Are You My Mother? (2 page)

It hit the forehead of the woman with the plum lips with a smack, leaving a red graze. She started to whimper loudly, covering her face with her hands. Through the pounding of my heart, I still managed to be impressed at how exactly her nail polish managed to match her lipstick. The urge to cry left me, and I was strangely not at all scared; not then. I looked at my watch – it was only six o’clock. Masses of time. I’d been planning to do some shopping in Kensington High Street first, although now I had this idle thought that perhaps the man was right, perhaps we
were
all going to die down here? I thought that the synapses in my brain must not have been firing properly, for the very next second I found myself wondering if I could afford that lovely three-quarter length denim skirt I’d seen in French Connection the week before. Money, whilst not desperately tight, wasn’t exactly plentiful either, and the tickets had been my big indulgence for the month.

There was a stunned silence from everyone else. Then the Spanish girl began to cry for real, snuffling and burying her head in her boyfriend's shoulder, lost in his outsize designer jacket. The only part of her face visible was a thin plastered-down and lacquered sideburn which had been sculpted into a delicate serpent.

The man stared briefly at the outburst of emotion erupting behind him. Then, once more, he locked eyes with me. At that moment, it was as if I woke up. My trancelike musings on nail polish, foot complaints and denim skirts vanished, and I was hit with the sudden revelation that we were the same, me and this disturbed man. I felt an overwhelming wave of empathy for him. I saw myself sitting on benches at midnight, cold and miserable; and ten years on, I felt the same, only less cold.
I
had no more idea of my own place on this strange planet than he did - possibly less - and unless I took steps to find it, then I could see myself ending up in a similar state, standing on a tube train incandescent with rage, ranting at Tony Blair or London Transport – random victims, innocent or otherwise. New clothes and Who tickets – they were like trying to stick bandaids on a severed limb.

Perhaps this was an exaggeration – although I was only half sure – but the point was that, in that split second, I realised that for years I’d been drifting, sacrificing everything to make sure Stella was OK: that she was fed, watered, educated, loved. I had been subsuming my own needs to care for my little sister - and what about me? Who’d been looking after
me
? Not Gavin, not really. In fact, nobody. Not one single person. This was an alarm bell. This man was telling me that things had to change. That I really had to
do something about it
before it was too late and my life slipped by, measured only by a succession of nameless backs, burly or weedy, in marginally differing striped shirts.

Actually, that wasn’t true. I didn’t quite subsume
all
my needs to take care of Stella, not at first. There was this one lapse, after Mum and Dad were killed, ten years ago. I did something terrible; something which helped me identify with the man on the train. I’d never told a soul, but in those first few months of bewildering bereavement, I used to wait until Stella was asleep; eleven, twelve o’clock, and then I would let myself out of the house, leaving her alone in there. The thought of her slight figure motionless under a Barbie duvet, the only living thing in the house, made me nearly physically sick with guilt – but I had to do it.

It started with a craving for air, a longing to escape the stuffy confines of our recycled grief as we sat each night, wordless on the sofa, our eyes empty squares of flickering escapism. When Stella had finally, silently, trailed off to bed, I used to go and stand in the back garden, breathing in the dirty night air, listening for town foxes and cats being penetrated, wishing I could scream like that too.

One night, before I knew what I was doing, I’d slunk like an intruder along the passage at the side of the house, unlocked the gate, and I was out. A rush of exhilarated freedom filled my lungs for a second, and I found myself walking away. It was eleven thirty, and most of the houses in our street were sealed for sleep, but a few had lights in bedroom windows. I stared at these, willing myself to be able to see in, to see parents getting ready for bed; to catch a glimpse of a mother stroking her daughter’s forehead, kissing her in her sleep. I could still feel the imprints of Mum’s kisses branding my own forehead; feel the memory of love, nurture not nature, but still as strong.

That first night, I was only out for a few minutes. By the time I reached the end of the street, I raced back again, my footsteps metallic on the empty pavements, hurling myself back through the gate and into the kitchen, assailed by the stillness of the dead house, but relieved that all was still quiet. For the rest of that night I stayed downstairs and played my recorder,
sotto voce
, immersing myself in its tinny breathless parp - my other prop in times of crisis. I never read music, just played along to songs on the radio, picking out melodies and bass lines, mindlessly creating muzak in my head. It went a small way towards drowning out some of the guilt and grief. Until the next time I sneaked out again.

I knew that if Social Services ever found out – found out about the wandering, I mean; my recorder playing wasn’t
that
bad - I risked losing Stella, and she would be taken into care. She was only ten years old. But as time went on, I reasoned with myself that if I
didn’t
get out on my own at night like that, I would explode, and possibly hurt Stella in some other way. I wrote a note for her which I left on the kitchen table at nights, just in case she woke up and couldn’t find me – although that never happened. Stella slept as if in a coma
: ‘Stella – gone down to the 7-11, back in fifteen minutes, don’t worry xx’.
During the day, I hid this note under the lining paper of the kitchen drawer.

I was rarely out for more than twenty minutes, and I always took a rape alarm with me. Some nights I even dressed up – not short skirts and high heels; but just a bit of mascara, black trousers and a swirly hairdo – so I could pretend that I was an ordinary nineteen year old, coming home from an ordinary night down the pub. On those nights I walked briskly, purposefully, clutching my empty handbag firmly under my arm.

I walked down to Ealing Broadway, glancing in the windows of a few bars and pubs to see people drinking and having fun. I saw girls laughing and flirting, leaving lipstick imprints on their wineglass rims; and I wanted to press my own lips up against the glass of the windows. I wanted to leave my mark somewhere.

Sometimes I even saw girls I’d been to school with. Half of me wanted to go in and talk to them; but the shy part of me knew that I never would. It was enough, really, just to see that life was going on without me. I realised that this sounded horribly self-pitying, but it was true.

I could’ve got a babysitter for Stella, and gone out for real, if I’d really put my foot down. But she was so clingy, those first few months, that if I even tentatively mentioned that my friend Esther had rung to invite me to a party, Stella’s eyes would get huge with panic, her voice instantly thick with tears, and she’d whisper ‘please don’t leave me.’ And that would be that.

Other nights I just meandered about, up and down the residential streets near our house, my head dragging with grief, stumbling and blinded by the tears that I couldn’t shed in front of Stella. I’d walk to the nearest bench and sit down, pulling my knees up under my chin, not caring who saw me crying. I wanted to be rescued: I didn’t care who by. I wanted someone to take the burden off my shoulders and the decisions out of my hands.

There was no way I’d ever have told
that
to the camera, though.

Chapter 2

‘
So, tell me about this book you used to read Stella. What’s it got to do with the man on the tube?’

‘
It was called ‘Are You My Mother?’. It’s a really sweet book, about this baby bird who hatches just after his mother’s gone to look for some food for him. He jumps out of the nest and goes to find her, only he doesn’t know what she looks like, so he goes up to all these different animals and asks them if they’re his mother, but of course none of them are. In the end he gets so desperate that he’s asking aeroplanes and ocean liners and, eventually, this big scary digger…

‘
Oh no. I can’t believe that even telling you about this is making me sad. It’s a kid’s book…that’s ridiculous. Sorry. I’m a bit emotional at the moment, what with one thing and another. Can we stop for a bit?’

I probably hadn’t given
Are You My Mother?
a thought for fifteen years. It was Stella’s favourite book when she was three years old. I read it to her, every single night for months, over and over again until the words were printed indelibly on my mind. I could still remember most of them, the same way that you remember all the lyrics to certain pop songs even though you never consciously learned them in the first place.

At that stage, Stella couldn’t read, but familiarity had branded the text into her head too. She used to recite every sentence along with me, verbatim; cackling and squirming with a toddler’s heartlessness at the subtle pathos of the story. If I ever tried to miss out a single line, or, God forbid, skip a page, it provoked a storm of protest.

Mum had worried when the book first came into our household; a birthday gift from Stella’s rather tactless godmother. Mum even took me aside and asked if I was OK about it, since I was the one who’d have to read it - I was, officially, on permanent bedtime story duty.

‘
I could get rid of it, Emma darling, really,’ she’d said. ‘I could just put it in a bag for jumble before we’ve even read it to her, and she’ll never miss it, not with all these other presents’.

I was touched by Mum’s unwarranted concern - until she mentioned it, I hadn’t thought twice about its subject matter. After that, though, I did feel a bit funny the next few times I read it. I supposed, subconsciously, I did identify with that poor lost baby bird when I was thirteen years old. Although back in those days, I had Mum and Dad, so why would
I
need to look for my real mother?

In the book, of course, it all worked out in the end. The scary digger picked up the bird in his scoop and popped him back into the nest, just as the mother flew home, worm in beak. Mum used to snort through her nose at this part of the book. ‘Typical,’ she said. ‘The mother comes back, completely oblivious to the fact that her baby’s even left the nest. She’d be appalled if she knew what he’d been up to, talking to all kinds of strangers and getting himself in trouble! He should have just stayed put and waited patiently.’

That was one of the things I really liked about Mum. For a scientist, she got really passionate about things. Sometimes we used to actually act out the entire plot of
Are You My Mother?
, after I’d finished reading it. Stella would be curled up as the egg, and I’d pretend to sit on her. I’d fly away and look for a worm, Stella would hatch out, and Mum would put on silly voices for all the animals she approached in her search. If any of my friends had ever seen me participate in this little charade, I would have had to kill myself. Obviously.

After six or seven months of daily recitations and numerous dramatic productions, even Stella eventually got sick of
Are You My Mother?
To my great relief, she gradually stopped declining the offers of other bedtime books, and we got into, respectively,
The Diggingest Dog
,
Hop on Pop
, and
The Tiger Who Came To Tea
. By the time she was four, she could read herself and she didn’t need my services so much anymore. Instead, more often than not, she read to her two imaginary friends, Gunk and Marmalay, the ones who lived inside the lamp-post on the pavement. They were allowed into the house just once a day, so that Stella could read them a bedtime story.

Things had changed so much since then. Now, seeing that desperate, abandoned-looking man howling on a tube train, staring at me as if I might just be his salvation – well, it made me realise that, like the baby bird, it was time I did a little searching of my own.

The train eventually, finally, vibrated back into life with a whirr and a reluctant whine. After a further few seconds it hauled itself down the remainder of the track to Notting Hill, and the doors slid open. I stood up, still gazing into the green eyes in front of me. Then I bent down and picked up the two halves of the verruca leaflet, just because I couldn’t stand litter in trains.

Finally, and maybe because on all those cold nights walking around, I’d so passionately wanted someone to do this for me, I took the man by the hand and led him out of the carriage at Notting Hill station. Before I even had time to think about it, I’d escorted him calmly up the escalators to the main ticket hall. Passengers descending on the opposite escalator sailed past us in a blur of incredulous features and unsubtle stares as the man keened and wailed; his dirty hand clasped in mine. I gazed grimly at the caked-in grime between the metal corrugations of the escalator stairs, stabbed with a sudden desire to scrub them out with a toothbrush; to make them shiny and new again.