All My Mothers

by Joanna Glen

  ‘Are you and Bridget still close?’ she said.

  I couldn’t bear to answer.

  ‘We write letters,’ I said.

  ‘Tell me the colours again,’ she said. ‘I want to work out which my mother is.’

  I repeated them.

  ‘My mother’s purple,’ she said. ‘Liturgical purple. Definitely. She loves rules. And doing the right thing!’

  ‘What colour mother would you like to be?’ I said to Carrie.

  ‘Green or Blue,’ she said.

  ‘Me too,’ I said. ‘You’ve no idea how much I loved Bridget’s family. I’d be a totally different person if it wasn’t for her.’

  And perhaps we were different people now from the ones we’d been then, and perhaps we could never have back what had once seemed ours forever. But even if we wouldn’t mudlark on the grey beach by Battersea Bridge or mark each other’s similes out of ten, we could maybe still love each other just the same.

  I thought unexpectedly of the tiny fingers curled around the woman’s thumb.

  And, with tears in my eyes, I told Carrie about my endometriosis.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘That’s tough, Evs.’

  She hugged me, and we walked some more, and we came across a little Moroccan souk under an arch, selling pottery plates and bowls and silver teapots and brass lamps, with a rail of silk clothes at the back.

  ‘Harem pants!’ I said. ‘These are what Blue Mother wore!’

  ‘She sounds so lovely,’ said Carrie. ‘Come on, let’s try some on!’

  ‘Tres por dos,’ said the man, who was wearing leather shoes with curled-up toes.

  Carrie and I bought three pairs, in gleaming silk.

  I wore emerald green and she wore tangerine orange back to the hostal, and the harem pants helped. I was back to baggy again and back to being myself.

  On the table, there were letters.

  Had Bridget written?

  Had she marked my similes?

  Could I have her back?

  Carrie’s letter was from her mum, checking she was going to Mass.

  My first letter was from Michael.

  ‘Michael?’ said Carrie.

  I told her all about Michael and the Orsons and their film-set life, but I left out Billy, and we moved onto Carrie’s string of useless boyfriends, none of whom had held her attention for very long.

  ‘He’s booked his flight for Friday the thirteenth of May,’ I said flatly, skimming Michael’s letter.

  ‘Unlucky for some!’ said Carrie.

  Hold on – the second was from Barnaby Blue.

  D and I will be in Córdoba from Wed 11–Sun 15 May. How about meeting up one evening for tapas?

  ‘You’re blushing,’ said Carrie. ‘At the wrong letter.’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ I said.

  ‘You definitely were.’

  ‘You could combine them all,’ said Carrie, staring at my face. ‘On the Saturday night.’

  ‘I think I’ll see Barnaby before Michael arrives,’ I said.

  ‘Tell me about this Barnaby,’ she said, winking.

  I said stiffly, ‘I told you about Bridget …’

  Carrie nodded.

  ‘Well, Barnaby’s her brother – and he’s an architect at Medina Azahara, where we’re going tomorrow.’

  Carrie smiled knowingly.

  Then she said, ‘Have you got that rainbow book with you?’

  ‘Weirdly I have,’ I said.

  And we sat looking through The Rainbow Rained Us.

  Carrie said, ‘Michael’s mother is Gold Mother. Obviously. You were never going to like her.’

  ‘Also,’ I said, ‘there was another Orson son that I can’t really bear to talk about. Probably the best of them all. He was called Billy …’

  Chapter 71

  On the day I was due to meet Barnaby, I couldn’t concentrate at all.

  And I can always concentrate.

  Everything I put on was wrong.

  I wore dungarees.

  Like Naomi – as you probably spotted.

  I was late.

  I rushed along the corridor, which ran in a square above the inner courtyard where we ate breakfast surrounded by ferns and piles of old National Geographic magazines.

  I skipped down the stairs and out of the building, heading towards the Mezquita and up to the tapas bar where we’d arranged to meet.

  Two brown nuns were walking together, arm in arm.

  And there he was.

  He was wearing shorts.

  My eyes darted to his legs.

  I felt myself blushing.

  His Barnaby Blue lovely architecty weathered hairy shins.

  Yes, OK, legs as well as arms as well as eyelashes.

  Shallow as anything.

  Kiss, kiss – xx – one cheek, the other, Spanish style.

  I didn’t fall into his arms and he didn’t feel like a bear.

  Nobody feels like a bear when you go kiss kiss, one cheek then the other.

  He said he was sorry D wasn’t there, he was having one of his days.

  ‘I know all about that,’ I said.

  ‘Have you struggled with depression?’

  ‘No!’

  Too loud and too fast, just checking he knew that I was not the sort of person to struggle with depression because I was cool and adventuring in my dungarees, like Naomi who made pots of girls with holes in the middle, and don’t you go thinking I have a hole in my middle, because actually … don’t think of bald heads or tiny curling fingers.

  ‘How do you know about depression then?’

  ‘My mother.’

  ‘Oh, of course. We never knew the detail of that. M never said.’

  ‘I don’t know the detail of it,’ I said. ‘But I still suspect she isn’t my mother.’

  ‘Isn’t your mother?’

  ‘Did Bridget never tell you?’

  ‘It’s odd, but we didn’t really talk about you.’

  You didn’t talk about me?

  Before I knew it, because Córdoba was melting my reserve, I was telling Barnaby Blue that years ago, before I went to live with them, I’d found a photo of a baby who looked just like me, I’d compared my own face in a magnifying mirror.

  I was finally going to show another person the photo.

  But first I’d describe it to him.

  To warm up.

  ‘It was definitely me in a beautiful patio,’ I said, ‘and definitely in Córdoba, which was definitely my place of birth.’

  I told him that there was a statue of an angel behind me and an old wagon wheel, and that the hands holding me were old hands, probably the hands of my real mother, who was wearing a grey dress and who’d been deliberately beheaded, and what did he make of that?

  ‘I guess the patio could be anywhere in Spain,’ said Barnaby.

  He paused.

  I tried to maintain a confident facial expression.

  ‘And the person holding you might be a relative.’

  He paused again.

  I felt stupid.

  But I tried to look as if I didn’t.

  ‘Or of course the baby might not be you.’

  The thing I’d been trying not to think since I was ten.

  And said so casually.

  ‘Or you may be right, of course,’ he said.

  Yes, I may be right.

  And no, I definitely wasn’t going to show him the photo now.

  Not after that reaction.

  Like I hadn’t shown Bridget, and I hadn’t shown Carrie.

  Like I wouldn’t dream of showing Michael.

  Forget about it, I said to myself, and enjoy the evening!

  You might even end up with your head in his lap and his gold star hanging over you like a sign!

  Oh, lovely make-believe, perhaps we could rewind.

  Perhaps Barnaby Blue could be perfect again, and Blue Mother could be alive, and Bridget could love me like she used to, all of us preserved forever in formaldehyde at the hou
se in Lyme Regis.

  ‘So tell me how your dad is,’ I said, as his smile made its way down my legs.

  ‘He never got over M’s death,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t get over death,’ I said. ‘You swallow it inside you. And your grief forms a layer of you. Because that’s what we are, layer on layer of experience, like your dad used to explain history, do you remember?’

  Gabbling again.

  ‘I like that,’ he said.

  ‘You would do,’ I said. ‘You’re an archaeologist!’

  He laughed.

  I was slightly hyper, but I couldn’t help it.

  ‘Your dad said all history is personal,’ I said. ‘We are walking histories. And the stuff that happened to us years ago is still inside us. And we choose how much to excavate.’

  ‘I like that,’ he said again.

  Yes, yes, you do like that, I thought because I’m hell-bent on making you like me, and Michael flashed into my mind, all handsome and tidy, and Barnaby Blue’s shirt flapped open at the bottom where there wasn’t a button, showing the top of his boxer shorts, and a line of hair, going down down, Eva, Eva, Eva, I said to myself, stop that at once, you are going down down to a very dangerous place.

  After we’d eaten our tapas and drunk too much wine, I said I would take him on my completely unique fact-packed guided tour of Córdoba.

  ‘I’m going to set my watch,’ he said. ‘And this is the challenge. See how long you can talk about Córdoba without stopping.’

  About seven minutes in, I got the giggles.

  We walked down to the river, and we let our sides bump together, and I wanted to grab Barnaby Blue and ravish him in the little patch of grass by the river, my favourite spot, where the old holm oak grows next to the crumbling wall.

  ‘You look lovely,’ he said.

  I stopped walking.

  I stopped breathing.

  We looked at the little bird-flecked islands in the river, the elms and tamarisks, the poplars and eucalyptus trees. A flock of egrets flew by as we headed towards the bridge.

  Barnaby and I walked over the bridge to the tower.

  I thought: I’ll ravish you, or you ravish me, or we could ravish each other – I’m easy. And anywhere would do. Even here. On the pavement.

  ‘Did you know that Medina Azahara was the largest city ever built from scratch in Western Europe,’ he said. ‘It was built from a single plan. There’s nothing like it anywhere.’

  I tried to concentrate.

  ‘I’ll see if I can beat seven minutes,’ he said.

  Barnaby kept going at some pace, and he was several minutes in before I said, ‘Hold on! I don’t think you got that date right. The first threat came in 1010, surely – when the palace was sacked by Islamic purists from North Africa. They didn’t like the liberal ways of the Caliphate, did they? All this happy coexistence wasn’t their thing …’

  ‘I thought this was my special subject!’ said Barnaby, laughing, taking my arm. ‘But what you might not know is that, now, when only ten per cent of Medina Azahara has been uncovered, we have a new threat.’

  We stopped in front of Heladería Torre, the famous ice cream shop.

  You are my new threat, I thought.

  ‘Construction companies are building illegal houses,’ he said. ‘The town hall in Córdoba is failing to protect the site.’

  I couldn’t care less, I thought.

  I’m just a mess of whooshes.

  Fall in love with me.

  We sat at a table on the terrace and ordered a mountain of coconut and coffee and caramel ice cream, feeding each other with orange plastic spoons.

  We stopped talking for a moment.

  We looked at our watches.

  We’d been talking for four hours.

  ‘I need to get back to D,’ he said.

  ‘Anything else we should have covered?’ I said.

  Cover me.

  Uncover me.

  Either.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘I forgot. Naomi sends her love.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, feeling my mouth forming a very strangely shaped smile.

  ‘Do you have a partner?’ he said.

  ‘Well, I have …’

  I tried to pull myself together.

  ‘Yes,’ I said firmly. ‘Michael!’

  He didn’t say anything.

  ‘When I come out here for longer, Naomi will visit,’ he said. ‘So hopefully we can catch up again, the three of us.’

  He paused.

  ‘Or, I guess, the four of us, with Michael.’

  We walked over the bridge in silence, and, when we reached the other side, I turned right along the river, and he headed over the road.

  Then I ran back and said, ‘I would really love to see your father.’

  He said, ‘I’ll sort that,’ and he disappeared under the Roman arch up towards the Mezquita.

  Chapter 72

  The next morning, Carrie asked me how my date had gone.

  I snapped at her that it wasn’t a date.

  She said, ‘You’re feeling guilty.’

  I said, ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Did something happen with Barnaby?’ she said. ‘Like did you end up in bed?’

  ‘Course we didn’t end up in bed.’

  Carrie stared at me, cocking her head to the right and then to the left.

  ‘So how was your evening?’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Will you tell Michael you went out with Barnaby?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I do know,’ said Carrie. ‘I know you won’t.’

  ‘I’d prefer you not to say anything either,’ I said.

  Carrie smiled.

  There was a knock on the door.

  It was the owner of the hostal, saying there was someone to see me in Reception.

  ‘It’ll be Barnaby declaring undying love!’ said Carrie.

  When I went downstairs, Mr Blue was waiting.

  ‘Eva Martínez-Green!’ he said, opening his arms.

  I fell into them, and stayed there.

  ‘I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed you,’ I said, and we held each other’s hands.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I said.

  ‘It depends on the day,’ he said. ‘And I woke up OK this morning. So I’m taking you out for breakfast.’

  We started walking.

  ‘Barnaby says it’s still very hard for you.’

  ‘I let the children down very badly,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t recover.’

  ‘You did your best,’ I said.

  ‘You rerun things,’ he said. ‘And wish you’d done it differently.’

  ‘We all do that,’ I said, and I thought of Billy Orson, getting into his orange kayak.

  We ate croissants and we drank peach juice and we talked about the house in Turret Grove, and the bald lawn, and Lyme Regis, and fossils, but I couldn’t make myself talk about Bridget.

  We went to see the statue of Maimonides, the famous Jewish Sephardic philosopher, and we visited the tiny synagogue, which was converted into a rabies hospital when the Jews were kicked out.

  When we hugged each other goodbye, he said, ‘Bridget took the brunt of it. Trying to be a mother to the little ones when I was falling to pieces. It nearly undid her.’

  My heart hurt.

  I didn’t know, and I hadn’t been there for her, and I was ashamed.

  ‘It’s a pity you two lost touch,’ he said.

  Is that what she’d told him?

  That we’d lost touch?

  What sort of a person was I to lose touch with Bridget?

  ‘We write letters,’ I said, trying to defend myself. ‘In fact, I only just wrote to her. I’m sure she’ll reply soon.’

  Chapter 73

  When I got back to Hostal Jardín, Carrie had dyed her hair rust-red.

  ‘Where on earth have you been?’ she said.

  ‘With Mr Blue.’

  ‘I was hoping for some romance,’ she said. />
  ‘Would you like me to move into Jane and Dee’s room while Michael’s here?’ she said.

  ‘It feels a bit of an imposition,’ I said.

  ‘But it’s better than watching you have sex.’

  Oh yes, I thought, sex, I hadn’t really thought about sex, well not with Michael anyway.

  ‘Have you missed it?’ she said.

  ‘Sex?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Have you missed Michael?’ she said.

  I thought for a few seconds.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t think so,’ she said.

  ‘Have you missed me?’ said Michael, holding me in his arms at Córdoba station.

  His body felt much thinner and harder than Barnaby Blue’s.

  ‘Of course I’ve missed you,’ I said, hearing my own voice ringing out too loudly.

  ‘What are you wearing?’ said Michael.

  ‘They’re called harem pants.’

  ‘Do you mind not wearing them tonight?’ he said.

  Michael had booked dinner at La Bodega, the most expensive restaurant in the city.

  I changed out of my harem pants, feeling furious.

  When we arrived, we were ushered to our table by a slightly pompous waiter. The lights were too bright, and the air conditioning was too cold. Michael ordered lobster and champagne.

  ‘To us!’ he said, and we clinked our glasses together, and my teeth grated against each other.

  I told Michael that Medina Azahara was the largest city ever built from scratch in Western Europe, but I didn’t mention anything about Barnaby Blue.

  ‘It’s hard to imagine,’ he said, ‘without going there.’

  ‘I could take you,’ I said.

  He nodded.

  ‘So how’s it all going?’ I said.

  ‘I’ve got some news,’ he said. ‘KPMG have accepted me, even before I get the results of the MBA.’

  Oh my word, what a burst of acronyms, I thought.

  ‘Congratulations!’ I said, as if I was acting in a play. ‘You must be so pleased.’

  ‘Aren’t you pleased, Evs? It’s the beginning of our future.’

  ‘Course I’m pleased,’ I said, forcing some warmth into my voice. ‘Let’s go for a walk around the old town. We’ll stop for ice cream.’

  ‘Ice cream?’ said Michael.

  ‘Yes, ice cream,’ I said, rather aggressively. ‘It’s what everyone does round here.’