by Claire Dyer
But in the late seventies she must have changed tack, because then there came three more marriages: the first to Douglas who sold cars at his family’s dealership and who was portly and florid and who died of a heart attack five years later; the second was to Patrick, an accountant who slipped and fell on an icy pavement one January evening on his way home from work, knocking his head on an iron foot scraper and dying from his injuries three days later; and the third was to a small, bespectacled vet called Aubrey who had died of peritonitis after a burst appendix a mere six weeks after the wedding.
Whether Belle had loved any of these men, Boyd never knew. But his mother dutifully set up home with each one, only to move on to the next, until Aubrey that was. And, as each left the majority of his estate to Belle, by the time Aubrey died (Boyd had often had Lady Bracknell’s voice in his head, extolling the difference between being unfortunate and being careless in his mother’s track record with husbands) Belle had amassed some wealth, a vet’s practice in a substantial Victorian house in another part of West London, which she quickly closed down, converting the house back to its former glory – and Boyd.
And now Boyd had persuaded her to sell the house and move into a care home in the Surrey hills where she sat jealously guarding what was left to her: her photographs, her money and her disappointments. And, because he’d broken his promise to her and had tried, once, to find his father, she refused to make things any easier for him. And so they wait, on opposite sides of the fence, glaring at each other over the metaphorical barbed wire of her estate. It is a shame that it should be like this, and is another of Boyd’s regrets.
However, it’s Sunday and Boyd is driving through the early autumn lanes to see her. Around him the trees are on the cusp, the sun is huge and low, the fields seem to glisten. There is, he notices, a lot of roadkill today: rabbits, a badger, pheasants – a tapestry of guts and fur and feathers. Each time he passes the remains of one, his heart contracts a fraction and he daren’t look in the rear-view mirror.
The Lexus is purring, the radio’s on and he’s thinking of the house in Albert Terrace and of Vita in her studio, her red glasses, her long, thick plait hanging down her back and he’s thinking of Honey in the office, gamely manning the phones and dealing with the viewings. It’s more difficult for him to get away during the week and although it’s hard to leave Honey on a Sunday, he tries to visit his mother once a month at least; it’s the least he can do.
He pulls up outside. The house had once belonged to a famous Victorian female novelist and it intrigues Boyd, when he steps through the front door, to think that he’s walking on tiles where she once stood.
He rings the bell and gets buzzed in. He says hello to a passing nurse and signs the visitors’ book. He is, as every time, stupidly nervous.
‘Hello, Mum,’ he says as he pulls up a chair next to her.
She’s sitting in her chair as if it’s a throne. She glances in his direction then looks back at the TV screen where some implausibly bendy gymnast is doing a floor routine.
‘How are you?’ he asks. It’s very hot in the lounge and, despite the best efforts of the staff and the air fresheners attached to the walls, which puff out bursts of fragrance at regular intervals, the room smells of cooked cabbage and wee.
This time she looks at him. ‘Not bad, thank you,’ she replies.
He notices a nurse signalling to him from the doorway and so when his mother returns her attention to the screen, Boyd unpacks himself from the chair and goes over to the door.
‘Yes?’ he asks.
The nurse is young and sweetly beautiful; he wonders briefly how old she might be.
‘We just wanted to let you know how she is,’ she says in somewhat halting English.
Boyd has not seen her before but guesses she’s from Poland or somewhere in that direction. One of the other nurses, one who knows him, must have pointed out to her who he is and who he’s here to see.
‘Oh, thank you.’ There is a pause, so Boyd adds, ‘And so, how is she?’
‘She is very well; blood pressure, everything like that, all good and she is eating well, as always,’ the nurse says.
Boyd is disappointed that he’s disappointed by this news. Somehow, some part of him had wished for a different, graver update.
He’s always wanted to be a good man, to live up to his own idea of himself. He never wanted his mother’s disappointments to colour the way he sees the world. He’s not always managed it of course, but in the way he loves – or rather loved – Vita, and the way he loves Honey he hopes he is doing his best. If anyone was to give out medals for good intentions, Boyd would certainly be on the podium.
‘But,’ the nurse is saying, ‘she has been complaining of a pain in her back this last week so we are, how you say, keeping our eyes peeled onto it.’
‘OK, thank you,’ he says, wanting to reach out a hand and rest it on the nurse’s arm in a show of solidarity but knowing he shouldn’t do this, that it is not allowed or appropriate. ‘I should,’ he adds, ‘get back, you know, to sit with her. I can’t stay for long.’
‘Ah,’ the nurse says, smiling kindly at him, ‘yes, she says you are a very busy man with your own house business, yes?’
‘An estate agency, yes, but we rarely talk about it, she and I. I’ve always had the impression she doesn’t quite approve of it.’
‘I think,’ the nurse says, making ready to turn and leave, ‘she is very proud of you actually.’ She says the word ‘actually’ as though it’s spelt acturarly.
This information unsettles Boyd as he walks back to where his mother is still watching the gymnastics. He wants to say something soothing and kind but when he says, ‘Mum, the nurse tells me you’ve got backache,’ it comes out sharper than he’d intended.
‘It’s nothing,’ she murmurs, picking at the hem of her cardigan with a painted fingernail.
For as long as Boyd can remember his mother has always had perfectly manicured hands.
She is, of course, old and frail now, her once glorious hair is grey and wispy and she seems to get smaller and smaller each time he goes to visit her. She does, however, still take pride in her clothes which are always smart and colour co-ordinated and she always wears some jewellery; after all, she has plenty. He has no idea which of the husbands’ wedding rings she wears these days, although something tells him it’s Malcolm’s. He was the only one of them she’d ever said she really loved.
Boyd’s childhood hadn’t lacked material things, not after she married Douglas anyway. Before that they’d had to be frugal and his mother had worked tirelessly at different jobs in shops and offices to make ends meet and he’d had his odd jobs and washed neighbours’ cars. He likes to think she was being heroic, sacrificing her happiness for his, but now feels that he knows her better than this, that her motives weren’t always altruistic. He was always well-dressed, mostly well-fed, there was heat and light in whichever flat they were living, but he felt he’d missed out on something significant: that type of connection a son should feel for his mother or that a mother should feel for her son. He’d had the sneaky feeling that she’d resented his presence in her life and would have much preferred it if he hadn’t been born at all. He can never remember dancing with her or hearing her sing along to a song on the radio like the mothers in movies sometimes did.
At least, he thinks, as the tea trolley gets wheeled into the room and the gymnastics moves seamlessly to a murder mystery on TV – Miss Marple by the look of things – he has Honey now. Her presence in his life is like a fresh start; she helps to keep the ghosts at bay.
He’s never been quite sure that his mother understood what happened between him and Vita, how sad and unnecessary it all was, how much it shames him to think of how he behaved but, as she stirs sugar into her cup of tea she says, ‘So tell me, Boyd. Are the three of you still living together in that house of yours? You, Vita and that girl?’
She says the word ‘that’ as though she’s spitting it out.
&n
bsp; ‘How do you know about that?’ he replies. He hasn’t told her because he believes she’d judge him for messing up his finances. He hadn’t wanted her censure on top of his own.
‘Vita visits me now and again.’ There is a look of veiled triumph on his mother’s face.
‘Does she?’
‘Well, why wouldn’t she? I’m still her mother-in-law after all.’
‘And she told you I’d moved back in,’ he pauses, ‘with Honey?’
‘Of course. Something about you needing to save money. You never were very good with money, were you Boyd?’
She takes a sip of tea. A drop of it spills down her chin but she doesn’t notice.
He doesn’t reply to her question but says instead, ‘Well, it’s all going really nicely thank you. Vita’s being wonderful about it and Honey is so lovely that you can’t help but love her. I wish …’
His mother turns her flinty gaze on him. ‘You wish what?’
‘I wish you’d agree to meet her. She’d love to meet you.’
‘I’d like to say, over my dead body,’ his mother says, ‘but that may turn out to be too prophetic.’ She smiles wryly and hands him her cup. ‘Put this on the table for me will you?’
The sound is low on the TV but Boyd can still hear the tinny sound of murder mystery music and the rumble of voices both from it and from the other residents and visitors dotted around the room. He dislikes this lack of privacy but thinks he’d be even more uncomfortable if it were just him and his mother in her room.
‘Vita’s never got over it, you know,’ she says now, out of nowhere.
‘Over what?’ He taps his spoon on his saucer for lack of anything else to do.
‘Over you and what happened.’
‘And you know this how? Has she said anything?’
‘Of course not, Vita has far too much class for anything like that.’
It’s odd, Boyd thinks, that his mother should sing Vita’s praises now. In the early days his new wife could do nothing right, and so it’s even odder to think that she would now willingly come and visit Belle and not tell Boyd about it either. How easy it is, he thinks, to think you know someone when you don’t, not really.
‘How often does she come?’ he asks his mother.
‘Now and again,’ she says. ‘Not often. But she did come recently, or she must have done or I wouldn’t have known about your new …’ this time it’s she who pauses, ‘… living arrangement.’ She says this as though it’s something squalid.
‘It’s only temporary Mum, until I get back on my feet and pay my sodding tax bill.’
The look of triumph hasn’t yet left his mother’s face; how he wishes for a different parent at times like these. With her, life is so fucking complex, as though everything is some sort of eternal game of one-upmanship.
This time both she and he turn their faces to watch TV and the minutes tick by and eventually he looks down at the tepid half-inch of tea in the bottom of his cup and says, ‘Ah well, Mum. I guess I’d better be going.’
And she says, ‘That’s fine. Thank you for visiting.’
But he knows she doesn’t mean it.
On the way back out to the car he feels like he could cry and, driving through the small lanes back out to the A31, it seems to Boyd that he’s been in the care home for weeks and yet the sky is the same shade of blue and the leaves on the trees are the same colour as when he got there. He’s been with his mother for less than an hour but feels as though he’s aged ten years. He thinks, how come our parents do this to us? They reduce us to the dependents we once were, they remind us at all times of how much we owe them and how we can never fully repay them.
He wants to talk to Honey and so dials the office number. She will, he knows, be packing up for the day; he hopes she’s had an easy time of it. He pulls over and switches from hands-free because he wants to connect with her via something tangible. The phone rings four times and then she picks up. He can imagine the tilt of her head, the soft skin of her neck.
‘Hi, it’s me,’ he says before she has the chance to say the usual, ‘Good afternoon, Harrison’s Residential, how may I help you?’
‘How did it go?’ she asks.
‘Pretty awful to tell you the truth.’
‘Still, it’s done, eh?’
‘Yes, it is, for now. There’s always next time and the time after that though.’ He tries to laugh it off, but is filled with a sudden and inexplicable despair. ‘How have you got on today?’ he asks in an effort to chase it away.
‘Oh, OK. It’s been quite quiet actually. I’m just starting to pack up. What do you fancy doing this evening?’
‘I’m not sure.’
There is a pause and a muffling of her voice and he can hear the office door open and Honey say to whoever has just walked in, ‘Hello. I’ll be with you in a minute.’ And then she comes back on the line and says, ‘I’d better go. Look, if Vita’s going out tonight, perhaps we can stay in. Get a takeaway?’
‘Sounds like heaven,’ he replies. ‘Leave it with me. I’ll see you back at home, OK?’
He doesn’t think it strange that he should refer to Vita’s house as home, but maybe on another day, in another place, he may have done.
Next he dials Vita’s mobile.
‘Mmmm,’ she says as she picks up.
‘You painting?’ he asks.
‘Yes. How do you know?’
‘You always answer the phone like that when you’re painting.’
‘Like what?’
‘You say, “Mmmm” as if whoever it is ringing is a total inconvenience.’
‘Well it is. You are.’
She laughs her throaty laugh as she says this, the sound echoes as it always does when she’s in the studio and Boyd is momentarily unsure whether he should speak next or whether she’s going to say anything more. There is a second’s silence and so he says, ‘How’s it going?’
‘What?’
‘The painting.’
‘Oh, it’s crap. I can’t get the colour of the pesky dog’s coat right. These fucking Cockapoos, no two are ever the bloody same. Now give me a nice traditional Golden Retriever, I know where I am with those.’
In the field next to the lay-by where Boyd is parked are two horses; he watches as one saunters over to the other. The horse is graceful and muscular and rests his huge head on the flank of the other. Then, as if someone’s fired a starting pistol, they spring apart and start to run, manes streaming out behind them.
‘Why do you do it?’ he asks Vita.
‘What, paint stupid animals?’ she says.
‘Yes.’
‘For the money. Why do you think?’
The horses have stopped running and in the distance a flock of birds banks in tight formation. Boyd watches them mesmerised.
‘You still there?’ Vita asks.
‘Yes, sorry. Look, I know it’s a job,’ he says, ‘but why don’t you go back to doing portraits? Weren’t they always your first love?’
‘No,’ Vita says, ‘you were.’
‘Pardon?’ he says.
‘Only joking, Boyd.’ She hesitates before adding, ‘You’re right though, I should think about changing. I fucking hate people’s pets. Anyway, you didn’t call to talk about my job did you? What did you want?’
Boyd has, over the years, got used to Vita’s total lack of charm on the phone and in some ways it’s refreshing to talk to her like this. It’s normal and natural and comforting. He wants to ask her why she still visits his mother, what they talk about, how often she goes. But he holds back from doing so. The birds have disappeared from view; the horses are quietly eating, their long necks stretching down to the grass. Instead he says, ‘I’m just on my way back from seeing Mum and was wondering if you know your plans for this evening yet?’
‘Why?’
He can hear her tapping her paintbrush on the side of her glasses. He used to love watching her do this when they first met.
‘Honey and I were thinking of
staying in, getting a takeaway.’ There is silence at the other end of the line, the tapping sound has stopped. ‘You could join us if you wish.’
As soon as the words are out of his mouth he regrets them. It isn’t what he wants and he guesses it isn’t what Honey would want either.
‘I’m going out, but thanks for asking,’ she replies.
‘Anywhere nice?’
‘I hope so. Look, I’d better get on. See you later Boyd.’
‘Yes, see you.’
She hangs up and he puts his phone back down on the seat next to him, shifts position and starts the engine. Of course he didn’t ask her about her visits to his mother and probably never will. One of the horses looks up and stares at him. He pulls out of the lay-by and heads back to Farnham.
Vita
After I hang up, I stare at the screen for a long moment. There is a tightness in my chest I don’t recognise.
‘Shit,’ I say, putting the phone down on the table to the side of the easel. Did I really say, ‘No, you were,’ when Boyd asked me whether portraits had always been my first love?
I place the phone such that it’s dead square with the corner of the table; there’s something pleasing in the symmetry of this.
I think of Belle and the care home’s unique scent: the warm, slightly sweet odour that seems to hang to my clothes after I leave. I think of Belle and her disappointments, and then, naturally, of my own.
Although I hate the movie and particularly despise René Zellweger’s portrayal of the simpering and ditzy Bridget, the line about dying alone and being eaten by Alsatians often ricochets around my head. I don’t want to fear ending up alone, but I guess it’s natural. I don’t want to wonder about my motives for doing what I’m doing with Colin either.