Mothers & Daughters (18 page)

‘I know how it feels.'

On Jaz's right was a cherry tree we'd planted over the hamster. I thought of the morning she'd come in from burying him and I'd made her eggy bread and she'd been too sad to eat it. The more parenthood goes on, the more you realise how little you can put right.

‘The reason I called,' David was saying, ‘is to check whether Wednesday's still OK. You weren't sure, remember? But I could do with getting it in the diary. Ian can take a flexi-day. We could come over after lunch, if that suited.'

‘It's fine. I can always give you a ring at the last minute if the situation changes.'

‘You can, but please don't. Cancel at the last minute, I mean.' I could hear his breathing down the line. ‘You've no idea what these visits mean to Ian.'

‘Who was that?' said Jaz, as soon as I stepped through the back door.

I'd meant to lie but I couldn't; not about that, anyway. ‘Your father-in-law.'

Her face fell. ‘What's he ringing for?'

‘For a chat. A chat with me, Jaz. To me.'

I must have overstressed that last bit, because her expression changed to one of puzzlement, then alarm.

‘He's a nice man,' I continued, my blood thumping. ‘We were talking about gardening.'

Yes, and I was born yesterday
, she was clearly thinking. ‘Well, I'd rather you didn't see him at the moment.'

‘I'm not “seeing” him.'

‘Being in contact, whatever. It feels like you're ganging up on me.'

‘Don't be ridiculous. I like him, that's all. He's sensible to talk to.' Not a posturing idiot like your father, I could have added.

‘I don't like it,' she said. ‘Next time you speak to him, tell him from me he can fuck off.'

‘Jaz!' I whipped round to see if Matty had heard, but he'd moved to the top of the garden and was digging with a stick near the drain. When I turned back she'd sat down on the grass with her shoulders slumped and her hair hanging. Part of me longed to shake her, to say,
We could all give up, love. Snap out of it, shape yourself
. But the stronger urge was to comfort.

I settled myself next to her.

‘Look, Jaz, will you not reconsider?'

Her head came up, sulky and puzzled.

‘I'm asking you straight out: please, please think about a reconciliation with Ian. You're so down, you're going to make yourself ill. I know what it's like, the aftermath—'

‘How dare you!' she cried, jerking into life. ‘What kind of a mother are you to suggest that?'

‘One who wants the best for you. For Matty.'

‘What, and you think going crawling back to a man who's got zero respect for me is “the best”? That the best thing for Matty is to grow up in a household where the parents loathe each other? I had to do that, and it was hell.'

I struggled to be gentle with her. ‘You say that when you look back now, but at the time, you know, you were perfectly OK. You were, Jaz. You're seeing it from an adult's perspective.'

‘What fucking planet were you on? How can you say that?
Were you
blind
? Or are you deliberately misremembering because that suits you?'

‘I know that when you were older, just before your dad and I split up—'

‘What about that time I saw him with Penny in town and I came home practically in tears? How can you not remember that?' She was wild-eyed now, and flushed.

‘You did come home upset once – I think you were about twelve? But that was because you'd had a row with Nat.'

‘Yes:
over Dad
. We'd argued because she'd told me Penny was
his mistress
and I didn't believe her.'

‘You didn't tell me that.'

‘I thought you knew! You
did
know. He'd been screwing her for years!'

‘I knew about Penny, yes, but not why you were upset. You didn't say.'

‘Did you ever ask, Mum? Did you
ever
stop to ask me?'

We were staring at each other then, completely absorbed, so I don't know exactly how it happened. I heard a single terrific splash, no other sound, and when I turned, the water in the pond was slopping the banks and Matty wasn't by the drain-pipe any more.

It's not deep, my pond, but Matty's not very tall.

Before I'd struggled to my feet, Jaz had jumped up, thundered onto the plank bridge, scrambled down into the water, and was bending and feeling with her hands. In another second she'd hauled him out, streaming. ‘Help me!' she shouted, because he was heavy and slippery and she was weighed down by her own sodden clothes. Her face was distorted, her mouth pulled down in an awful grimace, and her T-shirt was sticking to her skin in shiny folds. The ends of her hair were fused with moisture. At that moment I was completely terrified of her. But I lunged forward and took my
grandson, who was writhing and retching, into my arms, and laid him on the grass. I felt the cold stain of him spreading across my blouse.

Jaz hauled herself onto the bank and bent over him. Matty's fair arms were marked with mud and strands of blanketweed; spots of duckweed clung to his cheek. Though I knew it wasn't important right now, I was desperate to wipe them away, to reclaim him from that nasty water.

‘We'll get him in the bath,' I said.

She shot me this look, then went back to crouching over him, running her hands over his hair and chafing his fingers. The whole business, from Matty falling in till now, probably took less than a minute, but I knew I'd be re-playing it for the rest of my life.

Matty curled his body round, retched again, and began to howl. Jaz gathered him up and hugged him to her. ‘Shhh, shhh,' she said. Their pose was like an old-fashioned painting,
Mother and Sick Child
.

‘Let's get him inside,' I said, but they were a closed unit.

With difficulty I stood up – my legs were like rubber – and said, ‘I'll start a bath running. He'll be frozen.'

‘I
told
you to get it filled in when he was born! Told you!' She tried to shake wet strands of hair off her face but they wouldn't budge. ‘Go and call the Health Centre. Tell them he might have inhaled some water. I want him checking over. I'll dry him off, I'll see to him.'

I hovered for a second. ‘You're all right,' I said. ‘You're all right, sweetheart.'

Matty just yelled harder.

‘
Mum
,' Jaz said.

Behind her, the dark water was still churning with cloudy sediment like a collapsing universe. I ran to do as I was told.

CHAPTER 15

Photograph 419, Album Four

Location: Blakemere Moss, Nantwich

Taken by: Carol

Subject: a winter landscape – frozen water, bleached banks, stark trees, featureless sky. The only colour comes from the red light in the corner, which at first looks like a sunset. In fact it is chemical discoloration, caused by Carol leaving the film in the camera too long. It's been a pig of a year (losing Eileen to cancer, Dad's diagnosis, Jaz dropping out, hormones shutting up shop) and she hasn't felt like recording much of it. If ever there was a picture that summed up a moment, it's this
.

By the time I told Josh about it on Monday morning, the pond incident was beginning to sound not nearly so bad.

‘Of course he was upset, but once we'd got him dry, once Jaz had talked to the doctor and he'd given the OK, we went to the Gingerbread Playbarn afterwards and let Matty loose in the ball pit.'

‘I used to love those places.'

‘They're great, aren't they? Kids can hurl themselves about for hours and nobody minds.'

‘Yeah, but I don't qualify any longer. The curse of somatotropin.'

‘The curse of what?'

Josh stretched his legs as far as he could into the cramped space of the Micra's foot well. ‘Human growth hormone. The Hungarian was banging on about it last week.'

‘And how is our Hungarian? Still picking on that boy?'

He shook his head. ‘Had a nasty incident with a sports bag, brought him right down.'

‘What happened?'

‘He likes to kick our bags out the way, if we leave them between the benches type of thing. He doesn't bend down and shift them, or tell us to, oh no. He just gets his toe in. Biff. Splinter.'

‘Is he allowed to do that?'

Josh shrugged. ‘We're supposed to stick our bags in the lockers outside, but nobody does because then your stuff goes walkabout. So someone had the idea to fill an old one with bricks, yeah, and plant it in the aisle. The Hungarian, he comes swooping down like a rugby player and gives it an almighty boot –
crunch
. Bones splintering, blood all over his sock, probably. It was excellent. We were killing ourselves.'

‘Good God. What did he do?'

‘Limped off in agony.'

‘Didn't you get into trouble?'

‘He didn't want to lose face, did he? Like, if he'd started unzipping the bag and shouting at us, he'd just have looked even more of a wazz than he already did.' Josh must have seen my expression. ‘He totally deserved it. Wish it had been his kneecaps.'

‘When I was at school,' I said, ‘one trick we did was we used to zap each other with compass points.'

‘What? Like, stab each other?'

‘
No
.' I braked to let a bus pull out in front of me. ‘Static electricity. There was this section of nylon carpet outside the Head's office, and if you shuffled your feet and then held out your compass point-first, you could give someone an electric shock. Sparks and all. It nipped, actually.'

‘Cool.'

‘I don't know who first discovered it, but every Year would pass it onto the kids below. We used to have battles there, although it was risky, what with the Head being just the other side of the door. My friend Eileen was particularly gifted in that department. And my ex-husband.'

‘Expelliarmus!'

‘Pretty much. Do you still use compasses these days?'

‘Yup.'

We were coming to the lay-by where he liked to be let out these days. ‘Well,' I said, ‘don't let on it was me who told you.'

Josh mimed a compass-point electrocution. ‘You may feel a little prick.'

‘Have a nice day.'

He dragged his sports kit over the head-rest. ‘I won't.'

The door slammed and he loped away.

A stream of lorries and buses kept me stationary, then the traffic came to a halt altogether. I stopped indicating, and put the handbrake back on. Images of Matty floating face down and lifeless in the water immediately covered my vision, and I had to wind down the window and breathe in some cold air to clear my head. ‘I'll see about filling in the pond straight away,' I'd promised Jaz. To be fair, she hadn't gone on about it. She hadn't needed to. ‘You know, when he's round here, I never take my eyes off him.' That had been the last thing I'd said to her. My eyes welled.

This was no good. Tissues, I needed tissues, and to pull myself together. Ridiculous to churn myself up about what
might have been. There was nothing useful in the glove box, or in the door pockets, so I groped behind the passenger seat for the storage compartment there. All I could feel was the packet of wet-wipes I always kept handy for Matty. I unclipped my seat belt and turned to hunt properly, and that's when I saw the plastic bag on the floor, half-hidden under the front seat. I knew without opening it what was inside: Josh's football boots, which he needed today.

Could I still catch him? Forty minutes till I had to open the shop, so I wasn't in a desperate hurry. I wiped my eyes on my cuff, re-buckled my belt, indicated and pulled out into the traffic once more, cruising as slowly as I dared. Luckily it was all stop-start along this stretch anyway, with the crossing by the school and the roundabout up ahead. I crawled past the billboard advertising Thorn Valley Golf Club, past the bus shelter, then the ambulance station, all the while trying to work out how far he could have got during the time I was sitting in the lay-by.

Without warning Josh shot across the road two cars in front of me, straight out into the traffic, like a fugitive in a cop show. He actually jumped over the end of someone's bonnet. Brakes squealed and someone bibbed their horn. I only got a glimpse of his progress because a van was in the way, but after a few awful seconds I saw him reach the far pavement, running.

I'd hardly had time to register that when three other figures appeared in pursuit, dodging crazily between vehicles, swinging sports bags. I had an impression of flying shirts, a white face with the mouth open shouting something I couldn't hear, before they were gone too. Car horns were blaring, and a man in the opposite carriageway had wound down his window to lean out and curse. His lips were making shapes:
Fucking yobs. What the fuck do you think you're doing?

And I sat there in my Micra, with those football boots on my front seat, not knowing what to do.

‘What happened next?' said David, putting his mug down on the table and frowning.

I let my gaze shift to the far end of the room where Ian and Matty were building Duplo towers on the carpet. It had been raining heavily all day, and we had the lights on against the gloom. A stream of water fell from the middle of the gutter where the course was blocked, or damaged: another job I needed to sort out.

‘There was a space of about a minute for me to make up my mind,' I told him. ‘I thought, I could carry on up to the roundabout, come back on myself, and then either drive on to work, or make a left turn into the school car park. And that's what I did, stop at the school. Because I couldn't just go off and leave things, could I?'

David gave a very slight shrug.

‘No, I couldn't. I'd have been thinking about him all day, worrying. With me being the one to drop him off, it felt like my responsibility. And I'm very fond of the lad.'