Motherland (36 page)

She has a dream. In her dream she’s wearing a bathing costume and all the boys are looking at her. She feels youthful and desirable. She’s on a beach, and the waves that come rolling in are frothing and churning on the shore. The ocean beyond is infinitely big. She starts to run, and runs over the sand and the pebbles towards the sea. She runs faster and faster, filled with gladness, because she knows she’s going to hurl herself into those great crashing waves. The waves are going to embrace her and sweep her away.

She wakes before she reaches the water, but her heart is thundering, and her whole body is glowing. It’s not a death dream at all, this isn’t a desire to drown. It’s a longing to use all of herself, to hold nothing back, to experience an overwhelming desire. And instead of the explosive urgency of her dream, all she feels in her waking life is fatigue.

‘You know what I think we should do for Easter?’ she tells Pamela. ‘I think we should go and visit Grandma and Grandpa.’

Pamela thinks about this.

‘I am affronted,’ she says.

Kitty’s parents always make a great fuss of Pamela, and there’s nothing the little girl appreciates as much as attention. As for Kitty herself, she’s aware that she doesn’t visit her parents nearly as much as they’d like. Her mother has a way of getting on the wrong side of her, and so Kitty always ends up behaving badly, and being what her mother calls ‘moody’. Still, they didn’t visit at Christmas time, and tired and restless as she is, Kitty would rather go than stay.

*

‘Hello, little stranger,’ says Mrs Teale to Pamela. ‘I expect you’ve entirely forgotten who I am.’

‘You’re Grandma,’ says Pamela.

‘Guess what I’ve got for the most beautiful little girl in the world?’

‘A present,’ says Pamela.

‘I wonder whether you want it now, or whether you’d rather keep it for Easter Day?’

‘Now,’ says Pamela.

Kitty follows this exchange with helpless irritation. It’s been a long slow journey and all she wants is a comfortable chair and a cup of tea. Why must her mother go in for this ludicrous arch teasing tone of voice, as if she and Pamela are engaged in some conspiracy?

The present is a small chocolate egg, wrapped in silver paper. Pamela unwraps it at once and puts it whole into her mouth.

‘Who’s a hungry girl?’ says Mrs Teale.

‘Say thank you, Pammy,’ says Kitty.

‘Thank you,’ says the child, her mouth full.

Mrs Teale turns to her daughter.

‘No handsome young husband, then?’

Kitty wants to scream. She’s been in the house five minutes and already her mother has managed to enrage her.

‘I told you, Mummy. Ed’s in France.’

‘Well, I don’t know, darling. No one ever tells me anything. It would just be nice if he visited us once in a while. Michael was saying only the other day that he’s never heard the story of how he got his Victoria Cross.’

‘You know Ed doesn’t like to talk about that.’

‘I can’t think why not. You’d think he’d be proud. Did I tell you Robert Reynolds has been made a canon of Wells? He still asks after you, you know?’

‘I thought he was married.’

‘Is he?’ says Mrs Teale vaguely. ‘Maybe he is. I can’t keep up these days. We all thought Harold would marry the Stanley girl, but he says it’s off, and there was never anything in it in the first place. I don’t understand young people. It seems you can go about together and it all means nothing at all. Pamela is looking a bit peaky, isn’t she? We’ll do our best to feed her up and give her lots of good country air.’

‘We live in the country too, Mummy.’

‘Somehow I never think of Sussex as being the real country. I suppose because it’s on the way to France.’

Kitty’s father’s return puts a stop to the stream of barbed prattle that issues from her mother’s mouth. In his presence she becomes timid, clumsy, awkward. Michael Teale, by contrast, is all smiles and hugs.

‘My two best girls!’ he cries. ‘My word, Pamela! You smell chocolatey enough to eat.’ And turning to Kitty, ‘Guess who’s been filling my ear with your praises? Jonathan Saxon!’

‘Dear Mr Saxon,’ says Kitty. ‘Is he still bossing the poor little choirboys about?’

‘He asked me to ask you if you’d sing in the abbey on Sunday. You know he always says you were the best soprano he ever had.’

Kitty hasn’t sung in public for years, and she was never properly trained. But this request pleases her more than she would have expected.

‘Oh, I couldn’t,’ she says. ‘I’m far too rusty.’

‘Well, you tell Jonathan yourself. All I can say is, he seems dead set on it.’

When Mrs Teale hears of the proposal she manages to turn it around and make it a source of disappointment.

‘Oh, do sing, darling. It’s such a waste, the way you do nothing with your beautiful voice.’

‘I’ve no intention of making a fool of myself in front of a full congregation,’ says Kitty sharply.

‘You could sing “Little Brown Jug”,’ says Pamela.

Mr Saxon calls round to make his request in person. Charmed by the sweet old gentleman’s pink smiling face and flattered by his praise, Kitty agrees to sing, on condition that they can go through the piece at least once beforehand. He wants her to sing César Franck’s
Panis Angelicus
.

Pamela’s greatest pleasure on these visits is playing with the dolls her own mother played with when she was little. This notion, that her mother was a little girl once, both puzzles and fascinates her. She wants to know the names of every doll, and which ones were her mother’s special favourites, and what they all did together. Then once told she repeats the pattern as faithfully as she can.

‘Rosie, you’re the birthday girl today. You can sit on the birthday chair. And Ethel, you’re Rosie’s best friend. Droopy, you can be by Rosie’s feet. Oh, Rosie, I forgot your flower hat. You have to wear the flower hat on your birthday.’

Kitty watches her child’s grave re-creation of her past with a smile. But along with the fond memories comes another more shadowed picture. She sees her daughter growing up and having a daughter of her own, and that little child playing the same game. And is this all? whispers a voice in her head. Are we never to leave the nursery?

Her father brings out the sherry before dinner, in Kitty’s honour, and her mother drinks her entire glassful. It’s clear from Michael Teale’s frown that this is not what he wants, though
having poured his wife the sherry it seems odd that she should not be supposed to drink it. However, he says nothing.

His smiles are all for his daughter.

‘So have you had any trouble with these terrible floods?’ he says.

‘The river burst its banks,’ says Kitty, ‘but our house has never been in danger. I’m just so happy not to be freezing any more.’

‘What a winter it’s been! Here’s Easter at last, the feast of the Resurrection, and I’m telling everyone the worst is over.’

‘But Michael,’ says Mrs Teale, ‘winter will come round again.’

‘Yes, yes,’ he says, his eyes still on Kitty. ‘So how’s that famous husband of yours getting along?’

‘He’s in France,’ says Kitty. ‘He works so hard.’

‘Jesus rises from the dead on Easter Day,’ says Mrs Teale, her cheeks now a little flushed. ‘And the year goes round, and then he’s crucified all over again.’

‘Be quiet!’ says Mr Teale. ‘You’re a fool.’

Silence falls over the table. This is the first time Kitty has known her father reprimand her mother in the presence of others. It frightens her. She looks down at her plate. But her father resumes the conversation as if nothing has happened.

‘I respect a man who works hard,’ he says.

‘It does mean he’s away from home a great deal,’ says Kitty, avoiding looking at her mother.

‘We all have to make sacrifices,’ says her father. ‘When I was a young man I had a great dream. I was going to go round the world, working my passage on cargo ships. Then the war came along, of course, and that was that.’

Kitty has never heard of this dream before.

‘Maybe you could go now,’ she says.

‘Impossible.’ He beams at her, as if this impossibility somehow suits him. ‘Here I am, nearly sixty years old. And there’s your mother. No, I shall stick by the old abbey now, and be buried beside it. The abbey and I will crumble away together.’

She sees then, for the merest instant, a flicker of horror in his eyes, not at the coming of death but at the losing of life; at the life he might have lived, and knows he never will.

Lying awake that night in the bed she slept in as a child, Kitty tells herself her life will be different, that it is already different. She will not grow old in a loveless angry marriage. And yet her mother could never have anticipated such a fate. How is it to be avoided? The years go by, and the shadows lengthen. For a while you live for your children, and then the children leave home, and what do you do then? Turn slowly sour, like undrunk milk.

*

On Easter Day, at the big mid-morning service, Kitty sings
Panis Angelicus
. The abbey is full. Her father stands robed and beaming at the altar behind her. Her mother sits with Pamela in the front pew before her. Old Mr Saxon plays the gently falling chords of the introduction on the big organ. And the melody rises up from within her like the sweet breath of life itself.

She has sung it many times in her younger years, and the words flow effortlessly. She has no nervousness before the congregation: she hardly sees them. She is surrendering herself to the music, her body an instrument beyond her own control. She hears the throbbing hum of the organ notes as if the same keys
and pedals press the clear high song from her throat, and she need do nothing. As she sings she can hear herself make mistakes, but somehow even her wrong notes sound right. So, self-forgetting, she reaches out for the high note, and gets it and loses it, and comes stepping down the melody, singing with a purity and a wholeheartedness she has rediscovered from her youth.

Pamela watches and hears with her lips parted, enraptured. It’s not only the voice that astonishes her this Easter morning, a voice she never knew her mother had. It’s the shining eyes of all the others round her, eyes fixed in admiration on her mother. From this moment the child knows that this is what she wants for herself: to be the object of such looks of love.

There’s no applause as Kitty finishes. This is a religious service. But a kind of collective sigh goes up from the pews. Afterwards there are many old friends and neighbours pressing forward with their congratulations, and Kitty smiles and thanks them for their kind words, and Pamela clings tight to one arm wherever she goes so that everyone knows it’s her mother who is the star of Easter Day. But inside herself Kitty has gone far away, and wishes she could be alone, because something big has happened. She’s found a place where she can give all of herself. She has entered the wave.

Then comes the reaction, a sudden exhaustion so powerful she can no longer stand, accompanied by a bad taste in her mouth. Her mother sees her stumble, and coming to her side, takes her away from the crowd.

‘You’re worn out, darling. Go and lie down. Pammy, you stay here with me. Just go, darling. I’ll explain.’

Kitty throws her a grateful look and runs upstairs to her room. There she lies full length on the bed and hears the buzz of voices
below and attempts to find again the extraordinary joy she felt while singing. She can do no more than catch a faint echo; and even that is slipping fast away from her.

For a while she rests, half-sleeping. Then, wanting not to lose the precious moment for ever, she gets up and goes to her old desk. She will write it down, in a letter. There’s only one person to whom she can send such confused thoughts. She writes to Larry.

She folds the letter up and puts it in her suitcase to send when she gets home. Then as she straightens up again she feels a tightness in her chest, and a tingling of the skin of her breasts. All at once it comes to her.

I’m pregnant.

This simple immense fact drops into her mind like a key into a lock. Suddenly everything makes sense. The constant fatigue, the mild nausea, the metallic taste in her mouth.