ‘So where do you want to go?’ Rob said. ‘How about Leningrad?’

  ‘Yes, Leningrad.’ My voice was quite steady but I needed to keep talking. And then those words I didn’t want to say fell from my mouth. ‘What about my father? Would we invite him?’ For a moment the evening paused and held its breath. The moment floated on champagne and shock.

  ‘Ask him?’ Rob said. ‘Well, yes, of course, why ever not?’ The evening recovered and rushed on. Rob said he’d write to my father, if I wanted. I knew that he wanted to expunge those awkward conversations we’d had about the past. ‘Oh no,’ I said, ‘don’t bother. It doesn’t really matter. And anyway, it isn’t possible – the solicitors haven’t got an address for him.’ But Rob said it must be possible. He’d telephone his father and tell him to get the address. It was as easy as a blue plastic ring sliding on to your finger.

  We drank more vodka, and I tried to teach Rob to dance the tango, but I stumbled against the bed and the broken leg fell off its box. Together we tried to put it right but we couldn’t do it because we were laughing so much. So instead we lay on the tipping bed, and made love in a drunken rush of zips, and shoes hastily pulled off. Then we lay there wrapped up together in one sheet through a night that never quite got dark.

  Marsh End House, Malthouse, Norfolk

  July, 1991

  My mother sat at her sewing table with wedding magazines spread around her. She’d already made a dress in calico so that I could see if I liked it. She was just redoing one of the side seams because it wasn’t quite even. ‘Yes,’ she said as she cut into the calico. ‘Manic depression is really the cruellest of illnesses because the people who suffer from it don’t want to be cured.’

  Snip-snip. My mother’s scissors moved through the material. I sat opposite her, close to the open window, lolling on a wooden stool. The room smelt of ironing and oil from the sewing machine. I couldn’t believe the change in my mother. Strands of hair fell from her bun and she didn’t bother to put them back. She wore a cardigan with a hole in the sleeve. On Sunday morning she’d said she didn’t feel like going to Mass. Instead, she’d walked on the marsh and then sat out in the garden reading a book. And now this conversation.

  ‘But you always knew he had a problem?’

  ‘Not when I married him, no. But from early on. You see, he went through a major depression only a year after we married and …’ She lifted the foot of the sewing machine and placed the fabric under it. ‘Well, I suddenly didn’t know who I’d married. And, you see, I was alone here, and so I just couldn’t afford to see what was happening. All I could do was to cling to the idea that as long as I loved him, then everything would be all right.’

  ‘And then?’ I fiddled with a piece of green ribbon tied around a dusty box.

  ‘Well, often things were fine. Good. Far too good. But then the black times got longer, and he got lost in his work, and in Mexico and astronomy and all these wild ideas … I mean, we’d both been brought up Catholic, of course, but with him it got out of control. He had all these ideas about pagan religions in Mexico. He wanted to know things you just can’t know. Then when Amelia died, he had to go into hospital …’

  And at that time he’d lost Maya as well. She’d gone away to Rome. But my mother wouldn’t say that and I judged it better just to let her talk.

  ‘At the time, the hospital seemed like a disaster but actually it was a great help, at least to me, because I met this priest there and he was the first person I’d talked to who really understood.’ My mother put her foot down on the pedal and the sewing machine hammered through the material. She stopped, lifted the machine foot and cut off the threads.

  ‘The priest had red hair?’

  My mother stopped still with the material half-
lifted out from the machine. ‘What? You remember him?’

  ‘No. Just a man with red hair.’

  She gave me a searching stare and then went to the ironing board. ‘Father Michael, that was his name. He saw that I was pretending there wasn’t a problem and encouraging your father to do the same. And he was furious with me. “If you love someone, you see them just as they are,” he said. And it was like a slap in the face – but he was right. The only problem was, other people didn’t want to see the truth either.’

  ‘People like Maya?’

  ‘Yes. She was one.’

  ‘But she loved my father?’

  ‘Did she? That kind of love is only about losing yourself … Certainly she wouldn’t listen to anything I said. She wouldn’t be told.’

  I didn’t like my mother talking about love. I was sure she couldn’t know anything about it. In the distance I could hear the shouts from children swimming in the lake by the caravan park. I stared out of the window at the monkey puzzle tree and the pinewoods blurred in the heat, thinking of that photograph I’d seen at Maya’s. It must have been taken here – the spider’s-web gate, the monkey puzzle tree. But then why was everything in it the wrong way round?

  ‘Of course, what that priest didn’t say was how high the costs would be.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, looking her in the eye. ‘Very high.’

  My mother was busy with the iron. I just wanted her to admit that perhaps her decision had been difficult for me, but she wouldn’t do that. I thought over what she’d said. Another turn of the kaleidoscope. This wasn’t the truth, it was just a story she needed to tell. Of course, if a Catholic priest had told her all that, then she would have believed it. The Church at that time would have been quite capable of confusing adultery and mental illness. The iron hissed as my mother pressed it down and the room filled with the smell of pressed material. My fingers twisted the green ribbon on the box. ‘What’s in here?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, that. It’s the veil I wore when I got married. I thought …’

  I opened the box. Inside, pale pink tissue unfolded to reveal a veil as fine as a cobweb, and an ivory satin bodice stitched all over with seed pearls. ‘It’s beautiful. Did you make it?’

  My mother had finished with the iron. She came to stand beside me, and laying the veil aside, she lifted the bodice out of the box. ‘I never got it quite right. You see here …’ her finger indicated some invisible fault. ‘It was too ambitious, there wasn’t time.’ She stared around her, as though trying to work something out, still holding the pearl-crusted bodice in her hands. ‘It wasn’t just him, you know. It was this place as well. All the stories your father told about his father and his grandfather, and their furniture, pictures, books. The past all still here.’ My mother laid the bodice back down in the box, carefully folding the straps and the long ribbons at the back. ‘But after a while I came to question even that. Your great-grandfather killed in Mexico in circumstances which were never explained. And your grandfather drowned, out on the marsh here. How could that have happened? I just don’t understand. The man grew up here – he knew how dangerous this coast is. I don’t know. The doctors can’t say whether that kind of illness runs in families. And then Amelia as well …’

  My mother shook her head, and placed the veil on top of the bodice, her hands briskly stroking the fabric into place. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s see how this looks.’

  As I began to undress, I thought of Jack, his hands touching me. I stepped into the dress and my mother made me stand on the stool. The material felt stiff and scratchy against my skin. She hovered with a box of pins. ‘For the general shape, I think – yes.’

  I turned and looked at myself in the long mirror on the wall. Although the dress wasn’t even cut out from proper material, it made me look tall and slender. My neck was long, coming up from the low V at the front. I didn’t look like those silly women in the wedding magazines, I looked better than that. I wished I could wear this dress for Jack. My mother started to search around for various fabric samples that she wanted to show me.

  ‘Just put that box out of the way, will you?’ she said. I tied the green ribbon around the box and took it over to the cupboard. Every shelf was full of different materials, all neatly folded. Silk with gold thread running through it, chiffon, shot taffeta. Other shelves were stacked with transparent boxes full of feathers, beads, cottons, and bindings. I went to get the stool and reached up high to put the box right up at the top, on a pile of finished clothes. The wedding dress scratched under my arms. I saw a flash of sky-blue silk, and swayed on the stool. As I pulled at that material, it slid out from the pile. My hand gripped the deep cuffs, sewn with tiny buttons. I’d never been sure that this jacket really existed. I didn’t want it to exist. Looking down, I saw my mother staring up, her eyes held by that sky-blue silk. I pushed it back into the pile. I’m getting married to Rob. I’m going to Yugoslavia.

  ‘Come here a minute,’ my mother said. ‘I’m not quite happy with that neckline. It’d look better with more of a heart shape.’ She made me get back on the stool and produced a black pen and pins. She drew on the calico, a line appearing under her hand, close to my collar-bone. Two pins were inserted at the shoulders. ‘More this shape perhaps?’ My mother had ceased to be the woman with a hole in her cardigan wandering on the beach. She was back in her world now, creating dresses for cardboard cut-out women. A black pen and pins. Shoulders a little higher here, waist a little lower there. Just fold the tabs over and she’ll walk away.

  ‘Mum, you know what you said about my father? I understand it all much better now except – why did you decide that he should go away?’

  My mother stood with one hand on her hip, and sighed. ‘It was … I couldn’t trust him, he was out of control … Oh really, this heat. It’s too much. Let me just sit down for a while and then I’ll have another go at that seam and we’ll decide on some material.’

  I looked at her, making it clear that I wanted an answer to my question.

  ‘It was just – I wanted to lift you out of this in one piece, complete. For myself, I could have gone on, but I had you to consider.’ She wiped her hand across her forehead, then got up to start on the dress again. So she hadn’t wanted me to finish up like him, I thought. She’d fought so hard for that. The little red devil who looked so like him. She could prevent me from being an art student, she could make sure I got married to Rob, but if she was fighting genetics, could she ever win?

  ‘You know, Eva, I really think it would be better for you to get married before Christmas.’ The dress was pulled tighter at the waist as pins were inserted. I felt them close to my skin. Calico, black lines and pins … The room seemed to turn around. My mother’s hand, moving my hair, touched my spine exactly where Jack had touched it that first night. I looked up at the cupboard but I couldn’t see that blue silk any more. I didn’t want to start asking more questions. My father was mentally ill so, of course, everything I remembered about him would seem confused.

  ‘I’ve looked in the calendar. The fifteenth of December is a Saturday – wouldn’t that be better?’ she said.

  But Rob had been certain about Twelfth Night. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘People might find that date difficult. If the weather is bad the travel could be a problem.’ I said – Oh well, if they want to get here, they’d do it somehow. But my mother insisted that it just wasn’t practical.

  I felt a pin slide close to my skin. When was it that my father had worn that jacket? I couldn’t be sure if the question mattered. I thought I’d seen an ogre, but it was only my father wearing a rubber mask. But still I wanted to know. Something had happened on the night he wore that jacket.

  ‘Mum, you know that costume – the blue silk jacket?’ I looked at myself in the mirror. The pale girl in the cream dress did look beautiful, but she wasn’t me. However had I thought I could do this?

  ‘Stand still now.’

  ‘That belonged to my father, didn’t it?�
�

  ‘Yes, it did. At first it seemed like a joke – Beauty and the Beast.’ My mother sighed and reached for another pin.

  ‘Where did he wear it? Here?’

  ‘I don’t know, dear. He wore it several times. I really can’t remember. Stand still, will you?’ A pin stuck into my ribcage. I thought of the 1967 diary in his room and that day early in the year, the names and train times.

  ‘Eva, I need you to keep your arms up, please.’

  ‘Mum, I can’t. Sorry. I’ll have to … I’ve got a headache.’

  ‘Oh sorry, dear, have you? I didn’t realize.’ My mother was all concern. She wanted me to go and lie down. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, that’s what I’ll do.’ I pulled the dress off and reached for my T-shirt and skirt. The dress lay collapsed in a heap, stiff, like a Victorian lady, swooned on a sofa.

  But I didn’t go to my bedroom, I went to hers and pulled that cardboard box from under the bed. 1967. I flicked through its pages to 6 January. Exhibition. Boltons, two crates of wine, a barrel of beer, six bottles of champagne. 15.30 Hislops and Carrs. 17.02 Rachel and Edith. Then, afterwards, only those three entries which had been scratched out. So there’d been a party on Twelfth Night, 1967 – the night of the red lolly and the ogre face. Beauty and the Beast. But where was the path where I had stood?

  I hurried down the stairs, across the drive and out into the lane. A gentle wind rattled the masts of the boats in the yard opposite. A group of ramblers were setting out to walk across the marsh. The air smelt of salt and dried mud. I walked inland to where the lane curves and the gate leads through the pinewoods back to the house. I opened the gate and stood on the overgrown grass of the path. This wasn’t the moonlit path I remembered, but it was the only path. I climbed through the collapsing post and rail fence and into the woods themselves, pushing my way through briar and thicket. Prickly twigs caught at my hands as I moved them aside. I trod down brambles but thorns still dug into my shins. After I’d gone a few yards I looked back. What was I doing? But I went on, manoeuvring myself past the trunks of trees, stumbling on roots half-covered by sand.