Chapter Thirty-one

WHEN I WAS a child, I had hoped I was adopted. Attempts to carbon-date the moment when I hit on this notion are for ever linked with the grey of my parents’ bedroom, before I started school.

‘Don’t ask stupid questions,’ Mother replied from her bed. ( The phrase ‘Your mother’s just having a lie-down’ is one of my earliest memories. My first mimicry of this line earned me a wallop, but the stifled giggles from the greengrocer made it worthwhile.)

It wasn’t just that the idea would have led to fantasies as to the fairy-tale lives of my true parents. It would also have legitimised my early ambitions to escape.

*

Mother is being discharged today. Dylan has dropped me en route to meeting the Bishop. I’ve decided not to drive. Of the two possibilities (that my failure to provide transport will be viewed as typically thoughtless, or that my offer to drive Mother home will be rebuffed), I prefer the former. Maybe I endure my mother’s contempt because it is less shattering than outright rejection. Her corridor greets me with the smell of bleach.

Mother sits at the foot of her bed, talking to a male nurse I do not recognise. She wears an oatmeal-coloured jacket with matching slacks; the outfit, presumably, from the day of her collapse. I have never seen her look so smart, so coordinated. Beside her in a neat pile lie all the new clothes I bought her during her stay. The nurse excuses himself.

‘Agency,’ whispers Mother, arching her eyebrows. I feel as though I am expected to concur with the implied insult.

‘Shall I get you a bag for those?’ I ask, nodding at the clothes.

‘No. I’m leaving them here. They’re not what I would buy,’ she adds.

I let this pass. I cross to the window and look out at the river and the Houses of Parliament. A police motor launch bumps against the tide, doggedly in pursuit of something.

‘You don’t have to stay,’ says Mother. ‘They’ve organised a car to take me home.’

‘All the way? It’s over seventy miles.’ No wonder the NHS is over budget, I think.

‘I can’t manage on my own. What with all the equipment I must take.’

I turn around. ‘What equipment?’

Mother gestures limply at a black oblong box on wheels against the wall. I go over to inspect it. It has dials, and a corrugated tube connected to a grey mask.

‘What’s it for?’ I can guess, but having established a base camp of neutral conversation I don’t want to aim for the summit too soon.

‘Oxygen. The bronchial pneumonia has left me very weak—’ I hear pride in her voice, as though she has reached the next round in a national competition. ‘—and I need help breathing. I can use it during the day, but it’s mainly to wear when I’m asleep. Not that I intend to.’ Mother’s back appears to ripple. ‘So, as I say, the unit’s very kindly arranged a car. It’s nice to feel that someone cares, at least.’

I make a conscious effort to resist the familiar bait, but ‘I can’t imagine you’d’ve wanted me to drive you all the way to Sussex’ blurts out. I want to slap myself.

‘Of course not,’ says Mother, sharply. ‘Don’t be so stupid.’

I take a deep breath. ‘I’m not stupid,’ I say, more evenly. ‘I am merely pointing out that you’d’ve loathed the trip as much as me.’

‘Don’t pick me up,’ says Mother, quickly. ‘It would have been unbearable, because you’re always so cold.’

‘Only with you,’ I say, in spite of that mantra in my head telling me not to get involved.

‘You always were a secretive child,’ Mother continues, ‘rehearsing your little plays. You never even cried in the night as a baby. You were so self-sufficient.’

There is a soreness at the base of my neck. We have never talked this way before, and I’m not entirely sure I am happy with us talking this way now. All the same, I feel unjustly accused. And why do you think that was? I long to say.

For the first time, she turns to look at me. ‘You have no idea, have you, what it was like watching you with your father? To see the way you played with him and not with me. When you came home from school, you used to race to his studio and sit fumbling with clay. For hours! What did you find to model all that time? It’s just pieces of baked mud. I just don’t get it. Do you have any idea how much that hurt me?’

‘I was just playing, for God’s sake. I was being a child.’

Mother’s eyes flash with anger. ‘You took him away from me.’

I stare at her, astonished. ‘But you and Daddy shouted all the time. He left us.’

Her eyes narrow. ‘Yes, you’ve always blamed me for that. But where were you the evening he left? Flounced out to a party, as I recall. Came back and bragged that you’d started smoking.’

I cross over from the oxygen tank and sit down on the bed beside her. I look down at her bony hands and think how simple it ought to be to reach out and take them in my own, and how sad it is that I can’t bear to touch my own mother. Before I know what I’m doing, I’ve tucked my hands under my thighs. Pity I didn’t think to do the same with my tongue.

‘Actually, you’re not the warmest of people.’

At this, Mother stands up abruptly and starts pacing the room. ‘What an extraordinary thing to say. You were fed, weren’t you? Clothed? Your father was devoted to you. I wasn’t aware I’d been such a bad mother. But now I know that this situation is one hundred per cent you, and nothing to do with me—’

The agency nurse appears in the doorway. The car is running late, he tells us with an apologetic grin. Could he get us cups of tea? We both quickly shake our heads.

‘It’s a result of your behaviour, because of how you were,’ hisses my mother as the nurse retreats.

‘Well, there’s a context for everything, and mine is that I was raised by someone who was very closed off. I’m a product of my upbringing just as you’re a product of yours.’

‘How dare you presume’, seethes Mother, striding to the bed, ‘to know about my upbringing. You don’t know anything about my upbringing—’ She towers above me, the lines at her lips standing to attention.

‘And you accuse me of being secretive!’

‘You were too young. You wouldn’t understand.’

‘You say that as if you can’t believe I’d understand today.’

‘The world’s a brutal place, Amber,’ Mother declares. ‘One will always be betrayed. When my parents died in the war, I had nobody to help me. I was out of London, and my carers couldn’t have cared less.’ I watch as Mother reaches up her sleeve for a small lace handkerchief and uses it to blow her nose. Its delicate fabric makes me feel warmer towards her.

‘And you were very afraid—’ I say, moving towards her.

‘Don’t tell me what I did and didn’t feel,’ she snaps, shrinking away from me. Her eyes are bright and sharp. ‘You’re jolly lucky I’m not the sort of woman to roll around on the floor—’

‘But that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. It’s very hard to be the child of someone who’s so buttoned up.’

‘Oh, really. Then I can’t wait to see how yours turn out.’

I take a deep breath and turn back to the window. The old buildings stand tall and strong across the water. A lone buoy bobs in the current left by the police launch. ‘I’m not having children. That is, we aren’t. Matt and I.’ I bristle. Even this disclosure feels irresponsible.

‘You never told me,’ says Mother, the words like pips on her tongue that she spits on the lino.

‘I’m careful never to tell you anything,’ I mutter under my breath, appealing to the House of Lords.

‘But I’ve always wanted grandchildren.’ I turn in time to see her move slowly, reaching out for the bed before sinking into the mattress. Her eyes are fixed on her shoes, as though she might find my babies playing at her feet.

‘But you told me once you didn’t like children.’

When she speaks, her speech is slow, as if she’s trying to remember. ‘I said that? When?’

‘When I was little. I think it was your way of treating me like an adult. Can you imagine how I felt when I heard that?’

When Mother looks up again, it’s to ask me why I’m not having children.

‘God knows,’ I sigh. ‘Because of all this, maybe? As I said, you told me you didn’t really like children.’

‘Oh, so it’s my fault?’

‘No, I’m not saying that.’

‘So, what are you trying to say? That I should have provided you with brothers and sisters for you to practise on? That this is your revenge for being an only child?’

I have a knot in my stomach. ‘But there was another child, wasn’t there, Mum?’

‘This is stupid—’

‘Vasant took me—’

‘Vasant?’ she screams, rising. ‘How dare you!’ She leaps for the doorway. I’ve never seen her move so fast. ‘When’s that car coming?’ she yells to the empty corridor. I sit on the bed and watch her dart back and forth. ‘This will have huge reverberations,’ she announces, before running back out into the corridor. When she finally returns, it’s to the armchair, where she sits clutching its armrests. There is a silence before she speaks again. ‘I don’t think I can bear sitting here with you until the car comes, so perhaps you’ll be on your way.’

I hear the familiar strains of Mother deciding what is best for both of us. I slide off the bed and stand alongside the chair, gazing out over the river, tugging at the hair at my parting. The police launch is now heading back the way it came, gliding by beyond the double glazing. I have the impression it wasn’t successful in its mission.

‘I always thought it was my job to make you happy,’ I say, my words on the pane of glass becoming spores of condensation. ‘But, because you were always so miserable, and bitter, I guessed I’d let you down.’

Mother is silent for some time. When she finally speaks, her voice is completely flat. ‘I think your father had the same idea – that he could turn my life around. That he could spin me on his potter’s wheel and create a happy woman, like one of his vases. I’ve always suspected he married me out of pity. And that made me contemptuous of him, that he could have been so noble and warm-spirited towards someone like me.’ Her eyes light up. ‘When we were first married, he’d sketch me. Those drawings made me feel special – whole again, somehow. But then you came along, and he took to sketching you instead.’ Her mouth is set rigid.

I feel things clicking into place, like reading a perfectly crafted sentence. ‘But that doesn’t mean Dad stopped loving you.’

‘Believe me, Amber,’ Mother says, sharply. ‘You have no idea. No idea about anything.’ Mother’s gaze is fixed on the squares of lino. ‘Wretched was the word they used about me.’ She folds her arms across her chest. ‘I never dreamed I’d tell anyone this. I never even told your father, I was so ashamed. I wanted my parents to stop thinking of me as wretched. I was so sorry for what I did that, when they told me I must leave London to stay in a home— It meant being alone at the birth, but I was prepared to do anything to earn their forgiveness.’

I crouch down on a level with her knees.

‘I hadn’t meant to disobey. The Common was out of bounds, they said. It was so visible from the air, it made the perfect landmark for German bombers. And what with being so close to the river and the docks, it wasn’t considered safe to even play there, let alone walk home across it. But I was tired, and it was about four o’clock. Dusk. So I took the short cut home— And afterwards, I felt so guilty. I couldn’t tell anyone what had happened.

‘And later, when I began to show, my parents changed their mind about keeping me in London. I was never an evacuee like other youngsters. I wasn’t sent to a family, but to a home for fallen women, to be punished for my indiscretion. I never even got to finish school.’ She pauses. ‘I’ve thought about their decision all my life, and now I think perhaps they were also punishing themselves, for not being able to keep me safe.’

Cramp forces me to shift position; to kneel. Mother half turns at the adjustment and looks at me. There are tears massing in her eyes.

‘So, you see, love is very fickle. It’s turned on and off like a tap.’ She looks away again. ‘They never came to visit. Of course, I thought that when they saw my baby they would love me again. That they’d see I hadn’t meant to hurt them. And then they were killed in a raid on Battersea, and they never got to see her—’

My mother weeps. It is an uncomfortable sight, not least because it’s as though she doesn’t know how to do it. The water that swells her rheumy eyes is stopped before it has a chance to become tears. She weeps in the manner in which I guess she has grieved in private for decades, taking care not to tear again the fragile fabric of her life.

‘And I knew then that their deaths were my punishment for— you know—’

‘For what? For getting pregnant?’

‘I was raped, Amber!’ she cries. ‘Raped in a place I’d been forbidden to go to. How could that not be my fault?’

My muscles tighten and I hear a rushing sound in my ears. The walls of the room appear to contract around us and dilate again, in constant waves of horror and messy understanding. It quite chokes me, this pain of remembered pain. And, almost blindly, I reach out to grab at the rigid balls of Mother’s clenched fists.

‘God sees everything,’ Mother cries, yanking her hands away. ‘How often have I told you that? God saw me that day and sought to punish me.’

I am shaking my head.

‘When the matron at the home told me about my parents, I didn’t speak for a week. And then the baby started coming. I knew it was too early, but there was nothing I could do. I gave birth to her all on my own. My own, my little baby. I never got to hear her cry.’

And suddenly Mother creases over and howls into her lap, slashing my wrists with hot tears. Occasionally, phrases seep out from under her hair, wretched spasms of rage and loss, about her parents, and being forbidden from holding her daughter before she died. But most of the time she simply repeats one word over and over again: June. June. June.

*

‘I suppose now you’ve heard all that, you’ll want to sever connections,’ my mother says, once she has composed herself and tucked the handkerchief back up her sleeve. I am not thinking that at all, but she is already on to her next point. ‘I’m sure I made mistakes. But you’d do well to remember, Amber, that in a family there’s always a parent who gets it wrong and a parent who stands by and allows it to happen.’

I dig my nails into my hand and will myself not to retaliate. For I realise that marriage, parenthood, divorce, widowhood: none of these has defined her as much as her wartime losses. And that I am as much to blame as she is for our dreadful relationship. Change, if it comes at all, will be partial, and will require a dropping of guards on both sides.

‘I like the name,’ I say lamely, trying to be generous and finding it awkward. And suddenly I remember Mother’s botched efforts to bake a cake every year in June, and my eyes fill with tears. I wipe them away with my sleeve.

‘Do you?’ says Mother, smiling. ‘I’ve always loved it. My Junie. In naming her, I made her mine. Without a name it was as if she’d never existed. The home didn’t offer baptisms for bastard babies, let alone dead ones. The wardens considered such quaint practices superfluous. There wasn’t even a funeral.’

‘And I thought the gravestone was nice.’ This isn’t quite true. It certainly isn’t what I would have chosen, but then I’ve never needed to make such a choice. Mother did. And I can see that this makes it the right one.

‘Did you?’ says Mother, suddenly wistful. ‘It’s not the real grave, of course. I read about it in a magazine. About the importance of having somewhere to go to focus one’s grief. So I chose a cemetery near Clapham, where she was conceived.’ She turns to look at me, her living daughter. ‘There hasn’t been a day when I don’t think about her, want to reach out for her. And now there’s a grave for me to visit. Something of hers, with her name on it.’

‘Ah, Hope. There you are.’

We both turn in the direction of the door, where a porter’s presence fills the frame.

‘Your car’s here. I’m to take your things.’

I rarely think of Mother as having a first name. In fact, I realise now, I rarely think of her as a proper person at all. She is ‘Mother’, a label laden with bad memories and contemptible connotations. Long ago she was born, and given a name. And yet, over time, as more and more things slipped from her grasp, it was as though Hope took it upon herself to shed her own name, sliding into a black hole of hopelessness, and effacing all her attachments. Now, for the first time, I think I might have to try to integrate, in my own mind, the two women into the one person.

And I am reminded of the stained-glass triptych in Dylan’s church, its three separate windows telling one story. I stood before them when I took my marriage vows; they gazed down upon me during my rampage; would gaze on me still, were I ever to return and kneel before them, seeking forgiveness from their bright chips of dazzling colour. And the thought of them, of their glory, of their unspoken benevolence, overwhelms me with conflicting feelings of longing and trepidation.

*

Little of consequence is said in the lift. Outside, the autumn breeze has died down. Neither of us tries to account for what, if anything, has taken place. I think we both know it’s too early to say.

Yet, in the car park, as the porter strains to heave the oxygen tank into the boot of the car, we both make tentative suggestions as to possible future meetings, in an attempt to dilute the imminent ending. I look at her, in her plain oatmeal suit, and I see an old woman who has been lonely for most of her life, and whose daughters couldn’t change that.

‘Have a safe journey,’ I call out, as the driver starts the engine.

Suddenly Hope winds down the window and reaches out to grab my arm.

‘The ring.’

I frown as Hope’s bony fingers dig into my flesh. ‘What?’

‘The ring. I threw it away. I’m sorry.’

‘What ring?’

‘The amber ring. I threw it away when your father left. My mother’s ring – the one you’re named after.’ She is having to shout above the noise of the car. ‘So I have nothing to leave you. Forgive me.’

I stand still, not knowing quite what to say to this; I didn’t even know she had the ring. Mother’s expression is impossible to read. If it ever had been. A discarded plastic cup turns a small pirouette and bumps into my shoe. And as I glance down to kick it aside, I sense the car pull slowly away, and my mother’s withered fingers loosen their grip, stroking my wrist as they do so before fluttering softly, swiftly, out of reach.