All My Mothers

by Joanna Glen

  The piano came before they did.

  I remember their arrival.

  Tall David, the pianist, with his long fingers.

  Long-bearded Abed with his huge cello in its wheeled case.

  Bald Seth carrying his clarinet and a suit bag.

  Yosef’s violin strapped across his back.

  Mostly I remember Yosef.

  I was reading you Peter Pan in the shaded corner, on the Moroccan couch.

  I read: ‘Surely you know what a kiss is?’

  And Yosef said: ‘I shall know when you give it to me.’

  ‘You know it?’ I said.

  ‘My favourite book!’ he said.

  ‘Mine too,’ I smiled.

  ‘The acorn and the thimble!’ he said.

  ‘Exactly!’ I said.

  Adriana took the musicians to their rooms, and Carrie and Jhazmin clattered comfortingly in the kitchen. I loved watching them cooking together. Liam had sent her a birthday card saying Happy Birthday from Liam. It had given her hope. Perhaps too much hope.

  You joined Ignacio and Lily at the table for lunch, Beth, but I wasn’t hungry.

  The musicians were rehearsing in the lecture room, and I liked listening to them.

  I remembered poor Grandpa Blue playing Quartet for the End of Time over and over in his study in Turret Grove, as he felt his happiness slipping away from him.

  Peter Pan was Yosef’s favourite book, and kisses could be acorns and kisses could be thimbles, and the starlings in the sky above the courtyard were turning into a hot-air balloon, and rising, rising.

  All of this comforted me.

  I was still praying for a miracle.

  I still didn’t know exactly how to pray.

  So I said, like Sister Ana, ‘Round and round. Love love love.’

  Chapter 127

  I wheeled your mother into the packed candlelit courtyard for the concert.

  She was very weak.

  She closed her eyes.

  I made circles on her palm.

  The moment was the biggest place you could imagine, far far bigger than the time we lay on our backs on the grass with Sister Ruth at St Hilda’s.

  The present was all there was and would ever be, that’s what I felt, and that’s what we must feel whenever we can.

  The quartet started to play.

  Yosef stood with his violin, his feet flat on the ground, fully balanced – the way I loved, the way the Blumes stood in that photo at the edge of the sea – and he seemed ready for anything life might throw at him.

  He seemed.

  Substantial.

  He looked at me, and I smiled at him, and he smiled at me. He closed his eyes, and the four of them started to play Quartet for the End of Time.

  In the hot evening, the music, which had once rung out in the chill of Stalag VIII-A, made a ring around La Convivencia, a ring around Córdoba, spreading concentrically, wider, wider, wider, until it circled the whole earth, at least that’s how it felt that night.

  I closed my eyes.

  Blue Mother was there inside the music, clinking her bangles as she danced.

  Sister Ana waltzed in her big old sandals with Lorenzo.

  And Billy Orson moonwalked backwards.

  There is a door in the wall, Beth, your mother was wrong.

  The door sometimes opens!

  But you can’t plan when.

  And it’s not us who open it.

  I went on making circles on your mother’s palm.

  Then, when the music stopped, I opened my eyes, but your mother didn’t.

  We sat together, holding hands: brown fingers, white fingers, interlinked, like on our first day in Entrance Class at St Hilda’s.

  The guests left.

  And the chairs were cleared away.

  Your mother still didn’t open her eyes.

  ‘It was like I was deep-sea diving,’ she whispered to me, her voice tiny now, fading. ‘It was wonderful. Like great shining coral reefs.’

  I smiled into her beautiful radiant face.

  She opened her eyes.

  ‘Look after Bethesda, won’t you?’ she said.

  We were holding hands.

  ‘Will you miss me?’ she said.

  We were eleven, and we were standing in her garden, and she was going to Israel.

  I couldn’t speak.

  The musicians crossed the courtyard to go to bed.

  I stood up.

  I said the music had been out of this world.

  ‘Actually,’ I said.

  Tall David, the pianist, scratched his chin, said it had been a pleasure.

  Long-bearded Abed and bald Seth smiled.

  I said that the music had taken Bridget somewhere she’d never been.

  Yosef, the violinist, walked over to your mother in her wheelchair.

  I watched him as he took her hand, and held it.

  ‘There were colours I’d never seen before,’ she said. ‘And I finally saw my mother. I’ve missed her so much.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I won’t forget that.’

  She smiled.

  Then Yosef came over to me.

  Brown fingers, brown fingers – he held my hand.

  I loved the feeling of it.

  He raised my hand to his lips, and he kissed the back of it.

  Surely you know what a kiss is?

  Maybe I didn’t.

  I shall know when you give it to me.

  And now I did.

  ‘This must be so hard for you,’ he said.

  As the musicians walked away, I felt overwhelmed.

  Not with one feeling but with every feeling I’d ever had, all of them running together, as if the rainbow had collapsed and its colours were seeping into each other.

  I heard myself saying Bridget Bridget Bridget over and over again, and I was crying, and she and I were seeping together, all the versions of ourselves – little girls, teenagers, adults, mothers – all that we’d meant to each other, all that we’d made each other.

  Carrie and Gabriel came into the courtyard with you, Beth.

  You were wearing pyjamas and a tiara, and playing that screechy plastic violin, and your eyes were flushed with the thrill of staying up very late.

  ‘Can we do spinning?’ you said to Carrie, and she took the yellow hoop and you threw down the violin and crawled in, and the hoop was spinning around the two of you, and you were laughing as it spun round and round, round and round.

  ‘Watch Mummy! Watch!’ you shouted.

  Your mother smiled.

  And the moon was whole, above the courtyard.

  Chapter 128

  When the musicians checked out the next afternoon, I asked if they’d like to come back the next year and do it all again.

  ‘We’d love to,’ said Yosef. ‘I’d love to.’

  ‘Great!’ I said.

  ‘Confirmed,’ said Yosef. ‘In the diary!’

  Yosef smiled at me, and I smiled at him.

  He reached into his pocket.

  ‘I found this down by the river!’ he said, smiling. ‘Far too early for acorns. But there you are.’

  A tiny green acorn, out of season.

  ‘The holm oak!’ I said. ‘My favourite tree.’

  I hesitated.

  ‘I wish there was something I could give you,’ I said.

  I caught sight of Carrie’s little china thimbles, painted with red geraniums, on the reception desk.

  And I thought, ‘Why not?’

  Go on, why not?

  Be Blumey.

  I gave him a thimble.

  He smiled.

  He said, ‘See you next year!’

  The others gathered their things.

  ‘If not before,’ he said. ‘I think it will be before, don’t you?’

  The musicians left, as it started to rain.

  I walked into the centre of the courtyard and I stood next to San Rafael and I held out my arms and tipped back my head and felt the raindrops on my skin an
d on my tongue.

  I went to your mother’s room.

  Jhazmin was sitting on a chair to the right of Bridget’s bed.

  I sat on the left.

  Your mother, my beautiful Bridget, smiled at me and closed her eyes, and I thought of the way the curtains close at the end of a play, and you hope that they’ll open again, and the actors will still be standing there, and you’ll go on clapping, and the curtains will go on opening, and you hope they will never leave, and it will never end.

  Your mother took Jhazmin’s hand and my hand – and Jhazmin and I took each other’s, so that we were making a circle with our hands.

  You were in the circle too, Beth, though you were playing with Mee next to the angel.

  There was room for Mee in the circle too.

  And other kittens.

  As many as we needed.

  I suspected that we were going to need a lot of kittens in the days ahead.

  I looked at you and I saw myself.

  You were three and a half, the same age I was when my father drove to Córdoba and took me away from my life.

  Your mother opened her eyes, and she squeezed my hand as if she was trying to tell me something.

  Perhaps she was telling me what I was thinking.

  That Yosef was the sort of person, even maybe the actual person, who I could imagine adding to our circle.

  Some time.

  No rush.

  But only if it was OK with you, Beth.

  That’s what I thought.

  I’d given you my heart.

  And you’d given me mine.

  If we were to go adding to the circle, we would both have to agree.

  That, I knew, from now on, was the deal.

  Chapter 129

  Twenty-two per cent of people live for at least five years after diagnosis with Stage 4 breast cancer, that’s what I knew.

  So I’d sat your mother on a nice living sofa with twenty-one survivors.

  Safe as anything.

  The champagne was on ice for the last chapter.

  And here we are, and here it is.

  We’re in it, together, you and I.

  Whatever it is.

  Whatever happens next, Beth, we will survive.

  We will even flourish.

  Like the geraniums.

  I pushed through.

  Like you will.

  And I found the mother I was looking for.

  And she was me.

  Green Mother.

  Here I am.

  I’ll take you to the waterfalls in the Sierra Morena where they grow cork trees, and we’ll walk barefoot in the grass together, like in The Rainbow Rained Us.

  We’ll stand together under the gush of falling water and feel alive.

  And.

  Meanwhile.

  I’ll be the best mother I can be for you, Beth.

  Blood isn’t everything, it turns out.

  I’ll give everything I have to loving you.

  She died so peacefully.

  With all of us gathered around.

  The shutters open.

  San Rafael gold in the dusk.

  4

  4 January 2020

  Dearest Beth

  You’ve turned into the most beautiful Blumey nearly-sixteen.

  Did I ever tell you that?

  I still sometimes keep the things I feel inside, but I’m getting so much better at letting them out.

  You’ve taught me that, Beth.

  You’ve carried on what your mother started.

  London already feels like a dream, doesn’t it?

  Fireworks over the Thames.

  Lunch with Cherie and Jean in their favourite little Italian.

  Mudlarking on the beach near Battersea Bridge.

  Finding rocket shells in the mulchy sand.

  Writing your mother’s name with our feet.

  B-R-I-D-G-E-T.

  Drawing her kisses from the wall to the water.

  Watching the tide come in and carry them downriver.

  Finding the plastic duck, faded and washed up and winking at us.

  Here it is, yellow and sparkling – Yosef cleaned it up for you.

  And here’s our story, Beth, typed and bound, ready for you to read – nothing left out (except my bad dates).

  It’s been waiting for you in Sister Ana’s wooden box for twelve years.

  The time feels like now.

  XX

  PS

  Don’t think your Uncle Barnaby’s a bad man.

  We were both looking for something we couldn’t have again.

  The past.

  Acknowledgements

  First, in a book called All My Mothers, I want to acknowledge the impact that my own mother, Jennifer Simmonds, had on my life. She was, in my view, the perfect mother – radiantly joyful, deeply loving, full of fun. She inspired me to write about motherhood. Her presence shaped me, and so does her absence.

  All My Mothers is a novel about mothers, but also a novel about friendship, and I want to acknowledge, with gratitude, the many friendships which have deepened and brightened my life. Eva’s relationship with Bridget and Carrie is inspired by a cornucopia of wonderful friends. My deepest love and thanks to the Pinner girls (one non-Pinner member) with whom I grew up; friends from my much-loved school, and from heady university days in London and Córdoba; those who helped me grow babies; those who helped me grow myself; those who worked alongside me in the deep bond of demanding jobs; those who generously shared my past and share my present. As Eva discovers, friends dance miraculously into our lives, and also out, separated by geography and impossible schedules and work and parenting and general hopelessness (I’m sorry) but they sometimes dance back in too. That’s been my experience of late. Thank you. You’re all part of this story.

  Then there’s the other big presence in my life – a place, not a person. My love affair with Spain began as a child in Denia, collecting beetles and snails on the sandy path to the beach, and exploded into life when I studied at the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras in Córdoba, the most soul-stirring place I’ve ever lived. It was a joy to set much of the story there.

  Eva calls her hotel La Convivencia, the word convivencia conveying a sense of happy co-existence for which the city is famed. The publication of my first novel, The Other Half of Augusta Hope, created a new and happy co-existence – the incomparable team that made it happen. And now they’ve done it again. My huge thanks to my wonderful agent, Susan Armstrong, my first reader, always brilliant, always there with the mot juste, the right answer and the unstinting support. Likewise to my trusted and esteemed editor, Carla Josephson, who sheds her special brand of light and love on my words. To Andrew Davis, who’s created a cover of such evocative beauty that the air around the book smells of orange blossom. To Ann Bissell, publicist extraordinaire, a woman of untold energy, talent and joie de vivre; to Katy Blott, Izzy Coburn and Sarah Munro, who find unimaginably ingenious ways to put the book into the hands of readers, without whom it cannot live.

  From the deeply happy co-existence of childhood – Mum, Dad, Richard – to the deeply happy co-existence of adulthood – Mark, Nina, Charlie (and now Holly too), I owe you all everything.

  Postscript

  I arrived in Córdoba when I was twenty, like Eva did, driving through the scrappy suburbs and entering the city between palm-lined parks, my heart thumping.

  I remember opening the door to my black-barred flat, just up from Plaza de Tendillas.

  There were cockroaches living under the fridge.

  My friend Drusilla and I swapped from single bed to sofa-bed, one week on, one week off, because the flat didn’t have enough bedrooms.

  The residents thought we were prostitutes.

  I remember a sand-coloured church close by, the church of San Miguel, built after the reconquest of the city. It was the end of 800 years of interplay between three religions and three cultures, the extent and duration of which is still hotly debated in academic circle
s.

  What, however, most agree is that for at least 250 of those years, there was an enlightened and unlikely harmony in the city, which is known as the Convivencia.

  And for 100 years, Abd al-Rahman III of Córdoba was the legitimate caliph of the whole Islamic world, and Córdoba was the largest and most prosperous city in all of Europe. Art and architecture and literature and science bloomed, perhaps creating the foundations for the Renaissance and Enlightenment of Europe.

  And there I was, standing on layers of history, in a tiny back street, where leathery old men hissed at me like snakes, ‘Sssss, sssss, Rubia!’ (Rubia meaning blondie – and blonder I would become, helped by sunshine and lemons.) These were unenlightened days and blonde girls, presumed English or Swedish, were known to be easy. But let’s leave the hisses behind. You stopped hearing them after a while.

  It was time for my first walk into the Judería (the old Jewish and Moorish quarter), the path that Carrie and Eva took after the revelation of the photo, and down I went with frilly girls from the flamenco school, happily losing myself in a maze of white buildings hugger mugger on narrow cobbled streets.

  The houses taunted me with their black wrought iron gates – verjas – through which I caught slivers of shady flower-hung terraces, not quite visible.

  Above, women in aprons hung their sheets out on roof terraces (because roof terraces weren’t yet fashionable), wearing straw hats designed to keep out the sun.

  Everything was designed to keep out the sun and dissipate the heat: the white paint; the heavy wooden shutters; the narrow sloping streets, houses inclining inwards; the hand-held fans which old ladies unfolded with a flourish from their handbags.

  We, on the other hand, sought out the sun, heading to our friends’ roof terrace, crawling under the hung sheets and there, hidden from prying eyes, taking all our clothes off and dousing ourselves in olive oil, before we knew that the sun was dangerous.

  Then we were back to lectures in the old university building, through the tree-lined streets, past shops selling painted tiles and bullfighting postcards and silver rings.

  I can see the huge old wooden door to the Facultad de Letras, and beyond it a shady quadrangle, always cool on the hottest days. I can see my Spanish cardboard folders with elasticated bands at the top right-hand corner, scattered on the street when I fainted in the heat on the way to lectures because I’d forgotten to have breakfast and it was forty degrees already, not yet ten o’clock.