Beneath the Surface (19 page)

How I hated her. I hated that she was going to bring another child into the world when she didn’t have time for the one she already had. It wasn’t jealousy; I was angry with her. Angry that she thought she was such a good mother she could warrant doing it all again, and that she even wanted a child who wasn’t my daddy’s.

I was so angry I took the stick and went downstairs to find her. She was in the kitchen, as ever, this time staring into a cup of tea. I shook the stick in front of her face and screamed, ‘I can’t believe you’ve done this!’

Her face turned chalk-white. She didn’t have any words to defend herself.

‘Have you not heard of bloody condoms?’ I shouted. ‘This is so embarrassing!’

Still she said nothing but began fidgeting in her seat, her discomfort angering me more. ‘I hope you’re going to get rid of it,’ I spat.

‘How dare you,’ she said eventually. ‘How dare you even suggest such a thing!’ I knew there was no way my mother would have an abortion. She was brought up Catholic; and there were certain beliefs my grandmother had instilled into all of us, and valuing life, whatever your age, was one of them.

‘You’re too bloody old to be having a baby!’ I shouted. ‘Everyone’s going to laugh at me.’ I started crying.

‘Oh, this is so typical of you, Abigail,’ she spoke calmly. ‘Always thinking of yourself and not about anyone else. I should have known you wouldn’t be happy for me and Peter.’

‘And is he happy?’ my head snapped up to look at her. I was sniffing like a child, wiping snot from my nose.

Her eyes flickered momentarily. ‘Of course he’s happy. He’s thrilled we’re having a baby together,’ she told me in the even, lifeless tone I’d come to expect from her.

*****

Maggie asked me how I had felt deep down.

‘Lonely,’ I recalled. ‘Does that sound stupid?’

‘Absolutely not,’ she said. ‘Many people feel lonely and a lot of the time they’re surrounded by people. Some people feel lonely in their marriages, like your mother might have done.’

‘I never felt that way with Adam,’ I said. ‘In fact it was the opposite. Even when he wasn’t with me I knew he was only a phone call away. I never felt like he was far away, even if he was in a different country.’

Maggie smiled. ‘That’s a beautiful way of summing up your marriage,’ she said.

I told Maggie about the time you were staying in Surrey for a conference when I was lying in bed and heard a crash downstairs. I thought it was a burglar and I could literally feel my body freeze with fright. It was 3 a.m., that horrible time when morning is still distant and you don’t want to be awake because everyone else is sleeping. I called you and you answered straight away. I could hear the panic in your voice even though you tried to hide it. You told me to call the police and said you’d come home and then I felt calm enough to turn on the lights and creep downstairs first rather than dial 999. Thankfully I did because it was just a broken shelf that had sent saucepans crashing to the floor.

Maggie laughed when I finished the story. ‘I don’t think I could do that now, though,’ I said. ‘Now I’m on my own I wouldn’t have the nerve to confront potential burglars.’

I feel lonelier now than ever. Wasn’t it Tennyson who said, ‘’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’? I don’t think I agree with him. Loving and losing you, Adam, sometimes feels harder than if I’d never met you at all.

*****

I was living in a house with two people I didn’t like. Peter, who had never wanted anything to do with me, and Kathryn, who was rapidly spiralling that way too. On top of that, I’d surrounded myself with friends who made me feel empty. Great if you wanted fun, but no use if you needed more. When I tried talking to Tasha about my mother once she told me to stop moaning – ‘Abi, d’you really think I want you hanging around if you’re going to get all depressed on me?’

Over the following weeks Eleanor was around much more than usual. Charles had business in London, on some select committee or other, discussing wronged politicians or rather ones who had done something wrong. Eleanor made the most of the opportunity – meeting wives in Harvey Nichols for coffee, manicuring her talons, purchasing new clothes to hang off her ageing body. Then she would come to the house armed with her own special kind of first aid repair kit, intending to plaster up the cracks of a household threatening to fall apart any moment. She wouldn’t have let it reach that point, of course. But the first time she arrived, after my mother had told her the happy news of the pregnancy, I could see alarm shining out of her eyes.

If she’d been the type of granny yours was it would have been wonderful to have her around. Granny Vee would have made endless cups of tea and knitted blankets and booties for the new baby. It would have been the happy household of a family expecting a new arrival. Not like the one I was living in, masked in fear and silences. Everyone drowning in their own worries, neither time nor desire to find out if anyone else in the house was keeping their head above water.

And enter Eleanor. Eleanor didn’t come to make anyone feel better, she was there to make sure it didn’t get worse because she must have known my mother wouldn’t cope.

On her first visit, Peter was in a particularly bad mood. It was three days after I’d found the stick in the bin. I hadn’t said anything to him about the pregnancy and neither had he to me. We were both pretending it wasn’t happening.

My mother had barely spoken to either of us. Most of the time she was either throwing up in the bathroom or lying in bed. Her morning sickness lasted all day but I was more inclined to believe she used it as an excuse to shut herself away from the world spinning around her. I was angry with her for doing that: she couldn’t face the music and so she went to bed. It was all I wanted to do too – to close the door to my life and pull the covers over my head until I could hear nothing.

Peter was slamming about in the garage, muttering away to himself as he sifted through boxes. I watched him through a gap in the door but could only see part of him. The previous night my mother had told Eleanor and he wasn’t happy about it.

‘Why have you told her already?’ he growled when he thought I was out of earshot.

‘She’s my mother,’ Kathryn said. ‘She needs to know.’

‘You need her to know, more like.’

‘Why are you being so bitter about it? I thought you’d be happy to share the news.’ My mother had an edge to her voice, trying to make it sound jolly, but I could tell it was strained.

‘I just wanted us to keep it quiet for a bit longer,’ Peter said.

My mother started crying. She didn’t often cry. You would think she would be the type to do it more but she wasn’t and I often wondered if she was so devoid of emotion that half the time she didn’t even consider it an option. But that night she cried and Peter tried to placate her in his brusque, clumsy manner.

‘Come on, Kathryn, don’t get upset now, it’s all fine,’ he chirruped, practically slapping her on the back.

Stiff upper lip and all that.

*****

That night when the doorbell rang Peter stopped in his tracks in the garage, a box in one hand. He waited for someone else to answer the door and I knew I should go, but I couldn’t stop watching him. Eventually my mother shuffled down the stairs, her purple dressing gown pulled tightly around her.

‘You look awful,’ Eleanor told her when Kathryn opened the door.

Peter swore quietly, dropped the box and straightened his back, so I quickly moved away from the door to sit at the table. He was surprised to see me when he came out of the garage and if Eleanor hadn’t appeared in the doorway at the same time he’d probably have questioned me.

‘Peter,’ Eleanor nodded in his direction. ‘Isn’t this wonderful news?’ she asked in a flat tone. She hadn’t thought it wonderful at all. Babies were of even less interest to my grandmother than the children they grew up into. More likely she was wondering how another grandchild might adversely affect her life. And with my mother obviously not coping, it was just one more thing for her to have to deal with.

He brushed his mouth against her cheek and said, ‘Yes, Eleanor. We’re all thrilled.’

Out of my mouth came a noise resembling a snort. I hadn’t meant to – I’d wanted to sneak away from the circus that was unfurling and go up to my room, unnoticed.

‘What was that?’ Eleanor said to me.

‘Nothing, Grandma, just agreeing we’re all absolutely delighted Mum is having a baby. It’s just the perfect thing. Exactly what we all wanted.’ I left the room before anyone could say anything, but not before I heard her say, ‘Let’s hope you bring the next one up with more manners.’

*****

So my mother was pregnant with a baby that at the time I didn’t want her to have. I didn’t like the thought of another child being brought up by those two – it didn’t seem fair.

‘I want to know how the girls have turned out,’ I said to Maggie today. ‘Sometimes I try drawing what I think they look like. But I could draw hundreds of pictures and I wouldn’t have a clue.’ It’s hard to imagine when your mind is such a blank canvas. ‘But it’s not just what they look like, I wonder if Hannah is the loudest, because she always had more tantrums. Does Lauren giggle all the time like she did when she was a toddler? Does she now play the piano because she always loved this little plastic keyboard she had, or have they both had every ounce of fun and imagination torn out of them over the years and now they’re just shadows of the little girls they once were?’

Maggie waited a moment and then asked me, ‘Have you thought about all the things that could go wrong when you look for them? Or, of course, when you find them?’

‘Like what?’

‘Well,’ she said cautiously. ‘Most likely they know nothing about you. Or they might, but they might not want anything to do with you.’

‘I thought you were on my side,’ I said, taken aback. Maggie had always been supportive of everything I told her.

‘Oh, Abi, I
am
on your side. That’s why I’m saying this. You don’t know what’s happened over the last fourteen years or what they’ve been told.’

‘I know that. But that’s why I’m doing all this, isn’t it? Going through it all again? Reliving everything that happened before she left me, so I can find out what happened after?’

Maggie nodded. ‘Of course it is, Abi. I don’t mean to worry you. Anyway, carry on with your story.’

Eleanor moved into Claridge’s so she could come to the house nearly every day. Not bearing gifts, or offering to help: she came with words of steel and an eye that roamed over us to ensure everything was operating smoothly. I don’t know who by then she was keeping the most tabs on: Peter, my mother or me. We were all capable of doing something crazy.

Peter acted like a puppy whenever she was there – ‘Yes, Eleanor’, ‘No, Eleanor’. Then as soon as she was out of the house he looked fit to explode. A few times I caught him swinging an axe at stumps of wood at the end of the garden. One time I even saw him dig a large hole in the middle of the lawn, filling it up again the next day. He obviously had no idea what to do with the hole once he’d made it but I liked to imagine he was planning on throwing my grandmother into it.

One Sunday he came home from the pub at lunchtime, a few whiskies inside him. It was two o’clock and my mother had been cooking a roast dinner. In itself that was unusual and she’d obviously omitted to tell Peter, because when he came in and smelled the charred chicken, he told her he wasn’t hungry and had only come back because he had forgotten his phone.

Five minutes later he left the house again. I was probably smirking because Kathryn said, ‘What do you think is so funny?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You think I enjoy cooking all this for people who don’t appreciate it?’

‘Then go and tell him.’

The pans crashed against the sink as carrots and beans were drained, water cascading down the side and onto the floor. I watched as her slippers began to soak up the water. ‘I meant
you
,’ she said eventually.

‘You’re so lame,’ I snapped back.

‘What was that?’ she turned to me. ‘What did you call me?’

‘LAME,’ I said the word slowly. ‘He doesn’t want this baby, and you’re pretending not to notice. It’s pathetic.’

*****

‘Do you think I was horrible to her?’ I asked Maggie.

‘No, you were a teenager, and you had a lot going on. Of course she was the one you would take it out on.’

‘Sometimes when I think about what I used to say to her I feel bad.’

‘Really?’

‘For a moment. Then I remember everything else, and I think she deserved it.’

‘You were only fourteen, Abi. Kids say stuff like that to their parents all the time.’

‘But I saw something in her eyes that day. She knew Peter didn’t want a baby. She must have known it was the worst thing to happen to her.’

‘You sound like you regret what you said.’

‘I guess I just wonder if things could have panned out differently,’ I said. ‘Maybe I was too hard on her.’

Occasionally, Adam, I would ask you if you thought that. Often it was when I felt sad about something completely different, and then all of a sudden I couldn’t shake off the thought of my mother abandoning me. ‘Do you think it was my fault?’ I would ask.

‘God, no! No way, not at all.’ You were always so adamant. ‘It was never, ever your fault and don’t even think it was. Only she was responsible for her actions.’

Was she, though? She was a mess. In truth, I don’t think she had responsibility for anything in her life.