Unbecoming (16 page)

Katie peeled it from the wall and turned the photo over, but there was nothing on the back – no name, no date, no clue.

‘Robert took it,’ Mary told her. ‘Jack was sad it wasn’t him I was posing for, but you can’t know one person for ever, can you? Now then, remind me what we’re doing in here again.’

‘Suitcase?’

‘Ah, yes.’ Mary pulled open a drawer and rummaged through. It appeared to be full of gardening things – packets of seeds, a ball of twine, a bundle of wooden sticks, several brown paper bags neatly folded, a single leather glove. ‘Not in here.’ She shut the drawer and opened the cupboard above and peered in. ‘Is this what we’re looking for?’

It was a battered overnight case in red leather. Katie pulled it out of the cupboard and laid it on the bench.

‘It has a silk lining,’ Mary said. ‘A pocket for an alarm clock and elasticated loops for a bottle of perfume or travel shampoo. There’s plenty of room for a change of clothes, a facecloth and makeup.’

She sounded as if she was reeling off the original advert. ‘What’s inside now, Mary? Anything?’

‘I wanted glamour,’ Mary said, ignoring Katie and lovingly wiping dust off the case. ‘I wanted a place in London with big bright rooms and gilded mirrors that reflected the light. I wanted plush white
sofas and a chandelier. I wanted a different life from my sister. Pat had a housecoat in quilted nylon. She used to make rags from old sheets and tie them to her feet to polish the lino. She used to darn socks and alter clothes with pin tucks and pleats and gathers.’ Mary leaned over the case as if the memories weighed too much. ‘I took this case when I left. It was a present from my father years before. He was always buying me gifts, though he stopped all that when the baby came.’ She tapped it with a finger. ‘I wrote letters to Pat every day, and – do you know? – she never replied. I thought perhaps she was throwing them away, but she saved every single one.’

‘Is that what’s in the suitcase, Mary? Your letters to Pat?’

She nodded very slowly. ‘And other special things.’

‘Shall we open it?’

‘If you like.’ She looked up at Katie, her eyes full of hope. ‘I expect you’ll know what to do with it all.’

Mary sits at a table in the corner of the staff canteen and waits for the new girl (Joan, is it?) to register what she's just said.

‘A baby?'

Mary nods, tries to smile. ‘Yes, nine weeks ago.'

‘And you did
what
with her?'

‘I relinquished care and responsibility to my sister Patricia and her husband Lionel and have no further claim.'

Second time round, the words hold the same foreboding. Mary feels as if she's placed a funeral brochure on the table amongst the tea cups.

‘Blimey.' Joan gives Mary's hand a small and sorry stroke. ‘I'd never have guessed.'

‘I send letters,' Mary says. ‘And each Friday I send money.'

‘You must miss her though?'

Every minute of every hour
, Mary wants to say.
And nothing fills the gap. It's as if my life has stopped, as if there's an invisible tie that binds me to a child I fear I may never see again
. What she actually says, however, is, ‘Well, it helps to know she's in such good hands. Lionel's a friend of our father, a little older than my sister. He's a good man, and marriage suited them both. Pat will make a wonderful mother. She's very sensible.'

Pat always turns out lights and locks the door at night. She
understands how to get the washing line to stay up with the clothes prop and what halibut oil is for and how to administer it. Both of these arts escape Mary. In fact, if she really thinks about it, the list of things Pat's capable of is endless. The child will flourish, Mary must keep telling herself this.

‘There was always cake for tea,' Mary says, ‘all the way through the war.'

Joan grins. ‘Nothing like cake in a crisis.'

‘And it's comforting to know that if the baby gets a fever, Pat'll be able to tell if it's the kind that requires a doctor, or the kind that needs putting to bed with wintergreen and eucalyptus. I'd probably just put the poor thing in a cot with a hot water-bottle and hope for the best.' Mary tries to laugh, but it comes out like a strangled cough.

‘And can you visit whenever you like?'

‘I'm letting them settle. My sister only just got married and so this is all very new for her. I'll go up at spring bank holiday, I expect.'

Mary swirls the dregs of tea round her cup and gulps the last of it down, tries to swallow the doubt along with it. Despite all the careful negotiations, all the wording gone over and over, the signatures, the promises – not a word! Pat, who was always so fastidious about keeping in touch, about thank you cards and gracious little notes to shopkeepers, has not replied to a single letter.

‘And tell me,' Joan says darkly. ‘Most girls would have taken something. I know at least two who have. They get a bottle from the chemist and nothing's said.' She leans in closer. ‘Didn't you think you might do that?'

‘Only at the very beginning. Not really.'

A pang of fear for the child strikes Mary again – like a wound in
her chest, something primal that makes her want to run screaming from the table and go and find her daughter and snatch her back.

‘Well, I think you're very brave.' Joan pushes her plate of chips closer and gestures that Mary help herself. ‘Let's cheer ourselves up before we get back to the grind, shall we?'

The monotony of working in a factory canteen doesn't help – the scraping and chopping, the heat of the kitchen and the washing of pans, the mixing and stirring, the tedium of it all – it gives too much space for thinking. Mary tells herself she deserves it. What else had she expected? She has no qualifications, no talents, never passed the typing course, never did understand shorthand. Pat was right all along – she'll come to no good.

She tries to do her tasks without her mind being present, her real self buried somewhere deep down, like a hibernating thing. But every now and then she thinks of Caroline and wonders what she is doing
right now, this very minute
and it makes her stop in peculiar places and have to breathe very slowly and deeply. Sometimes she even hears a voice inside her head reaffirming what she suspects already, that her life is going to be exactly like this for ever. This is all there is, a kind of never-ending sadness, broken only by moments of sheer terror.

She tries to pull herself together, tries to blame it on lack of vitamins and boredom. She makes an effort to vary her routine, maybe a cup of tea with Joan at lunch time, or a bit of supper. Sometimes she attempts to surprise herself by going to see a film on the way home from work. But mostly, she just goes back to the bedsit and writes her daily letter to Pat, has some tea, then gets ready for bed. She sits there unable to sleep, her blanket at her chin, her knees hugged in to herself, gazing out at the night.

It's a shock not to be able to shrug off the grief. Something so animal in Mary that she wakes up with her pillow damp from dreams of loss. She longs for this baby who has gone, who she's chosen to give up. She's giddy with it and no one seems to notice. Joan keeps inviting her to things, as if a night at a dance hall or a few drinks at the works social club will cheer Mary up.

‘You might surprise yourself,' Joan says.

‘I doubt that.'

‘Come on. It'll be fun. Quite a few of the chaps have been asking after you.'

But a chap isn't what Mary needs, much as it surprises her to admit it. That part of her life is over. She sees something in other women that seems to have faded in her – something hot and quick that used to draw life to her, that used to make her feel alive. What's the point of pretending to enjoy a dance?

Mary tries every argument, tells Joan she has no special clothes, even embarrasses herself by saying she can't afford it, is ashamed when Joan offers to lend her money.

By the height of summer, Joan's stopped asking. Mary feels almost invisible. Barely anyone speaks to her at work and she hardly lifts her eyes to meet those of anyone else. She knows people talk about her, knows she's perceived as strange, sees herself as they must see her – half withered inside like a crone. Sometimes when she's alone in the canteen, clearing tables after the rush of hungry workers, or mopping the floor, she has a sense of foreboding, as if a shadow has crossed her soul. She sees herself speeding towards death, feels herself being watched, feels the tick of death's heart close to her own.

She has to give herself a good talking to on more than one occasion. Such a drama queen! Wasn't that what Pat always told her?

She writes letters and postcards daily, begging for news. Four months old now and what can Caroline do? Can she sit up yet? Reach out for toys? Recognize faces? And at last, at last, she gets back from work one night to see Pat's meticulous handwriting on an envelope. Someone's placed it on the hall table and she sits on the stairs and holds it to her breast. Perhaps it will be an
invitation –
come quick
,
she misses you
– or perhaps a photograph or some funny anecdote about her daughter. No. When she eventually dares open it, it's a rather dull note from Pat detailing the weather and the price of things. The only news of Caroline is that she's ‘a good girl' and is ‘doing well'. Much as it's a relief to hear anything at all, it's the
detail
that Mary craves.

She buys a book and studies the stages of development. She discovers that Caroline should quieten to the sound of a voice and turn towards it, that she ought to be able to follow a brightly coloured object with her eyes if it's held eight inches away from her.
She will have been smiling for weeks. And children have more bones than adults, does Pat know this? If Caroline falls badly, she'll be more likely to bend a bone than to break it because her periosteum is stronger and thicker.

What's a periosteum?

Mary borrows a medical encyclopaedia from the library, takes it home to bed and traces with her finger the diagram of a baby's skeletal structure, the spine like a string of pearls. She learns that the skull of a new-born consists of five main bones and there are soft spots on a baby's head allowing the plates of the skull to flex during birth.

She studies the blood system, the respiratory system. She learns the names of every bone. It's like a whole new language. Neurocranium. Cartilaginous. Olfactory. She can even make up sentences that make sense with words such as these.

‘Did you know,' she asks Joan, ‘that the neurocranium has cartilaginous supports and olfactory receptors?'

Joan frowns, ‘Are you swearing at me now?'

‘No,' Mary says. ‘It's simple – it means in your head there's a nose. That's all.'

She continues to write daily letters, spending a fortune on stamps. She asks if Caroline can sit up yet. Has she started to crawl? Is she babbling any recognizable sounds? How long is her hair and has Pat bought ribbons or bands? Should Mary send some, would that be welcome? She also tells Pat that the most common fractures to look out for in children are the incomplete ones such as
greenstick
or buckle. The former involve a bend on one side of the bone and a partial fracture on the other. Is Pat aware of this?

The letter that comes back is curt. Pat would find it a great relief if Mary could stop sending letters. Pat is a busy woman and doesn't Mary have better things to do than give unsolicited lectures on
child welfare? In fact, it would probably be better if all correspondence was limited to birthdays and Christmas from now on.