by Rosie Thomas
Lily was dancing with delight and triumph. ‘We could go and see her now, right away.’
‘We can’t, Lily. We can’t possibly. Think of the shock it would give her.’
‘Well then, we could look up her number in the directory, and telephone her.’
Lily saw a row of call boxes in the Town Hall foyer and ran across to them. A moment later she was back, holding out an envelope with the number printed on it in big red numerals. Julia looked at it, thinking, In one minute from now, I could be speaking to her. Then she took it, folded the envelope in half, and put it away with Margaret’s letter and her present address. Lily’s face fell.
‘Lily, I need to prepare myself. And I should try to prepare her …’ Julia couldn’t call her Margaret, or my mother. She realised that, in truth, she hadn’t thought much beyond just finding her. Different, newer fears began to assert themselves.
Lily nodded, mastering her disappointment. ‘It’s okay, Mum. I understand.’
‘I’ll take you to see … her, as soon as I can,’ Julia promised, aware of her own evasion. She felt guilty because of Lily’s generosity, but she wanted to make this very last step on her own. She wanted to see Margaret alone, for the first time. And Julia was impatient. She had meant to wait and think a little longer, perhaps to write a careful letter. But just two days later, she was on her way back to Ilford. She borrowed Felix’s car, thinking that she could hide herself in a car, rather than standing exposed in the open street. It wasn’t until she turned into Denebank itself that it occurred to her that a brand-new white Alfa Romeo might provide more advertisement than camouflage.
Denebank was a long, straight cul-de-sac. The double row of council houses looked flat and tired. Some of the windows were dressed with bunched frills of nylon curtain, greyish white or bright pink, but just as many were bare and dusty. There were cars, parked with their wheels half on the pavements, but none of them was anything like Felix’s. The front gardens of the houses sloped into the road, separated from the neighbours’ by low wire fences. Some of the fences had sagged, in other places they had rusted away altogether, giving all the gardens a dispirited air. Some of them were planted with rose bushes and tiny circles of grass, but the rest sprouted weeds and drifts of litter.
Julia let the Alfa slide slowly forward, conscious of its gleaming white shell around her. The children stared at her as she passed them. She counted the house numbers. Forty, forty-two. She stopped the car well short of number sixty, but as she shrank back against Felix’s black leather upholstery, feeling like a dirty voyeur, she could see it clearly.
It was one of the bare-windowed, littered-garden houses.
A dull, stale feeling of perfect familiarity possessed Julia as she gazed at it. This house was just like the one that Mattie had run away from, back on the old estate. This estate was much newer, and stained high-rise blocks poked up beyond it instead of hundreds of identical roads spreading in unrelieved flatness. But exactly the same air of exhausted inertia stalked between the houses. None of the people who lived here were going anywhere else.
Julia closed her eyes, then opened them again. Nothing had changed. The children had edged closer, but they ran off when they saw her watching them.
Oh Mattie, Julia thought. Full circle. If you were here. She wanted Mattie badly then, and knew a moment’s selfish resentment of the grief that had taken Mattie into itself. It shouldn’t, she resolved. I won’t let it, however much you try to fend me off. You need me, and I need you. Love and sympathy for her friend spilled over inside her, gratefully warm in the chilly street.
She sat in the car for a long time, wanting to move but rooted by fascination. At about half past five a man walked past. He was wearing a donkey jacket, carrying a bag over his shoulder that might have held an empty lunch-tin. He was greying, bulky, with a wide, pale face. He went up the sloping path to number sixty and let himself in.
Julia shifted in her seat, afraid that he might be staring out at her through the dusty windows. She started the car’s engine, swung the wheel and turned away down Denebank. She was stiff and cramped from sitting too long in the same position.
She saw a woman walking along the pavement towards her. She was black, very fat, with a headscarf, and a coat gaping across her front. She had a cheerful face, the only one that Julia had seen in Denebank. Julia stopped the car again and wound down the window, confident that she wasn’t unknowingly approaching Margaret Rennyshaw.
‘Excuse me. Number sixty.’ She nodded covertly back at the house. ‘Is that where Mrs Rennyshaw lives?’
The woman shifted her heavy basket to her other hand and peered along the road. ‘Let’s see now. Sixty? No, my love, that’s the Davises’ house.’
‘Oh.’ Julia gripped the steering wheel. ‘Has Mrs Rennyshaw moved, then? I’m sure that was her house.’
The woman shook her head. ‘Don’t know no Rennyshaws. Them’s the Davises, living there. Been there since the estate was built, same as me. Thirteen years next month. Gawd help us.’
Julia was stunned. She couldn’t even make herself return the woman’s smile. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘I must have made a mistake.’
She drove slowly on, turning into clogged high streets, past garish shopfronts, not knowing where she was going. A wild, silly hope fluttered inside her, that she would find her mother living somewhere else altogether, in a pretty cottage in the country with lavender and hollyhocks in the garden. The old, romantic dream twisted with the fear that she had lost her again and that there were no more clues to follow up. And lying over it all she felt a heavy certainty that Margaret Rennyshaw did live at number sixty Denebank, and that for some reason she couldn’t explain the cheerful neighbour was wrong and she had been right all along.
At last she reached home, and told Lily the story.
‘It must be a mistake,’ Lily said sadly. ‘The list thing must be wrong, mustn’t it?’
‘I don’t think so. There’s just something we don’t understand.’
‘What was the place like?’
Julia hesitated. ‘It reminded me of Mattie’s old house. Where she lived with her father, and Marilyn and Ricky and the others, right at the very beginning.’ Julia could see the two houses, one superimposed on the other. The similarity was eerie. ‘Lily. Will you be all right here on your own if I go to Coppins tomorrow, to see Mattie? I must go and see her. Whatever she says.’ As she spoke she felt sharp, irrational anxiety. ‘Ma,’ Lily exhaled patiently. ‘You know I’ll be all right.’
Julia begged Felix’s car again and drove to Coppins.
She didn’t know, or wouldn’t admit to herself what she was afraid of. But she craned forward to see the house as she swung through the gates. It looked much the same as it had always done, except that the curtains were drawn at some of the windows. The grass had started to grow in the April sun, and the lawns needed mowing.
Mattie answered the doorbell. She was dressed, but she didn’t look as if she had given much regard to her choice of clothes.
Julia said, ‘Hello, Mat.’
‘Julia? We didn’t fix anything, did we?’ Mattie looked round in bewilderment. She had been in the empty kitchen, telling herself that she should eat some of the food that Mrs Hopper had made for her. And now Julia was here, standing bright and urgent and out of place in the listening garden.
‘I just came. I wanted to see you.’
Julia took her arm, and Mattie let her guide her back inside and across the hallway Mattie didn’t like crossing the hall. She always thought that she could feel the crackle of dead leaves underfoot, and see the post lying neatly where Mitch had left it on the hall table.
In the kitchen she made a vague gesture intended to be hospitable. ‘I was just going to have something to eat. Do you want it? It smells quite good,’ she added, in encouragement. She decided that she would get a drink for herself. It was only the second, or perhaps the third of the morning. The bottle was standing handily on the countertop. Mrs Hopper t
ended to tidy it away, but Mattie always got it out again. She poured herself a full glass, and another for Julia. She held Julia’s out to her, carefully, not spilling a drop.
‘Here you are. Helps the lunch go down.’
Julia took the glass, but put it aside without tasting it. She came across the kitchen and wrapped her arms around Mattie. Mattie held herself stiff for a second, then let her head fall forward to rest against Julia’s shoulder. Julia stroked her hair. When she spoke again, her voice was muffled for Mattie by the stroking.
‘Oh, Mat. Are you drinking very much?’
‘No. Yes, I suppose I am. It helps.’ And then, after a moment, ‘Actually it doesn’t even bloody help, but I don’t know what else to do. I miss him so much that I hate him.’
Julia went on rhythmically stroking her hair. ‘Poor Mat. Poor Mattie, poor love.’ After a while, Mattie sniffed. At once the mucus in the back of her throat tasted of stale whisky. ‘Give me my drink,’ she begged. ‘There’s a dear.’
She drank, and straightened up. Julia led her to the kitchen table and made her sit down. She poured two bowls of soup out of the pan on the stove and set them on the table. ‘Go on. Eat some,’ she ordered. She began spooning up her own, setting an example, but Mattie left hers untouched. She lit a cigarette instead and let the smoke curl up through her thick hair. Julia watched her.
‘I don’t want you to go on living here on your own, Mattie, when you’re like this.’
‘I’m better on my own.’ There was a sharp edge in her voice. Mattie knew it was the truth, and she was defending it.
‘Mitch wouldn’t want you to.’
‘You don’t damn well know what Mitch would have wanted.’
Julia reddened slightly, but she didn’t look away. Mattie leaned awkwardly across to her. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. Take no notice, I don’t mean anything. You see? I am better on my own.’
She could see Julia mustering her arguments, ready to try again.
‘It doesn’t matter what you say, Mattie. Say anything. Just listen to what I’m saying, too. Won’t you sell this house? Buy yourself somewhere else, on your own if you must, but in Town. I’d rather you came with me, though. Come back to Montebellate. Just for a little while, won’t you?’
As if she hadn’t heard, Mattie repeated, ‘Mitch loved this house.’
She didn’t love it herself any more. There was nothing in it that she could look at without seeing him, nowhere in it to hide from his absence. But she couldn’t sell it, or even leave it. To sell it would be to sell Mitch himself. She felt the house sucking her into itself.
Julia did bend her head now, to hide her face. She finished her soup, not even noticing what it was. Mattie ate nothing, but she drank her whisky.
Afterwards Julia made some coffee. She carried the tray through into the drawing room and Mattie brought the whisky bottle. The thick velvet curtains were closed, but otherwise the room was formally neat. The cushions were all smooth and the silver-framed photographs were set squarely on their tables. Julia felt the atmosphere and shivered a little. She went to the windows and pulled back the curtains. Mattie squinted in the shafts of sunshine, but said nothing. When she sat down Julia pulled up another chair so that she could be close to her.
She asked gently, ‘What are you doing here, all by yourself? You’ve got friends who love you. We want to look after you.’
Mattie frowned down at her hands. ‘What do I do? Try to go to sleep. Wake up again. I watch television quite a lot.’
Deliberately, wilfully, she took the question at its literal value. She knew that Julia was asking Why? Why not come and grieve with us? but Mattie didn’t want to give her that answer. The truth was that the performances of friendship called for more than she could give. Mattie felt that the loss of Mitch had left her with no assets, no store of emotions, even selfish ones, that she could offer as currency in return. And worse. With the sharp perceptions of grief – perceptions that stayed painfully sharp however much she tried to blunt them with whisky – she could hear the silent demands under Julia’s kindness. Look, see here, I’m your friend. Don’t pull away, because I need to help you. I’ll make you feel better, and that will make me fell better. That’s how it works, isn’t it?
In her desolation Mattie couldn’t hand over anything, but she didn’t want Julia to know what she was thinking. Because that might hurt her, mightn’t it?
Mattie tried to marshal her thoughts, momentarily regretting the whisky.
Then she attempted a laugh. ‘I can’t give you anything, Julia.’
‘What?’ Julia looked stunned.
‘What did I say?’ The laugh wasn’t a good idea. But perhaps Julia would just think it was the drink. I’m better on my own. I knew I was. ‘Sorry. I’m not thinking very straight.’
Julia left her chair and knelt down in front of Mattie. She was too close, looking at her too hard.
‘It’s going to take a long time, I know that, Mattie. Try to be gentle with yourself.’ For her own part, Julia felt the clumsiness of her attempts at condolence. In frustration she felt that the right words, the key to the help that Mattie needed, lay close at hand, somewhere just out of her reach. But every word that did come into her mouth shouted its inadequacy at her.
‘It will get better,’ she whispered. ‘I know it will.’
Mattie stared miserably over her head. This distance from her oldest friend made the hurt worse, if that was possible. Only it couldn’t be possible, because it was already the most terrible thing in the world.
Mattie longed to be alone again.
But to be alone, she must convince Julia that she was all right. That was the token that she must hand over, wasn’t it? ‘I have been doing things other than drinking and watching the telly. I went to do the knicker commercial, for a start.’
Julia looked pleased. Her pleasure touched Mattie. ‘How did it go?’
Mattie couldn’t help the laugh this time. ‘Not all that brilliantly. I was rather pissed, actually. They were quite nice about it.’
Julia didn’t laugh with her. ‘You don’t have to work, do you?’
‘I’m reading a script just now. It’s quite good.’ And if I don’t work, what else is there? Has it come to this? She stood up abruptly.
‘This room’s getting on my nerves, a bit. Whenever I try to mess it up, Mrs Hopper comes in and tidies. Let’s go and walk round the garden.’
They went outside. The April sun was thin but bright. They walked slowly over the uncut grass, passing between the rose bushes with their swelling red knobs. Mattie kept her face turned away from the corner of the house, from the patch of colourless gravel. ‘Talk to me about something else,’ she ordered, without much hope.
Julia began to tell her about Margaret Rennyshaw.
She described the adoption agency, and the first two Ilford streets. Mattie walked beside her, her head down and her hands pushed deep into the pockets of her woollen jacket. Julia came to the point, only the day before, when she had sat in Felix’s car in Denebank. Mattie listened, trying to imagine it. She couldn’t think what it must have been like for Julia to sit outside a stranger’s house, a stranger who was also her mother. It occurred to her that her perceptions of herself were hideously clear, those concerning other people blurred, or non-existent. She tried to care about that, and couldn’t. Her sense of isolation deepened.
Mitch. Why did you have to die? So stupid. So cruel.
Julia was talking about the street her real mother lived in. She said it had reminded her of Mattie’s old home. Mattie tried to grasp why it seemed so significant.
‘Full circle,’ Julia said in wonderment. ‘It was as if we tried so hard to get away from it, the estate and Fairmile Road, and all the time it was lying in wait for us. You can’t run away. Perhaps that’s what we’re supposed to learn. Perhaps you haven’t ever really got away, until you know it. And afterwards, you’re free.’
‘Free,’ Mattie echoed. She had no sense of circu
larity. She imagined that it would be comforting to recognise such a definite pattern. For herself, the estate, and Ted Banner, and everything else lay dimly, a long way off, reduced to irrelevance. Life seemed like a long, dull thread, perilously thin, easily severed.
She couldn’t see that it would make much difference, now, whether Betty Smith or Mrs Rennyshaw was Julia’s real mother. Not after almost forty years. And it mattered even less than that a street on a council estate in Ilford looked like another street, on another estate, from almost as long ago. After all, everything, all of it, came to this. And this was what? As little as nothing?
‘So will you go and see this Mrs Rennyshaw?’
‘Oh, yes. I’m afraid of doing it, but I must.’
Mattie nodded. ‘Of course. Yes, of course.’ They made another circuit of the lawns before Mattie shivered. ‘It’s cold out here. Let’s go inside again.’
In the dusted and polished drawing room she made straight for the whisky bottle, ‘Don’t frown, Julia. It keeps out the cold. Cheers.’
Mattie didn’t remember much about the rest of the day. She dimly recalled Julia and Mrs Hopper fussing in the kitchen, and then sitting down at the kitchen table with Julia for more food. She might even have eaten some of it, because she wanted Julia to know that she was all right.
And then it must have been the end of the day, at last, because Julia had helped her upstairs. She found herself lying on the bed, but she sat up at once. Her head had cleared for a moment. Treacherous. She didn’t like these clear intervals, and she didn’t like waking up after being sleep. The hurt swung in harder, then.
‘I don’t need to be put to bed like Lily, you know.’
‘Lily doesn’t need to be put to bed nowadays either.’
‘God. Isn’t it weird?’
Julia came and sat down on the bed beside her. ‘Will you go to sleep now?’
‘Sure.’
She looked sceptical. ‘Do you have anything to help you sleep?’
‘Brown bottle in the bathroom. Half a tablet only.’
Julia went, and came back with a halved tablet and a glass of water. ‘Here, Mattie,’ she begged. ‘Won’t you let me stay?’ Lily needed her less, she was sure of that.