by Alice Jolly
But I still maintain that I was only an averagely bad mother, she’d said. And then she’d started to laugh and strangely he’d joined her, his laughter like the clanking of an ancient machine. A machine which hadn’t been used in many years, which was rusted up and overgrown with weeds but had now, mysteriously, come back to life, wheezing and straining but alive, definitely alive.
If only Oliver was at home tonight. She never expected to become friends with a church warden, or a failed vicar – or is he a failed faith healer? But that’s what seems to be happening. Passing the table in the sitting room, she picks up Jay’s letter. He can be surprisingly articulate for someone who has failed so many exams. She wanders into the kitchen. At least the builders have nearly finished now – just the painting to be done. And it does look good – very good. Although if she was doing it again she would choose a lighter coloured splashback and perhaps a slightly darker wood. In her head she makes the normal bargains. Dear God, if you bring him home safe then I’ll be good and kind forever and I’ll do whatever you want. But what does God want? Lara has no idea and anyway she doesn’t believe in God. But God is in her life now whether she wants him or not because it simply isn’t possible to believe that whether Jay comes home is just a matter of chance. Human life can’t be saved or lost on the toss of a coin. Someone, somewhere must be making a decision. It must be possible to strike a bargain, there must be a right of appeal.
Standing at the window, Lara sees a shower of pink sparks whizzing into the seeping blackness above the pier. All day bands have been playing and loud speakers blaring. And occasionally men have passed in the street wearing dustbin liners or pink rabbit ears. Lara listens to the scream of a firework, then to the silence that follows. Kicking off her shoes, she heads upstairs to her study. Green box files are lined up on a shelf and she examines these carefully. Have they been moved? One of them sticks out slightly further than the others. She wonders now why she ever kept that letter.
In some distant storeroom of her mind, she’s always worried that one day Jay would start going through her files. But had he done? Lara lifts the last of the files down and, kneeling on the floor, opens it. The piece of paper is buried behind all the other letters and papers. It lies to one side of the file and she wonders now – has it been moved? But there’s nothing to suggest that. The paper is furred but Lara still remembers the writing – that green copperplate swirl and the London address, just an address, no name. Lara pushes the piece of paper back into place and shuts up the file. Jay has always claimed that none of his difficulties have anything to do with not having a father. But can that really be true?
Why? Why? Lara says as she pushes the file back into its place. But the power of these words to obliterate all else is fading. They were a rope bridge constructed to reach across some vast abyss in her mind. But the ropes are straining and creaking, the wooden slats cracking. Standing still for a moment, on the landing, she stares at Jay’s bedroom door. Only a week ago she’d been thinking she’d clear up his room, reorganise things a bit, ready for him coming home. A great wave of something – fear, grief, shock – rises in her throat. She goes to the bedroom door and pushes it open.
Staring at the room, she realises for the first time that Jay has gone. It’s ridiculous, of course, because he’s been gone for six weeks but now she feels it, in her joints, the tips of her fingers. His absence is so tangible that it’s present. His trainers are still lying near the door and now she knows that she must never move them. They’ve become exhibits in a museum, evidence of some irrecoverable past. As she stares at them, he suddenly appears. His height and shape, the way he stands, weight on one leg, his thick glasses and tousled hair, his young man smell and those eyes which never turn away, which continue to ask questions without answers. The shivery white blemished skin, the unchanged socks, the movements clumsy and raw. The great wet footprints which he leaves on the carpet as he crosses the landing. The soaked towel on the bedroom carpet. The banana skin pushed into a half finished glass of milk on the bedside table.
Staring at her son, who isn’t there, she sees that he’s someone quite different to her, quite separate. Stupid, of course. She knows that. And yet this is the first time that she’s really understood that his eyes don’t see the same world that her eyes see. She stands beside his bed, stares around his museum room. His books, his tapes, his half dismantled bike, his clothes still piled on a chair. That book about conscientious objectors in the Second World War. She wants to kneel down and touch the wheel of the bike, trace her finger on the place where his name is written on the front of a notebook. Jay. My son.
If only she could hold him, or talk to him. If only he would walk in through the door then she could make it different, she could heal the wound. She remembers this room as it was when they first moved into this flat – blue trains on the curtain, a blue patchwork duvet cover, a rug with ships sailing on a wavy blue sea. She’d bought him a little bed, painted blue, and she used to kneel down beside him as he slept. His tiny head would be sweaty, his arms stretched back beyond his head, abandoned to sleep, his closed lids fanned by the longest lashes. And then she’d wish that she’d never had a child. It had been wrong of her, she was sure of that. Life is not something one would wish on anyone else.
But the little blue bed and the patchwork duvet cover have gone long ago. It’d all moved too fast, she’d been too tired. Often Jay had been an interior design problem – a bookcase too big for a particular alcove, a cushion that clashed with the carpet. And then the university place – that had been the breaking point. She’d given up her university place for him and then he gave up his for no reason at all.
She kicks off her shoes, lies down on his bed, smells the sheets. Even after six weeks they do still smell of him. She pulls the duvet close to her face, wraps her arms around the pillows. Slowly and quietly, she starts to cry, as she lies in the darkness, her tears soaking into the place where his head should lie. The tragedy is not that she misses him now but that she’s missed him always. I love you, Mum, but I can’t keep on discussing with you whether we should have salmon or lamb for supper. Life has to be about something other than consumption. No doubt he’s right. But what? What?
She thinks back to his childhood and remembers winter afternoons, on her own, pushing him on a swing in a park. And it had seemed the saddest thing in the world – the child, the park, the trees bare of their leaves and the light melting. Somewhere in the background the mournful music of an ice-cream van. She asks now, Why does childhood – any childhood – seem loaded with loss? Balloons and teddy bears, mobiles swinging from the ceiling, alphabet friezes. All of those things, which are meant to be so full of happiness, speak to her only of something fractured. Perhaps she was never a mother to Jay, only to the child that she once was.
Another memory. Jay as a toddler, in a park, with a balloon. He’s bundled up into a navy blue duffel coat and his tiny face is alight with wonder. He’s staring up at the balloon – a large, green balloon dancing on the end of a string. But then older children come, a boy and a girl, well dressed and sure of themselves. They must be eight or nine – and they take the balloon away, snatching it out of his tiny starfish hands, laughing, dancing away insouciantly, not caring that the child in the blue duffel coat has started to wail.
Lara is filled with sudden and violent hatred. She wants to shoot those children, or stab them, pummel their faces with her fists. She hurries towards them, shouts at them, grabs the balloon, threatens to find their parents, to report them to the police. She’s shocked at her own venom, has never felt such anger before. She goes to Jay and tries to give him the balloon but he won’t take it. He’s wailing so much he can’t even see the balloon. Lara’s head is thumping with hatred for those posh little children. How could they do that? She tries again to give the balloon to Jay but he won’t take it. Lara can’t bear him wailing. She hugs his stiff, duffel-coated little frame but that doesn’t work. He’s still crying and the sound seems to fill the w
hole park, to rise up high into the air, to press against her bones. Please, please, make him stop.
She wants to get away from him then, to run from the park, to silence him somehow, anyhow. She grabs him and shakes him into silence, his small head rocking back and forwards as she yanks his shoulders. Then she hates herself for doing that, and hugs him tightly. She cries all the way home and all the time he toddles beside her saying – Sorry, Mummy, sorry. And she says she’s sorry as well, but she can’t stop herself from crying even more. She can’t bear his innocence – so fresh and sharp and dangerous – she can’t bear being responsible for that. He can’t be allowed to walk through the world as naked as he is. Perhaps she’s always been frightened of Jay.
23
NOW
Mollie – Brighton, March 2003
The sound of the doorbell rattles through the Windsor Guest House followed by a crash. Bugger, Mollie says. One of the cats knocking something off the table? She sets off downstairs. Rufus must be home, she thinks, and feels a familiar tingle pass across her flesh. But pulling open the front door, she finds only a girl holding a suitcase, her face olive green under the accusing porch light. At the bottom of the steps, in the shadows, other bags are stacked against a pushchair. Mollie has seen the girl before, wandering the streets, or in the corner shop.
The old story. The displaced and dispossessed of Brighton. They knock on her door because the stained paintwork and rotten window frames suggest that the Windsor Guest House might be cheap enough even for them. She considers the girl – an Asian girl, with long black hair, wearing a gypsy skirt, footless tights, jewelled shoes. Some young mum thrown out of the house. Probably the husband – if there is one – can’t cope with the baby.
The girl clears her throat and starts to speak. Her voice is surprisingly refined for a girl of her type. Mollie remembers all the things that Rufus and Lara have told her. You’re not running a hostel for the homeless. Make sure you get a deposit in cash. Don’t allow children or dogs. Make it clear that this isn’t a guest house any more. Anyone who rents a room needs to do their own cleaning and get their own breakfast.
Excuse me, do you have a room? Just for one night.
Mollie stares down at the shadowy pushchair. It would be wrong to refuse a woman with a baby. Dangerous for it to be out on the streets. Mollie imagines talcum powder, nappies, bottles, all the soft and scented baby things in that bag in the bottom of the pushchair. She knows what it is to wander the streets looking for a place to stay. More than forty years ago now, but she doesn’t forget. Rooms with other people’s stains on the sheets. Doors banged in her face. Middle-aged men with beer-smelling breath standing too close. Yes, yes, yes. Of course, my dear, you must come in. The creaks and strains of other people’s houses, flock wallpaper, the expressionless faces glimpsed through half-closed doors. What right have Rufus and Lara to tell her what she can and can’t do?
I’m a friend of Jay’s, the girl says.
Oh, well, of course.
Sorry to disturb you.
No. No. I was looking for something. Nothing important. You better come in although the rooms aren’t ready and I’ve had a problem with the window – but I’m sure I can organise something.
Thank you, the girl says. She carries the suitcase into the hall. Mollie puts a wedge under the front door while the girl goes to get her other bags. I better go and help her with that pushchair, Mollie thinks. Cotton wool and a white blanket wrapped around the sleeping child. A tiny, wrinkled hand stretched out and locking around her finger. She hurries down the steps, lifts a bag. The girl spins the pushchair around, and there’s no baby, only a sewing machine. Her heart shrivels inside her. She had wanted to see the baby – but never mind. She’ll tell the girl she can bring the baby around tomorrow. Probably left it with her mother.
So have you heard any news of Jay? the girl asks.
Not much. But on Sunday we did hear that the buses were coming back.
Together Mollie and the girl haul the bag and pushchair up the steps.
I’m not sure what you know, Mollie says. This man, somebody Al-Hashimi, he’s part of the group which invited them to Iraq, but now he’s telling them that he’s deciding what sites they can go to – and sending them to places not approved by the UN. So some of them are being turned out of the country and the others are coming back. Well, they’ve got to, haven’t they?
Yes – because there will be a war now, won’t there?
I fear so – yes. Spike says soon. I just hope they get out.
But you haven’t spoken to Jay?
No, but we have this friend, a journalist called Greg Marsden, and he’s in Iraq and if his paper orders him out, which they will do soon, then he won’t leave without Jay.
Must be awful.
Yes, just the waiting and waiting. Hard to know how to get through the day.
In the hall light Mollie sees that the girl is shivering and sallow. Probably she’s the victim of one of those Muslim family feuds. Mollie’s read all about those in the newspaper. Only the other day the body of a young woman was found chopped up in a suitcase in the Left Luggage at Heathrow. All she did was marry the man she loved.
Let’s get a room sorted out, Mollie says. Then I’ll make you a cup of tea.
Together they haul the bags and the pushchair up to the first floor landing. Mollie enjoys the struggle, the brief bubbling of laughter as the wheel catches in the torn stair carpet. Thank goodness for company. Mollie hates it when the Guest House is empty and it is tonight. Stan and Stan and Stan have all left for a job in Croydon and won’t be back until early next week. Ahmed is at the peace protest office and Mr Lambert has gone off down to that Gay Pride march on the seafront. Mollie’s got nothing against them, of course, but no one over the age of fifty should be allowed to wear pink lycra shorts.
I’m sorry, Mollie says. About the window – but don’t you worry because I’ll be able to get it sorted out soon enough. I’ll put some clean sheets on and get you a hot-water bottle.
As Mollie goes up to her own room, she passes stacked piles of boxes and bags, the open door to the store cupboard under the eaves. Boxes. Stuff. More stuff. That’s what she was doing when the doorbell rang, sorting and searching. How emotion accumulates around physical objects. Over the years Mollie has pushed so much away into the cupboard under the eaves.
Some of these boxes belong to people who are now dead. Physical things are so robust, their owners fragile. Mollie should doubtless throw out those boxes but she hesitates because the objects they contain were significant to the people who owned them, even though the stories which made them more than mere junk can never be recovered now. Most of this stuff has accumulated while she’s been at the Guest House but there are two or three boxes that come from before, one of which might contain her birth certificate. Rufus burnt a copy when she first met him – but did she get another one later? Of course, it’s always had the wrong date but she could still use it to apply for a passport. In the past she’d always borrowed someone else’s but that might not be so easy now. All that new technology. She probably won’t need one now that Jay is on his way home.
La-la-la-la-la. Deal with all that later. She goes into her bedroom, takes a brightly coloured patchwork bedspread out of the wardrobe. If the girl wants to bring the baby here then she hasn’t a cradle for it. She gave the one she used for Lara away, couldn’t stand to have it in the house. But she’ll borrow one if the need arises or get one down the charity shop.
The girl tucks the corner of the sheet under the mattress. So how did you come to know Jay? Mollie asks. The girl explains about the college. Leave that now, dear. Come downstairs.
Let me.
No. No. No need. I can do it.
Sorry, I realise I don’t know your name?
Mollie laughs – A good question, that. I’ve so many names I forget myself. Bunton, that was my father’s name. Stanley Bunton, killed in the war. Fawcett, stepfather. Bertie Fawcett. I learnt my cheerfulness from
him. He was forever laughing. What else could he do married to my mother? And stage name – Mayeford. Married name – Ravello. That’s a name you might know. My husband’s an actor.
Mollie points out pictures of Rufus on a board in the hall. Doing a show in London, she says.
The girl nods but Mollie has the impression she isn’t fooled.
This is him in She Stoops to Conquer.
As she looks at the photographs, Mollie thinks again of how she hates Rufus and how she misses him. He’s been gone nearly three weeks. Left a heap of unpaid bills and uncancelled appointments. The bailiffs have been around twice. Mollie leaves messages with Baggers, and she knows Baggers passes them on, but Rufus doesn’t ring back. She was sure – totally sure – that he’d be back for her birthday. But that was ten days ago and he didn’t even call. Bugger him. No doubt the whirligig of time will eventually bring in his revenges but Mollie is tired of waiting.
The curious thing is that her longing for him is physical, even sexual. Earlier in the evening, leaving the Rose and Crown, she’d even thought of going home with Bobby Bellows. She’s done that before – with Bobby and with other men. You’ve got to keep your vaginal fluids from drying up. If you don’t use it, you lose it. She never tells Rufus, of course, but she enjoys the silent power it gives her. Helps to even things up. But really she’s past the age for all that now – and it wouldn’t be any good with Bobby Bellows anyway. For all the trouble she’s had with Rufus, at least she’s always known that she could never have had better sex with another man. Thank God for his manifold mercies, Viagra included.