An Unsuitable Mother

by Sheelagh Kelly

  ‘It is,’ informed Nell. ‘With olive oil.’

  ‘I thought I could hear sizzling – you’ll end up looking like battered haddock,’ he told his daughter, who as usual ignored him, and gave herself up to the sun god.

  Nell smiled, but enjoyable though it was to be all together with Nina and Romy – who was having a whale of a time digging a hole with her friend – she was growing bored with these endless days of sun, and was not sure she was suited to the indolent life. Upon her granddaughter’s entry to grammar school, she would dearly have loved to return to nursing, but with Joe retired by then, and not wanting him to feel neglected, she had sacrificed this desire. Though, at fifty-four, something felt missing. But then, she supposed it always would …

  Half child, half woman, her granddaughter was busy digging her way to Australia. Stung to remembrance, Nell tried to be happy – it was wrong not to be happy on such a cloudless day as this, in such wonderful company, but somehow the relentless sunshine only served to highlight that which was absent from her life. She looked away, and tried to concentrate on others who inhabited the wide stretch of sand, the happy squeals of children, the swish of the sea … Her eyes fell on an attractive dark-haired girl, aged about twenty, who was throwing a beach ball back and forth between two friends and the young man who was obviously her husband. She wore a black one-piece swimsuit, distorted by six months of pregnancy. Nell thought of herself, desperate not to let hers show, cramming, squeezing, constricting her baby into a corset, not like this girl, showing it off …

  ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

  Eyes still vague, she turned to see that from behind the screen of his sunglasses Joe was regarding the girl too. ‘Come again, love?’

  ‘That brazen madam,’ he commented. ‘They don’t seem to have any decorum these days, belly out to here …’

  ‘True enough.’ Trying to escape from her past, Nell sighed, and in the same breath, as she rose from her deckchair, asked, ‘who fancies another ice-cream?’

  The melancholy just would not go away, though she managed to put on a brave face until after dark. But lying there with the sheets thrown back, trying to gain some relief from the open window, she could not help silently screaming for William. At the foot of the garden, a train went past. Oppressed by heat and misery, Nell barely noticed as its thundering passage trembled the mattress. But then she suddenly became aware of a constant hissing, and began to shake the bed with her soft laughter, breaking out of her mood to say to her husband:

  ‘Listen …’

  Joe attended the sound of running water.

  Nell chuckled. ‘Mr Lazenby’s sneaked out to beat the hosepipe ban.’

  ‘Thank God,’ breathed Joe. ‘I thought it was you pissing the bed.’

  Lured away from her maudlin, his wife elbowed him. ‘Stop making me laugh!’

  ‘You started it!’ reasoned Joe.

  ‘It’s bad enough trying to sleep in this heat without you making me all hot and bothered,’ said Nell.

  ‘Christ, you’re right there.’ Joe heaved in discomfort, sweat trickling along each rumple of his naked, ageing torso. ‘Are you sure there isn’t a single fan left in the shops?’

  ‘I told you, not one. I asked everywhere, they’ve all sold out.’

  Joe wiped his brow with the one sheet that covered them. ‘It makes you wonder how people cope in Australia.’

  Nell was so quiet for a while that he began to think she had gone to sleep. Then he heard the faintest of sniffs. ‘Are you all right?’ he enquired immediately, turning his head.

  ‘Yes, my nose is just so stuffed up. There must be tons of pollen about.’

  Joe hoisted himself onto his elbow, and extended a careful hand through the semi-darkness to touch her face. ‘You’re crying,’ he accused.

  ‘No, I’m not.’ She tried not to let him feel the tears.

  ‘Lazenby’s hosepipe must have sprayed a bloody long way, then! Come on, what’s up?’

  ‘Nothing really, it’s just not being able to sleep, I get to thinking …’

  ‘What about?’ Joe laid down again.

  Nell despaired that she had to tell him – why could he not guess? She took a deep breath.

  ‘My son.’

  ‘Ah …’ He turned his head away to gaze through darkness at the ceiling, wondering what he could possibly have said that had instigated such thought.

  ‘It was just when you mentioned Australia,’ sighed Nell, the tears gone now. ‘That’s where he was sent.’

  Joe made a soft exclamation of discovery. ‘Have you always known that?’

  ‘No …’ she hesitated, then admitted, ‘I only found out about seven or eight years ago. I’m sorry, I should have told you, but I didn’t want to stir things up. Do you mind me talking about it now?’

  ‘No, don’t be daft.’ Joe stretched out a clammy hand to her.

  She confessed then about her visit to Doctor Greenhow. ‘I don’t know what spurred me to do it. It was just on impulse – don’t think I plotted behind your ba—’

  ‘I don’t,’ emitted Joe’s soft growl. ‘I know you, you’re not a plotter.’

  ‘Anyway, it was all rather a waste of time and emotion,’ continued Nell. ‘It would have been hard enough to find William if he still lived in York, but to locate him on the other side of the world would be impossible.’ She was weeping again, quietly.

  ‘And would you like to?’

  There was a flash of anger that Nell only just managed to rein in. Of course I would, you fool, she felt like screaming. But the one who lay alongside her was so kind and attentive, passing her his own handkerchief from the bedside table, that she merely said, ‘I always promised myself I would. That was the one thing that kept me going through those terrible war years, that I’d see him again one day … but there’s not much hope of that now.’

  Joe crooned sympathy. ‘You know if I had the money, I’d pay for you to go there?’

  ‘Oh I know you would, dear.’ She gripped his hand firmly now, thinking she did not deserve so generous a man, after her selfish thoughts.

  After a slight gap, he began to hoist himself up. ‘Sorry, I’ll have to go for a slash. It’s that bloody hosepipe …’

  He was away a long time. Finally stumbling back, he apologised for disturbing her. She said he hadn’t, she was wide awake. Joe emitted a grunt as he lay down beside her again.

  ‘Feeling no better?’

  ‘Oh, take no notice of me harping on about it – I’ve been so lucky to have Nina, I love her as if I’d given birth to her, truly I do. Most times I can cope, it’s just some days …’

  ‘I hate to think of you hurting.’

  ‘No, I’m fine,’ she assured Joe, and briefly laid her head on his bony shoulder. ‘So long as I’m able to hold that picture of him in my mind, under the Australian sun, rounding up sheep, or boxing a kangaroo,’ she gave a little laugh for this silliness, ‘then I’ll be satisfied. I’ll have to be, there’s nothing anyone can do.’ She withdrew her head, for this night was much too sticky for contact.

  ‘You never know, we might win the pools,’ murmured Joe.

  ‘You don’t do the pools!’ He had her chuckling again.

  ‘Well, I’ll make a point. And the moment my draws come up, you’ll be on a plane.’

  Nell gave sincere thanks, even though it would remain only a dream. Then, with a peck of each other’s lips, they both settled down and tried their best to sleep.

  22

  Inasmuch as she had prophesied that, as an eight-year-old, Romy would forget about William, Nina had been right. At least, she had forgotten the details. But, obviously recalling the gist of that poignant saga, it being germane to her own situation, Romy had continued to raise the topic time and again over the years of her childhood, forcing Nell to repeat that painful episode of her life, until her granddaughter was old enough to retain it. By that time, Nell adjudged her old enough to be told every element of the tale, so that Romy might know
how lucky she was not to have been removed from her natural mother. It was not her intention that the tale should break her heart.

  ‘I promise, when I’m an adult, I’ll do all I can to help you find him, Nana,’ the thirteen-year-old vouched through her tears. ‘Even if he is in Australia, I swear I’ll find him.’

  And Nell had blessed her, and said, ‘I know you will,’ when both of them knew that there was no earthly way that would ever be.

  That year’s Jubilee party in honour of the Queen was probably one of the last occasions in which her granddaughter would be content to participate, thought Nell, watching Romy and her friend trying to make out they were too adult to indulge in jelly and ice-cream, in their silvery shoes performing the latest gyration to the radio that someone had turned up full blast, so the partygoers could dance in the sunshine. How different it all was to the Coronation, and how those seated around her had changed. A wave of nostalgia washed aside the woman with the long blonde hair, allowing Nell briefly to see again the infant with whom she had fallen in love – still loved more than life, as well as feeling desperately sorry for the lone mother. If only Nina could find a good companion, like she herself had in Joe …

  The face of the estate was much changed too. Over the years tenants had come and gone, various newcomers arriving to share a path with Nell and Joe, lasting for only a spell before moving on too. And then had come Mary.

  Mary McCullough was of indeterminate age, though her wrinkles, and the fact that she had an adult daughter, would connote she was of a similar vintage to Joe. Whether she had ever been married was hard to say, for she wore a wedding ring though never mentioned a husband. If she had had any intentions on Joe by addressing him as Snakehips then it came to nothing, for he treated it as a joke and responded with nicknames of his own, most of them uncomplimentary. So Mary was forced to look elsewhere. She certainly went out a lot, dressed to the nines, always in beautifully applied make-up, and her legs still good enough to carry off those stiletto heels – though she was not one for keeping up with fashion, as portrayed in the tight silver perm, the bouffant skirts, and many layered net petticoats.

  Despite her flamboyance there was an air of misery and loneliness about Mary McCullough. On a jaunt to the theatre, and to a pub afterwards to celebrate their silver wedding, Nell and Joe had caught sight of their elderly neighbour sitting on her own on a tall stool at the bar, hoping for a man to throw her a line, which none did in the whole time they were there. Touched by this incredibly pathetic sight, Nell thought of asking Joe to buy her a drink, which was very generous, for then she herself would have the indignity of Mary purloining her husband’s attention for the rest of the night. In the end she and Joe had crept away before Mary saw them, so as not to embarrass her. But that pathetic sight was the reason Nell chose to put up with all manner of annoyance from Mary after that – the regular unannounced visits for early-morning tea, the scarlet lipstick she left on Nell’s cups, her habit of revealing all her intimate complaints in front of Joe. This kind of behaviour had obviously been a great embarrassment to her daughter, who, in Nell’s opinion, thought herself a cut above, and at her first opportunity had moved out to get married, and never were they or Mary to see her again.

  They were certainly to hear of her, though: Mary never tired of boasting how well she had done for herself in America. But, blessed as she was with her own daughter, Nell felt it her duty to be kind, even though this only attracted more unwanted intimacy. But at least there was slight dividend, for one could always rely on Mary to report on the state of the supermarkets, the cheapest places to buy, or who had supplies of a certain commodity – which was vital in this awful decade of endless strikes and political unrest that stripped food from the shelves and imbued Nell with a sense of déjà vu, and of hopelessness, the feeling that life just kept picking her up and throwing her back to that same awful spot.

  The strikes and shortages, and human nature, might always remain the same, but the face of society had changed out of all proportion to the way it had been in Nell’s youth – and was even a stark contrast to Nina’s. The eyebrows that had been raised in the sixties would surely lift off completely at today’s sexual shenanigans: young women living quite openly with their boyfriends to make sure they were suited to each other before marriage. How Nina must fear for Romy, thought Nell, who shared this unspoken worry with Joe, now that their granddaughter was of a similar age to when her mother had given birth to her. There was little comparison – apart from in looks, both often mistaken for sisters rather than mother and daughter, with their willowy figures, long blonde hair and blue eyes – for the level-headed Romy appeared to be excelling at college, ploughing methodically through her heavy workload, no inducement required. And it was encouraging that she remained close to her grandparents, always finding time to drop in on them whilst still managing to gain As and Bs in most of her subjects, according to her proud mother.

  Though with her A Levels in progress, Nina was taking no chances. ‘We’ll have to leave a bit earlier than usual, if you don’t mind,’ she told her parents, when she and Romy came on their regular Sunday visit. ‘She’s got a lot of revising to do.’

  ‘She’ll have no trouble, this brainbox,’ said Joe, with a confident smile at Romy. ‘But I’m glad to hear you’re concentrating on school work, and not wasting your time with lads – you’re not are you?’ he said in afterthought.

  Romy shook her head, but confided with a laugh, when she, her mother and her grandmother were in the kitchen making tea, ‘I am, actually, but Mum said I hadn’t to say anything to Grandad, he’d only worry.’

  ‘Oh, and you’re not concerned with worrying your nana?’ Nell demanded of them both jokingly. ‘What’s his name then?’

  ‘John.’ To Nell’s pleasure, Romy was to tell her all about him. Though, judging by the gleam in her eye, her granddaughter was besotted, and, when she had finished eulogising, Nell sought to issue a caution.

  ‘You won’t do anything silly, will you?’ She saw the look that passed between Romy and her mother, and for a second had qualms, until Nina murmured:

  ‘She’s on the pill.’

  ‘Oh …’ Nell tried not to look shocked. ‘Well, good for you, being sensible … still, I don’t think we’ll tell your grandad,’ she uttered confidentially. ‘He’s a bit old-fashioned like that.’

  Ignorant of female secrets, a happy Joe continued to boast of his granddaughter’s prowess to anyone who would listen – more so than ever when, as he had forecast, Romy attained good results in her A levels and won a place at the university of her choice. But, ‘What the hell are you going all the way up to haggis land for?’ he demanded to know.

  Nina put in a shrewd guess. ‘To get as far away as possible from me.’

  Romy laughed, and, by a slip of the tongue, informed her grandfather, ‘That’s where my boyfriend’s applied for.’

  The old face showed disbelief. ‘I don’t know! You shouldn’t be bothering with boyfriends at your age – where did you meet him then?’

  ‘When I did that stint on the Viking Dig.’

  This fired her grandfather’s memory, for the archaeological discovery had come via the demolition of the factory in Coppergate where he used to work, and he spoke for a few minutes about the sensational treasures unearthed. Then he made a joke. ‘Tell him if he found that two bob I dropped under a machine in 1955 I won’t ask for it back, so long as he’s treating my granddaughter right.’

  ‘Yes, he’s lovely, Grandad.’ The shining blue eyes told this was true.

  ‘Well, don’t be letting him take your mind off your studies, we need new blood to put this country right.’ Then Joe glowed with pride. ‘The first of our family to go to university! I don’t know where you get your brains from – certainly none of us.’

  ‘Speak for yourself!’ objected Nina and Nell alike, though the latter voiced great faith in their granddaughter too.

  Joe then handed over a twenty-pound note. ‘Reward for your
hard work.’

  Romy thanked him. ‘It’ll go towards my car fund. Mum’s bought me driving lessons.’

  ‘It’s for her eighteenth as well,’ Nina joked quickly. ‘She needn’t think she’ll be getting anything else.’

  ‘I don’t know! We had to wait till we were twenty-one, didn’t we, Nell? And even then all we got was an apple, an orange and a lump of coal. Now they get two special birthdays.’ With smiling face, Joe left the room.

  With the old man gone, Nell displayed a more personal interest in her granddaughter. ‘Couldn’t bear to be without your boyfriend, eh? Aw, how romantic! What’s his name again?’

  ‘Steve.’

  Nell filed this away, then said, ‘Well, don’t forget to take your pill whilst you’re away. Much as I look forward to being a great-grandmother, I wouldn’t like it to arrive too soon.’

  Romy seemed not at all awkward, not like her mother, who wore a rather prudish expression, thought Nell. ‘Don’t worry, Nan, it’ll be a long time yet,’ she said with a laugh.

  Later, when Joe had come back and was keeping Romy occupied, Nell whispered laughingly to her daughter, ‘I nearly put my foot in it before, I thought his name was John.’

  ‘It was.’ muttered Nina. ‘He was kicked into touch ages ago. There’ve been a few since him.’

  Nell saw the disapproving look, but did not comment on it in case the subject, or Joe, should overhear. Instead, she spent a moment in fond reflection, listening to Romy and her grandfather tease each other, and finally said during a gap, ‘We’re certainly going to miss your little face popping in to see us – especially me. I don’t know how I shall keep your grandfather fed without all those recipes you bring me.’ Sharing Nell’s love of cooking, over the years Romy had introduced some adventurous new meals to her grandparents’ menu.

  ‘If I come across anything nice I’ll send it along with my letters,’ Romy vouched.

  ‘You what?’ teased her mother. ‘From what I know of students it’ll be takeaway curries from now on.’

  ‘For you, you mean,’ retorted her daughter with a laugh, before adding to her grandparents, ‘I’m counting on you two to look after this one. I shall expect regular reports of what she’s getting up to whilest I’m away.’