Mothertime

by Gillian White

  ‘There’s nothing there that I desperately want,’ he told her defensively. ‘There’s nothing that can’t be replaced.’

  ‘So what are you going to do? You can’t just not return! You must let her know where you are! She’ll think you’ve had an accident and start phoning round the hospitals. She’ll ring you at work…’

  ‘I was going to leave a note but I decided that wasn’t the way. I am going to ring her in a minute.’

  ‘Well Christ, you’d better make sure that you do! And the children—you’ll have to see them and explain yourself. You can’t let Caroline tell them!’

  ‘I’ll see you this evening and I’ll tell you what happens,’ he said hesitantly, and hung up. It should have been a happy day but he sounded fatigued and defeated like a traveller lost in the catacombs.

  What happened was that he arrived at the flat shuddering with relief, and after he closed the door he stood defensively against it, breathing hard like a cartoon mouse. ‘She doesn’t know where I am,’ he squeaked. ‘I wouldn’t tell her.’

  Shocked, Suzie cried, ‘But you did ring her? What did she say?’

  ‘She said that I’d ruined her life, she said that she’d never find herself again and she said that she’d dedicate the rest of her life to the task of paying me back.’

  ‘Oh? Is that all?’

  Robin threw down his briefcase. The day was gloriously hot, the sun streamed through the newly cleaned windows turning the air the colour of marigolds—you could smell the freshness of the curtains—but Robin noticed none of this. He stretched out on the sofa and kicked off his shoes. He flung his arms over his head and groaned in anguished despair. ‘She was totally unreasonable, Suzie. Beside herself. She was exactly as I knew she would be. But I am seeing the children the day after tomorrow, I insisted on that.’ He turned to her almost pleadingly, but surely he didn’t need reassuring on this—he’d always been a wonderful father. And Suzie gazed at him thoughtfully, as a cat looks at a king. She saw how handsome he was, how he handled the fast, exciting pace of his life. With that early trace of silver on those side-wings of hair, the high, thin bones of his face that look so well on television, the wide, intelligent brow and the neat, narrow nose, he was arrogant and handsome. But cowed by that woman as usual, as if she held something over him. The throb within Suzie slackened slowly… she re-buttoned her blouse, she had hoped to make love on this their first evening but alas…

  He believed he had covered his tracks so well, he was so careful to take a devious route home, to check in his driving mirror in case he was being followed, to tell no one save for his most trusted friends about his new home, and it was a fortnight before Caroline’s detective managed to track him down. That’s when the banger went off in the hall, a mean little banger which was pushed through the letter box one Monday morning. It did no damage except for a small brown burn on the carpet.

  ‘Ring the police! We must take out an injunction! She will kill somebody! First she tampers with your car and now she is attacking your home. She might have caused a fire! She is rabid and must be stopped.’

  He sighed. ‘She’ll stop in the end. We just have to allow her to get this out of her system. She is a highly-strung woman, Suzie. She’s always been highly-strung and given to dramatics.’

  Suzie was truly frightened. ‘Christ, Robin, I don’t believe this! That woman will get away with murder one day and no one will turn a hair!’

  Robin was desperate to convince her. ‘Please believe me, Suzie. I know her, you don’t. Let her burn herself out. Please, please!’ He smashed his fist into his hand.

  ‘Wait till she finds out that I live here, too. She is quite likely to kill me!’

  ‘Just let’s give her time,’ was Robin’s only answer, hardly reassuring, and so Suzie took to creeping about, keeping the curtains drawn when she was home, and making sure the oak door was locked and bolted when she went out into the garden, only coming home through the back way and inconveniently parking the Peugeot down the road at the bottom of the mews. It was all quite absurd. She never opened the door without peeping through the spyhole first. She always listened in before she picked up the answerphone. She felt like a fugitive. She had not met Caroline then, had only been shown some pictures, and they looked daunting enough… a tall, lean woman in leather aggressively astride a powerful motor bike advertising some macho brand of aftershave… ‘but that was taken years ago,’ said Robin carelessly. ‘She doesn’t look quite like that now.’ Suzie was not comforted. Caroline had looked like that once—she couldn’t have changed that much.

  When Robin’s children visited the flat Suzie was forced to move out.

  And then, one day on the telephone: ‘Why do you want a divorce, Robin?’ Caroline screamed over the wires. ‘There’s someone else, isn’t there? Why are you telling me lies! There must be somebody else.’

  ‘There is someone else.’ Robin was ashen-faced, the phone was a knife in his hand, he gripped it like a dagger, ‘and we are going to get married.’ Suzie stood at his side blowing out air like a bugler, urging her champion into battle. Robin kept his voice steady. In his best television tone he said, ‘It really doesn’t matter whether you agree or not, I’m afraid, Caroline. I intend to divorce you and that is what is going to happen whether you agree or not.’

  ‘What about Isobel?’

  ‘Isobel?’ Robin stuttered.

  ‘She will never speak to you again!’

  ‘Don’t threaten me with my own mother, Caroline. It will make no difference what Isobel says either.’

  ‘You cowardly tosser!’ Caroline’s voice was a rusty blade. ‘And what about that God of yours? How are you going to tell Him about your broken marriage vows? But then… you can go through a priest, can’t you Robin, it never needs to be face to face, not with you. Always from a distance… that’s you to a T, isn’t it, you wanker, always on the phone, never face to face with anyone… not me not God not Isobel not the kids. I hope your soul rots in hell!’ and her voice rose to a screaming scrape. It was embarrassing. Such misery was horribly distasteful—how could Caroline expose herself so?

  ‘Caroline, listen to yourself! Can you honestly blame me? I needn’t have told you at all, I could have communicated through a solicitor.’

  ‘And you fucking well would have done if I hadn’t just bloody well asked you! Who is she? WHO IS THE BITCH?’

  Robin put the phone down, unable to take any more, and Suzie, who felt that a contract had suddenly been taken out on her life, eased a stiff scotch into his shaking hand.

  ‘I’ve told her!’ he said quite needlessly, like a child who has swallowed his medicine. ‘I’ve done it! And now you will have to meet Isobel and Joe.’

  ‘And the children,’ Suzie reminded him gently. ‘No more moving out when they come.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ But he sounded so wary! Caged in! The truth finally told had not brought anything like the relief for which Suzie had so desperately hoped.

  As they drove towards the prearranged meeting with Isobel, along the identical streets, wet and dark, with their identical box hedges, bay windows and security alarms, the yellow road gleamed ahead of them through the rain. Robin’s voice came to her through the soft rushing sounds of the downpour. ‘Surrey was too much for them. The garden was too much for Joe and the house was too much for Isobel.’

  How could they bear to live here? ‘But surely they could have paid for some help?’

  ‘Isobel doesn’t trust cleaners.’

  Suzie peered out of the window and saw no litter; every tree was the same shape, there was not even the messy clutter of anything so normal as a bus-stop. Her own family home was a rambling Somerset long house, and here Eileen lived on after Daddy’s death six years ago in a dreadful, happy muddle amidst jars of pickle and magazines, amidst tall reeds and grasses and the collapsed woodwork of Suzie’s old dens. She was beginning to wonder if she should move—she couldn’t keep on top of it, but Suzie dissuaded her. ‘You’d hate it. How
could you leave all the memories behind? There is so much of Daddy still here and it doesn’t cost much more. And then of course there’s the cats.’

  She couldn’t bear the thought of Mummy moving, of never being able to go down to ‘Poppins’ again, as if that’s where her strength was.

  Picking up cups and straightening magazines, sitting up and down, clearing throats… Feeling slightly sick and shivery, Suzie noticed the knees as they all sat so squarely in Isobel’s sitting room. Rows of dented, frightened knees all pointing to the middle. There were parrots on the chintz. There was a photograph of Robin in a gold frame and a small, faded one of Joe and Isobel. That was discoloured. There were fly specks on it, no one had noticed the fly specks… the only disruption in the room. The one of Robin was not a good likeness. It showed him in his wedding suit and spoke of a lost age. But he looked Suzie square in the eyes from that shiny piece of glass and even now she recalls the gaze of those tiny miniature eyes.

  They stared at the fan of paper in the spotlessly empty red-brick hearth. A hoovered hearth.

  ‘This is Suzie.’

  Isobel’s hand was cool and dry, like her greeting. Robin had told his parents about his impending divorce. ‘They were quite shocked, of course, but they’ll get over it. I am sure they will like you. Isobel never got on very well with Caroline.’

  Now Suzie could see why.

  Isobel’s pink-rimmed eyes, her mildly disapproving stare flicked over her, Isobel, with her withered throat and her steel-grey hair. ‘I believe you intend to marry my son, my son who is already married.’

  What was going on here? Suzie, nervous now and taken aback, looked to Robin for rescue before she nodded cautiously.

  ‘And I expect he has told you that I find divorce unacceptable—yes, even in this advanced day and age. I suppose you think that’s peculiar.’

  Suzie, a prisoner in that dreary little room, shook her head in disbelief. Could this really be Robin’s mother? What hold did this woman have over him that he seemed to wither beside her, hoping for approval like a little boy. Suzie swore she would never see this woman again and Robin would just have to put up with it. ‘I hadn’t really given it much thought. It is Robin I am involved with, not his family.’

  ‘A fact which is glaringly apparent.’

  Suzie grimaced at Robin, preparing to rise and leave. ‘I think I’ve already had enough of this, Robin. Shall we go now?’

  ‘Isobel.’ Robin sat forward, wringing his hands. ‘I couldn’t have gone on any longer. You know that, Mother.’

  ‘I daresay. But that does not mean you have to abandon all restraint and leap straight into an unholy union with somebody else!’

  Suzie flared. ‘An unholy union? Robin, I will wait for you in the car.’

  She sat in the car, listening to the rain, wondering and waiting. What sort of childhood had Robin had? He never spoke of it. What was he doing in there? And how dare he allow his mother to address her like that! He should have sprung to her defence: it was Robin who should have insisted they leave. Suzie was shaking with fury when he finally came out and slid self-consciously into the driving seat.

  ‘She says she’s sorry, darling. You have to understand, Isobel can’t bear any sort of chaos and she sees divorce as totally calamitous… it is nothing to do with you personally, in fact, I think she approves of you.’

  ‘Approves of me! So what did she think she was going to achieve by that vicious performance? She was trying to drive me away!’

  ‘She’s a very direct person. She says exactly what she thinks…’

  Suzie stared, astonished and then she burst out laughing and went on, laughing and laughing. All Robin’s women seemed to be allowed to behave however badly they pleased. He spent his life making excuses for them as if he was somehow to blame. He must pander to Isobel because his morals fall short of hers, he must put up with Caroline because he’s responsible for her bad behaviour. She pulled herself together and cut off his misguided ramblings. ‘You realise, of course, that after we marry I refuse to have anything whatsoever to do with your mother.’

  ‘She’ll come round eventually, once she sees I’m determined.’

  ‘Oh? Oh? Just like Caroline will calm down if we wait long enough, if we’re prepared to put up with anything? Well, I am NOT prepared I’m afraid, Robin—and you are being incredibly unreasonable if you expect anything else after what you’ve just put me through.’ She looked at him hard. ‘Perceptive,’ they called him, and ‘shrewd’. It is said that off-stage, comedians are often the saddest people, so perhaps the hardest investigative journalists are soft as butter underneath. Over dinner that night, amazed to find herself still with him, Suzie told Robin, ‘I think that I really must love you very much.’

  Though disapproving of their marriage, Isobel accepted Suzie in the end, just as Robin said she would. She sent her an Easter card—Christ rising, embossed, with arms outstretched, in a sickly glow of Cartland pink. Suzie’s relationship with Robin’s mother is as brittle as the tail of the glass hawk that stands on the mantelpiece over that red-brick fireplace.

  ‘Mummy, I wish you wouldn’t go on so much about Robin’s children, especially when Isobel’s here. It’s difficult enough as it is.’ Suzie is packing the Scrabble away. Robin is off running Joe and Isobel home at dear last. It has gone ten o’clock and she feels exhausted.

  ‘I don’t see what’s difficult about it, lovey.’

  ‘It is a struggle for me to have them here. They don’t like me, Mummy, especially the oldest girl, Vanessa. I am constantly on edge when she’s around. She watches me. She watches everything I do, every move I make.’

  ‘I didn’t notice. Are you sure you’re not being paranoid, Suzie?’

  It is unusual for Suzie’s mother to contradict her; it is unusual and unpleasant.

  ‘And Dominic undermines me whenever he gets the chance.’

  ‘I doubt that. But even if they are, you can’t really blame them. After all, it’s far harder for children to criticise the people they love. They can’t blame Robin so they have to blame you. It is up to you to deal with it sensitively.’

  ‘And you don’t think I’m trying?’

  ‘I am sure you are, dear.’

  ‘If Caroline was different there wouldn’t be a problem.’ Suzie travels uneasily round her drawing room, pummelling cushions. ‘Robin feels so guilty, you see, knowing what a disastrous mother Caroline is. When we have our own child he’ll feel easier.’

  ‘But Caroline will surely still be a disastrous mother, won’t she?’

  Suzie confronts her with slipping control. ‘You think I should have them here, don’t you Mummy?’

  ‘I think that’s what Robin wants—certainly until Caroline improves. Perhaps, while she’s away at this place… Broadlands. They should not be left alone in that house for a fortnight. Even with the paid help it is not a satisfactory arrangement to my mind.’

  Suzie’s response is a sharp one. ‘I’d never have married him if I’d known I’d be expected to play mother to his string of disturbed children.’

  ‘You must work it out in your own way, lovey. The last thing I want to do is to interfere.’

  Suzie wants to cry out—‘But you have interfered, Mummy! Everyone is interfering with the order of my life and my garden and my attitudes and I just can’t stand it any more.’

  Who can that be at this hour? Probably someone for Robin. Suzie removes her earring automatically as she picks up the phone.

  ‘Ah, Isobel. I expect you are ringing to say that you’ve arrived safely and that Robin is on his way back now?’

  ‘Well no, actually,’ Isobel replies, ‘although, yes, he has started back. I am really phoning to tell you that I looked up the word wight just now and it means a human being, a person, and it also means, by the way, courageous and brave. I thought I’d just ring to let you know, and you can tell Robin from me that just because he’s on television that doesn’t mean he knows everything.’

  ‘Well
, thank you, Isobel.’ Suzie bats her cat-slit eyes as she regards herself in the wall mirror. ‘Thank you for ringing to tell us that. Goodnight.’

  Seventeen

  T IS FOR TINSEL and S is for good old Santa but they also stand for trouble and strife…

  ‘Damn it, what did you say to him, Ruby? Lot has been sending me malicious looks all day and he’s gone all distant and silent.’

  Ruby Dance feels absolutely rotten; the room is swimming round and her eyes must surely be filled with straw. The children are bathed and in bed, sleeping by the sound of it, even Damian, thrown by Bart’s fumbling attentions, fell straight to sleep tonight. Ruby feels sick. She should not have drunk all that wine. She should have refused the liqueurs. She is lying down flat on her back on the sofa in a cleared space between softly wrinkled balloons, a cup of black coffee on the table beside her, made by the clucking, anxious Bart. She lies there sinking, smothered, lost, obliterated by the depths of Bart’s betrayal but it’s easier now. Everyone has gone.

  Everyone said they had a lovely time but Pat Dance sidled up to her once during the afternoon and whispered with deep understanding, ‘Everything all right, Ruby?’

  ‘Yes, of course Pat, everything’s fine!’

  ‘Only Lot is behaving very strangely, and he always picks up disturbing vibrations.’

  ‘Really, I don’t know what’s the matter with Lot, but I am just fine.’

  But already she regretted the way she had broken down when they’d all gone out to play in the snow. She wished she hadn’t spilled the beans, the moment after she’d done it. It hadn’t mattered that Lot was there—she would have talked to the wall at the time only Lot was there instead.

  And afterwards, when they ail traipsed in, wet and raw-skinned from the cold, Lot was perfectly silent. But gradually Ruby noticed that if Bart came anywhere near him he edged away, throwing black looks over his shoulder. If Bart actually came to sit beside him, then Lot got up and moved immediately. Bart asked him innocently, ‘What’s the matter, Lot? Have I said something?’