Casting Off (50 page)

Her mother was a long time in the bathroom, and when she returned, Zoë saw that she had been crying.

‘I’m sorry, Mummy. I shouldn’t have lost my temper like that.’

Her mother let herself be helped into bed without saying anything. ‘Shall I take your sling off? You don’t need to wear it in bed.’

She unpinned the silk scarf. As her mother lay down, she said, ‘I did my best for you. You may not have thought it much, but it was the best I could do. In the circumstances.’

‘I know you did. I didn’t mean to make you cry.’

‘I was missing Maud,’ she answered with shaky dignity. ‘It’s hard losing your only friend when you’re my age.’

‘I know – I do realize that. We’ll talk in the morning.’ She kissed the soft pouchy cheek; an empty gesture that would only be significant if it had been absent. ‘Shall I turn off your light?’

‘If you wouldn’t mind.’

When she and Rupert had settled Juliet, he took her arm on the stairs up to their bedroom.

‘Darling! You’re shaking! I’m sure she’ll be all right.’

‘I lost my temper with Mummy. It’s my fault – she’s not capable of anything after all these years of being looked after by her friend. Maud did everything for her – encouraged her to think of herself as an invalid. And now that’s just what she is.’

‘Ellen will be back soon,’ he said.

‘It will be easier when Mummy’s arm is out of plaster,’ she said.

‘Jules is a tough little egg. And, after all, the back garden is only about the temperature of the bathroom at Home Place. She’s used to being cold,’ he said, trying to coax a smile out of her and failing.

‘Let’s get to bed. It’s after one, and you’re dead beat.’

She thought she wouldn’t sleep, but she did – at once, and woke in the morning because Rupert had brought her a cup of tea. It was Saturday so he didn’t have to go to work. Jules was fine, he said; he was giving her breakfast. But there was still her mother’s tray to do. She drank the tea, put on her dressing gown and went down to the kitchen, where Rupert and Jules were sitting at the table.

‘We’re having kippers,’ Jules said.

‘Kippers?’ They couldn’t be.

‘Madam ordered kippers,’ Rupert said.

‘And this is a hotel splongdeed where you can get everything, Mummy.’

She held out a piece of toast spread with anchovy paste from her plate. Rupert had cut the toast into a fish shape.

‘Guests don’t usually eat meals with the waiter,’ she said.

‘I’m the manager,’ Rupert answered, ‘and this is a very special guest.’

She made her mother’s breakfast tray, and with a rather shaky determination to be bright and kind, went into Mrs Headford’s bedroom.

She was up – and partially dressed. That is to say, she was still wearing her bedjacket, but she had managed to get into her roll-on suspender belt and her knickers, and was struggling to fasten her stockings. She had lit her gas fire and drawn the curtains, whose window looked on to the back garden.

‘Oh, Mummy! You should have waited for me.’

‘You know I don’t like to be a burden.’ There was resentment in the familiar phrase.

‘You’re not, honestly. You can’t help your arm. Anyway, it will soon be better.’ She had put the tray down and knelt to do the suspenders.

‘The doctor said next week. So it won’t be long.’

‘No. That’ll be nice, won’t it? You’ll be able to finish your jumper.’

She hooked her mother into the bust bodice that halfheartedly encased the drooping white breasts, slipped the camisole over her head and eased the Viyella shirt sleeve on to the plastered arm. While she was buttoning up the front, her mother said: ‘I’ve been thinking, Zoë. I think I’d rather go home – to the cottage – when my arm is out of plaster. I can perfectly well manage for myself and Maud left me the cottage, after all. I don’t like to think of it empty.’

‘But you know the agent said he could let it for you in the summer, Mummy.’

‘I don’t like to think of it full of strangers among all Maud’s things. And anyway, dear, you have your own life, and you don’t really want me in it. You never have.’ The faded pale blue eyes met hers with an irrefutable directness. ‘I know’, she said, ‘when I’m not wanted. And there’s no need to tell me that I am. I may be useless, but I’m not a fool. As soon as I’ve got back the use of my right hand, I shall write to Avril Fenwick and she will tell Doris I’m coming back and get the cottage ready for me. I don’t want to argue about this. I’ve thought it all out in the night. Would you pull that curtain further back, dear? It’s taking the light.’

Zoë went to the curtain and the window. Outside, snow, like coarse greyish sugar, lay in the little runnels on the blackened grass, and the bread that Jules had scattered sat in frozen lumps. She felt confused – because with the guilt about her failure there was irrepressible relief that her mother might leave (she realized then that the worst part of having her had been the feeling that it was for ever) – to which was added deep shame – that she should have such a feeling, and that she had behaved so badly in the first place as to make her mother consider such a course. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘I don’t think there is anything to say.’

‘I shouldn’t have been so cross last night, but I was frightened about Jules, you see.’

Her mother took a sip of tea and then put the cup back in the saucer. ‘Do you know, Zoë, ever since you were a little girl, you hardly ever apologized for anything, and when you did, you always made an excuse for what you had done to show that it wasn’t your fault.’

All of that day, which seemed interminable, she struggled with this indictment. Was it fair, or true? If it was true, it must be fair. Whatever it was, it rankled bitterly inside her. She could not tell Rupert of her mother’s decision because she didn’t want to talk about it in front of Jules. She sent them out shopping while she tidied the flat and prepared lunch; she remembered to ask Rupert to get some batteries for her mother’s wireless. At least she had remembered that. But when Rupert returned with them and installed them of course it was he whom her mother thanked.

As a treat she had used the week’s meat ration for a Sunday joint. She had chosen pork, because Ellen, who was very good at that, had told her how to cook it. With it she had made apple sauce, mashed potatoes and cabbage, which always seemed to turn out rather watery but at that time of year there was not much choice of vegetable.

Rupert carved. ‘I say! This is a bit of all right!’ he said, in the cheery voice she noticed he seemed always to use when her mother was present.

‘No crackling for me,’ Mrs Headford said.

‘
PLEASE DON’T CUT MY MEAT UP!
’ Jules shouted.

‘It’s not yours, darling, it’s Gran’s.’

‘Oh. Can I have her crackling?’

‘No. You’ll have your own crackling.’

‘No cabbage! I hate it. I—’

‘Cabbage is good for your complexion,’ Mrs Headford observed.

‘What’s that?’

‘Your skin,’ Rupert said, putting her plate of food in front of her.

‘My skin? My
skin
? A funny thing, Mummy. You know how people sweat? When they have little blobs on their forehead when they get hot? Well, why don’t blobs of rain go in? Because Ellen says they don’t. She said skin’s waterproof, but if sweat comes out it can’t be, can it?’

‘I see what you mean,’ Rupert said. ‘Perhaps some does go in and you don’t notice.’

‘I don’t think we want to talk about that at lunch-time.’

‘
I
do, Gran.’ She seized a bit of her crackling in her fingers and bit into it with her sharp white teeth. ‘What would you like to talk about?’ she asked. ‘Oh, I know! Dad says that Polly is getting married. It’s in June. Can I be a bridesmaid, Mummy? It
is
my turn. Lydia was last time, and she’s
far
too old now. She’s marrying a man called Gerald Lord.’

‘No, darling, he
is
a lord. He’s called Gerald Fakenham.’

‘What’s a lord, Dad?’

‘It’s a title. You know, like Dr Ballater being called doctor.’

‘What are lords good at?’

‘A good question. Well, the same things as other people, really. Or not, as the case may be.’

‘I expect he has a very nice house and grounds,’ Mrs Headford said, ‘and plenty of money. Very nice for your niece.’

‘I don’t think he’s got any money at all, but Hugh says he’s a very good egg and they both seem very happy.’

‘A good
egg
, Dad? How can a person possibly be an egg?’

‘It’s just a phrase. It means a good person.’

‘Jules, darling, do eat your lunch.’

‘I am, Mummy, bit by bit.’ She speared a slice of meat with her fork and bit a piece of it.

‘Cut it up first, Jules.’

‘It sounds silly, marrying an egg.’

‘And don’t talk with your mouth full.’

‘Mummy, I can’t do both the things you say. I can’t eat my lunch and
not
talk with my mouth full.’

And so it went on, the atmosphere saved by Juliet’s prattle. At least Zoë’s mother didn’t bring up the subject of her going then.

Afterwards, they took Juliet to Kensington Gardens to see if there was ice on the Round Pond. Zoë had got some stale bread from the baker’s without coupons so that Juliet could feed the ducks – one of her favourite occupations. Mrs Headford, invited to come, said that she would have a little rest.

Home before it was dark. It had been freezing in the park, and standing about, while Juliet fed the ducks, she had nearly told Rupert about her mother, but each time she was about to start, Juliet claimed their attention.

‘What’s up, darling?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Something’s worrying you.’

‘I’ll tell you later.’

Tea and toast with Marmite to conceal the taste of the bright yellow margarine. Then they played games with Juliet: Rupert tried very hard to get his mother-in-law to join in, but she said she couldn’t play cards with one hand, and when he suggested Pelman Patience, she said she could never remember where any of the cards were. ‘Pegotty, then,’ Rupert said, and they played that, although Jules said she didn’t like it.

Eventually, and by what seemed tediously slow progression, Juliet was bathed and put to bed, supper, mostly left-overs, was laid on the table, eaten and washed up, and then Mrs Headford said that she was tired and would go straight to bed and listen to her wireless. So Zoë helped her mother undress, filled her hot-water bottle, waited while she went to the bathroom, and helped her into bed. During all this, nothing was said about the future, beyond that tomorrow she would have breakfast in bed and wait there until Zoë had returned from taking Juliet to school to give her her bath. Eventually she escaped upstairs to the sitting room, exhausted.

‘There’s a spot of brandy left. Would you like it with soda or neat?’

‘With soda, I think.’

‘Coming up.’

‘Now, then,’ he said, when he handed her her glass. ‘What’s going on? The atmosphere was pretty sticky at dinner, I thought.’

She told him.

‘Perhaps she doesn’t really mean it,’ he said. ‘It might just be because you were cross with her.’

‘She does. I mean, I’m sure it is to do with me being cross with her, but she does mean it.’

‘Do you think she can manage by herself?’

‘Well, she couldn’t before.’

‘I must say, I can’t see her cooking much, or that sort of thing. She didn’t do a thing to help you today.’

‘She can’t with no right arm. But she says, as soon as the plaster is off, she’s going to get in touch with Miss Fenwick – the friend who lives nearby – to get the cottage ready.’

‘I suppose she couldn’t just go back there for the summer when it would be easier for her, no fires etcetera, and spend the rest of the year with us?’

‘Oh,
God
– I don’t know. It’s just so awful, day after day. I don’t know what to
do
with her, and she doesn’t get on with Jules – or Ellen, come to that.’

‘Poor darling, I do realize how difficult you find it.’

‘Well, you do too, really. You’re much nicer about it than I am, but meals are awful just with her, and we’ve tried having people and we know that’s out. And it’s going to go on for years and years! She’s not sixty.’

‘It’s partly this flat,’ he said. ‘There’s not enough room. If she had her own sitting room it would be easier.’

‘I don’t think it would. She would be wanting to be with us all the time, so even when she wasn’t I’d feel guilty.’

There was a short silence while she watched him take a cigarette out of a bright blue packet and light it. Then she said, ‘If I’d been nicer to her when it was easier to be it – I mean, when I only had to see her sometimes – I wouldn’t feel so bad about her now. Goodness, that smells far better than your usual cigarettes. Could I have one?’

He offered her the packet and lit one for her. For a moment it reminded her of Jack’s cigarettes, but only for a moment: these did not have the slightly burnt-caramel taste of the Lucky Strikes.

‘How do you get French cigarettes?’

‘A place in Soho. I only smoke them occasionally.’ He sounded defensive.

‘I don’t mind what you smoke, darling.’

‘The fact is that you’ve never got on with her, and of course she must know that. I’m not
blaming
you,’ he added hastily. ‘I’m just saying that that’s what makes it so difficult. Perhaps it would be better if she did go.’

‘But, Rupert, that’s the problem. I feel I can’t let her go and I feel I can’t stop her from going.’

They talked in this way for some time. He offered to talk to her mother, but she refused. She was afraid of what her mother might say about her: she was in that state when every suggestion that he made seemed unavailing. Eventually, he gave up and she could sense that he was aggrieved at the lack of a solution.

‘I think you just feel everything is insoluble because you’re dead beat,’ he said. ‘Come on. Bed.’

As she followed him into the bedroom, she thought of all the different ways in which, long ago, he had made that suggestion.

A few days later, she took her mother to Dr Ballater to have the plaster taken off her arm. Yes, he said, she could use it normally; the muscle tone would soon return. ‘But don’t go hopping on and off buses in this weather,’ he had added, looking at Zoë as he spoke, as though, she felt,
she
had made her mother go in buses.