‘Have you seen outside?’ she asks me.
‘We watched it happen,’ I said. ‘Didn’t we sweetheart?’
‘Was there a horrible, horrible storm?’ Stella directs her attention to the baby and switches to motherese. ‘Were you very, very frightened? Were you? My poor darling.’
‘She loved it,’ I say, sliding into bed next to her, pulling the paisley duvet up over my cold arms and shivering. ‘She’d have given it a standing ovation if she could.’
‘She takes after her mother, then.’
We sit there with the baby happily between us, her legs in the air, goggling at us with her big inky eyes as we share the cup of coffee, passing it between us when the ceramic starts to scald our fingertips.
‘Thanks for taking her,’ says Stella. ‘I really needed the sleep.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ I say. ‘We’re in this together.’ She smiles and nods, looking past me to the baby, picking her up and patting her over her right shoulder.
‘Of course we are,’ she says. But there’s something in her voice, some small scrap of what feels like fear, which tells me she is not sure of this at all.
Cement
Plastic rubble bag containing miscellaneous cement shards.
My mother made myths like puff pastry; folding and tucking and smoothing and snipping, until her past was golden and fluffy and melt-in-the-mouth. She was a master pâtissière, spinning all her sorrows into sugar. Even as a young child I could tell this from the stories she told me, in which she would emerge as a fairy-tale mother figure, soft and kindly and protective. That is not to say she was ever cruel to me, just that her flightiness, and then later on her yawning sadness, had forged a gulf between us for as long as I could remember. Sometimes Stella seemed to me more like a slightly imbalanced aunt than a mother.
I was not particularly troubled about our relationship, having reached adulthood. We spoke on the phone occasionally, when she wasn’t travelling, or on some retreat stipulating a technological detox. We rarely met, and I was happy with that. Despite having lived with her for most of my childhood, I hardly felt I knew much of her inner self at all. Her depression had been like a vortex, swallowing everything in the house, contracting only when a dubious man was spotted on the horizon. I was not bitter about this, just slightly sad. Seeing Lucia with her deeply eccentric mother and witnessing the way Cecilia had brushed the damp hair from her daughter’s face and kissed her forehead as she stood by the open door of the cab made me crave the touch of my own. Throughout my life, Stella’s manias had seen indifference giving way to flashes of extreme affection that I hoarded like marbles. I longed for more.
Lou was exhausted from seeing Cecilia, so I put her to bed and walked through to the kitchen. There I sat in the stifling quiet and smoked, picking at the end of a stale French stick and remembering how I used to hollow out the loaves of bread that my grandmother bought, rolling the white flesh between my fingers until it returned to little more than a ball of dough, at which point I would pop it in my mouth and suck, allowing it to disintegrate in my mouth. Josh was still at work, and I wasn’t due at the pub until the evening, so I had very little with which to occupy myself.
Downstairs, Coral was playing Toots and the Maytals. It floated through the French windows into the garden below, which, I noticed, was looking remarkably bald. I stood at the sill stubbing out my cigarette, and several moments later saw Coral emerge in gardening gloves and dungarees. Her hair, in a parody of a woman undertaking menial work, was tied up in a scarf, and she was holding a can of Red Stripe.
‘Need a hand?’
She looked up at me. ‘Door’s open’. I recognised in her that resolute sense of purpose that comes after a dark period, just as Stella’s pull-your-socks-up determination to empty and thoroughly clean all the kitchen cupboards would manifest, like clockwork, after a long spell beneath the duvet. If you couldn’t sort your life out, you could at the very least sort the pulses from the grains.
I went down. Coral had barely made a dent in the bramble jungle that was the yard, though she had been hacking away all morning. The tangle of vegetation reached almost to the tops of the high brick wall at the back of a long expanse of land, its tendrils reaching between cracks in the fences either side, intermingling with ivy and a mass of wild climbing roses like some tentacled creature made of weeds and dandelion fluff. Standing next to it on her skinny alcoholic’s legs, Coral looked tiny.
‘Got a letter from the council,’ she said, in that hoarse voice. ‘Neighbours have complained about all the fox crap. Say it’s an environmental health hazard, that there might be rats. Obviously worried that it’ll affect the value of their house . . . ’ She took a swig. ‘Give me a hand?’
I grabbed a pair of secateurs. The weeds and brambles came within six feet of the French windows, below which someone had tried to establish the semblance of a patio, but there were saving graces: the wildflowers I remembered from my childhood were in evidence, their heads poking through gaps in the thorny nest, dainty blossoms in white and yellow and blue set against the green. What’s more, I detected a heady hint of honeysuckle; over in the corner I could spy what looked like the black wrought iron of a round table.
‘Where’s the motorbike grave?’
‘I’m surprised you remember that,’ said Coral, pointing at the split, pale stump of the lilac tree.
‘I used to play here a lot, with Gabs. That time Stella and I left Bryn and came back again, I spent nearly the whole summer out here.’
A vivid image of the red-headed woman flitted past. Barefoot and in shorts, chasing me in circles as I laughed, her fingers tickling my tummy. And with her, the thought that that place would outlast all of those of us who had by chance wandered (or in Coral’s case stumbled) momentarily through it, the musky sweet scents of the jasmine still clinging to the dusk long after we are gone.
‘He was a beautiful boy, that Gabriel,’ said Coral. ‘Such lovely big brown eyes. Are you still in touch?’
‘Mum and Vita speak sporadically, but I haven’t seen them since I was eight or nine, when they came to visit us. He’s not very well, I hear. Mentally I mean. They moved back to Brixton and he still lives with her there. It’s been so long since we knew each other that I don’t know how it would feel to meet him again.’
‘So many casualties from this house. Just look at Mikey D.’ She took another swig of her can, and, realising that she hadn’t offered me my own, handed it to me and ducked into the darkness of the kitchen. I held it cool against my forehead, then drank.
Her voice floated through the windows. ‘So how was he? I don’t half miss the old bugger.’
‘He seemed on fine form, though obviously I don’t really know him. In fact he didn’t seem crazy at all. He said I reminded him of my mum. Told me some stuff about him and my dad in the sixties, the parties they used to go to and the squats they lived in. I liked him.’
‘Ah, he’s not all that mad, most of the time. He just needs a rest sometimes. Wrecked that burning brain of his and had a great time doing it, but it came at a price.’
‘Flashbacks?’
‘More permanent than that. He sees auras around things.’
‘That doesn’t sound unpleasant’
‘I don’t think it is, in itself. But there are other things, like hearing voices, that probably don’t have much to do with the drugs, but mix it all together and the world stops feeling real to him. He stops feeling real. And that’s when he tries to hurt himself.’
I knew what she meant, the part about not feeling real.
‘Poor Mikey. He gave me this.’
I pulled out the boule, shiny in the sunlight.
‘He was always messing with that thing. He gave it to you? That’s high praise, that is. He always loved you, from when you were a nipper.’
‘I don’t remember him,’ I said.
‘He was one of the originals. Came with your dad, right at the beginning. They’d been young tearaways together. Woul
d have long chats in the kitchen about politics and religion and veganism and sex. Mostly sex. Your father quoting Bertrand Russell: “Love can flourish only as long as it is free and spontaneous.” Most people had given up on that stuff by then. The sixties were finished, Vietnam was over. Joplin and Hendrix had died five years earlier, and punk was just getting started. In November of that year the Sex Pistols played their first gig.’
‘Bryn would have been, what? Twenty-five?’
‘About that. Mikey too. They had a lot of girls come through here. This was long before your mother.’
‘Did you . . . ?’
‘We all did. Don’t look at me like that, love. It never meant anything. Plus, I had a fella for a lot of the time. Remember Andy? Fleur’s dad?’
‘I remember Fleur. She was a bit of a punk. She used to let me go upstairs with her when Rufus was doing his music. She was what, a teenager?’
‘Born in 1970, the year we moved in. In what is your bedroom now, I do believe. Her mum was a Swedish girl whose name I can’t remember, who did a runner, leaving them here.’
‘What do they do now?’
‘I don’t know, Harmony.’ Coral was pulling hard at an entrenched root which eventually gave, propelling her a couple of feet backwards. ‘I could never keep track of all the people who passed through this house. I barely knew their surnames. We didn’t have a phone in those days.’
‘It’s strange that you were with my dad.’
‘Is it? I was one of many, I’ll tell you that much.’
‘Didn’t that bother you? Didn’t that bother Stella, when she moved in?’
‘I was never that traditional. And yes, his past more than bothered her. She tried ever so hard not to let it, but she was always jealous. She married him on condition that he stop all that stuff, which he did, for a while at least. That was her biggest mistake, really. Thinking that she’d be enough. Then, after having you, thinking that you both would be enough, and taking you away, with no thought for anyone else, for how it might hurt them. Your dad didn’t want to go, but she insisted. Predictable that it all ended in tears.’
‘But how did it end in tears?’ I threw down my rake. ‘Stella won’t tell me, Mikey won’t tell me, Bryn won’t tell me. Something happened here. A girl died. Didn’t she? A young girl. And you blame Stella for it. Coral? Tell me, please. I need to know.’
‘Calm yourself, girl. If you must know, I’ll start from the beginning.’
She told me about the day Bryn brought Stella home, how young she had seemed, how Coral had raised various feminist objections to a teenager joining the commune, and how they had fallen on deaf ears. ‘He’d been too dazzled by her,’ she said. ‘It was like there was a force inside her that dragged him away from us.’
We continued to work through the hottest part of the day, as Coral told me more about the commune and the people who passed through, of marijuana cultivation, meditation and squabbles over dietary requirements, and always, always, the washing up. It had been no utopia, she said, but it was home, where company was guaranteed and the music was good and loud and the drugs were free. There was an edge to her voice as she told me all this, because, I think, she knew that the questions about my parents would keep coming. How odd it was to speak to someone who viewed my mother, whose presence at the school gate had so embarrassed and thrilled me, as desperately conventional. She had always been so different from other mothers, but now I saw her attempts to force a stable family unit upon my father – all the while trying to maintain the persona of a free spirit – with renewed sympathy. She had tried to escape her Metroland upbringing of martini wines and tennis skirts, but had ended up trying to replicate the monogamy that had featured so strongly in it. I felt sad for her.
The afternoon drew on and the air cooled, the shadows in the garden lengthening. I had stopped after my fourth beer, mindful of the need to start work soon, but Coral was still going. There was something therapeutic about hacking and pulling at the brambles, listening to her disjointed remembrances, all recounted to me in that same, gravelly tremor. As she spoke, I began to feel part of a history that had previously eluded me, and the parents that I had known before, conceptually at least, and whose outlines I had so childishly worshipped, seemed to me to be strangers. That’s not to say that their love for me felt suddenly false, merely that these caricatures I had created in the void of our family’s shared history were now fleshed out. Flawed, yes, but also breathing.
My spade hit something solid. I had been digging up roots, and for a moment I assumed I had struck the rusted metal of the motorbike until I realised that the lilac tree was still some distance away. I continued to clear the earth and vegetation, vaguely excited that I may have made some valuable discovery, only for a largish patch of cement to reveal itself, no doubt another attempt to create a serviceable space free from weeds. It was only after frowning at it for several seconds that I realised that my name was staring back at me. ‘HARMONY 1990’, carved into the cement in a childlike script, as though with a stick, or the end of a paintbrush. Kneeling down, I traced it with my finger.
‘Look Coral, I’ve found some of my juvenilia.’ I was smiling, thrilled to look at those letters, in all their permanence. Coral’s lack of surprise and excitement when she looked at them was deflating. For a few moments she said nothing, then she looked up at me carefully.
‘Of course, they might not be yours,’ she said. ‘Someone else could have written them.’
‘You mean the other Harmony? My namesake?’
Coral nodded.
‘The name was your father’s choice, though Stella seemed happy enough with it. A beautiful name, everyone said.’
‘But she died before I was born. Of an asthma attack.’
‘Did your mother tell you that?’
My face must have confirmed it for her, because I said nothing. Coral looked as though she was wrestling with herself.
‘Harmony didn’t die of an asthma attack before you were born. She lived here, with you. Surely you must remember that?’
I said nothing.
‘You had three parents, my love.’
An ice cream van turned the corner, tinkling out the incongruous strains of ‘Yankee Doodle’. A neighbour’s strimmer hummed. Somewhere through a distant window a woman laughed.
I continued to stare at the letters, but they no longer made any sense.
Sheets
Sheets featuring faded paisley pattern in pale green, circa 1970s. 220 × 260 cm. 100 per cent cotton.
I remember:
Standing in the dingy hall, in the late afternoon. The house seemed empty, but there was music playing somewhere, cooking smells, footfall creaking. The sound of a dog barking. A clock ticking. I was playing with my bouncy ball, throwing it into the marked squares of the floor tiles: black, white, black. The noise echoed. The soles of my red Mary Janes squeaked.
The spiral of the staircase rose above me into darkness and then, right at the very top, disappeared in streams of light emanating for what seemed like miles above my head. The chandelier, always a source of anxiety, mocked me from above. I liked going up there, to the room at the very top. That might be where the grown-ups were hiding. Perhaps I’d go there now.
I am big enough for the stairs, but only just. I go up two at a time, to the first landing. It is gloomy, the window blinds are closed, as are both doors. I push one open and walk into the room, see bare floorboards. It’s empty, so I take this chance to spin and spin in circles, my nose tilted up towards the meringue of the ceiling rose until I feel dizzy. I sit on the floor, wondering where my mum and dad are. I will try their room.
I mount the next flight of stairs. I am tired and grouchy, and clammy, even in the cool indoors. It’s been very hot. I should be outside. Where is everyone?
I call for my mum, first in a small voice, then more loudly. I haul myself up onto the next landing, my bare knees hitting the rug of the second-floor landing, scratchy. I call for her again, the whine in my v
oice reverberating through the lonely house. I start to worry that they have all left me, that I am alone in the world.
Just as I start to cry, I hear the creak of the door to my parents’ room, a shaft of light. In it stands one of the grown-ups. She is not wearing any clothes, and between her legs is orange and furry, like copper wire wool. I look at it in horror, but she smiles at me, and puts her fingers to her lips. Behind her, my father yawns. I glimpse him half uncovered by my parents’ sheets – white, with a faded, mint-green paisley pattern (there are photographs of me lying on those sheets as a newborn). Harmony pulls the door to.
No, this is wrong, that is not how memories are at all. They are not neat narratives, but a series of shining flashes like those of a camera taking shots in quick succession, distinct from one another: there I am playing with the ball, climbing the stairs, calling for my mother, looking at the naked woman. One, two, three, four. That is all.
This is a memory I have always had. It was never repressed, just never dwelt upon. I grew up knowing it. That my father had other women Stella hardly kept a secret, nor was she especially forthcoming on the topic. It just was what it was, until it wasn’t. To learn from Coral that in fact she had hated it, had wanted me, and him, all for herself, made me wonder how she had behaved towards anyone who got in the way. Harmony. My namesake. My other mother.
The chunk of my life during which my mother and father were apart was four times longer than the time they had been together, and yet somehow their relationship continued to loom large throughout my childhood. Stella had had innumerable boyfriends, Bryn fewer relationships, and for longer, but both spoke of their time at Longhope with a wistful longing – my mother in her good moments skimming over the less savoury details and recalling, above all else, the sense of camaraderie, the endless stream of kooky visitors, the togetherness of it. No wonder it seemed to her a golden time. The countryside, her depression, had isolated her, and she must have craved the companionship of the city. Though at her lowest points she appeared to blame Longhope bitterly for all the pain she suffered in her life, you only had to see her eyes blazing to know it was also the place where she had had the most fun.
The Tyranny of Lost Things Page 17