Mothers & Daughters (9 page)

‘Tell me when.'

‘Tomorrow afternoon. Can you sort something with Moira?'

‘I can swap a Saturday, probably. I'll give her a ring now but I shouldn't think there'll be a problem.'

‘Thank God. This tooth's driving me nuts. I can't stop poking at it, even though it hurts like fuck. And coming on top of everything else—'

‘I know.'

‘Sometimes it's the little things that finish you off.'

‘Don't worry,' I said. ‘It'll be fine.' I closed my eyes and became part of the darkness. ‘I'm always here if you need me.'

CHAPTER 8

Photograph: unnumbered, loose inside an old Bunny-Bons toffee tin, the shed, Sunnybank
.

Location: the swimming pool, Stackholme Grammar, Bolton, 1968

Taken by: Mr Soper (Physics)

Subject: The swimsuited girls of 2A stand in a double row against a wall of mustard-coloured tiles. They have been told, time without number, how lucky they are to have their own pool on the premises; the poor children of St Joseph's have to be bussed all the way across town to the municipal baths. But the municipal baths are clean and modern, whereas Stackholme pool was built in 1912, looks like the annexe of a museum and feels, to those girls shivering in their navy costumes, like a walk-in refrigerator. Painted iron pillars ending in scrolled acanthus leaves hold up the ceiling, polished wooden benches line the sides. In the foyer, pictures of teams long dead hang on fraying string, behind speckled glass
.

Rumour has it that their swimming teacher is really a man. Certainly Mrs Monks' arms are thick and beefy, and she has no obvious waist, but whether she shaves her chin every
morning has never been established. Male or female, she's a bastard. Another rumour says she can't actually swim herself, but this turns out to be wrong
.

One month before this photo is taken, Carol and her best friend Eileen's class is getting ready to practise crouching dives. There are twenty-five girls lined up along the length of the pool, and Carol is the last on the right, near the shallow-end steps. Mrs Monks' whistle shrills, echoes, and the row of navy swimsuits topples in like a Busby Berkeley routine
.

It is Eileen, emerging further up the pool, who spots something is wrong
.

‘You should never have made her dive past the five-foot mark!' she says, as a dripping Mrs Monks lays Carol out on the side. The girls watch fascinated as bloody saliva spools from Carol's mouth and settles into the grooves between the tiles
.

‘She's fine,' snaps Mrs Monks. ‘Go and get me some tissues.'

And Carol is fine, of course she is, good heavens. She's bitten her tongue so badly she won't be able to talk for a week, and one of her bottom front teeth is loose, but that's nothing, really. She needs to pull herself together. Wasn't she watching where she was going? There's no apology, no letter home to Bob and Frieda White to warn them of the possible after-effects of a blow to the chin. The only concession Mrs Monks makes is to allow Eileen to wait behind while they tidy Carol up
.

‘Cow,' says Eileen as they trudge across the rec together. ‘If I hadn't been watching, you could have died.'

‘Ugh,' says Carol
.

‘We should go see the Headmistress about it.'

‘Gugh,' says Carol
.

‘Don't worry, though,' says Eileen. ‘I'll always look out for
you, you can be sure of that. If you ever go under again, I'll know.'

All Carol can do is hold the paper towel to her lip
.

It being a sunny day, I had Matty out in the garden with a washing-up bowl full of water and a selection of containers. Laverne's back door was open and she was playing some classical music – piano, very clean and sharp – which kind of went with the afternoon. Meanwhile Matty filled a margarine tub, poured it first into a roseless watering can, and from there into a colander. I stalked around him with my camera, crouching and rising by turns to catch the moment the silver stream fell, and playing with the shutter speed so that sometimes it was the water in focus and sometimes his face. His concentration was impressive; a Nobel physicist couldn't have been studying harder.

‘Wish I was doing that,' said Josh's voice from behind me.

I took the viewfinder away from my eye and turned. He was leaning against the fence, looking like a boy with nothing to do.

‘Be my guest,' I said. ‘Matty won't mind.'

Josh's mouth twisted into something like a smile. ‘I don't mean literally, like, on my knees with my hands in the water, yeah?'

‘What do you mean, then?'

‘I mean, I wish I was that age again. Sometimes. Like, when you've got no cares and everything's done for you, life's a doss.'

He stroked his smooth chin. Yes, I thought, I bet it's tough being a teenage boy these days.

‘Not much freedom, though, Josh; that's the pay-off. He has to go wherever we go, eat what we put in front of him, stay in his cot till we lift him out.'

‘Yeah, but. Freedom's overrated.'

‘You only say that because you've got it.' Yet even as I spoke I pictured Laverne and the way she hung on him all the time, and how he didn't actually have much freedom at all, which meant that once again I was talking rubbish.
Mum doesn't say right out I can't do stuff
, Josh once told me.
She just makes me feel so guilty, I go off the idea
.

We watched Matty tip liquid from a height like a fancy Spanish wine waiter, then open his hand and drop the watering can in the bowl. Waves slopped over the plastic sides, and the paving stones around the base were stained in a jagged fan shape.

‘What they do at school,' said Josh, ‘is they try and splash your trousers while you're in the bogs, you know, at the front, then they can go round saying you've peed yourself.'

‘Charming.'

‘Have you got any washing-up liquid?'

‘Why?'

‘'Cause you can put some in the bowl and give Matty a straw, yeah, and let him blow a load of bubbles. It's good, that. They go everywhere, you get like a mountain.'

‘Nice idea, but he's too young.'

‘It's not difficult. You only have to blow.'

‘There's a good chance he'd suck, and then we'd all be in a mess.'

The image amused Josh, and he snorted with laughter. Before he could object, I'd brought up my camera and snapped him.

‘Oy!' he said, shielding his face too late.

‘Sorry. I couldn't resist.' I pressed review and brought up the picture on the screen for him. ‘It's a nice one. I'll delete it if you want, though.'

He craned his neck. ‘God. Do I look like that?'

‘Like what?'

‘Shrek.'

‘You do
not
look like Shrek.'

‘Colour me in with a green felt tip.'

I took the camera back. ‘I'm not rising to the bait.'

At which point Laverne swept out. ‘What bait would that be?' she said. She's got this way of holding her head up – a dancer's posture, I suppose. You could mistake it for snootiness. I know it's just tense muscles.

‘Josh doesn't like having his picture taken.' I passed the camera across again. ‘But I think he takes a good portrait.'

Laverne clutched the camera and stared at the screen for several seconds. After a moment she took a deep, intense breath. ‘Oh, Carol, yes.' Behind her, Josh made a strangling gesture on his own neck.

‘Shall I do you a copy?'

‘Please, no,' said Josh.

‘That would be lovely.'

‘Uh-oh,' said Matty suddenly. ‘Nanna, uh-oh.'

While we were admiring my composition, he'd taken the car sponge and held it above his head so that half a pint of water had streamed down his arm and soaked into his navy T-shirt. His torso gleamed like a sealion; he was sodden.

‘Oops,' said Josh, and there was glee in his tone. I think he might have been expecting me to shout.

‘Uh-oh indeed,' I said, looping my camera strap over a fencepost and going to inspect the damage. ‘Good heavens. Where's all this water come from? Whatever are we going to do?'

Matty did his shrug sign, palms spread.

‘His mum's going to be a bit fed up,' I heard Laverne say.

‘Children should get messy sometimes,' I said over my shoulder.

‘But he's drenched!'

‘I've got spare clothes.'

‘You think of everything.' Laverne sounded unconvinced by the argument.

‘Of course. That's a grandma's job.'

I knelt down on the film of spilled water and began to peel away Matty's shirt, exposing his pale, rounded tummy. It didn't seem any time since Jaz had brought him home from hospital with the clip still on his umbilical stump; now his belly button was a smooth neat hole. Months passed like minutes.

‘I remember when Josh was that age,' said Laverne.

I tugged at the waistband of Matty's trousers. ‘How's that nappy going on, while we're at it?'

In the background, Josh made a disgusted noise, and a second or two later I heard their back door click shut.

I felt Laverne's eyes. ‘Matty means the world to you, doesn't he?'

‘Yes,' I said. ‘He does.'

The garden seemed full of Laverne's presence, and for a moment I had the strongest impression it was Jaz whose eyes burned into me, observing, appraising.

I don't know why you clean the house more thoroughly for people you hardly ever see. Maybe it's because there's more chance of fooling them into thinking you lead a life of poise and order, whereas your regular visitors are too familiar with the truth. Whatever, I was burning round the house like a madwoman, shifting pockets of dust that had lain inoffensively for months. And as I went along, I thought of David's high-arched Victorian hallway with its parquet floor, wondered who it was got down on their hands and knees with a tub of polish every week to bring a shine to that. Then the picture became Mum and the way she used to clean at Pincroft: unnecessarily, in ways you'd laugh at nowadays. Every morning, all cushions
taken outside and beaten, every door handle polished religiously, the front step edge chalked white with a donkey stone. When she dusted pictures, she'd to take them off the walls and do the backs as well. Beds were stripped to air daily, and each week she'd haul the mattress off its iron frame for brushing and turning. Up at six in winter darkness to clear out the grate, dragging sodden freezing sheets out of the top-loader and feeding them through the electric mangle; you could see why she was always tired. Then again, it's only what her own mother had to do.

I lifted the ornaments off the mantelpiece one by one: Matty's baby photo, Jaz's clay pot, Mum's Sylvac vase, Mum's Beswick budgie, the cigarette-and-match dispenser Dad had made himself out of oak in the days when he smoked. Always good with his hands, my dad. Then I ran the cloth over the buff tiles that Jaz hated so much (she'd cheered that time I dropped the poker and chipped the corner off the hearth, as if for one minute that would've meant getting new). Finally I put everything back again, remembering how there used to be a set of teardrop-shaped wooden mice at the window end that Phil had brought back from a so-called sales trip. They'd gone in the fire when I found out where he'd really been. All my life spread out on this bloody mantelpiece.

The duster I threw in the washing machine, then I went upstairs to make myself presentable. There was still an hour to go, so no point getting jittery. Except I was beyond jittery, already.

When I glanced out of the bedroom window I could see Josh and Matty on Laverne's neat back lawn. Matty was chipping at the grass with a teaspoon, and Josh was standing at the far end, running a remote-controlled jeep backwards and forwards. I leaned against the curtain for a minute and watched them, trying to slow my breathing and not think too much about the
fact that Ian and David and Jaz were on their way here. ‘They can sit down and talk things through; we can act as referees,' David had said. But ‘referee' implied impartiality. I put my fingertips to my forehead and closed my eyes.

The doorbell rang.

‘An hour, there's another hour to go,' I muttered as I ran down the stairs. A tall shape moved behind the coloured glass.

‘I thought,' said David as he stepped inside, ‘that if I got here early, we could go through our strategy together. Compare notes.'

‘Oh, right,' I said. ‘You'll have to give me a minute.' Then I fled back upstairs, leaving him standing there in the hallway. I'm not normally so rude; it must have been the shock.

In front of the dressing-table I rubbed foundation in at top speed, drew on my lipstick in a panicky sweep and dragged a comb through my hair. ‘Referee,' I said experimentally into the mirror. ‘Refereeing.' It sounded an odd word when you said it aloud.

When I came back down he'd taken himself into the lounge and was on his mobile. ‘If you want,' he was saying, without enthusiasm. ‘Not really. OK, then, whenever.'

He snapped the phone shut as I walked in.

‘Clinching another property deal?' I'd spoken before I could stop myself. ‘Sorry, ignore me.'

But he shook his head mildly. ‘Just a friend. A complicated friend.' While I dithered over whether to ask, he turned and pointed to my gallery of Jaz photos above the bureau. ‘That one's interesting,' he said, indicating the one of her peering through leaves, her hair hanging down, sunlight needling the green canopy behind her head. ‘Was she an expert tree-climber, by any chance?'

‘She was. Like a fearless monkey. I used to die a thousand deaths watching her.'

‘You've got a good eye for composition.'

‘I used to go to classes, up at the high school.'