Remember Why You Fear Me (36 page)

I was going to say “Right” again, but stopped myself. I watched as he deliberately skewered another olive on to a stick, aiming exactly for the very centre.

“And my work’s improved,” he said. “I think there’s a new maturity to it. Everybody says so. Well, most people anyway. The ones who count. They say that within my celebration of life there is now a recognition of death. It’s very fulfilling. I mean,” he went on, twisting that stick into the olive, twisting it on ever further, “there’s still room for development. I’m interested to see what will happen to me when Dad dies. But, you know, I’m happy now,” and he
did
look happy, actually, and that was a good thing, I supposed, “there’s no rush,
I can wait.”

“You should call Kevin,” I said. “Have you called Kevin? Now you’ve both lost Mum. It’s something you should talk about.”

“I must do that,” he agreed.

“And we should keep in touch. You know. More than we do.”

“We must.”

He smiled at me indulgently then. “That’s the thing about you,” he said. “You always want to put people
right
. Make sure we’re just a happy family.”

“Oh,” I said. “Do you think so?”

“You’re just like Mum. You look a lot like her, you know. Or you could do. If you just took a bit of care, wore a bit of make-up, did a bit of work to your hair.”

“Yes, you said.”

“I could help you make more of yourself. I’d be glad to. Free of charge, of course. Well, save materials. Free labour.”

And all I could think of was Mum lying there in that coffin, all made up to look pretty before they’d burned her, her hair neater than it had ever been in life, her cheeks pink and lips red to hide the pallor—because she must have been pale, mustn’t she, underneath? And it was silly to care because it wasn’t as if she were
my
Mum, not exactly. And I couldn’t tell Anthony, because it wasn’t exactly his Mum either.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’m fine.”

“I know you are, sweetie,” he said. “I was just saying.”

I offered to pay for the meal; it seemed only fair, since he was the one who was mourning. And he insisted we go dutch. We kissed on the cheeks as brother and sister would do, and then somehow ended up shaking hands anyway, that all went wrong somehow. And he said goodbye to me as if it were the last time he’d ever see me, and I wondered if it might be.

Mum and Dad died for each other at exactly the same time. There was a car crash. The policeman told me they wouldn’t have felt anything.

I tried phoning Mum, because I knew she’d be upset. And when there was no answer I began to get worried. A few hours later she called me from a phone box. “It’s a bit embarrassing,” she said. “But obviously your father and I can’t live together any more. Can I stay with you for a bit?” I picked her up in the car, and she flung her arms around me. “Oh God,” she said. “It was horrible. Our heads passing through the windscreen like that. I don’t care what that policeman said, it really hurt.” She reached out and took my hand tightly; I couldn’t steer the car properly when she did that, so I pulled over to the curb—I didn’t want her dying in a car crash twice the same night. “You’re the only one left, Connie,” she said. “You’re the only one left.”

I don’t have a big house, but it has a spare bedroom, and I’d naturally assumed it could easily accommodate any visitors should the need arise. But in all the years I’d lived there the need never had arisen, not even once. It was full of boxes: old school books, clothes I hadn’t worn since I was a girl, dolls. I did my best to stick everything into the back of the wardrobes. “Thank you, sweetie,” said Mum. “Oh, thank God for you, thank God for you.” She took my face in her hands gently, stroked my cheeks. “I’m going to need more wardrobe space,” she said.

For the next few days she didn’t do very much. I’d go off to work in the morning, and by then she’d already be up, watching television, spread out on the sofa in her nightie. When I’d come home she’d still be there, watching repeats of soaps she’d already seen earlier that day. Sometimes she’d perk up and ask if she could help with anything—tidying up, making dinner. Then she’d cry with frustration when the vacuum cleaner wasn’t the same model she was used to, or when the cutlery wasn’t in the drawer she’d expected.

“Your father was a wonderful man,” she’d tell me from time to time. “There never was a man more kind, more gentle, more tender.”

Of course, I went to see Dad. It was no surprise he didn’t want to know how Mum was getting on, I knew how awkward that would be. “I’ve found someone else,” he said. “I’m happy.” I didn’t tell Mum, but she found out anyway. “That shit,” she said, and began to sob. “He was just waiting for me to die. He couldn’t keep his hands to himself even when I was alive.”

It seemed churlish to mind Mum staying with me. She did her best. She tried to keep out of my way, not make any mess. And the insomnia wasn’t her fault, and certainly she could hardly have crept around the sitting room any more quietly. But it was knowing she was there at all. I’d lie in bed at three in the morning, seething as I heard her tiptoe down the stairs, open cupboard doors in the kitchen so gently. Cry to herself in such a quiet selfless little sob.

One night I got up to confront her. She was in the kitchen making gingerbread men. There was flour everywhere, flour that I knew she’d have cleared up before morning. She started at me guiltily.

“I didn’t disturb you, sweetie,” she said. “I didn’t, did I?”

“No,” I answered truthfully. “What are you doing?”

I helped her to cut the little gingerbread figures, I put a smile on every one. “What do you think happens when we die?” she asked me suddenly.

“I don’t know, Mum,” I sighed.

“I mean, when you die to
everyone
. When there’s no one around any more who knows who you are. No one who remembers you. Do you think we just vanish forever? I think we do. I think we must do. If there’s not even a
memory
of who you were, what choice do you have?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, Connie,” she said, and stroked my face with floury fingers. “Oh, sweetie. Who’s going to remember you? How many people can you die for, when no one knows who you are? Oh, sweetie, what ever will become of you?”

One day I came home from work to find a man sitting with Mum on the sofa. He was in his early thirties, wore glasses. She told me she thought he was reasonably good looking, and I could do much worse than let him take me on a date. I didn’t know what to do. I apologized to the man, and he said it was all right—in fact, he
was
rather lonely, and he wasn’t doing anything that night; my mother had showed him a photograph of me when I was a little girl, and he appreciated I had aged in the mean time, but I was certainly his type. So he was up for the date if I was. He told me his name was Mike, and he shook my hand—then, as an afterthought, he kissed me on the cheek as well. I took Mum to one side and asked her where she’d found him, and she said it was the supermarket. For a moment I thought she meant she’d
bought
him there and I was confused, but Mum laughed and said, “No, sweetie, he’s a greengrocer there. He was serving behind the counter. Seriously, sweetie,” she whispered, confidentially, “he’s a catch. You can never have too much fruit.”

Mike waited as Mum took me to the bathroom, did my make-up, fluffed my hair. “You look so pretty,” she cooed.

We went to a local restaurant. Mike didn’t buy one of the expensive wines, but the one up from the one up from the house red. It was quite nice. I realized that life selling fruit in a supermarket was more interesting than I’d have imagined, and he had many funny anecdotes to tell me. I tried gamely with anecdotes of my own, and he was a gentleman and laughed at the end of each one. Then he took me home and shyly said he hoped we could do it all again some time soon. And I said okay, and gave him my phone number. Then Mum said, no, no, what’s the point in that? “Don’t spare my blushes!” she laughed. “I think you should go to bed together right now! Life is fleeting, and you never know when it’ll be over. Just grab every chance you’ve got.”

We made love, and it hurt a bit, but not as much as I was expecting. Mike said sorry, and I could see he really meant it, so I told him it didn’t matter. I thought he might then have gone home, but he didn’t. We lay there together for a while, not really knowing what to say. “Your Mum’s nice,” Mike ventured at last. I told him I was going to the toilet, and he said okay. And I asked if he wanted anything, a drink or anything, anything to eat, but he said he was okay.

Downstairs my Mum was making gingerbread men. She was very excited.

“I think he’s lovely,” she said. “He reminds me of your father. So kind, so gentle, so tender. But it’s up to you, sweetie. What do you think?”

She went to the cupboard I used to keep my baked beans in, and took from it a plate. She plonked a gingerbread man on to it. “Here,” she said. “Fresh from the oven.”

I bit its head off. “You’ve been using salt again, Mum,” I said.

“Have I?”

“Yes. It looks the same as sugar, but really, it’s not.”

But I ate the rest of the body, just to be polite. And I cried.

“Ssh,” said Mum, and took me in her arms. “It’s okay, Mummy’s here. Mummy’s here.” And at that I couldn’t help it, I cried all the louder. “You were always my favourite,” she told me. “You were, baby. Sweet sweet baby. All the others have gone, but you stuck by me. I love you. And I’m never going to leave you, not ever.”

I thanked her, said good night.

Mike was upstairs, no doubt waiting for me to come back to him. And Mum was downstairs, committing unspeakable acts in the kitchen. So there was nowhere for me but the garden. It was cold and I couldn’t stop shivering. And I delivered up a prayer, of sorts, my first since I was a child. For anyone who might care to listen.

Oh God, I don’t know how I’ll react. How I’ll mourn, whether I’ll cry, whether I’ll go numb. Whether it will be a passing fleeting moment, and then all will seem as it was. You can’t know until it happens to you. But please, God, please. Let me know what it feels like. To find out how I’ll be when my mother dies.

My daughter Laura is pregnant. I wouldn’t mind, but she’s only two years old. Her little girl stomach is distended with the weight of her baby inside; she only started to walk nine months ago, and now she’s having to prop herself up clinging to the walls, otherwise that big bulge in her tummy will topple her over. My wife is so happy about it. She’s over the moon. She’d always wanted a child, she told me that clearly on our very first date—I’d asked what she was interested in, expecting her to come out with a hobby or her favourite TV programme, and she said just one thing—”Breeding.” And now she gets to have a grandchild too, and she’s already knitting it socks and booties. “I’m going to be a nanna,” she says, “I’ll be the best nanna in the world. It’s a blessing.” I’m not so sure. I wonder whether a family can be just a little too blessed.

My wife had loved being pregnant. She would show off about it to all her friends, and wear clothes that emphasized her swelling bump. And she was fascinated by the way her body would change daily; I’d come home from work sometimes and she’d be waiting for me, standing in the hallway, naked, all the better to show the latest instances of her metamorphosis, she’d point out the darkening of the areolas around her nipple, or the way her belly button had pushed out. And she’d delight in her glow; “Look, darling,” she’d say, “I’m glowing, can you see how much I’m glowing?” Laura hasn’t got the vocabulary to express herself properly yet, but it’s clear she’s not enjoying her pregnancy quite so much. She sighs as she heaves her bulk around her little playroom, sometimes she’s in tears. My wife tries to be supportive, and is full of good advice about what to expect in the third trimester, and ways Laura can best nurture the foetus—but for all her good intentions, she often gets impatient with her. “You don’t know how lucky you are!” she snaps at her. “Why, all around the world now there are women just
begging
to conceive, they’re trying all sorts of unnatural methods with frozen sperm and sieves. And here you are, and it’s fallen into your lap. And look at how you glow!” Sometimes my wife gets so angry with Laura she won’t speak to her for days. Once I even saw her slap her. It wasn’t too hard, though, and it was only across the face—she wouldn’t do anything that might hurt that little baby within.

We didn’t realize Laura was pregnant for a while. Try as hard as we can, we’re not expert parents, and when at first our little daughter ballooned in weight we just thought we were feeding her too much. It wasn’t until the morning sickness took hold of her that my wife recognized the symptoms; she had been taken exactly the same way, her daily vomiting both loud and copious, and how she’d gloried in it, her face rising up from that toilet bowl at me all full of smiles, “Darling, you’re going to be a Daddy!” Laura would wake up each morning and have to toddle to the bathroom and throw up, and her mother would be there, pulling her hair back so it wouldn’t get caught in the effluence, and stroking that hair, and telling her that she was going to be all right, and telling her how lucky she was. I’d suggested we take Laura to a doctor, but my wife was dead set against that—this was an unusual thing, we both knew that, and they’d want to run lots of lab tests on Laura like a lab rat, they’d take her away from us. “And this is
our
miracle,” said my wife, “this is all
ours
.” We hid Laura away. It wasn’t as if it were that hard. Laura attended playgroup on Thursday mornings, and we merely cancelled that, my wife thought the other little girls there would be jealous. And it wasn’t as if anyone ever visited, it wasn’t as if we had many friends left, most of them had got bored with us when my wife had been expecting.

I suppose one of the first things I wondered about was who the father might be. After all, it wasn’t as if Laura had much of a social life, I couldn’t see there could be that many contenders. And I asked myself some searching questions, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t me; I was able to reassure my wife on that score. Certainly, I loved Laura; I hadn’t felt quite as involved with the whole pregnancy thing as my wife had been, truth to tell I’d been a little ambivalent. But when I saw my daughter for the first time—in that hospital bed—all bald and squalling—oh, I felt such a sudden rush of love for her, and I just wanted to pick her up in my arms, and the nurse gave her to me to hold, and I was terrified I’d break her, fragile little thing like that, and the nurse laughed and said she was stronger than she looked. And I’d held her tight then, and I’ve held her tight since, whenever that rush of love came over me I’d lift her out of her cot and give her the biggest cuddle—had I made her pregnant doing that? Had my love been too much? My wife thought it was unlikely, but I couldn’t help worrying about it. The only alternative I could see was that it might have happened at the playgroup. There was a woman in charge of the playgroup, and all the assistants at the playgroup were women too, and only mothers ever collected their children from the playgroup, fathers were too busy—really, it was wall to wall women at the Shillingthorpe Nursery, I can assure you. But some of the toddlers left in care were boys, and I was a boy myself once, I know what naughty tricks boys can get up to. And I went along to the nursery one morning. I stood outside and watched them secretly through the window. None of the little boys seemed sexually boisterous, but I suppose you never can tell. I wondered whether Laura had led them on a bit, had she been flirty, had she flaunted herself, had she been a bit of a tramp?