Copycat (14 page)

But did I want to exist like this, drained of energy and purpose, my head split as if cleaved by an axe? Day after day, despair and inertia until slowly my brain gave way?

I could end it all, of course, and lift this exquisite pain. How lovely that white emptiness seemed when my future was surrounded by darkness. There was no point in living without Martha’s friendship, and I fantasized that they found me hanging by a rope in the garage. Or perhaps I would take a more gentle route and use the car exhaust fumes.

Sam would feel the most guilty.

That monster who treated Martha like the dust that flew daily out of her old vacuum cleaner, how he would regret his cruel words; how he’d stand, shamefaced, by my coffin as they trickled the earth onto the lid, cursing himself for his insensitivity, his ego, his flippancy and his deranged aggression.

That same day, praise be, my mother, Stella, dropped dead and all I could think of was that at last, apart from the animal act of birth, she had done something positive to help me.

My salvation was as miraculous as Christ appearing after death. The phone rang while Graham was bathing the children and I sprang to get it…
it might be Martha.

It was Mrs Miles, my mother’s neighbour.

‘Is that you, Jennie?’

Not Martha. My heart dropped as I said yes. I had no other interest in life except my cocoon of agony and I wanted to slam down the phone.

‘Jennie Young that was?’

As I heard the background of Walthamstow traffic, heavy at that time of evening, my mind slipped into gear. ‘Yes.’

‘I have some terrible news, I’m afraid, my dear.’

I knew at once that Stella was dead because this was part of such an old fantasy… all those occasions when I’d prayed to hear those words at school, elevating me instantly to the heights of noble martyr while the flames of tragedy licked my feet. And I used to imagine my poor mother winging her way to heaven and passing my vile thoughts, like belching chimney smoke, on the way up.

And would my betrayal be such a surprise?
Had she honestly never known?

But if Stella had done as I wished and died while I was at school, it would have been a wasted gesture. This was a far, far better thing she did now, but I squashed the rising flash of excitement.

Having acted out this part so many times, it was hard to guess at the proper reaction because nothing came to me naturally – no deep sense of grief, no shock, only a calm acceptance and woodenness of emotion.

Had I ever loved her?

Had I ever loved anyone?

If no to both these questions – did that make me a psychopath?

Mrs Miles was saying, ‘And, of course, they’re waiting at the hospital until they know what to do with her. All that side still needs to be arranged, and then there’ll be the flat to clear. I presume she left a will, but as far as I know you were her only kin.’

Kin? Kith, and dear ones. The departed and the dearly beloved. Words like white lilies, saved for death.

I assured Mrs Miles that I would take care of everything. Graham would know exactly how to deal with this melancholy business, and of course Martha would have to be told.

‘Who was that?’ Graham asked, coming downstairs with little Josh wrapped in a towel, and Poppy trailing naked behind them.

‘Stella’s dead.’

‘Oh, Jennie, no…
’

‘She died in hospital this afternoon. She was admitted this morning with a brain haemorrhage and they’ve been trying to trace me ever since.’

‘Oh, Jennie, how awful, oh no… no. Poppy, come here. Mummy doesn’t want you crawling all over her just now. Mummy’s upset. Where are those Fuzzy Felt pieces you were playing with before? Go and see if you can find them.’

‘I’ll have to go and sort it all out.’

‘I can make most of the arrangements from this end.’ Graham was so reliable, so practical, so sweet and considerate to me. ‘All you’ll have to do is clear out the flat at some point.’

‘She didn’t have anything we would want.’

‘No,’ said Graham, aware that everything in that dreary basement would end up in the council tip. ‘But you better go and make sure. There have to be personal bits like photos, books and papers. When you’ve done that I’ll get hold of a clearance firm.’

‘She was only young. She was fifty-one.’

‘I know,’ said Graham. ‘It’s awful.’

‘She was always so unhappy.’

‘But that wasn’t your fault, Jennie.’ He tied Poppy’s dressing-gown cord in a special butterfly bow. He started to dress the baby, while I sat motionless by the phone trying to make sense of the mess. ‘Why was she so unhappy?’

‘Because her life was so unfulfilled, I suppose, and she was lonely. She never recovered from being abandoned all those years ago, and she never forgave my father.’

Graham said, ‘Her life was a struggle. She was short of money. She had to work hard.’

But that was no excuse for being so bitter and twisted. ‘Lots of people are short of money, but they don’t go through life bearing the cross she lugged round on her shoulders. Think of her face – so closed and ungiving.’

If these were ordinary circumstances Graham knew that I would need Martha. He knew his compassion wasn’t enough and he said, with so much concern in his voice, ‘Why don’t you slip over to Martha’s while I put these two little devils to bed?’

My chest was bursting with new-found hope. ‘Would you mind?’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Graham. ‘Martha would want to know, anyway. First Hilda, now poor Stella. Two deaths in forty-eight hours. Who will be next, I wonder?’

I crept up my neighbour’s drive with an indescribable dread.

‘Jennie!’
Sam’s eyes narrowed, confusion spread.
‘What the hell…?’

‘I know, Sam. I’m sorry.’ And I burst into tears. ‘Mum’s dead.’

He took one wary step backwards as if he suspected a lie. ‘What? When?’

‘This afternoon,’ I told him with my head down, unchallenging. ‘And I just wondered if you would mind if I had a quick word with Martha.’

He could hardly throw me out of the house – not now.
Bless you, Mother.

‘But… I didn’t know Stella was ill.’

‘Nobody knew. It was sudden.’ I remained on the porch. I wouldn’t go in unless invited.

Sam said, ‘Well, you better come through.’

‘Thank you, Sam. I hope I’m not disturbing…’

‘No, no, it’s OK.’

‘Listen,’ I told him, a red-eyed penitent, ‘I want you to know that I’m so very sorry and if I could take time back I would…’

Sam sighed and softened. He looked weary. ‘Jennie, don’t let’s go into that now. Come and find Martha and have a good cry…’

When death strikes people hold their breath, and Sam and Martha adored their own mothers.

I stepped inside to the same general disorder. Martha had been crying. They must have been in the middle of an almighty row when I so brazenly interrupted. She looked up at Sam, then at me, and she hesitated before stepping forward. Sam said solemnly, ‘Stella’s dead.’

‘Oh Jennie, no!’

Martha drew me towards her and we sat down on the battered old sofa, my vile indecencies quite forgotten in the gravity of the moment. How simply it had turned out after all. Who would have thought that such a short time ago I was thinking of topping myself?

‘I just feel so sad for her,’ I whimpered to Martha.
‘Nothing good ever happened…’

‘Shush, shush, don’t think like that,’ said Martha at her sweetest, and I knew I was halfway to forgiveness. ‘Good things did happen to Stella. She had you, she had Graham and two wonderful grandchildren.’

‘Drink?’ asked Sam, giving me a chance to smile and share some new understanding.

‘I never loved her, perhaps she knew that,’ I sniffed in my distress.

‘But you did love her, Jennie,’ Martha argued, soothing the newly bereft, stroking my hand. ‘Look how much you cared when those girls at school were so cruel. It was your mother they were attacking and you felt so hurt for her, not for yourself. You tried to protect her, you went through hell so she wouldn’t be distressed. And you did this when you were only a child. You did love her. I’m sure you did.’

‘You’re going through the kind of guilt everyone feels when someone dies,’ said Sam, rallying to my pitiful cause. ‘And let’s face it, Jennie, Stella didn’t make it that easy for anyone to love her.’

‘And I worry that I’m too like her,’ I went on, dabbing my eyes. Both Sam and Martha protested at this. I looked up to show them how much I appreciated their comfort. Everyone likes to feel needed and here we were in a marvellous vortex, gurgling down a comforting hole, and all was going to be well again.

If I’d never loved my mother before, then I certainly loved her now.

When I left their house later that evening it was as a special guest, wrapped in their concern, strengthened by their love and in the certain knowledge that we could start afresh.

What a blessing that it’s not possible to see into the future.

W
HAT A BLESSING THAT
it’s not possible to see into the future.

I, too, blessed Stella’s timing, but these coincidental dramas whenever there’d been an ‘incident’ between me and Jennie were becoming uncanny. If I hadn’t known for certain that Jennie was next door all day, and that Stella had died under the eagle eye of professionals, I would have suspected murder.

A murder of convenience.

I have never seen Sam so driven as on the day he arrived home with that note, pursued by a hysterical Jennie. It was scary. I had no defence. I had ‘been to bed with that woman’, and it was, as Sam told me quietly, ‘more gross than any normal bloody infidelity’. And how the hell would I have felt if he’d been caught in some public bog with his prick up another man’s arse, or coming out of our bedroom wearing my bra and knickers?

And what the fuck was he supposed to do now?

It was a waste of time telling him it was a ‘one-off’, never to be repeated, one dreadful mistake. He refused to listen. ‘What’s done is done,’ he said with meaning. And how could we possibly return to any semblance of married life – ‘Especially with that nympho next door. Nothing but a farce,’ he sneered.

Now was not a good time to mention the hypocrisy of his self-righteous rage, the unimportant fling he had with the daughter of his sales manager; Fiona, with the lifeless eyes, the dead hair, but the alarmingly lithe and firm body. Or his weekend with the lovely Sarah, one of the designers at work; Sarah who flashed her thong at the world every time she bent down. He would have preferred not to work quite so closely with Sarah, he said. But funnily enough – although he disliked her and called her a tramp – he ended up shafting her, then calling her ‘nothing much’.

And then there were the nearly times when he flirted shamelessly with my friends, fawned over women at parties, made passes at other men’s wives, and when I saw how easily they fell under his spell I wanted to shout a warning, ‘Beware, this man is debauched, don’t touch him, he’ll hurt.’

And how many times had I warned him that I wouldn’t have him back again?

If I had screwed another man I had no doubt that would end our marriage, and, until Jennie came to the door with her devastating news, I almost believed that Sam would pack his bags and go.

But death is hard to deal with, especially the death of a mother. If mine had died I couldn’t have borne it and Sam felt the same about Caroline. And under that hard-boiled exterior, Sam is a soft-hearted fool. He caved in at the sight of poor Jennie in mourning, and only I detected that gleam of triumph in her eye. By the end of the evening I couldn’t believe it when I heard Sam say of our ‘warped liaison’, ‘It’s the age we live in, these things happen.’ Although by then he was on his fourth brandy.

I went to the funeral with Jennie.

‘But surely Graham should be the one…’

‘Please, Martha. I need to feel strong, and with you alongside me I will.’ And Graham seemed only too happy to stay at home and mind the kids.

As we drove through the dull grey streets, past terraces, towering blocks of flats and broken houses, we marvelled at the way some small, proud gardens basked in green and white spring daisies before the dust of London withered their freshness away. The privets along the railings were gold, the uniform trees were spread with the pink and white of may, or draped with the mauve of lilac. It was odd to smell the sweet fragrance resting on the air, mixed with fumes and garbage.

Jennie said, ‘I could have gone to visit her in the chapel of rest, but I didn’t think that was a good idea.’

‘Very wise,’ I told her, ‘what would be the point?’ But I couldn’t use the old platitude, ‘Remember her how she was when she was alive,’ because in Stella’s case she would probably look happier and more relaxed in death.

The dead. And their poetry.

‘
It hath pleased God Almighty to take unto Himself
…’

‘
He cometh up and is cut down like a flower
…’

‘
In the midst of life we are in death.’
Well, Jennie’s mother was certainly so.

It was all the essence of courtesy. Sympathy flowed, from the men who carried the coffin down the aisle to the priest on his soft feet, but no amount of kindness could obscure the fact that the crematorium chapel was empty and that nobody – not even her daughter – mourned the fact that Stella’s body lay under the purple drapes.

When the soft machinery started to hum and the coffin moved towards the furnace, I wondered how many times she had left her house with no-one to wave her goodbye.
And was this a measure of success –
how many people wept at your funeral?

Afterwards, at the basement flat, someone had puked on the steps outside. Mrs Miles, the neighbour who gave us the key, said greedily, ‘Let me come and see what’s left before you finally lock up, dear.’ And when Jennie looked at her stonily, the woman said with total conviction, ‘Stella would have wanted that.’

We drank two strong cups of tea before we felt able to sort through the remnants of somebody else’s life. Everything had a doleful look, once special and new, now soiled and unwanted. It was quite an eye-opener for me. So this was where Jennie grew up; her dreams had been formed in this dismal basement, her view from the window obstructed by chimneys, tenements and a railway line. Limited horizons.