I made an effort to appear at my best for Jane. I had washed my hair and turned in early with a tranquilliser, washed down with a glass of beer. I painted my face for her and caught the train, secure in the knowledge that Roger wasn’t there. He was climbing rocks in Wales. I bought her a present in the flower shop in the High Street. A little indoor palm tree in a pot. Jane herself was certainly not at her best that day. I entered to find her crabbing unreasonably at Sylvia, who had wet her pants. Jonathan, who came into the kitchen to make cheese doorsteps for himself, ignored her very pointedly. As she had once said to me, she was not ‘one of those insufferable people who does it all right’. She did not, surprisingly, seem all that concerned over me and Roger. She had other things on her mind. Roger had told her nothing much and had seemed cheerful enough, she said, and I was determined to pose the same. Roger had always made a point of being thoroughly undemonstrative with me in the presence of his parents in any case. She said, a little wistfully, ‘That’s it then, is it? It does seem a shame, Katherine. But you cannot, of course, think of pleasing me. I will not hear a word against either of you. I’ll miss you terribly. Jonathan, will you bugger off, please?’ She clearly couldn’t bear to have him in the same room. Jonathan turned very slowly and looked at her, daggers in his eyes, and said nothing.
‘Katherine is going abroad,’ she said. ‘She’s got herself a very nice job. There’s a moral in that, somewhere, which you might pick up.’
‘Piss off,’ Jonathan said to her. ‘Where are you going, Katherine?’
‘Rome,’ I said. ‘I got some Italian money today. Can I show you my Monopoly money?’ I pulled out of my purse my wad of wonderful lire. We gazed at them, the three of us. Jane started suddenly with new inspiration.
‘You wouldn’t stoop to bribery, would you, Jontikins?’ she said. Jonathan, who had relaxed over the banknotes, returned to his hostile stare.
‘It’ll take you a lot of fucking Smarties to get me to write that exam, lady,’ he said.
‘I was thinking more of something like six hundred pounds,’ she said. ‘Stay and write the exam and I will give you six hundred pounds. You could have a better time in Europe with money, you know.’ Jonathan left the room, but suddenly he was there again.
‘You haven’t got it,’ he said.
‘I’ll borrow it, won’t I?’ she said. ‘I’ll tack it on to the mortgage. Useful things, mortgages.’
‘I want it in writing,’ Jonathan said. ‘I don’t trust you.’
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Have seven. It’s only money, you know. Give me some paper.’
‘Jesus, Ma,’ Jonathan said, climbing down, ‘I don’t need it in writing. I don’t need seven hundred pounds. Give me four.’
‘Have six, Jont,’ she said, ‘and have it in writing. Don’t get soft on me.’ She wrote it down and signed it. I couldn’t believe it. Jonathan put the note in his pocket.
‘I make three conditions,’ she said firmly. ‘Come back next October and give Oxford a try. Send me a postcard every eight weeks, and don’t get anyone pregnant.’
‘I’m not stupid,’ Jonathan said.
‘As if I don’t know that,’ she said. ‘Why do you think I’m making all this fuss over you? But someone has yet to prove that bright young men are less capable of impregnating women.’
‘Don’t imagine I’m going to surround myself with pissing infants, like you,’ he said.
‘You, Jonathan,’ Jane said with emphasis, ‘you were the only one of my children who consistently peed into my wellington boots and don’t you forget it.’
After that she and I said goodbye. We both cried a little. Her gardening gloves were lying on the table. She picked up one of them to mop her eyes and gave me the other.
‘Here,’ she said, ‘have it for the train.’ I took it, knowing I would treasure it like a relic of the cross. Within the week I had packed my hand luggage into Roger’s hold-all and boarded a train for Europe.