Remember Me (16 page)

Lily shakes Jarvis awake. Lily tells Jarvis it is time he went to work.

‘Do stop telling me what to do,’ grunts Jarvis.

Lily sulks the more. How can you help anyone if they abuse you for trying?

‘Where’s Hilary?’ enquires Jarvis, remembering his daughter.

‘She went to school,’ says Lily.

‘She what?’ demands Jarvis, angry.

‘She wanted to, so I let her.’ Bad-tempered men must expect to be lied to. Jarvis does not altogether accept Lily’s version of events, but cannot find the emotional energy to query it.

‘She doesn’t seem to have any proper feelings,’ laments Jarvis.

‘No,’ says Lily. ‘She finished up every scrap of lemon mousse before she went, and there was a whole lot of cigarette ash blown into it from somewhere. I’m sure if my mother died the last thing I could do would be eat.’

‘Perhaps I’d better meet her out of school,’ says Jarvis.

‘You’d never find her,’ says Lily. ‘Two thousand children all let out at once. It’s mayhem.’

Downstairs, Jonathon misses his mother and begins to cry. Margot, typing letters, hears him perfectly well, but for once does not go to his rescue. Spoilt brat, she thinks. Jonathon starts up the stairs.

Jarvis pulls Lily down upon the bed: he embraces her. Her resistances disperse.

‘I shouldn’t drink so much,’ he says. ‘Then I could cope better.’

‘It’s all right,’ she says. ‘All right. Of course you’re upset. I’m sorry I was so nasty before.’

‘I suppose it will be a relief to you,’ he says, ‘not having Madeleine on the other end of the telephone all the time.’

‘That’s right,’ says Lily.

‘You’ll be a full-time stepmother now,’ he warns. ‘Will you mind?’

‘Of course not,’ says Lily, but she lies in her little white teeth. Her little sister Rose’s hair, blonde, thick and curly, was not unlike Hilary’s. Hilary’s hair on the hairdresser’s floor; Rose’s hair on a sandy bare-wood floor, while mother Ida grumbled and whinnied, and snipped and snipped—so much hair on such a tiny thing! Hair everywhere! What makes me think of that now, wonders Lily.

I am Lily, the butcher’s daughter, Rose’s big sister, fled ten thousand miles, but still the memories come back. My husband lies on top of me, my dress pushed up, everything rucked and rumpled. Never mind, never mind; despoiling is what it’s all about. My mother never understood it; the cycle of cleaning in order to dirty, dirtying in order to clean. I am an advance on my mother, and that’s something surely. Socially, sexually, I am one step forward. And that’s the meaning of my life.

So thinks Lily, sly eyes shining, sly lips slippery beneath Jarvis’s own. Coitus is what we owe the dead, thinks Jarvis. The only answer to death is life, and more life.

Jonathon stands in the doorway observing his parents with no little wonder. He is pale.

Hangover, thinks Lily, disengaging herself, straightening herself; all that whisky before breakfast. Just like his father.

Downstairs the doorbell rings. Margot stops typing, and answers it.

Miss Maguire has come visiting, her smell strong upon the wind, asking for Mr Kominski.

‘Mr Kominski moved away fifteen years ago,’ says Margot, ‘when Mr and Mrs Katkin bought the house. Can I help?’

Ah, the doctor’s wife, always helping! But you have nothing to offer this poor old lady, with her swollen, ulcerated legs and her trembling hands. Your husband has, perhaps; not you.

Miss Maguire shuffles off, confused. Margot closes the door, but something seems to have slipped into the house while the door was open: at any rate Madeleine’s presence seems strong in the room: or is Margot only now emerging from the shock of hearing Madeleine is dead? Here she stood yesterday, thinks Margot, poor wronged soul: and now she’s dead, and what was all that struggle, all that anger for?

I never said I’d take her child, thinks Margot. I never actually said I’d look after Hilary. She asked me but I didn’t reply. I am excused. It would be impossible, in any case. I have my own family to look after. Your child, Madeleine, not mine. Nothing to do with me. Nothing.

I am Margot the doctor’s wife, Winifred’s daughter Alice’s granddaughter. Let me hold on to that. By our titles you shall know us.

Yes, I came to this house once, years ago, so long ago it doesn’t matter. You were queen here then, Madeleine, and a sorry queen you were. You should have looked after your kingdom better. But I don’t remember you at all. I remember no glints from the jewels on your crown. I remember feeling sick from too much gin: I remember following Jarvis up the stairs, giggling and stumbling. He led the way, I followed. I can hardly be blamed for following: it’s in a woman’s nature. I owed you nothing: I never met you.

Margot feels again the tightness of her chest, and gasps for breath; I’m ill, thinks Margot. I must leave, I must go home. Margot gets up and goes to the door and calls up the stairs in a hoaky old voice scarcely her own, more like her grandmother Alice’s—

‘Where’s Hilary? What have you done with Hilary?’

But no adult hears, which is just as well. Only Jonathon, who comes tottering to the top of the stairs, unattended. He stares at Margot, unblinking and unsmiling, and then wavers and almost loses his footing, and Margot/Madeleine, instead of rushing to protect him, stays exactly where she is and hopes to see him fall.

Jonathon does without the witch’s help, regains his balance and saves himself. But his face puckers. Jonathon changes his mind about coming downstairs, and goes back instead to stand silently on guard outside his parents’ door, where it’s safer.

‘S
HE KNEW SHE WAS GOING
to die,
’
says Margot to Philip at lunch. She serves veal-and-ham pie and salad. Laurence and Lettice are relieved to see the familiar slices and to know that their mother is herself again. Philip reads
The Lancet
and the
BMJ
while he eats. He smiled at his wife when he came in so she knows their breakfast quarrel is forgotten, or at any rate that she is forgiven.

‘People who say they’re going to die frequently do,’ remarks Philip, ‘but there’s nothing magic about it. They say they’re going to die because they want to, and if they want to die, they usually do. One way or another.’

‘It was an accident,’ Margot protests.

‘Bad tyres aren’t an accident,’ says Philip. ‘They’re negligence. If you want to live, you don’t travel the motorways in old cars.’

Margot does not reply. Philip knows best.

Philip discovers and laments the existence of a new crack in the salad bowl.

Lettice dissects the pie crust from the veal-and-ham pie (in the interests of her figure) and queries the necessity of its existence.

Laurence helps himself to her discarded crust and discourses on the existence of charm quarks.

Philip asks for tomato ketchup, Lettice for pickled walnuts, Laurence finds that the salt cellar is empty. Margot gets to her feet, during the first ten minutes of the meal, some five times. ‘If I dropped dead from overwork,’ says Margot/Madeleine to her family, on the fifth occasion, ‘I don’t suppose any of you would bother to come to the funeral.’

Fortunately neither Philip, Laurence nor Lettice hears, either because Margot/Madeleine’s voice does not have much power (so far) or because they are too busy with their own lives to pay attention to Margot’s.

‘Look,’ says Lettice. ‘Greenfly. Never mind,’ and with the coarseness consequent upon her new status, her arrival at the menarche, she actually devours a couple of the green translucent creatures, to her brother’s horror.

‘Six people a year in this country are killed by cows,’ he announces, for no particular reason. ‘And four are blinded by champagne corks.’

‘Someone was sick in the Art room,’ says Lettice. ‘I helped clean that up.’

Margot limps as she goes to fetch a fresh bottle of Heinz salad cream, and turning says to her husband in Margot/Madeleine’s voice:

‘I think we should have Hilary to live with us.’

‘You must be mad,’ is all Philip says, and goes back to his paper and the pain in Margot’s leg gets worse and worse, and her breath comes in gasps, and she wonders why she ever married her husband, and remembers, because she was pregnant.

In the afternoon she irons her husband’s shirts.

Seven o’clock. Bonsoir! Supper time. Shepherd’s pie, and the tomato sauce has run out and all the shops are shut.

Bonsoir!

Clarence starts the second half of his shift. The air inside the mortuary is still and close: the tile and formica surfaces seem not so much hygienic as grubby. Arthur, unusually for him, has not cleared away his tea things. Everything seems to Clarence to be in need of sweeping and wiping, as it seemed to in his mother’s house, after her death. Dead spiders and crumpled daddy-longlegs are swept up in corners: rust flakes fall from the rows of empty trolleys: the shrouds, which should be neatly folded, white and crisp upon the shelves, lie in grey untidy heaps upon the floor. How did they get there? Clarence picks one up and starts to fold it. But it is too large to be folded by one person: the width beyond the reach of his arms. Clarence leaves the shrouds where they are. Someone else’s job, he thinks, not mine. I am here as guardian of the dead, not as a cleaner.

Clarence opens his work on the works of Bishop Berkeley, but cannot concentrate. There is a smell of something—what? Toothpaste? Tooth powder? He sniffs around like some shaggy, untidy dog, but cannot trace the smell to its source. Clarence does not clean his teeth. He has been heard to say to his girlfriend that if God had meant us to clean our teeth he would have made us with bristles on our fingers. Clarence’s teeth are filmed over with plaque and have a yellowish greenish colour, but are in perfect condition. Clarence’s girlfriend cleans her teeth after every meal, goes to a dental hygienist who regularly picks away at the build-up of plaque, and uses both dental floss and tooth sticks daily, and has very painful, very sensitive, very rotten teeth. The smell of tooth powder reminds Clarence of his girl-friend. Clarence feels a stab of painful lust.

New identity forms, properly completed, must now be attached to Madeleine’s body. Clarence performs this distasteful task. He prefers dealing with the bodies of men. Madeleine’s eyes are closed. She appears to listen. When her eyes fall open, on their easy hinges, she appears to watch. Still, thinks Clarence, listening is better than watching.

Clarence’s father lost a leg in the Second World War: Clarence’s mother grew cross and sluttish in his absence. Clarence was born in the satisfaction of his father’s inordinate (according to Clarence’s mother) demands. Clarence’s father groaned long and loud in the face of his misfortunes. Clarence’s mother reproached Clarence’s father until the day she died.

Clarence, like Goliath, is accustomed to the complaints and reproaches of women.

‘How can I manage on the money you give me? How can I cope with a growing boy with you out at work all day? Of course the place is untidy: I’m at my wits’ end coping with the mess you make. If you’d ever played football with the lad, his hair wouldn’t be the length it is. Just because your peg leg hurts and you’re too mean to get a new one, stainless steel, articulated, and with toes that even wiggle? How you ill treat me, monster! Villain! Going off to war with two legs, coming back with one, and not even hurrying home, either. Beast! What kind of husband is that? What kind of fate? Oh my heart, my poor heart

Shut your ears, Clarence. The chorus is at it again. ‘Who killed this woman? This poor woman, with her crushed chest, and her perfect face?’ Mother, sleeping, silent while her eyes are closed. ‘Who killed her? Or failing that, who drove her to her death? Someone must have. Some man, some devil, some monster. Who? Was it you? Clarence? Your guilt, by virtue of your maleness, your beard, your yellow teeth (how she begged you to brush them!), your hair, grown long in order to annoy?’

Clarence closes Madeleine away again, in her little chilled cupboard in the wall.

Lie still, Madeleine. Lie quiet. Don’t think about Lily. Was it really her fault? People do the best they can: only steal what they have to. Husbands, lovers, children.

No. Not Hilary. Not my child. Never.

Bon appetit!

Lily pours herself a pink drink in a frosted glass. Madeleine can touch her not at all. Is there something already dead about Lily: so that the touch of the dead on her mind seems nothing untoward?

It was Lily’s father the butcher who made a lady of Lily in the end, and not Lily’s mother, the Home-County miss. It was Lily’s father who rescued Lily from the white sands and randy servicemen of wartime New Zealand; who sent her to a good school and paid for a course in flower-arrangement. How did he do it? With money lent him, long ago, by Karl Kominski’s sister Renate. It was Lily’s father who paid for the fare to England, home and safety. It was Lily’s father who told her she was a princess, and made her one, so that in the end she outstripped him, passed him, all but forgot him. Lily writes to her mother, the expatriate Englishwoman, not to her father the retired butcher, with the tops of his two forefingers missing, and two phallic stumps left behind.

Bon appetit!

Margot heats up the water for the frozen peas, to serve with the Shepherd’s pie, Philip’s, Laurence’s and Lettice’s favourite dish. The curtains are drawn and it’s cosy and nice.

You sly bitch Margot, cries Madeleine now; you hypocrite, with your secret knowledge, and your self-satisfied wifedom, your smug motherhood—it was you who started the whole thing off. I remember you now. Beneath the coats with Jarvis. It was you. You owe me something. Look after Hilary now.

Margot winces, suffers, sighs: and feels such a wave of spite and anger against all the world that Hilary, poor Hilary, quite gets forgotten in the wash of it.

It is left to Renee that evening, child-loving, man-hating Renee, to take Hilary in her arms, fold her bosom against her own, and gently swaying, gently murmuring, to offer the child comfort and a place for her tears.

‘All right,’ says Madeleine in their ears. Is she passing by? ‘All right for the moment, but not for long.’ At any rate Hilary cheers up, and Renee wonders whether the landlord will let her have Madeleine’s two basement rooms in addition to her own. In which case she could then re-apply for custody of her daughters. The judge rejected her last application on the grounds that Renee could not provide the girls with proper accommodation, though Renee herself believes that the real reason is her avowed bisexuality. My husband’s heterosexuality, she wished to say, has been more damaging to our marriage than my homosexuality, but no one seemed interested. He has custody of the girls, employs a succession of au-pair girls to look after them, and sleeps with them if he can. Renee’s friend Bonny drifts between Renee and her own husband, unable to make up her mind as to whom she prefers, finding Renee more consoling but her husband more exciting. Bonny is only just eighteen.