The Scrapbook (4 page)

I stop and lean on the rake. ‘Why now?'

‘Because I'm tired out. I'm tired of missing him. And because I want him to see you, the woman you've become.'

I drop the rake and walk over to her. ‘Yes, but why now, after all this time? Why not right after he disappeared, or when Granny Ivy died, or when I left home? Why now, when it will only hurt you more than you can handle?'

She stares past me at the oak tree. One of its leaves has flung itself, damp and filmy, against my leg, and I stoop to flick it off.

‘What do you think will happen, mum? I'll find him, he'll show up here, hold you in his arms and proclaim undying love? He's had plenty of opportunities to do that over the years and he hasn't taken any of them. It's time to accept that he's not coming back.'

I expect her to start crying. I want her to start crying. She looks at me for a solemn moment and then reaches to pat my cheek. ‘You're still so full of anger towards him, aren't you? When you get like this you're the spit of your grandmother. She'd be proud of you.'

She smiles at the point she's scored and tips her nose into her glass. I breathe through my nostrils to calm myself down and rub at the pulpy imprint the oak leaf has left on my jeans.

‘Can't you just leave her memory alone, please? She might have had her faults …'

Mum snorts through a mouthful of gin and starts to choke. I stand and watch, taking a spiteful pleasure in her discomfort, but then move to pull her forward and thump her between the shoulder blades.

‘Well,' I say, jolting her back and forth, ‘what does that tell you? The man upstairs clearly doesn't like you bad-mouthing one of his flock.'

She points at the ground and wipes her mouth with her sleeve. ‘The man downstairs, Fern. Believe me, it'll be the man downstairs.'

I acknowledge the joke with a tight lip-twitch and settle on the ground by her feet.

‘But, mum, what if he doesn't want to know? What if he's dead, did you ever think of that? Or what if he takes one look at my face and hurls himself screaming through the nearest window? You do see that there isn't going to be a happy ending, don't you?'

She rests her hand on the top of my head and suddenly I'm my four-year-old self again, trapped beneath my father's reluctant palm. I force myself not to shrug her off. She sighs and tangles her fingers into my hair and we sit for a while in silence. I almost start to doze but then her hand tightens on my scalp and I jerk away. Her fingers collapse through the air and into her lap and she sniffs and looks down, fumbles through her coat pockets for her handkerchief. Her eyes have taken on the glassy sheen of marbles left out in the rain.

‘Oh, Fern, I miss him.'

I rub her shin as she wipes at her face and I make soothing noises through closed lips. I'm determined not to give in. I know I'm right.

Her shoulders start to heave and she knuckles the shabby brown handkerchief brutally into her eye sockets. I'm scared that she'll start making that high, thin sound from my childhood.

‘Okay, I'll do it. I'll look for him.'

I regret it immediately, but she lowers her handkerchief and presses her sodden cheek to mine and my resentment is shot through with relief that she's smiling again.

‘You'd better give me a starting point,' I say. ‘Last known address. I can go to the library tomorrow after I've taken you to the hospital. It's not going to be easy, though, if he's not from Spur or Sorel.'

She bites at the skin of her index finger, worrying at it. ‘I don't have an address. But he wasn't an islander. I'm sure he lived on the mainland.'

‘Okay, well where did he work?'

She mumbles something I don't catch through a mouthful of fingertip and I ask her to repeat it.

‘There's nothing, Fern. Nothing relevant anyway.'

She won't meet my eyes. I laugh and shake my head. I'd always assumed that my ignorance in all things related to my father was down to my own denial of him, my wilful deafness whenever his name was mentioned. ‘But that's ridiculous. You can't have a relationship as all-consuming as yours was and not know even simple things about him.'

She starts scratching at the stitches in her handkerchief, getting her thumbnail into a loose one and teasing it away from the fabric. The handkerchief starts to pucker, curling in on itself like a dying woodlouse. We both watch and I wait for her to respond.

Once she's sawed the thread completely with her sharp nails she smoothes the handkerchief flat across her knees, nods down at it. There's something bitter about the movement, the accompanying wry smile.

‘I don't suppose this will be any help? It's his. There's nothing else really. I only knew a few things about him for certain, Fern, he preferred it that way. He didn't even like having his photograph taken. When we were together it was just about the two of us. No past, no future, no baggage.'

This is why I stayed away for so many years. This knowledge that my very existence is no more than
baggage
, an offshoot from the trunk of her main love. And this is why I've always shrugged her off whenever she's wanted to talk about him. The anger is always there, just below the surface, and it hurts us both.

‘Bullshit you were just two people. You shared a child together. Don't tell me you were happy with that arrangement, tucked away in your toy box until he was ready to take you out to play.'

‘It wasn't like that. I can't explain it to you in a way that would make you understand. He loved me …'

I laugh at her. Furious. Cruel. ‘What, every third Thursday and alternate bank holidays? He couldn't possibly squeeze any more love for you than that?'

She catches one of my hands and holds on. Presses it hard. ‘You know he was married. It wasn't that easy.'

I try to turn away. ‘Easy for who? I can't imagine it was a struggle for him.'

‘Don't, Fern. He loved me. He loved us both.'

Bile washes sour at the back of my throat. I cover my mouth, speak through my palm. ‘
Us both?
Are you talking about me and you, or you and her? Did he keep pictures of his proper family in his wallet, mum? Did you talk about them?'

She closes her eyes and rubs at her cheek. She looks exhausted. I'm suddenly aware of the lateness of the afternoon, the chill crawling up from the grass. I gently tug my hand from hers but she scrabbles to retrieve it, pressing it to her chest. We make an awkward tableau, stiff and shivering in the sunlight, our faces blank with pain.

Her words are whispered. ‘I know I didn't ever put you first, Fern, and I'm sorry. Really I am. We never talked about his wife. He never apologised for it and I never tried to make him feel guilty. Not even when you came along.'

I clear my throat and reach to pick up her glass and book. ‘Well, that's a relief, just as long as he wasn't made to feel bad.'

If she's bothered by my sarcasm she doesn't show it. I haul her onto her feet and steady her across the lawn. Her body quivers beneath my grip and I pause by the oak. ‘Are you really sure you want me to do this, mum? It's been a long time and things aren't going to be the same.'

She gropes with her good arm to pat the old tree and smiles, more at it than at me. ‘I want this. I'll be fine, darling.'

Tommy comes to the back door while I'm cooking dinner. I meet him on the step and give him a hug. He's got a lot thinner but his arms around me feel as thick and ropey as they ever did. When I was young I used to be able to lace my fingers around one of his forearms and swing myself off the ground, and know that he would hold my weight.

He kisses the top of my head and then steps away to look at me properly. ‘You look great, love, really well. I'm so glad you came back to look after your mum. How is she?'

I steer him down the path a little way. ‘She's having a nap at the moment. Do you want me to wake her?'

He shakes his head. ‘No, leave her be. I just popped by to say hello and see how she is. How you both are. It's been so long since you visited. Is it good to be home?'

I grimace at him. ‘I wouldn't go that far. It feels strange. Mum's just the same though.'

He laughs at that, but distractedly. ‘Do you think so? I've been worried about her for a while. She's more absentminded these days. Seems to be collapsing the past into the present, forgetting herself.'

‘It's probably the drink,' I say briskly. ‘Though she's asked me to look for him. My dad. And I said I would.' My voice is sharper than I intended. Challenging.

He nods and looks away. ‘Maybe it'll help her to know what happened.'

We stand in silence for a while and I pity him his hopeless love for my mum. I'd always hoped she'd pity him too, turn to him for comfort and find some kind of contentment. But lukewarm loving never worked for her. And maybe the situation suits him too. Maybe, like her, he'd rather love a cipher, an absent figure, than sacrifice the dream to crinkled skin over the breakfast table and petty irritations.

He hugs me again and makes to leave. ‘Didn't I see you at the dock yesterday?' he asks. ‘I'm sure it was you. Parked up on the headland at the beauty spot, looking out to sea through a pair of binoculars. I waved.'

I shrug and look away. ‘Yes, it could have been me. I like to watch the ferries come in and out.'

He raises my head with a hand under my chin and winks at me. ‘I'll be back soon, kid. Give your mother my best. Look after her for me.'

Mum and I spend the evening playing rummy and I pour her a few generous drinks, win every game. She shakes her head at me as I crow with triumph and scoop another pile of coins onto my lap.

‘You should be ashamed of yourself, Fern. Taking advantage of my weakness.'

I tip my head towards her near empty glass. ‘Another one?'

‘Oh, yes please.'

‘Okay, shuffle and deal and I'll be back in a sec.'

My legs and chest stop performing their usual functions just as I'm mixing the drinks and I'm on the floor and sobbing before I know what's happened. I can barely breathe. I stretch out, kick the door closed, crawl under the table and surrender myself. I have no idea why I'm crying, or for whom, so I settle on Granny Ivy. I conjure up her voice, the smell of her apron, the bony clasp of her hand, and let myself miss her.

The phone starts to shrill from its place on the sideboard, pulses of sound that fill the pauses between sobs. Impatience filters through from the front room and I stagger to my feet, call out to forestall any appearance.

‘Just rescuing a moth, mum, be through in a minute.'

I can hear her muttering to herself as I splash water on my face and then collect the glasses. She's at least two drinks past the mellow stage.

‘It's okay, panic over. There you go.'

I sit down in the armchair and put her drink on the coffee table. Her mouth's twisted in on itself like a poisoned rosebud, but then she peers at me and takes in the swollen eyelids and the rose blooms and blossoms.

‘Oh, Fern. What happened?'

‘It died. The moth. It was caught up in a cobweb and I crushed it trying to get it free.'

‘I'm sorry to hear that,' she says slowly. ‘Was that the phone I heard? Who was it? Was it Rick?'

I shake my head and reach for my glass. We sip for a moment in silence and she watches me as if she's about to say, or ask, something else. I'm in no mood for a heart to heart. I pick up my cards, look them over, and nod towards her purse.

‘I think you'd better crack open the notes, mum. I'm upping the stakes and coins just aren't going to cut it.'

She fumbles through the worn compartments and starts to count her remaining funds. ‘You'll have the shirt off my back, you evil girl. We'd better go to the bank tomorrow after you've taken me to the hospital. Replenish my supply.'

But she's smiling.

A Clipped Square
From The Top Of A Cigarette Box

Afterwards. After you'd lain on me in the back seat of your car, covered me with your hands, blocked out the moon and the stars until the night narrowed to just the skin of your neck – afterwards – I remembered my mother's words.

Drowsy with joy and desperate to prove her wrong, so sure that she would be wrong, I laughed as I asked you if you were married, and didn't understand why you weren't laughing too.

You hissed smoke out between your teeth and glanced at me. Glanced away.

I think other women would have wanted to know everything then. Every detail of every aspect of this other life. Gorged themselves on the pain of it until they were plump and ripe with its awfulness. Carried it around with them forever afterwards, so carefully, like a vase too big and too heavy, too full of water. Dripping its load no matter how delicately they cradled it.

They'd have wanted to know everything.

Do you wind her hair into a rope, to cling to as you climb her body? Did you buy two sets of camisoles in silver satin, one for each of us? When you see me wearing mine, in the subtle confusion of night, do you mistake me for her?