Daughters (12 page)

Sweat dripped down her neck. Alicia approved her decision to get rid of Nick (who still sent her the you-are-dead stare whenever they met in college). ‘Leave yourself free,’ she had advised. Maudie had paid attention. Instead she thought about the future, which seemed to involve a lot of practicalities, which Alicia was excellent at demystifying. Sometimes she missed Nick – the swaggering, solid-packed urgency of him. At the same time, she rejoiced in her power to send him away. Almost as much as she had thrilled to the subversion of applying to Harvard without consulting anyone.

Time was behaving in a way that was new to her – it was slipping by fast. Looking back, she couldn’t believe how much she had done already. Applications forms had been filled in, funding arrangements researched (that had taken a lot of work and some tense conversations with her father), timetables rearranged, SAT requirements minutely studied … then the exam.

In all this activity and practical application, there had been absolutely no space for Nick.

Once, during a tutorial, Alicia and she had debated personal autonomy. ‘I just had to make something of myself by myself,’ said Alicia, with the drawl that so fascinated Maudie. ‘So should you. Think big. Think wide.’

‘I feel so angry, sometimes,’ Maudie had confided in her. ‘I don’t know why. I’m angry with the stupidest things. The house. The street.’

‘Here’s your chance to get away from them,’ said Alicia. ‘What have I just said? Think
big
.’

Alicia’s confident, knowing advice made sense to the Maudie who was so hungry to establish herself. Knowing she was bottom of the pecking order in her oddly configured family gave her an extra push. A willingness to be the iconoclast.

That made her think of Eve, and the wedding preparations that appeared to grow bigger and more complicated each day. They had turned into an epic theatre production and, IHO, just as tasteless, leaving the family gasping like goldfish that had jumped out of their bowl.

It was all so ridiculous. Moreover, Eve reminded her the presents that were beginning to trickle into the house: listed, wrapped, delivered and utterly predictable.

Back at the house, the laundry basket was overflowing (most of the stuff Lara’s). She eyed it, planned to ignore it, realized her mother wouldn’t, which was unfair on her, and began to sort the stuff.

The SAT exam hadn’t been so bad. Critical reading, maths, writing … She had sat down to the papers numb
with fear. None of her friends were doing them, which made it a lonely business. ‘So what?’ said Alicia. ‘That’s half the attraction.’

True.

She had got through. At the finish, she had put down her pen with an extraordinary feeling of accomplishment. Later, she felt as though she had been lashed with hazel switches in a primitive ritual to mark a coming of age. At the weekend, when she had come home, everything was exactly as it always was. China neatly stacked. Cut-out supermarket coupons on the sideboard in the kitchen. A bag of half-price apples in the bowl on the table.

But they didn’t matter any more.

If she had
anything
to do with it, Maudie was going to leave all those behind. ‘I agree,’ she had told Alicia. ‘A life of one’s own
is
what one should aspire to.’

That had been a few weeks ago … And now she was in a rush to get her financial application sorted, which had to be in – so said the sternly worded on-line information – by March.

Tea-towels, towels, sheets …

Blues into one pile. Whites into another. She dickered over a pink T-shirt.

Dirty laundry had such a characteristic smell. Slighty musty, with a hint of mud and rain and, in this feminine household, there was not so much sweat as a
pot-pourri
of creams and scents. Sports socks whose inner lining had gone fuzzy with wear. A pair of jeans that had to be turned inside out. ‘Texas Stretch’, read the label. (Could Texas stretch? It seemed big enough already.)

If sock-darning and laundry were a direct consequence
of love (and its tragedies, such as were experienced by Mrs Shelley and her crowd) she was not going to be part of it. Best not, then, to get involved.

Nick had looked so hard into her eyes that she had become breathless.

But Nick wouldn’t get it.

She sat in front of the screen and worked.

Work was good. Work was reliable. She liked it and it interested her.

Mother and daughter had spent hours in collaboration on the upcoming A levels. With coloured pens, they had constructed mind maps – neural pathways traced in blue, purple, green and red – that had visualized and classified Maudie’s knowledge of the French Revolution, European nationalism, Shakespeare’s
Henry V
and Fitzgerald’s
The Great Gatsby
,
plus ecosystems and, finally, genetics, inheritance and variation.

‘There’s quite enough variation in this family,’ Maudie had pointed out, as she and her mother had toiled over the latter. ‘
Too
much.’

Lara had laughed. It had been a nice, happy sound and, after a moment, Maudie had joined in.

Her mother now put her head around the door to check on her. Not unexpected. Living with her mother was to have a blanket wrapped around her – soft, warm and, from time to time, stifling.

She wasn’t paying attention to the mind maps. She was occupied, instead, in twisting the tops off her set of painted Russian
matryoshka
dolls, which, years ago, their father had brought back from a trip.

Her mother advanced into the room. ‘You look bothered. Want to talk to me? I’m sure we can sort out whatever it is.’

That was another reason to fly away. Her mother was always trying to make things all right while Maudie’s instinct was to face life head on. Things were not always all right. Quite a lot of the time they were awful.

Maudie shrugged and disinterred the smallest doll from the belly of its ‘mother’ – a tiny faithful replica, down to the last detail on the gaudy apron.

‘Maudie, shoot.’

‘Mum, I’ve got A levels, remember.’ Mind Maps To Go. ‘And the prom. Thought I’d ask Jas to come and choose my dress with me.’

‘What about Tess?’

‘Mum, it has to be a secret.’ She picked up the smallest doll and rubbed her cheek on its cool glossy curve.

Her mother tried again: ‘How about hair? Have you discussed
that
with Tess?’

‘Nope. She’d copy me.’

‘But Tess is your best friend.’

‘My very best friend. So?’

‘Don’t you trust her?’

Maudie opened her eyes wide and looked hard at her mother. ‘What planet are you on?’

‘Would you ask … Nick?’

Despite everything, she found herself biting her lip, which she knew imprinted a tiny white circle on it. ‘You know I won’t. Why ask?’

‘Because I wonder,’ said her mother, infuriatingly.

‘Well, don’t.’

Her mother sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘Why the long face, then?’

‘Don’t know.’ She fiddled around with the dolls. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Second thoughts about anything? You’re allowed second thoughts.’

‘No.
No
.’

She picked up the big fat mama doll. She had the odd notion that, in some way, it represented her. Twist off its top and a fresh version of herself would spring forth. Then she experienced a tiny shock. Had she already reached the age – at eighteen and a half, for God’s sake – to think,
Time to
remodel
?

Her mother’s phone rang and she dug it out of the back pocket of her jeans. ‘Robin.’ To Maudie’s astonishment a faint blush crept over mother’s cheeks. The blush was new. Definitely.

‘Yes,’ she was saying. ‘I wanted to talk over some plans. Would that suit? … Yes … OK.’

Conversation over, she turned and met Maudie’s gaze full on. ‘And?’

‘Nothing,’ said Maudie.

‘That was just Robin.’

‘Sure. Work conversation, then?’ But her mother wasn’t rising to the bait so she stuffed the dolls back into their nests. ‘You don’t mind if Jas comes with me to choose a dress, do you?’ She squinted at the dolls. She had put the final one back together askew.

‘No,’ said Lara. Patently she did, but Maudie wasn’t
going to be nice on that one. ‘Best Jas goes with you. But wouldn’t Eve be better?’

The face and top of the big mama doll stared at Maudie from above its plump wooden backside. It was most peculiar.

‘No,’ said Maudie. ‘I need someone who understands.’

Shadowed by Sarah, her father emerged from the house and planted himself four-square on the grey stone steps that mounted to the front door. Lara drove up and hauled on the brake.

Maudie leaned over and whispered in her ear. ‘OK, Mum?’

Lara’s hands remained on the wheel. ‘I think so.’

‘You don’t have to stay,’ said Maudie, and Jasmine echoed, ‘You can drive straight home. We can catch a train.’

‘I said I’d come, and I will,’ said Lara.

Bill and Sarah had moved in, and they had invited the family down to see the place properly. Only Eve couldn’t make it.

Maudie let her hand rest on her mother’s shoulder. Lara said, ‘I wanted to see the garden again.’

It was hardly rural tranquillity, which everyone always banged on about when they talked about the countryside. Apart from the posse of workmen in overalls and low-slung jeans, there were heavy tyre marks on the grass flanking the drive, mud spray, a pile of industrial-sized paint tins, wood stacked under tarpaulins and paint-spattered gravel.

Actually, it didn’t matter. Maudie observed the serene
frontage, including the balustrade. Normally a house made no impact on her but this one was undeniably lovely.

‘Beautiful,’ murmured Jasmine.

Maudie had left her hair untied, and shook it back over her shoulders where it floated in a blonde cloud. ‘House or the
Country Life
couple?’

She tucked her hand under her mother’s elbow. Whatever else, and however she might criticize her mother, her duty was to defend Lara in public. Life was changing, as she explained to Alicia, but this was a role she had taken on and she would see it through.

Bill waited for them to climb the steps, then said, ‘Welcome to Membury Manor.’

Sarah surged past him. ‘Don’t be pompous, Bill.’ She was nervous and held out her hands in theatrical welcome. Actually, they were both nervous: Maudie sniffed tension. ‘I’ve got coffee waiting.’ She ushered the party through the front door. ‘We’re in the small sitting room.’

Maudie hissed into Jasmine’s ear. ‘The
small
sitting room?’

Whatever the room was, or was not, it was lovely. Jasmine was clearly enraptured and drifted around, exclaiming over this and that. Cube-shaped, with huge windows, it had elaborate plasterwork but everything cried out for repair. Even Maudie could see that. Hundreds and thousands of pounds’ worth of work. Arranged in it was Bill and Sarah’s sparse selection of London furniture, which included a sofa covered with raspberry striped silk and an antique mirror. Although they were elegant, the two pieces contributed to the rather forlorn effect.

‘It’ll be superb,’ said Jasmine.

Sarah said, ‘God knows when we can do it up. Everything else has gone on fundamentals like electrics and plumbing.’

There was a special, cosmically depressing kind of boredom attached to conversations about houses … 
Never
would Maudie talk about them in the hushed, reverent tones that her mother and even Jasmine were given to.

Jasmine and Lara sat on the raspberry stripes. Maudie took up sentry duty by the window from where she was able to watch her father covertly, a habit perfected over the years.

That was easy for he never really looked at her.

Whenever she considered her father, she thought of a big man – however not? – but a big man inside whom lurked a chastened spirit. Someone who expected the worst and who was wary of his youngest daughter. Did she mind?

Yes. No. Yes.

But, her mother might be surprised to know, he kept tabs on his ex-wife. Not obviously – but not lovingly either. It was as if … and Maudie warmed to her burgeoning analysis … her father feared her mother.

Often, far more often than she wished, Maudie reprised the childhood visits to the house-at-the-end-of-the-street occupied by him and, first, Violet, then Sarah. Uneasy, often tearful, visits during which tentative roots were put down, tentative rapprochements established, only to be ripped up because neither father nor daughters could settle to the spadework that would make the relationships flourish.

He was asking, ‘Maudie, how’s the revision going?’

‘For the A levels, OK. Ish. Got the mocks at the end of term. But, I’ve done the SAT exam.’

‘You’ve done the SAT exam?’ Her father’s brows snapped together. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

Sarah said, ‘Bill … don’t.’

‘You could have asked,’ said Maudie.

Her mother and father looked at each other. Oddly united?

Sarah coughed.

‘I think we’d better have a discussion,’ said her father at last. ‘To keep me in the picture.’

More than anything I want to get away from England.

Sarah was wearing a pressed pair of light blue jeans, and a soft red sweater. Her nails, clipped and buffed, were painted shell pink and her hair gleamed frosted blonde. Her mother and Jasmine were also in jeans – blue-black ones (Jasmine’s extra skinny), and both wore little black jackets. As for herself, she was in black leggings, a loose black jumper and lace-up biker boots. All three outfits were replicated in their thousands on any London street, but in the rural setting they had a startling effect. They were crows dropping in on a colony of blue tits.

Sarah poured coffee.

It tasted dreadful because it had been stewing in a Thermos – typical of the efficient Sarah. Maudie managed a mouthful and thought longingly of the tough, toxic espresso from the Italian down the street.

A framed photograph had been placed on the table
beside the window. It showed Sarah and Bill on holiday in a hot-looking seaside venue. Maudie picked it up. ‘Where’s this?’

‘Corfu,’ said Sarah.

‘Scene of your great triumph, Mum,’ said Maudie. ‘When you hired a speedboat and
drove
it.’