‘Or he might just be lonely and missing you.’
‘Have you spoken to Pandora recently?’
‘Not for a few weeks. Why?’
‘Something’s not right. She says they’re all fine but…’
‘You worry too much. You ought to be out there having a wonderful new life with your Mr Wiseman…’
‘I wish I’d never told you.’
‘…instead of imagining all the things that could be going wrong for everyone else. You’ve got enough on your plate with Gran. Pandora’s OK.’
‘Well, for the record, Gran was in great form, today. She actually made me laugh.’
I smile, remembering. It’s becoming easier to see the funny side. Affection is creeping back in.
Mother was sitting dozing when I arrived. I watched her for 20 minutes. She looks so reduced. Her scalp showing through her hair, her arms so thin. Her fingers are perpetually restless, even in sleep. But her nails are long, beautifully shaped, polished in Frosted Pearl by the lady who comes in twice a month to provide ‘pampering’. Mother never wore nail polish in her mentally competent days. And, aged 16, I well remember hiding my hands inside my sleeves, the first time I tried it out.
The kitchen assistant woke her, barging in after the most cursory of knocks.
‘Sorry! Did I wake you, sweetheart? Me and me big trolley. It’s coffee-time… here we are. Nice an’ milky, like you like it. One sugar. Not too hot. Watch yourself, mind. And how about a nice wee custard cream? Your favourite, eh? Coffee for you too, dear?’
I accepted the tasteless brew and she trundled off down the corridor.
Mother sat bleary-eyed, staring at the cup. Since when did she take sugar in her coffee? Or lots of milk, come to that? And she always loathed custard creams.
I leaned over and said quietly, ‘I’m here, Mother. Jessica. Your daughter.’
‘Where’s George?’
‘He’s been waiting a long time for you. Won’t he be chuffed to see you when you eventually decide to pay him a visit? Wonder what he’ll say when he sees you. “Did I invite you?” maybe. You’ll feel right at home.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ she said.
I hugged her.
After James has gone home to Margot, I daub a test-splodge of the new emulsion on the bare plaster. Yes, I like it. It’s the right colour for this room. Neutral. Unlike the war-zone Adeline and I created, until I reached my teens and she moved out. I became fiercely protective of my territory and I still remember the sense of betrayal when I returned home after my second term at university to find the ornaments changed and two of the drawers commandeered for table linen. Now, four decades later, I wonder: was it the same for my mother when I started to claim parts of her home? What must it have felt like to have her own child turn jailor?
I must hold onto this thought next time she makes me wish she was dead.
Chapter 3
I PAUSE FOR a long moment before entering Mother’s old bedroom. As children we knew it was off limits; as I grew older I understood.
The crush in her wardrobes comes as no surprise. Twice before I’ve had to select clothes from these racks: first when I wrenched her away to live in my home, then when she went into The Morningside. But before that, countless times, I’ve dashed in, seizing something – anything – to replace a soiled, burned, shredded or lost garment.
The wardrobes are mahogany and vast, with scrollery and castle-sized keyholes. I can only marvel that one tiny woman could compress so many boxes and bags into this space. I find spangled shoes stuffed inside Wellington boots, a baby’s bootee inside a handbag. Seamed silk stockings tangle with a book about wartime economies. A strip of Belgian lace snags on a paper of snap fasteners. A nightdress I gave her, still in its wrapping, is stained with something dark and sticky. Embroidery kits hide between used sheets.
Everything on hangers seems more manageable. I scribble four labels: ‘The Morningside’; ‘Alter’… hmm, she has lost so much weight over the last few years, dare I attempt such a task? ‘Charity shops’; ‘Recycling’.
A lavender-blue silk dress drags me back to my childhood. Mother twirling under the light, the soft drapes floating about her, her look coquettish as Father says, with something odd in his voice, ‘Is that a new frock, Doris?’ It was such a rare thing for them to go out together that I lay in bed convinced they would meet with an accident on the way home, and we children would be orphans. I never saw Mother in that dress again. It’s too beautiful to dispose of. I sneak it into the collection for going back to my house.
A grey tailored suit, the cut exceptional. My sharpest memory is of Mother wearing it when she stopped wearing black. For her son. I abandon it to the designer rail of some charity shop.
Good grief! What on earth is a man’s kilt doing here? The genuine article, eight yards of tartan, beautifully finished. Weighs a ton. Surely Mother couldn’t have smuggled this out of a shop unseen? But then, I never ceased to be amazed at the stream of things she managed to appropriate without being caught. At first I returned the magazines and sweeties and perfume and jewellery with abject apologies. Then I took to slipping things back without reporting their absence: electrical goods, silk scarves, books. Latterly I gave James items to take to an Oxfam shop on the other side of town. Mother had become a kind of modern-day Robin Hood and I her henchman. But a perfect kilt? It must be worth a mint. I will return it myself.
Oh, here’s the suit Mother wore to Pandora’s wedding. Pale pink linen. Fitted jacket, slim skirt. Matching sculpted pink hat. Pandora chose it. Just as she insisted I wear mauve silk. To ‘complement the wedding party’. Mauve! With my skin!
Her father, Lewis, absolutely refused to wear what he called a ‘penguin suit’. The desperate bride tried every wile in her repertoire, including hiring the whole outfit, but no, he stands out in the wedding pictures as the only one in a lounge suit. Nothing in Pandora’s smile betrays her anguish. Nowadays she’d probably have asked the photographer to digitally eliminate the evidence of his non-compliance, but her wedding pre-dated such facilities. That suit remains as a testament to her persistent disappointment in us.
The groom, Enrico, looks sheepish; his father, bewildered. So perhaps Lewis had a point. And I envied him his courage as I donned the mauve and watched the colour drain from my face. But in fairness, Mother’s pink suited her to perfection. The stain of a strawberry on the sleeve is still there. She probably never wore the outfit again. Perhaps the clouds had already begun to obscure her memory. Who knows how long she covered her forgetfulness before I started to suspect?
The cornflower-blue ensemble she wore to James’ wedding is looking much sadder. Her own choice, based on a lifetime’s understanding of what became her. It’s worn state marks it out as a loved friend, fit now only for the recycling bag.
I shake out the claret dress she bought for James’ graduation. How proud she was of his achievement, how devastated that he could obtain only three tickets and she could not attend. We gave her an enlarged photo, which she displayed with pride, but I never saw her in that red dress without a pang of guilt.
She was wearing red when I went to visit her yesterday afternoon. This same deep crimson, but synthetic, not merino wool. By the time she’d spilled her hot milk and brushed against the pollen of the lilies ‘that prime minister’ had brought her, it had survived for less than two hours. I want to swathe her in aprons but the staff just whip things off and throw them in the laundry. Who am I to interfere?
Most of the garments in Mother’s wardrobes hold no sentiment for me so I sort them swiftly according to size and condition. Until, that is, I come to a dark green outfit with a box-pleat skirt. I had no idea she still had it.
I close my eyes and sink down onto the bed, clutching the suit, my own wedding swirling across my vision. Mother twittering round me like some forest elf; Adeline wailing about the tightness of her bridesmaid’s dress after her holiday in Spain; Father walking in a measured stride beside me as if on parade. A
nd me, a curious sense of detachment beneath the boned satin.
I slip my arms into the jacket, turn this way and that, remembering. I zip the skirt, leaving the waistband unbuttoned, the loose pleats accommodating my broader hips. It looks surprisingly neat. How did Mother feel that day? In the mirror, her motherhood merges with mine. The suit joins the pile for going to my home. The thoughts need time.
Many of these items are clearly brand new mail order ‘bargains’, neither Mother’s size nor style. By the time I’ve emptied the racks I have a row of carrier bags to go to charity. James will remove those tonight, before I can change my mind. The smaller piles destined for The Morningside or my house I carry down and stow in the boot of my car, my dubious reasons safe from questioning.
Once I’ve closed those massive wardrobe doors, the room looks much the same, a denial of my emotional day. I shroud the furniture in old sheets. It will be steadier than ladders to stand on while I paint. Another phase in its long life.
What a lot it has witnessed.
Doris as a young wife, excited by ownership of her first home, is a mystery figure to me. My earliest memories of my parents are of two people whose world centred on their family. Hard to imagine them before we existed. Doris and George. Just the two of them.
Easier to picture Mother pregnant. I was born barely a year after their wedding. (Although there are no photos. ‘People didn’t flaunt their bumps in those days. And besides, we didn’t even own a camera when we got married.’) Then Adeline and Eugene at two-year intervals, and Lionel six years later. I always wondered if he was ‘a mistake’. Maybe she loved him so fiercely in order to compensate.
As newborns we all lay in the family cot on Mother’s side of the mahogany bed, within easy reach when we woke. ‘You didn’t cry much, any of you,’ she used to say. ‘You knew your food was coming. Every three hours for the first week or so, then every four hours. No demand feeding in those days. Routine, that’s what babies need. Routine and security.’
How different from her granddaughter’s approach. ‘There’s no way I’m going to let this baby rule my life. It’ll be in its own room from the start. And bottle-fed. I’m not ruining my figure.’
Family life matters to me. Perhaps that’s why my internal pictures of Doris the young parent are the ones I’ve clung to as she slipped away from me. The stories she invented, the games, the sewing, crafting, baking. By the time Adeline came along Father had invested in a Brownie box camera. A bookshelf full of albums – meticulously arranged in chronological order and invaluable aids as the plaque started to invade Mother’s brain – holds a record of our holidays, home-life, schooldays, outdated clothes and stilted poses.
Doris as a new widow, alone in this big bed, that I don’t want to picture. It brings my own loss too close for comfort.
But Mother’s restless search for George now seems to me to reflect the enormity of her loneliness. Is the man she seeks the same one I remember? In my mind he remains a rather remote figure. Placid, bookish, given to flashes of paternal affection.
The annual excursion to the forest to select a Christmas tree. The chocolate darkness, the scent of cut wood, the pyramid of festivity Mother made from the seven feet of Douglas Fir he dragged home.
The tree-house, constructed entirely without our prior knowledge. The bounce of the planks under our feet; the held breath hiding from the neighbourhood children lest they devalue this labour of love.
The seaside chalet in Devon, big enough for 10. Father organising games on the beach, swimming with us in the sea, buying in food that made Mother gasp: shrimps and asparagus, marinated steaks, chocolate brazils. Hushing us as Mum actually dozed on the veranda, her knitting slipping from her fingers, while we stifled giggles.
The night when he found me weeping in the back garden.
‘What on earth’s the matter, Jessica? You’ll catch your death of cold out here.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘Don’t be silly. Of course you care.’
‘I do not!’
‘Why? What’s wrong?’
‘I know I don’t belong.’
‘Belong where?’
‘In this family.’
I’d done it this time. His voice came out all starched as if he needed something stiff to hold in his annoyance.
‘Why on earth would you think that?’
‘I don’t look like you or Mum.’
‘Rubbish. You have your mother’s build. And you’re the spitting image of your grandmother on her side – and you’re every bit as stubborn as she was!’
‘But Adeline looks exactly like you.’
‘I hope for her sake she doesn’t!’ he said with a lopsided grin.
‘And the boys – they’ve got your hair and your nose and Lionel’s got Mum’s eyes. The others are all tall.’
‘And you’re petite, like Mum. You have your grandmother’s curls. What brought all this on?’
‘Nesta. At school. She says her mum reckons I’m not a real Mannering.’
‘And what would Nesta’s mother know about anything – whoever she is? You mustn’t take any notice of what spiteful little girls say. Who is this Nesta anyway?’
‘She’s got sticky-out teeth and d’you know, Dad, she can’t even do algebra. I mean, how can anybody not see how to do easy-peasy stuff like algebra?’
‘There’s your answer. She’s jealous. Now come on, girl, stir your stumps. I’m freezing out here. A nice hot cup of tea is what we both need and no more of this silly nonsense.’
And my reliably undemonstrative father gave me a swift hug.
I know that Mother taught me far more, mopped up more tears, coaxed me out of more fancied slights, laid down far more stepping stones to adulthood, but somehow Father’s rare excursions into her realm had a more memorable impact on me.
When it was my turn to face a daughter’s angst about her appearance, I remembered his patience and listened to Pandora’s fears with sympathy.
Being the first of his offspring to reach adolescence, I probably tested my father’s boundaries more than I realised, but my abiding memory is of a disciplined man, slow to anger, who taught by example, and I for one, suffered more from his disappointment in me than from any verbal reproof.
I was 29 when he died. He was only 53.
Nothing prepares you for news like that. Mother’s voice was flat as she told me over the phone. It was a massive heart attack. He’d been walking up the stairs at the wool mill he managed, a journey he’d made thousands of times. The steps were no steeper that day, the day no more stressful than usual. In his bag he had the yearly budget to work on, but it was no more onerous than it had been every other year. Why had his heart failed the test on that particular day?
I went home immediately. Mother allowed me to accompany her to the undertaker, to the manse, to the solicitor, but I was superfluous to requirements. She was totally in control of everything.
But the shock of Dad’s death was totally eclipsed 15 years later by the loss of my brother, Lionel.
He was 32. Just 32.
It was this tragedy that changed Mother. Something in her died with him and I came to dread the closed expression that told me she had gone somewhere I couldn’t follow. But after a few years my sympathy edged into resentment. Her withdrawal seemed selfish, it denied our grief. I wished I could have talked to my father about it, he would have understood.
I sometimes wonder, could the shock of Lionel’s death have started her dementia? Is such a thing medically possible? The loss of her identity and the endless searching do seem to mirror profound maternal sorrow. Surely, I told myself, this survivor could not now fragment inside. And since she continued to conjure up her habitual graciousness for visitors, and provide excuses for her lapses, she made me doubt my early suspicions.
James takes the stairs two at a time and the warmth of his presence banishes my melancholy.
‘I popped in to see Gran at lunchtime today. She was dozing most of the time but
she’s looking good.’
‘I agree, she looks much less strained than she did.’
‘She sent me off to find Charles Darwin to sort out the plumbing, which she reckons has been tinkered with by the Poles.’
I give him a watery smile.
‘And what about you?’ he says briskly. ‘We need to plump you up now.’
‘No thank you! I need to lose a few pounds, not put anything on.’
‘The rate you’re working, you’ll be skin and bone by the time this place goes on the market. You really must ease up, Mum.’
‘I will, dear. Just as soon as this is all finished.’
I don’t tell him that I’ve agreed to have Pandora’s children for two weeks in the summer, while she goes on holiday to Italy – I presume with Enrico. Her brittle tone doesn’t suggest lazy days or companionship. James has enough worries of his own with the new mortgage and the boys. Is Aunt Beatrice right? Would Mother prefer the money from this house to go to helping her grandchildren?
He’s looking at me quizzically.
‘What?’ I say. It sounds sharp. I soften it with a smile.
‘You were miles away.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Oh, before I forget, I cut this out of the paper yesterday.’ He hands me a torn cutting.
I read it in silence. Sedatives – chemical coshes, it actually says – to keep them calm and manageable, are apparently killing people with Alzheimer’s prematurely. About 23,000 a year.
‘Remember that family at The Morningside?’ James says. ‘The ones that moved their grandad there from that other home? Died a few months ago.’
‘The Sullivans?’
‘That’s the ones. They reckoned he was being doped to keep him quiet, didn’t they?’
‘They also reckoned the staff were cruel to him. Nice enough when they were there, but shouting at him and ignoring him when they weren’t. Dumping a tray beside him at mealtimes, knowing he couldn’t feed himself. That’s why they moved him to The Morningside. But they were pretty paranoid.’
Remember, Remember Page 3