Nest of Sorrows (28 page)

Rachel exhaled loudly and wondered what would be on telly tonight. She’d done her crossword and her bit of Sunday reading, and was hoping there’d be a good play on BBC. Just as she reached for the television page, a key turned in the lock and Kate stepped into the house. ‘Hello, Mum.’

Rachel stared for a moment at her daughter, taking in quickly the whitened face, the small suitcase, the clenched free fist. ‘Well, I never expected you, lass, not on a Sunday.’

‘No.’

‘Well? Shut that door, you’ll have the street in. Whatever are you doing wandering about Daubhill today? Started working Sundays, have you?’

‘Maureen brought me. And no, we’re not teaching at weekends.’

‘I see.’ Rachel glanced at the bag. ‘So what’s in there? A picnic? Or has he got you selling door to door to make ends meet?’

‘No need for sarcasm, Mother. These are clothes.’

‘Ah. I see. Picked me out some nice jumble, have you?’ Kate often commandeered a coat or a skirt for her mother whenever the school held a rummage sale.

‘They’re . . . my clothes.’

Rachel’s jaw was clenched tightly for a moment. ‘Right. You’d best sit yourself down, hadn’t you? Tell me what it’s all about. I suppose there is a tale to it, I can tell from the set of your mouth.’

Kate placed her case on the floor, picked up Puddy-Tat and sat with him close to her chest as if using him as a shield. ‘I’ve left home,’ she said baldly. The kitchen cuckoo clock sang the hour, seeming to underline Kate’s foolishness.

‘Oh.’ Rachel smoothed her navy skirt and brushed a few non-existent crumbs from its pleats. ‘Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. The only thing that surprises me is that you’ve put up with Geoffrey and Fanny Fannackerpants for this length of time without making some sort of a stand. Mind, it is only a stand, isn’t it? I mean, you will go back?’

‘No.’

Rachel’s lower lip sagged for a fraction of a second. ‘What do you mean, “no”? You don’t just walk out on a marriage, girl. Marriage is sacred, even if the ceremony was performed in a Proddy church or a registry. Have you no sense at all? Dora Saunders is getting exactly what she wants, her son back all to herself.’

‘She can have him and welcome.’

‘But . . . but what about your daughter? You can’t just leave Melanie.’

‘Yes I can. I can, I will and I have done. Don’t you start, Mother. I know what it’s like being brought up in an atmosphere . . .’

‘Atmosphere? Atmosphere? And what do you mean by that, my girl? You and your sister had the best education we could afford. We went without so that you and Judith . . .’

‘No, Mam. You went without. He never did.’

‘I suppose “he” is your father, God rest him?’

‘Yes, “he” was my father. If he had five bob in his pocket, it went on a horse while we got clothes and shoes for a shilling a week in the pound. He was a drunken slob . . .’

‘Don’t you dare!’

‘Stop treating me like a child. Stop telling me what to think and feel and say.’ The cat jumped down, eager to get away from such ill-concealed anger. ‘Don’t tell me you weren’t relieved when he died. I saw your bruises, Mam, I saw you having an all-over wash before we got the bath; I watched you wincing while you bathed the black and blue bits. I hated him. I still hate him now!’

Rachel crossed herself hurriedly.

‘That’s right, Mother, bless yourself against those thoughts, those awful memories. Ask God to forgive you for being content now. But don’t ever tell me to be grateful to a man who tried to crush my spirit.’

‘Katherine! Stop this!’

‘My daughter is being brought up in that same atmosphere.’

There followed a long pause. ‘What?’ asked Rachel eventually, her tone quiet. ‘He . . . he actually hits you?’

‘He daren’t. Only once did he hit me. I waited till he was asleep and then I clobbered him with his tennis racquet. After that, he seemed to go off physical violence. Now, it’s just verbal. And it’s not really violence, Geoff hasn’t the emotional energy for that. And he’s not really a bad man, he’s just weak and under his mother’s thumb. But he undermines me all the time, belittles me in front of our daughter. Well, I’ve started to fight back and that’s not good for Melanie. It wasn’t good for her when I used to sit there and take it, but now . . .’

‘Katherine, you cannot leave that poor girl to him and his mother. Think how she’ll turn out.’

‘She’ll turn out fine. Anyway, I couldn’t stay. That’s all there is to it.’

Rachel sucked on her teeth before speaking again. ‘That house is worth a fortune but you’ll get not one penny . . .’

‘I know.’

‘No security, lass. Can you really come back and live here? No bathroom, the lav down the yard . . .’

‘I’m not coming back. I’ve taken a flat on Chorley New Road. Don’t look at me like that, Mam. I have never been able to stand the way you look at me.’

‘Why? What do you mean by that, eh? I look at you the same road as I look at everybody else. I’m not cross-eyed, am I? What’s the matter with the way I look at you?’

Kate hung her head. ‘It’s as if you don’t like me, as if I’m some sort of great disappointment.’

‘Well.’ Rachel’s feet shuffled against the lino. ‘If you want the truth, I was disappointed in you at one time. I thought you’d have made some sort of a mark in the world. But I don’t feel like that now, not any more. You’re a beautiful young woman and a fine person . . .’

‘And a stupid one. How do you think I felt as a child? “You should work hard like Judith, you should stay clean like Judith”. I got Judith rammed down my throat until I almost hated my own sister. I am me . . . me . . . ME!’ She beat her breast harshly. ‘And I’m sick of being compared to perfection and coming out less than second best.’

‘Well. Well, I never thought . . .’

‘Never thought I cared? Well, I did care. I wasn’t going to turn myself into a doctor or a lawyer just to please him. I never did a stroke of work at school, that was my way of paying him back. I wanted out of here, Mam. The two-year course at training college meant a year less than university, a year less with this as my permanent address. Getting away from him was my prime ambition since I reached the age of reason. We tried to love one another, he and I. But we never managed it, not quite. His love had too many conditions attached to it, it was not the instinctive love of parent for child. And all you could say was “you never got a degree” and “look at Judith with her doctorate”. A failure. All my life, I was a failure. So I ran. And I ran to the wrong place. Just like you did, Mother.’

Rachel shivered and folded her arms across a suddenly chilled body. ‘I know. I know. There’s no need for you to rub it in.’ The shoulders drooped heavily. ‘I watched you, love. Like me all over again, you were. It broke my heart to see it. Because, Katherine, I loved you more than . . . more than I should have done. And when they told me at Peter and Paul’s that you had this high intelligence quotient thing, I hoped you’d ride out on your own star, lass. You didn’t need anybody, because you had it all in your head. There was no need for you to escape as a pillion passenger, no need for you to sit in the shadow of a man. As I told you at the time, he was all wrong . . .’

‘And I didn’t listen.’

‘Huh! If you’d listened, it would have been for the first time. But I did warn you never to trust a man whose eyebrows meet in the middle . . .’

‘Or a man in a pink shirt.’

‘Exactly. And he was always too well turned out for my liking, never a hair out of place. He wasn’t good enough for you, Katherine. But you still have to go back.’ Rachel’s mouth set itself into a stubborn straight line.

‘No.’

‘Then you’ll get no blessing from me, Katherine Murray.’

‘Saunders.’

‘Aye, that’s the nail on the head, isn’t it? You’re Saunders now, and you’ve been Saunders for fourteen years. Perhaps you should never have married him, but you know me, Katherine, I’m straight as a die when it comes to marriage. Yes, I know I left your dad for a while, but I did go back. I was teaching him a lesson. It’s all right to teach folk a lesson. But once wed, always wed till death you do part. And it’s not just my religion. It’s other things like commonsense. I mean, you get married, set up a home, put time and money and effort in – you can’t just throw all that away! It’s like investing in a failing bank! Then there’s kiddies to consider. Children need two parents . . .’

‘I needed my father like I needed a hole in the head. Without him, we might have been happy, Mam. Judith would possibly have stayed in England – where do you think she got her wanderlust, eh? She was quiet, I know, but he got on her nerves and that’s what made her decide to leave the country the first time. And I might have taken time over my decisions if I hadn’t had him breathing down my neck all the time. All it needed was for you to do what I’ve done, you should have got out while Judith and I were young.’

Rachel glowered. ‘Ah, yes, but I would have taken you with me, wouldn’t I? The one time I did clear out for a while, I took you with me to my dad’s. And after he’d died, where could we go except into poverty? And what good would that have done? I notice you’ve not fetched your daughter away from her home, so why preach to me?’

‘She chose to stay. Melanie’s thirteen. At thirteen, a child should have a say in its own future. She wants her horses and her friends.’

‘Aye, and that’s one of the reasons why I stayed here. Because you two had school and friends. So you should do what I did, stay with your daughter.’

They glared at one another for several seconds, then Rachel stood up and walked out to the kitchen. At the stove, she paused, a hand on the kettle’s handle. She suddenly realized that she loved and understood her little girl more in this moment – much more – than she had ever done in the past. Katherine was breaking out, emerging at last from that whited sepulchre of a marriage. And what was a sepulchre after all? A fancy blinking coffin, that was what! And should she, Rachel Murray, try to force her own child back into a place of decay and mouldering? ‘Katherine?’ Her voice was unsteady.

‘Yes?’ A similar shaky tone.

‘Cup of tea?’

‘Please. No sugar.’

‘Aye, I know. I know, love.’

Rachel scooped tea from the Coronation caddy into a brown teapot. ‘I love you, child.’ It was easier from in here, easier not face to face. ‘It’s always been a terrible burden for me, knowing I loved you . . . differently from the way I love our Judith. You must never tell her, not as long as you live! That’s why I was so hard on you, because I needed it not to show.’

‘Oh, Mam!’

‘Stop where you are! Don’t you be coming in here and watching me crying into the Black and Green’s. When you were born, we couldn’t open your hands. It was like you’d come into the world for a terrible big fight. Twelve months you screamed when you were awake, then you learned a few words and started telling us what was what. You were always special. Then when . . . when he treated you different and you went all quiet, I could have . . . oh God . . . I could have murdered him. All inside yourself, you went, as if you’d no idea of your own worth. I know what he did. I know what I let him do. May God find it in His heart to forgive me, because your childhood must have been awful, lass. But to me, you were the most special thing in all the world.’ She dabbed at her eyes before scalding the tea.

‘You never told me.’ The voice from the front room was small.

‘Didn’t want you big-headed, didn’t want our Judith feeling out of place with me. Two wrongs would not have made a right. Because I love my other daughter too, always have and always will.’

‘Yes.’

Rachel took a long, deep breath. ‘I’m going to show you now how much I really care for you. I’m going to swallow all my principles, everything I believe in, and I’m going to . . . to wish you luck.’

‘Eh?’

‘I’m standing by you, princess.’

‘Thanks. Thanks, Mam.’ This was fractured by tears.

‘You’re right, I never loved him. Not after he started taking his frustrations out on my kids. I was a loyal wife, loyal to the point of stubborn. When you told me he was dead, my first thought was, “well, he can’t hurt our Katie no more”. Even though you were wed, I was still scared of him lashing out at you. Aye, and I was scared of you hitting him back, because I’d seen temper in your eyes when you looked at him. I know you came to the funeral just for my sake. Even our Judith never shed a tear and she was always his little doll.’ She paused to blow her nose. ‘Do what you have to do, my girl. You were never what they call conventional. Happen this is your way for a new start. I’m . . . I’m behind you. I just want you to know that no matter what my own beliefs are, I am on your side.’

‘Oh, Mother!’

Rachel sniffed impatiently. ‘Don’t you be “oh mothering” me now. This tea will be iced lollies before we’ve even got to it. Drag yourself in here and butter these two scones. Can you have a scone? How many points is a scone? And before you come in, knock that cat off my chair, I know he’s on it, I can feel his eyes boring through the wall. And take your coat off unless you’re not stopping. I hope you’ve walked nothing in, lady, I was an hour doing that floor yesterday. You can switch the telly on if you want, there might be some nice hymns on. We’ve got some new neighbours, Santosh Mathur and his wife Hamida. Nobody else bothers with them, ’cos they’re from India or some such fancy place, but I like them, they’re blinking hard workers. She wears them fancy frocks and a red mark on her head, very pretty. Have you read about all that fighting in Paris? It’s in the paper, all knocking spots off one another round that Latin Quarter. You went there, didn’t you? I remember you telling me about the street women and all them funny underclothes in the shops . . .’

Kate relaxed. All this chatter was just to hide emotion, to bring things back to ‘normal’. She looked at her watch. It hadn’t taken a week to argue it out; it had taken all of fifteen minutes. And there was a new warmth in her breast, a feeling of comfort and deep security. She didn’t yet recognize it as her mother’s love.

‘So you married her and she married you without either of you knowing the other?’ Rachel’s eyes were round with amazement. ‘Sounds like a flipping raffle to me. How did you know what sort of prize you’d get, if any?’