The Storyteller's Daughter (11 page)

“She'll be wonderful at whatever she does,” agrees my mother, pouring hot water into the coffee pot, “she has so many skills. She used to love writing and painting, you know. And craft work and acting – ”

“I was dreadful at all those things!” I scoff, knowing Mark has very little time for the arts. “I was terrible at anything that involved any sort of creativity at all.”

“Only once you stopped trying. When you were very little you used to adore dressing up and playing at make believe. Don't you remember?” She sits down at the table again, smiling at the memories that are flooding back to her. “You used to dress up in green tights and my frilly red blouse and pretend you were a rose. You looked so pretty!”

I frown at her, a warning to be quiet. I don't want Mark thinking I was some sort of idiot child, the sort who have imaginary friends and believe the bogeyman lives under their bed.

“I must have looked ridiculous,” I tell her. “You shouldn't have encouraged me.”

“One Christmas, you knocked on every door in our block of flats dressed as Santa Claus and told all our neighbours that you'd come from Bethlehem to find the baby Jesus.”

“I was obviously confused. You shouldn't have let me wander around on my own like that talking such rubbish.”

“I didn't even notice you'd gone until old Mr Ginsberg brought you back by the hand. Oh, poor Mr Ginsberg! One day you startled the life out of him by dressing up in my big, brown woolly jumper and growling at him as he stepped out of the lift. Apparently he thought you were a bear, although I'm not sure why he thought a bear would be wandering around on the fourth floor!”

Suddenly I can't help myself. I clamp my hand over my mouth and let out a loud snort as I try and suppress my giggles.

“Oh, you do remember, don't you?” laughs my mother, grabbing my arm.

I nod and cover my face with my hands as tears of laughter spring to my eyes. I have vague memories of that itchy brown jumper pulled up over my head, and Mr Ginsberg's look of terror as I pounced at him. I peek through my fingers at Mark who isn't laughing at all.

“You could have given the poor man a heart attack,” he says, seriously.

I bite my lip hard. “It was very silly, I was only little though. And it
was
funny.”

“It wouldn't have been funny if the poor man had dropped down dead. Over two hundred and thirty thousand British people die of heart attacks every year,” he informs me.

I compose myself and nod seriously. “You're right. It wouldn't have been funny at all if I'd killed him.”

My mother stops laughing and takes a sip of her coffee. Mark takes a bite of his croissant and chews slowly, while I fold my napkin into little squares.

“Anyway,” says my mother, “you suddenly lost interest in anything creative. Just like that. One day you came home from school, put all your toys in a box and declared it was time to grow up.” She shakes her head and smiles wistfully. “You must have been all of eight-years-old. I really don't know what happened.”

I gaze into my coffee, suddenly feeling rather sad. Eight-years-old sounds so young to want to grow up, to want to put aside the magic of childhood.

“Waste of time, the arts,” declares Mark.

I see my mother's lips tighten. She loves art, music, theatre, poetry. She says they ‘take her out of herself' whatever that is supposed to mean.

“Oh, I don't think they're a waste of time,” she says, with a polite smile.

“No artist is ever going to find a cure for cancer, and no actor is ever going to discover the secrets of the universe. Meg, on the other hand, is going to be able to make a real difference to the world.”

“She already does,” says my mother, sharply. Mark looks up at her, surprised by the edge to her voice. She smiles quickly.

“Of course she does,” he agrees, “I understand her end of term paper caused quite a debate in the faculty, and if you can get people thinking, you're half way there. She's a very intelligent girl.” He squeezes my knee and I smile lovingly at him.

“And a funny, compassionate and sweet girl, too,” adds my mother.

Mark nods distractedly as he picks at the crumbs on his plate. My mother watches him closely, waiting for his agreement. I want to intervene, to change the subject and stop them discussing me like I'm not here, but instead I find myself also waiting for Mark's reply. What
does
he think of me? I mean, apart from finding me smart and intelligent and intellectually challenging? What does he actually think of
me?
Bizarrely, I realise he has never said, and, even more bizarrely, I realise I have never wondered.

“Oh yes, she's lovely,” he says, realising it's his cue to speak. He takes a napkin and wipes his mouth. I watch him, waiting, wanting more, but when he leans back in his chair, sighs and pats his stomach I realise he's finished.

My mother reaches across the table and rubs my hand, smiling indulgently. “She always was a sweet girl. When she was little she was so sweet I used to dip her toes in my tea. It saved me a fortune on sugar. I used to lend her out to the neighbours. ‘Don't bother buying sugar,' I used to tell them, ‘my daughter's the sweetest thing around and she doesn't rot your teeth.'”

“Mother,” I scold, sharply pulling my hand away from hers.

“The neighbours would knock on our door at all hours of the day with cups of tea or coffee, and they'd say ‘Can we get some sweetener?', and I'd dip one of Meg's tiny fingers or toes into their cup – ”

“Mother!”

I can feel my cheeks burning with embarrassment. It's bad enough that Mark knows my mother is insane without him having to witness her rantings first hand.

“Then one day I noticed that Meg's middle toes were starting to wither away. Have you ever noticed, Mark, how Meg's middle toes are a little too short? It was all that dipping them in hot drinks that was the problem. Well, when I realised what was happening I had to stop – ”

“Mother!” I snap, angrily. “Mark doesn't want to hear any of your ridiculous stories. Stop embarrassing yourself!”

My mother stares at me, silent and abashed. I am so ashamed. Whatever must Mark think of us? Why must she do this? Why must she make us look like such fools?

Slowly she stands up, her cheeks flushed, her hands fumbling to gather up her cup and her plate.

“I must go and get on with things,” she says, quietly, “you don't want your silly mother sitting here rambling on all day.” She gives an embarrassed chuckle and goes to leave, but just before she gets to the door she turns to me, “I just thought Mark might like to know something more about you.”

“He already knows everything about me that matters,” I say, annoyed.

She gives a little smile and I wonder why, when she is the one who talks such nonsense, I am the one who feels like a liar.

Once she has gone, Mark shakes his head in disbelief. “Blimey, what a story!” he laughs. “I'm relieved to hear you take after your father, because your mother is crazy!”

I feel hurt. How am I meant to respond to that? She might be a little strange, but she is still my mother. I look at Mark shaking his head in dismay, his gorgeous pearly white smile conveying his amusement. He is so intelligent, so confident, so everything I would like to be.

I force myself to laugh with him.

“Yes,” I agree, “she is crazy.”

Nothing feels right for the rest of the morning. My mother and I tactfully avoid each other. I feel annoyed with her for humiliating me, but also guilty for my outburst. Then I decide I shouldn't have to feel guilty for my outburst, and my annoyance with her doubles. In order to get out of the house, I take Mark into town where we eat stodgy sandwiches in a cheap café. I try my best to be interesting, adding what I think are fairly astute observations to our discussions about the latest political crisis, but my heart's not really in it.

To make matters worse, our return to the house perfectly coincides with the gardener's arrival. Mark usually insists on parking his perfectly buffed and shined car on the driveway just in case anybody should see fit to steal it, but today, for some reason, he pulls up right behind the gardener's rusty, clapped out van, looking strangely satisfied. Unfortunately, the new parking arrangement does not seem to work quite so well for the gardener, who taps on Mark's window just as we are unfastening our seat belts.

Mark opens his door slightly, looking annoyed and muttering something about the filthy mark that the gardener has left on his window.

“Do you mind backing up a bit?” asks the gardener, “I need to open the back doors of my van.”

Mark doesn't respond, so engrossed is he in examining the streak of dirt the gardener has left on his window. I feel slightly embarrassed and want to whisper to Mark that it really doesn't matter, that we have plenty of Mr Sheen inside the house, and that I will be more than happy to come and clean the dirt off later. But I don't think that would help matters.

“Didn't expect to see you back so soon,” says Mark. “I expect you need to work every day though, don't you, to make your line of work pay?”

I feel impressed and relieved that Mark has adopted such a friendly and sensitive tone. For a moment there I thought he was going to be insulting.

“Just on my way back from another job,” the gardener says, “thought I'd swing by and just finish off the staking. Ran out of bamboo yesterday.”

“Stretching the job out,” nods Mark, “very clever.”

They stare at each other for what feels like an embarrassingly long time, and I shift awkwardly in my seat, thinking that Mark can't possibly have realised the implication of his comment. But the gardener just smiles.

“I'm not charging for it,” he explains, “I just don't like leaving a job unfinished.”

Mark nods slowly, and I can see his mind whirring while he thinks of a response to this.

“We'll reverse a bit,” I say, quickly, wanting to end this exchange.

“Be careful not to scratch my bonnet when you take your tools out, won't you?” says Mark, going to close the door.

“Right you are, governor,” says the gardener, giving a little salute. “Miss.” He winks at me and gives another little salute, before giving the top of the car a hearty pat and walking back towards his van, pretending to tip his imaginary cap and flex his imaginary braces. I try to suppress a smile, telling myself there is nothing funny about this insolent little comedy routine, while Mark shakes his head, disgruntled, and puts the car in reverse. Mark isn't terribly good with heights, which is why, later that day, I am the one perching precariously at the top of a ladder with my head inside the loft hatch while he passes me up my suitcases.

“What's that?” I hear him ask from the landing below.

He suddenly tugs so hard on the case I am struggling to hoist it into the loft, that I am forced to let it go or come tumbling down the ladder with it. It is only by grabbing onto the edge of the loft hatch that I manage to stop myself from falling and breaking my neck. I hear a cry of pain and look down to see Mark holding his head, the old battered leather suitcase at his feet.

“Meg,” he says, looking up at me, “can you try to be less clumsy?”

“But you – ”

“You could have killed me.”

“Sorry,” I say, thinking that if anyone could have been killed then surely it's me.

“What's that?” I ask, looking at the piece of paper Mark is examining.

“Just looks like an old flier for some rock band,” he says, rubbing his head. “It was sticking out the seam of the suitcase. I thought it might be important. Not so important I wanted to risk my life for it, though.”

“What do you mean, a flier?” I ask, intrigued. I descend the ladder and take the piece of paper out of Mark's hand.

The Frog and Whistle, Kings Cross, presents CHLORINE (nearly featured in
That's Music!
magazine). Tickets on the door.

The date is the year of my birth.

“Probably something from your mother's crazy teenage years,” Mark says. “Was she into bands? I can imagine she was. Probably did drugs. That would explain a lot… ”

I turn the piece of paper over. On the back, in my mother's faded handwriting, is an address. 15 Gray's Inn Road, London.

“… drugs fry the brain. That's probably the problem, you know. Irresponsible behaviour always takes its toll sooner or later… ”

I'm not really listening to anything Mark is saying. All I can think is that I am holding a piece of my mother's past in my hands. A real, concrete item from the year I was born that has transcended the passage of time and ended up here, now, today, between my fingers. It feels rather surreal.

“It must have worked its way into the lining of the case,” says Mark. “You should just get rid of this old thing. Look at the state of it.”

I touch the piece of paper as if it is a priceless museum piece.

“This belonged to her,” I say, thoughtfully, “around the time I was born. Maybe even before I was born.”

“Mmm. So, do you want to keep this case or shall we throw it out?”

Mark clearly has no idea what this means. Despite everything I have told him about my past – or lack of it – he still doesn't really grasp the extent of the void. And how could he? How could anybody? No-one understands what it feels like to have a hole where a life should be.

“Do you think it's important?” asks Mark, spying the intrigue on my face.

Whose address could this be? I wonder. Could it be family? Could it be an old friend of my mothers? Could it be the address of my father's family, who might not have been French at all? Could it be the address of my father!

“It's probably nothing,” I say.

Mark eyes me closely.

“Are you sure? Because if you do think this is important in some way then you need to – ”