Swallowing Grandma (32 page)

‘That’s sorted,’ she said, coming into the living room, where I’d settled with the drinks. ‘I’ll make us something to eat in a bit.’

Like what, I wondered. Oxo on toast?

‘Have you been watching me, then, all these years?’ I burst out. ‘All this time, have you known who I was?’

She’d been going to sit down, but at that she scooted away from the sofa and went to stand in the bay, arms clasped round herself.

‘Yes.’

‘Well,
why
didn’t you say something to me?’

‘I tried, a few years back. I did. I telephoned, and you told me to get out of your life. That’s what you said.
Get out of my life.
’

My heart started to thud, because it wasn’t true. ‘No way. I didn’t know anything about you phoning. When? What else did I say to you?’

Mum was twisting on the spot unhappily. ‘I’d talked to your grandmother about meeting you – this’ll have been about six years ago, a year or so after I started at Bank Top Library. I phoned her several times and she told me you didn’t want anything to do with me. I said I didn’t believe her, so she put you on and you told me to leave you both alone. It was you. I’d been going to speak to you about who I was, the next time you came to borrow a book, but I didn’t dare after that.’

‘I can’t remember it at all. Poll never said you’d been in touch.’

‘That I can believe.’

‘And you told Poll you were working in the library?’

‘
No
. I only said I wanted to see you. I didn’t dare tell her where I was based. I honestly think she’d have tried to kill me if she knew. The woman’s mad. She attacked her own husband, beat him up.’

That made me feel peculiar, her talking about Poll like that. ‘She thinks you went off with him.’

‘He helped me to leave, that was all. Then we went our separate ways. I don’t know where he is now. Good God. He was ancient. It would have been like eloping with my father.’ She put her hand over her eyes for a moment, and laughed unpleasantly. ‘What an evil mind that woman has.’

So Cissie got that wrong too, I thought. But she had it from Poll, so no wonder. Perhaps Poll was mentally ill. It would make sense in some ways.

‘So did you deliberately get a job near to me?’

Mum nodded. She kept looking up at the ceiling and taking deep breaths, as if she was trying to stop herself saying too much all at once.

‘Well, wasn’t it one huge risk coming back? I mean, didn’t you think someone would recognize you?’

‘It was a risk, yes, but one I was prepared to take. It had been ten years since I’d been in the village and I’d changed a lot. I’d lost a great deal of weight, I’d dyed my hair and had it cut short. Changed my name, obviously – and quite legally; I’m Ann Ollerton now, you must never ever call me Elizabeth. That was another life. And the only people who ever saw much of me when I was living in Bank Top were Poll and Vince because I was so ill I hardly ever left the house. Vince had disappeared—’

‘ – And Poll was going blind even then. Did you know that when you came?’

‘I’d seen her with her white stick when I drove through once.’

Bloody handy for you, then, I thought.

‘There was a woman, Maggie, Mary, I can’t remember exactly; she might have spotted me, at a pinch, because she used to come round sometimes when I was still at Poll’s.’

‘You’re lucky,’ I said. ‘Maggie does read, but she favours inspirational books from the church library, or romance off the market, type of books where the heroine starts off in a shawl and ends up in Brussels lace. So she never bothers with the library.’ And if you’re not actually looking for someone, I was thinking, if you don’t expect them to be there, you probably won’t see them.

Mum only stared up at the ceiling rose. ‘I never thought it through like that, I just needed to be there. You don’t understand the pull I felt to be near you.’

‘But not when I was a baby.’

‘No. I told you, I was ill. Depression’s been my baby.’

There was a silence. I wondered whether to ask her about Dad, and about Callum. It would be like blowing up mines in her face.

‘Do you know what I think?’ she said suddenly. ‘I think we should have a drink.’

I thought so too. I needed a break. ‘Can I use your toilet?’

‘Up the stairs on your left. Sherry, brandy or Martini?’

I thought they were all vile. ‘Martini, smashing.’

On the landing I paused and counted doors. The bathroom was on the left, what must have been my room in front of me with the curtains drawn, the light on and a dressing gown laid across the bed. Two doors on the right; hers the first one I opened.

I suppose I was hoping for a little shrine. The room was pine and pastel, unremarkable except for the towers of books along the wall under the window. The dressing-table surface was clear, no cosmetics out, and even on the bedside table there was only a pair of reading glasses and a bottle of pills. But over the chest of drawers was me; two newspaper clippings, one of me winning a book quiz in about the third year at secondary school, and an older one of Bank Top Primary’s Harvest Festival, with me holding a plate of onions. Both pieces had been laminated and pinned to the wall. There was also a colour photo that I remembered Miss Dragon taking, the day after I got the letter saying I’d got a place at the grammar.

I stood grinning for a minute, remembering. Then another memory popped up, of me screaming down the telephone while Poll held the receiver in such a way that I could only get at the mouthpiece. ‘It’s that flaming pervert again,’ she’d said, shaking with temper. ‘Don’t listen to his filth. You just tell him, tell him to get out of our lives.’

I turned the light off and closed the door behind me.

When I got down there were two glasses of Martini sitting on the coffee table.

‘I’m not a drinker,’ said Mum. ‘I can’t remember when this was last out. But we should have a drink tonight. Shall I make us something to eat as well?’

That was weird, because all she had herself was two Weetabix, lightly sprinkled with milk so they held their shape, and this slug of Martini. I wanted to help her make the meal but she insisted I stay in the living room watching TV. Eventually she brought through a plate of cheesy broccoli pasta for me, the sort where all you do is add water, and we ate sitting on the sofa in front of
TOTP2
.

‘I wasn’t expecting company tonight,’ she said, observing as my fork uncovered a little pocket of unmixed sauce powder.

‘No no, it’s delicious,’ I said, and I wasn’t lying either. I’d been ready to eat the kitchen sponge I was so hungry. On the screen in front of us Sting sang about being lonelier than any man could bear, but he didn’t look it.

Afterwards she let me back in the kitchen to wash up; I felt we were making strides. The Martini was beginning to penetrate and I was feeling bolder.

I said, ‘Was it awful when Dad died?’

‘Yes. I was ill.’

I acted ignorant. ‘From the car crash?’

‘That wasn’t my fault,’ she said quickly. ‘The coroner said so. It was a proper inquest and the verdict was accidental death. I’ve got the newspaper clippings to prove it.’

‘Right.’ I carried on swilling the sink, chasing particles of Weetabix down the plug hole.

‘I’ll show you.’

‘There’s no need.’

She put down the tea towel and took my hand. ‘Yes there is. I can guess what you’ve been told.’ Her grip tightened. ‘I know you must hate me, I know that really.’

‘I’m not sure what I feel,’ I said, after a struggle. If we weren’t honest here, we were lost. ‘It was a mistake on the phone that time. I didn’t mean to tell you to go away. I got confused and thought you were someone else.’

Tears started at her eyes and she began to pull me through the hall.

‘I’ve never been far away. I wanted to help. You liked the clothes, didn’t you? That was something I got right. It took me weeks, months to get them all together. I only wanted nice things for you.’

‘They were lovely.’

In her room I pretended surprise at the photos of me.

‘See? I’ve only been able to put these up after Dad died, but I’ve been close to you for a long time.’

I sat on the bed while she brought out the coroner’s report from a suitcase under the chest of drawers. I didn’t feel comfortable reading it with her there, I’d have preferred it if she’d left me alone, but she clearly wanted to gauge my reaction.

‘See?’ she said when I’d finished.

It was true; according to the paper, she’d been cleared. It had been my dad’s fault for driving like a maniac. I thought of Poll’s lies and hated them, and understood them.

‘He was so arrogant,’ Mum began. ‘He always had his own way, and his own rules, he never stopped to think about other—’

‘Don’t,’ I shouted. ‘Don’t say anything about him. I don’t want to hear. If you start slagging him off, I’ll walk straight out of this house and never come back, I promise you. I did not come here to listen to bad stuff about my father.’

I stuffed the report back in its envelope and threw it back into the open case. She went out of the room and after a minute I heard taps running, over the sound of sobbing. I’m not going to feel guilty, I thought, I don’t actually owe her anything. For a moment I wondered whether I should just grab my purse and go. But then I caught sight of the photo album. At the back of the case, half under a college scarf, a gold embossed maroon cover:
My Memories
.

And there they were. All the pictures that should have been round Poll’s house: Roger and Elizabeth, Roger and Elizabeth. In Poll’s back garden; sitting on a stone wall up on the moors somewhere; in my old bedroom; holding hands in the porch of this house. Mum with her long dark centre-parted hair, Dad with his devil-smile. And they did seem odd together, as if they were asking to be cut apart with scissors.

I sat for a long time looking at one of them in his Metro, smiling through the windscreen. The water was still running in the bathroom. It felt as if my whole identity was draining away with it.

I flipped over the last couple of pages and it was me, a fuzzy fat baby. First the three of us, then me and Mum, then me and Dad. Finally just me on my own, boss-eyed and chewing a teething ring. It was really me; Poll had the ring and the Babygro still in a bag under her bed. The strange thing was, in all the shots, everyone looked really happy.

I put the album open on the duvet and went to get Mum.

*

I leant over the sink and watched the water run away from me into darkness. I thought, what if I’ve lost her all over again?

It was still dark when I heard her get up.

She was out on the landing, laying my clean clothes carefully over the banister. All she was wearing was an underslip, and my eyes were drawn to her thin arms covered all over with small silvery scars, like stretch-marks. She caught me looking, and jumped.

‘I didn’t know you were awake.’ She pulled my sweater against herself.

‘Is the bathroom free?’ I mumbled, wanting to get away as much as she did.

She nodded and we fled in opposite directions.

I washed and dressed quickly because I knew she’d have to be at work. Personally, though, I was in no rush to go back to Poll’s. I started to rehearse the tale I’d tell her about where I’d spent the night. Tempting to be hung for a sheep as a lamb, and tell her I’d been at an orgy in Harrop, or mainlining heroin round the back of Porter’s. Even that would be nothing like the shock of the truth.

‘I’m going to tell Poll I’ve been with my friend Rebecca,’ I said to Mum over my slice of dry toast. She was sitting opposite, sucking on a cube of frozen orange juice that dripped down her sweater cuffs every so often. I kept remembering the arms under those chunky sleeves, and tried not to stare. ‘I don’t like to lie, but on no account must Poll find out about you. She’d go berserk, and she’s unstable enough at the moment.’

‘All right.’ Her voice sounded flat, disappointed.

Well, what did you think I was going to do? I felt like asking. Shout it from the hilltops? Destroy my entire past at one fell swoop? I could have gone back to Poll holding the information like a flaming sword above her cowering form, and cut her version of my life into tiny parts. But what would that have done for me?

Here, in this kitchen, was a woman who had sat by and watched me struggle for years, who never even told her own father I still existed. It was in my power to take her apart as well, if I’d wanted; tell her I never wanted to see her again, that the embrace last night in the bathroom was only the product of Martini and confusion. Or I could confront her with the unmentionable, the story of Callum and his mother. Did she even know?

I wouldn’t though. Hurting either of them would only be hurting myself. I’d keep the secrets, for now, while I decided what to do with them.

‘We’d best run if we want to make the eight-twenty,’ she said suddenly. I watched her load her bag with bananas and crispbreads, and felt sad. Why did she have to be so bloody fragile? Why couldn’t she have turned out to be strong?

*

Poll was making a show of ironing when I got in, putting more creases in than she was taking out.

‘Ooh, look who’s showed her face,’ she said. ‘Finally. You’ll get a name, you will.’

Instantly I wished I’d never come home. I said, ‘How lovely to see you, Kat, have you had a nice time with your friend?’

Poll only pulled a face. ‘Out till dawn. Well, I don’t care. I’ve been managing fine on my own.’ I watched as she deftly ironed a ladybird flat into the sleeve of her blouse.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘Because I’m seeing her tonight as well.’

‘What,
all
night? God Almighty.’ Poll rested the iron up on its end. ‘Out all night with a woman? That’s not normal. Dickie says you might be gay. He says he’s had his suspicions for a while. I don’t know what to think; there’s summat shifty about you at the minute, that’s for sure.’

‘Actually, I’m asexual.’

‘And what’s that mean, Miss Clever?’

‘Look it up. Hey, have you seen that nasty stain on your blouse?’ I pointed to the orange blob on the sleeve and she skutched it away to hold it near the window.