Mothers & Daughters (36 page)

Then there were her ancient magazines:
Housewife, Mother
and Home
, the
Homecraft Book
, all pushing a routine where every day your letterbox must be wiped free of fingerprints, the doorstep scrubbed, the porch swept; where every week all metal items and light bulbs had to be polished, lace mats rinsed and ironed, walls and ceilings brushed down. Where washing your clothes involved steeping, blueing and starching, and cleaning your fireplace required blacklead, methylated spirits and wax.
Use two dusters, one in each hand for speed
, one article advised.
Wallpaper can be rubbed clean with a simple flour-and-water dough. And why not hem old shirts and use them as kitchen towels? Or quilt worn towels into bath mats?
suggested another.

Thank God I was born when I was, I thought smugly. What a bloody dull existence it must have been.

A picture came to me of a future Jaz clearing out this house, and what she might find, and how she might assess me by the remnants of my life.

And then the bell rang.

‘You're not moving, are you?' Laverne stared round the living room at the assorted boxes and bin bags, the emptied bureau and the dislocated drawers. Behind her, in the doorway, lurked Josh.

‘No,' I said. ‘Just having a clear-out.'

On the rug by my feet was strewn more evidence of my mother: piles of
Picture Post
and
Everybody's Magazine
,
Bairnswear
paper bags of half-used embroidery silks, bundles of cotton cloth cut into strips with pinking shears, packets of Coverax jam seals, a St Bruno's Flake tobacco tin of little horn buttons, a Keating's Powder pot containing twenty or thirty suspender clips. Old Sylko cotton reels, bright as the day Mum must have bought them, spilled out of a Coredoxa cigar box, along with several packets of Co-operative needles and a box of birthday
cake candles. One large, scratched Coronation tin contained about two hundred recipe clippings, some of which obviously dated from the days of rationing. Cauliflower Fool, Spaghetti Mould, Semolina Soup.

Laverne frowned sympathetically. ‘You haven't heard anything from Jaz, still?'

‘No.'

‘Well,' said Laverne, and stopped, because what comment can you make in such a situation that doesn't sound either trite or alarmist?

‘Would Josh like a slice of lemon cake?' I said, more brightly than I felt.

He shook his head emphatically. ‘I have to go in a minute.'

‘He has to be at Healey's for eleven,' she said. ‘I'm giving him a lift in. He's got an interview.'

‘Not an interview, Mum.'

‘Healey's coffee shop?' I asked.

‘That's right,' said Laverne. ‘They want more Saturday kitchen staff – waiters, washers up. I wasn't sure, because, you know, if he wants something, I can buy it for him – well, we can talk about it – but he thinks he should be earning.'

‘Mum,' said Josh.

‘So I said he could pop along and see, although I wasn't sure it would suit him. It's not a particularly pleasant job, is it? But I suppose they need to try these things for themselves.'

She turned a searching gaze on him, trying no doubt to imagine him in a steaming kitchen with a swearing chef. Self-conscious, Josh put his hand up to check his fringe. As he did so, the cuff of his shirt flopped open.

‘Do your button up, at least,' said Laverne.

‘Haven't got one.'

‘Haven't you? You'll need to go and change, then.'

‘I'll roll my sleeves up, it'll be fine.'

‘No, it won't. Oh, see, Carol, he hasn't got a button on that one, either.'

‘It doesn't matter,' he said. ‘They won't care.'

‘I'm not taking you like that. Go home and put your green shirt on.'

I could see the temper gathering on Josh's face. ‘Hey,' I said. ‘I've cotton and a threaded needle here, ready. There's buttons in that tobacco tin; I can have one sewn on before you've reached the top of your stairs.'

‘It's both cuffs,' said Laverne.

‘Then you do one and I'll do the other. Come on, Josh. Sit at the table and we'll have you sorted in two minutes. I promise.'

Jesus
, he mouthed, but he went over and slumped down, wrists out in front of him like someone awaiting the application of thumbscrews. ‘Eleven o' clock, I have to be there,' he muttered.

‘Heaps of time yet,' I said, handing a needle to Laverne. She pulled a chair round and we positioned ourselves either side of him so there was no escape.

For half a minute there was just the movement of cloth being punctured and thread drawn tight. Then Laverne said: ‘The reason I actually came round was, I heard some awful news this morning.'

I kept up my careful rhythm with the needle. Logic told me, if she had any information about my daughter and grandson, she'd have come straight out with it. In fact, she'd asked
me
, hadn't she? Even so, I felt the panic surge.

‘What, Laverne? What is it?'

‘Alice.'

‘Alice?' Not Jaz.

‘Dorothy Wynne's Alice.'

‘Oh, yes. Sorry. Is she all right? Has she had the baby? I knew it must be any time soon.'

‘She's had a little boy, but he's very poorly. There's something wrong. A disability of some sort, I'm not sure what exactly. It's serious, though, I do know that. Mrs Wynne caught me as I was wheeling the bin round. She's ever so upset. I said I'd tell you, save her having to.'

‘God, that's awful. I am sorry. Is Alice all right?'

‘Physically I think she's OK. It's the baby. And obviously she's very distressed, as you would be.'

Between us, Josh studied the table-top.

‘The thing is,' Laverne was saying, ‘you expect babies these days to be healthy, don't you? It never crosses your mind that anything might go wrong.'

It used to cross mine, I thought. Every day I was pregnant with Jaz, I scared myself stupid, imagining the worst. When she was born perfect, I couldn't believe it. And when, afterwards, we tried for another baby and it never happened, I didn't dare rail against fate in case what I already had was taken away from me. Did I ever worry for unborn Matty? No: somehow I always trusted he'd be all right. Jaz worried, though. She told me some nights she was wakened several times with bad dreams. Perhaps it's something to do with feeling another heartbeat beneath your ribs; that's enough to send anyone's mind off-balance.

‘Joshy came out blue, with oxygen deprivation. They brought him round, but it was – I can't imagine what Alice must be going through, can you?'

‘No,' I said.

‘And she's so young, isn't she? It's such a lot for anyone, let alone – should we send a card? What do you say? Not congratulations. Or should we? I don't know.' She looked about for scissors, found none, wound the cotton round her finger and tugged. Then she sat back, her eyes searching my face.

‘Let me have a word with Mrs Wynne,' I said. ‘I suppose a
lot depends on how the baby's doing. You know, the long term.'

‘However is she going to cope, though?'

‘I don't know,' I said, and broke off the last piece of thread.

Released at last, Josh jerked his chair back and stood up. ‘Great. Can we get going now, Mum?'

‘In a minute,' she said. ‘I'm sorry, Carol. He's been really stroppy lately – Oh, it's just so sad. Should we send some flowers?'

‘Flowers would be good. Maybe some for Mrs Wynne, too.'

‘You ask yourself why on earth these things have to happen to good people.' Laverne gazed round the room as though the answer might be lying somewhere among my piles of paper and junk. Then she sighed and stood up.

‘Will you order the flowers?' she began, moving towards the door. But in squeezing past the edge of the table, she knocked off an ancient Kestos Nursing Brassière box. There was a sound like marbles clicking together, and a whole heap of miniature light bulbs spilled out onto the carpet.

Josh made a growling noise. ‘Nice one, Mum.'

‘Watch where you're treading,' I said hastily, imagining how tiny the glass splinters might be if any of the bulbs got crushed.

‘Oh, heavens, Carol,' she said. ‘What are they? I can barely see them. Josh, stick that light on, would you?'

‘Leave them, I'll do it,' I said, conscious of her son loitering.

‘No, it's all right, we're still early. We are, Josh.' Laverne bent down and began swishing her palms over the carpet. With extreme care I lowered myself onto my knees next to her and we hunted about blindly. ‘Don't move your left foot,' she'd go. ‘There's something glinting.' And I'd freeze, and she'd say, ‘Oh no, it was a speck of glitter.' Or I'd say, ‘Under the sofa end, near your hand. A bit further. A bit further.' They were like dolls' bulbs, and I wondered where they'd
fitted and why the filaments were different colours and how many of them still worked. This was exactly why all the rubbish needed to go.

From somewhere above me Josh went, ‘Is this Jaz?'

‘Where?'

I scrambled to my feet at once, but he was only holding up a photograph.

He passed it to me and I peered into the picture, my heart contracting painfully. It was Jaz, aged about thirteen, almost unrecognisable with her round, unmade-up face and her hair in little plaits like dreadlocks. She was sitting with Nat on the steps of a shabby caravan, holding a bottle of Coke aloft as if she was offering up a toast. On her feet, which were stretched out in front of her, she sported a pair of men's boots, much too big for her.

‘Where did you find it?'

‘Here.' He pointed at a yellow Kodak envelope which I'd balanced on the back of the sofa. ‘That one was stuck against another.'

I took the wedge of prints and flicked through them. They were ones I'd found when I was going through Dad's boxes in the shed, but I'd mislaid them in the panic over Libby. How had they ended up in the bureau? I lost all sorts these days. Here again were the frog, the toadstool, the horse, Nat astride a gate, but the shot Josh had asked about was new to me.

‘She looks like a gypsy,' said Josh.

‘You shouldn't go through people's personal things,' said Laverne, pulling herself upright and brushing at her jeans.

‘It was out on top, I was only looking. Can we go now?'

‘He means “thank you, Carol, for sewing my shirt”,' said Laverne.

‘Yeah, cheers.'

‘Any time,' I said, and winked at him. I did get the tiniest of smiles back, so that was something.

After I'd seen them out I went back into the lounge, piled all my mother's belongings back into the bureau, and shut the door on them. Today was not the day for getting rid of the past.

CHAPTER 29

Photograph: loose inside a
Cook Electric!
brochure at the bottom of the bureau, Sunnybank

Location: Canterbury

Taken by: Reverend Pendlebury

Subject: the exterior of the cathedral, south-west aspect
.

It's been a long journey, but worth it. Frieda had thought, on the coach, with the rest of the Mothers' Union, that she had another headache starting, but the pain vanishes once she's in the nave. The cathedral is blissfully cool, and dim. If everyone will just leave her alone, she'll be fine
.

‘How long are we going to be?' asks Carol, pulling down on Frieda's bag so the strap cuts into her shoulder
.

‘I don't know,' says Frieda
.

‘I need the toilet,' whines Carol
.

So they have to go and look for the ladies', and as they hurry along the aisles, Frieda feels a flush starting, and when they get to the washrooms she realises she's left her cologne stick at home. ‘Why didn't you go when we got off the bus?' she says to the cubicle door, but gets no answer
.

By the time they make it back to the nave, she's incandescent
with heat. Sliding into a pew, she lowers her burning brow to the back of her hand, and prays
.

‘The vicar says Jesus was born in a cellar,' Carol whispers suddenly in her ear, making her jump
.

Frieda raises her head and Carol skips off
.

After a while, the glow subsides. Other women, her friends, come and go without fuss. Kneelers sag under the weight of pious knees, sending up little spurts of dust into the light. Someone starts to play the organ quietly and the notes are like a thread of silver beads unravelling in her soul
.

Partially restored, she stands and steps out into the aisle, which is when she sees her daughter spinning like a Dervish among the tombs in the Warrior Chapel. What does she think she's doing? People are looking
.

‘This is NOT a playground!' she snaps, and drags Carol outside to retch over the grass and her own shoes
.

‘Did you see the pelican?' asks Carol, when everything's come up
.

Behind them, a woman exclaims with delight over some small feat of ordinariness her baby has just performed
.

‘There's a pelican in the window,' Carol continues. ‘It's a symbol of the Redeemer, because it tears its own breast that the young may feed. A man told me. Wouldn't it die, though? And the babies starve? Joyce Whittle's rabbit ate its babies, did I tell you?'

Five minutes – five minutes' peace was all Frieda wanted
.

‘And Joyce says spiders eat each other. If you were a pelican, would you tear your own flesh? Say we had no food and we were starving to death, except we had one slice of bread between us, would you give it all to me?'

‘Of course I would,' says Frieda. But Carol is picking at a scab on her knee and doesn't bother listening to the answer
.