25 July 2004
Is it better or worse to be in genteel surroundings when you shatter the illusions of someone you love?
Taking Mum to the village of Alfriston seemed like the right idea this morning. But now I’m less sure. None of the gift shops are accessible and it’s been raining so the riverside is too boggy to navigate. As I wheel her chair into a cafe, the doilies and the cake stands and the teapots hem me in so much I want to smash my way out of here.
‘Are you sure it’s all home-made?’ she demands of the poor waitress. ‘Because this menu looks far too big for that to be probable.’
I struggle to find small talk while we wait for our lunch, knowing time is running out. I’m certain Kerry will come home from her triathlon and tell me it’s definitely over. I’d offered to go with her, but she insisted she needed time to do some serious thinking. And while I’m gone, please talk to your mum. Whatever we end up doing, the wedding is not going to happen next year. If she realizes we’ve been lying, she’ll never forgive us.
But what will I tell her?
You can tell her as much or as little as you want.
Our jacket potatoes arrive, the size of cannonballs, and Mum stares disdainfully at her plate.
‘Looks nice, doesn’t it?’ I say, for the waitress’s sake. The first forkful burns my throat and tongue as I swallow. A laryngopharyngeal thermal injury, but not bad enough to get me out of telling her the truth.
‘Eyes are bigger than your stomach, Tim!’ Mum says, as she has for as long as I can remember.
I can’t put it off any longer. ‘Mum, I’ve got something to tell you, and I’m sorry because I don’t want to upset you.’
Her face doesn’t change but she seems to lose another inch of height in her chair.
‘It’s about the wedding.’ I have rehearsed these words over and over in my head. Saying them out loud is different. ‘Kerry and me, we’ve decided to postpone it.’
It’s as if she’s ageing in front of me. Her sharp blue eyes fade to grey and the lines around her eyes deepen.
‘Mum, did you hear me? We’ve postponed it. Kerry has got most of the money back, or a credit note in the case of the hotel . . .’
‘Is it another woman? Have you been unfaithful?’
‘Mum!’
‘After everything she’s done for you! You got it from your father. Bad genes. I am so ashamed of you, Tim. I can’t bear it.’ In her rage, her accent has got stronger and her voice louder, and people are looking at us.
Over the years, I’ve trained myself to let her cruelties wash over me, but she’s never said these things in public before. ‘That’s not why. She’s . . . we’re . . . we’re not sure anymore. About marriage.’
‘But you’re made for each other. You always were.’
‘All done?’ the waitress regrets her question as soon as she sees Mum’s face, and snatches away our plates before scuttling back to the kitchen.
‘Mum, I’m trying my hardest to make it better, but it might not be enough—’
‘Trying your hardest? That’s defeatist talk. You need to fight with all you’ve got.’
‘Sometimes you can fight and you can fight but it won’t change someone’s mind.’
I never told her I heard the rows. She fought for my father. Cajoled and seduced and wept and raged and begged and it made no difference. That’s how I learned that telling someone how you feel is not enough. It simply piles humiliation on top of pain.
On the journey back, Mum’s hostile silence seems bigger than the car. She maintains it all the way back to Brighton. I park Kerry’s mother’s Fiesta in their driveway but when I try to persuade my mother into her wheelchair to get across the road, she shrugs me off and stumbles painfully back to the bungalow.
Kerry isn’t due home till late. Mum pushes open the door to her bedroom but I catch it before it slams behind her.
‘I know you’re upset but—’
‘You’re risking everything, Tim. What would you be without her? Nothing, that’s what.’
It’s the kind of thing I heard her shout at my dad before he left. ‘Do you really mean that?’
Doubt crosses Mum’s face, and shock at being challenged. ‘Maybe I’m too harsh, sometimes, son. But it’s always because I want you to be the best you can be. And I know you need Kerry a hell of a lot more than she needs you.’
She waves me out of the way and closes the door.
In the kitchen I pour myself a shot of cooking brandy. It tastes disgusting but not as bad as knowing my own mother – who adores me more than any other person in the world – thinks I am doomed without Kerry in my life.
I text her to ask if we can meet before she comes back to the bungalow and I suggest the cafe at the top of Devil’s Dyke. I walk there early, so I can gather my thoughts. It’s close to the city but all you can see from here is dazzling green fields, countryside so lush it makes you start humming ‘Jerusalem’.
When she arrives, I see she’s still in the hire car: a Golf GTI. Typical Kerry. I bet she put her foot down on the way to the triathlon, though I can’t imagine she was in a hurry to come back. When she gets out, I’m afraid to look at her face, in case I can see her decision. The last of the daylight is fading and with it, the warmth.
‘Hey,’ she says. We hug out of habit but there’s no kiss. Was that my choice or hers?
‘Hey. Well done. For finishing.’ She texted me the time but I have no idea if it’s good or bad. No wonder I’m going to lose her.
‘Yeah. It was such a buzz.’
‘Did you get a chance to think?’
She nods. Why isn’t she saying what she’s decided? It has to be bad.
Because I don’t know what else to do, I start walking towards the trail, opening the gate. She steps through and I close it behind her, like some Victorian suitor. The shrubs and farmland give off a herbal scent as the air cools. This is what I will remember whenever I smell this again. The night I lost her.
‘Tim—’
‘I told Mum. And she said if I let you go, I’m finished. That I would be nothing without you.’
Kerry turns. ‘Oh, Tim, that’s not true.’
‘So are you ending it or not?’ I brace myself.
‘I just want us to be happy.’ She turns away again and walks slowly, pulling at the greenery along the lane. Now the air smells of wild garlic.
My head throbs and my mother’s words come back to me: you need to fight for her.
‘Please don’t leave. Tell me what it’d take to make you happy.’
As I wait for her to reply, a memory catches me unawares. The very first time I came to this spot was with her and her parents. I was nearly nine years old. We’d been to see the paragliders floating above the valley and all she could talk about was how she’d love to try it. I was more interested in getting home to look up thermal columns in the encyclopaedia.
Afterwards, her mum bought us hot chocolate and dinosaur cake with an entire spiky thagomizer made of icing, and I couldn’t understand why I was getting a treat when it wasn’t even my birthday yet.
When I got home, Dad wasn’t there. His coat and shoes by the door had gone, his briefcase, his tennis bag. That was, I realize now, the last outing where I’d feel like a kid, not a carer. I had become the head of the household.
Kerry has stopped at a turnstile. ‘I don’t know. For you to feel OK?’ She shakes her head. ‘But that’s about you. I wish I knew that I wanted for me.’
‘Won’t medicine be enough?’
‘Like it’s been enough for you?’
‘I can’t blame medicine for the mess I got myself into, but I’m doing my best to dig myself out.’ I help her over the turnstile. ‘I wasn’t sure till now why I suggested coming here, but I just remembered. You and me, against the world. You probably don’t remember but it was the day my dad left and—’
‘I remember.’ She says it so tenderly that I want to cry. But I won’t. It’s not something I do. ‘It was shitty what he did. Abandoning you to look after your mum.’
‘No, it was fine, I wanted to look after her,’ I say automatically. Except, is that true? I had no choice in the matter.
‘I know what your mum is like. More than anyone else, I’ve seen her at her worst.’
‘She can’t help herself.’ My voice cracks. No. I am not going to cry. ‘She needs me.’
Kerry hears my weakness. She reaches for my hand. ‘Being needed is addictive, isn’t it? But what I’m realizing is that there’s a time to help, and a time when you have to let people get on with it for themselves.’
I want to ask her how am I meant to do that when my mother is so helpless?
But she’s turning around to go back to the car. After we climb in, she waits before starting the engine.
‘What I said about not leaving me, Kerry. You mustn’t stay because you feel sorry for me,’ I say, wanting her to deny it, to say we’re together because she loves me. ‘I know it’s my turn, now, to support you the way you’ve supported me. Let me do that. Please.’
‘I don’t want you to be something you’re not. That’s not how love works.’
Love. ‘Tell me what you do need, then.’
‘Right now what I need is more time.’
At least she’s not saying it’s over.
As she reverses with a ferocious whoosh, I make a promise in my head, to her and to myself. Starting tonight, I will do everything I can to fix myself, and then fix us. Even if I fail, at least I will have tried.