Making Marion (22 page)

“I had no other way to contact you. Harriet wouldn't give me your telephone number.”

“That's because I didn't want you to contact me.”

“So what if something had happened? What if somebody got sick, or died? You can't just disappear without any means of getting in touch.”

“Harriet would have told me.”

My mother smiled, hesitant. “Would you mind if we found somewhere to sit down? Maybe get a cup of tea?”

“Has it?”

“Has what?”

“Has something happened?”

She shook her head. “No. Not really.”

“Then you don't need to stay. You've seen me. I'm fine. If you need somewhere to spend tonight then I can give you directions to a hotel. I have nothing to say to you and I don't want to hear anything you might want to say to me.”

“Ah, now, Marion. I've come all this way. Will you not even give me a cup of tea?”

With nowhere else to go, I reluctantly led her to my caravan after asking Jake to cover for me. I made tea, and tried to hide the trembling in my hands as I sliced cheese for sandwiches and buttered bread.

“How have you been?”

“Good, Ma. I've been great.”
Living without your continual putdowns and cruelty has been absolute heaven.

“So you work here?”

“Yes.” There was an awkward pause. I didn't want to fill it. This was not my doing. I spoke anyway: “How did you find me?”

“Your postcard was sent from Nottingham. And I found the photograph was missing. I knew you would have followed him here.”

“You knew he lived here?”

“Yes. It's where we met.”

Who was this woman in Ma's brown coat who spoke about my father? I stared at her. I was waiting for the sarcasm, the bitter cackle, the jabbing finger.

“What on earth is going on? Last time I mentioned Da you threw spaghetti at me.”

“I have been ill since you left.”

I waited.

“Worse than before. I was away for five months. The doctors there managed to sort out my medication. And I've had a lot of time to think, and talk to people. It helped me to see. I want you to come home.”

I squeezed my hands over my eyes, determined to keep a grip on myself. To remember who I was now. “This is my home.”

T
he rest of the day stretched out into a cringe-filled eternity. We circled each other with rigid small talk and, in my case, anger simmering just below the surface. I waited for an apology. I didn't want one – I wouldn't know how to deal with it. I feared I might explode if confronted with one. But how long could this false politeness continue with so much left unsaid? Was this it now? Did I just pretend twenty years of abuse never happened? Had my mother decided to love me? Did she accept responsibility for destroying my childhood? For the damage she caused that I still lived with every day?

I went to Fire Night, introduced my mother, found a spot on a bench next to Scarlett and ate a very large amount of chicken.

Valerie squinted at my mother. “Marion's mum! Wow. Marion, your mum came to visit – how cool is that? There are two billion mums in the world, and look, here's yours! Come and have a drink. Did you come all the way from Ireland? Did you come on a plane or a boat? Nearly twice as many people die every year from boats as from planes, but the plane is faster. Did you have a security search? Did a dog sniff your bag for explosives? Do you need a passport to come from Northern Ireland to England?”

My mother held up her hand. “Stop.”

Valerie stopped.

“Yes. A plane. Yes. No. No.”

Valerie nodded her head in response to my mother's answers.

“Well? Go on.”

“Oh! Okay. Does it really rain there every day? Marion says it's like a wet towel left on the bathroom floor, but Derry is the second rainiest city in the United Kingdom not the first; and is it fun being Marion's mum and did you really miss her?”

I ate another drumstick and tried to tune them out.

Ginger was horrified at the thought of my mother staying at a hotel. She offered her a bed for as long as she wanted it at the Hall. My mother refused, politely but firmly. She said the memories were too much. I made up a bed for her in the spare employee's caravan.

Three days later I still hadn't grown used to my mother's presence at the campsite. Or rather, the mother who didn't criticize, demean or ignore me. We remained cautious. I avoided spending any time alone with her and had still not ventured further than small talk, but it was just about working for now. I called Harriet, who confirmed that Ma had gone “bonkers in a bad way” after I had left, and spent several months in hospital again. According to my second cousin's wife, Tanya, the family had been declaring their Jane to be finally her old self again. At last those doctors had managed to get it right and get her sorted. It was a miracle. Nobody made the point that the old Jane hadn't actually been that great to start with. Small mercies.

On hearing about Scarlett's illness, Mum took upon herself the role of carer: cooking, cleaning, and helping with everyday tasks. She was sympathetic toward Grace and Valerie, baking them treats, fussing over them; reminding them if they needed anything, they had only to ask.

I seethed until my volcano of resentment could be contained no longer.

“Ma, I need Valerie on reception now. She can't eat a cooked breakfast and be on time for work.”

Valerie poured herself a glass of orange juice, freshly squeezed by my mother. “Ha, Marion. Your voice goes all Irishy when you talk to Jane.”

“Does it? That's nice.” I unclenched my teeth. “Ma, you are making Valerie late. Stop fussing. She can get her own breakfast.”

My mother failed to hear my rising anger, or chose to ignore it. “Well yes, she can. But why would she want to do that when I'm here to do it for her?”

“I don't know, Ma.” Here it came, spewing forth, boiling hot lava. “Did I want to do it when I was seven years old and you decided to lie in bed for three months? Or when I was eight, and nine, and ten, and, oh yes – you never made me breakfast once in eighteen years. You never made me breakfast, never cleaned it up afterwards for me and nine times out of ten you didn't even bother to make sure there was anything in the house to even make a breakfast! I went to school hungry day after day after day when you should have
been there to do it for me
. And what about lunch, and supper and every other meal of my life? What about my birthday? Were you there to do it then? Or Christmas? I starved because of you. I actually starved.”

I think the ducks on the far side of the lake might have heard me.

“And now, here you are, in my campsite, frying bacon in your best brown coat for a grown woman you barely know who has plenty of others to take care of her!”

She stopped cooking, but stood still facing the stove, a steel rod in her back. “I didn't know you liked bacon.”

That was when I knew. There would be no reckoning. No apology. No great heart-to-heart where it all got laid out on the table and Ma, weeping with remorse, finally admitted that yes, she had screwed me up as well as my childhood and wrongfully taken out her bitter rage on an innocent, helpless child. That she had ensured I grew up, not without a mother, but, worse, with a cruel, unloving mother who made me believe I had killed my own da. I would never hear her say she got it wrong. I had better suck it up, get used to it and get on with my life. Perhaps I would even learn to be grateful for the chipped, limping skeleton of a relationship she held out to me now.

I also knew this: I had lived for nine months without bitterness, unhealthy anger or twisty, warped emotions, and I was not going to allow her invasion to end that.

I went to work.

The following evening, Scarlett strolled by on my mother's arm and invited me back to her caravan for champagne. I walked back with them, trying not to let my frustration show at the slow pace, wondering what on earth we had to celebrate. Was Samuel going to be there? Had Scarlett finally said yes?

Grace was already waiting, picking at the ends of her hair in a pretence at nonchalance. Valerie had no concept of feigning indifference; she bounced up and down on the sofa while Samuel, who
was
there, uncorked a bottle.

When we had all been handed a glass, Scarlett coughed to get everybody's attention. She picked up an envelope from the table and held it out to Grace.

Grace frowned, puzzled, as she took the envelope.

Valerie called, “Open it up, Grace – faster! What is it?”

Grace pulled out a thin sheet of A4 paper. Her puzzlement transformed into shock, her mouth dropping open. She gazed at the paper, and up at Scarlett, and back at the paper.

“Tell us what it is.” Valerie waved her glass, splashing champagne onto the carpet.

Scarlett smiled, her face glowing, and for a moment she no longer looked like a woman ravaged by illness and brain tentacles. She must have shone that way the first time she ever held her daughter, for she couldn't have displayed her love any clearer than in that moment.

“Grace sold her first pair of shoes.”

“What?” Valerie slopped more champagne. “Who? Where? How? How much money did you get, Grace?”

It took a while and a lot of Samuel's promptings and reminders, but Scarlett managed to tell us. She had asked Erica to look at Grace's designs, and of course Erica had been enchanted. She had taken a dozen pairs to her office, and her manager had agreed to trial them in the Nottingham store. That was on Wednesday. The first pair had sold by Thursday lunchtime. For three figures. The manager wanted more.

It was almost a perfect evening. We drank champagne and ate cheesecake on the veranda, serenaded by the spring crickets and the bubbling of the brook. Grace got her half-finished shoes out for us to have a fashion parade, up and down the decking. We laughed, and dreamed about Grace's future world domination, when every fashion icon from pop stars to royalty would do anything to get their feet into the latest Grace Obermann.

That was the point in the evening when things got complicated.

“I'm not calling myself Grace Obermann, Mum. I'm going to be Grace Tynedale.”

Scarlett dropped her glass, which splintered on the decking, scattering across the boards. Samuel moved to pick up the pieces while my mother went inside to find a brush. Grace and Scarlett were twin statues in the deepening dusk.

“Don't freak out, okay? This is important to me. Where do you think I Iearned how to make shoes? And all the stuff. I couldn't have afforded tools and a bench. Do you know how much silk costs?” She took a deep breath, steadying herself.

Scarlett was shaking her head. “How did I not see that? How could I not have known?” She snorted. “I thought you'd run off to meet some man. And you did. But that man?”

Grace stood up, tipping her chair over. “I knew you wouldn't understand. That's why I didn't tell you. I have a right to know him! He's part of me.”

“Oh, honey, you don't know the half of it.”

“Yes, I do. I know he went to prison and I know why. It was sixteen years ago. He's changed now. He served his time. He paid his debt.”

“Really? And what about the debt owed a young girl in a foreign country with no family, no money comin' in and his baby growin' inside of her? He left me – not once, but twice. And the second time he left, he left you too. Underneath all that flash and charm he is a liar, and a loser, and a weak, weak man. He will break your heart, Grace. Please don't let him.”

Grace was stark white now, tight with anger. “He taught me this.” She jerked one of her shoes, a sky-blue court shoe covered in white clouds with a rainbow tassel. “He gave me this. And how can I not love him? Pretty soon he'll be the only parent I have.” She began to cry. “Nobody else will ever love me like you do, except maybe him. I'm scared, Mum. Who will I belong to when you're gone?”

Scarlett crumpled. She opened up her frail arms, unable to lift the left one higher than her waist. Grace fell into her lap, and the rest of us stepped inside, leaving shards of broken glass still sparkling at their feet.

After a while Scarlett got too cold to stay outside. She and Grace sat on the sofa, arms wrapped tightly around each other, twin streaks of mascara running down each face.

“Well, there you go, folks,” Scarlett drawled. “You can always trust an Obermann-Tynedale to bring a bang to the party. Anyone else with a bomb to drop before I turn in?”

Samuel twisted his head around from where he was washing up the cheesecake plates. “I don't suppose this would be a good time to ask you to marry me?”

“Well, heck, Samuel, it seems like as good a time as any.” She rolled her eyes. “Come on then, I'm tired. Get it over with.”

Samuel stood for a moment dripping soapsuds onto the kitchen floor. Scarlett sighed, and made as if to get up. He took one easy lope across the caravan and gently pushed her back down onto the sofa.

“Don't you dare.” He kneeled down in front of her, and I had to look away, his expression of tenderness was so raw, so open. “I have loved you for twenty-one years. I loved you when you gave your heart to another man, even though I knew he would not treat it as you deserved. I loved you when you struggled alone to raise a child and build the Peace and Pigs after you dared to trust him again, and he wounded you once more. And when you swore never to love a man like that again, I loved you still. You are the single most beautiful, remarkable, strongest, wisest, kindest woman I have ever known. The only woman I have ever wanted. I will love you
whether you like it or not until the day I die. And, God willing, for an eternity after that. And I will love your wonderful daughters as if they were my own. Now come on, girl. You know I am too old and too ugly to spin you a line or say what I don't mean. Scarlett Obermann? Stop being so darned proud and marry me.”

Scarlett blushed like a young girl. She nodded her head, and the night was perfect once more.

 

I had been looking through the Peace and Pigs' books. I felt worried. Christmas had helped, and Valentine's Day; I had raised prices as high as I thought seemed fair, but it wasn't enough. We needed a long-term, sustainable way to boost income, otherwise the holiday park would not be able to survive. The big question was still whether or not it needed to. Or whether, without Scarlett, anyone would want that.

I couldn't talk to Valerie about it. She loved the campsite, as she did everything she cared about, with a purity of strength and commitment most people would not be capable of feeling. Her heart was here, and I feared the pain of losing Scarlett would be the most she could bear for a long time. I spoke to Jake.

“Will you want to carry on here?”

Jake was unloading supplies into the back room. He ripped open a box of toilet rolls and began unpacking them. “If the Pigs is still a going concern, I'll stay.”

“But?”

“I'm not up for spending the next year stressing out, watching the debt soar, desperately trying to find ways to scrabble a bit more cash together until eventually we have to give up and let the creditors move in.”

“Nice thought.”

“I'm being realistic. You've seen the figures.”

I kicked a box. “I hate Fisher.”

Jake unpacked the box.

I relented a little. “No, I don't really. But I hate what he's done. I want to go round to his house and yell in his face, make him
understand what it will do to Valerie and Grace. That because of him Scarlett is having to spend her last months worrying about where her children are going to live after she's gone.”

“Why don't you then?”

“What? You think I should go round and see Fisher?”

“Can't do any harm.”

“Will you come with me?”

“I suppose so,” he sighed. “So long as you don't yell in his face.”

I spent the rest of the afternoon compiling a document outlining why the rent rise was unreasonable, and how much we could afford to pay to stay viable as a business. I made a plan, detailing the running of the campsite for the next year, and how, if he could introduce the rent increase gradually over a three-year period, we stood a chance of making it work. I even created a spreadsheet. A tiny glimmer of business-womany hope began to grow.