Mothertime

by Gillian White

  ‘There, and yet when I asked you a moment ago you told me your mother was well. It is terribly unfortunate, this drinking problem of Caroline’s,’ Isobel mentions to Eileen, who nods in boozy sympathy. She is quick to explain that she knows all about it, and she adds reassuringly, ‘Most families have one hidden away somewhere.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘An alcoholic, lovey,’ Eileen says doggedly. ‘Most families do, like homosexuality and bankruptcy and mental illness.’

  Suzie manages to stop herself from contributing thoughtlessly, ‘But we don’t, Mummy. We never knew anyone like that.’ With the children sitting round listening so intently it would be a silly remark to make. Instead she asks, ‘But she’ll wait until you are back at school before she goes, surely?’

  Robin’s impatient with her. ‘It doesn’t work that way, unfortunately, Suzie. It’s not that neat! You can’t just pick your time and book in as if you’re planning a nose job.’ He asks his oldest daughter, ‘Is there any particular incident which has triggered this emergency off?’ Lying on the floor, reading instructions, Robin’s voice is distant, coming from a faraway place. How much easier life would be if everyone’s ups and downs could be controlled by a button, like Mario, so you got another turn, and another, emerging unscathed from the crisis each time. Broadlands is cripplingly expensive, double the price of a luxury hotel, and yet how can he refuse to cater to his wife’s urgent needs, especially when her well-being is so central to the happiness of his children?

  ‘She has split up with her friend Bart.’

  Robin groans and shoots Suzie a brief, knowing look. ‘It had to happen, I suppose,’ he says lamely. ‘Rather bad luck over Christmas, though. Is she drinking very heavily?’ Poor Robin, he truly does not want to know.

  ‘No,’ Vanessa assures him, her pinched little face deadly serious. Christ… she is only twelve years old. Eileen is shocked by this discussion, so obviously familiar to these young children, so casually conducted.

  ‘No, she’s not too bad yet, but I heard her telling someone on the phone that she thought she could cope with it all the more easily if she had the support of the staff at Broadlands.’ Vanessa stares glassily into the fire. ‘Mother doesn’t want to slip back, you see.’

  ‘Well, at least Caroline has the right attitude at last, that’s a blessing at any rate.’ Isobel, aware of the red fleck between her teeth, picks at it with a white fingernail, concealing the action behind her hand.

  Suzie knows that the other undoubted blessing is that when Caroline goes to Broadlands there is far less likelihood of disturbance. There will be a fortnight of uninterrupted peace, and life at Camberley Road runs more smoothly when the mistress of the house is away. The children will be back at school and thank God for that gem Mrs Guerney. That the woman stays to tolerate Caroline’s insults, the abuse, is certainly one of life’s miracles. And Ilse, of course, however inadequate the girl might be, at least her presence gives some peace of mind. And the children are capable, not babies who need twenty-four-hour attention.

  Every now and then, when overstressed, Robin plays with the vague notion of boarding schools for his children. He has broached the subject with Caroline who said that the children would hate it. ‘Too many changes in their lives, too soon,’ she said pointedly. Guilt. Guilt. Guilt. Suzie is careful not to comment but she sees the problems… these children, so close, would be split. Robin considers the twins too young to leave home and he says, ‘How much more hellish life would be for them at Camberley Road without the older ones to protect them.’

  Suzie knows what the children want. They want to come and live here! And Robin… what does he really want to do? A few weeks ago he dropped the hint casually, ‘You know, Suzie, there’d be plenty of space for three bedrooms up here if I jettisoned my gym.’

  My God!

  Once, Suzie dreamed that Caroline died and the children hovered round the flat in pyjamas, like ghostly Peter Pan people.

  But now Robin is slipping away, his eyes glued to the television screen… an infuriating trick of his. He can read a book in a room full of people, at a party he will closet himself away with one person and leave it to Suzie to mingle. ‘You worry too much,’ he says, when she tackles him. ‘Nobody minds.’

  ‘Of course they mind,’ says Suzie, furious. ‘When people come to the flat, they expect to see you—to talk to you. You’re the celebrity, not me!’

  The monotonous ditty of the computer game is worse, far worse than the flickering distraction of those old, overplayed videos she’s been forced to watch on past occasions, hour after hour. What should she do? Suzie is aware of Isobel’s mounting irritation, the twisting handkerchief, the tight-lipped, steely stare. If she is so aware of his mother, why the hell isn’t Robin? And the children, particularly the twins, are growing restless.

  ‘Why don’t you all go outside in the garden and play in the snow,’ trills Eileen brightly.

  ‘But they haven’t brought their gloves…’

  ‘Oh fuss and fiddle,’ Eileen insists. ‘They don’t feel the cold at their ages! And we can string all their clothes on a horse round the fire to get them dry before they go home.’

  Isobel tenses but Suzie smiles bleakly. Her precious garden… The snow has slyly covered the beds, so it is impossible to detect some of her rarest, most vulnerable shrubs. Even she would have difficulty in keeping to the path through the rockery.

  ‘That’s right… off you go, lovies!’ shouts Eileen, red in the face and clapping her hands with seasonal joy. ‘Really, it does my heart good. Do you remember, Suzie?’

  But Suzie’s head is clogged with a myriad other thoughts; strangely, she can remember absolutely nothing at all.

  ‘Don’t go in the greenhouse whatever you do, will you?’ she calls after them faintly.

  Eleven

  DESPITE THEIR MONETARY PROBLEMS the Dances have switched their heating full on—because it is Christmas Day, because they are expecting guests, because it is snowing outside and because two-timing Bart wants Ruby to be as warm and comfortable as possible. He loves her. He does not want to lose her. And her father is a very rich man.

  She has only just stopped shivering.

  Ruby Dance cannot remember a Christmas when she has been so pampered. Bart is behaving like a real father should and they are ready before their guests arrive—table laid, food prepared and under control, kids bathed and dressed and sitting room fairly neat and tidy.

  But Ruby, who never drinks before noon, is already on her third sherry.

  Before she knew, before she allowed herself to accept the fact that Bart was off screwing somebody else, she had pushed the horror to the back of her mind and buried it. How could she cope with the turmoil of that massive betrayal, with everything else that was cluttering up her days and nights? With her broken nights and her child-filled days, with all the worries about money and Bart’s business going under, Ruby spent most of her time on her knees like a down-and-out, exhausted. She is tired of all the scrimping and scraping, she is fed up with using buses and never having the car.

  But now she does know. And the knowledge gnaws away at her, like a rat with a long, grey shiny tail, into garbage, down and down into all the litter and trash of her subconscious fears. It reaches her self-esteem, her competence as a wife and mother, it worms its way down to her image of herself. Is she still a young and attractive woman? Apart from the Bendix man, would any other man want her? If she was abandoned, would it be possible ever to find anyone else? What with the kids and everything…

  And anyway, this thing of Bart’s, he says it was unimportant but how serious was it? In spite of the fact that it hurts her, she cannot leave the subject alone. Bart has already confessed that he tried to ring the bitch this morning in a misguided bid to try and patch up some misunderstanding they had last night.

  ‘But you said it was over!’ whines Ruby.

  ‘It was over. But I tried to phone to make sure she was all right. I thought it was odd that I got
the answerphone.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ Ruby sleuths.

  ‘Because she has five children and I doubt they would all be out at that hour.’

  ‘Five children! She’s a goer, then. What is her name?’

  ‘Ruby, can’t you leave it? This conversation is only damaging us both.’

  ‘No, Bart, I am very sorry but I cannot leave it alone. I know it makes no sense but I have to know her name.’ Ruby is terrified it might be a friend of hers, or even some acquaintance at whom she might nod and smile.

  ‘Well, her name is Caroline.’

  ‘Caroline who?’

  ‘Oh Ruby, please don’t.’

  Ruby’s eyes are madly bright. She sits and watches with her fists clenched while Bart kneels on the floor, inexpertly changing Damian’s nappy. ‘Caroline who, for God’s sake?’ Bart is forced to abandon Damian and rescue the chocolate tree decorations from James’ clasping fingers.

  ‘Her surname,’ says Bart sadly, a safety pin clamped between his teeth and his hair wild and desperate, ‘is Townsend.’ He raises his red-rimmed eyes from his submissive position on the rug in front of her, like a slave to an empress. But Ruby does not feel like royalty this morning. Damian drags at the hem of her tartan Christmas skirt, exposing her worn-out, two-year-old boot.

  ‘And why were you worried that she might be upset?’ You see, the more she learns about Bart’s affair, the more she is seized by a masochistic craving to know more. And yet every fact she learns makes it worse, leaves her more dissatisfied. She is trying to make him take away the pain but this is not the way. It’s not working.

  ‘Because I said some unkind things to her. I told her I wanted to call it a day and she was hysterical in the car on the way back…’

  ‘On the way back from where? Where had you taken her?’

  ‘We spent the evening at a nightclub.’

  ‘Which nightclub? Were you alone?’ If they’d been alone that would be terrible; if they had been with other friends it might even feel worse. Ruby is far too impatient to wait for Bart’s answer. ‘Did any of our friends know about this?’

  ‘No, Ruby. Nobody knew.’

  ‘David must have known.’ David, Bart’s partner.

  ‘Dave might have suspected, but I never told him.’ Bart is wrestling with the baby, he is trying to send reassuring smiles to the child and talk to Ruby at the same time. He is losing the battle on the carpet.

  ‘Oh come on, Bart! You kept the whole sordid business to yourself, did you? You are actually trying to convince me that you did not confide in anyone else?’ She cannot believe that. Somebody knew, surely? Somebody is sneering at her abysmal ignorance. ‘So this woman, this Caroline, did she want to carry on?’

  ‘She was lonely, Ruby. She’s just been through a difficult divorce. Her husband walked out on her.’

  ‘My God!’ Ruby startles the baby, Damian, who staggers across the room in his slipping nappy and flings himself into her arms. She coolly disengages him and passes him to her husband. ‘My God, my God, how absolutely appalling for her! Christ, how my heart goes out to her at this most difficult time of her life! How considerate of you, Bart, to ring her up and make sure she’s all right once I was up out of bed, down here and out of the way, taking care of your kids and drudging away trying to create some kind of fucking Christmas…’

  ‘Don’t, Ruby, please stop…’

  ‘She never said that to you, did she, Bart? Presumably she was never too tired!’ Ruby’s eyes narrow, her face turns scarlet. Through clenched teeth she asks him the dreadful question: ‘Who paid? Who paid, at this nightclub, and at all the restaurants and pubs and wine bars and dark little underlit venues with satin button-seating where you made your amorous assignations! WHO FRIGGING WELL PAID?’

  Bart hides his face in his hands, as well he might. ‘I did.’

  Ruby sits back now in agonised triumph. ‘I see,’ she says to nobody in particular. ‘I see. I see. I see.’

  ‘I used the business account. It came out of expenses.’

  ‘Tax deductible’ Ruby gives an awful smile. ‘That’s all right then, isn’t it? While I trudged around the sales trying to find ways of giving the children some kind of Christmas.’

  ‘What can I say?’ groans Bart, surrendering and utterly defeated.

  ‘Just tell me how long.’ Ruby is like an automaton, but she is winding up, not down.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘When did you first meet her?’

  ‘In October.’

  ‘How, in October?’

  ‘I stopped in a pub on my way home from work. It was the day we lost the Barker account. She was sitting at the bar…’

  ‘Available, and probably poxed. I can only pray that you took precautions. Just like an old western, really.’ Ruby conjures Caroline up, a long-legged moll with scarlet lips, a drooping cigarette and world-weary eyes. Quite an accurate picture in fact, apart from the wig.

  ‘I needed someone to talk to who wasn’t involved. I was dreading getting home, telling you.’

  ‘Oh? Now you’re shoving me into the convenient role of shrewish, nagging old wife. Go on, then. This is crap! This is the sort of thing you bloody well read about!’ Ruby’s lips draw tighter together.

  ‘You know I don’t mean it like that. I knew you’d be desperately worried and upset.’

  ‘And did she help you… in ways that I could not have done?’

  ‘She listened.’

  ‘And then you fucked her.’ Bart fails to answer. ‘Where did you fuck her?’

  ‘I went back to her house.’

  ‘Ah, yes. The house in Highgate.’

  Bart is startled. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘The phone call told me that. Who would have made that phone call, Bart?’

  ‘God knows.’

  ‘What does she look like? Tell me exactly!’ It is in the middle of all this drama, as it usually is, that the doorbell rings, a melodic chime that ought to signal happy arrivals, especially as Ruby has hung a wreath on the front door, a wreath for life when inside the house at Potters Bar it feels as if there is only death, long and lingering and everlasting.

  Eleven for lunch. Ruby, on her fourth sherry now, knows that it does not really matter if the turkey is raw, if the spuds are white, if the gravy goes grey and lumpy. All these fears are negligible now… and always were, quite honestly. This might well be the last Christmas the family spends together. Certainly if Ruby goes on feeling like this she won’t be able to bear having Bart in the house, let alone at the dining-room table, let alone in the bedroom.

  It is the snow that is making this Christmas so horribly realistic.

  ‘Happy Christmas, Happy Christmas, Happy Christmas.’ The greeting goes on and on and on because all the Dances’ visitors have managed to arrive together. Ruby gets up, she moves toys and takes coats; she makes her mouth smile and takes part, but at the same time Ruby is utterly excluded from everyday life and feelings. Inside herself she’s not there. Stunned, Ruby watches.

  She is easy with her pretty little sister, Elspeth, and her latest boyfriend, Kurt. She is easy with Bart’s gregarious parents, who have always loved her and make sure she knows it. ‘I hope Bart realises what a lucky bloke he is,’ said Harry Dance from somewhere under his tipped top hat, making his speech at their wedding. She is equally easy with Bart’s brain-damaged brother, Lot. She has all the time in the world for Lot, who lives in a hostel in Kentish Town, folds gift-boxes at the special workshop and is made very welcome at Potters Bar on high days and holidays. Lot was a page at Ruby’s wedding. Lot adores Ruby and is far too guileless to conceal it. Lot’s blatant worship of Ruby is a sort of family joke, kindly done. Lot was damaged by a forceps delivery in the days when they were so fashionable, in the days when highly paid men wouldn’t wait for women to push their babies out, too keen to return to their golf-courses and their gins. There was no compensation for poor Pat Dance when that awful light dawned and she slowly realised that Lot was failing to
meet the targets set so brilliantly by her bright-as-a-button little blond-haired Bart, ten years the elder. But they loved their gentle, different child just as much, if not more. Their lives were taken up by the wickedly essential everyday battle for his rights. Oh yes, the whole day would have been quite fun in a chaotic kind of way—if Ruby still felt easy with Bart.

  But she bloody well doesn’t. And who can blame her?

  The only one of Ruby’s guests to sense that something is wrong is the brain-damaged Lot. Still in his twenties, Lot is the Jesus in every epic, the disconcerting presence, the divine man with the piercing Robert Powell eyes and the faraway smile. Long and loping and gaunt, his clothes and his jet-black hair flow smoothly behind him and there is something distinguished about his pain. Once he was wrongly diagnosed as schizophrenic but Lot does not fit any labels, he goes his own strange way. Hauntingly beautiful, uncannily graceful, Lot is uneasy this morning; he knows there is something wrong, and he sends Ruby long worried looks.

  Christmas lunch is a tremendous success because of the effort put in by the mortified Bart. The children behave quite wonderfully. Naomi sparkles, her lovely, almost-white crinkly hair is the fine-spun silver of the fibre-glass decorations. She is just like a fairy.

  Afterwards Harry suggests that they take the children outside to play in the snow, and ‘Give you a well-deserved break, Ruby Tuesday.’

  Ruby sighs. ‘I’ll clear up while you’re gone.’

  ‘I’ll stay and help you,’ says Lot, and everyone gently smiles.

  ‘You go out and enjoy yourself. I’ll stay here and do that.’ Someone will notice there’s something wrong if Bart isn’t more careful.

  ‘I would rather stay indoors in peace, for a while, and Lot would prefer to stay in the warm, I think. He’s not too happy in the snow. He hates it if people chuck snowballs at him.’

  Ruby throws all her efforts into pretending. She could confide in Elspeth, but it is impossible for the sisters to spend that much time on their own today without attracting attention. She could probably confide in Pat Dance, because she has known so much pain in her life Ruby’s mother-in-law virtually bubbles over with genuine kindness and understanding, but that would spoil everyone’s Christmas. Pat would have to have it out there and then in front of everybody, no messing. No, Ruby will just have to bide her time and wait to attack Bart again the minute that everyone has gone. But in the meantime Ruby is forced to endure as the intolerable pain bites deeper.