Those Faraday Girls

by Monica McInerney

  ‘Tell me now.’

  ‘It was about eighteen months after Mum died. Miranda had her end-of-year school dance and she needed a gold scarf or a wrap, that kind of thing. She told Dad she remembered Mum wearing something like that and about five minutes later he came back into the room and handed the scarf over. Miranda was all kisses and hugs, as if Dad had presented her with a Tiffany necklace.’

  ‘But that’s so unfair. How come she got to have something of Mum’s and none of us did?’

  ‘She never wore it. When she came out the next night all dressed up in it, Dad freaked out. Said he was sorry but she couldn’t have it. It was Tessa’s, and he shouldn’t have given it to Miranda. And that was that. She handed it back and he never offered anything again.’

  ‘But he let us have the scrapbooks. And her recipe books. You use them all the time.’

  ‘I suppose because we helped her do them. They were different.’

  ‘But all the other things she started. The July Christmas. That was her idea, wasn’t it?’

  A pause. ‘She only had the idea for it the day before she died.’

  ‘I can’t believe I didn’t know any of this.’ Clementine turned to face Juliet. ‘What about all the other things we do in her memory? The birthday chair? The treasure hunts at Easter time? Did she ever do those with us?’

  ‘Those ones, yes,’ Juliet said. ‘You’ve seen the photos stuck in her scrapbook.’

  Juliet had a sudden memory of sitting in a living room with her mother – but was it here in Hobart or in London before they emigrated? – when Tessa announced she wanted a purple page in the latest scrapbook. She’d given Juliet, Miranda and Eliza scissors and magazines each, set a kitchen timer to ten minutes and shouted ‘Go!’. When the time was up, there were snippets of shiny paper all over the room.

  Miranda had won, helped by a cookery magazine. She’d cut out aubergines, grapes and plums. It made Juliet sad to think Clementine had none of those memories of their mother. The rushes of excitement, the spontaneous games, the fun. They were the bright moments. The dark side was the mood swings that often followed. Every high day had a low day, when Tessa wouldn’t want to play with them, when Leo would cook, when the bedroom door would be shut for most of the day. ‘Your mother’s just tired,’ Leo would say. ‘She needs a sleep-in.’ Protecting her, as he always did. Treating her like some precious object. In awe of her, almost. He still was now.

  ‘I should be able to remember more than I do,’ Clementine said. ‘I read a book that said you learn to mother the way you were mothered yourself. And I wasn’t mothered properly if I can’t remember it happening, was I? So does that mean I’ll be bad to Maggie? That I won’t know how to look after her properly?’

  ‘You do look after her properly. You’re a great mother. Everyone says you are.’

  ‘Everyone is wrong.’ She was not lowering her voice now. ‘I’m a terrible mother. She needs someone better than me.’

  ‘Oh, Clemmie. Of course you’re not a terrible mother. You’re a lovely mother. Go easy on yourself. It’s early days. She’s not even a year old yet. You’re tired. You’re still learning. You have to be patient. You can’t know everything all at once.’

  ‘This isn’t learning. Learning is facts. This is —’ She searched for the words. ‘This is like chaos theory and algebra and trigonometry and Latin and cross-country athletics and mental torture all rolled into one.’

  ‘All that? Well, you’re the family brainbox. You should be able to pick it up in a second.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can.’

  ‘Of course you can.’

  ‘I don’t like being like this, Juliet. Out of control. It’s not me.’

  ‘This is out of control?’ Juliet laughed and leaned across, kissing Clementine and then Maggie on the tops of their heads. ‘You’re doing wonders. It’s us who need to lift our game. Do you want a hot chocolate or something? It might help you sleep.’

  ‘Don’t go yet, Juliet, please. Tell me, when Mum would take us on those trips, where would we go?’

  Juliet sat down again. ‘Funny places. She drove us to the top of Mount Wellington one day. She told us we had to pretend it was the top of Mount Everest and that we were Edmund Hillary and his sherpa. We got right into the spirit of it. I remember coming back to the car after about an hour – Mum had got cold so she’d left us to it. She was sitting in the car listening to the radio, and Sadie was so excited, telling Mum about the other climbers who had perished on the way up, and how emotional it had been when she planted the flag on the summit and – I’ll never forget Sadie’s face – Mum said, “Sorry, darling, I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.” It had been her idea to do the make-believe and she’d forgotten. Poor Sadie was so upset.’

  ‘Tell me another story.’

  Juliet started to smile. ‘I remember Dad’s first boss was over for dinner once and he had a great turn of phrase, really Australian. It was all, “I was flat out like a lizard on a rock”, or “Fair suck of the sauce bottle”. Mum kept trying not to laugh, I know, and then she started getting up and down from the table every ten minutes or so, excusing herself, hinting that she had to go to the bathroom. But of course I knew she was going into her bedroom to write it all down. She liked collecting funny comments like that. In the end Dad said to her, “Tessa, would you just bring that diary of yours into the dining room once and for all, or the poor man will think you’ve got cystitis.”’

  ‘Dad said that?’

  ‘Mum was horrified.’

  ‘I didn’t even know Mum kept diaries. Has Dad still got them? Have you read them?’

  ‘No, of course not. You don’t read other people’s diaries.’

  Clementine was sitting upright. ‘You do in a situation like this. Juliet, can’t you see? If Mum always kept diaries, she probably wrote about what it was like to have us. About being a mother. I need to read them. When was the last time you saw them?’

  ‘In the hospital.’ She hesitated. ‘After she died, I had to collect her things. Her diary was there with her other books.’

  ‘Didn’t Dad do that?’

  ‘No, he couldn’t.’ She didn’t tell Clementine it was because he had locked himself in his bedroom for two days after Tessa died. It was fifteen-year-old Juliet who spoke to the hospital about her mother’s body, to the priest about the funeral.

  ‘So what did you do with the diary?’

  ‘Dad told me to leave it in their bedroom. In the wardrobe. When I put it away I saw there were loads of other ones. All the same, small blue notebooks. She must have been keeping them for years.’

  ‘I need to read them.’

  ‘You can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because Dad won’t let you. And I know because I asked him myself, a few years ago.’ It was the year she turned twenty-one. Her father’s expression had changed instantly.

  ‘No, Juliet,’ he had said. No discussion, no argument. He had walked out of the room. There’d been no further mention of the diaries.

  ‘But she’s our mother,’ Clementine said.

  ‘And she was his wife.’

  ‘I need to read them, Juliet.’

  ‘No problem. I’d say they’re in Dad’s bedroom somewhere. You go and help yourself while I distract him.’ Her eyes widened as Clementine stood up, a dozing Maggie still on her shoulder. ‘I’m joking. Of course you can’t read them. I realised afterwards that I couldn’t have, even if he had given them to me.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They’re diaries. They’re secret.’

  ‘But what if they are the only way you’ll ever find out what someone was like?’

  ‘Clementine, I know what you mean, but if Mum had meant for us to read them, she’d have said something to Dad, or left a note —’

  ‘Mum didn’t know she was about to die, though, did she?’ Maggie made a snuffling sound, wriggled under the cream blanket and then was quiet again. Clementine gently rubbed her bac
k for a few moments before she spoke. ‘I’m going to ask Dad. Not just about her diaries. About all her things.’

  ‘You’re a braver woman than me.’

  ‘Will you hold Maggie for me?’

  ‘You’re going to ask him now?’

  ‘It’s important.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe it is time. But if we’re going to ask Dad about Mum’s things, then I think all five of us should be there.’

  ‘He has to let us, Juliet. She was our mother as much as she was his wife. He’ll understand, won’t he?’

  Juliet hoped so.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Their mother had gone into hospital for a simple operation. ‘Women’s problems,’ was the phrase used.

  Juliet, fifteen at the time, happily took over the running of the household. It would only be for a week or so. As all their neighbours said, the rest would do Tessa a world of good. Running that house full of girls, the poor woman must be exhausted.

  Tessa was in a small ward, just three other women. Her daughters took turns visiting her, not wanting to crowd the room. Thirteen-year-old Miranda especially grew tired of the remarks that would greet any group visit.

  ‘Ah, the Von Trapp family are back again,’ one cheery hospital porter would always say when the five of them filed into the corridor.

  Their mother was due to come home on the fifteenth of April. None of them could wait, Juliet especially. The adventure of keeping the house running without Tessa had paled after a week. Even the routine of coming home from school, having a quick dinner and going into the hospital to visit her each night had started to lose its lustre. The hospital had asked if they could restrict the visits to two children at a time. It was Miranda’s fault, they all knew, though they hadn’t told their father. The sister in charge of their mother’s ward had caught Miranda in the storeroom, opening up boxes of bandages and turning eight-year-old Clementine into a little mummy. ‘We wanted to cheer our mother up,’ she said, unabashed, when the matron caught her. Clementine – or at least what was visible of Clementine – stood motionless beside her, her dark eyes peering through the white bandage. ‘Laughter is the best medicine, isn’t it?’ Miranda said.

  It was the thirteenth of April. Two days until she’d be home. Leo had hung a calendar on the wall by the rosters and had been marking off the days. He took a final sip of tea after his dinner, stood up and reached for his coat. ‘Visiting time. Come on, Juliet and Clementine, your turn.’

  ‘Freedom awaits, alleluia,’ Tessa said as they walked in. Despite being in hospital, she was fully made-up, her dark hair curled, her eyes lined, her lipstick red. ‘You must be as sick of coming to see me as I am sick of being in here.’ She had the ward to herself again. The other beds had been through several different occupants in the time she had been there. She was working on one of her scrapbooks.

  ‘You’re more of a magpie than a mother,’ Juliet said, as she took in the clippings, photographs, glue and scissors spread over the bed.

  ‘I like to have bright things around me. That’s why I had the five of you. Now, what about this for an idea,’ she said as they settled in the uncomfortable chairs around her bed. ‘Let’s start celebrating Christmas in July. As well as in December.’

  ‘Two Christmases?’ Clementine said. ‘Two lots of presents and trees and everything?’

  ‘Exactly. We could have our usual summer Christmas and then our own special Christmas in wintertime, like it would have been if we still lived in England.’ Tessa showed them an article about expatriate July Christmases in the English Woman’s Own to which she subscribed. It took three months to arrive in Australia and was always out of date season-wise as well as calendar-wise.

  ‘Let’s start this year. What do you think, Leo? Can you get us a tree? Of course you can get us a tree. You can get us thousands of trees. Clementine, will you be in charge of the decorations? Will you help me with the puddings, Juliet?’

  Leo said it sounded great. He said that to all of her suggestions.

  There was nothing unusual in the way they said goodbye to their mother an hour later, or in the way they had a light supper of hot chocolate and biscuits when they got home. There was nothing unusual in the way Juliet made sure Clementine’s school clothes were ready for the morning, or in the way Leo went out to his shed, already distracted with a new idea.

  It was 3.15 in the morning when Juliet heard the phone ring. She sat upright, heard her father get up to answer. ‘No,’ he said, too loudly. Over and over again. She got up and went into the hall. He was listening to whoever was on the other end of the phone, shaking his head, still repeating ‘No’ again and again. Juliet’s first thought was that something had happened to his brother Bill in England.

  He hung up. She saw in the dim light that his hand was shaking. Not just his hand, his whole body. The expression on his face frightened her as he turned around.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘It’s Tessa.’

  Not ‘Your mother’, the way he usually referred to her. ‘What did she want? What’s happened?’

  ‘She’s dead.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A nurse found her. They —’

  ‘No, Dad.’

  This was a nightmare. She had seen her mother that night. Been laughing with her. Talking about July Christmases. How could she be dead?

  Movement behind her. She turned. Miranda, yawning. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Wake the others, Juliet.’

  They all went into the hospital. There was no thought of leaving anyone behind. Clementine was still in her pyjamas. Juliet carried her. There was a doctor waiting for them. Yes, Tessa had recovered well from the hysterectomy. What none of them had expected was sudden heart failure caused by an undiagnosed blood clot. The doctor sympathised briskly, then talked at them, a constant stream of words from his too-full lips. There was no way anyone could have foreseen it, he said. We did everything we could. There was no comfort in his words. Juliet noticed he kept checking his watch as he spoke to them. He was waiting for his shift to be over.

  Word spread before dawn. Neighbours crowded in. There were whispered comments. It’s a scandal. Sue the doctor. Sue the hospital. In there for more than a week and they didn’t detect a blood clot? What kind of hospital is that? Their father shook his head to every suggestion. The local priest was there nearly every day. He was the one who kept saying, ‘Yes, it’s a tragic mistake, but going to the courts about it won’t bring her back.’

  More days, more visitors. The funeral. After days of sharp autumn sunshine, the weather turned cold and grey. There was a tracing of snow on the mountain. The wind was like ice. Juliet stood beside her father, holding a weeping Clementine close against her, Sadie, Eliza and Miranda sobbing next to them, all watching as their mother’s coffin was lowered into the wet, dark soil of the Cornelian Bay Cemetery.

  When Juliet thought back to the first days and weeks after her mother’s death, it felt like life seen through a frosted window. Everything was blurred, shapeless, unclear. She remembered crying for what felt like hours, every day. All of them did. Tears would turn to anger, bringing more tears. They came together, closed in around each other, trying to soothe one another, then one of them would snap under the strain and go out with friends, until it was too much being away. They would almost hurtle back into the house. It didn’t feel safe outside.

  Their father became a different person overnight. Juliet was more conscious of it than the others. As the eldest, she heard more from the whispered conversations of visiting friends. They stopped talking when the other girls came in. It was an honour of sorts that they considered her old enough to listen. The same phrase over and over again. ‘Poor Leo and those poor little girls…’

  Leo didn’t even try to hide his heartbreak. Juliet saw him grieving, heard the sobs that seemed to tear from inside him. There was no comforting him. There were rare moments when he returned to being their father, thinking of their loss more than his own. It didn’t
last long. The other person, the man who had loved Tessa, was stronger, more desperate. She didn’t like to admit it, but the depth of his sorrow shocked her. The helplessness of it. The desperation of it. Didn’t he know they needed him to be strong for them?

  Juliet gradually found herself in complete charge of the house, and the family. There were no rosters at that time. She did everything. In the early weeks there was no need to cook. Casseroles, stews, pies, buns, cakes and biscuits were regularly left at their front door. Leo couldn’t walk down the street without someone coming up and murmuring their sympathies. Once a week, for the first month, Saturday morning saw a small group of women at the door, carrying mops and dustcloths. They ignored the shocked looks on the girls’ faces and Leo’s protests. Before they quite realised what had happened, the six of them found themselves out taking a walk. On their return an hour later, the floors had been swept and washed, the cupboards tidied, the refrigerator organised and restocked, their beds made with fresh sheets, the clothesline at the end of the back garden a mass of linen billowing and snapping in the wind.

  It was Juliet who called a halt to it after the fourth week, explaining that it was time the family started looking after themselves again. Miranda complained bitterly. ‘Couldn’t you have told them not to do it any more after they’d done it once more, instead of before they started?’

  Juliet ignored her. She was ignoring Miranda as much as possible. She couldn’t understand how Miranda could still be spiky and full of attitude. Juliet herself felt as though her clothes had become too tight, pressing hard against every organ, especially her heart. It was hard to breathe, to talk, to smile, to get out of bed, to keep going when all she wanted to do was cry, howl, blame someone. She wanted to go to her mother and tell her how bad she was feeling, and that was the one thing that was impossible.

  Eliza shut herself away. Juliet noticed she was losing weight, but the truth was she didn’t really care if Eliza was eating properly or not.