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Authors: Kate Long

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BOOK: Mothers & Daughters
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I dragged in a patio chair to work on, unfurled three bin bags (Keep, Throw, Charity Shop), and set to on the first box. On the top were bundles of bone-handled cutlery wrapped in my mother's fancy tablecloths. I thought how many hours she'd worked at those cloths, how she'd taught me all the stitches one after another, stem-stitch and satin- and chain-stitch and French knots, separating lengths of embroidery thread and laying them across the arm of the sofa. Her Singer box of trimmings, braid and ribbon was in the second layer down, along with a Tupperware container of sewing-machine accessories, and her embroidery hoops I was always so afraid of cracking. Two nickel-plated candlesticks in the shape of leaping deer were next – they'd sat on the box-room mantel for as many years as I could remember – and then a plastic bag of recipe books, most of them fat with clippings from magazines and packet-sides. I let a page fall open at random:
Date Delights
said the article heading, above a marginal advert for Nostroline nasal spray. Might I, one day, be moved to cook a Date Delight? Or Cornflour Foam, Cheese-and-Rice Shape? It seemed unlikely. But to consign all her work to the wheeliebin was unthinkable.

Further down the box there was a green dragon tea service, incomplete but lovely to see again, and also a Lustreware fruit bowl with a great crack through the centre. I held the bowl in my hands for a while, turning it this way and that to gauge how visible the damage really was. Too visible, I decided, but even then I couldn't bring myself to put it in the throwaway pile. That bowl had been on our sideboard throughout my childhood. I could see my mother dusting it now.

And then, towards the bottom of the box, was real treasure: two yellow Kodak envelopes. That meant two virgin batches of photographs, unviewed and uncatalogued. My heart gave a little jolt of anticipation. Another night where I'd be able to get the albums out and go through them, refining our family story.

The prints, when I opened the flap, were an out-of-fashion size, mean and small by today's standards. They weren't especially old ones, but then I wouldn't have expected them to be. Pictures of my girlhood were few and far between.

This first set seemed to be of a family barbecue in the garden here, with another, more random selection towards the back of the pile. Eagerly I pushed the shed door further open to let more light in, and settled myself against the work bench.

Phil's picture was at the front, a Phil with thicker hair and a sharper jaw-line, but the same easy, charming smile. ‘Git,' I told him, and the word hung satisfyingly in the air for a moment. But even just speaking that one syllable started a little hot fizz in the middle of my chest. Thinking of your ex is like scratching eczema, a woman on
Oprah
once said. Let yourself get started, and you'll end up a terrible mess.

I slid the picture away to uncover instead a bright-eyed Dad with a very young Jaz perched on his knee. What age was she there? I could only dimly remember the hair-in-plaits phase; she was usually too impatient for anything other than a light
brushing. Knowing Jaz, she'd have had those ribbons off minutes after the picture was taken.

The next photograph fixed the date more clearly, because it was of Mum, which had to mean pre-1986. And then it clicked: my thirtieth birthday. Which made Jaz five, Mum about to be diagnosed. Another year on and she'd be dead. I held the photo up to peer more closely. What I was looking for, I suppose, was whether there was anything in her face to show that she knew. Her eyes were slits against the sun, her mouth turned down at the corners. There was still no getting past that expression.

I put her picture to the back and carried on. More pictures of the party, the lawn in its pre-pond days, the kitchen before we had it extended, Dad actually lifting Jaz right up and swinging her round. And here was my very best friend Eileen – good God, Eileen! – raising a glass and obviously in the middle of saying something. ‘Oh, I miss you,' I said, ‘like you wouldn't believe. What I could tell you if you were still here.'
I know
, she went.
It's a bugger
.

I sat for a minute, holding the pack and thinking how fast twenty years can go. Some days I feel all ages and no age, as though I'm hovering over time, somehow. I can be back at school in a blink, with everyone I knew and all the same jokes and worries and obsessions. Astonishing how you can be the girl at the leavers' assembly – winking at your pals while the Headmistress drones on about the world awaiting you – and also the grandmother sitting on your own in a cramped shed sorting through the dregs of your dad's life.
Failure is a natural part of existence
(I could actually hear old Miss Wilson saying it, see the rope of beads swinging from her bosom),
but it's how we deal with failure that matters
. It's the only line of hers that's stuck; that and the one about strangers judging you by your fingernails. I always hear her voice when I'm rooting for an emery
board. Eileen used to do a very good impression of Miss Wilson.

The packet began to slide off my knee, and that brought me back to myself.
Get your skates on
, said Eileen.

The last photo of the batch was me with Phil, our arms round each other. I had my hair in a bob with a side-swept fringe, and I was wearing extraordinary blue eye-shadow. Phil was puckering his lips as if for a kiss.

A slight surface unevenness caught the light and made me turn the print over:
Pretty Woman
, my dad had written, in his loopy hand. I never labelled my photographs, so seeing Dad's caption was a shock, like suddenly hearing his voice in the shed with me. Hastily I went back and flicked through to check for other hidden messages, but there was nothing more, which left me feeling both disappointed and relieved. What might he have written on the back of Phil's? I didn't want to imagine.

The next batch proved to be a strange selection: Jaz, older, about ten, on a grey horse (when had Jaz ever been on a horse?); two shots of a frog out of focus; a sunset; Jaz's best friend Natalie astride a gate, balancing on a milestone, hanging by her hands from a tree, pulling a nasty face; Jaz throwing herself about in a field; a black dog tied to the post of a rotary clothes-line; a yellow toadstool. ‘Funny girl,' I said to the one of her dancing. ‘What were you up to there?' As I went through the set again, I wondered whether Jaz had ever felt the way I did about growing up, or whether she saw her childhood as a distinct period which was now closed, a life compartmentalised into School, University, Before Matty and after. Pre-Infidelity, Post-Infidelity.

It struck me that I could call Jaz this evening and tell her about finding them. ‘Shall I bring them round?' I could say. Or, ‘Do you fancy popping over?' Important, this, because since the
nursery incident she'd been too busy to see me. I knew the drill: left her alone, stayed occupied, kept off the phone, even though I missed Matty like hell. You have to give Jaz space, and then you have to supply her with an opening. It's the way she's always been.

I slid the photos back, put the envelope to one side, and carried on sorting.

The banging started as I was unrolling a teacloth of spoons. It wasn't clear at first what the noise was or even where it was happening. Only when I stepped out of the shed did I understand it was coming from the front of my own house. Thumping, violent thumping, as though someone was trying to break in. What the hell was going on? I ran up the path, rounded the corner, then stood and stared.

A big fat woman was kicking the bottom panel of my door.

No, not a fat woman: a pregnant one. Dorothy Wynne's grand-daughter, Alice.

Kicking because her arms were full of a limp child.

‘It's Libby!' she shouted when she saw me. ‘Something's wrong.'

I ran to open up, and she stumbled over the threshold and laid the infant girl down in the middle of the hall carpet.

‘What's happened?'

‘I don't know what to do,' she said in a rush. ‘I went to wake her up from her nap two minutes ago and she wouldn't come round; she was all, like she is now, floppy, wouldn't open her eyes, and she's so hot. Look at her, she's burning up, she's red.'

The little girl's lips were parted and her eyelids closed but fluttery. Her cheeks were scarlet patches, as though someone had slapped her.

‘Get her top off,' I said. I was thinking, We need to look for a rash.

Alice unzipped the little fleece and dragged it, with T-shirt
and vest, up over Libby's face while I fed her arms through the sleeves. The child was completely unresisting. Her head lolled back like a baby's. ‘How long's she been like this?'

‘She was like it when I went to wake her. I went up and she was . . . her eyelids were all fluttery.'

‘What about before?'

‘Fine, OK, just normal.'

‘Strip her completely,' I said. ‘Underwear and all.'

There was a clattering on the step. When I looked up it was Mrs Wynne, leaning against the jamb with her stick. She was trembling and panting, and normally I'd have leaped up to usher her onto a seat. But not right now. Instead I bolted upstairs for Matty's ear thermometer.
Be working
, I told it,
be working
. The relief when I heard it beep and the digital panel lit up.

When I got back down, Alice had started to weep with fright. I could see at once, though, that the little girl's limbs and torso were white and unmarked. ‘Shut the front door and take your grandma through to the lounge,' I said, because I could see Alice was in no state to hold a thermometer steady.

I helped her to her feet, and in the brief space the two women were out of the hall, I managed to take a reading. Libby's temperature was high, but not dramatically. I felt her tummy, and it was soft.

‘What do you think?' said Alice from behind me.

‘I think I've been here before. How old's Libby?'

‘Five.'

‘Jaz was younger, but I'm pretty sure it's the same. Listen, was Libby maybe a bit cooked? She'd plenty of layers on. Was her room very warm? I know your grandma likes the heating high.'

Alice gave a nervous giggle. ‘Sweltering.'

‘Then I suspect,' I said cautiously, ‘it's what they call a febrile convulsion. If young children get too hot they can have these
mini-fits; Jaz had a couple of similar dos when she was tiny. It looks scary, but it soon passes off.'

‘Does that mean she's going to be OK?'

‘You stay with her and talk to her while I get some warm water.'

I brought back two clean towels, plus a plastic bucket of Matty's which had been the first container to hand, and set to work wiping Libby down. ‘You too,' I said to Alice. ‘It'll cool her gently.'

Within moments, Libby had started to whimper, and then cry, a normal, blessed noise. Her mother's face crumpled with relief. ‘Oh, sweetheart, sweetheart, shush shush, Mummy's here. I'm here, you're all right.' She scooped the naked child up and started to rock her.

‘Obviously she still needs checking over, for your peace of mind as much as anything.'

‘Yes, yes,' said Alice.

‘Shall I call the surgery for you? I can run you down there, too, although actually a walk in the fresh air might perk her up. Do you want to pop her vest back on now? I'll go call the doctor's, and have a word with your grandma—'

‘I'll do anything,' Alice broke in, ‘if she's OK. Anything, do you know what I mean? If she's all right, if she's just all right.'

‘Yes,' I said.

I left her rocking and went to phone the GP.

It was dropping dark by the time I got back from the surgery. It hadn't seemed right to send Alice on her own, and Mrs Wynne wasn't up to the job. ‘Thank you, oh, thank you,' Alice kept saying, the way you do when you've been frightened out of your wits and then someone gives you the all-clear.

I stepped into the hall but I didn't switch the light on. I went and sat on the stairs and contemplated the stained-glass
panels in the door. The colours at this time of day were muted and dusky, the dimples and surface imperfections highlighted silver by a porch lamp on the house opposite. Jaz used to trace the lines of lead with her fingertips while I was doing her coat up, handing over her schoolbag, nagging her to be careful crossing the road. A hundred thousand years ago.

‘You were so calm,' Alice had said afterwards. And she'd put her hand to her pregnant belly and sighed, as though the weight of the world was across her young frame. ‘You just knew what to do, and there I was flapping about in a panic. I suppose it gets easier, does it?'

In the gloom of the hallway I leaned my arm against the stair-gate and remembered the other times Jaz was ill: a dash up to hospital when she caught a chest infection at four weeks; chicken pox that revealed itself on the first day of a holiday; nights up with croup; a gash from a knife we'd told her not to touch; the Bad Time. I thought of a moment during delivery when the midwife announced the baby was in distress and they'd have to induce. And years later, that awful morning I went into her bedroom to wake her and she wasn't there.

Which was when the phone rang, out of the gloom. I got down off the step and picked up the receiver. It was Jaz.

‘I tried calling earlier.'

‘Ah.'

‘But you were out,' she said, her tone accusing.

‘That's right.'

‘It was your afternoon off. I thought you'd be home.'

Headlamps passed. I thought of Alice, crouched here in this hall, rocking. ‘There was a mini-crisis next door and I got involved.'

‘Trust you, Mum.'

‘Can I help it if people see me as calm and competent?'

She laughed, but not unkindly. ‘Talking of crises,' she said.

‘Do you want me to look after Matty?' I asked, my heart doing a giant leap.

‘Yeah, if you could. I've lost a bloody filling and I need to get it sorted quick, but there aren't any spaces at nursery. They're so inflexible at that place, which is ridiculous when you think how much it costs.'

BOOK: Mothers & Daughters
11.11Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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