We left after dawn, Chris and I. He’d already met with Max, he said. The rescued animals had already been seen to. He said, “I’ve got some new members in the unit. Have I mentioned them? I think they’re going to work out well,” and I imagine he was trying to tell me about Amanda even then. He must have felt a measure of relief. I was on the road to being taken care of, which meant that I would be taken off his hands as the ALS progressed. If he wanted to pursue Amanda despite the rules of ARM, he could do it without the worry of hurting me. All of these thoughts were probably on his mind, but I didn’t notice his quiet as we drove back to Little Venice. I was too full of what had passed between my mother and me.
“She’s changed,” I said. “She seems like she’s at peace with herself. Did you see that, Chris?”
He hadn’t known her before, he reminded me, so he couldn’t tell what was different about her. But she was the first woman he’d ever met who at five o’clock in the morning, after a night without sleep, seemed as sharp as a scalpel. Where did she get the excess energy? he wanted to know. He himself was knackered and I looked done in.
I said it was the tea, the caffeine, the strangeness and the excitement of the evening. “And love,” I said. “It was that as well.” I spoke more truth than I realised.
We went home to the barge. Chris took the dogs for a run. I filled their food and their water bowls. I fed the cat. I took real pleasure in puttering through the simple chores I could still perform. Everything is going to be all right, I thought.
My body reacted with a vengeance to the long night in Kensington. The day that followed, I fought off an onslaught of fibrillations and weakness by telling myself that it was exhaustion. I had support for that conclusion from Chris, who himself slept until mid-afternoon and left the barge only to take the dogs for two runs.
I more than half expected to hear from my mother during that day. I’d made the first move in her direction. Surely she would make the second move in mine. But each time the telephone rang, it rang for Chris.
Of course, Mother and I hadn’t left things so that she needed to phone. And she’d been up all night like us, so she’d probably be sleeping like us as well. Or if she wasn’t, no doubt she’d gone to the printworks to see to business. I’d let a few days go by, I decided. Then I’d phone her and ask her to come to the barge for a meal. Better yet, I’d wait till Kenneth was back from Greece. I’d use that holiday as an excuse to phone. It’s welcome home and come over for a meal, I would say. What better way for Mother to see that not only was I eager to end the years of enmity between us, but also I wasn’t judgemental about her association with a much younger man. In fact, perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad idea if I became familiar with the current news in the cricket world. I’d want to be able to talk to Kenneth when I finally met him, wouldn’t I?
When Chris took the dogs for their run the next morning, I asked him to bring me a newspaper. He returned with The Times and the Daily Mail. I turned to the back to find the news about sport. Articles on boxing, rowing, and cricket filled the page. I began to read.
Nottinghamshire was at the top of the championship table. Three men batting for Derbyshire had each scored a century in the final day of four against Worcestershire. Cambridge University had kept Surrey in the field until after the tea interval before they won. The Test and County Cricket Board were going to have a momentous special meeting at Lord’s to discuss the future of domestic cricket. Aside from scoreboards, fixtures, and leading first-class averages, the only mention of the England team and the coming test matches between England and Australia was in an article about the differing styles of their captains: England’s Guy Mollison—affable and accessible to the media in contrast to Australia’s Henry Church—short-tempered and aloof. I made a mental note about Church. He was something to discuss. I could say, “Tell me, Kenneth, do you find Australia’s captain as prickly as the newspapers do?” to break the ice.
I laughed inwardly even as I thought about ice-breaking. What was happening to me? I was actually thinking of putting someone at ease. When in my life had I ever worried about that? Despite the fact that, until his fall from grace with Jean Cooper, he’d haunted my adolescence, I found I wanted to like Kenneth Fleming, I wanted him to like me, I wanted all of us to get on. What on earth was bloody happening here? Where were grudge-bearing, ill-will, and distrust?
I hobbled to the loo to have a good look at myself in the mirror, thinking that if I no longer felt myself seething inside at the mere idea of my mother, I must probably look different outside as well. I didn’t. And even my looks confused me. The hair was the same, as were the nose ring, the studs, the thick circles of black I still managed to paint round my eyes each morning. Externally, I was the same person who had thought of Miriam Whitelaw as a bitch and a cow. But my heart had changed if my appearance hadn’t. It was like a part of me had disappeared.
I decided what had effected the change in me was the change in Mother. She hadn’t said, “I washed my hands of you ten years ago, Olivia,” or “After everything you’ve done, Olivia,” in a need to rehash and relive the past. She offered, instead, unconditional acceptance. That gesture asked for unconditional acceptance in return. This change in her I assumed to be the result of her involvement with Kenneth Fleming. And if Kenneth Fleming could influence her behaviour that much, I was more than ready to like and accept him.
I remember now that I wondered fleetingly about Jean Cooper, about where she fitted in, about how, when, and if Mother had dealt with her. But I decided that the triangular aspect of the Mother-Kenneth-Jean affair was their business, not mine. If Mother had no worries about Jean Cooper, why should I?
I pulled Chris’s collection of vegetarian cookbooks off their shelf above the cooker and carried them one at a time to the table. I opened the first book and thought about the meal Chris and I would serve my mother and Kenneth. Starter, main course, pudding, and cheese, it would be the real thing. We’d even have wine. I began reading. I reached for a pencil from the tin to make notes.
As I thought and planned, Chris studied a piece of moulding in the workroom. Our pencils scratched away on paper for a large part of the afternoon. Aside from that noise and the stereo playing, nothing disturbed or distracted us until Max came to see us later that evening.
He announced himself by calling out quietly, “Chris? Girlie? You below, are you?” as he clambered with a grunt onto the barge. The dogs began to bark. Chris called out, “It’s open,” and Max stepped carefully down the stairs. He tossed dog biscuits the length of the workroom and smiled as Toast and Beans tore after them. I’d been half-dozing in the old orange armchair. Chris had been sprawled on the floor at my feet. Both of us yawned.
Chris said, “’Lo, Max. What’s up?”
A white grocery bag dangled from Max’s right hand. He lifted it slightly. For a moment, he looked oddly awkward and even more oddly unsure of himself. “I’ve brought you some grub.”
“What’s the occasion?”
Max unpacked red grapes, a block of cheese, biscuits, and a bottle of Italian wine. “I’m falling back on an age-old response to crisis. When disaster descends upon a family in the village, the neighbours bring food. It’s an activity second cousin to brewing tea.”
Max went into the galley. Chris and I looked at each other, perplexed. Chris said, “Disaster? What’s going on, Max? Are you all right?”
He said, “I?” He returned to us with glasses, plates, and the corkscrew. He placed these on the workbench and turned to face us. “Have you not listened to the radio tonight?”
We shook our heads. “What’s happened?” Chris said. And then his face altered quickly. “Shit. Have the cops caught one of the units, Max?”
“It’s nothing to do with ARM,” Max said. He looked at me. “It’s to do with your mother.”
I thought, Oh God. Heart attack, stroke, hit-and-run accident, mugged on the street. It felt like a cold hand passed over my face.
“And that lad of her
s,” Max went on. “You’ve not yet heard about Kenneth Fleming?”
I said, “Kenneth?” rather stupidly and, “What, Max? What’s happened?” In that rapid way ideas zip through one’s mind, I thought, Plane crash. But there had been no mention of a crash in this morning’s paper, and if a plane had gone down on the way to Greece, wouldn’t every paper be announcing that fact? And I had a paper, hadn’t I? I had two, in fact. I had yesterday’s as well. But neither had said….
I heard only fragments of Max’s response. “Dead…fire…in Kent…near the Springburns.”
“But he can’t be in Kent,” I said. “Mother said…” I stopped myself. My thinking stopped with my words.
I knew Chris was watching me. I did what I could to show nothing in my face. My memory began to race from detail to detail of those hours I’d spent alone and then with my mother in Kensington. Because she’d said…she’d said…It was Greece. The airport. She’d taken him there. Hadn’t she said that?
“…on the news,” Max was saying, “…don’t know much else yet…perfectly rotten for everyone.”
I thought of her standing in the darkened corridor. That odd shirtwaister, the declaration that she needed to change, the smell of gin on her breath after she took too long to slip out of a shirtwaister and into a dressing gown. And what had Chris noticed about her when he joined us? The energy flowing from her at five in the morning, so odd in a woman of her age. What was going on?
A spanner seemed to be tightening round my neck. I prayed that Max would leave as soon as possible because I knew if he didn’t, I’d break down and babble like a fool.
But babble about what? I must have misunderstood her, I thought. I was nervous, after all. She woke me up out of a disturbing sleep. I wasn’t paying close attention to her words. I was intent on getting through our initial meeting without it disintegrating into accusation and incrimination. So she must have said something that I misinterpreted.
In bed that night, I examined the facts. She said she’d taken him to the airport…No. She said she’d come from the airport, hadn’t she? His flight, she said, had been delayed. Okay. All right. Then how did it play out? She wouldn’t have wanted to leave him there at loose ends. So she would have stayed, they would have had drinks. Finally, he would have told her to go home. And then…what then? He would have left the airport and dashed over to Kent? Why? Even if the flight had been delayed, wouldn’t he have already checked in, waited in the international lounge, or in one of those special executive lounges where people without tickets weren’t even admitted…just as they were not admitted into the international lounge in the first place so why was I thinking that Kenneth and Mother would have been having drinks together as he waited for the flight? That wasn’t on. I needed something different.
Perhaps the flight had been cancelled altogether. Perhaps he’d gone from the airport to Kent to use the cottage for his holiday. He hadn’t told Mother because he hadn’t known he’d be going in the first place because when she’d left him at the airport he hadn’t known the flight would be cancelled. Yes. Yes, that was it. So he went to Kent. Yes, he went to Kent. And in Kent he died. Alone. A fire. Wiring gone bad, sparks shooting out, carpet smouldering, then the flames and the flames and his body incinerated. A horrible accident. Yes, yes. That was what had happened.
The relief I felt at this conclusion was incredible. What had I been thinking? I wondered. And why on earth had I been thinking it?
When Chris came in with my morning tea, he set the mug on the shelf next to the bed. He sat on the edge, and said, “When shall we go?”
I said, “Go?”
“To see her. You want to see her, don’t you?”
I mumbled a yes. I asked him would he get me a paper. I said, “I want to know what happened. Before I talk to her. I need to know so I can decide what to say to her.”
He brought me The Times again. And the Daily Mail. As he made our breakfast, I sat at the table and read the stories. There were few details that first morning after Kenneth’s body had been discovered: the name of the victim, the name of the cottage in which he’d been found, the owner of the cottage, the name of the milkman who discovered the fire scene, the time of discovery, the names of the principal investigators. Following these facts was the background story on Kenneth Fleming himself. And at the end were posited the current theories waiting to be affirmed by the postmortem and the subsequent investigation. I read this final section over and over, dwelling on the words arson specialist and on the speculated time of death. I stared at the sentence: “Prior to the postmortem examination, the medical examiner on the scene has determined the time of death to be approximately thirty to thirty-six hours before discovery of the body,” and I did the mathematical calculation in my head. That put the time of death sometime round midnight on Wednesday. My chest felt sore. No matter what Mother had said to me in the early hours of Thursday morning about Kenneth Fleming’s whereabouts, one fact remained clear. He couldn’t have been in two places at once: in her company on the way to or at the airport and in Celandine Cottage in Kent. Either the medical examiner was wildly incorrect, or Mother was lying.
I told myself that I had to know. I phoned her, but there was no answer. I phoned all day and into the evening. And the following afternoon I broke down.
I asked Chris could we go to Kensington now. I said I wanted to see Mother alone if he didn’t mind. Because things had been awkward between Mother and me for so long, I said. She’d be grieving, I said. She wouldn’t want someone who’s not family there, I said.
Chris said he understood. He’d drop me off, he said. He’d wait for me to phone him and then he’d fetch me back.
I didn’t ring the bell when I’d made the muscle-aching climb up those seven front steps. Instead, I let myself in with my key. I closed the door behind me and saw that the dining room door was shut as was the farther door to the morning room. Curtains were drawn over the distant window that overlooked the back garden. I stood in the resulting near-darkness of the entry. I listened to the profound silence of the house.
“Mother?” I called with as much self-assurance as I could muster. “Are you here?” Like Wednesday night, there was no response. I made my way to the dining room and opened the door. Light filtered into the entry, falling against the newel-post at the foot of the stairs. A shoulder bag hung from this. I went to it. I ran my fingers along the soft leather A floor board creaked somewhere above me. I raised my head, called, “Mother?” and then added, “Chris isn’t with me. I’ve come alone.”
I squinted up the stairs. They ascended into darkness. It was early afternoon, but she’d managed with curtains and doors to turn the house into a nighttime tomb. I couldn’t see anything but shapes and shadows.
“I’ve read the papers.” I directed my voice to where she had to be, on the second floor of the house, standing just outside her bedroom door, leaning against the panels, her hands behind her clutching the knob. “I know about Kenneth. I’m so sorry, Mother.” Pretend, I thought. Pretend nothing has changed. “When I read about the fire, I had to come,” I said. “How awful for you. Mother, are you all right?”
A sigh seemed to float down from above although it might have been a gust of wind lightly hitting the curtained window at the end of the corridor. A rustle followed. And then the stairs themselves began to creak slowly as if a hundredweight were being lowered an inch at a time.
I moved myself back from the newel-post. I waited and wondered what we would say. How can I carry off this pretence, I wondered. She’s your mother, I told myself in reply, so you’ll have to. I riffled through my mind for something to say as she made her way down the first flight of stairs. As she moved across the passage above me, I opened the door to the morning room. I pulled the curtains away from the far corridor window. I went back to meet her at the foot of the stairs.
She paused on the mezzanine. Her left hand clutched the banister. Her right hand made a fist between her breasts. She was wearing the same dressing
gown she’d put on at three in the morning on Thursday. But unlike three in the morning on Thursday, she seemed unpossessed of what Chris had seen as unusual energy and what I now realised had been tautly strung nerves.
I said, “When I read about him, I had to come. Are you all right, Mother?”
She descended the last half-flight of stairs. The telephone began ringing in the morning room as she did so. She didn’t give any indication that she heard the noise. It went on insistently. I looked towards the morning room and wondered about answering it.
Mother said, “Newspapers. Vultures. Plucking at the corpse.”
She was standing on the bottom stair, and in the light I’d let in from the open doors and uncurtained window, I could see how deeply the last day had altered her. Although she was dressed for it, she couldn’t have slept. Lines had become gouges on her face. Pouches of flesh hung beneath her eyes.
I saw she was holding something in her fist, mahogany coloured against the ash of her skin. She raised the fist to her cheek and pressed her cheek against whatever she held.
She whispered, “I didn’t know. I didn’t, my darling. I’m swearing it. Now.”
“Mother,” I said.
“I didn’t know you were there.”
“Where?”
“In the cottage. I didn’t. I didn’t know.”
All at once my mouth felt like I’d been walking a month in the desert as she destroyed every possibility of pretence between us.
I felt the only answer against going faint was to concentrate on something outside the realm of my own spinning thoughts, so I concentrated on counting the double rings of the phone that still shrilled in the morning room. When the ringing finally stopped, I moved my concentration to what my mother still held to her cheek. I saw it was an old cricket ball.
“After your first century.” She whispered, with her eyes fixed on something only she could see. “We went to dinner. A group of us. What you were like that night. Buoyant. Life and laughter, I thought. So splendid and young.” She raised the ball to her lips. “You gave me this. In front of all those people. Your wife. Your children. Your parents. Other players. ‘Let’s give credit where credit is rightly due,’ you said. ‘I lift my glass to Miriam. She’s given me the courage to pursue my dreams.’”