Astonishing Splashes of Colour (11 page)

He always looks puzzled when I ask this. “No, of course not. She didn’t need to. We got married.”

So. My father wants me to believe they lived happily ever after. My mother, Margaret, probably with a promising academic career ahead of her, surrendered it to get married and have six children.

The mother of my dreams is tall, thin, brown-haired, laughing in the sea. Where do I come into all this? I look through the wedding album, black and white, and my father never looks quite right. He should be full of restless energy and his fierce eyes should stare out of the photographs, somehow willing the photographer to get it right, to capture his real identity. But the very nature of a photograph—freezing him in time—misses a vital part of his personality. What we see is only half the man.

My mother looks so young and pretty next to him, her hair unfashionably long and straight. I suppose if my father was the original hippy, she was the second, fashioned out of his rib. Did she always look like that, or did he change her? Was the mother we knew the same as the university student who never finished? Do we only see half the woman in the photographs?

I have grandparents—Margaret’s parents, who live in a small bungalow in Lyme Regis. I used to go and stay with them in the school holidays, because my father was always busy and my brothers were unreliable. I still occasionally go down for a weekend. They’re over ninety. My grandfather sits in front of the television every
day, barking with laughter at regular intervals. In the evenings I sit with him and watch programmes I never knew existed.

“Did you see that?” cries my grandfather every now and again, slapping his leg and sucking the edges of his moustache. I try to see what he is laughing at. I used to think I was too young to understand. I now think he doesn’t understand either. He wants to convince himself that he is still alive, that he still has an active brain under that shiny bald dome. Sometimes he calls his wife from the kitchen. “Mrs. Harrison,” he shouts, “come and see this.”

She comes in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a tea-towel, and stands in front of the television for ten seconds. “Well I never,” she says. “Don’t laugh too much, Mr. Harrison—your teeth will fall out.”

For years I thought old people didn’t have first names, that they were christened Mr. Harrison or Mrs. Harrison.

My grandmother lives in the kitchen, baking, cleaning, scrubbing the floor, constantly wiping her dishcloth over the yellow Formica tops. “Such wonderful things you can buy today,” she says to me with pleasure. “These tops come up lovely.”

She is very thin and pale, her skin settling in loose folds round the base of her neck. Her hands are mottled red and blue, as if she were permanently cold. She tries to feed me nonstop. “Have another scone, dear,” she says. “You’re far too skinny. All this rationing—it’s not good for you.”

She frequently thinks I’m Margaret, that she’s lost fifty years somewhere and is starting again. I like this confusion. It makes me part of my mother.

There is a large black-and-white studio photograph of Margaret in the lounge, mounted and framed. She’s sitting sideways, but her face is turned towards the camera, looking across her shoulder. She has a long pale neck and her skin is smooth and unblemished. Her dark hair is tied into the nape of her neck and
she looks beautiful, like an Edwardian lady, graceful and frozen into a past that doesn’t exist any more.

My grandmother tells me different stories every time she sees me looking at this picture. “Why, that was before she went up to university. Mr. Harrison and I wanted to remember how she looked when she had just grown up. You can see the innocence in her eyes.”

Or: “After she was married. I remember they came to stay after their honeymoon and Guy—your father, dear—insisted on a portrait photograph. We thought it was too expensive, but he said he was paying. He insisted.”

Why does my father not have a copy of this picture at home? Why are the wedding photograph and album the only pictures he has of my mother?

There are photographs of my mother all over the house in Lyme Regis. At eleven, with long stick-like legs and thick dark plaits; at three, squatting on the grass picking daisies, her hair cut into a severe bob, but her eyes bright and inquisitive.

There are photographs that my father has sent of all the grandchildren and great-grandchildren, but my grandmother has trouble remembering the names. Also, several photographs of the wedding, my mother clutching a bouquet of white lilies, two friends as bridesmaids with their fashionable hair curling round tiny hats, and my grandparents as middle-aged parents, from another era, people whom I’ve never known. I’ve sat and examined this picture many times. Do I look like her? Did she want to be my mother? Did I sit on her lap and have cuddles?

“Why did my parents go and live in Birmingham when they both liked the sea so much?” I asked once.

My grandmother stopped beating her cake mixture for a few seconds and looked bemused. “I don’t know,” she said. “I expect
it was because he wanted to take her away from her university friends. They were a bit rowdy.”

This answer worries me. Was she happy? Six pregnancies. Did she want us all?

Sometimes, I think I can remember sitting on her knees, playing with her fingers as she laced them together, hearing a soft, low voice singing “A Hard Day’s Night.”

Every now and again I determine to find out more about my mother and how she died. I’ve made lists: are there reports in old newspapers about the crash she died in? Could I find any of her old university friends, school friends? Ask my grandparents about the funeral?

But these are big tasks and require energy and I put it off, until one day it will be too late and everyone who ever knew her will be gone. Even now, I make the lists and never do anything. There is something that makes me uneasy. I don’t know what it is.

I lie next to James and think about it all. I’ve learned to keep it there in my mind without it becoming urgent or frustrated, but not losing it either.

Now, hearing James breathing, feeling the space around me, the calming emptiness, I feel my body grow heavy and still and I sink finally down into sleep.

J
AMES AND I SIT
in the doctor’s waiting room. I’ve been here before, many times, and I’m familiar with the posters about AIDS, breast cancer, diabetes. I know several of them by heart.

Depression:

Do you wake early in the morning and not get back to sleep?
(Yes.)

Do you find it difficult to eat?
(No.)

Do you find it difficult to talk to people?
(It depends who they are.)

Do you find it difficult to concentrate?
(Yes.)

Are you tired all the time?
(Yes.)

You might be depressed.

(Yes. Right.)

This is part of a deal with Adrian. If I don’t go to see the doctor, he won’t let me see Emily and Rosie again. Ever. He’s waiting outside in his car, expecting to take us home. The engine’s probably already running, in case I try to escape and he has to give chase.

When I woke up on Saturday, out of a frenetic, kaleidoscope dream, James was no longer lying next to me. I lay still for a while, trying to clear my head from the dream, dazzled and confused by its complexity, but unable to remember much.

I could hear James’s voice from the other room, talking to someone on the telephone, and I realized that his voice had been in my dream and taken it over, words coming out of his mouth visibly in multi-coloured layers.

“Give us an hour.” I sat up to look at the alarm clock on the bedside table and was amazed to see that it said 7:15. That’s impossible, I thought. We only came to bed at 7:00. I’ve been here longer than fifteen minutes.

James came into the room, pleased to find me awake.

“Hello,” he said. “You’ve had a good sleep.”

For quarter of an hour, I thought. Then I saw that he’d changed his clothes, shaved, brushed his hair, and I realized I had lost twelve hours.

“You’d better get up,” he said. “Adrian wants us to go over to Tennyson Drive by eight.”

“Wonderful,” I said. “You’re going to love that.” James and my father are like jigsaw pieces from two different puzzles. They look as if they’ll fit together, but they don’t.

James sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at me.

“What?” I said.

“Are you all right?”

“Of course,” I said, and swung my legs over the side of the bed so that I wasn’t facing him.

“Only—”

“Yes?”

“It was a bit silly—taking the girls—”

I turned and gave him a hug. I like him to be protective. “I know,” I said. “I didn’t think it through properly.”

He kissed me on the tip of my nose. “Tell me next time, and then we can work on the defence together.”

“Have I got time for a bath?”

“Yes. Do you want me to go next door for some clean clothes?”

I nodded and decided to wait for him to return before running the bath. He would select the right clothes for the occasion.

“Sorry,” he said as he opened the door to go out. “I wanted Adrian to come here, but he refused. Neutral ground, he said.”

“Not so neutral with Dad there.”

“No.” He rolled his eyes and left.