by Georgie Hall
‘We try.’ I try not to think about last night, sleeping in separate bedrooms. Or wonder who Kylie Jenner is.
‘Kwasi has different ground rules to me. He refuses to define what we are. He says we need distance, but it’s like he’s always searching for an identity in which I’m an ethical part, our unique space? He says that our divisions are deeper than class and race, that my radical inclusionism is overcompensating for my privilege, which is almost certainly your fault when you think about it.’
‘Why is it my fault?’
‘You’ve got the Guardian app, Mum, get with the zeitgeist. I’m also a communaholic, according to Kwasi, whereas he internalises. And he is being totally unreasonable about my ex.’
‘About Jack?’
‘It’s more complicated than that.’ Her eyes flash and again I decide it’s safest not to ask. Communaholics tell all soon enough in my experience. (I used to be one, after all.)
‘Do you think he’ll come after us?’ I ask instead.
‘After I just trashed his shoot? He’s ghosted me for less. We’re lousy at making up. We’re so alike. That’s why I love him.’ She blinks angrily, tears close at hand again.
This is safer maternal ground. Ah yes, that self-delusion I remember only too well, when yet another forbidden eighties heartthrob failed to live up to my love-struck expectations I’d have undoubtedly burst into defiant, dramatic sobs.
But Summer’s tougher. ‘He totally deserves what just happened!’ And swearier. ‘He’s entirely fucking linear!’ And lacking empathy. ‘Can you believe Kwasi’s so paranoid, he’s convinced my ex has flown here to England to fight him for me?’ And less faithful. ‘I have never made a secret of the fact I have another man in my life who still cares for me, so what’s his problem?’
Alarm bells are ringing. ‘Are you talking about Jack?’
‘That’s not important, Mum. The fact is, Kwasi saw a picture of him on my phone, and since then he thinks he sees him everywhere. He is super-jealous. He keeps picking on old guys in Stratford, accusing them of being him.’
Flashing blue lights join the alarm bells. Has she got an ex we don’t know about? Where would he fly in from? And… ‘How old are these old guys exactly?’
‘Really, Mum, it’s not what you think.’ She rolls over onto her front, head propped up on her elbows, pure Lolita.
‘How old?’ I’m not letting this drop.
‘Thirties, maybe?’ She watches a pair of canoeists in dark glasses and space-age Lycra overtaking us, floating centaurs entirely focussed on their strokes. ‘Dad’s right. Love’s all a game of poker, isn’t it? He says we start out with two hearts and a diamond and all end up wanting a club and a spade, ha ha.’
‘That’s just an after-dinner joke he’s heard at a cricket do and it’s wrong.’ Says the woman taking a trump card down the Avon to hide it up her sleeve.
‘No, Mum, he is right,’ Summer insists. ‘It’s poker, all bluff and no buff. Show them your hand and they’re uploading your ass shots as avatars. And before you ask, not mine.’
My naivety at seventeen was Pollyanna-like by comparison to Summer’s cynicism, but mothers remain just as tenacious. ‘Who is this ex? Somebody you met overseas? When? It has to be on a school trip because we’ve only been to Cornwall and the Peak District!’
‘He’s nobody.’ She looks away angrily. ‘Really, really nobody.’
‘Thirties is far too old. That’s an abusive age gap, Summer.’
‘I am old enough to know what I’m doing! Kwasi needs to respect that Joachim started me out on the journey to physical love. As far as Kwasi’s concerned I am so not giving up my friend and mentor.’
‘Jesus!’ I scream. ‘Who is this man?’
‘How many times, Mum? He’s nobody! You do realise, he’s –’ she looks at me over her dark glasses ‘– made up?’
It takes a while to understand what she’s saying. (‘Made up’ as in happy, a lover of cosmetics or…) ‘He’s not real?’
‘Pure fantasy, Mum.’
*
Sometimes we tell a lie that gets a bit out of control, yet seems to fit the circumstances much better than reality.
When I was about seven or eight, I was having a bad day at school. Nothing epic, just one of those sad, glum days that stem from lots of petty things: a hideous new short fringe haircut, not being allowed to stay up to watch Top of the Pops the night before, Miles nabbing the plastic toy in the Frosties packet that morning, my best friend off sick, spam fritters for lunch which I was ordered to finish. All that and rain. One of those days it’s all too easy to lose our sense of perspective and humour. Like most days when we’re fiftyish and menopausal.
So when the class bully broke my favourite pencil, and I burst into tears, it was a cumulative thing. But they were big, blubbery, shaming tears that for some reason wouldn’t stop. On and on I cried, and the more I did, the more ashamed I was of being unable to stop, and the harder I cried. The teacher was lovely. I got to go into the staff room to calm down with hot chocolate and tissues and kindness.
When I finally stopped hiccupping and sobbing, she asked what had upset me. And when I thought about that pencil and that bully and how much she had wanted a reaction from me and how much I’d gratified her by overreacting, I couldn’t say it. Instead, I blurted, ‘My dog’s died!’
It seemed more in keeping. The teacher seemed to think so too.
I hoped that would be the end of it, but oh no, the sympathetic questions kept coming. I felt compelled to give this dear departed pet a name, a breed and an age and cause of death. Soon Patch the red-and-white Cavalier who liked playing with sticks and hated blue cheese really felt like a part of my life and I really missed him. I even cried a bit more.
As soon as I got home, Mum cornered me furiously in the kitchen and asked what I thought I was up to, telling all those lies about a dog? The school had phoned her to sympathetically explain that I’d got a bit upset about poor Patch being run over.
Cue more tears. And I told her about the class bully and the pencil and the crying getting out of control. I added that I really did want a dog and I promised to look after it and walk it and groom it and feed it. I told her nothing but the truth.
She was a lot less sympathetic than the teacher.
We didn’t get a dog.
*
It turns out make-believe Joachim has been very useful in training boys who take an interest in Summer to be less selfish and sex-obsessed. ‘Because every time one is being a dick – or wants to send me a shot of theirs – all I need to do is remind him how respectful and expert and grown-up Joachim was with me, and that I’ll take no shit from thirsty smols like them.’
‘And you’ve never come clean that he’s made up?’
‘Why should I? He’s the dragon they want to slay, the Daddy they have to live up to, my get-out-of-jail card? This way they can never hurt me.’
I get the point, a part of me wishing I’d thought of that when the nineties bastards were around, however deceitful.
‘Kwasi has a big problem with imaginary Joachim.’ She rolls over to sit up again, crossing her legs. ‘He is super-disapproving and jealous. Which is how I know he secretly loves me too, like Mr Darcy with Elizabeth.’
‘Jealousy doesn’t equate to love, Summer. Maybe he thinks the age gap’s way too big?’
‘It’s only three years! Dad’s four years older than you.’
‘Not with Kwasi. With – Joachim, is it?’
‘Kwasi is in no way ageist.’ She shakes her head. ‘Mum, you have no idea how gold he is, how non-judgmental, how rare that is. You are so out of touch. Kwasi is an angel compared to most guys I know. Some of the stuff my friends put up with would make your hair curl.’
‘So tell me. Bring me up to date.’
‘You’ll just interrupt all the time. Force your outmoded opinions on me. That’s why I can never talk to you.’
‘I won’t interrupt.’
*
I appreciate that Summer’s current eye-rolling disapproval of me is a well-worn rite of passage – just as mine was with my mother (although Mum claims she didn’t have one with Granny because teenagers didn’t have hormones or control issues until after the 1950s) – but it can be unbearably painful to endure. Summer longs to be older but never old like me. Her burning feelings for Kwasi are a part of this ageing-up, I’m certain, seventeen being a pivot point in life when the decade ahead and all its adventures can’t come fast enough, unlike my point in life where just ten years can mark the rapid decline of flexible joints, continence, eyesight and teeth.
I have to believe Summer will one day stop questioning me, that she won’t always disregard what I have to say. But right now, I must stay silent, just to prove that my willpower is as steely as my unbending love for her.
As The Tempest slowly follows the Avon’s meanders, I hear my daughter telling what it’s like growing up in the shadow of lovelorn millennials swiping right in place of dating, and of young girls who learn what consent means before they know how to tie shoelaces. Of everything being sexualised by thirteen, of hating their bodies, of boys who think porn is the norm, of the endless quest to be perfect, to be liked, followed, on-trend, of FOMO and being scared AF of not getting it right. I’ve agonised about much of this with fellow mums, read the reports and witnessed her sermonise about it before, but it’s tough to hear first-hand, delivered from the front line in a quick-fire monologue. For the first time in recent memory, Summer doesn’t have a phone in her hand, meaning her entire focus is on what she’s saying and who she’s saying it to, a single individual, not a cloud of digitised reactions.
Sharp-witted and straight-talking, Summer thrives on analysing herself and her peers. She doesn’t need me to relate to her, just hear her out. My opinions would only get in the way, and I don’t offer any – even though I was just as dogmatic at her age, when life was still something improvised after childhood’s set prologue – because today, for once, I have the time and space to listen; for once I’m not trying to hurry her along or multitask or think what to say next to exert authority or prove I’m still relevant; for once, life outside this moment in time doesn’t feel very important at all, not even the fact I’m stealing a boat with my children as unwitting conspirators. I am her audience of one.
She explains that Kwasi was always different. That the first time she met him – at one of Joe’s parties in the basement at home – she lied about her age so he’d talk to her for longer, that she was blown away by how clever and left field he is, how they kissed in the kitchen but Joe caught them and warned Kwasi off. He’s not laid a finger on her since, has only ever been supportive and kind, but they burn for each other. She tells me her feelings for him have been like a forcefield protecting her in the past few years, and that by not fearing screen culture, she’s owned it, that she wants the younger girls who follow her vlog to feel that same strength and control. Standing up on the roof of the barge, she promises me that, as an actor, she will perform ‘… outside the boundaries of sexual stereotyping and you will be totally proud of me, and women everywhere will feel less objectified and Kwasi will realise what he’s just lost!’
Her hyperbole has no brakes, but I keep holding my tongue because I’ve vowed to, and because if I don’t, this wiser older actress who has been physically objectified from the first step of her career path to the big red STOP! sign over forty, wouldn’t be able to resist making comparisons, giving opinions, making it all about me. I can’t redirect her life, can’t live it for her. And I like listening without my mind busily thinking what to say next. As I tilt my face up to the sun, I devour what Summer has to say, however idealistic; I am proud of her enthusiasm, her kindness. I like it that she’s not remotely self-conscious when she lists the many human rights causes she will support when she’s a global icon. I remember how good it felt to think as boldly as she does, to know that life is there for the taking. Maybe this time, it is.
She even breaks into song – ‘This Girl is on Fire’ (it was too much to hope for ‘Climb Every Mountain’). She means every word, dancing up and down the boat roof, encouraging me to join in.
A little Regatta Set cruiser overtakes, the captain taking off his hat in Summer’s honour and calling out, ‘Bravo, young lady!’ The other passengers clap.
She bows and moves on to sing Beyoncé’s break-up anthem ‘Irreplaceable’, pointing her fingers fiercely and telling an imaginary ex to put all his stuff together.
In the spirit of trust, I feel I should tell Summer the truth about this boat trip, but I don’t want to break the spell. Instead, I ask her to go down and check that her brother is still OK.
‘Why is Ed on here anyway? I thought he had PGL?’
‘He was travel sick on the coach.’
‘He was really looking forward to it!’ That flash of anger is back in her eyes. ‘You didn’t think to drive him there?’
‘They have a post-vomit quarantine policy,’ I snap back. ‘He’s isolating.’
‘So you thought you’d bring him along with you to see Nigel and Susie? No wonder he’s up to his old tricks, locking himself in the loo. You are so selfish, Mum.’ She flounces down into the cabin, and I reach for my AirPods for a much-needed Annie boost. ‘Little Bird’. Ah, that’s better. I’m putting my wings to the test, too.
*
I kept a diary on and off throughout my teens in which I dedicated many tear-stained paragraphs to how annoying my mother was being, how little she understood me, how much I hated her narrow-minded, smug oldness. I’d occasionally leave the diary out where I knew she might stumble across it, sometimes helpfully open on the relevant page.
She took to replying in the margins like a teacher. I remember one entry, written after some petty domestic grievance, where I had scrawled in angry capitals I WILL NEVER EVER BE LIKE HER! She simply underlined it and wrote: You will.
*
Re-emerging after a few minutes, looking less mutinous, Summer mouths that he’s very happy and now on level seven. A moment later, Annie suddenly sounds distant, the engine closer, and I realise she’s picked up my phone to disconnect the Bluetooth.
‘We can have music, yay!’ She starts flicking through my Spotify downloads, selecting The 1975’s ‘The Sound’, which is only there because I once mistook it for a seventies playlist.
Her phone’s still at school, I remember, as she raids my bag for a mint, lip salve, hairband and Factor 50 before climbing back up on the roof to sunbathe and exclaiming, ‘Look at those miniature cows!’ She points at a riverside watering spot where a tail-twitching black-and-white group are clustered tightly under a midge haze, muscles quivering to shake the odd fly off.
‘They’re ponies.’
She lifts her glasses. ‘Why do you always have to contradict me?’
‘Because they’re ponies. Or do you think they want to identify as bovine?’
‘Don’t even go there, Mum,’ she rests back on her elbows. ‘Nature teaches beasts to know their friends. Cymbeline.’
‘Coriolanus.’
‘Cymbeline!’ she growls, turning her head away.
I’m sure I’m right. Now it will drive me mad until I can Google it, as will the fact I can’t show off that I once toured in a Coriolanus production reimagined in twenties gangland New York, our leading man a newly RADA-ed Old Etonian who went on to star in a huge movie franchise dressed in a trademark tux. He was very polite and shy, never joined us in the pub and had slight BO. I was cast as Gentlewoman – doubled with Unruly Crowd Member/Roman Soldier/Volscian Mobster plus stagehand and understudy – one of my sad little stage career highlights – but this isn’t about me.
Another narrowboat putters by, all eyes on Summer who waves and blows kisses.
I bat away the desire to be waspish, but it stays buzzing close by as my menopausal mood swing flies back and forth between love and fury.
‘Do you need to get back to school this afternoon?’ I ask Summer.
‘Please, no! I’d like to stay with you, Mum? Can I?’
‘Of course.’ My daring mission is turning into a day out with the kids. All we need is Joe wakeboarding up to complete the trio.
I consult the Avon Navigation Guide to remind myself what’s coming up next, my mouth going dry at the prospect of the first of the old bridges, Binton, followed shortly afterwards by the notoriously deep and fierce Welford lock. The guide reassures me I’ve several furlongs of water to navigate first – riverways, like racecourses, are measured in old eighth of a mile lengths.
Above me, Summer is rolling up her dress to expose maximum thigh to the sun. ‘I said Cymbeline to wind you up, Mum.’
‘I knew that,’ I lie.
‘And cows.’
‘That too.’
*
When the sonographer told Paddy and me that the little blob on the twenty-week scan was a girl, I was too happy to speak. I’d claimed I didn’t mind one way or another, but whilst that had been true for Joe, this time I knew I wanted a daughter. She was my chance to get it right. I would pass on the wisdom of women, guard her against the masculine filter that would fix its distorted eye on her from childhood, spare her from her paternal grandmother’s limited choices, maternal grandmother’s bitter regrets, aunt’s conflicted chippiness and my frustrated self-deprecation. My girl would thrive.
It hasn’t quite unfolded that way, of course; a mother will learn more about herself by having a daughter than she’ll ever be able to teach her. It’s a lesson nobody tells us about.
Today I have learned that a precocious seventeen-year-old girl, even one I adore, is not an ideal boating companion for a woman currently fighting a physical sea change from top deck to old wreck. If I must have company, can’t it be somebody my own age? An enthusiasm for crewing locks would be a bonus (Summer was never an eager volunteer), as well as a calming influence. And preferably somebody who doesn’t lie conspicuously on the roof lifting an occasional leg to admire sparkly toenails. That’s the company I crave, not a nubile reminder of my half-century-old decrepitude.