Second Chance (15 page)

My mother's life torn to shreds.

But why, if she'd been set on obliterating all memory of her marriage, had she preserved this confetti-like detritus? That night, when it was almost midnight, it seemed like a message from her. What was she trying to tell me? It was like the last unfinished sentence of her letter.
And now I want to tell you that..
.

I shut the box and put it back in the cupboard with the others.

And now I want to tell you that... you must live life to the full. Not give up on it as I did
.

Perhaps that had been her last message to me. That certainly seemed the message of the third cardboard box.

I was awake for hours, almost pleased to be awake grieving for my mother. I'd always been a dutiful daughter, I knew that, but hadn't been as loving as she'd deserved. From the time I was sixteen or seventeen, there'd been a distance between us; perhaps I'd never quite been able to forgive her for the wretched years of my childhood.

Yet, I'd always known that she'd suffered far more than I had, so why had I been so hard? How, for instance, had I been able to justify going away to university, leaving her alone in this isolated cottage? I could have gone to the nearer college at Aberystwyth so that I'd have been able to come home more often. No, I'd wanted to break away, to be completely free. I'd been utterly selfish. Not that she was as helpless as she'd once been. She had a job as dinner lady in the village school by this time, which meant she had a certain amount of contact with others. I know she loved the children, especially the naughty ones, used to tell me stories about them in her Sunday letters. Perhaps my absence had forced her to find other interests.

In this way I spent most of the night, blaming myself, defending myself, remembering the past.

At last, though, I fell asleep and had a dream about her. She was dressed in the cap and gown I'd had to hire for my graduation, she was standing in front of a full-length mirror admiring herself and smiling. At last she turned round to me and said, ‘I'm glad I'm not fat and ugly like the other mothers. Look at my feet. Aren't they slim and beautiful? I've always wanted red court shoes.'

It was a consoling dream, though very short. She had come to Cardiff for my graduation, and though she hadn't, as far as I can remember, tried on my cap and gown, she had been happy. And many years afterwards I had bought her red court shoes.

It was too late to make amends for my shortcomings, so I had to take what comfort I could from that vivid snatch of dream. She had certainly loved those shoes.

I suppose the dream came because I needed it; needed the reminder that there had been good times.

During my first years at grammar school, as soon as I'd got to know the town, we used to go shopping every Saturday afternoon. She had a little money by this time as she was working for Mrs Bevan, and a great desire for what she called ‘finery', though this might turn out to be only a quarter of a yard of veiling for a hat, or some violet eyeshadow.

It was the late sixties, early seventies – Biba time – and if you couldn't get to London, dressy clothes from antique shops were all the rage. There was no antique shop in Abernon and my mother wouldn't have been able to afford the prices even if there had been, but Mrs Bevan had several old coats and dresses which she was delighted for my mother to have. After all, Mr Bevan, as his wife never failed to remind us, had been ‘in business', so that her clothes had always been expensive, acquired from catalogues from the very best London stores – Barkers, Derry and Toms, Pontings. Mrs Bevan would repeat the names like a rosary. The clothes were of beautiful soft material and were also rather elegant, I think, and though my mother wasn't a great needlewoman, she had a flair for adapting these twenties and thirties garments; a wide, shiny, patent leather belt and some large safety-pins would sometimes be enough for their transformation into what she – and I – considered the height of chic.

When we went out on a Saturday, she wore a lot of white face powder and hat and gloves and I used to be very gratified by the admiring, or perhaps startled looks that people gave her. I always wore my navy-blue school coat, bought for me, with ample room for growth, by my Auntie Jane – ‘the very best quality, Katie' – though my mother assured me that I should inherit some of her smartest clothes as soon as I got ‘a figure'.

Not that she had much of a figure, but she was small and slim and looked very young. ‘People will think we're sisters,' she used to say when she caught sight of us in a shop window.

There were two smart dress shops in town and we would go to them in turn, I being expected to do all the talking. ‘We're looking for a wedding-outfit,' is what I'd usually say. ‘Something rather special.' Some of the haughty-faced assistants had heard this many times so that they weren't over-eager to help us, but in fact we preferred searching through the racks for ourselves. ‘We'll try these on, please,' I'd say, after a happy half-hour.

‘Very well, madam.' They were always icily polite.

My mother would try on the most expensive dresses and suits in the shop, without, of course, the slightest intention of buying. The smallest sizes fitted her perfectly. Sometimes she was so pleased with the way she looked that she'd walk out of the dressing room to admire herself in a larger mirror in the showroom.

‘You'll never find anything to suit you better,' an assistant might say, but without hope of a sale. They treated us quite well; they knew we weren't going to buy, but they also realised we were fairly decorative and entirely harmless; that I would hang every garment back in its rightful place, thank them and assure them of our return.

I've often been asked by various interviewers whether there's any tradition of acting in my family. ‘No. Members of my family are mostly farmers and shopkeepers,' I tell them.

It's only now I realise what a consummate actor my mother was, how much she could convey without speaking a word. Perhaps the non-speaking was part of the role. I think she aimed at being a woman of mystery and romance and on those Saturday afternoons she achieved that. Her clothes were eccentric, but expensive; she wore French perfume – sprayed on from the make-up department of the store, yes, but not until she'd tested several sorts. The purchases she did eventually make might only cost pence, a slip of a scarf or an artificial rose, but they were as carefully chosen as any theatre props.

It's only now I realise that the pleasure she got from my career was at least partly from knowing that what talent I had, had been inherited from her. So that when our shopping sprees came to an end when I was fifteen or sixteen, she was able to accept it readily, knowing that, from then on, I was attending a Saturday drama class which she considered much more important.

We'd still go to the September hiring fair together, a night when there was a special late bus back to the village. No one else took their mother with them to the fair, but no one else had such a fun-loving, young-looking mother. I often felt she was far younger than I was; more excited, more exuberant, more frightened of height and speed and noise. My friends thought she was ‘brilliant' – that was the in word, then. She didn't say much, but laughed and shrieked a great deal – giving, I realise now, a thoroughly different performance.

She was always an attractive woman, but I'd almost forgotten how very pretty she was when she was young. At certain times, when things were going well, I think she was beautiful.

On the morning of her funeral, I got up determined to remember the happy times, the special meals she'd make for birthdays and holidays, the surprise neither of us could hide when cakes rose and puddings set as they were supposed to. Culinary success for my mother was always a surprise, failure was normal, but tasted surprisingly good. She didn't believe that anyone could manage to get two courses right for any meal. We only attempted one; egg and chips for lunch and apple crumble for supper was the sort of menu we aimed at, with bread and butter if we were still hungry.

When I was about thirteen, my class at school was taught to make meringues, and one Sunday morning I decided to demonstrate this new skill, but with disastrous results. Instead of the crisp little confections I'd whisked and beaten so hard for, there were only sticky yellow splodges like chicken messes at the bottom on the baking tin, which we scraped out with teaspoons and tried, but failed, to eat. For years the word meringue was our synonym for failure, ‘the marriage turned out a total meringue,' reducing us both to fits of schoolgirl laughter... We had been close, of course we had.

At ten fifteen I was still sitting at the table in my nightdress, having done nothing but feed Arthur. I felt completely separated from reality. There was a great deal happening inside my head, but it didn't seem to have any connection with the funeral.

It was a phone call from Grace which brought me back to the present. ‘Is there anything I can do? Would it help if Rhydian dropped me at your place so that I'd be with you when the car comes for you? I honestly don't like to think of you being on your own.'

‘I think Paul is going to be here, Grace. But what car is coming for me?'

‘The undertaker's car will be fetching you.'

‘I don't think I arranged that, did I?'

‘I phoned them just to make doubly sure of everything, I hope you don't mind. And they said you'd been very vague. Goodness, that's only natural. They were going to phone you again, but I thought I'd save you that.'

‘Thank you, Grace. I must go and get dressed now. And have a cup of tea.'

A nervous silence. ‘You're still not ready? I think I'd better come over. I'll be with you in fifteen minutes.'

She must think I'm buckling under the strain, that I'm some sort of weakling.

I spend ten minutes over tea and toast. I'm not a weakling, Grace. Three minutes for make-up, three minutes for costume, and even without a hat, I'm in the part, my lines rock-solid. Is this reality? I'm not sure.

There's no sign of Paul.

By the time Rhydian and Grace drive up, I'm ready for them; Gucci suit, Prada shoes and handbag, a double layer of Elizabeth Arden's matte foundation, miel dor
´
e, Rubenstein lip-line, sable rose, black eyeliner, pewter eyeshadow, both Steiner, with a black georgette scarf – property of Miriam Rivers – round my head.

The funeral car draws up behind Rhydian's.

‘Do we need to be at the chapel so early?' I ask Grace. ‘I think I'll give Paul another ten minutes. Would you like to come in and have a cup of tea?'

‘No time for that, love. We'll go, now we know you're all right.'

‘I knew you'd be all right,' Rhydian muttered from the car, ‘but it's easier not to argue. We dropped Bleddyn and Siwan at the chapel so we'd better go along and join them.' I could read nothing in his funeral-dark eyes.

I stood watching the two large cars, one shiny, one mud-spattered, manoeuvring to change positions in the narrow lane; it looked like a strange courtship, advance and withdrawal, advance, withdrawal. Grace wound down her window to say something to the driver of the funeral car, probably that he was on no account to let me wait for more than five minutes.

As soon as Rhydian's car leaves, Lorna arrives pushing her bike. ‘I'll be finished before long,' she says cheerfully. ‘I'll see you in the vestry.' She hands me a letter from Annabel – oh God – which I put in my handbag.

‘I think you ought to go now,' she says, ‘or people will think you're making an entrance.'

‘I'm waiting for Paul,' I tell her.

‘Don't hang about any more,' she says. ‘You should be there before the coffin arrives. Off you go.'

She notices how I flinch and gives me a hearty hug. ‘Your poor mam died last Sunday. Today isn't important. It's just something you've got to go through, that's all.'

‘Just something to go through,' I'll tell myself. ‘Just another part to play.'

I'm in the chapel at a quarter to eleven and it's already full. I sit next to George Williams in the front pew. I don't bow my head, pretending or even attempting to pray, because I don't believe in prayer and neither did my mother. I'm soothed by the atmosphere of the little chapel though; the whitewashed walls and the plain glass windows. I seem quite pleased, somehow, that some people have Kept the Faith. Perhaps attempts to worship a man, kinder and more forgiving than any other before or since is to be admired, however much false sanctity and hypocrisy goes with it.

I wish there was some marvellous music, St Matthew's Passion, from some famous organ. No, I don't. This anthem played inexpertly on this small organ is more than enough to be going on with. I'm aware that listening to the beautiful, craggy language of Bishop Morgan's Bible will be comforting and enriching; it will be Lewis Owen's halting words that will be unbearably moving. Services in Welsh Congregational chapels are altogether too personal, too demanding. Roman Catholics and Anglicans with their ritualised responses have it easy.

‘Just something to go through.' I hang on to Lorna's words as I listen to the red-haired boy in the pulpit trying to say something relevant and true about my mother. Who is dead. He seems certain that she has lived the good life and fought the good fight and begs the congregation to learn from her example. So far, so predictable. Now he's faltering, needing a prompt. No, this is an ad lib, he's out of his text. ‘I hardly knew her. But every time I met her I was aware of two things: the pain in her eyes; and the love.'