What Have I Done?

by Amanda Prowse

  ‘Amor vitae meae.’ His voice was low and clipped.

  Love of my life. Kathryn didn’t lift her eyes from the ground, but took the proffered flower between her thumb and forefinger. Mark placed his index finger under her chin and raised her face until she looked him in the eye.

  ‘That’s better, my wonderful wife. Now I can see your lovely face properly. What do you say?’ he prompted. ‘What do you say for the gift of a rose?’

  ‘Thank you,’ she offered in a whisper.

  He lowered her head and kissed the top of her scalp.

  ‘Oh my God, you two lovebirds, get a room!’

  Their fifteen-year-old daughter mimed retching as she walked past, weighed down beneath a rucksack full of books. Her skinny legs appeared to dangle in their black tights, and her long, dark hair was full of knots and styling product; again, the correct look of the day, and not to be remarked on.

  It amused Kathryn to see how far the children would go to push the limits of ‘acceptable uniform wearing’. To the untrained eye, even with a sleeve rolled up, a tie in an unconventional knot or a pair of non-regulation tights, all the pupils looked identical. No matter how scruffily they dressed or how they slouched and swore, they couldn’t shake the stamp of privilege and the whiff of money that followed in their designer-styled wake.

  Kathryn ignored her daughter’s comment.

  ‘Are you home for supper, Lydia, or have you got art club?’

  ‘Dunno. I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Okay, darling. Fine. Have a great day. And please make sure you eat lunch.’

  ‘I’ll walk with you, Lyds. Hang on a mo, I just need to fetch my case.’

  Mark was happy for the opportunity to catch up with his little girl. His hectic schedule meant time alone with either of their children was precious.

  ‘No, please don’t, Dad. I’m meeting Phoebe and it is just too uncool to arrive at lessons with you.’

  ‘Uncool? I’ve never heard anything like it!’ He feigned hurt. ‘I’m a very hip and happening dad, I’ll have you know!’ He laughed at her scorn.

  ‘Oh my God, please shut up! If you were either of those things then you would know not to say “hip” and “happening” for a start! You are both so embarrassing, firstly snogging in public and then trying to be my mate; it is just so cringey! Why can’t I have normal parents? Just for once I’d like a boring mum and dad like everyone else’s, ones that didn’t make everything so awkward!’

  Her mother interjected. ‘It was hardly snogging, Lydia.’

  No one heard her.

  The head and his daughter disappeared around the corner. The echo of their playful banter drifted back in fragmented syllables, interspersed with squeals; it was all jolly good fun. Kathryn tucked in her lips and bit down hard.

  Left alone in the garden to continue with her chores, Kathryn wondered what it must be like to have a place that you needed to get to – an office, a shop, a classroom – and what it might be like to be the kind of person that people would miss if you disappeared.

  Aware of the flower in her hand, she squeezed the rose until the sap dripped from the petals and ran down her wrist, its heady perfume offering her a few seconds of joy. It wilted in the middle of her scrunched-up palm. Walking to the flower bed, where its siblings and cousins stood proud and tall, she scooped out a handful of soil, placed the rose in the hole, and buried it.

  With her hands now free and wiped clean on her apron, she turned her attention to the laundry. She secured one corner of the sheet, then pulled the other end taut and fastened it with another wooden dolly peg.

  The peg was one of a set that she had owned for ever, possibly since she was a little girl. She didn’t know for certain when they had been passed on to her, but she knew they came from her mother’s pantry. She could clearly picture the metal box in which they had been kept, with its image of straight-backed, marching toy soldiers on the lid. Her mother had in turn been given them by her own mother. For some reason Mark had allowed her to keep them; they were probably too insignificant to warrant his attention.

  Over the years she had acquired and discarded many a set of lurid plastic pegs with fiddly little springs which often perished before the end of their useful life, but these long wooden splints with their bulbous heads and precision, hand-cut splits would outlive them all. She would in time hand them on to Lydia. The thought made her chuckle; she could imagine Lydia rolling her eyes at the prospect of inheriting a set of pegs. As a little girl, Lydia had shown an interest in them once, carefully selecting a random peg and using a big, fat, black felt-tipped pen to draw two dots for eyes and the upward curve of a smile. Kathryn had named that particular peg Peggy, and it still made her smile on a daily basis. Maybe when Lydia was older she would feel differently; goodness knows, her own views were now so very altered from when she had been her daughter’s age.

  In the early days of her marriage, Kathryn remembered feeling comforted by the knowledge that she was probably the third generation to handle these funny little objects. She often considered the clothes that had been held fast; three generations of garments in which her family had slept, worked and loved. She would finger the end of the splint, wondering if it had touched her grandpa’s work shirt or her mum’s silk slip.

  She often wondered if her mother and grandmother had derived as much joy as she did from a line strung full of clean laundry. The anticipation of gathering it in huge armfuls and inhaling its fresh, blown-dry scent was itself a unique pleasure. The folding and smoothing of clean garments was satisfying and used to give her a feeling of great contentment. The washing and ironing of clothes had been tangible proof of a family life lived in harmony.

  The pleasure she used to take in doing the laundry had, however, been removed from her the day she got married, seventeen years and five months ago. These days there was no joy in this daily ritual, none at all. Apart from her two children, there was very little joy in her life, full stop.

  Kathryn knew that her nickname was Mrs Bedmaker; she had known it for some time, having heard it muttered behind cupped hands and seen it scrawled in chalk and pen on various surfaces, including the underside of a desk and the back of a loo door in the junior common room. She was called it regularly by the more daring children, each hoping that she would not hear and would not comment. Of course she never did ‘hear’ or comment, giving them the confidence to continue. She didn’t mind too much; she had more to worry about than that on a daily basis, much more.

  On better days, she could find humour in the fact that the rumour mill among the pupils had it laid down as fact that she was a sex maniac who insisted on indulging in a wild and frantic love life on a nightly basis. Why else would there be the constant need for the laundering of bed linen? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink… Saucy Mrs Brooker, lucky Mr Brooker. Was that why she always looked so exhausted, so weak, and he so happy, so smug?

  She would sometimes stare at her reflection, pondering her skinny frame and nervous expression, her pale demeanour, the dark circles under her eyes, her cellist’s fingers with their square-cut nails and her blunt-bobbed haircut. Pulling her olive-coloured cardigan over her linen skirt, she would think, That’s me, a regular sex kitten.

  Kathryn wandered back into the kitchen, reluctantly abandoning the warmth of the early-morning sun, and started to clear the breakfast things from the scrubbed pine table that dominated the room.

  A marmalade-smeared plate and an empty coffee mug were the only evidence that her son Dominic still lived under their Georgian roof. Their interactions were minimal, so she welcomed these little reminders that he was still around, living in the same space, even if she hadn’t actually seen him. At the moment he appeared to be playing the role of a reluctant lodger who sought the solace of his own room at every opportunity. The truth, she suspected, was that he was probably sneaking off to the comfort of someone else’s room at every opportunity, someone in the girls’ dorm. She was pretty sure it was Emily Grant who was the latest object of hi
s affections, but there was no point commenting or getting involved – it would be another identikit, glossy-haired lovely in a few weeks’ time. This seemed to be how it worked nowadays.

  There were many aspects of her son’s life, not just his courtship rituals, that Kathryn simply did not understand. Far from disapprove, however, she was in fact happy for him, happy for both of her children. Delighted that they were living busy, joyful lives, full of fun and excitement, with a host of possibilities ahead. She needed to know that this was how it was and that there was a whole world out there for them to grab with both hands and run with; otherwise, what was the point?

  The Brooker family had lived in the house for seven years, having moved there in the September when Mark had been promoted from head of year to headmaster. It was a wonderful achievement, the youngest head of school ever to be appointed. It meant a happy life for her and her family; this had to be true because everyone had told her so, even her sister, Francesca. Kathryn had detected the vaguest hint of jealousy and for Francesca to be jealous, it most certainly had to be true.

  She knew that the outside world saw her as the fortunate Kathryn Brooker, living a fulfilling life in a lovely two-hundred-year-old house with her perfect family and a rosy future. Many envied her charmed existence, her prestige and her material wealth. Not to mention that she had bagged the rather handsome Mark Brooker – the girl had definitely been punching above her weight on that day. This amused Kathryn, knowing that if they walked in her sensible shoes for a day and a night, they would be clamouring to escape, clawing at the flint stones until their fingernails ripped away, scrambling over the walls until knees were raw, and digging with bare, bloodied hands at the very foundations to make a tunnel. They would try anything and stop at nothing to be free of the charmed life she led.

  There was something about living in a school house on school grounds in a building that was joined on to the school that meant that she never quite felt like it was hers. Which was quite right – it wasn’t. The majority of the time, Kathryn felt more like a curator or custodian than a home-maker. She took extra care of the blackened range, original window cording and parquet flooring, as if she would be judged on the state in which she kept this venerable property and the state in which she handed it back. This of course is exactly how history would have judged her, had some other more significant and somewhat more shocking event not occurred, rendering the cleanliness of her windows and their dust-free cording quite irrelevant.

  The children had been young when they moved in and it had taken a while for them all to get used to the new set-up. Lydia could no longer run around ‘nudey dudey’ after her bath, not with masters and pupils dropping in unannounced. And Dominic had had to say a reluctant goodbye to his beloved pet chickens, Nugget and Kiev; the prospect of having to repeatedly retrieve them as they pecked around the cricket crease could not be countenanced. Once had been enough to cause much annoyance to the visiting Millfield eleven, who to this day were convinced it had been a clever tactic to divert and conquer.

  Those youngsters were now teenagers, Lydia fifteen and Dominic sixteen. Being the headmaster’s children meant that you were either extremely popular or unpopular for all the wrong reasons. Thankfully for the Brooker children, they had already been at the school for a number of years prior to their dad’s appointment as head honcho, so they were established and accepted. It also helped that they were both considered attractive by their peers. They had inherited Kathryn’s rangy physique and the striking face of their father translated very well onto those sharp, young cheekbones. They were funny, cool kids who were well liked, regardless of their parents’ status.

  Mark, of course, flourished in such an environment, constantly in character and always ready to perform. He engaged in banter with the children and displayed the jovial camaraderie that made him a hit with the masters. He appeased and buttered up the parents, offering a firm handshake to the wealthy fathers and all the time in the world to discuss minutiae with the coiffed and toned mummies. He was in complete control of all he surveyed, a very happy man.

  Kathryn, however, upon taking up residence in the ‘big house’, had felt her refuge diminish until it was non-existent. Earlier in Mark’s career, when they had lived in rented accommodation in Finchbury, she at least could spend the daytimes away from his obsessive gaze. Until he returned from school, there was no one to watch her, no eyes waiting to see how she did things, what she wore, what she said or ate, who she sat with, spoke to, when she arrived and when she left. Life in the head’s house was very different; the list of things that were forbidden, permitted and expected was long and ever changing. It was in this fluid environment of constant scrutiny that she existed. ‘Existed’ was the word Kathryn used when thinking about her situation – ‘lived’ would imply that she had a life, and she did not. Kathryn had no life at all.

  As she scraped the breakfast detritus into the bin and loaded the plates into the dishwasher with the rest of the china, her mind flitted back to the early hours of that Thursday morning in June, nineteen years ago. She had been twenty-one, her sister Francesca nineteen. They were both still living at home with their parents, occupying adjacent bedrooms in the cramped, semi-detached house.

  Kathryn had padded into Francesca’s room and gently shaken the blanket-wrapped shoulder of her sleeping sibling. She hadn’t wanted to wake her, but knew if she didn’t share the news that was threatening to burst from her, she would very probably explode.

  ‘Francesca, are you asleep?’

  ‘Mmmmnnnn… Go away…’ Francesca mumbled.

  ‘Wake up! I really need to tell you something.’

  Even in her semi-conscious fog, Francesca knew from her sister’s tone that resistance was futile. She reached out an arm and snapped the lamp on the bedside table into life.

  ‘For God’s sake, Katie, this better be good.’

  Rubbing her eyes, she focussed on her sister’s blushing face.

  ‘Well, go on then!’

  Francesca’s irritable prompting rather robbed her of her moment, but she proceeded nonetheless.

  ‘Guess what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Francesca, you’re supposed to guess! Come on!’

  ‘For God’s sake, Katie, you’re really annoying me now! We’re not children any more; it’s three o’clock in the bloody morning. I’ve got to be up for work in three hours. So, you either tell me now why you’ve woken me up or bugger off and leave me alone!’

  ‘Okay, grumpy, you are not going to believe this, but Mark has asked me to marry him!’

  Kathryn clapped her hands together and let the news hang in the air. Francesca reached over and located her glasses, perching them on the tip of her nose. She leant forward as though improved visual focus would help her mentally focus as well.

  ‘He has asked you to marry him?’

  ‘Yes! Can you believe it?’

  Her sister thought for a few seconds. ‘Frankly, no. I thought you were going to say you’d shagged him.’

  ‘Oh for goodness sake, Fran, you are so gross! Isn’t it wonderful?’

  ‘Truthfully, honey? I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’

  ‘I mean… Look, Katie, I love you, but you are a bit like a character in a Famous Five novel who doesn’t realise that there is a big bad world out there. Even though I’m the youngest, I’ve always felt as if you needed my protection. We all do, in fact.’

  ‘Do you?’ It wasn’t exactly news to her that Francesca felt that she was a total idiot, but her parents as well?

  ‘Yeah, kind of. And this Mark… It’s great that you’re so happy, but he’s your first proper boyfriend, you’ve only known him five minutes, and you haven’t even, you know… Sex is very important!’

  ‘Oh for goodness sake, there has to be more to a relationship than sex!’

  ‘There does? Okay, don’t look like that, I’m kidding, kind of. I am happy if you are happy, but I don’t think tha
t you should be rushing into anything.’

  ‘Actually we have been going out for three and a half months and I love him, Fran, and he loves me.’

  Kathryn chose not to divulge the frenzied kissing and aggressive smooching that left her more excited and alive than she had ever felt. This she knew boded well for a satisfying love life in the future.

  ‘Blurgh! Pass the bucket!’

  Kathryn punched her sister on the arm.

  ‘I’m truly chuffed for you, sis, but there’s something about Mark that I’m not quite sure about…’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Kathryn’s voice was a high-pitched squeal, she looked close to tears.

  Francesca decided to backtrack.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just that I haven’t got to know him yet or maybe he isn’t relaxed with us because it’s all new for him as well.’

  These words caused Kathryn to brighten again. Yes, that would be it.

  ‘All I am saying is, Katie, why don’t you have a long engagement, get the sex out of the way, get to know each other a bit and see how it works out. Worst-case scenario, you get to keep the rock; best-case scenario, you end up with the love of your life!’

  ‘I don’t have to wait or have a long engagement. Mark is the love of my life, he is so gorgeous and he feels the same, we just know.’

  ‘How do you “just know”? Do you remember how much you loved jacket potatoes when you were little and then you discovered pasta and that became your favourite? Maybe Mark is your jacket potato?’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake, he is not my jacket potato! I can’t explain it, but we do know. Mark says why wait if we have found what we would only spend our future searching for. It would be like wasting years, only to reach the conclusion that we were right all along!’