by Anna Maxted
Gabrielle, Jack, and Mr Coates turned towards me, a frieze of regret. Jack opened his mouth to speak – and the lights dimmed.
‘I—’ he said.
‘Sssssssssshhhhhhhhh!’ boomed Martine.
He winced apologetically at me, as the curtain rose.
The play began and while I made a point of looking in the right direction, I neither heard nor saw the action of the first scene. My heart seemed to twitch and fidget, and I kept stealing sideways glances at Mr Coates. His presence meant something awful. Terror weighed in my stomach like the first day at school. My mind groped for answers that lay just out of reach. It knew what it was searching for, I hadn’t a clue. And part of me wanted it to stay that way. I blocked this unauthorised search by forcing my attention back to the stage.
I could sense Gabrielle and Jack, bolt upright in their chairs beside me, as nervous as I was. Now and then, I was aware of their fearful gaze, and I felt like the ghost of a woman rising from the wreck of a fatal accident. Mr Coates never looked at me once. He stared straight ahead, as if hypnotised, his whole body still. He didn’t laugh at the jokes, though, and he didn’t stop twisting the loose threads of his jumper sleeve.
I tried to follow the story. I breathed evenly and managed to form the thought that Roger was a good actor. John Malcolm was a part that suited him. He’d described the part to me as ‘Heathcliffish’ (a description meant to enlighten me). Unfortunately, it had made me think of Cliff Richard. The character my father was portraying came across a lot less polished and polite than Cliff Richard.
I looked behind me and saw Martine mouthing his lines as he said them. Her crush on my father was out of control. I could see that Roger was handsome, with a certain charm. I could also see that the character of John Malcolm was – to an unworldly woman who didn’t get that being knocked about is not romantic – dreamy in that he purported to love his ex-punchbag, sorry, wife, ‘too much’. In Martine’s fiction, I imagined that the hero ain’t the hero unless he’s giving the heroine a good old belt. That’s how she knows he isn’t indifferent.
I’ve always thought that love isn’t a straight choice between being ignored or being pulped. (Historically, I’ve chosen to be ignored, but I believe that some women favour the middle ground of kindness, nurturing, and support.) Martine, however, was an old-fashioned girl. For this reason, despite her feelings for my father, she’d always remained respectful to Angela. I think she approved of my mother’s subservience – as if she was excused from the sin of being my father’s wife, because she knew her place. (Also, I suppose, Martine saw that they were over the honeymoon period.)
I was also able to register too that Angela wasn’t a bad actor. Her character was supposed to have a ‘quiet manner’, and fuss around my father – both of which came naturally – but Angela also conveyed a managerial efficiency. I could tell she was a little scared of the audience, though. She never looked our way once, whereas some of the other actors did. I could tell my father was aching to, but was restraining himself. No doubt he didn’t wish to be distracted from his own genius.
However, after the scene where he and the woman playing his ex-wife fought out their differences (Martine had nothing to worry about. Geraldine Robbins could cinch in her waist all she liked, her whiny, primadonnaish personality was anathema to my father; he didn’t like women who made him compete for attention), Roger could no longer resist. Geraldine Robbins exited, my mother, as Miss Cooper, entered. It was the point where the manageress realises that this glamorous guest of hers is her lover’s ex-wife, that he’s still in love with her.
‘That’s her, isn’t it? said Angela. The bitterness in her voice chilled you.
My father as John Malcolm was supposed to reply ‘What?’
‘What?’ said my father, but as he said it, I squirmed. He wasn’t directing the question at Miss Cooper, he was staring straight at Jack, as if he couldn’t look away. ‘What?’ he said again, turning his head with effort back to Miss Cooper.
My mother was disconcerted. She gabbled her next line, asking him if this was indeed, his former wife, at ninety miles an hour.
‘Yes,’ managed my father. All credit to him he’d caught the question. His gaze darted back to the front row. I writhed in my chair, willing him to snap back into character. It was horribly obvious, more obvious than he thought, that he was distracted.
‘What’s going to happen now, John?’ said my mother. There was a hint of panic in her voice, and I didn’t believe she was that much of a natural. My father’s head had turned a fraction away from her, towards Jack. No, he was looking at Mr Coates, and the expression on his face was of horrified disbelief. I frowned, not understanding, tried to see what he had seen in Mr Coates. Mr Coates had stopped fiddling with his jumper. He was staring back at my father, a cold, fierce intensity on his face. I felt as if my insides had curdled. I held my breath, involuntarily. There was supposed to be a pause, I knew, as John looks at Miss Cooper without response. But the pause wasn’t supposed to be this long.
Then I realised that it was my mother who was supposed to speak. John doesn’t reply; Miss Cooper draws the inevitable conclusion. My father’s eyes were now fixed on her, shock on his face, and she looked like a nervous spaniel. She darted a glance to the front row, to see what had so disconcerted my father, and visibly staggered backward. Her mouth opened but no sound came out.
The prompt murmured, ‘I see. Well, I always knew you were still in love with her …’
The entire audience cringed as one; it was like a Mexican Wave of denial. Which goes to show what a curious nation we are. Kids start school unable to recognise a fork, men bite the heads off kittens at barbecues, but the population is universally aghast to see anyone make a berk of themselves on stage.
‘I see,’ said Angela. ‘Well, I always knew I was still … you were still in love with her …’
She faltered, blushing through her heavy make-up, and her ghastly expression as she faced my father – not John Malcolm, there was no more pretence here – sent a jolt of recognition thundering through me. She’d looked at me like that, once, a long time ago. Fractured memories sped backward in time, jumping together, like footage rewound of a mirror smashing. I remembered something Ollie had said to Jude, not that long ago. It had made my skin crawl and I hadn’t known why.
‘Go and see what your mother is doing.’
My father had said it first, twenty-five years ago.
Chapter 36
I remembered. The bits that mattered, anyway. The rest I could piece together. I watched myself step over the doorframe. I was wearing dark green shoes with buckles, and white ankle socks, probably a grey school skirt. I felt five years old, but maybe I was six. My father was behind me, resting his hand on my shoulder. I could feel its warm pressure.
‘Go and see what your mother is doing,’ he whispered, pointing towards the stairs.
His voice wasn’t angry, it was calm and controlled. And yet it meant you did as you were told immediately. I must have pushed open the frosted-glass doors, scampered across the dogtooth oak floor of the hallway. Our stairs had orange carpet. Daddy smiled at me then, I’m sure, nodded me onwards, as I peered down at him over the banisters.
The mid-afternoon sun shone through the stained-glass windows at the back of the house, tinting patches of my skin red. It always did. Daddy placed a finger over his mouth, and I clapped a hand over mine, to muffle my giggles. Then I skipped towards my parents’ bedroom. I could hear my mother, but my smile faltered. She sounded as if she were in pain. I pushed open the door and screamed.
‘Mummy!’
She screamed too, and pushed Mr Coates off her. She grabbed at the sheets and Mr Coates fled, hunched, into the bathroom, his arms crossed over his chest, his hands covering his willy. He was hairy, and I felt a whoof of air as he swept past. There was a damp, musky smell, like something beginning to rot, mingled with a sickly sweet perfume – different from the light, flowery stuff my father slapped on his face
after shaving. It made my throat feel raw.
‘Baby!’ said Angela, and stumbled towards me, dragging the sheet with her. She tripped over it, and sprawled on the floor, pink and naked.
‘Daddy said you’d be in here,’ I blurted, and turned and ran.
I’ve probably imagined details, here and there, joined the dots. I don’t flatter myself that this memory lay perfectly formed in a no-go area of my mind, like a phoenix in the ashes, waiting to be reborn. But the sense of it was unquestionable. The emotions it dredged up, which now dragged me through the experience as though it had just occurred a second time, were supernatural in their force. I felt like an ant being sucked down a drain.
My head ached fit to crack.
Gabrielle grabbed at my arm as I rushed past her, past Jack, past Mr Coates and his throat-rasping aftershave. As I ran out of the Old School Hall, I could feel Angela and Roger watching me from the stage. I blundered outside and was sick into a bush. I didn’t have a tissue so I spat – ‘pah! pah! pah!’ – to get rid of the drool. Reluctantly, I wiped my mouth on my sleeve, resenting the fact that I’d now have to wash my jumper. It isn’t true that if you have a big blow to contend with, the little things cease to matter. If anything, they matter more.
Then, moaning aloud like a dying person, I staggered to my car. I flopped over the wheel, resting my head on my forearms, gasping, ‘Oh, how could he, how could he do it to both of us?’
He might as well have shot us, but plainly he’d wanted us to suffer.
I’d blanked it out – I must have blanked it. Aged five, your mind is mostly on ‘Play’, not ‘Record’. That’s why – and I owe this knowledge, of course, to Jason – if shit happens before then, it’s harder to undo later, because you don’t quite know what the shit was. Now, I stopped moaning. I just rested my forehead on my hands, opening and shutting my mouth silently. I couldn’t stop shaking my head. It was as if the repetitive swaying movement kept it from bursting open.
How could he be so … cold? How could he do that to me, how could he make a rational decision to damage us – me, her, his own family? Thanks to him, I’d had two and a half decades to stew over the fact that my harlot of a mother had been unfaithful, wrecked the family, deceived us all. And, also thanks to him, I trusted no one. If I even suspected I might get too close to anyone, I destroyed the relationship as a chick in the nest. It was safer to strike first.
I had adored my mother. Thanks to Roger, I’d been made to feel that my own mother had betrayed me – the most unnatural betrayal there is. I’d been made to feel that she didn’t love me back. When I burst in on her and Mr Coates that day, I was implicated in their crime. It marked the beginning of my preference for isolation.
That Angela had been unfaithful had been enough to condemn her. I had never thought to enquire back further as to why she had been unfaithful, something that was so very unlike her. Our condemnation was as absolute as if she’d committed a murder. Now, I couldn’t see why I hadn’t wondered about her reasons. I knew from my work at Hound Dog that an affair was often the end of a painful journey. I mean, I ignored it, but I knew. Greg and I were like – if I may be so bold – crime scene investigators. We uncovered the truth. We didn’t prevent the evil from taking place. We arrived too late. We ignored the beginning and the middle of the story. Our job was simply to witness the end.
And now, it hit me, that wasn’t enough. At least, not when the story had taken place at the heart of my own family, when a grasp of what had occurred before the affair might impact on … everything.
How could he? How could he do it to me, his little girl?
And my mother! I had barely been civil to her for most of my life. She had suffered disproportionately for her mistake. Her decision. I wouldn’t say an affair is a mistake. Swigging from a carton of milk five days past its sell-by date is a mistake.
How easily and glibly I had judged my mother for cheating, when probably her only wrong decision was to do the ‘right’ thing, by staying with Roger and damaging so many people including herself. I hadn’t felt a good person for sleeping with Jack while I was technically engaged to Jason, but if Angela’s experience had taught me anything, it was that if Jack was the right man for me, sex with him was not bad or wrong – the only wrong thing would have been to marry Jason.
Poor Angela. I could feel her infidelity shrinking in significance in my head. It was fizzing to nothing like an aspirin in water. What crowded out the image of me witnessing the offence was the realisation that my father had planned that I should witness it. That atrocity far outweighed the atrocity of seeing my mother grappling with my school drama teacher. I’d not understood what I’d witnessed, but its brutality had terrified me. Their reactions had terrified me even more.
I couldn’t believe that my father would be so callous. If this was how he punished his wife, I was lucky he hadn’t gassed me in the Volvo. That would really have served her right. I’m not easily taught, but I’d got the gist of being a good parent off Gabrielle. You protected your kids, for as long as the world let you. To a reasonable extent, you put their needs before yours. You didn’t traumatise them to the toes of their white ankle socks in order to inflict massive pain on your spouse. (That last was a basic.)
I was hurt.
All right, I was fucking hurt. I was so incredibly hurt it took my breath away.
If you love someone, you do not purposely inflict pain on them. I could only conclude that my father didn’t love me. Not in any sense that matched my definition of love (and my requirements weren’t excessive). However, from the nature of his crime, I didn’t have to work for Hound Dog to conclude that my mother did love me. His m.o. proved the opposite of what he had intended.
Chapter 37
I jumped as someone rapped on the window, and opened the passenger door.
‘God!’ I shouted. ‘Don’t do that!’ as Jack sat down beside me.
‘Special,’ he said, rubbing my back, ‘you OK?’ He looked concerned. As well he might.
I turned to face him. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I invite you to see my parents in a play, and you bring along him and upset everybody.’
Jack shook his head. ‘Hannah, Jonathan loves your mother. And she is so unhappy with your father. When you and I were together, I thought Angela was one of the saddest people I’d ever met. I just didn’t know why. She’s still sad. And the coldness between the two of you, it’s such a waste. As for Roger, he should be afuckingshamed of himself. I thought, here are two unhappy people who could be happy together and—’
‘Don’t patronise me.’
‘All right. It’s hard to explain. Jonathan didn’t approach me to be his agent just because he knew me. He knew I’d married you. Eleven years ago, he’d seen Roger’s announcement in the Ham & High. He’d always wondered about Angela, but as he never heard from her again, he presumed she and Roger had patched things up. For a while, he was married himself. He divorced four years ago. When he called me, looking for an agent, he’d recognised my name, he was hoping I might know something about Angela. He just couldn’t forget her. I didn’t know anything about anything, of course. Until … now. This wasn’t a spontaneous decision to interfere. It was about five, six months ago that Jonathan told me what happened, the truth of the affair. Which explains a lot. About you. I thought you deserved to know the whole story, from someone who wasn’t Roger. But I didn’t think that Roger would react like that when he saw Jonathan. I didn’t think Angela would react like that when she saw Jonathan. I didn’t know she was going to be on stage. You never said. I thought I’d bring him. He could see her. See if the spark was still there, or if he’d just created a whole new woman in his head. It’s easier to have a love affair with an idea of a person than the actual person. The idea of a person doesn’t give you any grief. So I thought, this man is desperate. At least, let him see her. But that wasn’t why I brought him along. I wanted him to speak to you. Tell you what happened. It was a wicked thing to do to a kid, and I feel that if only
you remembered what had happened, you’d understand … your own mind. And then, I thought, it would take away some of this fear—’
I clapped my hands in front of his face. ‘God bless you, Jack, are you ever going to stop talking? Because, guess what, I did remember. Everything. That aftershave Mr Coates wears, it brought it all back. Roger telling me to go and see what my mother was doing, me seeing what she was doing. So, thanks for your concern, but Mr Coates won’t have to explain the facts of my life, because I know them. I know that I’ve been taking out my bitterness on the wrong person. Of course, knowing this makes it all OK. The truth! The truth! The fucking truth! I know the truth! Everything will be wonderful now! I was happy with the way things were—’
‘You were not happy, Ratfink.’ Jack took my hand as he said this. ‘You’ve lived your life since the age of five in the emotional equivalent of solitary confinement.’
‘Jack,’ I said, looking at my hand in his, ‘to hear you talk you’d think that there was only one of us in this car that was screwed up. You’re no gift to intimacy yourself. I’m not saying it’s only your fault, what with parents who care marginally more about you than about the butcher down the road—’
‘That phrase is gonna stick.’
‘Sorry.’
‘No, you’re right. But, I like to think I’ve progressed. I accept that they’re never going to treat me how I’d have liked. I tell myself it’s not personal. And when I think of a “parent” I think of … other people’s parents.’
‘But you admit that how they were affected you.’
Jack nodded. ‘How could it not? I am … cautious. You were my one gamble … That set me back. Maybe the effect you had on me, the way I reacted, maybe there was more to it than … you. But. You can take a lot that’s useful from bad parents. It gives you an edge. You don’t expect the world to come to you. I’m cynical, but that’s an advantage.’
‘Well, no,’ I said. I was surprised to hear myself say it. ‘It isn’t. Not always.’