My Mother My Mirror

by Andrea Kitt

  Inside, the big kitchen/dining room had the bow window at the front overlooking the gravel drive, and another window opposite, at the back of the house. To the side of the back window was a square white sink, in which I can remember having a bath; in fact I can remember fitting in the round, wax-coloured plastic bowl that sat in the sink, so I must have been pretty small. Outside was an iron washstand filled with deep pink and purple flowers in the summer. This stood on the narrow strip of concrete where I did my dancing in the rain, on the other side of which was a laurel hedge that divided us from next door. Underneath the laurel, along an area of sloping concrete, my parents had set interesting pieces of patterned pottery and little shapes and figures into the cement, all of which added a bit more magic to my childhood landscape.

  The other room at the front of the house was the pottery where Carmen would sit at her wheel, pushing at the foot bar so the wet clay rose and fell, silky smooth and changing shape like magic as it spun round in her hands. I liked to peer into the white hot interior of the kiln, where I might catch a glimpse of a little pot I had made myself, hardening nicely in the intense heat. She made lots of mugs, including one specially for me with trees and animals on it, and tiny striped cats for the mantlepiece, large coil pots, and dozens of bowls, beautifully decorated with a squirrel-hair paintbrush.

  There was a passage from the kitchen to my playroom, which had French windows leading out onto the concrete; then on the other side of the kitchen, next to the AGA, a little old latched doorway opened to a curved flight of stairs covered in striped burgundy carpet. Near the bottom was a cupboard where the telephone was kept; at the top were some rails, and then another two cupboards set into the wall outside my bedroom on the right, which looked out over the front garden.

  The landing, with its slightly uneven wooden floor, led all around the upstairs. Next on the left was my parents’ bedroom, with the bow window directly above the downstairs one. I remember creeping between their candle-glow sheets in the middle of the night after a bad dream, sure that there were fairies in the bed, if only I could catch them. And I do remember lying in my own bed and hearing Daddy make some strange, rhythmic grunting noises once or twice, which made me feel a bit peculiar.

  From the landing window I could see next door’s very tidy lawn where we sometimes played with a hose in the summer, and the dustbin behind the garage into which Melanie had once thrown an exercise book of mine, leaving me stunned and tearful. At the end of the landing was a little room containing our claw-footed bath in which I used to swish up and down on my tummy, making waves and singing to Bibby and Bob, the two reflections of the overhead light that danced on the back surface of the bath.

  Just before this, a door on the left led to a room that was used variously for storage of paintings and sculpture or sometimes for sleeping in. I only have two memories of this room: one where I was being wrapped in cold, wet sheets to bring down a fever, the other when I had rolled over in bed on a pair of nail scissors and had a horrible gash in my thigh... Possibly I was put there once or twice when I was ill, because it was right next to my parents’ bedroom so it would have been easy for them to reach me in the night.

  The garden was roughly L-shaped. On one side was a long patch of grass with Shelley’s sculpture, Bertha, down near the end on a plinth; or rather: part of Bertha. At one time she used to have whole arms and legs, but these had been cut in half for some reason so she rested on her knees, with only her upper arms raised in the air.

  When Shelley was a younger man he had been assistant to the well-known sculptor Henry Moore, and had produced lots of these lifelike sculptures, particularly of women. As time went on his work became more and more abstract, although he remained fascinated with the subject of men and women... which, strangely, I didn’t connect at all with my confusions and aspirations in this area at the time. Perhaps it was all so symbolic that it didn’t seem to have much to do with real relationships. But a lot of the things he produced were combinations of something round and something long... often just standing side by side, but sometimes struggling to interact. I remember him years later at my sister Lucia’s wedding, rolling two tennis balls around each other and waffling on and on about male and female. If he were here now, I would like to ask him more about his ideas and conflicts.

  I do have one piece of information about his inner world, in the form of a letter I found again recently, written to me when I had just turned thirty and referring to the time when I was born, when he himself was in his early thirties. It was slightly pompous and long-winded, as was his way of communicating, but I have come to treasure it as a rare glimpse of what it was like for him back then. He says that he barely had one foot on the ground, he was so stuffed with ideas and ideals; that he was still very much a product of his upbringing and had by no means ‘found his own heart’ – a phrase he used a little uncomfortably, as language more likely to come from myself or Carmen. He concluded that it had fallen upon my young shoulders to teach him about love and help him to grow up.

  The letter didn’t mean much to me at the time, but each time I re-read it now I realize a little bit more what a gift it was. It confirmed what I had always suspected: that as the oldest child I was responsible for teaching my parents to grow up and become parents. And when it was told to me like that, in a humble and grateful way, I suddenly felt honoured and glad to have played that role, even if it was not always easy.

  Shelley’s studio was at the front of the house to the right of the gravel drive. It was built of concrete blocks, and inside everything was covered in a fine layer of dust from all his rasping and chiselling. He wore a dark pink beret – also very dusty – and sometimes had a pipe in the corner of his mouth. Once we found a frog in the corner, all dried up like a fossil.

  Hour after hour he worked away, either with stone or wood, or with plaster to make shapes that would later be cast in bronze. Sometimes I would sit and watch him, or potter in and out showing him a flower I had found or bringing a message from Mummy. He liked to mix his plaster in one half of a rubber ball, which was fine until I found that my favourite ball had been cut in half. It took a long time to forgive him for that.

  To the left at the front of the house was a garage, and behind this a hutch for my rabbit. I liked Benjy, but of course I didn’t like cleaning him out: all that smelly, pobbly straw with soggy newspaper underneath: having to scrape it all up, even on cold, wet days, and take it round to the dustbin. I fed him on oats and pellets, and often went for walks to find the green stuff he liked: groundsel, dandelions, hogweed and chickweed. Every night I lowered a piece of sacking over his cage to keep him warm, and on fine days I took him out in the morning and put him in his run.

  In front of the house stood the yew tree with its excitingly poisonous red berries, and behind this the grass went up a little incline and then continued, with the vegetable patch on the left, the fruit trees straight ahead and the bumbledinkies in the corner. The only other near neighbour was old Mrs Turnbull, who had a lot of pug dogs. She lived in a cottage covered in an enormous amount of thatch, all of which went up in flames one night, making the biggest fire I have ever seen and causing my parents alarm as sparks drifted our way. She survived, but the cottage had to be completely rebuilt.

  My mother, Carmen, was a good-looking woman, born on August 9th under the sign of the lion. She was tall and shapely, her long dark hair usually up in a bun; and she wore the flowing, colourful skirts, beads and dangly earrings typical of ‘beatnik’ culture in the 50s.

  As child I took her for the confident person she appeared to be. It was only much later I realized there was a part of her that was always putting on a show, trying to hide a much more vulnerable self. When she was two years old she had been left alone in hospital for ten weeks until she very nearly died of a broken heart, so causing a terror of abandonment which she never completely recovered from.

  Coming from a poorer background than Shelley, she was excited by all the knowledge and culture he brough
t into her life. She was also a little jealous of him and would put him down in subtle or not-so-subtle ways, which diminished him in my eyes.

  I don’t know what it would have been like to have received more positive messages about my father; I’m sure it would have made a difference. But to Carmen power was very important: she needed to be right, in fact to be more right than anyone else, to be dramatic and to be the centre of attention. Years later I realised that power is important to me too, which was probably part of the reason we clashed; but at the time all my energy was focused on keeping her at a safe distance, and I felt pretty powerless.

  My father, Shelley, was tall and handsome with brown hair and green-grey eyes. His birthday was in early April. He was steady and reliable, strong and kind, but a little bit emotionally withdrawn, which he compensated for by an enormous amount of intellectual jaw-wagging. When confronted with Carmen’s emotions, or with anything that he found it hard to respond to, he would adopt a certain ‘reasonable’ look which meant that he had settled into a safe place in his mind from which he was able to offer rational advice, but was not prepared to be influenced by the alarming fluctuations of the female psyche.

  I can remember sitting on his lap: the feel of corduroy and the smell of Lusty’s Herbal pipe mixture in his beard. He was of course the first man in my life, and I am grateful for those early positive impressions. I used to walk with Carmen to the edge of the village to meet him when he had cycled from the railway station, having been teaching at a school somewhere up the Cambridge line. When I saw him in the distance I would open my arms and start running, shouting, “Is meet!... Is meet!”

  Although he could be nagging and critical about eating habits, and sometimes terribly boring, he was also unerringly positive in a general way about his family, almost blindly so, refusing to see me as anything other than his lovely daughter even when I was distressed or depressed. Similarly with my friends, and especially boyfriends: whoever I brought home he saw the best in them. Because of that I have gone through life presuming that men will like me, and that has stood me in good stead.

  There were other companions at Long House too, long before my sisters came along. Tesca was there from as far back as I can remember, and I loved her dearly. She was a small tabby cat, and over the years she had dozens of kittens. So exciting, the whole business of Tesca getting a little bit larger... was she pregnant? ... and then larger still, and then after what seemed like ages and ages, starting to hunt round for a nest. It could be the airing cupboard or a drawer, or even outside when it was warm enough, but more often than not she would accept our invitation to a warm, woolly-lined cardboard box in the cupboard next to the AGA.

  Then there was the drama of when they began to be born, and counting how many and noticing their colours and markings and wondering which visiting tom cat had fathered them this time, and not being allowed to touch them yet and having to be quiet. And when they were all out and washed and settled, what more contented sight than a row of suckling kitties with mummy purring away at the helm? Crosse and Blackwell were born there, and many others. And of course they all grew up to be soft and bouncy and completely mad, and such fun to play with, until it was time to give them away to new homes. Sometimes if she had too many Shelley would drown them at birth in warm water. I didn’t know how he could bring himself to do this, and I didn’t like to think about it. Years later, when Tesca was very old and had been missing for some time, I eventually found her curled up all cold and hard in the corner of the tool-shed. Bless that dear little cat.

  A little while later we brought home a Burmese kitten, but he didn’t last very long. Whilst still quite young he was perched up on the gatepost at the end of the drive and for some reason I pushed him off. Maybe I was seeing how skilfully he would land; but he didn’t: at least, he landed, but he never got up again. Mummy said he’d had a fit and it wasn’t my fault, but of course I felt pretty bad about it.

  Fifty years later I went back to Weston and wandered a little way up the driveway so I could say a few words to my old friend the house. She was at this point looking rather scruffy, but in her long life I’m sure she took it all in her stride. In between the gateposts, on the edge of a puddle, there lay a small toy cat made out of some furry material. I picked him up and put him on top of the gatepost, and felt a satisfying sense of completion.

  It all sounds rather idyllic doesn’t it? Strange that I was such a troubled child; but over the years I have looked very deeply at what happened to me then, and it does make sense. One of the most important things I have learned is to honour the child in me and believe what she says about how she felt. Even though it seemed from the outside that life was a bed-of-roses, I was not happy, and there was a reason for that.

  4

  Grandparents

  The next most important people in my life were Shelley’s parents, who lived thirty miles away from Long House, back in the Essex countryside where I was born. On the way to their house there was a thrilling little hump-backed bridge that we leapt over in the car just before we arrived. For this reason I called Hugh ‘Bumpy’, which was apparently the second name I learned to write, after my own.

  I always think of Forge Cottage as the ideal place for grandparents to live. It was a large Tudor cottage, all dark beams and uneven surfaces, and inside everything seemed to be the colour of candlelight. There were lamps set in brackets on the walls with candle-shaped bulbs and yellowing shades, marzipan-yellow cushions on the scruffy old sofa and chairs, dark yellow curtains, a piano in the corner with yellowing keys, a print of Van Gogh’s painting of sunflowers... Even the fly-paper hanging from the beams in summer was a yellowy brown. When we first arrived Granny served tea from a big brown pot with a knitted cosy. She used a silver tea-strainer, silver sugar tongs and fine china cups, and there was always chocolate biscuits and batten-berg cake.

  Next to the sitting room was Hugh’s study, lined with bookshelves and with a big, solid desk from which he could see out into the garden. It was here that he sat and thought long and hard about life and death and spirituality, then wrote down his thoughts in the form of the many books, articles and essays he produced during his life. At the top of the bookshelf was a box containing a miniature china tea-set, and in the bottom drawer of his desk was a box of glucose powder. Sometimes while he was working he would bring down the tea-set, spoon a little glucose into the bowl and fill the teapot with water. There was special doll he kept in his study too, called Odette. She and I would have long tea parties on the carpet.

  The house always felt safe and warm, with a faint, familiar smell of mothballs, strong tea, furniture wax and paraffin. At the other end was the kitchen, where Granny cooked on a paraffin stove. Hanging from the ceiling or lying on the table were bunches of herbs and hedgerow plants, along with the vegetables from the garden. She had a thorough knowledge of everything that grew on the banks and in the fields, which flowers and leaves were edible and which were medicinal, and included lots of them in her meals.

  It was, by the way, because of Hugh that we were vegetarian. He had decided to adopt the vegetarian diet for both health and moral reasons years before when their children were still at home; Shelley kept up the tradition and Carmen joined in. Many years later, I wonder if I wouldn’t have been a stronger person if I had eaten meat. After producing two big chunks of protein in the form of my children, and reaching a time in my life when my fertility hormones were ebbing away, I started to eat some chicken and fish, and felt so much better for it.

  Up the wonky stairs was a sloping landing with a wooden trunk full of linen, and off the landing up and down steps were a series of cosy little bedrooms, though to tell you the truth the only strong memory I have of being upstairs was when I was beside myself with gasping, uncontrollable sobs because I missed my mummy. So this must have been much later, when the house and its inhabitants were no longer so familiar to me.

  The garden was lovely: smooth lawns, tidy beds crowded with pretty purple-and-yellow pans
ies, alpine strawberries, perfect lettuces, and smart rows of peas and beans climbing up their bamboo wigwams. Even between the rows of vegetables there were neat little tightly-mown paths, quite unlike our scruffier vegetable patch at home. A red squirrel lived in the tree on the other side of the hedge; a white Ford Anglia lived in the garage. Outside the kitchen door there was a wooden ‘horse’ for sawing wood. I would climb up a couple of rungs to the top, contemplate briefly how limited it was as a climbing frame then climb down the other side and find something else to do. Down by the front gate on the right hand side of the drive a weeping willow dangled its branches into a pond with duckweed and lilies and frogs, and tadpoles in the spring, and from here a stream ran under the drive and down the side of the lane, meeting the river at the hump-backed bridge.

  On a ledge in the front porch there sat a large round piece of agate like the big brown eye of an owl, which I admired every time I went in and out. Indoors there were carvings that my father had made out of cherry wood: one of a contented cat, her paws tucked under her chest; another a perching swallow.

  I remember Hugh in baggy tweed trousers that tucked into long, woollen ochre-coloured socks with smart brown shoes, a tweed jacket and a pipe in his mouth. When he came to visit us in Weston at Christmas or birthday time, he would nearly always bring me beautiful books as presents: poems or stories with lovely illustrations.

  I was close to Hugh, in a way I shall explain more further on in the book. Just for now I shall tell you a couple of things he wrote about me in letters I discovered long after he had died, that bring a warm glow to my heart as I read them, even after all these years. He says, “I was interested to catch glimpses amidst her delightfully unselfconscious childishness of a contemplative seriousness, when suddenly one would feel, in the little four-year-old body, an experienced soul looking through those large, clear candid blue eyes at one, a soul that had already travelled some way along the path and remembered.” And something I found particularly touching: “When I asked the other day what she was doing (a silence had fallen on the room in which she was by herself), she answered, ‘Andrea’s wondering.’ What a lovely thing to be doing – the very essence of pure meditation!” Thank you Hugh, for seeing me, hearing me, appreciating me. I really needed that, and I shall always hold you close in my heart.