Mothers & Daughters (34 page)

I'd read that, in the end, the vast majority of applications by grandparents were unsuccessful, and even where they won, the order for access was often ignored. The whole process would involve officials and reports and standing up in court, and would last for months, and cost a small fortune. And there were a million others like me, denied contact with the people they most loved in the world. The unfairness of it beggared belief.

A shadow fell across the field in front of me, and I looked up. Against the summer evening sky a red balloon drifted, clean and bright, like an illustration from a children's book. ‘Look', I longed to say to Matty. ‘Give them a wave!'

The balloon was rising steadily as I watched, the basket suspended like a matchbox underneath. Then the flame shot up, orange against the blue, and I thought, How amazing that a tiny jet of fire can raise that huge structure hundreds of feet. Incredible. For a few moments I was up there with them, out of myself and carried along.

I head Eileen's voice:
If you had the chance to see into your own future, would you take it? God, I would!
We'd had a weekend at Blackpool, just after I was married – her, me, Phil – and
she'd been eyeing up the clairvoyants' caravans along the seafront. ‘No,' I'd said, in answer to her question. She'd laughed at me and called me a coward. Later that night, and drunk, she'd laid half a chicken pie on the top step of a caravan. ‘Let's see if Gypsy Romana predicts
that
when she comes skipping out tomorrow morning.' ‘Like they sleep in their vans,' Phil had scoffed, and they'd had a bit of a fight. She never did have a reading, though, for all her talk.

The balloon passed over the allotments, and on towards town. Ahead of me the track ended in a stile, but so lost in nettles I knew I'd never stand a chance of getting near. I'd gone as far as I could. The light was changing, and it was time to go home.

On the way back towards the bridge, I began toying with the idea of ringing Jaz again. Part of me knew this was not the way, that she hated any kind of pursuit. Then again, if I didn't try, would she realise how desperately I was missing her? Maybe, in the end, I'd wear her down. Maybe I'd catch her at a mellow moment, if she had any mellow moments these days. All of a sudden, a hot flare engulfed me at the injustice, the sheer cruelty of her behaviour.
She used to cut her arms, you know
, I imagined telling a courtroom.
There's a history of instability
.
He'd be much better off with me
.

The next second I was shaking the picture away, appalled.

‘If you want an exchange of confessions,' David had said, ‘then listen to this: when Jeanette died, I was relieved. I loved her, I would have gone to the ends of the earth for her, but the truth was I was weary of the months of pain and suffering and the broken nights and the visitors trooping through the house and the sense of death hanging over all of us, stringing us out. Now, does that make you think any less of me?'

I was shaken out of memory by a sudden, violent shout coming from somewhere near the bridge. ‘You FUCK-ing
wanker!' a girl yelled, her voice ripping across the evening. ‘You
fucking
dickhead.'

The atmosphere of the evening changed at once. Suddenly I saw myself as I was: a lone middle-aged woman more than a mile from the nearest house and without a mobile phone. A figure shot out from under the arch, then ran back under, laughing. There was more calling, more swearing, the clatter of pebbles against stone.

‘I'll
fuck
ing kill you for that! Tosser.'

I hesitated, considering whether to go forward or stay where I was. You heard about these gangs, and what they got up to. There were always stories in the paper. A man near us had literally been frightened to death by a bunch of youths; they hadn't even needed to lay a finger on him.

‘You stupid fucking
prick
!'

No, better keep going. I needed to pass them to get back to the main road. If they came out and saw me, if they started shouting at me, what I'd do would be feign deafness. They wanted you to talk back, so I wouldn't give them the satisfaction. Dumbness was my best defence.

‘Oi, stop! STOP!'

Was that to me? I made myself look straight ahead, my pace fast but steady. Turning back wasn't an option; the path was too overgrown. I could walk out into the middle of the field, but that would only make me more conspicuous, and if they did spot me it would be obvious what I was doing, which would attract comment in itself. Mad sandal-shod woman, flattening crops.

Best to stick with it, and hope. The path went up and over the top of the bridge, so provided these kids stayed where they were, I had no need to cross their line of vision. I risked a quick glance to the side. No sign of anyone.

‘You utter fucking twat,' said the girl again.

‘I can make a match burn twice,' I heard a boy say.

‘Fuck off.'

More laughter, and a whoop. It was impossible to tell how many of them there were, or how old. I moved my steps away from the centre of the path, where the grit crunched, onto the muffled grass.

‘That was my hair,' whined the girl.

‘Aw, kiss it better.' There was a burst of tinny music, and someone threw what might have been a coloured plastic lighter out onto the grass.

I visualised David's train carriage, the blue-suited white-haired men standing to defeat the forces of yobbism. Where was a passing
a capella
group when you needed one? A memory flashed on me of Dad humming while he shaved in the kitchen, his mirror propped on the eye-level grill pan and a dish of water on the cold gas ring. Black and white tiles, the kitchenette with the fold-down front and built-in shopping reminder. When I was safe and small and knew what lay in front of me each day.

‘Give it us back, you little shit!'

And David's voice went,
Get a grip, Carol. This is a public footpath and you have every right to be here, just as much as whoever it is howling and cursing under the arch. Look, they probably won't come out, and even if they do, why should they be interested in you? You're not hassling them. You're quite clearly walking away, minding your own business. Forget what you've read in the newspapers; they have to scare to sell. Kids being noisy in a deserted spot isn't the crime of the century. They're not harming anyone. Just keep going. Put your shoulders back. Steady your breathing
.

In my mind, Dad still hummed ‘Bye Bye Blackbird', hauntingly. I slowed my pace to match the rhythm of the song, and lifted my chin. It did help, a bit.

At the start of the bridge rise, a track strewn with litter
branched off down the bank and, as I passed it, a boy wandered out from under the arch, scanning the ground. I watched him nervously out of the corner of my eye. There was something familiar about the back of his head.

‘Give it up,' called the girl. ‘It was knackered anyway.'

The boy lifted his head to shout back, and caught sight of me standing above him. I saw his lips form the word
fuck
. Josh.

‘Oh my God,' continued the girl. ‘See this, will you?'

Josh and I carried on staring at each other.

‘I've got a text from Vic. Oh my God. Oh my God.'

Do not speak
, his eyes said.
Do not go home and mention this to my mum. I don't know you and you don't know me. You owe me. Shut it
. At the same time I was taking all this in, I was thinking, He's done something to his fringe since I last saw him, it's made his face look squarer. Is that a cigarette between his fingers? Where does Laverne think he is tonight? Drama group?

‘Hoy, Joshy. Come see this.'

He gave me a tiny shake of the head, just as the girl wandered out. I turned and began to walk quickly away.

‘I don't fucking believe her. If she fucking thinks I'm taking any notice . . .' The girl's sentence trailed off. ‘What you looking at? Who was that?'

The balloon was a red football vanishing behind far-off trees.

‘No one,' I heard him say. ‘It wasn't anybody.'

CHAPTER 27

Photograph 217, Album Two

Location: James House Hospice, Worsley, Manchester

Taken by: Carol

Subject: Jaz, six, is sitting on a slatted white bench, holding on to her grandma's elbow crutch. Behind her, an impressive wisteria drapes its loaded arms over the stonework of the rear wall. The hospice manager is a keen horticulturalist himself, and knows the value of a well-kept garden for those in need of earthly balm. No one crosses these soft and level lawns without feeling a degree better. A blackbird sings each evening in the conifer, as if by arrangement, and worms send up their inoffensive casts between the patients' feet. Peonies bud, bloom, drop and seed by the path; tiny nymphs squirm across the surface of the bird bath. If Carol and her mother could make any kind of peace, it would be here
.

And they do find something like it, in that Carol's so far managed not to ask anything provocative – why did you have children if you didn't want them, for instance – and Frieda's refrained from making any final sour quips. It's the best that could be hoped for
.

During this particular visit, her mother consents to sit outside
for quarter of an hour. Once she's made it to the bench, Jaz climbs up alongside her and asks her what it's like to be dying. You'd think Frieda would be offended, but she takes the question in her stride. It may be that she's too tired to object
.

‘Don't they favour each other?' observes Bob
.

‘No,' says Carol, appalled
.

‘I meant the eyes, round the eyes,' he says. ‘I've never really noticed before.'

Carol looks, but won't see. Four to six weeks, the doctor's said, so it makes no odds anyway
.

So there we were, working alongside each other like the married couple we used to be. Phil was unwrapping Rawlbolts on the patio, and I was turning out kitchen drawers and cupboards and attempting to rationalise the contents. Like that married couple, we were holding an icy, singing silence between us that had us both clattering about and clearing our throats just for the relief of sound. Fit the grid and bugger off, I was thinking. I could hear his thoughts, too, clamouring back: Bloody hell, I come round here to help her out and she acts like she's the one doing
me
a favour. The quarrels where no one speaks are always the noisiest.

After a while I put the radio on, and tried to follow a discussion about the European Union.

Meanwhile I pulled out tea towels still in their wrapping, icing-bag nozzles, yet more of my mother's embroidered cloths. Three hand-whisks, it turned out I owned – not including the K beater for a defunct Kenwood Chef – plus four incomplete canteens of cutlery, and a set of unused American measuring cups. As I peeled away old lining paper, David's voice floated in over the rest:
Why did you stay so long with Phil?

The question, spoken in the dim back room of a country pub, had caught me off-guard. ‘For Jaz,' I'd said, as I always did. ‘I thought the disruption would be too damaging for her.'

‘That must have taken a lot of strength.'

‘Except now Jaz claims I stayed out of cowardice, and that I ruined her childhood because I was scared to strike out on my own.'

‘Wouldn't she have been disturbed if you'd split up?'

‘Probably. She didn't want me to change my name after the divorce; how's that for inconsistency?'

‘Had you intended to?'

‘I wasn't sure. I didn't want Jaz and me not to match. And I didn't want to go backwards, to be Carol White again. Hobson's choice, really. They should let you have a special divorce name that you choose. A naming party, you could have, a special dinner or something.'

David had said that was a good idea, and then we'd just sat for ages, listening to the blare and clatter of the fruit machine round the corner, sipping our drinks. A different kind of not-talking.

The kitchen door banging against the wall made me jump.

‘For God's sake!' I said.

Phil looked guilty, then irritated. ‘You want a new stopper,' he said, glancing at the floor. ‘You'll end up with a hole in your plaster otherwise.'

‘No, because no one else flings the door open like you.'

‘Two minutes of a job to screw one in.'

‘I don't need one!'

We glared at each other.

This is not your house! Screw a bloody stopper in your own floor!

Jesus wept, woman, I was only making a suggestion
.

‘What do you want, anyway?' I said ungraciously.

‘A slash,' he said, and pushed past me.

I carried on with the clearing, piling up crockery into sets.

As he came back down the stairs I could hear him whistling ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon'. Its jauntiness, and the sheer tactlessness of his choice, infuriated me beyond sanity.

‘I don't think you're remotely bothered about Matty,' I snapped.

Phil's step faltered in the doorway. ‘Eh?'

‘You don't love Matty as much as I do, and that's the reason you're not concerned.'

He closed his eyes. ‘Don't start, Carol.'

‘Well, you can't do,' I said, my fingers tightening on one of my mother's Coalport plates. ‘Otherwise you'd be as upset as me. Wouldn't you?
Wouldn't you?
'

‘Look,' he said, ‘how many times do I have to repeat myself? I love my grandson and I'll be glad when he comes home.'

‘You think she'll bring him back?'

‘Of course she will.'

‘And let us see him?'

‘I expect so.'

‘“Expect so”? Dear God, have you no feelings at all?'

He put his palm to his forehead. ‘I meant she will do. Jesus. You take her too seriously. You give her too much power over you.'