All My Mothers

by Joanna Glen

  ‘I don’t know what I was thinking,’ she would perhaps say the next day. ‘I was having one of my funny turns.’

  After her failed battle with the clipping shears and the terracotta pot, she decided to destroy the flowers my father had loved by refusing to water them.

  She couldn’t hurt him, so she decided to hurt the flowers instead.

  She locked the patio door and hid the key so that I couldn’t water them either, but I talked to them through the window, and prayed for rain.

  Chapter 15

  After my father left us, I read Peter Pan incessantly, trying to mimic my father’s different voices for the different characters. I especially loved the part where Peter Pan held out his hand for a kiss, because he had no idea what it was, and Wendy gave him a thimble so as not to hurt his feelings. Now my father was gone, no one in my house ever kissed me.

  But the long terrible summer holiday was coming to an end, and I jubilantly crossed off the last day on my chart.

  Mary laid out my school uniform on my chair – and my soul sang.

  It was term-time again – and Bridget!

  And, joy of joys, I started going for tea at her house every Thursday. This was Mary’s day off, and Pink Mother had a weekly commitment. I had no idea what this meant, but I wondered if it was similar to a monthly period, which Bridget had told me about.

  Bridget’s mother was (as I’d suspected) exactly like Blue Mother in The Rainbow Rained Us. I loved everything about her, especially the way she dried her crinkly blue scarf by twisting it around the banister of the stairs.

  There seemed to be children everywhere at Bridget’s house.

  The little girl twins, Bessie and Bella, were hard to tell apart.

  The big boy twins were not.

  Boaz was very clever, and looked like a mole.

  And Barnaby?

  Oh, Barnaby!

  I’ll be saying much more about Barnaby Blume, who I allowed to loom over my life for far too many years.

  The children called Mr and Mrs Blume D and M, and Mr and Mrs Blume even called each other D and M. Bridget’s mother said that I could call her M if I wanted to, or Aunty M, like her nephews and nieces did. I did want to but I couldn’t manage it. So I called her nothing.

  At Bridget’s house, there were beautiful wood-carved Bs nailed to the walls but, in her parents’ bedroom, whose door was always open, there were the letters M and D on the wall above their huge double bed.

  There were patterned throws over all the sofas and armchairs, which never tucked in properly, so you could see the velvet and brocade underneath poking out, and gorgeous Indian parasols propped in corners, and a great wire chandelier that Bridget’s mother had made, with fake feather birds in it. There were massive paintings on every wall, and the sea roared and rolled and sprayed, and flocks of gulls made shapes against the clouds. Framed photos crowded onto every windowsill – of Bridget’s parents’ wedding day and great huddles of Blumes.

  I noted in my Quest Book that we didn’t have photos like that in our house.

  In their big garden with weedy flowerbeds, Bridget taught me how to play. First, she taught me how to rotate a hula hoop around my hips. We did it one at a time, then two in together, and we became total pros. Then we went on to elastics.

  If Pink Mother was late, Bridget and I would have a bath together in the Blumes’ Victorian bathtub on legs, and we’d make up convoluted stories with a family of yellow rubber ducks and a pair of green frogs until the bathwater had turned cold, and I’d go home in a pair of Bridget’s pyjamas, smelling like a Blume.

  One Thursday evening, the yellow rubber ducks got married and had a yellow baby.

  ‘Say goodbye to daddy,’ I said in Father Duck’s voice to the small yellow duck, looking up at Bridget, and then more loudly, ‘I’m catching a plane to Spain.’

  ‘A plane to Spain?’ said Bridget, as I’d hoped.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’d been meaning to tell you. My father’s gone back to Spain.’

  ‘On holiday?’ said Bridget.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s living there now.’

  ‘He’s living in Spain?’ said Bridget, crumpling up her face.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘How long for?’ said Bridget.

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  ‘Could it be forever?’ said Bridget.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Is your mum OK?’ said Bridget.

  ‘My mum isn’t really like a proper mother,’ I said.

  Bridget stared at me.

  ‘It’s because she’s pink,’ I said, trying to sound very matter-of-fact. ‘She’s too delicate to be a proper mother. Like in The Rainbow Rained Us.’

  ‘Like in what?’ said Bridget.

  ‘You remember that book Miss Feast read us in Entrance Class?’ I said, unable to believe that she’d forgotten.

  Bridget frowned and looked slightly vague.

  ‘Whereas your mother is blue,’ I said. ‘You must remember Blue Mother. She was the best one.’

  ‘I remember her a bit,’ said Bridget.

  ‘I was thinking,’ I said, ‘maybe I could share your mother sometimes, because I like blue more than pink.’

  Bridget said, ‘I’m a bit cold. Are you?’

  We got out of the bath, wrapped ourselves in towels and Bridget gave me a little smile.

  ‘Yes, you can,’ said Bridget.

  ‘Can what?’

  ‘Share her when you’re here. We can share everything our whole lives if you like.’

  ‘Oh, yes please,’ I said, with no idea what this might mean. No idea at all.

  Bridget hugged me, and her bare arms against my bare arms, a bit squeaky and damp from the bath, gave me a feeling I couldn’t put into words. I dreamt of life being one eternal Thursday afternoon at the Blumes’ – one infinite stretch of love and happiness and long baths and delicious cakes with butter icing and strange messy games you made up as you went along.

  It was always a maximum of seven days until the next Thursday afternoon, and on long grey Sundays, only four days to go, school days which would race past – three, two, one, zero.

  One Thursday, Barnaby asked us if we’d like to play prisons, and he hemmed us in under the snooker table with furniture for most of the afternoon.

  ‘What did you play at Bridget’s house?’ said Pink Mother in the taxi.

  ‘Prisons,’ I said with great glee. ‘Bridget’s brother trapped us with furniture and swore at us.’

  This caused her to phone Bridget’s mother to say that if she wasn’t able to provide higher levels of supervision, I wouldn’t be able to go round to play any more.

  My world turned dark.

  I tried to think of ways to reverse the decision, suggesting that it was helpful for Bridget and me to work together on our joint project about animal adaptation because the Blumes had a whole library of useful books about camels.

  My mother wasn’t interested in camels.

  She wanted to find fault in Bridget’s mother, especially the clothes she wore, which made her look ‘a terrible sight’, she told Mary.

  ‘The dear woman looks like a clown!’ she said, smirking.

  ‘Why do you call her dear then,’ I asked, ‘if all you want to do is criticise her?’

  ‘You should have seen the trousers!’ she said to Mary, laughing in that wolfy way she had.

  The trousers in question were called harem pants, and Bridget’s mother told me they were two thousand years old. Not her actual ones, though. The style. Turkish, Moorish, clearly more-ish to Bridget’s mother: she had them in practically every colour.

  Chapter 16

  Before we knew it, we were heading for nine years old, and it was time for advent calendars and the nativity play: a different long-haired girl put a pillow up her dress, and God abhorred not the virgin’s womb again, and I prayed and prayed that my father would come home for Christmas.

  I went to the Blumes’ on Thursday
s all through the autumn term because Pink Mother had relented, and on the last day of term, Bridget brought Barnaby’s old light sabre into school for me as a Christmas present. I nearly died of joy. I sat in my father’s study, pointing it at the street lamps and pretending to create light.

  But look, there was Father Christmas getting out of a London taxi carrying a large sack of presents, walking with his feet splaying out a little, and, to my great surprise, climbing our shiny steps and ringing the doorbell.

  ‘Don’t answer!’ shrieked Pink Mother. ‘No one comes to my door unannounced!’

  Father Christmas stepped over the black chain which bordered the flowerbed and tapped on the study window, and I hid behind my father’s huge armchair, trembling with terror, and Father Christmas had a dark beard and dark skin and dark eyes – and Father Christmas was my father!

  My prayers had worked and he’d come home!

  Now we could all go back to normal, this Christmas and forever!

  I rushed to the front door and opened it.

  ‘Happy Christmas! Ho ho ho!’ said my father, kissing my cheeks, but not holding my nose between his fingers or dangling me upside down – perhaps I’d got too big or too old, or maybe we didn’t know each other well enough for him to do those things any more.

  ‘Let’s put the presents here,’ I said, gesturing towards the huge tree in the hall, wrapped round and round with silver tinsel and glistening with glittery baubles.

  ‘¿Por qué no los abres ahora?’ he said. Why don’t you open them now.

  ‘Voy a esperar hasta Navidad,’ I said, trying out my Spanish again. I’ll wait until Christmas. The words juddered a little on my tongue.

  ‘But then I won’t be here,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ I said. ‘How long are you staying?’

  ‘I’ve got a couple of hours,’ he said. ‘Then I’m flying back to Spain.’

  I felt my heart drop into my bowel with a hurty thud.

  The presents from my father were all books.

  I tried to look grateful.

  And normal.

  I tried not to cry about the fact that his arrival was also a departure.

  My father sat down in his leather Chesterfield armchair, and I sat on his knee, and we started reading. When we finished the first book, we started another. I made him read Peter Pan, and hearing all the old funny voices made me feel wobbly as jelly.

  Pink Mother came in, holding a camera. I didn’t want her to waste a single minute, so I looked at her impatiently.

  ‘Can I take a photo of you two?’ she said.

  My father nodded.

  She took three photos – flash flash flash.

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’ she said.

  ‘No, thank you,’ said my father. ‘I’m about to leave for the airport.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?’ she said.

  ‘I thought you wouldn’t open the door,’ he said. ‘But I knew you couldn’t refuse Father Christmas.’

  ‘You’re a manipulative bastard,’ she said.

  She walked out.

  ‘How is she?’ said my father.

  ‘She’s sad,’ I said. ‘And sometimes mad. And she’s trying to kill all the flowers on the patio. To spite you.’

  ‘How are you?’ said my father.

  I was just about to say a whole load of things when I decided not to bother.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said, pushing all my feelings deep down, as usual.

  ‘Good girl,’ he said.

  Chapter 17

  I’d noticed the teachers were all especially nice to me when Pink Mother went on her ‘little breaks’, which was very often through Class 4. Even Mrs Snell was nice, when she normally told us we were spoilt brats who had no idea what life was like in the real world, which was apparently over where she lived, in Croydon.

  Bridget and I moved from fad to fad, and in Class 4, it was making whirlybirds out of paper, hooking the paper flaps over our fingers and trying them out on all the teachers: What’s your favourite colour/animal/sweet/religion?

  ‘Your favourite religion is whichever one you get,’ said Miss Philips.

  For some reason, I wrote this in my Quest Book.

  Mary used to take me out into the square in the evenings when I’d finished my homework, and the neighbourhood cats would snake around my legs, and I’d close my eyes and feel hot kitten-skulls against my shins and dusty cat-tails blown up like bottle brushes back somewhere before. This went into the Quest Book too.

  In the square, Mary would sit and read the magazines that came with the weekend newspapers. One of these had a special section where famous mothers discussed their relationship with their daughters, and famous daughters discussed their relationship with their mothers. I tore these out and kept them, and I still have them. I used to stare at the famous mothers and daughters hanging onto each other’s arms and laughing into each other’s eyes, and I would yearn for the special feeling I knew a real mother would give me.

  Proper alchemy – warm and soft and telepathic: a wordless arm around my shoulders perhaps, or a hand squeezing messages through my palms, or a look between us that no one else could decipher.

  Pink Mother came back home, but she hadn’t changed one bit: she was strange and faraway in the evenings, and didn’t get out of bed in the mornings, so Mary still took me to school, and picked me up, and came to my parents’ evenings.

  ‘Why doesn’t your mum come?’ said Sophia, standing staring at me with Annabel, Lily and Laura clustered around her, just as terrifying as they had been from the start.

  ‘Is there something wrong with her?’ said Annabel, staring.

  ‘My mum says she’s ill,’ said Lily, staring.

  ‘In the head,’ said Laura.

  They laughed their heads off.

  There was no point telling the teachers.

  The teachers thought they were all totally marvellous.

  When they bullied Bridget for being fat, she used to sing, inside her head, I will survive, like Gloria Gaynor.

  Bridget and I used to raid her parents’ record collection and, using hairbrushes as microphones and badminton racquets as guitars, we’d don outlandish wigs and sparkly platform sandals from the dressing-up box, turn on the lights, open the curtains and stand in front of the glass doors, wiggling our bottoms at the dark garden and refusing, loudly, to crumble.

  And we survived – oh-oh!

  Chapter 18

  By the time I was in Class 5 and heading for double figures, we had a teacher called Mr Altman who was, shockingly, a man, a man who wore green velvet slippers with his initials on and a black cap on the back of his head fixed with girls’ hair clips because, said Bridget, he was Jewish like the Blumes, although none of them wore velvet caps on the back of their heads (which was confusing).

  He got us all to say what our religion was, and I said Catholic, and he said I would have a first communion and wear a pretty white dress like a bride, which I did not like the sound of at all.

  Laura Stephenson said she was a secular humanist and we had no idea what she was on about.

  I asked Mr Altman lots of questions about Judaism, and he said the main things were not to eat pork (like Muslims) and to be just and compassionate, and to go on waiting for a Messiah.

  ‘Did the fact that Jesus was a baby put you off?’ I asked him.

  Hahaha, he said.

  ‘My father thinks people made up religions as an excuse to hate each other,’ I said.

  Hahaha, he said, a bit more manically than the first time.

  My father had never come back after he came back as Father Christmas.

  I prayed and prayed for his return.

  In the summer term, Pink Mother appeared in the hall one morning in her stirrupy scarf, with so much foundation on that it looked like her face wasn’t her face.

  She planted a lipsticky kiss on my forehead.

  ‘Say goodbye to your mother,’ said Mary.

  ‘Goodbye,’ I sa
id, feeling that I dare not ask where she was going.

  She turned and walked, very carefully, as if she was on a tight rope, through the door, and Mary followed her with the luggage.

  When Mary came back inside, I plucked up the courage to ask where she was going, and she said to a lovely place, and I said what kind of lovely place, and she said a lovely place that will make her better.

  I went into the downstairs loo, stared at the pink cat’s bottom on my forehead in the mirror and rubbed it off with loo paper and water.

  The next Saturday, a man arrived on the doorstep. Mary opened the door and he pushed a trolley into the hall. He started to box up my father’s books, shoving them in, all messed up and back to front and upside down, with no idea that my father had arranged them in alphabetical order. As I watched, something fell out of a book. The man left the room with the trolley, and I picked up the something – a white sealed envelope – which I shoved into the chest-pocket of my denim pinafore. (Pink Mother had, despairingly, surrendered to my preference for baggy clothes without waistbands.)

  The man took the modern paintings off the hall wall and swaddled them in bubble wrap.

  The next thing I knew, Granny and Grandpa Green arrived.

  Granny and Grandpa Green sometimes took us out to lunch at smart restaurants where they liked to complain about the food.

  Grandpa Green was a kind of red-purple colour, and looked as if he might go off like a firework at any moment, and when Granny Green spoke, the wattle under her chin wobbled.

  Mary made them both a cup of tea, and Grandpa Green told the man with the trolley to remove every single bottle of alcohol from the house.

  The man started boxing up all the bottles of sherry and wine with my father’s special horse label from Jerez, and I plucked up the courage to ask what exactly he was doing.

  Granny Green said, ‘Your father wants his things in Spain.’