Exquisite
Page 14
‘I don’t feel bad.’
I said nothing to that. This girl, I knew, felt bad. Badness shimmered like moonshine beneath her skin. I was like you once, I wanted to say. I can make you well, if you would let me.
She wouldn’t let me. Not yet.
We spent our evenings at the kitchen table, drinking wine, while Gus watched television dramas in the living room and then took himself to bed. I didn’t care. He wasn’t interested in my writing life, other than the money it brought in. But Alice was interested, and she was animated and clever, and I realised while she was here how deprived I’d been of clever company since we’d left Oxford. There were my friends on Facebook, of course, talking politics, hoping to enlighten the unenlightened and change the world, but it wasn’t the same as having someone here beside me – real flesh and blood that spoke words I could hear, and had hands I could take in my own as she talked on and on and then said, casually, ‘It’s the anniversary of my mother’s death tomorrow.’
The mother. That old, recurring theme.
I said, ‘Will you be OK?’
‘Yes. It’s fine. A year. I hadn’t seen her for six years. It’s hard to miss someone you haven’t seen for that long, and I hadn’t even lived with her since I was eleven.’
‘I’m sure you do miss her, though.’
Alice shrugged and shook her head. ‘I think it’s … complicated. It will do me good not to examine it too much.’
I smiled. ‘Probably wise. But you’re so young to have lost a mother. And grief is such a funny, unpredictable thing. It can attack without warning, especially when it’s someone you’ve grown used to living without. Suddenly, for whatever reason, their absence makes itself felt, and it can knock the breath from you for a while.’
‘Maybe.’
‘All I mean is that we can do whatever you like tomorrow. We don’t need to make any plans. Don’t feel you have to come downstairs if all you want is to lie in bed all day. Be gentle with yourself; and if you do feel bad about it – and I’m not saying you will – just know that it’s normal and will pass.’
I spoke tenderly. Alice looked away from me. Oh, the vicious knife of tenderness. I knew it could cut the most hardened heart in two.
Alice turned back to me. ‘You said your mother was a nightmare…’ she ventured.
‘Oh, my mother is alright now. I spent many years being angry with her, but after I got married and settled down and was able to look after myself better, I found I could let go of the mother I wanted to have and build a relationship with her on different terms. I have an eye for people like me, though. I can pick the unmothered ones out in a crowd.’
‘What was wrong with her?’
‘She wasn’t maternal,’ I said. ‘She didn’t know how to look after people.’
An old image flooded my mind: my family’s gypsy caravan, bright red on the outside, dark within; my parents always absent, and the men who knew it, who came in one by one. My mother knew what happened. She knew and turned away, and I understood now, aged forty, that it was OK. It was OK not to forgive the unforgiveable, but live with it quietly, healing myself, loving myself as my mother never could.
We sat in silence for a while, and then she spoke. ‘My mother was violent,’ she said. ‘That was why they took me away from her. I didn’t realise it wasn’t normal for mothers to beat their children like that. I thought it happened to everyone. It took a long time for people to see what was happening. We had money, and that makes a difference. People don’t suspect you when you’re successful and own a big house; and she was clever enough to know not to send me to school when the bruises were bad. But eventually, one night, a neighbour heard me screaming and called the police. She’d broken my arm. Not long after that, they took me away.’
Gently, I said, ‘And did you see her again?’
She nodded. ‘Yes, but not often. She was always involved in emotional dramas with men. Always falling in love or having her heart broken. It was exhausting. I don’t think she had much energy left to repair things with me, although she did try when I was older. I was lucky. I had good foster parents and they kept me with them. They let me stay on after I turned sixteen – till I went to university.’
‘You did well.’
She shrugged. ‘It was my escape. I knew it was my only way out.’
‘And how did you feel when she died?’
‘I didn’t feel anything. She wanted me to forgive her, but there wasn’t really anything to forgive by then.’
‘That’s very generous of you.’
‘No. I mean there was no relationship left. It was gone. The time for forgiveness had passed. She was just someone who used to hurt me. I didn’t want her back. What would be the point in forming some emotional bond just as she died?’
‘You were afraid of the grief?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I think so.’ Then she looked at me and added, ‘You’re very understanding.’
I smiled and said, ‘I’m just very old.’
She laughed.
I went on, ‘Mothers are important, Alice. Everyone needs one. It’s important to acknowledge that, to acknowledge the gravity of what you never had. You know you can be your own mother. You can be for yourself everything you wanted the first time.’
For a moment, she seemed lost for words. Then she said, ‘How?’
‘Start by learning to cook,’ I said. I was beckoning her forwards, watching her take slow but certain steps further into my world. ‘Just simple things at first. Learn to make yourself vegetable soup. Take time to care for your body, and the rest of you will start to heal as well.’
Alice nodded.
We went on talking – about her boyfriend, the bleakness of her life in foster care, her hopes for the future. Children.
At midnight, the wine ran out. At the top of the stairs, we said goodnight. For a long time, I held her tight in my embrace, and told myself that this unexpected, constant desire to be close to her was maternal. As instinctive as holding a newborn baby to your chest.
3
And then she was gone. After a week, Maggie and I dropped her off at Oxenholme and the house was empty again. I was left with a feeling in my chest I hadn’t experienced since I was a child, as though someone had reached beneath my skin and taken a scoop out of my insides. It shocked me.
I thought I’d moved beyond all this. Self-preservation was my art. It always had been. Back in that caravan, when the men came and went, when Willow arrived and then was gone, I’d felt my body turning to wood. I’d thought my mother would find me there one day, old and stiff as a dying tree. Maybe she’d make something of me – a table, perhaps, or a blanket box.
If they cut me open now, they’d find the rings of my life: the hidden pain of the early years; the healing growth; and deep in the middle, a core. Ancient trees had dead wood at their core. Heartwood. The heart died, and the tree went on growing.
I was as magnificent and hard as old oak. And no one knew it but me.
Alice was not Willow. But she’d reminded me of Willow because she was twenty-five and beautiful and lovely and clever, and all the things I knew Willow would be by now, too.
I took myself into the study, fired up my computer and went straight to Facebook. It was stupid, futile, but in the search bar I typed ‘Willow Luxton’. Six profiles appeared on the screen in front of me. I clicked on each one, searching for a face the age of Alice’s, with features that carried genetic hints of my own. There was one: blonde, young, green eyes. It could be her, I thought. It could be. I looked at it a while longer.
My hands were shaking when I finally pulled myself away. You’re being ridiculous, I told myself. No one knew I’d ever even named her Willow. The girl probably had some other name now, something like Lucy or Kate or Nicola. And she wouldn’t be Luxton. Every part of me would have been erased from her long ago. I didn’t exist.
Anyway, Alice’s sheets needed changing. I often let things like that slide – the boring, non-urgent stuff �
�� but my work was slumping again and I couldn’t face it. It was a bad sign, when I’d rather change sheets than write, and I wondered if this new project was ever going to get off the ground.
Upstairs, the spare room stood empty and bare, nothing left of Alice save the wrinkle of an untidy bedspread. I took the duvet cover off and started a wash pile in the middle of the room. I could smell her in the bed linen – the warm, broken and beautiful heart of her, ingrained in the fibres. And I couldn’t help myself: I stood and stared at the empty space on the mattress, knowing her imprint would be fixed in the memory foam below; and then I climbed into the bed, curled up and wept.
4
From: AlicetheEighth@gmail.com
Sent: 11 July 2015, 11:07
To: Bo@BoLuxton.co.uk
Subject: Hello
Dear Lovely Bo
This week, I made the decision to take your advice and sort my life out. It takes a lot of commitment to sort out a life as disordered as this one, which is why you haven’t heard from me for a few days. But I can now report:
I am employed full-time.
I have found a one-bedroom flat in Kemptown to rent. I move next month.
I am fit to reproduce.
Ha ha. That last one is unexpected, I know, but while I was walking along the beach the other day, I came across a van that said ‘Free Chlamydia Test’ on the side, painted in friendly, non-threatening pink writing. I thought, Well, why not? This is the week for getting my life together, after all.
So I went inside and had a free chlamydia test, and, lo and behold, it turned out positive. Cue: visions of a lifetime spent alone, with seven cats and a house that smells of piss. After a number of calculations, I worked out that I’d probably had it five years.
The woman who did the test was breezy about my crisis. ‘Make an appointment to see your GP,’ she said. But when I phoned the surgery, I was told my GP couldn’t see me before the end of this century.
So that night, I stayed up till about 4 am, googling like a fuckwit, and came away knowing everything there is to know about the clap, most importantly:
– It does not always cause infertility.
– It only causes infertility if it becomes pelvic inflammatory disease, which is more likely the longer you’ve had it. But many people have it for hundreds of years and still have babies.
That was OK, then. On Monday, that was OK. On Tuesday, I found an alternative doctor and went to see her, weeping silently.
She gave me some degree of hope that I would not have PID. So that was also OK.
On Wednesday, I decided, after a lot of research and adding up and such, that my chances of having PID were about 40%.
On Thursday morning, after some more sums, this had risen to 60%. By Thursday afternoon, it had gone up again to 80%.
On Friday morning, I rang the Centre for International Adoption and asked them to send me three baby girls from China. They said they would send me a form. On Friday afternoon, the test results came back from the doctor, who said I didn’t have the clap after all, but advised me to visit my local GUM clinic, a place for irresponsible people to go to learn about safe sex and the horrors that might befall you if you don’t have safe sex – such as a family. Cruel and vicious irony.
So on Saturday, I went to the GUM clinic, where I sat for half an hour, the oldest person there by approximately eleven years. Then I was called to see a counsellor, who gave me about three hundred condoms and some sheets of rubber whose function I have not yet worked out, and also made me get tested for all other STDs, including HIV, something I have always avoided doing on the grounds that I would rather not know.
So on Saturday afternoon, the blood was drawn and I was fairly confident I would not have HIV, having never slept with men from the tropics, or homosexuals.
On Saturday evening, I had a few doubts.
In the early hours of Sunday morning, I began to grow a little fearful, so got out of bed and returned to Google.
By 6 am, I had worked out that my chances of having HIV were about 0.2%.
By 7 am, this had risen to about 98%.
At 8 am, I made a will. (You were in it. You got nearly everything.)
The rest of Sunday was a bit of a write-off.
On Monday morning, the form arrived from the International Adoption Agency re: the three baby girls I’d ordered from China. I thought I should fill it in, because if I had HIV, I would not be able to conceive a child myself, for reasons of ethics. One of the questions was, ‘Have you ever been tested for HIV?’ There was a choice of two boxes to tick – yes or no. Even in my state of slightly controlled hysteria, I could see that there was a definite right answer here. So I threw the paper aside, murmuring something about bureaucracy and a load of small-minded bastards because really, who hasn’t had a bit of a wild time in their youth? And all my dreams of motherhood were shattered.
I then waited for lunchtime to roll round, because after lunch, I was allowed to phone the GUM clinic for my results. Which I did. I then punched in my unique identification number, which made me feel special and warm inside, and listened to a recorded message saying this:
‘Your test results are as follows:
Chlamydia: negative. (That disembodied voice had a slight change in tone as it declared ‘negative’, like the one at train stations that says, ‘The next train will be calling at ….’)
Gonorrhea: negative.
Herpes: negative.
Syphilis: negative.
HIV: negative.
Thus I continued my day in a happy state, with all my dreams of motherhood restored.
And that is the end of the story of my week. But what I have been left wondering is whether this is how they break it to people that they are, in fact, HIV positive? Because if so, I don’t think it’s very caring.
I hope your week was as productive and happy as mine.
A xxxx
I was still laughing as I typed my reply: ‘Alice, you are a comedy genius. Please come and stay again soon. I think about you a lot. I miss you. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.’
From: AlicetheEighth@gmail.com
Sent: 11 July 2015 12:04
To: Bo@BoLuxton.co.uk
Subject: Re: Hello
I think about you a lot, too. And I miss you, too.
A xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: Bo@BoLuxton.co.uk
Sent: 11 July 2015, 12:14
To: AlicetheEighth@gmail.com
Subject: Re: Hello
Dear Sweet Alice,
I suppose now that you’re employed full-time, you won’t be able to come and stay again for a while. How much time off do you get? I was thinking that next time you come, we ought to climb a fell. Do you like climbing? I don’t mean real climbing, obviously, with ropes and equipment. I just mean a steep path up to a peak, from where you’ll see magnificent views of lakes and valleys. Really, there is nothing like it. I want you to experience it because I know you’ll love it.
Also, I used to love walking alone, but now it is just not the same without you. These days, I walk out alone and feel the space of you beside me and wish you could be here to fill it.
Love you,
Bxxx
From: AlicetheEighth@gmail.com
Sent: 11 July 2015, 12:43
To: Bo@BoLuxton.co.uk
Subject: Re: Hello
Dear Lovely Bo,
I have no idea whether I like climbing fells. I’ve never done it before. It sounds fucking energetic to me, and you know I am at heart just a slobbish, workshy youth who rarely walks beyond the front door if I can help it. But I am happy to give it a go. I’m sure if you are next to me, talking away about your books, then I will be happy whatever we’re doing. I would probably be happy lying beside you on a rubbish dump.
Love you,
A xxxxx
From: Bo@BoLuxton.co.uk
Sent: 11 July 2015, 12:52
To: AlicetheEighth@gmail.com
Subject: Re: Hello
A ru
bbish dump? Really?
From: AlicetheEigHth@gmail.com
Sent: 11 July 2015, 12:56
To: Bo@BoLuxton.co.uk
Subject: Re: Hello
A rubbish dump. Really.
That’s how much you mean to me, Mrs Luxton.
From: Bo@BoLuxton.co.uk
Sent: 11 July 2015, 13:06
To: AlicetheEighth@gmail.com
Subject: Re: Hello
Darling Alice, you make me smile and laugh more than anyone I’ve ever met.
I adore you. I wish you were here.
From: AlicetheEighth@gmail.com
Sent: 11 July 2015, 13:08
To: Bo@BoLuxton.co.uk
Subject: Re: Hello
I wish I was there, too.
Also: I adore you as well. Really. I love you to Empire State Building proportions. I do not know exactly what sort of love that is, but I do know it’s a lot.
From: Bo@BoLuxton.co.uk
Sent: 11 July 2015, 13:12
To: AlicetheEighth@gmail.com
Subject: Re: Hello
I agree. American Architecural Love is huge and hard to define, but it definitely exists, whatever it is.
Love you, adore you,
B xx
5
Sunday. Gus and the girls were still asleep. I kicked off the morning with a pint of coffee. All night, I’d lain awake, my mind flitting between work and Alice. There was nothing, really, for me to worry about as far as work was concerned. My seventh novel, The Poet’s Sister, had come out in April, and the older ones were selling steadily enough. But that last book hadn’t been published to a fanfare like my others had, and I had a niggling sense of myself now as a fading light in the book world. No one said as much, and my agent was as encouraging as always, but I knew. Younger, more exciting writers were emerging, and unless I could shed my skin and adapt, I’d be just another dead voice from the past.