by Elisa Lodato
I went and sat next to her and Christopher and took one of his fat hands. It was covered in slobber. ‘Yuck!’ I exclaimed, wiping it on my mother’s leg. I got up to rejoin my friends, who were busy blowing bubbles to send floating over the weeds. As I stood up and turned round, I saw the shadow of Jenny standing inside the kitchen, diffident and awkward, staring out at us from the open French doors. And then came the figure of my father, whom I hadn’t realised was even in the house, so curiously absent had he been from the party earlier. He joined her at the doorway and stood still beside her. They didn’t touch, but were united in the act of watching the happy scene from a distance: my mother with her children.
The following day, a Tuesday, Jenny came over as usual in the afternoon to look after Christopher and me. I was in the upstairs bathroom, wiping myself after a wee. I heard Jenny’s feet pad up the stairs as she went into Christopher’s room to lift him from his cot. Her duties began as soon as he woke from his lunchtime sleep. She would change his nappy and take him downstairs so my mother could feed him. But as she began opening his little sleepsuit, I heard my mother’s heavier step follow her up and into his room.
‘I’ll do that.’
Jenny was surprised and a little defensive. ‘OK.’
‘He’s just been a bit fraught recently. I’ll keep him with me this afternoon.’
‘Shall I do something with Laura?’
‘No, don’t worry about Laura. I’ll take them both to the swings. You can stay here and hang out that washing.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course. I think we could all do with some fresh air. Come on you,’ she said to Christopher, ‘let’s get you some milk and into the pushchair.’ And with that, she walked out of the room and back down the stairs.
Our house was within walking distance of a small playground with a slide, a set of swings and a rather jaded roundabout. It was where I spent most afternoons during the school holidays – a good place for my mother to sit with Christopher while I played, sometimes with other children but more often on my own. I used to pretend Christopher was my baby, that I was leaving him with a childminder all day and then disappear off down the slide, which doubled as my train to work. My mother would often join in, shouting at me to ‘have a good day!’ as I hurried away. Sometimes I had to rush down the slide in order to make a flight I’d booked on the swings. At which point my mother would stand up from the bench and, holding my baby up in her arms so I could see him and her from my bobbing window seat, would reassure me with the words: ‘Don’t worry! I’ll look after him.’
On the morning of her cremation, Christopher met me at the funeral home I’d selected in Kingston. He’d arrived on a flight from Sydney the evening before and spent the night in a local hotel. I remember it vividly: he was sitting in the reception area waiting for me, wielding a cup of coffee like a weapon, to hack at the jet lag and grief. She’d left him all alone.
I decided to Skype Christopher. He lives in a large house on the outskirts of Melbourne with his girlfriend Steph. A house they bought together and proceeded to fill with dogs. It was just after seven one bright morning at the end of March, and I was having breakfast at my laptop. He was nine hours ahead and well into his afternoon. I tried him a few times and after the fourth attempt, just as I was giving up and going to make myself another cup of tea in the kitchen, he called back.
‘Laura? Are you there?’
‘Yep, here. Hang on a sec.’ I turned the camera off. ‘Trust me, I’m doing you a favour – you don’t want to see this face.’
‘How are things?’ He looked tired.
‘OK. Just getting on, you know. I’m working again, trying to get into the habit of running. All that kind of stuff. How about you?’
‘Good. Yeah, all good,’ he said, nodding. ‘Steph’s outside, fixing one of the fences. Ruby managed to dig her way under it last night.’
I rolled my eyes, thankful I’d remembered to turn the camera off. Christopher had never so much as stroked a dog before he met Steph, and now they were all he could talk about. They met in 2007 while travelling in South East Asia. He was sufficiently smitten with her to feign an interest in the abiding love of her life. They continued travelling together and then, several weeks before he was due to fly home, he phoned my mother and told her he was going to live in Australia – that he and Steph had plans to marry. Five years on they were still, as far as I knew, unmarried, but heavily committed to a raucous and unruly pack of dogs.
‘Have you got any plans for your birthday?’
‘No, but Andrea has. She wants to cook for me here. I think she’s worried I’m going to become some sort of recluse. You know, the kind who hoards newspapers and plastic bottles and names the rats.’
Christopher folded his arms across his chest and smiled. ‘Or obsessive-compulsive? You know, cleaning the toilet seat five times a day. All I’m saying is, think about the kind of recluse you want to be. Don’t let Andrea pigeonhole you.’
‘Pigeons. I could feed pigeons – like the old lady in Mary Poppins.’
Christopher leant down to stroke one of the dogs.
‘But anyway, I’ll be sure to let you know what form of deranged outcast I become when I phone you from the secure unit.’
‘I look forward to it. So what’s up? What did you want to talk about?’
‘I’ve been going over some stuff in my head. You know, to do with Mum and Dad. And Jenny.’
‘Go on.’
‘I’m sorry, it’s not exactly uplifting.’
He paused. ‘Go on.’
‘Well, you were very young at the time, but Mum’s earlobe was torn by a woman called Sue.’
‘Jenny’s mum, I know.’
‘Right. And that night, when Dad came home, Mum said something to him about “never in the house”. I mean, that’s weird, isn’t it? Condoning an affair between your husband and a seventeen-year-old girl.’
He looked down at his lap.
‘But I don’t just mean Jenny’s age. Or Dad’s age, for that matter. I mean the fact that she – Mum – allowed it.’
Christopher sighed and looked around the immediate radius of his desk for the dog he’d just been stroking. Perhaps he was hoping Ruby would come and dig him out of this conversation. And then he surprised me. ‘We’re conditioned to think things like that are wrong.’
‘Are we?’
‘Do you remember Coco?’
‘No. Who’s Coco?’
‘Steph’s terrier. Her parents looked after him while we went travelling. No? Anyway, Coco was pretty old by the time we moved here, and he was just tired. You know?’
‘Not really.’
‘Well, he was. And when we got Ruby, everybody said they’d make great puppies. But Coco wasn’t interested. Ruby would back up all the time, trying to get herself all up in his nose, that sort of thing.’
‘Please get to the point.’
‘Well, then we got Buster, and he was all young and yappy and before long he was mounting her day and night. You could hear the howls for miles.’
‘That’s a very beautiful story. But what’s your point?’
‘I’m just saying, you’re overthinking things. Jenny was a young piece of ass and Mum was tired. It’s really not that complicated.’
We were children from a broken home. According to a recent study, Christopher and I were five times more likely to suffer from emotional and mental problems, problems that often manifest themselves in poor attainment at school. But in my case, academic achievement and going to university were a means of escape.
In 1999, I left home to read English at Cambridge. My mother didn’t drive, so the big journeys back to college at the beginning of every term were always expedited by my father. She would sit in the passenger seat – in Jenny’s seat – and stare straight ahead at the road. Uncomfortably still in my father’s car. They rarely spoke, connected only by my presence on the back seat and my belongings in the boot. But the moment they drove away, on th
at first morning of my first term, in silent pursuit of the M11, I remember standing on the street and craning my neck to look up at the grinning gargoyles above; they were smug and superior, their laughter fed by the timid undergraduate. It was the first time I truly understood the effect of my parents’ separation on me, as a young person. I looked closely at the red brick of my new college and knew I had no option but to go inside and make this place my home. Because they could offer no alternative. I knew my parents loved me: my father loved me enough to fill the car with petrol and put one of the seats down so all my belongings would fit. My mother loved me enough to sit silently beside him and point in the right direction as we came off the motorway. But they didn’t love each other. And the real truth of that fact meant I was on my own.
The first person I met was a girl called Sarah. Pinned on the noticeboard in my room was an invitation to tea in the Old Library where we could ‘meet other undergraduates and bid farewell to parents’. In their haste to get going, my mother and father hadn’t considered the possibility that they may have neglected a social ritual. But then neither had I; so after a momentary gulp, I felt relieved that in our ignorance we’d avoided an uncomfortable situation.
Sarah was standing at the back of the room, stirring a cup of tea. She had shoulder-length, light brown hair and large oval glasses. Her features were small and sharp, alert like a little mouse. Beside her was a tall, balding man in his fifties. He had his hand on her shoulder and was leaning down to say something pointed and only for her. She nodded as he spoke, glancing self-consciously at me as I walked over to a nearby table and poured myself the first cup of coffee I’d ever drunk. In my haste to join in I neglected to add sugar. I was still wincing at the bitterness when he reached across his daughter’s shoulder and introduced himself: ‘Michael Fisher,’ he said. ‘Pleased to meet you. This is my daughter Sarah,’ he said, pushing her gently towards me, ‘and this,’ he reached behind him and tapped a blonde woman with her back to us on the shoulder, ‘is my wife Jan.’ Jan lifted her right hand in a wave and turned back to the small group of timid undergraduates before her.
‘I’m Laura,’ I said, shaking his big, hairy hand.
‘Have your parents gone?’ Sarah asked, her voice – when it came – surprisingly loud.
‘Yes. I saw the note too late,’ I said, sipping the acrid coffee.
‘What are you reading?’
‘English. You?’
‘Arch and Anth.’
I nodded as though I understood. This was the first of many linguistic landmines I stepped on in Cambridge. ‘Have you met any other architects?’
She smiled kindly and said, as though it was her mistake, ‘No, sorry – Archaeology and Anthropology.’
‘Oh, I see. Right. What A levels did you do?’ The fail-safe question.
‘Sarah did English, History, German and Politics,’ Michael interrupted. ‘I’m a science man myself, but she wouldn’t be persuaded.’ He smiled down at his daughter.
Sarah’s mouth twitched, as though she wanted to smile but couldn’t. ‘How about you?’ she asked, looking back at me.
‘English, History and Psychology. Oh, and General Studies, but that doesn’t really count, does it?’
‘It does. It does,’ she said, nodding her head with authority and looking around for her father. He’d returned to Jan, whose group had been joined by the Senior Tutor. ‘I’d better go,’ she said, finding herself all alone with me.
‘OK. I’m going to try and find some sugar. See you later.’
I chatted to several people before finally meeting a small group of fellow English students, and we promptly settled into conversation about how little of the recommended reading list sent to us over the summer we’d covered. Another first – the attempt to belie effort and hard work – an accepted deception among undergraduates at Cambridge. I looked around for Sarah, wondering how she was getting on, and saw she was talking to a tall, slightly scruffy guy. Her parents were standing nearby, sipping their coffees and watching. Her companion was wearing the kind of jeans that are designed to fit badly, just loose enough to maintain an air of sartorial indifference but not enough for them to fall down around the knees. And watching him smile and run his hand through his hair, I found myself wondering what his knees looked like. I must have been staring, because Sarah looked over at me and smiled from behind her glasses. It was quiet and subtle, intended not to interrupt the flow of her conversation. I turned back to the English students, all of us bound together by a new sense of belonging.
‘That’s David over there,’ a girl who’d just introduced herself as Jess told me, indicating the scruffy guy. ‘He’s also English.’
‘Have you already chatted to him?’
‘Yeah, he’s nice. Lives in the staircase next to mine.’
‘OK. I’ll go over and say hello in a bit.’
Sarah’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly as I approached in their direction. David turned immediately and put his hand out.
‘Hiya. I’m David. And this is …?’ He inclined his head towards Sarah, willing her to provide the name he had already forgotten.
‘Sarah,’ she said, smiling and tucking more of her hair behind her ear.
‘We’ve met,’ I said, ignoring Sarah and shaking his hand. ‘I’m Laura. Nice to meet you. I hear you’re reading English too.’
‘Yeah! There’s quite a few of us. I’ve just met someone called Jess? She’s over there somewhere,’ he said, looking over the sea of bobbing, keen heads.
‘Oh, cool. Yes, I’ve met Jess too.’ I looked at Sarah, whose cheeks were red. ‘Anyway, I just thought I’d come and say hello. You’re welcome to come over and talk Piers Plowman with us.’
‘Shit.’ He ran his hand through his greasy hair. ‘Did you read that? I tried, but it was fucking boring.’
I laughed. ‘I don’t think any of us have. That’s what we’re talking about, actually. How the entire reading list made us dangerously drowsy.’
‘Yeah, like don’t-operate-any-heavy-machinery boring. I’ll be over in a sec.’
‘OK, and Sarah, you’re very welcome too. Sorry – didn’t mean to be exclusive.’
‘That’s OK. I’ll go and find some architects to talk to.’ Her smile had gone, and so too had her parents. She went off to look for them.
I don’t know how she did it, but Sarah managed to pull David a few nights later at a fresher’s bop. I hadn’t seen it coming at all: he was effortlessly charismatic and she was horribly contained. I was sitting at a table in the college bar talking to a small group of girls when one of them raised an eyebrow in the direction of the Junior Parlour, a large sitting room adjoining the bar. Sitting on an armchair with his long legs stretched out in front of him was David, and on his lap – in a side-saddle position – was Sarah. She had her arms around his neck, her hair covering his face in the manner of a bland curtain. There was much speculation about how she’d managed to win such a prize. But what became quickly apparent was that she had no plans to ever let go.
While Sarah and David became the couple that cooked together, I got on with the business of being Laura at Cambridge. Like a road that’s been built too quickly, I constructed a version of myself that was still very much in progress. And there were plenty of people I met who simply ran out of road. Guys I slept with in my first year who were happy to go to bed with a carefree and insouciant undergraduate found themselves waking up next to an eighteen-year-old agonising over what it meant the next morning. I clawed at life by smoking weed and listening to jazz, consciously pulling experience to me. Though David was often absent – he’d moved his single bed into Sarah’s room so they could assume marital sleeping arrangements towards the end of our second term – the Director of Studies for English dealt Sarah a heavy blow: David and I were designated supervision partners for the Renaissance paper. We were expected to attend a one-hour supervision together every week and began studying, side by side, in the English faculty library. The library, too subject
-specific for Sarah, meant we were finally free to get to know each other.
And what I got to know was pretty harrowing. We’d fallen into a set rhythm of smoking every forty-five minutes. One cigarette often became two, followed by a coffee in the canteen – anything to avoid returning to Edmund Spenser and Sir Philip Sidney.
Like me, David had a younger brother. And like me, David’s family had been fractured by circumstances. When he was just six years old he’d watched his American-born mother pack bag after bag while he was cared for by their live-in nanny. Her suitcases mounted by the front door until David, suddenly frantic that he might be left behind with a woman paid to know him, went to his bedroom and found a little Team USA rucksack his maternal grandmother had given him on her last visit to London. He knew he had to hurry, that his mother had a flight to catch, so he grabbed a small stuffed elephant from under his pillow and a watch that was lying on his desk. He hadn’t yet learnt to tell the time but he knew he’d need it in America: time was different over there – they ate breakfast when he was having dinner. But when he went downstairs, the suitcases had gone. The front door was ajar and his nanny was standing in the opening with her right arm raised. As he heard the tyres manoeuvring on the gritty road, he tried to pull the door wider but his nanny clamped it to her hip. He tried to push her from behind, to force her out so he could get closer to his mother.
‘I knew some decision had been made. That they’d agreed it would be better if she didn’t say goodbye.’
‘I can’t even process this,’ I said, shaking my head in my hands. The lit cigarette sticking out between my fingers like a candle that’s been blown out. The wish already made.
‘I know. Seriously fucked-up.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I tried to get out. I thought if I could just stand on the road and let her see my face, I thought …’ His voice had started to tremble. I put my hand on his arm. ‘I thought, if she saw me.’
‘She wouldn’t go?’
He nodded and lifted the cigarette to his lips, the pain of that morning red and raised again. He inhaled deeply, closing his eyes to the smoke that had pencilled up and away from him. As he exhaled he jammed the heel of his right hand, the one still holding the cigarette, into his eye, rubbing away the moisture there.