Sex and Stravinsky (28 page)

These same monthly amounts have been regularly transferred, by direct debit, into her higher-rate savings account; a nicely accumulating nest egg which has clearly been no problem for her since, all the while, she has had Caroline’s monthly allowance to provide for her day-to-day expenditure. Caroline fetches her mother’s handbag and tips out all its contents. She lines up the debit and credit cards along with the statements and the policies. In her mother’s pocket diary she observes that her mother has written what Caroline takes to be her pin code. It’s the year of the old woman’s birth, but written backwards. And, in the address book – yes! – under ‘B’ for ‘Bank’, she finds the TeleBank call number alongside what is very likely a five-digit security code – this last, somewhat inadequately disguised as a local telephone number. The Witch Woman has prefixed the five secret digits with her local telephone code, but the local numbers, as Caroline knows, should total six, not five.

Before she visits the hospital that day, Caroline spends an hour on the phone. She deals with the matter of the monthly allowance, cancelling the standing order from her own bank to her mother’s for an amount that, until yesterday, she had always wished could have been larger. Then she taps in the number of her mother’s TeleBank. She follows this with the security code and the sixteen-digit number on the front of her mother’s debit card. Bingo! Open Sesame! Alongside her, by the phone, Caroline has the number of her mother’s higher-rate account. She transfers ten thousand pounds from the higher-rate account to her mother’s current account. Then, using the pin number, she goes out to avail herself of the nearest cash point, where she withdraws the maximum-permitted daily amount, which appears to be two hundred pounds.

Caroline does this every morning before she visits the hospital. Her tally is one thousand four hundred per week. This she stashes under the newly sanded floorboards in the living room of the Victorian terraced house.

In between, she embarks on a policy of running up the maximum debt on her mother’s credit card. She goes for a facial, a massage and a haircut, to include the sort of blonde highlights that, way back in her Australian youth, the sun always granted her for free. Over the ensuing days, she browses in designer-clothing boutiques and buys herself Armani jeans, Betty Jackson trousers, two Joseph cardigans, a buttercup-yellow short-sleeved sundress by Marc Jacobs and an amazing Vivienne Westwood item with off-the-shoulder, whalebone-corset top and Flower Fairy skirt of gauzy pale-blue georgette. Then she buys a capacious Mulberry handbag, before she starts on shoes. That done, Caroline buys three tickets apiece for the entire Glyndebourne Touring Opera season and a trio of tickets for Zoe and her best friends, Mattie and Maggs, to see the Ellen Kent
Swan Lake
, to be performed by a much-lauded touring ballet company from Kiev.

Caroline is not surprised when her mother’s bank phones the house in Garden Haven. She is more than ready for the nice young man who has ‘some security concerns’, since the pattern of withdrawals from Mrs McCleod’s current account appears to be a little unusual.

‘Am I speaking to Mrs Catriona McCleod?’ he says.

‘Speaking,’ Caroline says.

She has no problem answering his range of easy security questions, regarding her mother’s date of birth and maiden name, or what the amount was of the last withdrawal she remembers making.

‘The truth is, I don’t have much time,’ Caroline tells him. ‘I’m sorry if I embarrass you, young man. Forgive me, but to put it bluntly, I’m “terminal”, you see. I’ve decided to treat myself.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ says the young man. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘I’m also treating my daughter,’ Caroline goes on. ‘It’s a better thing, wouldn’t you agree, to give with a warm hand rather than a cold one?’

‘Absolutely,’ says the young man. ‘You take care now, Mrs McCleod. You look after yourself.’

‘Thank you,’ Caroline says. ‘I will.’

Her next call is to order a new top-of-the-range central-heating system for the Victorian terraced house, which she pays for, over the telephone, with her mother’s credit card.

That evening, from her mother’s phone, Caroline calls her sister, who, given the time difference, will just have arrived at the office of her Grudge Fudge Jesus Mag.

‘Janet,’ she says, faking good cheer and finding, much to her own surprise, that she’s quite good at it. ‘First of all, Mum is a little bit better. I thought you’d like to know.’

‘Thank you,’ Janet says. ‘I could tell you were overreacting.’

Good God, Caroline is thinking. Is this a crazy person? I mean, is it possible one could be ‘overreacting’ to a vast blood clot pressing down on an oldie’s brain? But biting her tongue she goes on.

‘Mum has been talking quite a bit,’ she says. ‘But I think she’s a little confused.’

‘Is this relevant?’ Janet says, attempting to cut her short. ‘If it’s not, I’m a bit busy –’

‘She told me that I was adopted,’ Caroline says. ‘I mean, does that ring any bells with you? Or what is she thinking of?’

‘Of course you’re adopted,’ Janet says. ‘Mum and Dad thought they couldn’t have children. That’s until I came along.’

‘Any idea where they got me?’ Caroline says. ‘I mean it’s the first I’ve –’ Her hand is shaking so badly she can hardly hold the phone.

‘Sure,’ Janet says. ‘Mum told me. From some blonde tart on a bus.’

‘How do you mean tart?’ Caroline says.

‘As in tart,’ Janet says. ‘As in the sort of slut who gets pregnant out of wedlock and gives away her baby on a bus.’

‘Where?’ Caroline says. ‘A bus from where to where?’ She has suddenly found herself overwhelmed with relief to have it confirmed that she once had another sort of mother, whether tart or no.

‘Somewhere in the boondocks,’ Janet says. ‘Could’ve been somewhere like between Chillingollah and Pinnaroo. Or maybe between Tintinara and Dimboola? Or what about Wangaratta? How about Gol Gol? Take your pick, Caroline, because, frankly, I haven’t got a clue. Things could be quite informal back then. And I happen to know that there was no exchange of names and addresses. Mum, understandably, made it “strictly no contact”. Why don’t you ask her if you must?’

‘I will,’ Caroline says. ‘Thank you, Janet, I will.’

‘I reckon you owe Mum a lot,’ Janet says. ‘Think about it, Caroline.’

‘I will,’ says Caroline. ‘I am thinking about it.’

‘Well, if there’s nothing else,’ Janet says. ‘We go to press this afternoon.’

‘Yes,’ Caroline says. ‘Thank you, Janet. Thanks a lot.’ But once again, she’s talking into the air, because Janet, the Witch Woman’s heiress, the whining, one-time Less Fortunate, has already hung up on her sister.

The call concluded, Caroline sets out from Garden Haven to visit her mother, who is looking markedly worse. The old woman is groaning feebly and appears to be in pain. She’s developed a sudden fever and she’s back on a glucose drip. Somewhat to Caroline’s astonishment, a senior consultant actually seeks her out to acquaint her of new developments. The old woman has not only developed a lower-bowel infection – doubtless thanks to the Superbug factor, whose existence is discreetly not mentioned – but, in addition, she has managed to rip out a catheter with the result that bits of its rubber bulb have come adrift within her urethra, which are likely to cause blood poisoning. The only option on both counts, the doctor tells the patient’s daughter, is urgent surgery. They will need to cut away some of her bowel, in addition to removing the bits of rubber. He desists from making the obvious point that the patient, given the current state of her, is not likely to survive further surgery.

Caroline is given some papers to sign, after which she returns to Garden Haven, where she tries once more to phone her husband. His resolute inaccessibility over these last two weeks has suddenly begun to make her frantic and she bangs down the phone in a fret. Why is Josh always so bloody ineffectual? Why is he never there when things get tough? Why does he never take command? And why – bloody why – did he not ever put his foot down over his blood-sucking mother-in-law? Wouldn’t a real man have stopped her?

‘Or me?’ she yells. ‘Why did you let me do it? Why? You stood by and let me debase myself before that malignant old leech. I mean, for years and years. And she isn’t even my mother! Josh, why the fuck didn’t you STOP ME? Why did you let it go on? And on? And ON?’

She’s so angry with him that she suddenly knows that she’s got to have it out – and soon. If he can’t or won’t respond to her telephone calls, she’ll bloody well confront him face to face. She’ll book two return flights to South Africa on the old cow’s credit card and then she’ll go off on the Eurostar to collect her daughter from France. Why not? By the sound of Zoe’s uncharming exchange family, the poor girl will be only too pleased to have the experience cut short, and the two of them can then spend a glorious day in Paris – a day full of shopping and little-girl treats – all courtesy of Gran’s bank accounts.

There’s nothing that lifts Caroline’s spirits like a project and she’s on to the airline right away. Seven days’ time? Why not? Two return tickets from Heathrow to Johannesburg, plus two internal return flights from Johannesburg to Durban. Two days in France, then back to England in time to deal with her mother, be she alive or dead. Then, to pack for that lovely trip south, which has begun to seem quite an adventure. Caroline has not been on a plane since 1978. Using her mother’s TeleBank facility, Caroline shifts twenty thousand pounds from the Witch Woman’s higher-rate savings account to the current account. Then she pays off the minimum amount to accord with that quoted on her mother’s monthly Visa Card statement; this to ensure that her ensuing purchases will not be blocked through overspend. Both transactions are a simple matter of pushing buttons on the telephone keypad and it’s making her feel pretty good. As usual, she goes out to draw her daily limit of two hundred pounds, which she stashes under the newly sanded floorboards. The cash sum now tallies one thousand six hundred pounds.

Caroline’s mother survives the surgery, but survives it by a mere thirty-six hours, during which time she can breathe only with an oxygen mask and with a pronounced rattle in the larynx. She never again opens her eyes. Once it’s over, Caroline briskly checks the
Yellow Pages
. She arranges to have her mother’s body transported to the offices of the nearest burial service for cremation, where she arranges a speedy appointment. There, where all is tasteful carpeting and soothing birch veneer, a young female attendant is suitably sober and respectful. Caroline fills in the proffered form and answers several questions with regard to burial options. These include the offer of a horse-drawn hearse and a flunky in top hat and tails. The young woman has several full-colour plastic-coated albums of casket choices, from mahogany with buttoned satin linings to wicker eco-baskets.

‘I don’t need a casket,’ Caroline says. ‘There’s to be no funeral service. When can I collect the ashes?’

She pays the charges, on the spot, with her mother’s credit card, and collects the ashes after forty-eight hours, by which time the stash under the sanded floorboards totals two thousand two hundred pounds.

In the interim she has visited Argos, where she buys herself a shredder, and she returns with it to Garden Haven with the intention of shredding the will. It pleases her to reflect that it’s her mother’s card that has paid for the shredder, though she’s certain that all she’s doing is buying herself a little extra time. The woman will have a copy lodged with her solicitor. Come to think of it, which solicitor is that? She has no memory, from her desk-tidy episode, of coming upon a letter either to or from any such person.

Caroline goes to the cardboard folder and draws out the will once more. She scrutinises the thing from end to end. No evidence of a solicitor. No headed writing paper, nor sturdy legal envelope. It crosses her mind that this is the first time she has actually read the will all the way to the end. Last time she simply called a halt upon discovering herself the adopted heir to the Hummel figurines and the contents of her mother’s bookcase. Now, on the final page, she observes the signature. Catriona McCleod. It stands alone. Then there is the date: 19 August 1994. That is all. The will has not been witnessed and no solicitor has overseen it. With sixty thousand in her higher-rate savings account, the woman has nonetheless done her own will the cut-price, self-help way. She has bought the form from a high-street stationer and filled it in herself. God knows, as it stands, the thing is surely not valid – though could it be that Janet is in possession of a properly witnessed copy? And yet? And yet? All the evidence suggests that her sister’s severance from the old woman has been total. Caroline has unearthed no draft letter, no telephone calls to Australia, as recorded on her mother’s umpteen statements from BT, no fondly hoarded Christmas or birthday card from yesteryear. Nothing. Only those cloying wedding photos from eleven years back and the copy of
Codependent No More
, with its poisonous little message. Yet she can’t afford to pick up the phone and sound out her sister. Well, not yet.

When she goes to collect the ashes, Caroline notes that they are contained within a transparent plastic bag which is inside a cardboard box. The box is of subdued pastel hue, a bit like a cuboid tissue box, but with a small adhesive label bearing the name of the deceased. Once outside the offices of the burial service, she removes the transparent plastic bag and places it in a Sainsbury’s bag that she has about her person. The pastel cuboid box she drops into the nearest roadside litter bin, having first picked off the small adhesive label and put it in her pocket. Then she begins her journey home.