Fallout (2 page)

‘Please, darling—’

‘Just go!’ exclaimed Aunt Mat.

‘How can you say that? My daughter is
crying
!’ said Marianne.

Aunt Mat was powerless. Nina could not control herself; Marianne would not leave until she did. It was hopelessness, not will, that made her give up and finally let go of her.

Marianne walked slowly away, turning every few seconds to wave. She had gone.

‘Come along,’ said Aunt Mat briskly, taking Nina’s hand.

Pulled along roughly, Nina tried to keep up – tripped – her aunt stopped. She did not kneel or take Nina in her arms.

‘I’m sorry, dear,’ she said. ‘It’s not your fault.’ She re arranged her bags on her arm, an habitual regrouping.

‘Did you have a nice time? . . . Would you like a cup of tea and a nice bun?’

Nina didn’t answer. Aunt Mat sighed and surrendered for a moment the effort of being something for Nina. She looked sadly around at the pigeons and the crouching lions. A cold breeze moved the dirt on the ground into swirls about the plinths. She looked back at her niece’s desolate face.

‘Would you like to feed the pigeons?’

‘. . . No,’ whispered Nina, ‘they’re disgusting.’

‘What did you say, dear?’

Nina was about to answer when she saw that on the steps of the gallery ahead of them there was a woman in wellington boots.

‘What’s that lady doing?’ she asked, distracted.

Aunt Mat looked.

‘She’s sitting down.’

‘Why is she sitting on the steps? They’re dirty. And why is she wearing boots? And what is that boy doing?’

‘He’s trying to make her come along, I should think, which is what we should be doing.’

‘Is she crying?’

‘Don’t stare.’

‘She can’t see me.’

‘It’s rude.’

‘We’re miles away. Oh look, there’s a policeman!’

Aunt Mat couldn’t help but look too. A uniformed man, talking emphatically, was trying to approach the lanky boy who seemed to be shielding the woman, holding out his arms in a gesture of defence.

‘That’s not a policeman,’ said Aunt Mat, ‘that’s a guard from the gallery.’

‘What does he guard?’

‘The paintings – and he makes sure people behave sensibly.’

‘
She
isn’t behaving sensibly.’

The woman on the steps was rocking back and forth, pulling at her cardigan, and the boy and the guard seemed to be arguing. Aunt Mat took Nina’s hand again.

‘They’re probably tramps. Let’s go inside and see if we can’t find a cup of tea.’

They began to walk towards the steps, just to one side so as to avoid the scene rising in pitch between the guard, the boy and the woman in the wellington boots. Passers-by had become bystanders; bystanders developed into an uncertain crowd as the woman began to wail, a stream of sounds punctuated by words and phrases.

‘. . . there were
seven hundred of them
,’ she was saying, ‘
sept cents, vous voyez
? Not all of them
were
alive. You’re not a policeman . . .’ And she shied away, as if she were being assaulted.

‘Where do you live? What’s your name?’ asked the guard as the boy went from one foot to the other, glancing anxiously between them.

‘She’s all right,’ he kept saying, white-faced. ‘Please – you’re making it worse.’

‘Come with me, Nina,’ said Aunt Mat. ‘It’s none of our business.’ And she pulled Nina through the doors.

Inside the gallery were muted echoes, lowered voices, and the soft
shush
of the tall heavy doors brushing the floors as they opened and closed. Nina twisted her head to look, but the woman and strange boy were out of sight. Her mouth felt dry. She had been frightened going past them, as well as fascinated.

There was something else. Everyone had looked at the woman – her distress, her pallor. She was so fragile, with the scruffy boy who was too young to look after anybody standing over her, resolute and protective. Nina realised what she felt; it was envy.

She tugged Aunt Mat’s hand. ‘She was very pretty, wasn’t she?’ she said.

‘I can’t say I noticed. French, possibly.’

‘Like Mummy.’

‘Like your grandmother. Your mother is as English as I am, nearly.’

‘What will happen to her?’

‘They’ll take her away, poor thing,’ said Aunt Mat.

‘Where will they take her?’

‘Never you mind.’

‘Poor lady,’ murmured Nina.

She imagined her, wrapped in soft ropes like the painted maiden and taken by soldiers to an unseen salvation. It seemed to her a wonderful thing to be so helpless; to be taken up, and saved.

It was long after midnight when Tomasz Kanowski opened the door to his son and the two policemen. There was an orange shade over the dim bulb in the hall – fabric with flowers on it – and Tomasz was a dark bulk in the doorway. A smell of stewed onion, cigarette smoke and, faintly, sour fish floated round him from the inside of the house. The policemen took off their helmets to show that this was a family matter.

‘Mr Kanowski?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Come into the house, Lucasz.’

His voice seemed to struggle from his throat, the accent thickened by drink and feeling.

Luke went sideways past his father and looked at the two pasty-faced constables from behind his shoulder. The policemen exchanged looks. Tomasz stared at them in odd and passive challenge; it was decidedly un-English. They waited for him to say something else but he did not speak.

When they had gone, he closed the door slowly. Luke hung his head, weaving with tiredness, weak with relief to be home safe in their solid, stinking little prison. His father held the back of his neck and drew him towards the bulk of his chest until Luke’s forehead rested against the thick collarbone beneath his father’s shirt.

‘This was a brave and very stupid thing to do,’ he said softly, his big fingers pressing Luke’s skull.

Luke nodded, burning with sorrow. His father’s smell of beer and sweat was in his nostrils.

‘I think you must have frightened your mother very much.’

‘I don’t care,’ said Luke, urgent through gritted teeth. ‘She loved it. She wanted it, and she was happy. Some of the time. Why won’t you see her? You should visit her.’

Tomasz pressed his son’s head against his chest.

‘Stop, Lukasz.’

They stayed in the fierce lock of their embrace until Tomasz nodded and Luke felt his hot breath on his neck as he exhaled. Tomasz pushed his son slowly away, gripping his face in both hands. If his mother’s eyes fronted a void, his father’s, complicated and sodden, were spilling over. He kissed Luke’s forehead, hard, and released him.

‘Go to bed now,’ he said.

Luke sat on his bed, shivering in the luxury of his solitude. The evening passed across his memory: the succession of vehicles that had transported them along strange dark roads; the police officers who had questioned him, first with sympathy and suspicion, then pity, as his small crime was discovered and the fact that his mother had never been anywhere else in his lifetime but an asylum.
Nowhere else until today
, thought Luke. He pressed his hands to his eyes to shut out the inhuman subjugation it had taken to separate her from him, and his own shameful relief when she had gone.

He lay down, surrendering more than deciding, and stared at the dark-wood and gold crucifix on the wall opposite the end of his bed. Sometimes he laughed at the idea of God, other times he quaked in fear. Often he crossed himself unthinkingly, or bowed his head, or felt rage well up like blood at the blind patriarchal hand that held him down. Now he gazed upon the cheap crucifix hanging on its one nail and prayed. He could hear his father’s slow footfalls. His eyes drifted to the ceiling. The footsteps faded. His focus blurred.

‘Zdrowas Maryjo, łaski pełna, Pan z Toba . . .
’

Hail Mary, full of grace. Our Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death . . .

A stream of Hurricane bombers flew silently above him. His father, as he had never known him but knew he once had been, in a scarf and gauntlet gloves, waved a cheery salute as he flew by – and Luke slept.

Above his head, cheaply framed, the Virgin wearing powder-blue and unlikely lipstick, smiled down on him.

1965

In the September of 1965 Luke Kanowski in Lincolnshire was beginning his lower-sixth year at Seston Grammar, while in London Nina Hollings had just left school.

‘I want Nina to come with me to Paris,’ Marianne said, on the telephone to Aunt Mat.

There was a battle for territory being fought. Aunt Mat was a mild person but her sister-in-law enraged her.

‘Paris isn’t suitable,’ she said and straightened the rug with her toe, her heart beating hard against the things she must not say.

Marianne’s voice came down the line like an over-tightened violin string. ‘She’s fifteen! Paris isn’t suitable for
what
? Put her on!’

It was her
glad mother
tone, the one that said
my darling, I missed you
when she hadn’t called for three months; when she forgot another birthday; when she arrived with an armful of presents – sugar mice. Aunt Mat did not have that trump card to play. She had only Horlicks, bedtimes and the solace of a good book against sporadic joy, fugitive love. However much
sensible
she instilled, one word from her mother sent Nina reeling towards the ridiculous.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll get her.’

Nina was upstairs, listening to her dreadful records. Aunt Mat called her down and Nina spoke to her mother, wrapping the telephone cord around her fingers, as she murmured like a lover to her parent. Aunt Mat sat on the sofa in the sitting room like a bad fairy, watching through the open door, with the fat marmalade cat purring aggressively behind her on the sill, the net curtain hitched on his unknowing ear.

‘. . . really Mummy? Really?’ her niece whispered.

Aunt Mat felt familiar vile jealousy mixing with fear for Nina’s future. Paris with Marianne – the woman had no morals, no talent, no money. Nina put the receiver down and waited, her narrow shoulders eloquent.

‘How was your mother?’ asked Aunt Mat, levelly.

Nina turned; thickly kholled eyes, spiky triumph and guilt –

‘I thought I’d go to Paris next week,’ she said airily; the febrile shadow of Marianne, without the steel, without the acid.

‘I see. How will you get there?’ said Aunt Mat tightly.

‘On the train, I should think.’

‘What on earth for?’ burst out Aunt Mat, uncharacteristic, and Nina blazed, ‘
Because my mother wants me!
’ so violently, so ringing with righteous, operatic gratitude, that Aunt Mat crumpled. She wanted to cry. Nina thrust out her face and widened her eyes in silent demand – the whites so bright against the massed lashes and dark pupils the effect would have thrown them back against their seats in the circle.

‘Save the theatrics, dear. If Marianne wants to take you to Paris there’s nothing I can do about it. You’ll always have a home here, if it goes to the bad.’

‘
Lucky me!
’ Nina turned away with a hair-flick, ruining her exit by stepping over the telephone cord in an awkward sideways knee-lift, like a stork on the mudflats.

One hand on the newel post, jumping the first three stairs, she ran to her room and slammed the door so that the overhead light shook down a drift of plaster-dust. These were the sounds of Aunt Mat’s guardianship: the running feet, the door slam, the record player starting up.
Be my, be my baby – be my – be my little baby, be my baby now-ow-ow
. . . And Aunt Mat, loving her, whispered along –
be my, be my baby
– and pulled the ugly cat onto her lap where he settled, resentful and content.

Nina was amazed how simple it was to leave home. She packed a case, and said
goodbye
and walked to the tube station. Aunt Mat, who avoided scenes, barely acknowledged their parting. It hurt but did not surprise Nina. She had not recognised Aunt Mat’s care as love. For Nina, love was longing. She thought Aunt Mat must not love her at all, and did not know that she cried when Nina left.

The few tube stops from Fulham Broadway felt like an ocean voyage, then her mother’s street lay before her, curving away from the Cromwell Road to end in a square of sooty laurels held in by railings. The houses were tall and flaking white with electrical wires stapled loosely down the fronts and different sets of curtains at each of the windows. Nina walked quickly, checking the numbers, then stood on the top step with her case. Perhaps her mother had bought them a cake to celebrate. Aunt Mat often bought Victoria sponges, gritty with sugar, for tea. Her finger hovering over the bell.
Jacobs
. Not Hollings, her unknown father’s name. Jacobs. She pressed it, firmly.

Marianne’s flat was up five flights.
Marvellously good for the figure but they really must do something about the common parts.
The stairs had shredding carpets and smelled of budgie cages despite more than one sign stating pets were strictly not allowed.
I don’t know who they could be, these poor souls with their pets, best not to dwell.
The top-floor flats were cramped and asymmetrical, corners filled out with boxed-in pipes seeping welcome heat.

Nina put her toothbrush by the basin in the bedroom and unpacked into the bottom drawer of the wardrobe. She put her shampoo and hairbrush in the clothes drawer too. Marianne had found three wire hangers and Nina hung her blouses and skirts on top of one another while her mother watched, smoking.

‘It turns out we aren’t going to Paris after all,’ she said.

‘Oh!’ Nina turned. She was holding her pyjamas and the smell of home rose up from them. ‘Why not?’

Her mother glanced around the room, restlessly.

‘I’ve got a part. Isn’t it marvellous?’

‘Marvellous! What in?’

‘Oh, it’s nothing much. I’m doing the director a favour, really.’

Marianne slipped off her heels and walked in stockinged feet to the kitchen part of the room, where a Baby Belling stood propped on a tile, put out her cigarette and filled the kettle.

‘How long are you staying?’

Staying?

‘I don’t know.’

Marianne slammed the kettle onto the hob in arbitrary temper but then turned, smiling.

‘I should think Matilda was
livid
,’ she said. ‘
Was
she?’

Aunt Mat had helped Nina pack, taught her to fold her blouses and offered tissue paper, but Nina was determined to please.

‘You’d think I was running away to join the circus!’

Marianne smiled and cast her eye across her daughter’s small frame.

‘God, Nina, you look dreadful,’ she said, like a casual kick to the stomach, and then she went to the sofa and sat down. ‘Here –’ She patted the seat.

Nina sat, settling the pyjamas on her lap.

‘Darling, are you really serious about drama school?’

Nina was still watching the Paris apartment fade in her imagining.

‘. . . Nina?’

Drama school was something they had talked about. Nina had photographs of film stars on her walls, but apart from the occasional thrill of seeing her mother in a play her life had been Aunt Mat’s front room and school uniforms; baked eggs and the pictures on Saturday afternoons.

‘Do you have any idea what it costs? Look at me.’

Nina was embarrassed at her age to look anybody full in the face.

‘You have a look of Natalie Wood . . . an unspoilt look. We’re too dark to be the girl-next-door – it’s because we’re French . . .’ Her eyes lit with anger. ‘This
ridiculous
play. They want me to be somebody’s
mother
! Not a young wife with a baby! A
mother
. I come on. I’m shocked about something. I give people tea. I go off again. They’ll probably have me in a pinny.’

Nina didn’t know what to say.

‘Don’t look so dreary.’ Marianne was cheerful again. ‘One must face reality.’

According to Aunt Mat Marianne never faced reality so this was cheering.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘And the reality
is
, darling, that
you
have all the chances that were taken from me when—’ She stopped. ‘You’re old enough to hear it – when I got preggers.’

‘When did you get pregnant?’

‘Nina! Don’t be dense. With
you
!’

Nina’s mind was racing to keep up.

‘Those cows from drama school married directors,’ continued Marianne, oblivious. ‘Some of them married
casting
directors! But more than half of those were queer, so I shouldn’t think
that
was a walk in the park. I don’t mind admitting, darling, meeting your father was a disaster. But he
was
so romantic. He used to drive extremely fast.
Angel
—’

She took Nina’s cold hands, and held them. Nina gazed at her, full of love.

‘Get the kettle. It will boil dry without singing.’

The play came and went, and there wasn’t another. Marianne coached her daughter in monologues for auditions they had not yet applied for and bemoaned their poverty. She told Nina what she was, what she wasn’t and what she might be – if only they had the money – and Nina, as she had always done, struggled to gain her praise.
We won’t be here for ever, it’s just a stopgap,
said Marianne and Nina agreed, and remained small, doing her best to please. When she failed to impress Marianne would lose her temper.

Come along, you’re behaving like a child!

Don’t you know how to speak on the telephone?

Go into a shop.

Hail a taxi.

Smoke without looking like somebody’s maid.

Then:
You’re what I might have been
, she would say, adjusting Nina’s hair, lovingly.

Late at night, over small, cheap brandies, she tearfully confessed how it had hurt to give her baby daughter up to her sister-in-law’s guardianship, how every day without her it had felt as though her heart were breaking. She forgave Nina the past and Nina, in gratitude, took on the yoke of the future.

Nina visited Aunt Mat every few weeks for tea that she had not made herself and Victoria sponge. She saw the house, and her relative, through her mother’s eyes and felt like a cuckoo trying to return to its borrowed nest; not unwelcome but disapproved of.

‘Not in Paris, yet?’ Aunt Mat would say, and Nina felt attacked by it, until she realised one afternoon – it was an edge of anxiety, not criticism. Aunt Mat did not want her to go away.

Hugging goodbye on the step, Nina felt as though she were leaving her for the first time. She clung for a moment, but Aunt Mat did not give away a tear.

When she returned home her mother was lying on the sofa with an ice pack on her brow. Nina began to tiptoe to her room, but then she stopped.

‘Mummy?’ she said, approaching.

‘What is it?’ said Marianne, behind closed lids.

‘Mummy . . .’ Nina sat down. ‘I think Aunt Mat will pay for drama school and – things – if it means we’re staying in London.’

She waited to see the effect of her words.

Marianne’s head lifted on her long neck as she removed the ice pack. She turned until her eyes rested on her daughter.

‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Do you?’

So Nina, for whom exposure was agony, was to make a career of it.

Luke Kanowski went from school to home to the hospital, and could not raise his head to the future. He did his homework in his bedroom with Christ and the Virgin’s sorrowful, silent approval and trained for the cross-country mile around the Seston Asylum grounds;
dodging loonies
, he and his mother called it.

Seston Grammar, like the mental asylum, was red-brick, but where the asylum was gargantuan the school was a size too small, like a tight pair of shoes. The cheesy corridors were packed with boys. The hall doubled as a gymnasium and tripled as a theatre, mildewed and dispiriting. It was better than the minor public school a few miles away but snobbishly despised, and the grammar schoolboys’ hair was neater than the public schoolboys ever bothered to make theirs. There was just one goal – university. Seston boys had their eyes on a clean escape. Oxford. Cambridge. London. The day in September the headmaster made his speech to the upper-sixth
inspiring them to aspire
, Luke’s classmates went into town to the newly opened coffee shop to discuss their keen ambitions and Luke went to visit his mother.

The headmaster had said,
Some of you boys will be invited to stay on for the Oxbridge term
. . .

Luke knew that he was one of them. That despite his poverty, his questionable background, foreign parentage and suspected Judaism; despite his excess energy and chaotic attention, his facility had been greedily noted.

Difficult though it is to believe that you boys might yet achieve the heights of excellence, experience tells me they are not beyond your reach.

Luke climbed the asylum railings, cut across the ragged lawn towards the entrance and rang the bell.

Maudy, a young nurse with a big bust and brown teeth, who liked him, opened the door.

‘Hiya, Luke, y’all right?’

They waited in the mesh cage while the other nurse, Lynne, who was in her sixties, unlocked the second door.

As they went through Lynne said comfortably, ‘She had a very good night, your mum.’

‘Good,’ said Luke. He didn’t want to stop – never wanted to stop, he often had the urge to click at people like cows to hurry them up.

‘But she wasn’t at her best this afternoon, I’m afraid. She was in Hawthorn for a couple of hours, calming herself down.’

He did stop then. Hawthorn meant his mother would have been restrained; either straitjacketed or else with her wrists and ankles strapped to the bars of a bed. He was used to distress. He had learned to manage it and to forget, to push it from his mind and carry on. It didn’t make it all right. She had been alone. She had suffered. He pushed his hands into his pockets, squinted, chewed something imaginary with his front teeth, looked around the ceiling, pressed the feeling back down into himself and when he could, he asked, ‘What happened?’

‘Nothing to worry about, pet. Just Dr Herrick didn’t want her hurting herself,’ said Lynne. ‘She’s all better now, love. You might find her a bit sleepy. You can cheer her up.’