Growing Up for Beginners

by Claire Calman

  ‘Voicemail. Use my phone if you like. Then she won’t know it’s you.’

  ‘Isn’t that a bit sneaky?’

  Madeleine shrugged. ‘Do you want to speak to her or not?’

  Madeleine selected her sister’s number then handed over her phone.

  ‘Mads? Hi. Aren’t you still at Mum’s?’

  ‘Olivia? It’s me.’ Cecilia’s voice sounded false and bright. ‘Mummy,’ she added.

  ‘Oh. Why are you on Mads’s phone?’

  ‘I just borrowed it for a minute to – to—’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Well, nothing special, really. I was wondering if you might be joining us for brunch, that’s all.’

  ‘It’s nearly noon. Bit late for brunch.’

  ‘Well, lunch then. Or come for coffee.’ Now that she had her on the phone at last, she was suddenly nervous, eager to backtrack. ‘Not if you’re too busy, of course.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll think about it.’

  ‘It would be nice to see you.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘You’ll try then?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘You’ll come?’

  ‘Sure. Why not?’ Olivia’s voice sounded flat and colourless, as if all expression had been steam-rollered out of it. The call disconnected without Olivia’s saying goodbye.

  Maddy took back her phone and went to put on her coat.

  ‘You’re not leaving?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m seeing friends down in Peckham for lunch and it takes ages to get there.’

  ‘But Olivia said she’s coming over soon.’

  ‘So? It’s not as if I won’t see her later anyway.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Oh, Mum.’ Madeleine laughed. ‘She won’t bite you. Don’t be such a noodle!’

  ‘No, of course not.’ Cecilia forced a small laugh. ‘It’s probably nothing anyway.’

  Cecilia made an effort to tidy up as she knew her elder daughter found the mess irritating. She scooped up a teetering stack of paperwork – unfiled bills, receipts, fliers, etc. – from the old leather armchair and walked around the ground floor with it, looking for a new home. Eventually, she transferred it to another chair, but one that was tucked into a corner so was less noticeable. She loaded the dirty plates and mugs into the dishwasher and wiped the crumbs from the kitchen table into her cupped palm rather than straight onto the floor as she usually would. As an additional gesture, she inspected the interior of the fridge for elderly inhabitants and removed a crusty tub of taramasalata and deposited it in the bin. She refilled the kettle and rinsed out the coffee pot, feeling nervous yet excited, almost as if she were going on a date.

  The doorbell rang – a long, insistent ring: not a ring to be ignored. Not an Olivia-ish ring. Please, not God-Squadders wanting to save her soul again. All that time and energy wasted on proselytising when they could be helping the poor, growing vegetables or knitting blankets for refugees… it was such a waste. A little unnerved, she put the chain on and opened the door a couple of inches. It was Olivia, after all. She breathed out, relieved.

  ‘Oh, it is you. Did you forget your key? Hang on, the chain’s on.’

  She let off the chain and Olivia swept in past her – no hello, no how are you doodling, Ma? No kiss.

  ‘It’s lovely to see you,’ Cecilia began. ‘I’ve missed you—’

  ‘See, what I want to know is, when exactly were you planning to tell me who my father really is? On your deathbed? Because many people might argue that it’s my right to know who the fuck I am.’ Olivia stood there, tall and imposing, eyes bright with rage. She tugged off her woolly hat and her red hair flamed out loose and wild, crackling with static.

  ‘But when you found the letters, you dashed off in such a hurry. And then I called you, but you—’

  ‘I wasn’t in the mood to listen to any more lies. Can you blame me?’ She pulled out the cream envelope from her bag and flung it onto the kitchen table. The letter. His last letter.

  ‘You did have it then.’

  ‘Yup.’ She crossed her arms. ‘What do the initials stand for? DH. David? Donald? Derek?’

  Cecilia subsided into a chair and pulled the envelope towards her.

  ‘Dear Heart.’

  ‘He is the one, isn’t he?’ Olivia remained standing but leaned over to tap the frank mark with her finger. The date, though faded, was still decipherable. Cecilia was well into her pregnancy with Olivia by then.

  Cecilia nodded. ‘I’m sorry, I really am. You know I wasn’t close to my own father—’

  ‘Why does everything have to be about you? Can’t you, for once in your life, just think of someone else for a change? How is that even remotely the same thing? So you weren’t close! So what? He was in the house, you grew up with him, he was there every day, he kissed you good night. I never had that with my real father.’ She stopped. ‘I’m not criticising Dad – Phil. This is a completely separate thing.’

  ‘You read it?’ Cecilia stroked the writing on the envelope with a fingertip.

  ‘I think I was entitled to, under the circumstances. Don’t you?’

  Another nod.

  ‘That is not a letter written after a casual fling.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The man was clearly off his head over losing you.’

  ‘But I didn’t receive this until—’

  ‘Did you love him, too?’

  ‘Yes.’ Cecilia looked up at her daughter. ‘You can’t imagine how much I loved him. I’ve never loved anyone else like—’

  ‘Quite so. I can’t imagine. Nor should I have to.’ She folded her arms across her chest. ‘You see, I do think that any normal woman might have told her child that, actually, she had loved the child’s father very much, don’t you? One has to wonder what kind of person pretends it was a casual fling if it wasn’t. I know your disregard for convention borders on the compulsive, but surely even you must struggle to see the logic in your actions?’

  Cecilia tried to marshal her words but it was so hard to explain. At the time, she had been so sure that she was doing the right thing, but now…

  ‘Well, I thought… I thought… ’ She covered her eyes with her hand for a moment. ‘I thought that if you knew how it was – that we had loved each other so much… as we did.’ She paused. ‘As we truly did – then you would never be able to understand why.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘So, just to be really clear because I’d hate to be in a muddle about this – unimportant though it seems to be to you – when you said that you’d got pregnant with me as a result of a fling in Boston, that was a lie?’

  ‘I was trying to protect you—’

  ‘It was a lie?’

  ‘Yes. It was. I’m sorry.’

  ‘And when you told me it was all tremendous fun but that the guy didn’t matter to you and so shouldn’t matter to me, that was a lie?’

  ‘I didn’t want you to—’

  ‘That was a lie?’

  ‘Yes, but I—’

  ‘And when you said you couldn’t even remember the man’s surname so couldn’t have tracked him down even if you’d wanted to, that was a lie?’

  Cecilia gave the smallest of nods, then stole a look up at her daughter. Olivia’s eyes, so like her own, stared back, unreadable.

  ‘God knows, you’re always rattling on about your ex-lovers – how this one was a great fuck and that one you shagged on the floor of an art gallery, never giving a toss about whether we actually want to hear all this stuff – but the one guy – the one guy it sounds as if you really cared about – who actually mattered to you – you never mention! You make out you’re so chilled about sex and you masquerade as this laid-back, arty chick who has no hang-ups, but what about love?’ Olivia suddenly made a gulping sound and started to cry. ‘That’s… that’s the thing you… you can’t deal with.’

  Cecilia remained silent for a few moments.

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ she said. ‘Please won�
�t you sit down, Livvy?’ She never shortened her daughter’s name and, even to her ears, the chummy tone sounded fraudulent and out of place. ‘Come sit by me and let’s talk about this prop—’

  ‘No – let’s not anything.’ Olivia roughly rubbed away her tears with her coat sleeve. ‘How dare you? How dare you lie to me my whole life when you knew all along? You could have told me about my real father – even if – even if he wanted nothing to do with us – with me – you could have told me what he was like – what you loved about him. You could have given me that, at least. But you chose not to. What on earth is the matter with you? You always have to be special, don’t you? To be unconventional and all that posturing, self-conscious crap. You got off on being the martyr, stoically raising your abandoned baby and marrying someone you didn’t love so you could waft about being an artist and feeling noble and interesting. But it’s all bollocks. You could have gone to him and said, ‘Look, I seem to be up the duff – what are you going to do about it?’ But that would just be too normal and, by your lights, therefore dull and boring, yawn, yawn, what a drag. Well, for fuck’s sake, Mother – guess what? Sometimes doing the normal thing is actually the best thing. Ever thought of that?’

  ‘But I was only—’

  ‘No. Enough. I’m going.’ Olivia yanked on her woolly hat again.

  ‘Please don’t—’ Cecilia started to rise.

  ‘You don’t get it, do you? You lied to me – not to protect me, but selfishly – to protect yourself, because you did something so appalling that even you could see that you had fucked up and that I might never forgive you, so you kept on with the lie, for years and years – and to him, too, by not telling him.’ Tears pooled in her eyes again. ‘I really, really don’t want to be around you right now.’

  ‘But just let me try to—’

  ‘You know what? You’ve had thirty years to explain and you didn’t. Take another look at that letter! He clearly didn’t have a clue you were pregnant. You didn’t tell him, did you?’

  Cecilia slumped back into her seat and said nothing.

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then we have no idea what he might have done, do we? Look at the letter. The poor man sounds half crazy, searching for you. Maybe he’s looked for you since. Who knows? You moved, you changed your name, for crying out loud, while he could have been looking! He might have done the right thing!’

  She turned away, towards the door.

  ‘I know you’re upset, I understand that—’

  ‘Don’t! Don’t you dare patronise me and give me all that you understand how I feel crap! You don’t understand. You don’t have a fucking clue what this feels like. Everything is horrible. The ground has turned to quicksand beneath my feet and I can’t even stand up any more. You act as if I’m the uptight one because I don’t always like to talk about my private life or my feelings – but look at you. Maybe you just threw him aside once you got bored? Or maybe you didn’t really love him at all?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t like that.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. I’m going.’

  ‘Olivia, please stay.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ she said. ‘Look after yourself.’

  ‘But – but what about Christmas? You’ll still come for Christmas, won’t you?’

  And then she was gone.

  Cecilia took the envelope and pulled out the handwritten card. She had not read it for perhaps six or seven years. He had sent it to the art school where she sometimes used to pose as a life model, but it had taken months to reach her and by then, she had married Philip, moved house, and Olivia was born. Her gaze travelled over the words, her fingers relishing the half-forgotten feel of the thick card once more. She read it silently to herself:

  Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me! I cannot bear this… I move through the days on auto-pilot – unthinking, unfeeling – without joy or purpose. Before I knew you, I had lived my whole life believing – telling myself – that love was just some silly notion conjured up by poets so that they had something to write about… a kind of idea that people could spin stories around – like magic – an enchanting concept – but not a real thing. Not something that anyone might experience every single day. You opened my eyes, ML, and now I cannot close them again. It is unbearable. I do not even know if you will get this. I came to your flat but the mad woman who lives downstairs told me you had moved and claimed not to have your new address. Where are you? Come back to me, My Love.

  SYDH???

  Still Your Dear Heart???

  She held it up to her closed eyes, kissed it with dry lips and, at last, at last, began to weep.

  37

  Mochaccino

  Andrew slathered his face in shaving foam and picked up his razor. He looked in the mirror. How odd it was that he did this every single morning. Who decided that this was a normal, sensible, reasonable thing to do? To smother your face in slithery crap made of God knows what, then use a dangerous blade to slice off your entirely natural facial hair, which was just attempting to fulfil its mission, become a beard. And that was just the shaving. Then there was teeth-brushing. Even worse because it was twice a day. It would be better if teeth could just stay brushed. When you mended a tear in a piece of antique paper, there – it was done! The tear was fixed. You had implemented an action that had brought about a tangible improvement. But when you shaved, showered, brushed your teeth, got dressed, it didn’t stay done – none of it. You had to keep doing the same tasks, redoing them, on and on, day in, day out, for years, decades… until you died. Only then could you say well thank fuck for that, I can rest here in the dark, quiet earth and not have to shave any more. Alleluia and Amen, thank you and good night. All the tedious, God, so mind-numbingly tedious, routine maintenance you’re supposed to do to make believe you’re a civilised man in a civilised world just stops. How do people not go completely mad, overwhelmed by the complete pointlessness of it all? It was just futile. All of it. Absolutely fucking all of it.

  Andrew ran his flannel under the hot tap and scrubbed at his face with it. Downstairs, he shoved his feet into his shoes, put on his long overcoat and scarf – getting colder now – grabbed his current book from the hall table, silently opened the front door, then quickly called out goodbye to his parents. He was not in the mood to sit and eat breakfast to the soundtrack of his mother’s running commentary on the goings-on of every household in their postcode, relentless as a truck with busted brakes – powering on and through, crushing any stray, precious moment of silence in her path. And his father, sitting there, relishing the refuge his newspaper offered each day, breakfast the only meal at which he could legitimately escape, spinning it out, reading every inch: the foreign pages, the business section, even scanning the share index as if he might be considering having a chat with his broker. For God’s sake, his father, who had worked his whole life as a postman. The business section might as well be written in Aramaic for all the relevance or meaning it could have for his dad.

  On the tube, Andrew crunched himself into a corner, no seats free as usual, and burrowed deep into his book, at once freed from the crush around him, a woolly, sweaty, stressed mass of people, pressed close enough to each other to be lovers, carefully avoiding eye contact. The stench of generously applied perfume and after-shave was making him feel slightly queasy. Now he regretted that he hadn’t grabbed at least a quick slice of toast as he was running out the door, but there was no grabbing a quick anything in his mother’s domain. Breakfast must be taken sitting down, thank you very much. Cereal and a choice of fruit juice (orange or, if you are having trouble, you know, then prune), followed by toast as an optional – i.e., not very optional – extra. Full fry-up on a Sunday. You must eat properly, Andrew, or however will you get through the day? As if he were hard at it, sweating down a coal mine or digging holes in the road rather than sitting at a table, cleaning and restoring prints and drawings with painstaking care.

  His walk from the tube to the British Museum took him
past a small café where he sometimes bought a sandwich at lunchtime. Perhaps he would get a takeaway coffee, like other people do? London was now thronging with people walking along while drinking coffee out of a cup through a little hole in the lid, like in a toddler’s beaker, but it had never appealed to him. The first time Andrew had seen someone doing that – a woman in a smart black suit and high heels, slurping at this ridiculous sippy cup while texting one-handed on her mobile, click-clacking along the pavement, he had actually laughed out loud at the bonkersness of it. But now it had become a perfectly acceptable thing to do.

  He entered the café and looked up at the long hot drinks list on the wall. On a whim, he ordered a mochaccino. He had never had one before, but it sounded promising. It was the kind of thing other people ordered: smart, professional people such as… such as himself. Well, like himself only more… more what? More fashionable, maybe. More trendy. More… his shoulders sagged. More grown-up.

  ‘And one of those, please.’ He pointed at a Danish pastry. He hadn’t had one for ages. Suddenly it looked irresistible, with plump raisins peeping out from its curves, oozing crème pâtissière.

  Andrew carefully pulled up the little flap in the lid so that he, too, could drink while striding along. He smiled as he held open the door for a woman coming in as he was going out. She looked him up and down and gave him an intriguing sort of half-smile. Today he felt different. He was different. Women were noticing him. The image of Olivia’s face as he last saw her swam into his head, the way her smile had disappeared so completely. Well, no matter! He was a single guy. The world was his oyster. He walked on to the museum, took a confident slug at his sippy cup.

  ‘Jesus fuck!’ He said this out loud and three or four passers-by turned to stare at him. Why was it so bloody hot, for God’s sake? Did he order a sodding mochaccino or a cup of molten lava? He wiped his mouth on his coat sleeve and stomped upstairs to the conservation room within Prints and Drawings. It looked as if he was first in, even earlier than usual today as he had skipped breakfast. He sloughed off his coat, set the Danish down on his table, the mochaccino next to it. He’d feel better once he’d had this; just feeling a bit low-blood-sugary, that’s all it was. Then he could start work.