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I closed the front door behind me, tucked my baggage under the hall table and hung up my coat. At the end of the hall, the kitchen door was firmly shut. The crash of pots and pans escaped to greet me. A bad omen. The dining-room door was ajar and I caught sight of my father as I passed. He had been listening for me, his newspaper folded on his knee. He raised a hand in greeting but said nothing.
As bad as that, I thought. I opened the door of the kitchen and went in. When my mother is in a good mood, she leaves it open, so she can hear the phone and the doorbell. When she’s not, she shuts it tight and her hearing becomes even more acute. On such occasions any delay on my part is seen as an unfriendly act. Conversation with my father becomes rudeness to her. On a really bad day she treats it as an act of conspiracy.
‘Hello, Mummy, sorry I got held up.’
She turned round from the sink, a look of feigned amazement on her face. ‘Oh, so you’ve arrived after all,’ she said sarcastically. ‘I’d given you up half an hour ago.’
‘The traffic gets worse all the time,’ I replied easily.
The signals were clear. Whatever I said would be wrong. All I could do for the moment was try to ignore them.
‘Now you can’t tell me, Jennifer, that it was the traffic kept you since four o’clock,’ she began, slapping down her dishcloth on the draining board. ‘You may think I’m a fool, but I’m not that big a fool. Give me credit for some sense. Please.’
The ‘please’ was squeezed out with such self-pity, I could hardly bear to go on looking at her. The lines of her face were hard and her careful make-up did nothing to soften it. Indeed, the Gala Red of her lipstick only accentuated the tight, unyielding line of her mouth. I felt the old, familiar nausea clutch at my stomach.
If Colin were here, she’d be fussing over the dessert she’d made especially for him, making polite inquiries about William John, arch remarks about young directors and comments about hard-working young men needing good suppers at the end of a busy day. It required a fair amount of tolerance but it was better than this.
‘I had to go into town about the A-level texts,’ I said coolly. ‘I thought you said “the usual time” on the phone.’
‘That’s the first I’ve heard of it,’ she snapped, turning her back on me and continuing to scrub. ‘You must’ve been buyin’ the whole shop,’ she threw over her shoulder. She laughed shortly, pleased with herself. She rinsed the sink noisily and then threw back a sliding door and searched through a row of tins.
For two years now, ‘the usual time’ for a Friday evening visit was as soon after five as Colin could get away, collect the car, crawl through the traffic, pick me up in Botanic Avenue with the shopping, and get back across to the Stranmillis Road. It was seldom before five thirty. Often enough it was a quarter to six. But I knew from long experience the facts were not relevant. There was no point whatever in mentioning them.
She opened a tin of peas, flung down the opener and strode across the kitchen towards me. For a moment I thought she was about to strike me, so hostile was the look on her face.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, with exaggerated politeness.
I moved hastily aside as she wrenched open a cupboard behind me and pulled out a saucepan.
‘Can I do anything to help?’ I asked quietly.
She tipped the peas into the saucepan so fiercely the unpleasant-looking green liquid splattered the work surface. She tossed her head and smiled a tight little smile. ‘Well, you might just think of putting a comb through your hair.’
Without a word, I turned and left the kitchen, collected my handbag and made for the stairs. As I passed the dining-room door, I looked in, smiled with a cheerfulness I certainly didn’t feel and pulled an imaginary lavatory chain. My father grinned, looked somewhat relieved, and picked up his paper again.
I locked the bathroom door and glanced around. I felt like the hero in a B movie, looking for something to barricade it with. But there was nothing handy. Brightly lit and dazzlingly clean, all the room offered me was multiple images of myself.
I sat down on the pink velvet stool in front of the vanity unit and stared at a face I hardly recognised. The dark eyes that had won me the part of Elizabeth Bennett in a school production were dull and lifeless, with deep shadows under them. My pale complexion looked much too pale and my long, dark hair had come to the end of the week before I had. I pulled the ribbon from my pony tail and watched the dark mass flop around my face.
‘How about the witch of Endor?’ I said aloud as I pulled faces in the mirror. ‘You look just right for the part.’
But I couldn’t laugh. My dear mother was no laughing matter. I sighed and tipped out my make-up on the immaculate grey surface in front of me. If I did a proper job I might just work off some of the anger I was feeling.
I slid open the nearest bathroom cabinet. My mother never throws anything away and I was sure I’d seen a bottle of cleansing cream the last time I had to look for an aspirin. There it was, at the back, a brand I hadn’t used since I was a teenager. As the cold liquid touched my skin, the faint floral fragrance stirred layers of memory. I shivered.
Harvey’s wedding. My mother in an expensive silk suit. Daddy looking handsome in tails. Everywhere the smell of carnations. Buttonholes for the ushers and sprays for female relatives. My mother had helped me into my bridesmaid’s dress of pink organza and tulle. It was not what I would have chosen, but I had to admit it was pretty and the posy and garland of fresh flowers for my hair that Mavis had sent had quite delighted me. My best friend, Valerie, said the garland made me look like Titania.
I enjoyed the wedding. Managed to do the right thing at the right time. Drank my first glass of champagne and danced with all Harvey’s colleagues after the meal. I even managed to kiss Harvey goodbye with a fair imitation of sisterly love, given how supercilious and condescending he had become since his graduation from medical school. Everything seemed to go so well that I was completely unprepared for the storm that broke over me once we were home from the reception.
I was standing in my slip in my bedroom, the pink organza at my feet, when my mother stalked in and just let fly. I still don’t know what I said or did to provoke her outburst. She said I was full of myself, didn’t know how to behave, was spoilt, big-headed, lazy and idle, and that Mavis would never have asked me to be her bridesmaid if it hadn’t been for her. I’d made a real exhibition of myself at the reception, hadn’t I, smiling up at all the men and chattering away to Mavis’s family as if I actually knew them.
Hurt and taken by surprise, I had demanded to know what exactly was so wrong about the way I’d behaved. What had she expected of me that I hadn’t done? And if I’d done something awful, why hadn’t Daddy said anything? That was when she shouted at me so loudly Daddy heard her in the garage and came hurrying upstairs. Then she turned on him.
It was all his fault. He had spoilt me since I was no size. Running after me and giving me everything I asked for. Always reading to me, and books not suitable for a young girl. Now I was so full of myself there was no standing me. I just did what I liked and walked over her. And he was just as bad as I was. It was two to one against her, all the time.
I applied a little lipstick to my chin and cheekbones and pressed powder gently over fresh foundation. Sometimes the tricks of the drama workshop came in handy. A new face in six minutes flat. But new perspectives take longer, much longer.
From that day, in my seventeenth year, I was never easy at home again and seldom felt free to enjoy my father’s company as I had before. We still did some of the things we’d done previously, theatre, concerts and poetry readings, but there was always a price to pay. Either my mother would insist on coming with us and then pour scorn on whatever we had enjoyed, or she would insist she knew when she wasn’t wanted, stay at home and then sulk for days.
I escaped when I married. But for my father there was no escape. I put my make-up away and wiped up the flecks of powder with a piece of Supersoft toilet paper. Then I mopped up the drops of water in the handbasin. There must be nothing for her to complain about when I was gone. For a long time now, this kind of avoidance had helped me get by. But it didn’t solve anything. As I walked slowly down the thickly-carpeted stairs, I knew I had problems that couldn’t be avoided any longer.
‘Come on now, George. At least come to the table when it’s ready. That’s your father’s,’ she said, handing me a hot plate.
She glared at me as I put it down quickly and picked it up again with my napkin.
‘Thank you, dear,’ he said quietly as I put it in front of him.
He did not look up at me. The effort of walking across the room and bending down to switch off the television had left him breathless. His skin had a slight yellowy look. But he seemed composed, at ease almost, as if nothing she did could trouble him any more.
‘There isn’t any pudding,’ she announced as she sat down heavily, a drained look on her face. ‘But there’s plenty of fruit in the bowl.’
I passed her the potatoes. She waved them away. ‘No potatoes for me, I’m dieting.’ She spooned a large helping of peas on to her plate and studied the beef casserole minutely for traces of fat. ‘You wouldn’t know what to have sometimes,’ she said in a pained tone.
An effort had to be made. I collected my wits, passed the peas to my father and said agreeably, ‘Yes, I know what you mean, I usually run out of ideas by Friday.’
‘Well, of course, Jennifer, you can’t really complain now, can you?’ She wore that facial gesture which always meant she was about to say something hurtful but expected it to be let pass, because she was actually smiling.
‘I don’t think you’ve much to complain about, one way and another. I wonder if sometimes you might not consider Colin just a little bit. D’you ever think it might be hard on him, workin’ away all day and comin’ home and no meal ready?’
I opened my mouth to speak, but she didn’t pause.
‘It’s all very well havin’ a job, and the extra money’s very nice, I’m sure, but you can’t just have everythin’ your own way.’ And she was off again on the old familiar circuit. She stood up abruptly and reached across the table for the jug of water before I could pass it to her. The gesture was a familiar one. It meant, ‘No one so much as offers me a glass of water.’
‘Mummy, you know I’m not teaching just because of the money. I’ve had four years at University, at the community’s expense. I don’t think sitting at home is any way to repay that.’
‘Oh, that’s all very well. You can’t tell me very much about community, with all I do for the Church. But charity begins at home, Jennifer, doesn’t it? Do you not think it’s nearly time you were to show a little consideration to your husband and his family?’
I grasped my glass of water and swallowed slowly. When Karen Pearson from across the Drive had her second baby, six months ago, my mother had spoken her mind on the subject. But it had been all right then. Colin was there, he’d laughed and told her she was far too young to be a grandmother, and besides, we still hadn’t got the house straight. Now it looked as if she was going to have another go at me with Colin safely out of the way.
‘You have to accept, Jennifer, that Colin is the breadwinner. He is the one with the responsibility. Surely you give a wee bit of thought to his future. Just a wee bit.’
It was her squeezed toothpaste tone again. Like that ‘please’ in the kitchen. If she goes on like this, I’ll pour the peas over her blue rinse. She’s still talking about breadwinners in 1968. My stomach did a lurch as I tried to control myself.
‘Mummy, we came home from Birmingham because of Colin’s future. We took the house in Helen’s Bay because of Colin’s future. I didn’t want to give up the job in Birmingham and I didn’t want to live in Loughview Heights. What do you mean, “giving thought to Colin’s future”? We give it thought all the time.’
She swallowed hard, like a blackbird consuming a piece of crust that’s too big for it. Her chin poked forward with the effort. ‘Well, I don’t see much sign of it. There’s not much comfort for Colin with you correctin’ exercises in the evenings or runnin’ off to the theatre with those girls. I don’t think Colin has much say in what you do. It doesn’t look like it, does it, heh?’
From the corner of my eye I saw my father put down his knife and fork. He looked as if he were about to speak, but he paused, thought better of it and remained silent.
‘Mummy, Colin and I discuss everything we do,’ I replied patiently.
‘Oh yes, I’m sure you do,’ she retorted. ‘And you make sure you get what you want. And I have to hear from another party that you can’t go on holiday with your husband at Easter because you’re busy gallivantin’ with your friends.’
‘Easter?’ For a moment I was so surprised I couldn’t even think where in the year we were.
‘Yes, Easter,’ she repeated, her voice rising a degree higher, her flushed cheeks wobbling with vehemence. ‘It’s a quare thing when I have ta find out from another party.’
‘Another party’ was Maisie. At least now I’d guessed what she was talking about.
‘I’m going to a conference on English teaching,’ I said coolly. ‘It’s got nothing to do with going on holiday. Colin didn’t want to go to Majorca with Maisie and William John any more than I did.’
‘Oh, is that so? Is that so indeed?’
And then she took off. Just like the day of Harvey’s wedding. There were some new lines since then, but the refrain was basically the same. I wasn’t behaving as she thought I ought to behave. I made my own decisions, which clearly I had no right to do. She commented on my lack of loyalty to my husband, my family and my country, catalogued misdemeanours such as taking my A-level girls to see plays put on by the Other Side, ‘running around’ with Valerie Thompson and that arty crowd of hers, and being ungrateful to the McKinstrys who had been ‘more than generous’ to me.
‘My fine friends’, as she called them, were a recurring theme. Everyone I knew and cared about came in for some unpleasant comment. It was on that topic I finally took my stand.
‘You and your fine friends will get a comedown one of these days,’ she said, nodding vigorously. ‘Let me tell you, that Keith McKinstry is a real bad one, him and that Catholic crowd he runs around with. I’ll thank you not to bring that dirty-looking beggar to my front door where any of our decent neighbours might see him. Colin has more sense than to have anything to do with him.’
She had to pause for breath, so I took my chance.
‘Mummy,’ I said firmly, ‘I don’t know what Maisie has been saying about Keith, but whatever it was, it has nothing to do with Colin and me. Keith and Siobhan are friends of ours and will go on being friends of ours.’
‘Nothing to do with you?’ She twitched with fury as her voice rose higher.
I poured myself another glass of water and tried to find some logic in the flood of abuse and accusations she was stringing together. But I couldn’t. When she finally stopped, I didn’t know where to begin. But she completely misread my silence. Encouraged by it, she began again in a tone several degrees less hysterical than before.
‘You know, Jennifer, we all have to accept that we only have one life to live and that life is for the service of others. I don’t think if you had to give an account to your Maker, you could really say you’ve done the things you ought to have done, now could you?’
I listened hard. Not to the words, but to the tone. Did she really think that by lowering her voice and making the odd reference to God, her message would sound any different?
I waited till she stopped. My hands were stone cold and my stomach felt as if I’d swallowed a huge pork pie. Suddenly, a moment from my childhood sprang back into my mind and in the midst of the angry words and all my anxieties I felt a totally unexpected sense of unshakeable calm. I saw myself as a small girl, hand in hand with my father. I was trailing my feet through the puddles, utterly confident of the magical water-repellent qualities of my new Wellington boots. The memory was extraordinarily comforting. I took a deep breath. ‘Yes, Mummy, I agree. We do have only one life to live.’ My voice was so steady I couldn’t believe it. ‘Where we disagree is about who decides how you should live it. I think each person has to decide for themselves. I don’t think you should let other people decide for you.’
She opened her mouth, closed it again, then sprang to her feet. ‘Oh no, you’ll not do that, Jennifer. You only want to hear what suits you. As long as you’re all right, you couldn’t care less about poor Colin, or me, or anybody. I might as well talk to the wall. All you’re interested in is yourself. Self. Self. Self.’
She flung her napkin down on the table.
‘That’s all you ever think about. That, and making others like you. Well, I’m not stayin’ here for you to make skit of me. You take me for a fool. Well, I’m not. You’re not going to get everythin’ yer own way. We’ll just see who’s the fool.’
With a final vicious stare at me, she turned and strode out. She banged the door so hard a collection of old plates on the dresser rattled ominously. In the silence that followed, a full-blown rose on a small table by the door shed its petals in a soft shower on to the carpet.
I turned towards my father. To my amazement, he was smiling.
‘Good girl yourself. You didn’t cry.’
‘I think I might now,’ I said weakly.
‘Ach, not at all. We’ll have a drop of brandy and I’ll make us some coffee. I went down on the bus to Bell’s for a wee bag of Blue Mountain this morning. How about that?’
I nodded enthusiastically and then hesitated. ‘D’you think she’ll come back?’
‘No, not very likely. She’s got a television upstairs now and there’s something or other she watches at seven thirty. She might come down at eight. Shure there’s plenty o’ time.’
I looked across at him as he took the brandy from the cupboard. How could he be so cool, living with this woman, the fresh-faced girl he’d married thirty-five years ago, when he was my age and she a country girl from a cottage where they still used paraffin lamps and drew water from a well halfway up an orchard behind the single-storey dwelling.
‘Would you eat a bit of cheese, Jenny?’
I shook my head. ‘I’ve got terrible wind.’
‘The brandy’ll help that,’ he said comfortingly. ‘I don’t know what set that one off,’ he went on ruefully. ‘I’d have said my piece if I’d thought it would’ve done any good. I’m glad I didn’t. It was better the way it was.’
We sat down together, glasses in hand and looked into the fire. I thought of all the times we had sat by this fireside, reading to each other. Plays and poetry and fairytales. Those were the days, from my early years right up to Harvey’s wedding, when my mother seemed happy enough, with the new house being done up to her liking, a round of coffee mornings and sales of work at the local church, and Harvey always wanting attention, help with his work, someone to look at what he was doing, or making. It was always my mother he called for. If Harvey wanted to go to the cinema, she was quite happy to leave my father and me to make our own supper. How we might amuse ourselves while they were gone didn’t seem to trouble her at all.
I knelt on the hearth rug, hands outstretched to the leaping flames, and looked at him over my shoulder.
‘Got offered a job today, Daddy.’
He raised an eyebrow and grinned. ‘Headmistress?’
I laughed and shook my head. ‘Head of English. Connie’s going to retire early. She recommended me. So Miss Braidwood said.’
‘You’ll take it?’
‘To take or not to take, that is the question. I’ve got to decide by Monday.’
‘How do you feel about it?’
‘I feel yes, but it’s not as easy as that.’
He looked slightly puzzled and I wondered if, like Mr Cummings, he too might have forgotten all the business about starting a family. Since his heart attack, I’d noticed he could forget things and then get very upset, once he realised what had happened.
‘What’s on the no side?’ he asked quietly. ‘Colin wouldn’t stand in your way, would he?’ he went on, more sharply.
I reassured him. Colin and I had agreed I’d pursue my career till I was well-established. No need to make a break till I was twenty-nine or thirty, he’d said.
‘No, it’s not Colin, Daddy. There are some parties who might think it’s not considerate to wait any longer. Not just Mummy. I have a nasty feeling Maisie and William John have been getting at Colin.’
‘But what do you feel about that?’ he asked, very gently.
‘I just don’t know, Daddy. I really don’t.’
‘But you do know about the job?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said honestly. ‘I’d love the job.’
He looked away for a moment and I wondered what he could be thinking. Suddenly my mother’s words came back to me and I felt so uneasy.
‘I’m not selfish, Daddy, am I?’ The question was out before I’d even thought it. My voice had wavered dangerously.
‘Selfish?’ he repeated, as if the very idea puzzled him.
For a moment I expected him to say, ‘Now don’t be silly, Jenny.’ But he didn’t. He just sat looking into the fire. It was a look I’d seen recently that worried me, though I couldn’t really say why. I waited for him to reply. In the firelight, his face looked very old and very tired.
He straightened up with a visible effort and turned back to look at me. ‘Jenny, dear, all human beings are selfish in one sense of the word. They have to be if they’re going to be any good to themselves or anyone else. Your self is all you’ve got in the end. No matter how much you care about anyone else, it’s you that you have to live with, for whatever time you’ve got.’
He paused. I could see he was short of breath, but he ignored it and went on.
‘Your mother was right saying you had only one life to live. But you’re right, too, about making your own decisions. It has to be you, Jenny, leading the life you choose, otherwise you end up living the life others choose for you.’
His breathing was rougher by now, and to my dismay I heard a sound I hoped I’d never hear again, the wheeze he was making in the intensive care unit at the Royal when I got there straight from the Birmingham plane. That was two years ago. They’d said then they didn’t think he’d pull round, the heart attack was massive. I’d held his hand and prayed, the way children pray. ‘Please God, let Daddy live and I’ll give up the job and come home as Colin and everybody else wants, and I’ll not complain about leaving a super school and kids I love.’ He’d pulled through but he’d had to retire early. And I’d kept my part of the bargain. But at times like tonight, I wondered if I’d actually been very selfish indeed.
He took a deep breath. The ominous sound disappeared. He went on, ‘Jenny, I’ve seen too damn much of living for others in my time. This island’s full of it. Women living for the house, or the family, or the neighbours, or the Church; men living for the business, or the Lodge, or the Cause. Any excuse so as not to have to live for themselves and make some sort of decent job of it. Shakespeare had it right, you know. “To thine own self be true, Thou canst not then be false to any man.” Aye, or woman either. If that’s selfish, Jenny, I wish to goodness there was a bit more of it around.’
He leaned back in his chair, his face flushed with the effort he had made. I wanted to say so much, but I could see how tired he was. So I just said, ‘Thanks, Daddy, I’ll remember that.’ Then I offered to go and make the coffee, thinking he might well doze off in his chair.
He nodded gratefully and I was just putting my warm feet back into my shoes when the telephone rang loudly in the hall. I heard my mother’s step on the stairs. Her voice was as clear from the hallway as if she was standing in the room beside us.