Owen Marshall Selected Stories (50 page)

‘I know,' Naylor said. ‘He thought it best for me and Mum — Helen.'

‘He wrote a very kind and thoughtful reply. Although I was disappointed at the time, it made me think he must be a very intelligent man, and I was glad to think of him as your father.'

Naylor knew the opportunity was there to talk of his parents, to say that Helen had recently died, but he was surprised by an almost overwhelming gust of grief, and couldn't at that moment talk of one mother to the other. ‘So it's your turn for two free questions,' he said, and Frances smiled again.

‘Did you often wonder who your real parents were?'

Naylor had no more sensitivity than was usual in a young Kiwi guy, but he was aware of the need for tact above honesty in answering that question. ‘I did quite often,' he said, ‘but Mum and Dad never
brought it up and we were happy as we were.' Frances was waiting for more. ‘And I suppose because, as far as I knew, you'd made no effort to get in touch, I just put it to the back of my mind.'

‘I've never wanted to be one of those mothers who give away a baby to someone else to bring up, then expect to be welcomed back when the hard work's done.'

‘Fair enough.'

‘Were you happy — are you happy? When I'd think of you that was the thing for me. I'd tell myself, he's happy for sure, with people who love him.'

‘Like most kids I had ups and downs,' Naylor said, ‘but I was lucky with my family. It was a very secure place for me, whatever else happened.'

‘And you've done so well — your degrees and that. Everyone's proud of you, I bet.'

Frances stood up and went down the steps of the deck to turn off the sprinkler. The last of the water fell with a patter on the lawn and tomato plants. In the back yard of the house beyond them a guy had a push bike upended on seat and handlebars for a mechanical check. ‘I've got a green salad and some ham on the bone for us,' she said, ‘and some blueberry muffins. Do you drink wine, or beer?'

‘Beer usually, but I'm easy.'

‘You can sit here and listen to the zoo, or you can come inside while I get it ready and talk.'

‘The zoo's pretty quiet now. I'll come in,' said Naylor.

In the small kitchen they continued to talk as Naylor cut ham, and did what else he could to help. He learnt that Francis hadn't gone on with journalism, that she was office manager for a sizable courier firm. She'd had bad luck with men, she said, without giving details. Now she was happy living by herself, although she still had friends of both sexes. ‘What about yourself?' she asked casually, without glancing up from the salad she was preparing.

There had been no one special since he left for study in Bristol.
The subject, though, heightened the peculiarity of the situation. He was standing in the kitchen of a stranger, who happened to be his mother and was asking him about his love life. And the thing was, he found it easy enough to answer, because there was no history of emotional intimacy between them: no premises in their lives which both had tacitly accepted as private after years of discourse.

He spent that night in a small, green room with mismatched furniture. The bed-ends were of natural wood, the chest of drawers painted white with ceramic knobs. He occupied the full length of the bed, and could feel the wood with his feet. Maybe it was a young person's bed. For a long time he didn't sleep. He found himself listening for the noises from the zoo and trying to identify them. Although the species were drawn from all over the world, he imagined that most of the individual animals had lived in zoos all their lives, and unlike himself would feel no sense of displacement at all.

He experienced a mixture of emotions from the day. Chief among them, to his surprise, was a sense of sadness and guilt concerning Helen. Meeting and talking with Frances had strangely unlocked his grief concerning the mother he knew: maybe he must farewell one of them before he could draw close to the other.

‘What do you think we should do today?' Frances asked him at breakfast. It was a prelude to her idea of visiting friends later in the morning. He had only that full day before flying back home, and considered it strange that she should want to share much of it with other people. At first he thought the motive was to relieve the pressure of being one on one after all the years apart, but he realised Frances wanted to show him to other people: to have the satisfaction, long delayed, of being a public mother. It was a little embarrassing, but also endearing in a way.

Alistair and Jude Soloman had an expensive home out of earshot of the zoo and with a fine view across the harbour. They had their own computer firm, which specialised in developing stocklist software for
retailers. Alistair was large, brown and hairy everywhere except the top of his head. He had the direct joviality typical of success. Jude was smaller, browner, less hairy, but equally friendly. Her husband told Naylor with some pride that she was the one in the firm with the brains.

The four of them sat on black leather sofas close to the large lounge window with its view of the sea. ‘We've been trying to get Frances to come and work for us,' said Alistair. We need someone like her to organise us — a sort of practice manager. It's all got too big for Jude and me to handle and still push ahead the creative stuff.'

‘I can't think of a quicker way to spoil our friendship,' said Frances. ‘You both know that.' She had told Naylor that she had known both of them for years: she had been Alistair's girlfriend and Jude's flatmate.

How much they knew about Naylor, however, he wasn't sure; certainly neither Alistair nor Jude showed any great curiosity about his sudden appearance in Frances' life. Most of the talk was of living in Aussie, and business management. Alistair in particular was interested in Naylor's course at Bristol University and whether theoretical business models had a useful translation to actual firms and specific conditions. Naylor enjoyed the discussion. Alistair and Jude were lively challengers without any antagonism at all, and the observations Frances made were full of common sense.

‘Stay for lunch,' said Jude Soloman warmly, when it was already past one, and Alistair gave a bushy eyebrow flash of endorsement, but Frances said they'd better get back. When the two women were talking on the way to the car, Alistair took the opportunity to say something personal for the first time. ‘That Bryn Hollister,' he said. ‘No good at all. A bugger of a man in fact. He ripped your mother off financially as well as everything else. She probably wouldn't tell you that. Anyway, good to meet you, good to see you. We think the world of Frances, and she's been so excited since you got in touch.' He put a very clean, very hairy, hand on Naylor's shoulder briefly.

‘Hope to see you again,' he said.

‘Did you like them?' asked Frances as they were driving home.

‘Yeah, I did. Two people pretty much on the ball, and they've obviously done well. I'm not sure, though, why you wanted me to meet them now.'

‘I suppose I wanted some of my friends to see you so that I could talk about you with them later and they'd know who you were. And I suppose I wanted you to see that I'm not all by myself. I was thinking last night how I must seem to you, in my mid-forties and my job isn't very glamorous, and I haven't got a flash house, or a flash car. I'm just getting back on my feet after the marriage thing.'

‘As long as you're okay, what does it matter if you haven't got a mansion like your friends,' said Naylor.

‘I guess the Campbells had the best of everything when you were growing up. Both of them being professional people and self-employed.'

‘We don't live extravagantly,' said Naylor.

They had a walk in the afternoon, and went to the zoo. It seemed a waste to Naylor to be so close, to hear the noise of it, but not enter. Frances hadn't been for ages, she said. The places on your doorstep tend to get overlooked, don't they, until someone comes from outside and is interested. They took the funicular, they viewed the open savannah sections, they appreciated the culturally correct elephant premises, but Naylor enjoyed most the big crocodiles. Their sinister weight as if carved in old iron or pewter, yet those bodies so solid on the banks could, when immersed, hang just below the surface of the water.

The zoo gave them immediate and various topics of conversation when their own inventory failed. It was odd that their second day together was more difficult than the first. Not that they had discovered anything in each other which aroused dislike or distrust, just that the first urgency of meeting was waning and to talk of intimate things was no easier. To admire the silken menace of the
tigers was a relief from any consideration of the future. To watch the frantic social interaction of monkeys at feeding relieved mother and son for a time from the quandary of their own relationship. The awareness of kinship is not enough in itself to allow access to the heart: Frances and Naylor were well intentioned, but still essentially strangers.

Most of the evening they filled with explanations of what each had been doing in all those years apart, and what ambitions each had for the future. Events and achievements in particular had a protective rationality: they ended with a sort of curriculum vitae knowledge of each other. Later, however, in the small green bedroom, with the bottom of his feet touching the wood, and unable for a second night to sleep much, Naylor heard Frances crying. It wasn't loud, or high-pitched, but in the silence of the night he was sure of the sound. He wanted to ignore it; told himself how intrusive, how awkward, it would be to make any response. But himself answered back and said it was his mother weeping, and that tomorrow they would be separated again as they had been almost all their lives.

To his relief the sobbing stopped, but then he heard Frances walk quietly through to the kitchen, and faint, yellow rods outlined his door, which was ajar. She had turned on the kitchen light. Naylor was reminded of Helen and nights of her illness. He saw from the bedside digital clock that it was 4.30 in the morning, and he reluctantly got up and went to the kitchen. Just before he entered he found himself squeezing his eyes and mouth closed, a quick expression of unease much in the manner of his father, and his affection and understanding for Greg flicked out strongly for a moment.

Frances wore a blue towelling dressing-gown, and her feet were bare. She stood by the sink with a mug in her hands and the window behind her was darkly reflective. ‘I didn't mean to wake you,' she said.

‘I heard you crying and thought I'd better come out.'

‘It's what you were afraid of, I suppose. To come over here and
find your mother is a flaky woman who blubs in the night.'

‘Actually I thought things were going pretty well for a first meeting. I reckoned that we were okay, though of course we're just starting to get to know each other.'

‘I promised myself, and you without you knowing it, that I wasn't going to get all emotional. Young guys hate that, I know. Well, all guys do.' Frances came to the table and sat on one of the chairs. Naylor did the same. He had no dressing-gown, and was barefoot as well, but there was warmth in the Australian summer night. He was still pale from his time in England, and his feet were the colour of skim milk. Four thirty in the morning at the kitchen table is a time for straight talking in anyone's understanding of such things. Even the noises of the zoo were temporarily in abeyance.

‘You can tell me,' said Naylor.

‘There's nothing so special,' said Frances. ‘The thing is I feel guilty. I've always felt guilty, and it's stopping me saying the things I want to say. It's stopping me reaching out the way I feel I should. After Mr Campbell wrote and said it was best not to make contact with you, I had counselling on and off for quite a while about the whole business. One of the things the psychologist said was that guilt is incapacitating, and Jesus, is that true. Nothing I can say or do really changes the fact that I ditched you, just as your real father ditched me. Nothing from now on can ever change that.'

‘No one blames you,' said Naylor.

‘I blame myself,' she said. ‘Maybe, though, it's not just guilt, but knowing now I'll never bring a child up. I'll never be a mother to you in that way.'

‘You're still my mother.'

They came to it at last, sitting tousled before the dawn: what each thought could come of their meeting. Perhaps it would be the closest, most candid time, they would ever have before they drew back to safe ground; perhaps it was the threshold of some growth of intimacy. They made more coffee and talked as the sky gradually
lightened outside, and the cries and calls of the zoo were further herald of the day. Naylor felt at last he was able to tell Frances that Helen was dead: to praise her to his living mother without a sense of betrayal, or competition. He'd half expected to weep at the disclosure, but instead felt relief and gratitude, and went on to speak of Greg as well. In the past there had never been anyone to whom he felt he could praise his parents as they deserved. It was Frances who cried a little as well as smiling and nodding her head to encourage him. It was Frances who took his hand, with neither feeling awkwardness because of it. ‘I'll always envy her, though,' she said.

‘I lied as well,' she said then.

‘Lied about what?'

‘About your real father and me. It wasn't true what I said yesterday about that.'

‘So who was he really then?'

‘Oh, he was the married journalism tutor and all that,' said Frances. ‘True enough about the money too, but what I didn't say was that I loved him, and I think he loved me. Maybe I still love him and that's why I'm alone now. Love can be unbearably painful, can't it. Their garage was on the street and we used to meet there at night — sit in the car and talk, make love in the back seat. In all the times I was in that car the engine never started, but Jesus, we went some places. We switched on, Errol and I. ‘I'm not just talking about sex. We really talked. Know what I mean? We trusted each other to talk about anything at all: sometimes the first silly things that came into our heads, sometimes the most personal truth we knew. The garage always smelled of fish and macrocarpa, because his fishing gear hung by the door, and one side of the garage was lined with firewood.