From Something Old

by Alexander, Nick

  ‘Who?’ he asked obtusely.

  ‘Your mum,’ I replied. ‘You’ve never told me much about her.’

  ‘Well, she’s my mother,’ he said, wrinkling his nose as he glanced at me and shrugging.

  I tried for a moment to work out whether the fact of her being his mother was supposed to explain why he couldn’t describe her, or whether it was supposed to be description enough, then tried a different tack. ‘What did she do?’ I asked. ‘When she worked, I mean.’

  ‘She didn’t work,’ he said. ‘She was way too busy to work.’

  ‘Oh?’ I said. ‘Busy doing what?’

  ‘Busy being my mother,’ he replied.

  I turned to the side window, discreetly pulled a face, and went back to being silent.

  His mother’s place was in a generic nineties build of what would best be described as ‘retirement flats’. It was only about a mile from the sea, but faced the wrong way, looking out instead over a supermarket car park.

  Anthony had bought flowers from the corner shop and when we reached her shiny blue door he held them out in front of him so that they would be the first thing she saw.

  Marjory, a tallish white-haired woman, was unimpressed by the flowers, which she pushed unceremoniously to one side. She looked about seventy, I thought, and had a lot of crow’s feet around the edges of her mouth, which seemed to have been caused by her permanent thin-lipped sneer. To say that she was not instantly likeable would be a pretty severe understatement.

  ‘So you’re ’evvah, are ya?’ she asked, looking down at me from her dominant position on the step. ‘A real ’alf-pint model, ain’t ya?’

  I felt as if I’d been slapped, but when I looked back at Anthony for reassurance, he simply gestured with his chin for me to follow her into the flat.

  ‘Sit darn, then!’ she said, sounding as if I’d been standing in the middle of the room for minutes, rather than seconds. ‘I’ll make tea.’

  I swallowed with difficulty and perched on the edge of the floral sofa, glancing around at all the knick-knacks on the surfaces – she seemed to have a penchant for china cows. The room was severely overheated, so much so that it seemed difficult to breathe. I patted the space beside me, hoping that Ant’s proximity would provide a feeling of support, but instead he sighed and followed his mother to the kitchen.

  ‘They’re from the garage,’ I heard her say, presumably referring to the flowers. ‘I dunno why you bovvah. They don’t last more than a day.’

  ‘They’re not from the garage,’ Anthony replied. ‘They’re from the shop on the corner.’

  ‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘Same difference. And that’s ’er, is it? That’s the one you’ve been on about?’

  ‘Yes, Mum. I thought it was time you met.’

  ‘If you’d found yourself a smaller model,’ she said, making no effort to be discreet, ‘you could have kept ’er in yer pocket.’

  ‘Mum,’ Ant said, sounding part plaintive, part amused. ‘Be nice.’

  ‘And why’s she dressed like a boy?’ Marjory asked.

  ‘It’s cold,’ Ant said. ‘It’s not exactly dress weather out there, is it?’

  ‘Cold?’ she said. ‘You kids don’t know what cold is. In my day the boys looked like boys and the girls looked like girls, no matter what the wevvah.’

  ‘Mum,’ Ant pleaded. ‘Give it a break, OK?’

  We only stayed an hour, but honestly it felt like four.

  At first, I did my best to break through Marjory’s icy force field by doing everything I could to charm her. But as it was clearly an impossible task – she only ever replied to my comments with at best lazy sarcasm, at worst silence and a sneer – I quickly gave up.

  Instead, I sat listening to her talking at her son. I choose the word at rather than with, or even to, intentionally, for it was far more a monologue than any kind of conversation.

  In essence, Marjory complained. She complained about the pain in her hip and her noisy neighbour. She complained about the useless idiots at the town hall and joyriders in the car park; about someone called Trish who hadn’t returned her Tupperware box and ‘the immigrants’ who were the reason she couldn’t get an appointment at the clinic. Finally, she complained about the doctor (implying that she had got an appointment), who didn’t even speak what Marjory called ‘propah’ English.

  By one, we were back outside and as the rain had stopped we wandered down to the seafront in search of food. The sky out to sea was dramatic-looking, with dark clouds to the left and pretty patches of sunlight over the waves to the right.

  ‘I love the sea,’ I said, thanking the gods that Marjory’s dodgy hip had kept her at home.

  ‘Mum does too,’ Ant said. ‘That’s why she came back here.’

  ‘From Warrington?’ I asked. ‘That’s where you grew up, right?’

  Ant paused outside a fish and chip restaurant and held the door open for me. ‘Yeah. She moved back here when Dad left,’ he said, once he’d followed me in. ‘She grew up in Botany Bay. It’s just along the coast.’

  I almost asked when and why his father had left, but decided it would be tactless to do so. Plus, the ‘why’ part of the equation seemed fairly obvious, for who could possibly put up with Marjory? ‘Was she always like that?’ I asked instead as we slid into a booth, that thought leading to this one.

  ‘Like what?’ Ant asked, sounding genuinely confused. He picked up the menu and began to study it.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, treading carefully. ‘She doesn’t seem very happy.’

  ‘Happy?’ Ant repeated, looking up at me and frowning.

  ‘No. I mean, she seems a bit angry, really, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Angry? Wow,’ Ant said, raising an eyebrow. ‘And what brings you to that conclusion, Little Miss Psychology?’

  ‘Well, she wasn’t very nice to me,’ I pointed out.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. Calling me half-pint . . . Telling you that you couldn’t have found a smaller model. It wasn’t exactly tactful, was it?’

  Ant laughed at this, and it was genuine laughter that erupted from within.

  ‘Sorry, I think I missed the joke,’ I said, bitterness creeping into my voice.

  ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t know?’ Ant laughed, and there was something in his thin-lipped sneer that reminded me of his mother. I hadn’t known before where that came from, but now I did, it scared me.

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘That you’re small,’ he said.

  ‘No, I know that,’ I replied. I was starting to reach the borderline between anger and tears, and I didn’t really want to lapse into either, not now, not here, in the middle of a fish restaurant. ‘I know I’m not huge, but . . .’

  ‘So she was merely stating the obvious,’ Ant said.

  ‘Yes, but why?’

  Ant shrugged. ‘How should I know?’ he said. ‘We can pop in on the way back and you can ask her if you want. Anyway, what are you having? I think I’ll just go for cod and chips.’

  ‘So his mother’s horrible,’ Mum said when I phoned her that evening. ‘Not everyone can be as lucky as you, sweetheart.’

  ‘Yeah, but she’s really horrible,’ I insisted. ‘And he didn’t even stick up for me.’

  ‘I thought you said he did,’ Mum replied. ‘I thought he asked her to be nice.’

  ‘Yeah, he did ask her to be nice. And she wasn’t. She wasn’t nice at all.’

  ‘Look, honey,’ Mum said. ‘Do you want my advice?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Go for it.’

  ‘Don’t go to war with his mother. Because that’s a battle you can never win.’

  ‘But she’s . . .’

  ‘Just see as little of her as you can, and ignore her when you do. It’s not her you’re dating, after all. And whatever you do, don’t try to make him choose, because blood runs thicker than water and all that. If you force him to choose between the two of you, you’ll just end up single all over again, and none of us wants that, do we? The
only way you can get a mummy’s boy away from his mother is to wait.’

  ‘Wait?’ I repeated. ‘Wait for what?’

  ‘Eventually she’ll either come around, or she’ll drop dead,’ Mum said.

  ‘Right,’ I said, sighing deeply.

  ‘Actually, I need to see you,’ Mum added. ‘Can you come up next weekend?’

  I couldn’t. I had to work the following weekend, covering for Sheena, who was on leave.

  ‘The one after, then,’ Mum said.

  ‘I might get Ant to drive me,’ I told her. ‘Maybe it’s time you met him too. Make up your own mind.’

  ‘No, don’t,’ Mum said, surprising me. ‘I want you all to myself.’

  I didn’t see that much of Anthony over the following two weeks. He had to work a few evenings, wining and dining some developer he was trying to do business with, and when he wasn’t working he claimed to be tired. As I myself had to work right through the weekend, I was shattered in the evenings as well.

  So I spent my time with Dandy, staring at but not really watching the reflection-free TV screen. It turned out that the way Ant had positioned the sofa was better after all.

  I didn’t actually mind being alone, because the only time I’d met Ant – for lunch on the Wednesday – he hadn’t been that nice anyway. He’d seemed different, somehow – harsher, harder, more like his mother, perhaps. I wondered if it was just a phase or whether something had broken between us. Perhaps meeting his mother had changed the way I saw him for ever. Whatever the explanation, I found myself feeling relieved when he said he couldn’t see me.

  By the end of the second week, I sensed that I was reaching a decision. The time had come to end the relationship, I suspected. I just had to find the courage to tell my friends and family, to face down their judgements about the fact that I’d failed at my shot at a relationship. Kerry would probably ask me again if I wanted to admit that I was lesbian, and Mum would be worried and disappointed. But it wasn’t working out and I realised that, deep down, I’d always known that it wouldn’t.

  Mum lived in the same semi-detached house we’d moved to just before Dad died, and it was an absolute nightmare to get to.

  It was in a tiny hamlet called Oxen End, about ten miles from Braintree in Essex. Her last-ditch plan, her final attempt at saving him, had been to get him away from the pubs. As he’d simply driven – drunk – to Great Bardfield, or even as far as Braintree, and then home again, his smuggled bottles of vodka hidden beneath the spare wheel, it hadn’t made a blind bit of difference. If anything, it was a miracle he’d hadn’t killed anyone.

  As Mum didn’t drive, it was she who’d ended up stranded in the middle of nowhere. Luckily, since his death, she’d made friends with people who had cars.

  The lack of regular public transport, combined with my inability to pass the driving test – I’d failed three times before giving up – was the main reason I’d taken the job in well-connected Canterbury, but also the reason I hadn’t visited Mum since Christmas.

  The journey, which generally took about five hours door to door, involved a train to Stratford, then another to Braintree, followed by a bus to Great Bardfield, and then either a lift from a friend, a taxi (if I could find one) or an extremely long walk along dark country lanes with no footpaths. Which is why I was studying the various timetables on Friday evening when Kerry called.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I was wondering if you wanted me to pick you up at Braintree tomorrow?’

  ‘You’re coming too?’ I asked in surprise.

  ‘Apparently so,’ she said. ‘Any idea what it’s about?’

  ‘None. I thought it was just me.’

  ‘Mum asked me not to bring Agata, which seems weird,’ Kerry said.

  ‘She told me not to bring Anthony, either,’ I said. ‘Not that I particularly wanted to.’

  But it was unusual that Mum didn’t want Agata there. Kerry often complained that Mum loved her Polish girlfriend more than she loved her own daughter. ‘Is something going down?’ I asked. ‘Is it something serious, do you think?’

  ‘Maybe she’s selling that bloody house.’

  ‘Gosh, that would be great,’ I said. ‘The roof was leaking at Christmas, and the garden’s totally out of control.’

  ‘I guess we’ll find out tomorrow,’ Kerry said. ‘Maybe she met some bearded guy in Morocco and wants to emigrate.’

  ‘God, don’t,’ I laughed.

  ‘I’m gutted I’m not gonna get to see the famous Anthony, though,’ Kerry said.

  Though I doubted very much that uptight Anthony would get on with my vegan, dub-loving sister, I said, ‘Yeah, it’s a shame. But to answer your question, yes, please do pick me up. I’m looking at trains now, and it’s bad enough just getting to Braintree.’

  On Saturday morning I woke up shockingly tired. I felt unreasonably sleepy and vaguely nauseous, almost as if I hadn’t slept at all, yet by seven I’d forced myself out of bed and into the shower. I cleaned Dandy’s litter tray (yuck), put out enough food and water for the weekend and rushed out the door.

  By eight, I’d made it to the train station, and by nine I was at Ashford International, peering enviously out of the window at all the lucky sods travelling to Paris rather than Oxen End. Their journeys would be faster than mine, too.

  As the Kent countryside rolled by, I thought about my tiredness and nausea and realised that I was feeling bloated too. Kerry, who was something of a supplement addict, would almost certainly have something to help with water retention, I reckoned. It was then that it dawned on me: I’d missed my period. I was almost two weeks late.

  I watched the countryside spinning past, and when the sun came out I closed my eyes and let it flicker against my eyelids. I started cataloguing the sensations in my body over the past two weeks: my tender breasts, the tiredness, my mood swings, and the more I did so, the more convinced I became. I tried, for a bit, to get in touch with how shocked and scared I was, simply because that’s how I’d always assumed I would feel. But I’d wanted children for as long as I could remember. Actually, ‘wanted’ doesn’t really cover it – I’d simply never been able to imagine that I wouldn’t have kids. It took a while before I was able to admit that my dominant feeling was joy.

  We had taken no precautions, so I could hardly claim to be surprised. Would Ant be shocked if it was true? I wondered. Had he assumed I’d gone on the pill? Or did he see our relationship as long term and potentially fertile? My suspicion was that he simply didn’t see my capacity to get pregnant as in any way his responsibility, and perhaps he was right. After all, I’d known I wasn’t on the pill. All I would have had to do was say no. But I hadn’t, had I? I’d not said no and I’d refused to think about what might happen.

  Would I stay with him if I turned out to be pregnant? I surprised myself by thinking that it was unlikely, and shocked myself even more by realising that I didn’t find the idea of being a single mother particularly scary. So perhaps my inability to organise contraception had been driven by my unconscious desire for a child.

  Then again, maybe pregnancy would change our relationship for the better. Perhaps it would even change Ant himself. Had thin-lipped Marjory always dreamed of grandchildren? And if she had, and I provided one, would she too change her attitude?

  I suspect that this was hormone-driven, but I began to list Ant’s good points: his generosity, his professionalism in his work, his capacity and desire to provide. I daydreamed, imagining us as a perfect little cliché family in our luxurious future home. I imagined myself serving up a tasty nourishing meal to my hard-working husband while our cute, precociously clever son told his daddy about his day at school, and felt shamed by the fact that I found the vision so seductive.

  I had so much to think about that for once the journey seemed to be over almost before it had started. The sign outside the window suddenly read ‘Braintree’ and I had to rush to get off the train before it moved on.

  In the car park, I found Kerry sitting in her an
cient green Volvo. The baseline of the reggae she was listening to was making the side window rattle. She was rolling a joint in full view, and the first thing she said when I yanked open the door and slid in beside her was, ‘Shit, you look well! Is this the Anthony effect?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I told her, reaching out to turn the music down. Then, in spite of myself, I added, ‘No, I think I might be pregnant, actually. I’ve only just worked it out.’ Apparently it was a secret that I just couldn’t bear to keep to myself.

  ‘Fuck!’ Kerry said, turning the music back up a bit. ‘No way!’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I informed her. ‘But I am definitely late, and I’m feeling bloated and a bit vommy, so . . .’

  ‘That’ll get the old dear off my back,’ she said, licking the seal of the joint and raising it to her lips. ‘D’you want to go to a chemist’s and get a test?’

  ‘No,’ I said definitively. There was no way I was doing that in my mother’s house. I wanted to be all alone with my emotions for that particular life event.

  ‘Really?’ Kerry insisted. ‘There’s one just—’

  ‘No!’ I said, more forcefully. ‘And please don’t smoke that stuff while you’re driving. It scares me. Plus, like I said, I’m feeling a bit sick.’

  ‘It’s only a weak one,’ she protested. ‘It’s nearly all tobacco. It’s just to take the edge off.’

  ‘And you’re not to tell Mum, OK?’ I said, as she ignored my request and lit up.

  ‘Why not?’ she replied, speaking in smoke as she started the engine, engaged reverse gear and lurched out of the parking space. ‘She’ll be thrilled. She’s been banging on at me to have a baby.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Yes, me! I told her it’s not happening, but she wasn’t happy about it. This’ll take the pressure off me big time.’

  ‘At least open the fucking window, Kes,’ I said, waving my hand at the clouds of smoke she was producing.

  ‘Oops,’ Kerry said, reaching for the window winder. The smoke swirled around as the cold air rushed in. ‘Sorry. I forgot we had a baby on board. God, I can’t wait to see Mum’s face!’

  ‘Stop it. Look, I just want to wait till I’m sure,’ I told her. ‘Then I’ll tell her. In the meantime, not a word, you hear?’