The Not So Perfect Mother

by Kerry Fisher

  ‘To Mother, Sorry I can’t be with you but I will be thinking of you across the miles. Read the poem on P.31. Missing you! Love, Dominic. 15 August 1977.’

  The year I was born. I wondered how long afterwards he’d been killed in the car crash. I glanced at the photo of him on the mantelpiece, trapped forever in his twenties, suntanned and smiling, posing next to a kangaroo. I shook my head to chase away the thought of Harley or Bronte dying before me and turned my attention back to the book.

  It fell open naturally at page 31. I smiled as I read it, hearing the prof’s voice in my head as she read out Jenny Joseph’s poem, ‘Warning’, about becoming an old woman in purple and blowing her cash on booze and fancy sandals. I could almost hear her giggle, a light bird-like sound. I missed her.

  I shut the book quickly as Mr Harrison’s footsteps echoed on the parquet floor in the hall. I should have been gathering up the books I wanted. I hadn’t even looked to see if there was anything to help the children. Harley had said something about studying First World War poets, bursting in at odd moments with ‘If I should die, think only this of me’. I looked along the bottom shelf for her anthology of Rupert Brooke’s poems. And Shakespeare. They would definitely study Shakespeare. I started pulling out the tragedies, then the comedies, feeling a flutter of panic. Too much choice. I didn’t want to look greedy. But I couldn’t stand the idea of these beautiful books being packed into cardboard boxes and left to rot in some spidery attic.

  I turned round as Mr Harrison came in. ‘Sorry, I haven’t quite finished yet. I won’t be a sec. Are you in a hurry?’

  ‘No, not at all. The professor left this for you.’ He held out an A4 envelope.

  ‘For me?’ I took it. ‘Amaia Etxeleku. To be opened at the end of the first term at Stirling Hall’ was written on the front in her old lady’s writing, neat, flowery letters.

  ‘Where did you find this?’ Something in me was backing away. The whole thing of people speaking from the dead freaked me out.

  ‘It was in her safe.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes. She sent a copy to the office a few days before she died. She was quite clear that you were to have the version from the safe.’ Mr Harrison had that blank gaze back again, very ‘see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’. I wondered how many times he had quietly sorted out stuff left to mistresses without the wife ever knowing.

  ‘Do you know what’s in it?’

  ‘As the executor of her will, I have been party to all of Professor Stainton’s paperwork whilst dealing with probate.’ He wasn’t going to give me any clues.

  I tipped the envelope up and felt something heavier than a letter slide to the other end.

  My fingers were all clumsy, ripping the envelope as I opened it. A pile of photos, some black and white, some coloured, fell to the floor. I knelt down to gather them up. The prof with Dominic as a baby in one of those huge Silver Cross prams. Dominic and a gorgeous dark-haired girl standing in front of, was that Big Ben? She looked foreign, but there was a London bus in the background. The same couple dancing, Dominic looking very handsome in a DJ. The woman was in a bright red halter-necked maxi dress, a bit like the one Mum had when I was little.

  My eyes were drawn to her dangly gold and jade earrings. They were very familiar. That was Mum.

  ‘What’s going on? That’s my mother’s photo in there. With the professor’s son.’

  ‘Why don’t you sit down and read the letter? It will explain everything. Would you like me to sit with you? Or would you rather read it on your own? I really don’t mind.’

  ‘I think I want to be on my own.’ I couldn’t take my eyes off the photo of them dancing. They fitted together, as though they had melted into each other somehow, the chemistry between them shimmering in the stiff little Polaroid picture.

  Mr Harrison tucked a pen into his inside pocket and nodded towards the car. ‘I’ll wait outside for you.’

  I scrabbled at the photos on the floor, all fingers and thumbs. I piled them onto the prof’s little side table, gently putting her glasses to one side, then sat down in her armchair. I’d never sat in it before. It felt wrong. But not as wrong as this flipping letter turning up from the prof several months after she’d died. I flicked through the photos until I found one of Mum, dark hair swirled up in a lovely chignon like a 1950s film star. I propped it on the side. I pulled out the letter, surprised to see that it was several sheets long. Basildon Bond. Of course.

  Dear Amaia,

  This will no doubt come as a shock to you, but when you have had time to process all the information, I do hope that you will have a clearer understanding of the events leading up to this letter. I must endeavour to be as clear as possible as it is not my intention to leave you with unanswered questions, however painful you may find the truth. For this purpose, I must start from the beginning.

  My son, Dominic, met your mother, Josune, when she worked as a housekeeper with the Watson family before you were born. He had been at Charterhouse School with their son, Robert, and they were very good friends. To cut a long story short, Dominic fell in love with your mother. I think she was quite cool with him at first – she was three years older than Dominic and such a proud person. She would never let anyone pay for anything, even though she was clearly not well off. Dominic persisted with her. He was twenty-one and in his last year at Cambridge. He started to come home every weekend, staying in with Josune to babysit Robert’s younger brothers instead of going out with his friends. He was besotted by her.

  When he graduated in economics and found a job working in a bank up in London, I suppose we thought that Dominic would meet a City girl and forget all about Josune. Instead, I think it was after two years (it is all so long ago now), when he’d been promoted at the bank, he told us he wanted to marry your mother. I have to be truthful. I loved your mother and although she was not what I expected when I had imagined a daughter-in-law, I could see how happy they were. Her heart was a good one. I greatly admired her. She was such a capable woman. She’d made her way to England and forged a life for herself.

  I feel ashamed to write this next piece knowing it will hurt you. I am asking an awful lot of you, but you must try to take into account that this all happened nearly four decades ago and times were different then. Herbert, my husband, thought Dominic could do better. He liked Josune but he was always a little xenophobic. He was a good man but his horizons were limited. He’d been a bank manager for years. Everyone he knew, everyone we socialised with, was English, white and middle class He’d had almost no need to confront any variation on that in the real world. Your mother was so tactile, so enthusiastic and gregarious, I think he was almost scared of her. He used to stand behind the armchair in the drawing room whenever Josune came in until he was absolutely sure she wasn’t going to try to kiss him.

  Anyway, through his contacts, he arranged a transfer for Dominic to the Commonwealth Bank in Sydney, Australia. Dominic was furious and refused to go – Australia was a world away, a place where people emigrated and only saw their families again once or twice before they died. People didn’t have ‘gap years’ then. It was like being sent to the moon. But Herbert argued, threatened and cajoled until he finally persuaded Dominic to take a contract for a year. Herbert agreed that if he still wanted to marry Josune when he came home, then he would do so with our blessing.

  I don’t need to tell you that Josune was devastated. She was smart. Whatever we said about them being too young or Dominic needing to get some experience or see a bit of the world, she knew that we, or rather Herbert (and I was too weak to stand up to him), disapproved of her and that he hoped that distance would do anything other than make the heart grow fonder. She felt betrayed by Dominic for not resisting us. She refused to go to the airport to see him off, though I know she wrote to him every week once he was there because her letters were returned to us with his belongings. Dominic, for his part never stopped mentioning Josune in his letters, always asking if we’d seen her. She wouldn�
�t communicate with us at all. We’d humiliated her and she never forgave us.

  I rubbed my eyes. Mum had had to fight for everything in her life. Maybe that’s why she’d died young – nothing left to fight the biggest battle of all, against cancer. I wished she was there to make sense of all this for me. It sounded like her not to speak to them. I could imagine her: ‘They think I am not good enough for the son, so they are not good enough for me. So I don’t speak with them. It is a simple thing.’ She was very black and white like that. It was so her, it almost made me smile. I took a deep breath and turned to the next page.

  He’d only been there five months when we got a call to say he’d been killed in a car crash, a completely banal accident – someone misjudged their overtaking and Dominic was the casualty. At eleven o’clock at night on 28 August 1977 his boss at the bank called us. I remember that we talked over each other because of the time delay on the telephone. I can’t think about it now, more than thirty-six years later, without imagining those words travelling from the other side of the world suspended in time, my life still the same for a split second before they reached me.

  The writing was starting to get larger and untidier as though the effort to get it all on paper was sucking the life out of the poor old prof. My thoughts were all over the place. I looked out to Mr Harrison’s Jag. He was sitting in the front seat, reading The Daily Telegraph, flicking through the pages as all the important bits in my life were fed into a blender. The writing changed from black ink to blue, as though the prof had returned to it after some time.

  I went to see your mother the next day. My recollection of our meeting might be unfair, coloured as it was with my own indescribable feelings. All I can remember is her pointing at me. She was wearing bright red nail varnish, which never seemed to chip, however much housework she did. She just kept saying over and over again, ‘Tiene usted la culpa, tiene usted la culpa. This is your fault. You. You. Your fault.’ And howling, howling like something in the most terrible pain. It had a feral sound to it. Your mother was very petite, very slender, but when she stood up and put her hands on her hips, I saw that she was pregnant. I knew, of course, I knew the baby was Dominic’s but grief made me clumsy and I made the mistake of asking whether it was his, searching as I was for some solace, some tiny glimmer of anything other than total despair on which to throw myself. I was no match for your mother. She forced me out of the door.

  You have said you don’t know who your father is. Since you came to work for me any doubts I harboured have long since dissipated. Dominic is there in the way you arch your left eyebrow when you are puzzled. The way you curl your hair around your index finger when you are reading. Your acute observations of human nature. Your love of language, the sound of words. I am asking myself as I write this whether it is fair to burden you with this knowledge now, when those who can help you understand it are no longer around – me, your mother, Dominic, even Herbert. How I wish Dominic had known you. I know he would have been immensely, immeasurably proud of the wonderful young woman you are and of course, of your children.

  I had a dad. I had a dad. That blank on the birth certificate was Dominic Stainton. I had a dad with an English surname. Stainton. I rolled it round my tongue like a cherry stone. Amaia Stainton. Frightfully proper. I was bowled over by the fact that I was made out of love, not

  violence, as Mum’s tight-lipped silence had led me to believe.

  I picked up the photo of him in the tux and studied his face. I felt disloyal to Mum, but I wanted to see myself there. I stared at every feature. Perhaps the mouth, those full lips. Mum’s lips were thinner, less bow-shaped. It was difficult to judge. He did look a lot like Bronte, those wide-spaced eyes with thick lashes. That was my dad there, in that photo, concrete and real, not just the rock star/James Bond of my imagination. I read on, forcing myself not to skip lines or to turn to the last page.

  I am sure you will ask yourself why, why on God’s earth, I didn’t say something before I died? Of course I wanted to. I promised myself that once I knew you a bit better and I felt that you trusted me, I would. As with all these things, the perfect moment hasn’t yet presented itself and I think that it never will. I am dying, my heart is slowly giving out and I don’t have the energy for fighting. So, you can say, I lack courage. But my fear is that having found you, you might also reject me once you know the full story.

  Her writing, neat and straight at the top of the page, was veering down in sloping lines. I couldn’t bear to think what a strain it must have put on her to write this, dredging up all those horrible feelings from long ago.

  After your mother threw me out, I tried, I don’t know how many times, to contact her. She refused to see me, to accept my calls. Any letters were returned unopened. I wanted to offer her money, the gatehouse in the garden, Lord knows, I wanted to look after her. But she was so vehement in her fury, her hatred. I couldn’t get through to her.

  The Watsons were very fond of your mother and kept her on after you were born. Mrs Watson had three sons and I think she was quite pleased to have a little girl to spoil after all this time. She never was the sort to care much what other people thought, even though children out of wedlock were still very frowned upon in the seventies. I recognise how selfish this must sound, but it hurt me terribly that Mrs Watson was able to see you every day while I was banished. Josune lived with the Watsons for some years, I no longer recall how many, before she got the council flat over by the Common. Once you started school in Queen’s Drive, I used to time my walking the dog with playtime, so I could watch you through the railings. Nowadays I would probably be arrested.

  I bumped into your mother in town when you were about eight, a gorgeous little thing, shiny, bright eyes, full of curiosity. Your mother rushed you away from me as though I carried some terrible contagious disease. I think that last incident finally eradicated any fight I had left. I knew she would never forgive me.

  I trawled through my memory but couldn’t remember that meeting. Mum had never done forgiveness well. I was trying to make the shift from Professor Stainton, the elegant old lady I cleaned for, to Rose, my grandmother. Frustration was rushing around in all directions. My mother for being so bloody stubborn. Herbert for packing Dominic off to Australia. Rose for, I don’t know, not spitting out the truth over the Earl Grey.

  I glimpsed you a few times in town as you were growing up. I kept distant tabs on you over the years. I knew you had moved to the Walldon Estate because I found you in the phone book. I made a point of coming to your checkout when you worked at Tesco. Herbert was very against it. He thought that it was all ‘water under the bridge’. He was probably right but I couldn’t let it go. I think perhaps a mother feels the death of a child more keenly than a father. As long as I saw you, a tiny fragment of Dominic was still available to me.

  When I saw your mother’s death in the Surrey Mirror, I felt it nearly as much as when Dominic died. She was still so young, just sixty. I wanted to be with you afterwards, to comfort you. I was in slightly better health then. I couldn’t drive any more but when Herbert went off to play golf, I used to get the bus into town, then out to the Walldon Estate. I spent hours walking up and down, hanging about outside your house, trying to gather the courage to present myself at your door. I never did. Your mother and I had hurt each other enough. It seemed almost foolish to invite any more pain.

  I couldn’t imagine frail little Rose coping with the bus journey, getting off at the estate, picking her way through the dog shit, ignoring the shouts from the louts. She always wore a string of real pearls. Jesus, she was lucky not to be mugged. Why had I never noticed her?

  Then one day, not long after Herbert had died, I was in the post office and I saw the card advertising your services as a cleaner in the window. The name was Etxeleku. It had to be you. Excitement made my hands so uncooperative I had to ask the girl behind the till to write the number down for me.

  I remembered Rose calling me. I snatched her hand off because she offered me
£15 an hour – ‘I’m prepared to pay over the odds, because I can’t clean in between.’ It was my cushiest job, six hours on a Tuesday and Thursday. She’d ask me to make a pot of Earl Grey, then invite me to sit down with her. I could never relax properly because I should have been hoovering instead of scoffing her Clotted Cream Thins which arrived every so often in a Fortnum & Mason delivery. She could be quite nosey for an old bird who looked like a strong wind might snap her in two. ‘So your young man, this Colin, what does he do?’ ‘Do you keep some money of your own, dear?’ ‘Did your mother ever talk about your father?’

  I leaned back in her armchair. She could have told me. There were so many openings in our conversations. I thumped the armrest. Dust puffed up. The place needed a good clean. I supposed that the person who bought the house would chuck out all her lovely old furniture. Well, lovely to me. A lot of it was a bit shabby, but cosy and well-weathered, rather than crap quality.

  I loved it when you came to work for me. You really helped me through that period of early widowhood. I found it incredibly comforting to have my ‘other’ family close. In particular, I looked forward to the school holidays when Bronte and Harley came with you. I’d pushed away all that maternal love, channelled it instead into my career. Having you and your children around seemed to awaken something in me – I was old but young again. Through Harley and Bronte I felt I was regaining a little of the time I lost when you were growing up. In Harley, I could see so much of Dominic, similar mannerisms, even a way of expressing himself. And of course, Bronte resembles him in appearance.