‘I don’t think he’ll be using the time to think.’ My mum extracts her flowery toiletries bag.
We’re in the guest bedroom, once taken up by a succession of Latvian, Polish, and Hungarian au pairs. Now Otilya, our cleaner for the past ten years, has stemmed the flow of au pairs by offering to watch the children until I get home from work.
‘I never thought’—my mother shakes her head mournfully—‘it would happen in our family.’ She sighs. ‘It’s horrible. What am I going to tell your Aunt Lillian? And Cousin Margaret? Oh, it’s so…so embarrassing.’
Embarrassing? I give my mother a look: ever since I was this high, my mother has managed to embarrass me. Other mums accompanied the class responsibly on school trips; mine got caught smoking with the sixth formers and led the back of the bus in rousing renditions of ‘The Good Ship Venus’. Other mums might gently query their child’s mark with the relevant teacher; mine would write them five-page letters warning them not to be so provincial in their thinking. Other mums would put off any talk of the birds and the bees; mine was drawing diagrams and labelling them with rude words and inviting my friends to have a look ‘and see what’s what’.
Embarrassing, indeed.
With a huge effort I swallow my reproaches. She’s here and the summer holidays have not got off to a great start, as Jonathan has just announced that he thinks our usual fortnight in Devon would be ‘inappropriate’ this year.
‘Cup of tea?’ I volunteer.
‘I’ll come down with you, let me just organise my things,’ my mum says as she starts unpacking. Quickly and methodically, she hangs up her summer dresses and places her shirts and underwear in neat rows in the chest of drawers (I must have been looking for my mum when I married a neatness freak). She is always organising things: her house in the little village in Somerset she and Dad retired to; the members of her local Ladies’ Lawn Tennis Club; my dad’s life as a GP; mine and Tom’s as their none-too-ambitious children. She didn’t organise Dad’s untimely death, though, or my brother’s marriage to an Australian, who insists on Tom staying in Oz. And these failures spur her on to be even more in control of what is left.
‘I’ll come right over,’ Mum had said when I rang to tell her about Jonathan leaving home. ‘You need your mother at a time like this.’ She would brook no argument, and rang me within half an hour with station, platform and arrival time. Exhausted from days of poor sleep, I was too tired to argue—or remember that my mum’s assistance is not quite the balm to human suffering she believes.
‘I always did worry about your different backgrounds.’ Mum shakes her head as she hangs up her dress.
I haven’t forgotten the scene she made when she found out I was marrying a working-class boy from Leeds: ‘You are mad, barking mad! He won’t know how to hold his knife and fork!’
‘Mum, he’s lovely and so clever. His boss says he’s got a brilliant future ahead of him.’
‘I bet they have illuminated reindeers on the porch at Christmas.’
But Mum calmed down when Jonathan impressed my dad by confessing that he read the BMJ for pleasure. My parents’ grudging acceptance turned into positive praise when Jonathan made money with the patenting of Zelkin and invited them to stay with us the summer we rented a villa in the Dordogne.
‘Honestly,’ Mum now says, mouth set, ‘I don’t know how he could do it.’
‘He’s in love,’ I say, and I don’t think I sound too bitter.
‘Thank goodness your father’s not here to see it.’ My mother is rustling through her weekend bag. ‘Here, I brought you this—’ She pulls out a brochure and hands it over. ‘I know it’s not really your age group, but an older man might be just the ticket. And I thought it might take your mind off things.’
I look down at the glossy photos of a SAGA cruise around the Med.
‘Mu-um, I’m getting separated, not Alzheimer’s!’ I hand her back the brochure. I think ruefully of Jill’s comment about ‘the three stages of womanhood: “Aga, Saga, Gaga.”’
‘Well,’ my mother sniffs, ‘I found it very helpful when your father passed away.’
‘It’s not the same.’
‘No. Your father never chose to leave me.’
In her eyes, clearly, I’m a reject, she’s a survivor.
‘You’ve got to protect those poor children.’ My mother follows me down to the kitchen. ‘I know you’re still…raw, but I hope you’re not going to take this lying down, Rosie.’
I fill the kettle. ‘Mum, you’re just thinking in stereotypes…’
But Mum interrupts, cocking her head to one side to look at me appraisingly: ‘You look as if you’ve put on weight. Do you think that’s why—’
‘Mu-um!’ I cry, exasperated.
‘Sorry, darling, didn’t mean to upset you.’
Mum has never been one for diplomacy. When I was ten, miserable because my classmates were teasing me about my braces, Mum looked at the silver twin track that ran across my face and told me, ‘You do look dreadful, darling, but only for another two years.’ I catch sight of my reflection, distorted into a swollen shape on the shiny metallic microwave, and feel the tears sting: I do look dreadful.
‘You gave him the best years of your life.’ My mother shakes her head woefully.
‘I’ve still got a few left, Mum.’
‘They’re all the same’—Mum ignores me as she sips from her mug—‘these modern men. Not a thought about duties and responsibilities. It’s all about fun fun fun.’
‘That’s not fair on Jonathan.’
‘Fair? I don’t want to be fair. Is it fair for him to dump you when you’re nearly forty?’
‘He hasn’t dumped me,’ I protest. ‘Remember? The separation is my idea.’
‘What makes me spit is the thought of his having the pick of any woman he chooses, while you’ll be stuck with some broke divorc?or some Mama’s boy who’s not fit for anyone.’ Mum helps herself to the tin of biscuits. She starts to nibble a digestive. ‘Trust me,’ she says as she wipes the crumbs from the corners of her mouth, ‘it’s awful out there.’
I wince at the thought of my mum experiencing ‘out there’—does she date? Did she try to find herself a lover after Daddy died? She has looked the same for as long as I can remember: a soft brown bob that frames her remarkably unlined face, brown eyes brought out with charcoal-grey eye shadow, a lipstick that is more wine-hued than scarlet red. Her clothes are always neat and feminine, not so much eye-catching as a perfect complement to her trim frame. She is still, I realise for the first time in years, attractive.
‘Now, the thing is not to traumatise the children,’ my mother is saying decisively as we retreat into the sitting room. ‘We really need to show them that you will all do fine without Daddy, and that no one’s cross with anyone, and no one’s playing the blame game.’ She settles in the armchair, and takes out her crossword. ‘We’ll reassure them with a cosy family weekend. You’ll see.’ She tucks her feet under her legs and starts nibbling on her pencil. ‘Two across: “Hellish time…seven letters…” Hmmm…Divorce?’
I fetch the kids from the tennis club. Feeling guilty about Devon, Jonathan has enrolled them for expensive tennis lessons. He should feel guilty, because although it’s true, as I told Mum, that we’ve done our best