by Lucy Atkins
‘Oh. Right. Well. Yes, I thought so. But the slightly disturbing thing was this old man seemed to recognize me – but maybe he didn’t. He called me Elena. He also said lunatic things about drowning and murder. My sister thinks I must have given him the name and he picked up on it. He was pretty senile, and extremely old.’
Susannah looks as if I’ve leaned across the table and slapped her.
‘Yes, well, I suppose it was a bit mad of me to go there.’
She closes her eyes and her nostrils flare. She is breathing deeply and slowly. I see her belly rise and then fall again. Yoga breathing. Lines bracket her mouth, her brow remains creased in a frown, and her neck is very straight. Her face is severe, even in repose, as if her features are lodged in their defensive positions. Then her eyes open again. ‘Your mother’s father died just before she went to college, Kali.’
‘I know,’ I say. ‘Anyway. Can you tell me anything more about my grandmother? What was Katherine like?’
She leans forward, elbows on the table. ‘Terrified of your grandfather, I’d imagine. Your mother told me he’d drink, come home, and hit her – on the body, not her face, so nobody saw the marks. People knew, of course – neighbours, friends – but no one did a thing to stop him. They just accepted that this was what some men did. Your grandmother sounded like a frightened person, but kind and loving. You know what, though, Kali? When I met Elena she was actually OK – despite all the crap. She’d been through it, but she was an incredibly resilient person. She was so strong. Some people can do that – they can defy the past. Your mother was one of those people. She was determined to live life and follow her heart and be afraid of nothing. I loved that about her. It made her pig-headed, but she was so fearless.’
This doesn’t sound like my mother at all. I think about her daily life – the school run, walking the dog, painting the sea again and again and again. Her life was all about routine, repetition and predictability. In fact, this drove me wild as a teenager. I wanted to push at her boundaries and break her boring rules. It was a pretty standard adolescent rebellion but now I know she came out here and chased killer whales across a wild ocean; took massive risks when she was not much more than a teenager herself. Why did she allow her life to get so small and domestic?
I think about my life in Oxford: my ever-shrinking job. Playgroup. Sainsburys. Mummy and Me Music. Fish fingers. I never did get to India. Despite everything, my life has become as domestic as my mother’s.
Then again – where am I now? On the rim of a new continent, facing out.
I remember my father in the stairwell – his talk of ‘secrets’. And I make myself ask it because this is the only chance I’ll ever get to know the truth.
‘Did my grandfather abuse my mother, Susannah?’
‘Oh no.’ She looks at her hands on the table. ‘Not physically, if that’s what you mean. It was more neglect, really. He was old-fashioned, strict and away a lot – he sold logging equipment. You knew that, right? He left her with strangers: sitters, neighbours. Then, from the age of about fourteen, he left her to fend for herself when he went away. He didn’t drink so much after the accident, but she sure as hell didn’t like him. He had no idea what to do with a sad little girl. She told me that when he died she felt relief. I guess it’s impossible to forgive the person who robbed you of your mother.’ Her eyes suddenly flick to my face. She looks startled – guilty – as if she’s said something appalling, and behind her eyes I glimpse the same twitching fear that I saw when I first walked into her house.
I wonder what has happened in Susannah’s life to make her this way. Maybe all this – the beautiful house, the art, the thriving gallery – is her defiance of some equally nasty past. What sort of a mother did Susannah have? And what sort of a mother did she then become?
She pushes her hair back up into the wasp clasp at the base of her neck and glances over her shoulder, through the French windows. ‘There’s a storm coming.’ She closes her eyes and takes a long breath as if drawing the storm towards her. When she opens them, she does so slowly, her eyes rising up beneath lifting lids.
‘Kali,’ she says, almost lazily. ‘Why did you have such a hard time getting along with your mother?’
‘Oh? I don’t know. I really don’t. It’s hard to explain.’ It’s always like this when I try to describe my relationship with my mother – there is really no way to document it clearly, probably because I have never fully understood it myself.
‘Well,’ she says. ‘How about you give me some examples.’
‘Oh. I don’t know … OK. The thing is, she could be great, she really could – a great mother. When she was on my side it felt amazing. When I was about fourteen I was suspended from school for writing rude things about my geography teacher. My mother and I sat in the head teacher’s room together, and she had to read this thing I’d written. I was quite scared, waiting for her to get angry. The head teacher said some sanctimonious things, but my mother still just sat there. Finally, she looked at him and said, “If you’re going to teach them this sort of language you should at least teach them how to spell the words properly.” ’
Susannah’s face lights up. ‘Yeah, right. She was never very good with authority figures.’
‘Yes, well, what I mean is – she was complicated. We were complicated together. She could be on my side, like that, totally an ally. But it never lasted. I just never knew where I was with her. We could be fine and then this cloud would descend and she’d withdraw as if I’d committed a horrible crime and she couldn’t bear to look at me, or be anywhere near me. That was undermining. It felt unsafe. It probably made things harder that she and Alice got on so well. The two of them were completely harmonious. But I suppose we just clashed. People do, don’t they? We brought out the worst in each other.’
‘Huh.’ She nods. ‘So that’s why you’re obsessed with her then? You thought she didn’t love you enough?’
‘What? No. I don’t know if I’m obsessed. And I don’t think she didn’t love me enough. I know she loved me. It’s just … it’s a lot more complicated than that.’ But I feel the old resentments begin to surface. It all seems worse now that I am a mother myself. Even if I had ten children I can’t imagine ever allowing Finn to believe that I preferred one of his siblings.
Susannah is still looking at me, eyebrows raised. I feel as if she is rather enjoying watching me wrestle with all this at her kitchen table.
I make my voice lighter. ‘I really was a vile teenager and Alice was angelic: clever, pretty, talented, helpful – much, much nicer. I don’t blame her for preferring my sister. Frankly, I prefer my sister too.’
‘Oh. Sisters.’ Susannah wipes her hands, gets up, and picks up the plates. ‘Fucking poisonous things. I have one myself. Haven’t seen her in nineteen years.’ Her tone is brutal. I look at her, probably with horror, and she stares back at me, chin up. Instantly, I feel the need to defend Alice.
‘None of this is my sister’s fault,’ I say. ‘She didn’t ask to be the good girl. She always tried to include me and smooth things over. She was always quite protective of me, in a way, even though I’m the big sister and it should be the other way around. It must have been a nightmare for her to be stuck between me and my mother all the time.’ My voice wavers. Behind Susannah the sky is almost dark.
‘Huh, well, I guess there are worse things in life than not being your mother’s favourite.’ She walks towards the sink. She obviously doesn’t get any of this and I can’t expect her to. But I wonder, again, what sort of childhood Susannah had.
She is completely right. I do sound like a spoiled, middle-class whinger. I have to stop chasing my mother like this. It’s too late – manifestly too late.
Susannah is filling the sink with water. Once again, she is in control. She’s getting information out of me, and not the other way around.
‘You’d be really good at my job.’ I get up and gather our plates, fighting the urge to slam them together. And then, of course, she asks w
hat I do for a living. I follow her over to the sink. After I’ve told her about the website, she asks questions about my social psychology degree, interviewing techniques, the research behind the website, the funding. When she hears that it is partly funded by the NHS and Oxford University, she looks impressed. ‘I guess people like hearing about other people’s sicknesses,’ she says.
‘Ultimately,’ I say, ‘everybody just wants to tell their story, no matter how awful that story is.’
‘Well, I don’t,’ she says. For a moment, our eyes meet. This time she’s the one to look away. She squirts in washing-up liquid and plunges her hands into the boiling water. ‘You like your work.’
‘Actually, it’s become a bit frustrating since I had Finn. It’s impossible to do it properly. I only work one or two days a week now, so I tend to get given things that no one else wants to do. And I don’t even feel like I do those properly.’
‘Well, work more then.’
‘It’s really not that simple. I mean, I want to be there for Finn too. I want to be a good mother for him.’ She doesn’t say anything. I’m sure she’s thinking I’ll never be that.
‘Where’s the baby’s father in all this?’
‘Oh.’ I glance at my wedding ring. ‘Oh. Well, I … I don’t really want to talk about Doug … ’
She turns to me, wiping her hands, watching my face. I can feel her taking in my features, lingering here and there. Her eyes soften, and it suddenly occurs to me that when she looks at me like this, she’s looking at my mother’s face and not mine – or at least, at the echoes of my mother’s face in mine. My mother would have been younger than I am now when Susannah last saw her. I feel a shiver pass over my skin as if she has reached out to stroke me.
‘When you look at me like that I feel a bit like one of your exhibits.’ I laugh, and turn away to hang up a saucepan.
‘It’s just kind of curious, to see you all grown up, I guess.’
‘So you knew me as a baby?’ I blurt it out. She doesn’t answer.
Somewhere far off, thunder rumbles. A gust of wind bashes against the French window, and one dog, in its basket by the range, looks up sharply. ‘It’s just, I don’t know a single person other than my parents who knew me as a really little baby, before I came to England. I’ve never even seen a picture of myself as a baby.’
‘Huh? Is that right?’
‘So, what was I like?’
‘As a baby? Oh, you cried all the time. They said it was colic, but I always thought you were just objecting to being born. I used to walk you round outside to give your mother a break. You sure had some lungs on you.’
She says it so casually. I must be staring at her because she gives a harsh laugh. ‘What can I say?’ Her eyes are wintry, the pupils sharp and black. ‘You were a screamer.’
‘I just … you’re the only person I’ve ever met who knew me then. This is completely weird.’
‘Well, your mother knew you then.’
‘And my father.’
She shrugs and turns away again.
‘Do you have any pictures of me as a baby?’
‘No.’ She washes a glass.
I take it from her, carefully. ‘Oh. I just thought you might have … ’
‘Well, I don’t.’
‘I’ve always wondered, Susannah, whether my mother resented me in some way. She had to stop her PhD because she got pregnant. Maybe that was the root of our issues. I mean, I basically ruined her life, didn’t I?’
‘That’s a little simplistic, don’t you think?’ There is a clap of thunder, louder, flatter, but no lightning. I peer through the archway at the sofa. Finn doesn’t even twitch. ‘Women did have careers and babies in the seventies, you know,’ she is saying. ‘In fact, I happen to know that your mother read The Female Eunuch, because I gave it to her myself.’
‘Yeah, but not many women had a career chasing killer whales around the Pacific Northwest. You can’t exactly get day care for that, can you?’
She goes over and begins to wipe the table.
‘So am I why she gave it all up?’
She keeps wiping; big jerky movements. I wonder if she’s angry.
‘Susannah?’
She walks past me, throws the cloth into the sink and begins pulling on her boots.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I have to get something in before it rains.’
I look through the archway into the front room. I can see the sofa. Finn’s bum is in the air: his best sleeping position. There are cushions all around him. He’ll sleep for at least an hour. Susannah is hooping the grey scarf round her neck. This is turning into a conflict, and I have no idea why. But I don’t want this conversation to end yet. For the first time, I feel like I’m getting somewhere with her. She steps through the French windows with the dogs behind her.
I yank on my boots and follow her into the icy air. The sky roils overhead, and another clap of thunder makes me jump. Waves thrash at the rocks below. Three rooks or maybe crows – fat black birds – circle the tree tops behind the house, jet black against the troubled sky. She is walking away, fast, down the path along the side of the house towards the trees. I hurry along the deck.
It is not clear why she is so reluctant just to tell me things. Why can’t she tell me everything she knows about my mother? What’s the big secret?
I jump from the deck onto the path that leads into the massive pines. I run faster, catching her up. The wasp hair clasp is almost out, and the veins on the side of her neck bulge. I can hear her breaths as she strides along. The path leads us deeper into the forest. A few quick drops of rain tap down through the prickly branches above us. Another clap of thunder – lower, closer, louder. I mustn’t leave Finn – not with a storm about to break over us. Not in the same room as a Chihuly. I’ll have to go back – I’ll turn back in a moment.
‘When I was little, my father was away a lot,’ I half shout at her, though I’m not sure she can hear me, or is listening. ‘He set up his own architectural firm in London, he’s a total workaholic. My mother was basically a single parent. Even when he was there, at weekends, he was mostly working. She ran the house – she did everything, she was very practical. She even fixed the plumbing. And she had her art – but you’d never know she’d studied marine biology, or researched killer whales up here. I don’t know why she never told me any of this. What I want to know, Susannah – are you listening?’ I know she is. ‘Susannah, what I don’t understand is why she didn’t say anything about all this. Why was it such a big secret?’
There is a clearing up ahead. It’s raining now, droplets coming through the prickly branches, soaking into my hair, so cold they sting my skin. The chill slices through me and I hug myself as I stumble along behind her. I’m going to have to get back to the house for Finn. I can’t leave him there.
Susannah, in her brown fleece and big scarf, seems unconcerned by the cold, the storm or my voice. There is a sharp crack above us, and I hunch, rabbit-like, and then lightning illuminates the patch of land we’re standing on, the skeletal trees around us.
She doesn’t even flinch. She strides towards a wooden building. It is Swedish-looking, built in light pine, with large windows and solar panels on the roof and outside, spread out on the ground, are three paint-stained sheets, no doubt set out to dry earlier. She picks one up and begins to fold it. I run across to her. The rain is getting faster, dripping down my neck.
‘Are you planning on leaving that baby alone in a thunderstorm for long?’ she shouts.
‘I’m about to go back! But just tell me one thing. Just one thing. I just want to hear it for sure. She gave up her PhD because of me, didn’t she? Because she got pregnant with me?’
Susannah tosses the folded sheet onto the small deck of the studio, where the dogs huddle, and scoops up the next one. I can’t see inside the building because it’s dark in there, and the door is closed, slat blinds down, and the windows are streaked with rain. She doesn’t seem to notice the weat
her, even though the wind lashes the tops of the trees above us. She just keeps folding. I have to go back.
‘Susannah?’ I yell. ‘Can you just answer me?’
‘Holy shit. You really don’t give up, do you, Kali? Not even with that baby alone inside a … ’ I don’t catch the words – I think she says ‘strange house’ but it might be ‘stranger’s house’.
‘He’s sleeping!’ I yell through the rain. But I know she’s right. ‘It’s been five minutes! And I’m about to run back! As soon as you answer me—’
‘Quitting the PhD was nothing to do with you,’ she snaps. ‘She quit to come up here.’
I wipe the freezing rain out of my eyes. ‘You mean the mapping project wasn’t her PhD?’
‘Her PhD was on the play vocalizations of the Sea Park dolphins in California.’
Another clap of thunder cracks through the air right above us. My jeans are sticking to my thighs and the rain is soaking into my sweater. I’m shivering violently. Susannah tosses the sheet with the others, but instead of going towards the studio, as I expect her to, she turns and walks away, back towards the trees.
‘Wait!’ I run. The dogs bound after her, tails whirling like propellers. Lightning flashes, shifting a whole patch of air above me and I freeze, involuntarily. She disappears into the pines.
*
As we peel off our boots in the kitchen, I slide the French window shut. I can see Finn, oblivious to the thunder and lashing rain, his bum still in the air.
‘See.’ I nod towards him, breathless. ‘He sleeps like a log. When he was nine months old he slept through an entire fireworks display that shook the walls of the bedroom he was in. He didn’t even twitch.’
The rain is closing in now and there is no visibility outside at all, just layers of falling water. I’m soaking and very cold. But I’m not giving up. ‘Susannah, I’m confused. I don’t really understand the timescale – what she did, and when – and why, come to think of it.’
She pushes her hair back with both hands. Looking down at me, close up, she seems taller, her bones sharper, the lines on her wet face like carvings; her forehead high, like a priestess. ‘Fine,’ she snaps. ‘Your mother’s research was in southern California, near the university.’ She grabs a tea towel and throws it towards me then takes one herself and wipes rain off her face. ‘This was before you came along, a long time before. You want to know what happened to make her quit her PhD? OK. Sure. I’ll tell you. Sit down.’ She points at a stool. ‘Sit.’