by Louisa Young
Lily had been drawing at breakfast. I leaned to the table and retrieved her picture from among the detritus, and turned it over. His note, in beautiful small English writing that looked like Arabic. Even and flowing. He’d signed his name in Arabic.
‘I hope I may return,’ he said again.
‘Oh yes,’ I said. I felt like crying. I didn’t want him to go. Should I tell him about Sarah? He was leaning into Lily’s room and picking up his bag. The sight of his mother’s stopped him for a moment.
‘Is that Hakim’s?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said.
No comment. He gathered his things up and as he left he took my hand for a second. Yes, the skin burned under his touch.
‘Your mother was here—’ I didn’t say it. It wasn’t just because Maireadh was there. It was deeper. His mother whom he didn’t forgive. Territory beyond me. He was looking for Hakim and sorting out business that had nothing to do with her. He could deal with her later. And vice versa.
But it didn’t feel good. Good as in right.
Maireadh was peering after him down the balcony. ‘Ooh-er,’ she said. ‘I’ve always known you have an exciting life, it’s great to see it in action.’ This seemed to me fatuous, so I ignored it. Anyway Lily came in, looking tragic.
‘What is it, darling?’
‘Sa’id’s going!’ she cried. ‘He patted my head but he’s got his bag!’
‘He’ll come back,’ I said. Then, ‘Anyway, he doesn’t live here.’
‘I know!’ she shouted. ‘Nobody lives here except us and I think it’s horrible! There aren’t enough people in our house!’
I looked around at the five visitors (not counting the one leaving and bound to return, or the ones whose belongings festooned the place) littering the flat, but I knew what she meant. She only means one thing now, and everything comes back to that.
When Maireadh and the kids left, I rang my mother.
*
We arranged to meet at the café in the Royal Academy. I hadn’t been to the Academy since I went to the exhibition of Islamic art with Eddie and he so offensively kidnapped me. I didn’t mind going there. For ten years when I was young I wouldn’t go into the bathroom if my father was shaving because I’d had a bad dream about shaving – the devil had mixed thick red poison in the shaving cream. It’s as well not to let these things dwell. No nesting.
Sarah called late to say she was staying at her father’s and could she come by the next day. Sure.
I don’t mind.
Well I don’t and I do. I mind something. And I want privacy.
*
It is curious that although I find my father easier to talk to, and in a way I like him better, it did not occur to me to go to him about this. This was a mother thing. Mother to mother, re fatherhood. That must be pretty historically typical too. You don’t imagine Leto and Europa and Daphne and everyone going to their dad and saying, ‘The thing is, see, there was this shower of gold …’ No, the women sort it out first, and then find a way of presenting it to the men.
Well, I may have seemed calm to myself on the telephone, but the first thing Mum said when we sat down with our tuna sandwiches was, ‘What is it?’
For a horrible moment I thought I was going to burst into tears. But then the glass-shafted lift, so conveniently positioned almost in the middle of the café, alighted and the noise and distraction gave me a moment to compose myself. I may come out of this nakedly emotional, but I would like to go into it fully dressed.
‘It’s about Lily,’ I said, and then quickly as Mum’s eyes widened I said, ‘No, she’s OK. It’s not a bad thing. I don’t think.’
Mum just looked.
I put my hands on the table, took them off again, and gathered up my words.
‘This is a bit hard, Mum, because it involves things we’ve never really talked about. So.’
‘No reason we can’t start now,’ she said. Which I might have picked her up on. Like, ‘Excuse me, if there’s no reason then why the hell haven’t we done it before ever?’ But that’s pointless and adolescent and we’re all past that sort of thing now.
She was wearing a skinny rib sweater and a nice scarf. She looked kind. I’ve always been daddy’s girl but she is my mother. Part of me.
‘Lily wants her father,’ I said.
‘Oh,’ said Mum.
‘And there is …’ I started to laugh. ‘There’s a contender. Another contender.’
‘Oh my God,’ said Mum.
‘No, it’s OK, it’s OK …’
‘But after last time – Oh Angeline, darling …’
‘It’s not like last time. Last time was only bad because it was Jim. It was Jim we hated, not the idea of a father.’
‘Really?’ she said, curiously. ‘I thought – I rather had the impression that …’
‘That what?’
‘That you didn’t … well that you didn’t want anybody. You’re very independent, you know.’
‘Yes I know,’ I said. ‘But no. Most of that then was defence against Jim. Otherwise, I …’
‘What?’ she said.
‘Mum,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘It’s Harry.’
‘What’s Harry?’
‘The contender.’
She was silent a moment. Confused.
‘Your Harry?’
This was no time to be pedantic. ‘Yes.’
‘But Harry was your boyfriend, not Janie’s.’
‘Yes.’
Having to say it to my mum made me suddenly very very angry about it. Fucking bloody Janie. My fucking boyfriend. I felt myself going red and my lip was trembling.
‘But,’ she said.
‘It was after we’d split up,’ I said. Who was I trying to excuse?
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh dear oh dear.’
I gave her a little time. And myself.
Then: ‘But do you see, Mum, that it’s not such a bad thing.’
She looked at me.
‘He’s a lovely man.’
‘Oh,’ she said. Poor Mum.
Her sandwich sat there like a pile of paving stones. She stared at it. It’s curious how we have to comfort other people through our own difficulties. Difficulties which are more ours than theirs, say.
‘Is that why you don’t like Janie any more?’ said my mother. ‘Tell me.’
How did she know that?
Schoolteacher. Teachers have eyes in the backs of their heads. They’re paying attention when it looks as if they’re not. My mother was a very good teacher.
‘Something’s changed. In the past year or so. You two used to be so … but you don’t like her any more. Something has happened since she died. Is it this? Is it Harry?’
‘Yes,’ I said. Clutching at straws. I tried to look very upset about Janie and Harry. Though I had been, only moments before, I couldn’t summon it up again. I had moved on, taken up residence in my acceptance of it, for the purpose of giving Lily a good dad and not giving my mother too much pain.
‘But you just said it wasn’t such a bad thing. You don’t mind about it so much. You just said so.’
‘I mind and I don’t mind, Mum. There’s no point minding. He’d be a good father, and if he is her father we must let him be. You know, truth and all that.’
‘But you don’t know if he’s her father. And you still don’t like Janie. You like him but not her. So it’s something else.’
I said nothing.
Sitting there as the lift went up and down and the sandwiches sat and all around us people came and went, talking of Damien Hirst. Sitting there, silent.
‘Tell me,’ she said.
‘It’s bad,’ I said.
Oh fuck, I’ve admitted there is something.
That means I’m going to tell her.
‘Tell me.’ As she said it the angle of the tip of her left eyebrow reminded me of Janie. To whom I always told everything.
‘She was a whore,’ I said. Cold cold stomach.
Oh God. I’ve said it.
‘Oh Angeline,’ said my mother. It was a little scold, she was disappointed in me, how could I just produce low abuse at a time like this.
‘No,’ I said. ‘A real one. A prostitute.’
Need I tell her any more? Need I tell her about the immediate and intimate treachery? That through our physical similarity and the uniform of my profession she had whored me? That she pretended to be me, and fucked men from my audiences who had wanted me? That she let Eddie Bates think he was fucking me and give her – me – that bloody little Mercedes she was so proud of and we all rode around in?
‘I know,’ she said.
For a moment I thought she was saying ‘I know’ to the thought in my head.
But she wasn’t.
‘What do you know?’ I demanded.
‘That Janie was a prostitute.’
Ahh.
And we sat and stared at each other. Your daughter, my sister. Our dead girl. So we stared. Dry-eyed. Dry-mouthed, in my case.
It’s a watershed. Down which side of the mountain are we going to flow? The same side? Different sides?
We hovered. Suspended. Waters swaying, heavily, the impulse, gathering weight. Big heavy waters.
‘How do you know?’ I asked.
‘How do you know?’ she asked.
‘Mum there’s a lot …’
The chairs were not comfortable enough. I wanted comfortable chairs if we were to have an uncomfortable conversation.
‘How did you find out?’ she said.
And the waters began to lap over the edge, and trickles began to run down.
‘From stuff in that tea-chest. The one that was in the attic.’
‘What was in it?’
‘How did you find out?’
We stared at each other. I wasn’t going first. I was willing to tell her the truth, but as little of it as possible. There is pain I am not willing to be the bearer of.
Her face was still, her mouth drawn down at the sides as if pinned for stability. Holding her face together.
I don’t want her to know why I hate Janie.
Trickle, trickle.
‘She told me,’ she said.
Oh my God I was jealous. She told her. Janie told Mum. Didn’t tell me. Now that is against the laws of nature.
‘When?’
‘The summer when you were sixteen – no, she was sixteen. You were seventeen.’
My stomach started cramping. Cramping away, gently but irresistibly. Sixteen?
‘I had no idea,’ I said.
‘Of what?’
‘I …’
‘But you said … but you know. You told me.’
‘Then what?’
‘What?’
‘What happened? Tell me what happened.’
She gave me a straight look. I think she decided I was more upset than her. She told me.
‘It was the summer. Nearly autumn. She came home with a leather jacket. Elegant. She said she got it from the Oxfam shop and I didn’t believe her. She did that cross bluffing thing she does, and said a hundred different things, and then she said someone gave it to her, and that seemed true, so I asked why, and she said why shouldn’t her friends give her presents, and, oh, you can imagine. She pretended to think I was undermining her, you know, saying she wasn’t worth such a present. As if. As if.’
I remembered the jacket. Azzedine Alaia, if I remember rightly. Beautiful. She told me Gina Goulandris had given it to her. It was quite possible. Unwanted Christmas present, that kind of thing. Mum wouldn’t have been able to conceive of it.
Sixteen.
The detail she was giving, it sounded as if this was an isolated thing Mum was talking about.
Oh dear.
‘She told me the Greek girl had given it her but she was lying. I rang her mother, God help me. And so I challenged her, and she said it was someone else, and it … and in the end she said it was a man. And I wanted to know why. I was going to warn against men bearing gifts. Expensive gifts. Warn my poor innocent.’
Poor Mum.
‘So she lost her temper and it all came out.’ Mum raised her hands involuntarily, turned her face slightly away, as if to ward it off.
She doesn’t know the scale of it. She doesn’t know.
‘It was one man. She’d met him, and he’d … propositioned her, and he … Oh, I don’t know the details. She never would tell me. She had some kind of loyalty to him. She said he wasn’t old. Perhaps she said that to make me feel better, or to stop me going after him … I should have. Should have gone further. But she promised. She said leave it at this and I’ll never do it again. She said she’d run away with him if I … And she cried and promised. So he was off the hook.’
There was shame on her face. Shame that she’d let him go, not been able to deal with it. The good teacher, failed. Browbeaten by her young daughter.
‘Mum? Where was I? When all this was going on?’
It’s a curious thing to feel jealous of being left out of, but I did. Oh, I did. This was my family. Fifteen, eighteen years ago. This is clearing nothing up – this is opening new expanses of web, casting shafts of half-light on to shadows I didn’t even know were there. Though I was there when it happened.
‘You were out belly dancing. Or so I found out later.’ Her face had taken on a primness. Oh. Both her daughters lied. Both her little teenage daughters going out and being sexy in the world and lying to her. But I wasn’t doing wrong. Oh fuck.
‘I know I should have told you earlier, Mum, but I … it didn’t seem important. It was never the right moment. It was every reason and excuse you ever heard. Do you know I didn’t think you’d be interested?’
Even as I said it I bit my tongue. Indictment. Daughter didn’t think mother would be interested. If Lily ever said that to me, about anything she did, let alone take up a career in an ambiguous world, at sixteen, or grow an interest and passion like mine for the dance, and not tell me because she didn’t think I’d be interested … I might as well have slapped my mother’s face.
But she’s not like that. No doubt that’s why I am.
‘Of course I would have been interested,’ she said. But she wasn’t hurt. She didn’t mind my thinking that she mightn’t have been interested. Ho hum.
No doubt that’s why she didn’t notice when I started staying out late every Friday night dancing. Because she was occupied with Janie’s new career.
Sixteen! And promised her mother never again. Ha bloody ha.
‘What did Dad say?’
She gave me a look. ‘He doesn’t know,’ she said.
Well that floored me. Eighteen years. My God, but marriage is incomprehensible.
‘You didn’t tell him.’
‘No.’
‘You didn’t tell me.’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
For a moment she looked as if she had never asked herself the question. As if it had never crossed her mind. Then she laughed.
‘She didn’t want me to. She was so ashamed. She minded more about your knowing than about your father …’
Ha. Ha ha ha.
I turned to attend to my coffee. It was cold.
‘This isn’t what we came here to talk about,’ I said.
‘One thing leads to another,’ she said. ‘How did that lead to this? I can’t remember.’
‘Never mind,’ said I, remembering all too well. I wanted to take off before she wanted my version. I’d told her about Harry, I didn’t want to say more. Not now, pray God not ever.
‘Now listen. Harry thinks he may be Lily’s father. He wants to make sure. I’m with him. I think we should just find out the truth and I hope it is him because he is a good man and I can bear him being part of our lives and I would be very happy to have it cleared up once and for all. And Lily really wants a daddy. So,’ I found I was breathing rather fast, ‘he is going to do what we think of as the blood test; in fact it’s a DNA test and because they need DN
A from both parents, and because Janie is dead, that means we need a blood sample from you and Dad. Blood samples.’ They aren’t the same person, after all. Not a unit.
‘We,’ said Mum.
‘What?’
‘You said “we”.’
‘Yes.’
‘So it’s all set.’
‘Yes. There’s no other way.’
‘Well, I – and if it’s not Harry? Have you thought about this? Because if it’s not Harry, how many other contenders are going to crawl out of the – oh my God. Oh my God. Oh Angeline no. No. No.’
She wailed.
She started swaying. Realisation knocked her sideways, swept her feet from under her. I was round the table and holding her in my arms and stroking her head like I stroke Lily’s after a nightmare. But this was not after.
Unbelievably sad. Cradling your mother’s head while she weeps like a baby. Eyes closed, rocking, rocking, holding, rocking.
After a few moments the café man came, and coughed gently.
‘May I …? Is there anything …?’ he said. There were tears in his eyes. I think he thought it was widowhood.
‘Glass of water?’ I said.
A glass of water is not actually necessary at these times. But it is necessary to honour the human urge to help, by giving it something to do. Perhaps he had a widowed mother. Perhaps he had a dead sister the extent of whose prostitution was just coming to light in the family.
Mum soon straightened up. She is an Englishwoman, after all. She didn’t want to stay in the café where she’d made a spectacle of herself, but I didn’t think she was up to moving immediately. A little girl scampered past, wearing a pink sparkly fairy dress, clutching postcards from the Victorian Fairy Painting exhibition. Oh my Lily.
‘So she carried on,’ said Mum.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘And you hate her for it.’
‘Because she never told me.’ Well, it’s one of the reasons.
‘And because it leaves this question mark over Lily.’
‘No. Anything’s better than Jim.’
‘Ah. Yes … and she was up till the end?’
‘Presumably not while she was pregnant …’ And it was my turn to feel sick, and gag, and start to sway. Lily. Lily, inside a whoring body. Tiny Lily, unborn Lily, being sprayed with the septic semen of God knows who …