The Carer

by Deborah Moggach

  Stella’s mouth hung open. She’d wiped her smeared cheeks but Anna felt a perverse desire to make those tears spill down her face again.

  ‘You see, I was raped when I was eleven,’ she said. ‘I was raped by a friend of my father’s, who took me butterfly-hunting. His name was Dudley. We’d had lunch at his house in Sussex. Afterwards, when the others played tennis, he took me into the woods to look for pearl-bordered fritillaries. He knew I loved butterflies and I’d never seen one. He said they were shy little creatures. “Just like you,” he said. I thought that was a bit funny but then grown-ups were funny. When we were out of sight of his house he pushed me onto the ground. I thought he’d tripped on a tree root – he was a big man – and tried to help him up. But he pushed me back down. I thought, he’s a bit drunk, it’s some sort of game. Then I got frightened. He pressed his knuckles against my throat and I suddenly thought he was going to strangle me. Then I thought, of course he won’t strangle me, he knows my parents.’ Anna paused for breath, her heart hammering. The two Wimpys sat cooling on their plates, their buns starting to wrinkle. ‘Then he pulled off my knickers and unzipped his trousers and I saw this thing. He wanted me to see it. So purple and angry. It hurt like hell. I was a virgin, of course. And then he pulled me up and patted my bottom and whispered – I remember his boozy breath – he pressed his face against my ear and whispered, “If you tell anybody I’ll cut your pretty little eyes out.” So I didn’t. Until now.’

  Stella made a small noise in her throat. She wasn’t crying, however. Anna felt released, as if she could float up to the ceiling. She’d offloaded it onto this woman, for reasons she would never understand. To punish her? Shock her? Get her sympathies? Or to ease the guilt for both of them and bind them together in a clammy, sick sort of bond?

  ‘What happened to him?’ asked Stella.

  ‘He and his family moved to France and I never saw him again.’

  Ah, but it was a relief to speak about it, to say his name. Dudley, Dudley, Dudley. To open herself and spill out her fetid, steaming guts in front of this startled young woman.

  Anna pushed back her chair and stumbled to the toilets. Flinging open the door, she dropped to her knees and vomited down the pan. It turned out she was in the Gents; when she emerged, a man stepped out of the next cubicle, zipping up his flies.

  She kissed Stella goodbye. Stella looked startled, but rallied and gave her a hug, her breasts pressing against her coat. She was so small; for a mad moment Anna wanted to stroke her hair.

  Striding towards the railway station, Anna thought: did I really give her permission to sleep with my husband? In those very words? I went to Cardiff, sabre rattling, and ended up commiserating with this woman about babies and then unloading my deepest and most disgusting violation. What on earth was I doing?

  And by urging Stella to keep it a secret – the meeting, the confidences – the two of them had become inappropriately close. She should have simply told the woman to lay off her husband. She should have asked her the obvious question: do you really expect James to leave his family and run off with you?

  No, it hadn’t gone as planned. But then, what does?

  And she kept her secret to the grave.

  The letter to James continued:

  We ordered something to eat, though I suspect neither of us was hungry. I’d presumed I’d lose my temper and tell her to lay off my husband, but we found ourselves chatting about this and that. She knew I was a keen gardener, you must have told her that, and she wanted my advice about what to plant in a small back yard. North-facing. She said she didn’t have a clue but wanted to surprise her husband, of whom she seemed very fond. Then we talked about the scenic delights of the Shrewsbury to Swansea Heritage Railway.

  After a while I wondered if your name was ever going to come up, so I asked her what she was planning to do. She jumped like a startled rabbit and started to say how sorry she was and how she didn’t want anyone to be hurt, that sort of rubbish. It’s then that I surprised her.

  You see, I presumed she knew about the state of our marriage. I presumed you’d told her, not least because it excused your seeking solace elsewhere. I imagined it would have made you both feel a whole lot better.

  But you were obviously far too British to talk about things like that. Perhaps you were being loyal to me, the frigid wife. Perhaps you thought it reflected badly on yourself, that our lovemaking had pretty well ceased, for all these years.

  Perhaps – I’ve just thought of this – you didn’t want her to think it was simply a sex thing, because you weren’t ‘getting it’ at home.

  Anyway, she had no idea. Nor do I know if this made her feel better or worse. Not my problem, really.

  You won’t believe this but we parted on perfectly cordial terms. She even wrote down my suggestion of ‘Hydrangea anomala’ as a suitable climber for a shady wall.

  And she kept her word, I’ll give you that. You knew nothing about my little tryst, did you? I would have sensed it if you had. You carried on as usual, disappearing a couple of times a week with your flimsy excuses. But I felt differently now. I’d met her, you see, and lanced the boil. There’s nothing as powerful as the imagination and mine had created a collection of demon women. Now they’d evaporated and it was such a relief. Stella was just a normal human being and I could cope with that.

  I suspected that your affair would run its course, though it took longer than I expected. I knew when it did because I found you in the spare room sobbing your heart out. You were startled to see me and gabbled something about a colleague of yours having cancer. You used those words, ‘a colleague of mine’, which sounded pompous, not like you at all, but you’d been caught on the hop.

  I’m sure you remember every miserable detail of that day. I have no idea what the final catalyst had been. Maybe Stella issued an ultimatum; maybe you’d had a row. I’d had no communication with her since that meeting in Cardiff. Staying in touch would have been rather creepy, wouldn’t it? Besides, we had nothing in common, except you.

  So there it is, my darling.

  My poor little secret is out, and I know you’ll keep it. Why should our dear children and grandchildren be bothered by what happened so very long ago, in a world before mobile phones and the internet? A quaintly antique world where you could rent a room for £2 a week and get a job at the click of your fingers? The world today is so tough and brutal, compared to ours. That’s the received wisdom, anyway. I suspect we were just more adept at covering things up. For we were certainly experts at that.

  Did you have another affair? I have no idea, but I saw no signs of it. Our long and engrossing marriage continued for fifty more years, our rollercoaster of love with its highs and its lows, but throughout it we always talked. Always. Except for that one silence.

  And, as you know, my difficulties with our children grew easier as time passed. I grew into them, and they into me. We made our peace with each other, if such a peace were necessary. Needless to say, Alice and Jack have brought me nothing but joy. The simplest joy of my life. That’s what people say about grandchildren, and they’re right. God knows what they’d think, if they read this. The idea of old people’s sex lives would turn their stomachs. To them we’re just two harmless old crocks pottering around our Cotswold garden to the strains of Radio 4. And how heavenly that has been.

  For it has. Goodbye, darling heart. Forgive me, as I’ve forgiven you. Thank you. I love you.

  Robert

  They never knew if their father had opened it. The envelope was stuck down, which implied he hadn’t. On the other hand, it was not stuck down that firmly. This could be the result of the glue drying, over the years. Or that he had read it.

  Not surprisingly, the two of them preferred the first option. Their mother had put the letter where she’d hoped James would find it. Her death, however, had resulted in the usual tumultuous distractions. Perhaps the letter had fallen behind his desk and the cleaner had shoved it into a drawer. Who knew? Their father was absen
t-minded at the best of times, and in those raw early days he was barely able to function.

  They clung to this scenario. The thought that their father had read it, and misled them yet again, was too horribly painful.

  As indeed was their mother’s letter. So they had two parents who’d lied to them, and indeed to each other. Their wounds had barely been stitched up before they were opened again. They’d considered their mother a mistress of probity – she was a JP, for Christ’s sake! But now this woman who sat in judgement over others was revealed to be as devious as those who sat quivering in front of her.

  Robert felt weirdly derailed. Worse than this, it seemed he was a whiney little boy and impossible to love. ‘Aren’t mothers supposed to love you whatever you’re like, isn’t that the point of them?’ he said. ‘She banged on enough about her love for Dad, about their great adventure and long fucking conversation. We talked too!’

  They were sitting on the steps of his caravan. ‘I suppose we should feel sorry for her,’ said Phoebe.

  No doubt they would, in time. But just now he and Phoebe weren’t in the mood. Pulled back into the past, they felt buffeted and seasick. They sat, slumped against each other. Through the hedge they heard the sound of crashing glass as people threw their bottles into the bins.

  The next day, sorting through the paperwork, they found another envelope.

  This one had certainly been opened because it had been slit across the top with a paper-knife. It was postmarked Solihull and addressed to their mother.

  Inside was a photograph of a newborn baby. On the back was written Amanda (Mandy) Jane Gatterson b. 12.11.1967.

  Nothing more.

  So their mother knew, all the time. And maybe their father did, from the very beginning.

  Phoebe had decided to find the whole thing hilarious. This unsettled Robert; now he felt that he didn’t know her at all. He was feeling increasingly lonely in his little caravan.

  ‘You’re being very uptight,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you tell Jack and Alice? I bet they’ll find it fascinating.’

  ‘You don’t have children, you don’t understand. They need to trust their elders.’

  She burst out laughing. ‘You really are a pompous prick.’

  ‘What, tell them their frigid grandmother pimped her husband’s mistress back to him?’

  ‘You really see it like that?’

  ‘And knew about his secret love child?

  ‘Love child! What century are you in?’

  ‘And that everybody lied to everybody else? What sort of example does that set?’

  ‘You think they need examples? They seem to be doing pretty well on their own.’ Her voice rose. ‘In fact, they’re the ones who should be giving us an example. They’re so non-judgemental, compared to us! And kind and forgiving! And unscrewed up about sex! I mean, half of them seem to be bi and they don’t give a toss about that! And changing gender all over the place.’

  Now it was Robert who burst out laughing. ‘Good God, sis, you are firing on all cylinders. What’s got into you – got a bloke or something?’

  She glared at him. ‘Why do men always think that?’

  Phoebe

  Actually, Robert was right. Phoebe had been seeing a man called Gareth. She’d met him at the recycling centre, out on the bypass; Gareth was newly divorced and unloading his ex-wife’s clutter. His children, too, had long since grown up so into the Landfill Only skip went broken boxes of broken toys and jigsaws with pieces missing. Gareth said he was downsizing and moving into a flat above the incense shop in the High Street.

  They started talking when Phoebe’s cardboard box burst open and her father’s paperwork spilled out. Gareth helped her gather it up. They were both unburdening themselves of their past. It was a melancholy moment, seeing possessions turned to junk, and she’d been thinking about her father.

  She hadn’t cried at his funeral. It was time for him to go, that was why. He’d been dreading the indignities of old age, indignities that Mandy had itemised in brutal detail. He’d travelled far enough down that road to know he didn’t want to travel further. And he’d felt no pain. So why should one cry for a life so well lived?

  That’s what she was thinking on that windy October day, the obligatory Guardians swirling around the Paper and Cardboard Only container and the lorries thundering past.

  Gareth wasn’t really her type. A retired solicitor, no less, in one of those quilted jackets that retired solicitors wear. But they started talking, wandered down to The Coffee Cup and carried on talking for the rest of the morning. Then they crossed the High Street to Angie’s Bistro, had some lunch and talked some more. It certainly made a change from Torren, from whom she’d parted as unknown as when she’d arrived.

  The next day Gareth showed her his flat, three empty rooms smelling of new carpet, a stage set for the next period of his life. Opposite was the butcher’s shop, behind which she lived. It was laughably convenient.

  A few weeks later she told Robert she was having a thing with a solicitor and would he like his dog? She was a spaniel called Connie. Under the terms of the lease she wasn’t allowed in the flat and Gareth’s ex didn’t want her.

  ‘She’s not the obligatory lurcher but she’s highly intelligent and you said you’d love a dog again.’

  But Robert wasn’t listening. ‘A thing? Blimey, who is he? Where did you meet him?’

  Strictly speaking it wasn’t ‘a thing’ but she didn’t tell Robert this. When Gareth stayed over, the two of them lay chastely in each other’s arms. It reminded her of the boy she spent all night kissing in that tent a thousand years ago. Her life seemed to have come full circle. In those days, however, it was frustrated passion; now it was passion spent. For it was simply human warmth that the two of them seem to crave. They had both been hurt; they seemed to have slipped straight into companionship. And what a miracle, simply to be friends with a man! Something that had eluded her all her life, and what was wrong with that? After all, her parents remained devoted throughout their mariage blanc.

  Instead, they spent half the night talking. Insomnia was another thing that worsened with age, another thing nobody mentioned. She thought: the world is full of old people lying in the dark, waiting for the first birds to sing.

  Robert

  How great that Phoebe was having sex again! Cheeks flushed, eyes bright, she was throbbing with pheromones and looked ten years younger. It was hard to believe, but that portly little solicitor must be dynamite in the sack. Bully for him, Robert thought.

  His sister was changing in other ways too. Happier and less tense, which was to be expected. But in her case, sexual gratification seemed to be leading to a social conscience. This was not a common trajectory, but then Phoebe was an unusual woman. What had happened, however, surprised even him.

  For she seemed to be giving up the painting and devoting herself to public life. ‘Who needs another watercolour of bloody sheep,’ she said, ‘when the Scout Hut’s falling down?’

  He could understand this because Knockton had a great community spirit. Coming from London, this had been a revelation. Everybody knew everybody, they were always bustling around delivering casseroles to the bereaved and fixing each other’s cars. Only the day before, he went into the gift shop to buy Buffy a birthday card and Gilly, the owner, said: ‘Somebody’s got him the Van Gogh already, you’d better choose another one.’ No doubt some people would find this claustrophobic but it made a change from his street in Wimbledon where community meant gated.

  And now, blow me down, the woman wanted to become a Town Councillor! Phoebe, his sister! He presumed it was the influence of this Gareth chap but she snapped back: ‘Do you really think I’m defined by men?’

  She said the seeds were sown during the supermarket protest and grew from there. She said the world was full of second-rate artists and that Mandy had given her a reality check.

  ‘Reality check? Mandy?’

  ‘She made me realise that I was just dicking about and
I wasn’t really happy. She was doing something so worthwhile – caring for Dad, organising things in his village, being kind and useful. She said that happiness was like coke, it was a by-product of something else.’

  ‘Aldous Huxley said that, not her.’

  ‘But that’s how she lived her life, and we sneered at her because she watched daytime TV and went to Nando’s. You and me, we’re such snobs.’

  ‘You’re getting very Ken Loach. The working class isn’t necessarily noble; don’t fall for that one.’

  ‘Don’t be such a cynic.’

  This spiralled off into a row, which then subsided as they drained the bottle and departed on cordial terms. They were brother and sister; they were used to this.

  But to Robert’s astonishment – and hers – Phoebe got elected. This was apparently due to the poisonous nature of local politics. Knockton looked such a friendly place but lift the lid and in fact it was a nest of vipers. That’s what he was told by Caradoc, an amiable old alcoholic with whom he watched the footie in the pub. Caradoc used to be a reporter on the local paper and knew a thing or two. ‘Don’t be fooled,’ he said. ‘They’d slit each other’s throats if they got a chance.’ He said there were feuds going back years, old farming families stealing land from each other, poaching sheep and poaching wives, poisoning wells and snitching on each other to the authorities. Robert wished they’d met before he’d started on his ill-fated novel. Caradoc’s words had the stench of truth, something that had evaded him for four long years as he toiled in his shed.