by Linda Grant
“And, of course, to prove you wrong. You know you have spent far too long with an American, who believes that everything is a problem and so has a solution instead of being a situation, and that all it takes to be happy is a happy ending. Because he’s still the same idiot he has always been when it comes to trouble. All Americans are, not just him. Apart from the ones who made the temporary gardens, they were different.
“Eventually, I rang the bell and no one answered. The house was silent. I just heard birdsong, I don’t know where they nest since the woods were got rid of. I went to the side of the house where the gate was open as it was always open when I came home from school, and I walked past the kitchen door with the lavatory next to it for tradesmen, past the dustbins, odorous and strange, and as I looked down the long sloping garden there was my mother, bent under a cotton hat, weeding.
“She looked terrible. Her face was marked with brown age spots and her hands were like birds’ claws in leather gauntlets. She looked up at me and then she bent down again because she was working along a flower bed cutting the heads off chickweed.
“When she had finished she leaned the hoe against a tree and walked inside through the French windows where tea things were laid out on a white cloth. I followed her in. I had the letter in my hand in case she was gone in the head and hadn’t remembered that I was coming and I held it out to her, I wasn’t sure if she even recognized me. The letter signed Yours sincerely, Mummy.
“She went into the kitchen and came back with a pot of tea, and still she had said nothing, not a word. Finally, she spoke. ‘It’s Earl Grey. Philip didn’t like it so I didn’t buy it while he was alive. He liked common tea, very dark. I hope you don’t share his taste.’
“When I picked the cup up to drink it, it tasted slightly sour. I said, ‘Antonia, the milk’s not right.’
“It was as if using her first name was like pulling some old thing out of a trunk. I had never called her Antonia when I lived at home, but what was I supposed to call her now? She shook her head. ‘Call me Mummy,’ she said, but I couldn’t, the word stuck in my throat like a crumb.
“And then she asked about you. She said, ‘Do you still see your friend Andrea?’ I told her I was staying with you in London and she said she supposed you were married, so I replied that you were. And then she said the most extraordinary thing, talk about breaking the ice. She said, ‘She wanted a husband. I suspected she was after mine.’ Isn’t that funny?
“And in all this time she had not asked a word about me. I felt like a long-lost cousin, not her own child. She finished her tea and said she’d put me in my old room and I could take my luggage up. Of course, I hadn’t brought any luggage because I wasn’t planning to stay the night, I thought if I got there midafternoon, she would stop gardening for a few hours, but that was a vain hope.
“She stood and put the tea things on a tray, the sour milk, the cooling pot of Earl Grey, the plate of currant-speckled biscuits neither of us had touched which looked like they belonged in the century before last, and she said, ‘There’s still so much light. I have hours of work to do. If you can wait until nine I’ll make supper. The television reception is acceptable. We can talk then, I suppose you’ve come to talk.’
“So I had to leave then, or stay. And I knew you wouldn’t let me come back here empty-handed, it was you who forced me into it. I walked up the stairs and stood on the landing looking at these rooms that radiated out from the central stairwell. The house was succumbing to mold and dust and cobwebs and grime and subsidence, it was awful. In my old bedroom almost everything had been cleared out, nothing was left of my childhood but a single bed, a table with a vase of garden roses, and an empty wardrobe. The desk where I did my school homework had gone, not a book or a toy or a picture had been kept. Only the green carpet remained, with burn holes from the cigarettes I used to smoke while I was reading.
“Yes, it was the same room I came back to after the abortion. I remember lying under the bedcovers and counting up to a hundred then back down again, it gave me something to do. I decided I would never see James again, he had done this to me, I hated him. He had been too shy and stupid to go to the chemist and buy a packet of rubber things, so I said I’d do it, I didn’t mind, but the chemist wouldn’t sell them to me. I came out empty-handed and he was standing there, his face burning with the shame of me, then we went to the woods and did it, until a walker came along with his dog and disturbed us. James pulled out in a rush of sticky fluid. It will be okay, he said. I’m sure it will be fine.
“All I remember about him was that he had red hair like you and wanted to be an architect. His last name has gone completely. I haven’t thought about him since I went up to Oxford. It’s strange to think that if I’d had it, there would be a forty-year-old with red hair, or blond hair like mine. What a fuck-up that kid would have been.
“All the other rooms in the house had been emptied, there were just stripped beds, and in my parents’ room my mother had got rid of the double they’d slept in and replaced it with a single. I felt she had ruthlessly disposed of us. She had got what she wanted, the house and the garden and not its inhabitants.
“I looked in the wardrobe, it was full of the most terrible old clothes, nothing of my father’s, just her pull-on trousers with elastic waists, cotton shirts with and without sleeves, and jumpers. The smell of soil was everywhere, and everything was stained with grass and sap and roots.
“I walked through all the other rooms that had waited for new babies that hadn’t come, and they were all empty too. I remember grandparents sometimes coming to stay in those rooms, I remember a moustache, a breath-smell of boiled eggs, an old lady whose hair was piled on her head, and held in place with tortoiseshell combs. Cousins sometimes came, older boys and babies. I used to look inside the babies’ prams and unpin their nappies to see what was hidden there. The boys played cowboys and Indians in the woods and wouldn’t let me join in until my mother came out and told them they must play with me. They took me down to the leaf-floor where there were rabbit holes and a badger’s set, and tied me to a tree and I just waited there stoically for hours until my mother came and untied the knots.
“She said I was a silly girl to let them do this to me and that next time I had to be more firm. While I was waiting for her, tied to the tree, I thought of the story of Ariel, who was trapped inside a tree by a witch. I thought I would like to be deep inside the trunk, fused with the wood. When I grew up, I was going to be a tree.
“I went down to the kitchen, which was exactly the same as it was in my childhood. My father went to the Ideal Home Exhibition in 1955 and ordered a modern fitted kitchen which cost a fortune. In the sixties he had covered its surfaces with strips of that plastic called Fablon which was all the rage, but now it was torn and dirty and it curled at the edges.
“Only the drawing room had any signs of life, gardening magazines, library books, a basket of knitting and a pair of sheepskin slippers laid out on the hearth. And through the windows I could see my mother at the end of the garden, by the compost heap.
“It was six o’clock by now and there was no sign that she was coming in so I turned on the television to watch the news. God, this shitty little country, this flyblown rubbish tip, it’s sinking into the sea, all right. Good-bye.
“I suppose I must have fallen asleep in my mother’s armchair because when I woke up, the sun was well down in the garden, there were long shadows and I could hear Antonia in the kitchen clanging pans so I got up and went to see if anything was being cooked.
“‘I’m making rice,’ she said, ‘and there’s some tomatoes from the garden.’
“She put this miserable meal on a pair of plates and we ate it in silence.
“So finally, after we’d finished, she said, ‘Well, why have you come?’
“I’ve never put up with bullshit, so why did this witch tie my tongue? I was struggling, so I just came out with it. ‘What did you know about Daddy?’ It was an overly large question, I real
ize, but that was what I said.
“She sat there with her hands on the table, and soil under her fingernails. I couldn’t take my eyes off them. She must have seen that I was fixated on her hands, because she said, ‘When you’re a gardener the earth settles in and stays. Some of the ladies use dark red polish when they go out socially and your father was always nagging me to do it, but I could never be bothered. If he wanted nail polish he could get that from his mistresses. As long as he kept them in town they could have all the war paint they liked.’
“I said, ‘Why did you put up with it?’
“Her blue eyes were staring at me in that walnut face.
“‘But that is what gentlemen do. Everyone knows that.’
“I said, ‘In an Edwardian novel, perhaps. What about your self-respect?’
“‘Such modern words.’
“She cleared the plates and put a bowl of raspberries on the table. There wasn’t any cream or sugar.
“I said, ‘I met one of Daddy’s mistresses.’
“‘Did you?’
“‘Aren’t you curious about her?’
“‘Don’t be silly. I was never curious about those tarts.’
“‘She wasn’t a tart, she was more of a secretary.’
“‘It amounts to the same thing.’
“‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
“‘Secretaries are always out to pinch other women’s husbands. That’s the reason they learn to type. Did you bump into them on the street in London? I assume he went about with them in public. He came home reeking of scent on his evening clothes.’
“‘No, it was in his flat.’
“‘Oh, the flat. Wasn’t it an awful place? That hideous decoration, like a Harley Street waiting room. I always knew your father was common, but I didn’t mind because I thought that sort of thing was unimportant, the war turned everything upside down for a while, but it didn’t last. My mother always said he was a bad egg. A bad egg with elocution lessons, he’d been to a teacher, you see, who had taught him not to drop his aitches.’
“‘I had an abortion in that flat,’ I said.
“Her face was stained with raspberry juice, it ran into the cracks around her mouth. Her tongue was engorged and pink.
“She stood up abruptly and cleared the table, snatching the spoon from my fingers. She took the dishes into the kitchen and I could hear the sound of tap water running. I waited for her to come back, night had finally fallen on the garden and my reflection looked back at me in the glass of the French windows, a double image, I saw myself twice. So I stood up and drew the curtains.
“She came back into the room holding a tarnished silver coffeepot and demitasse cups and she put them down on the table and said, ‘Why didn’t you give it to me?’
“‘Give you what?’
“‘The baby.’
“‘I didn’t want to have a baby, I would have been expelled from school.’
“‘Education isn’t everything. Has it done you any good, do you think?’
“‘Of course it has.’ Which was a lie, but I wasn’t going to tell her the truth.
“She said, ‘You knew I wanted babies. I wanted them so much it was an ache in my body, I couldn’t sleep for it. Have you never felt that? Lying there tossing and turning because your bones are hurting with the need to have a child inside you?’
“‘No.’
“‘Then you don’t know you’re alive, to make something grow. That’s the thing!’
“‘I’m not a machine, making children to replace the ones you couldn’t have.’
“‘You’re selfish.’
“‘Antonia, you’re the most selfish person who has ever lived. When did you ever do anything for anyone? You weren’t a mother to me, you were always in the fucking garden.’
“‘Don’t be ridiculous, I loved you, I still do.’
“‘And how have you ever expressed it?’
“‘How could I have expressed it? I haven’t seen you since you were twenty-one. You went away. I still don’t understand why.’
“‘Because of him, of course.’
“‘Who? The boy who got you pregnant?’
“‘No, my father.’
“‘Did you have an argument?’
“‘I wouldn’t call it that.’
“‘Oh. I see now. Did he get rid of it?’
“‘Yes.’
“‘He was such a cruel man, he knew how much I wanted another child.’
“‘Cruel to you? What about me?’
“‘What do you mean?’
“‘He performed an abortion on his own daughter.’
“‘Well, you should have gone elsewhere.’
“‘How could I? It was illegal.’
“‘Then you could have come home and had it, and we would have been happy.’
“‘What a stupid idea. I wouldn’t have been happy.’
“‘And are you happy now?’
“And then I got up and slammed the door and went to my room. I was lying in bed, dreaming, I was dreaming I was a bird and then I was woken by birds, in the trees outside the window and my hands were trembling, as if they wanted to turn themselves into wings.
“The sun was coming up over the garden and my mother knocked and entered with a cup of tea. ‘I thought you might like this,’ she said, ‘though I’ve no idea, you always slept in and had no breakfast.’
“She sat on the edge of the bed and started talking. ‘I see now that you believe I have not been much of a mother to you. I’ll try to explain. Your father promised me babies, lots of babies, and a life in the country away from town, which I always hated. Those ghastly debs’ balls, and the parties and the chinless wonders and the awful stiff frocks they made you wear. I was prepared to put up with his common ways because he liked sex and he was a doctor, a children’s doctor—what could go wrong? Well, me, I couldn’t make them live. I went on trying until my ovaries packed up when I was forty-two, I still thought there could be a baby up to the last moment.’
“I said, ‘You refused to love the baby you actually had.’
“‘I adored you. But you were your father’s daughter right from the beginning, a daddy’s girl. You were in love with him.’
“‘In love? I hated him.’
“‘You had an odd way of showing it.’
“‘What do you mean?’
“‘Do you remember when you were thirteen and you came down to breakfast in your dressing gown and I told you that you were revealing yourself in the chest and you should cover yourself up?’ And Philip said, ‘Let’s take a look at the mammary development,’ and you showed him.
“‘But he was a doctor, a pediatrician, I thought…’
“‘You had a cunt, dear. That’s all he cared about. He didn’t ever touch you, did he?’
“Of course he didn’t touch me, I wish now that he had because then it would have all been over long ago, but I just stared at her and said, ‘No.’
“‘I thought not. He wouldn’t bloody dare. I warned him. I’d have murdered him and chopped his head off and buried his body in the garden and his head in the woods. So he got his revenge by making you fall in love with him.’
“But I was never in love with him, you don’t think I was, do you, Andrea? She said I was, she said, ‘Oh, Grace, you had a thwarted sexual attraction, it was an unrequited romance. And then you went to him when you were pregnant. You silly girl.’
“I said, ‘Why did you stay with him if you knew what he was like?’
“‘You don’t understand marriage. You don’t just leave when it doesn’t suit you. I did have lunch with Mummy but she was crowing. I told you, she said, I warned you not to marry beneath you. So I was too proud to admit I’d made a mistake. And Mummy said all men have their mistresses, you just put up with it.’
“‘But if you had taken me away when I was younger, everything would have been different. My whole life.’
“‘Yes, I suppose that’s right, but you see he promised me he w
ouldn’t touch you, and I thought that the not touching was what mattered.’
“She stood up and said, ‘Before you go, I just wanted to say that your things from Oxford are still in the attic in your trunk, your books and your clothes, if you want to take them. I cleared out the room but I didn’t throw anything away.’
“‘Where is my childhood?’
“‘What do you mean?’
“‘I can’t see a single picture, or an album.’
“‘Go into the attic, you’ll find everything there.’
“‘I’m leaving as soon as I’m dressed, I’m going back to London. Where are my shoes?’
“‘I cleaned them for you.’
“‘You cleaned my shoes? Why?’
“‘Guests always have their shoes cleaned. I was taught that at home.’
“I went up into the attic and found the boxes of old things. They didn’t seem terribly interesting when I saw them now, along with golf clubs, panama hats and a croquet set. No, it was definitely time to move on. It was pointless coming, I warned you it would be. I couldn’t be bothered to look for the hats.
“I went down to the garden to say good-bye. She was doing something with the roses. I said, ‘By the way, where did you have Daddy buried?’
“‘I had him cremated and put his ashes on the compost heap.’
“Is this over now? Can I stop this relentless self-examination, because it’s driving me crazy. Have I earned my right to stay under your roof? I’m definitely thinking about making hats, I want to be a milliner, hats with ears and hats with horns. I could make hats in my sleep.”
Dearest Marianne