Daughters (7 page)

Daniella spotted something was up and took to skewering Lara with her pale blue gaze. After a week of this, she slid into Lara’s room with a cup of tea. ‘Lara, you know if
anything is ever wrong, I’m here for you.’ She was always anxious to keep the practice humming and in shape. It was her job and job anxiety was a condition of the new era. She set the tea down carefully in front of Lara and steered a Bourbon biscuit into the saucer as bait. ‘Girls all right?’

The biscuit was touching – she must have gone out specially to buy it. Clever Daniella. She was reminding Lara that everyone had to pull their weight. ‘Ex-husband – you know how it is,’ replied Lara, and felt guilty when Daniella gave her hand a pat in womanly sympathy and, satisfied, retreated.

Teacup in hand, Lara wandered over to Robin’s desk. There was an assortment of books, papers and a festering coffee mug on the shelf above it. On the desk there were pens, papers, a bottle of a vicious-looking liquid bearing the label ‘Baghdad Bolly’, a striped lanyard, a snowstorm paperweight of New York at Christmas and a postcard of the Krak des Chevaliers castle in Syria.

She picked up the postcard. Krak des Chevaliers was one of the most ambitious Crusader castles ever built. Sand and isolation surrounded it, the hot wind played over it, faith and territorial ambition had built and now maintained it. Blood watered it. But the intriguing point about the impregnable Krak des Chevaliers was that it had only fallen to the enemy by a ruse.

She imagined Sarah saying,
Lara hates to be dependent
.
She’ll welcome the chance to be free of you, darling.

Sarah was correct.

But Lara needs it.
(Bill might have attempted to make a stand.)

Is it morally right that she still gets your money?

She scolded herself. Sarah was
not
like that.

Their –
his
– daughter still needed a home. So did she. The house suited them, had suited them all. The dimensions, which didn’t quite square, the cracked slates on the roof (which must be replaced), the unsmart kitchen and the shabby stair runner … The house kept their history and safeguarded it.

The previous night she had cried in her sleep and woken with wet eyes.

She wanted Eve to embark on her new life in a good and positive way, with the wedding she wished for, without tensions, without the burden of her and Bill’s history. This would be her way of telling Eve: I believe in this for you.

She replaced the postcard, picked out a book on Middle Eastern history from Robin’s shelf and opened it. ‘In robes of brilliant silk, superbly crafted armour, and their weapons inlaid with gold, the Mameluke Army who waited to fight the Ottomans in 1516 were the ultimate warriors …’ she read.

Suddenly she was there on the battlefield, far from the room that smelt faintly of cleaning fluid, waiting in the sunlight to move forward on the word.

Other worlds.

On an impulse, she scribbled a note, ‘Were they the ultimate warriors?’ inserted it into the place in the book and left it on his desk.

‘Another cup?’ asked Daniella, rematerializing at the door.

Startled, Lara stared at her – plump, pale and bossy. Her mind cleared. It was obvious: she must extend her mortgage and expand her practice.

Supper, glass of wine, a large slice of peace and something mindless to watch on TV, in that order. Upstairs in her bedroom, Lara conducted a long phone call about a distressing case, then surged downstairs and into the kitchen where she caught Maudie in the act of shrugging on her jacket.

‘Hi, Mum.’ She slammed down the lid of her laptop and shoved it into her bag.

‘Maudie, we agreed not Sunday evenings. You have to catch the early train to Winchester tomorrow.’

‘
You
agreed.’ Maudie zipped up the jacket. Below it her matchstick legs in black leggings stretched for a mile. ‘It’s my life.’

‘Shall we talk about this?’

‘No,’ said Maudie, adding, ‘Spare me the counselling.’

The on-duty mother.
Discuss.
‘Maudie, I’ve just been trying to rescue a child who has none of your options.’

‘So?’

‘Worth pondering?’

Maudie flicked at a pile of books. Clearly, their unresponsiveness annoyed her and she gave them a determined shove. The stack smacked on to the floor. Not that it made much difference to the state of the kitchen, but the last few days had been harassing and Lara had had enough. ‘Pick them up.’

Maudie’s stubborn, troubled face and over-blackened
eyelashes assailed Lara as she went about the task of retrieval.

‘If you wish to break the agreement, that’s fine. But you say you want to go to university more than anything else. To do this, you need to study and you need to rest.’

‘I do. I do.’ She whipped her rangy figure upright. ‘But it’s difficult. The others think it’s stupid. There
are
other things, Mum.’ Her mouth tightened.

Sensing confusion, Lara bit her tongue.

‘Exams, exams, exams … I don’t want to do them.’

This was an astonishing
volte face
for, up to that moment, Maudie had been fixed in her determination to dominate and triumph over the system.

Lara snapped on the kettle. ‘OK. Mother-daughter summit.’ She folded her arms across her stomach. ‘I’m listening.’

Maudie folded herself on to the bench that served as seating for the table. Taking after Bill, she was the tallest of the daughters and practically filled the tiny kitchen. The stubborn, troubled expression cleared as she confessed, ‘OK. I don’t mean that about the exams. That’s all fine. It’s just I’m in a bit of a state.’

‘Tell.’

Frisson of maternal anxiety. Maudie may have been heading for nineteen and inclined to moods but a gin-trap mind propelled her Nordic blonde five-foot-eleven frame. (Where had she sprung from? The goddess Freya or, failing that, Brünnhilde.)

‘I’ve done something,’ she said.

Lara steeled herself. Drugs? Pregnancy? Cheating?

‘Alicia …’

Case Notes

Alicia Runyon, 26, Tutor in English (with special reference to Feminist Studies) at the Winchester Sixth Form College. Winner of Kathleen Snape Award for the best essay on feminism in literature. To quote: ‘a work of the highest intellectual standard combined with the scholarly ideals’. On a couple of years’ secondment from her native US … etc.

Lara waited.

Maudie’s eyes reflected the colours of a deep and stormy fjord. ‘Alicia says … I mean, Alicia is keen …’ She leaped up from the bench.

Lara folded her arms and leaned back against the cooker.

Maudie took two paces to the right. Two paces to the left. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ve applied to Harvard.’

‘
What?
’ Lara reprised the last few weekends. Maudie’s closed-down expression, plus the irritation (plenty of that). There had also been the quick-to-anger Maudie and the quick-to-despair Maudie. ‘When did you decide this?’

Maudie shrugged.

‘And without telling me. Or anyone?’

Maudie was flapping her wings. Hard.

‘Yup.’ She had calmed down. ‘Alicia’s explained everything. I take their, I mean the US, SAT exam and apply for funds. If successful, I go next year.’ She stacked the
last book on the pile. The confession appeared to have brought a new resolve. ‘It’s sorted, Mum.’

Lara said, ‘What do
you
know about funding?’

Quick as a flash, Maudie said, ‘If it was left to you and Dad, nothing.’ She tugged at her hair. ‘Why don’t parents teach you useful things?’

‘We had to have one flaw, surely.’

‘No, but really,’ she said.

‘And you never thought to discuss it with me?’

‘I discussed it with Alicia. We went over and over it. She told me about the financial things and she helped me with the forms. I’ve done spreadsheets. I’ll have to work in the vacations. Of course. And live like a pauper – but, hey …’

Lara found herself tiptoeing through a maze. ‘Spreadsheets? Oh, spreadsheets. Could I remind you a spreadsheet is not the real thing?’

‘Stop it, Mum. You’re not listening.’

Lara folded her arms more tightly. Snap, went the wire-cutter that Maudie was wielding. ‘I’m your mother, Maudie. I had a right to know.’

‘Of course,’ agreed Maudie, in a kindly way, ‘and I’m telling you now.’

Lara persisted, ‘You should have told me earlier. I can see that Alicia is very useful, but she’s not family.’

‘Shall we just leave her out of it?’

‘You brought her into it.’ What was it she told her patients? Negotiate. Face up to the problem. ‘Are you sure she’s the right influence, Maudie? Should she be influencing you? Think about it.’

‘Most friends do influence each other.’

‘If she’s that much older, it must be hard to contradict her.’

Maudie adopted the expression that meant she was trying,
she was really
trying
, to be ultra-patient. ‘Alicia and I understand each other very well, and it’s not a question of who’s older and who’s junior. We’re friends, that’s all.’ Leaning over, she dropped a kiss on Lara’s cheek. ‘Don’t look so worried. I’m a big girl now.’ She swung the strap of her bag on to her shoulder and picked up her phone. ‘I must see to my own life. So …’ Again, the kindly smile. ‘I’m just going round to Tess for half an hour or so.’

‘Why are you doing this, Maudie?’

Maudie had vanished.

The kitchen seemed empty. Cold. Maudie was going. Maudie was gone?

She rang Jasmine and told her of Maudie’s plans. ‘Jasmine, she’s barely out of nappies.’

‘Let me get this right. Maudie applied to Harvard and failed to mention it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings. Wait till I tell Eve.’

‘I find it difficult to take in. It’s awful, actually.’

‘I sympathize. To have such a clever, determined daughter must be hell.’

That made her laugh.

Jasmine said, ‘Did you know that Maudie means “battle maid”?’

‘How on earth did you find that out?’

‘I commissioned research on names. I store stuff like that in the office database. It’s surprising how often it comes in useful.’

‘And you and Eve?’

‘Didn’t have to research those. I’m a sickly-scented flower and Eve was the first woman.’

Again, Lara laughed.

Jasmine became serious. ‘Maudie has to go, Mum. She was laying the ground when she decided to go to sixth-form college and leave Brightwells.’

‘I can’t help wishing to stave off the day.’

‘I see. It’s “Make me chaste, O Lord, but not yet.”’

Afterwards the phone rang and rang in the silent kitchen. For once, Lara did not pick it up for she knew it was likely to be Jane Hatfielde, a private client who had taken to ringing in the early mornings and evenings. ‘There are people who are quiet,’ she had explained to a much younger Maudie when she began her work, ‘but there are people who are noisy, and if they happen to be paying, they make themselves felt. It’s what happens.’

Young as she was, Maudie had an innate sense of natural justice. ‘But it shouldn’t be the fussers who get all the attention.’

‘That’s how it is.’

‘I’d fight them,’ she said. ‘But why do you have to work, Mum?’

‘I have to earn money because we have to look after ourselves. When you’re older, we’ll think about your future. I don’t want you to do –’

‘Do what, Mum?’

‘Do what I did.’

Flashback
.

Kneeling down in front of the chest, she opens the bottom drawer. Inside, wrapped in tissue paper, is the white crocheted shawl. The paper is becoming brittle, but the wool is still pliant and downy as she ruffles it between her fingers. She remembers how transparent she had felt as she had stowed it away, so paper thin with grief that people might look through her. She remembers, too, how she wept and trembled, and how her mind refused to accept that Louis no longer existed. She remembers Bill saying, ‘I will never forgive you,’ and waking one night to find he was no longer in the bed with her. She remembers going into Maudie’s room – still a baby, the only baby – and holding her.

Sitting down at the table, Lara dropped her head into her hands.

Maudie was cutting the umbilical cord.

This was how it felt to disengage.

Goodbye to supervising every breath a child took.

Goodbye to piecing together childish tales. The pick ’n’ mix of woe and joy.

Goodbye to sticking plasters on grazed knees, fingers and toes.

Don’t be stupid, she thought. All that had ceased some time ago.

It didn’t seem like that. And the feelings of loss were as sharp as they had ever been.

Into her mind stole an image of the shrub in the garden at Membury that had had flowers like tumbling ribbons. She had looked it up. Witch hazel,
Hamamelis mollis
. A plant hunter’s trophy smuggled back from China in
the 1870s. Twigs had been packed, no doubt, in earth and dampened canvas and cherished on the voyage home. Or set in glass planters (to shield them from the salt) and tended on the long, rolling sea passage. It was known as the Epiphany Tree because it was supposed to be at its very best at the time when the Magi had found the Christ child – the one at Membury had bloomed early – its yellow flowers symbolizing the gold they had brought, its scent (nature’s way of attracting the few pollinators around at this time of year) the frankincense, and its bitter bark the myrrh (which belonged to death).

Her hands tightened over her head.

The name on the phone fascia read ‘Saunderson’ and her pulse quickened with annoyance. She flicked it on. ‘Jasmine here.’

The voice at the other end – loud, male and angry – blared into her ear. Rowan Saunderson was livid about the piece in the evening paper. ‘How dare it suggest there’s no difference between Vegetalès’
new logo and, to quote, “any other common-or-garden one”?’ He ran out of breath and was forced to a halt. ‘The reason we hired the Branding Company was precisely to avoid this sort of situation. So get out there, earn your vast fee and sort it out.’

It was past nine o’clock. Jasmine was still in the office. Her head ached, her stomach rumbled. She anticipated a shower, the moment of stepping into it and the exquisite sensation of hot water pounding at her neck and shoulders.