Birthright, p.3
Birthright, page 3
‘Well?’ Jennifer said.
‘She’s me, isn’t she?’ Fiona pushed her chair back.
‘But she can’t be, Fifi,’ said Jennifer, doubtful. ‘You aren’t called Maddy. Your mother doesn’t go around with her nipples poking through her top. It’s a coincidence.’
‘A miracle,’ said Fiona.
‘It’s an odd sort of miracle.’
Fiona turned round, her expression urgent. ‘How do I find out who this woman is?’ she said. ‘Heather Thomsett. I mean, she must be somewhere. She must know something.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Jennifer. ‘But I’ll tell you who could find out.’
‘Who?’
‘My brother. Patrick. He’s a genius at finding things out.’
* * *
*
The following morning, a letter arrived from Fiona’s mother. Fiona waited until she and Jennifer were alone, then sat on the bed, with Jennifer beside her, so that they could read it together.
My dearest Fiona
I am so sorry we never seem to see eye to eye on anything these days. We seem to do nothing but argue and I must admit that it is often hard for me to forgive you for many of the hurtful things you say to me, which I do not believe I deserve. But our last telephone conversation has made me realise how much you must be missing Daddy. I miss him too, of course, I was his wife and loved him very much, but I know that you had a special bond and I know that I can never compensate for the loss of that. However, I am your mother and I love you too, and I want you to remember that always, whatever might happen, even when we disagree.
I have thought a great deal about your wish to spend Christmas with your new friend and her family, and I can quite understand why you might wish to pass some of your holiday away from home, although it is painful for me to say this. I appreciate that it can be lonely here, where you have no real friends, and the only people you see are middle-aged women. You see, I do understand how you feel, although I must say that I wish you felt differently and that you wanted to keep your mother company. But enough of that. What I want to ask you now is that you try to make the same effort to understand me. I wonder if we can reach a compromise, Fiona. I am prepared to let you spend a week with your new friend, but I insist that we spend the few days of the Christmas period together. I think I have a right to expect that from you, as your mother. I promise you that I will make every effort to ensure that those days are festive. Christmas, my dear, is for the family, and you are all the family I have. Please think about my proposal and let me know.
Your loving Mummy
‘She doesn’t say what happens if you don’t agree,’ said Jennifer. ‘And why does she keep calling me your “new” friend? It makes us sound like ten-year-olds.’
‘What do you think I should do?’
‘What do you want to do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘So don’t do anything. Let her stew for a bit.’ Jennifer read through the letter again. ‘It’s just like a business letter, isn’t it? I can never compensate for the loss. I am prepared to let you spend. Does she always write like that?’
‘She used to be Daddy’s secretary,’ Fiona said. ‘She’s never shaken it off. I’m surprised she doesn’t put “Yours sincerely” at the bottom.’ She sighed. ‘Oh my God, I hate her. I just wish she’d leave me alone.’
Jennifer put the letter back in the envelope. They sat there in silence for a few moments before she continued. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Of course you can,’ said Fiona warily.
‘Why do you hate her so much?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, it’s normal not to get on with your parents. Who does? But you hate her.’
‘I don’t know.’ Fiona stood up, took the envelope from Jennifer’s hand and threw it on the bed. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
Jennifer raised both hands. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Not another word.’ She grinned. ‘So shall I tell Mum you’ll be coming?’
Fiona sank back onto the bed.
‘I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to do what she wants,’ she said. ‘Just this once.’
‘A week, then? Or eight days?’
Fiona laughed. ‘Eight days, of course!’
Why did Fiona hate her mother so much? She didn’t know. She couldn’t remember not hating her, or loving her, which came to the same thing. It was what you did with parents, you loved them or you hated them, there was no middle ground. She couldn’t remember being held, or cuddled, when she was little, or having her cardigan buttoned up or her sandals buckled. She couldn’t remember having her hand gripped as she crossed the road, or being lifted across some obstacle, or being comforted because she had fallen over and grazed her knee. She had seen other mothers kissing their children’s scratches and grazes and making them better. Had her mother shown her love like this? If she had it had left no trace.
When Fiona tried to recall her childhood it was as though she’d been brought up by a stranger, or someone employed to do it, a nanny, an au pair. Her father, yes, her father had picked her up and thrown her in the air and made her squeal with fright and joy all mixed up together, and brought her presents when he came home from work or travelling, but her father had been away so often. She remembered him tucking her in and telling her she was his favourite girl, and when she was lying in the darkness of her bedroom she’d wondered how many other girls he had, and then dismissed the thought. Sometimes he’d come back and she’d pretend to be asleep until he’d gone and then wish she hadn’t, wish she’d told him how much she loved him. But she couldn’t remember her mother coming back into the bedroom after the light had been turned out, or sitting on the edge of her bed, or stroking her hair from her face. Maybe no one could, but how could she ask without seeming stupid? She couldn’t even ask Jennifer – Jennifer would laugh, or feel sorry for her, which would be worse. She couldn’t bear to be pitied because her mother had been disappointed in her. She would never forget one afternoon, she couldn’t have been more than five or six, when Rosie, the cleaning woman, had given her a basinful of dripping just-washed handkerchiefs and helped her rig up a line between two garden chairs. You’re a good little girl, Rosie had said, and had given her a bag full of clothes pegs. Now you peg up these hankies, my love, she’d said and Fiona remembered still how pleased and proud she’d felt as she took each handkerchief from the basin and gave it a shake, watching the drops of water burst on the flagstones, and then pegged one corner to the line. That’s it, Rosie had said, as she stretched the handkerchief out to get rid of the creases, and pegged the other corner. Rosie had shown her how to use one peg for two handkerchiefs, and she’d loved that. And then her mother had arrived and slapped the peg bag from her hand so hard the skin was still smarting when she went to bed, or that was how she remembered it. What on earth do you think you’re doing? her mother had said, and she wasn’t sure if the anger was directed at her, or at Rosie, or at them both. We don’t pay people to have you hang out the washing, she’d said, and she’d seized Fiona by the upper arm and pulled her back into the house. Fiona still remembered turning to see Rosie’s face and the expression on it, of shock and hatred and contempt. None of it for her, no sympathy, no pity, no attempt at defence; her mother had deprived her of that.
What made it worse was that Ludovico’s mother had hugged her and held her face in her hands, covering her cheeks with big wet kisses and her skin with special creams against the sun, telling her how lovely she was and how the boys would never leave her alone. Call me Luisa, she’d told Fiona one summer, years ago now, but Fiona, shy, had shaken her head. Va bene, chiamami Mamma. Call me Mamma. She’d told her own mother how sweet Ludo’s mother always was with her, and her own mother had sniffed and said, Well, what do you expect? She’s Italian. They’re so demonstrative. She hadn’t understood what demonstrative meant until Ludovico had told her. It means you don’t hide your feelings, he said, like English people do. So that was it, she’d thought. Her mother must have hidden the love she felt for her. But why? Was that Fiona’s fault? Did she think someone else might steal it? But who would want it, other than Fiona? Who else would have any use for it?
She could imagine the sort of love her mother might offer, some dried-out powdery husk from the bottom of the sack, weighed and measured out because too much of it might make them both ill, or be common, or not be given back in kind, a love that was cramped and suffocated and deprived of light. She’d never felt more alone than she did when she was with her mother. She’d catch her lifting her head from her book to look at Fiona with a sort of bemusement, as though she wasn’t sure whose property this odd, mysterious girl might be. If Fiona smiled, her mother would give a little shake of the head, as though she’d been thinking about something else, and then smile back, but Fiona knew when her mother was lying. She’d seen her do it to her father, small lies that served no other purpose than briefly to deceive, as far as Fiona could see. White lies, her mother might have said if she’d been challenged, but they weren’t white, they were colourless, invisible, useless. Watching her mother: that was how Fiona had learnt to lie.
CHAPTER FIVE
Patrick met them at the station. He was standing beside a dark-blue Range Rover, reading a book. He seized Jennifer’s bag with his free hand, swung it into the boot, then held out the same hand towards Fiona. Fiona took it, immediately realised her mistake and, blushing, gave him her bag. He smiled.
‘You’re Fiona, right? Jennifer’s new best friend?’
She nodded, watching him throw her bag into the car beside Jennifer’s, not sure if she liked him. She hadn’t liked the way he said ‘new’, as though she might be replaced by an improved model before too long. Her mother had done that too. She inspected him as he closed the back of the car and locked it. He was good-looking, although not in the way she’d imagined. She’d been promised tall, but he wasn’t much taller than Fiona. He was slim, as far as she could tell, beneath a duffel coat and a cable-knit sweater. His jeans looked new, his shoes as highly polished as the car. Did he want to make a good impression on her, she wondered. If he did, he hadn’t quite succeeded. Even his smile had been a touch too sardonic for her liking.
‘Who else would she be?’ Jennifer shifted the passenger seat forward to let Fiona pass. ‘You don’t mind getting in the back, do you?’ she said. ‘It’s probably safer. He’s only just got his licence. He’ll probably kill us all wherever we sit.’
‘O ye of little faith,’ he said. Inside the car, he turned round and gave her the book he’d been holding – The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth – then looked at her again, more appraisingly. ‘I don’t suppose you have to put up with a baby sister, do you?’
‘Or a big brother,’ said Jennifer. ‘She’s lucky.’
‘I left Mum decorating the tree,’ he said, starting the car. ‘It looked like Miss Havisham’s wedding cake when I left the house. God only knows the state it’s in by now.’ He glanced into the mirror, caught Fiona’s eye. ‘Perhaps you can help her tone it down.’
‘I thought Miss Havisham’s wedding cake was rotten,’ said Jennifer. She shuddered. ‘With spiders crawling all over it.’
‘Don’t be so literal.’ He turned his head to look at Fiona directly. ‘Is she like this at school, correcting people all the time? She must be a real bore.’
Jennifer thumped his arm, then lit a cigarette. ‘The last one,’ she said.
‘You can put that out right now,’ Patrick said. ‘You know little sisters aren’t allowed to smoke at home.’
‘I’m not at home,’ she said. ‘Not yet anyway.’
‘Well, think of Dad’s second-best car as an extension of home.’
‘See what I mean?’ She passed the cigarette back to Fiona, who took it. ‘Nag, nag, nag. He’s worse than a parent.’
‘In loco parentis. I do my best,’ he said. ‘You could at least open the window.’
She shrugged. ‘I suppose I could,’ she said, defiant. A moment later, she wound her window halfway down. ‘Tell me if you get cold,’ she said to Fiona.
‘We’re nearly there,’ Patrick said. ‘Don’t worry.’
Fiona said nothing. She was curled up in the back of the car, wishing she were somewhere else. The intimacy of their bickering, even the irritation in it, left no space for her. This is what family is, she thought. It reminded her of Ludo, and his mother, and the friends she had made in Italy, and how she had come to depend on them for what her own mother and father had failed to give her. A brother, a sister; it didn’t matter which. An ally, she supposed. She’d read somewhere that twins were believed to share a soul. There was a girl at school, Antonia, who had a twin brother and she claimed she could tell when he felt sick because she would feel sick too. I know when he’s unhappy, she said, it’s like a cloud inside me. Fiona didn’t believe in souls, but how wonderful it would be to share a soul, to have that bond with someone, better than love, because love can fade or turn into hate; to have something that would always be there, that no human agency could break.
Patrick pulled up outside a gate set into a high red brick wall. ‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘Home sweet home.’
The gravel drive was flanked by a paved area. A flight of steps led up to the front door, stone vases overflowing with ivy at the far ends of each step. Fiona could see her breath as she watched Patrick take their bags from the boot. Jennifer was blowing into her hands. ‘It’s freezing out here,’ she said. Fiona was about to pick up her bag when the front door opened and a woman hurried down the steps.
‘Don’t bother with that,’ she said, pulling her cardigan around her. She had an unlit cigarette in one hand. ‘Patrick will look after the luggage.’ She turned to look at him with a smile. ‘Won’t you, dear?’
‘I have to put the car in the garage,’ he said.
‘The car can wait a few minutes,’ the woman said. She opened her arms. ‘Fiona,’ she said. Fiona stepped forward, embarrassed. She tried to imagine her own mother greeting someone like this.
‘I’m here too, Mummy,’ said Jennifer.
‘Of course you are, my dear. I’m just so pleased you’ve brought someone home with you.’ She rested her hands on Fiona’s shoulders. ‘You’ve been so kind to help Jennifer settle into her new school. I don’t know what she’d have done without you.’
‘She’d have been fine,’ said Jennifer. ‘She isn’t completely useless.’
‘Take no notice.’ The woman gave Fiona an encouraging squeeze. ‘Promise me you’ll take no notice of my daughter.’
Fiona nodded, smiled. ‘Hello, Mrs Appleton.’
‘No need to be so formal, my dear. You must call me Ruth.’
‘Can I call you Ruth too?’ said Jennifer.
‘You can stop pretending to be jealous,’ said Ruth, ‘and help Patrick take the bags into the house.’
Jennifer took her round, opening and closing doors in a bored, dismissive way, taking the stairs two steps at a time. The house was large, larger than Fiona’s although it felt smaller. It was so much busier, there were so many signs of life. Fiona wanted to slow her friend down, ask questions, pick up books and flick through them, examine ornaments and ask where they were bought. There was an elephant’s foot with umbrellas in it. Jennifer caught her looking at it. ‘Vile, isn’t it?’ she said, and Fiona supposed it was, but her heart was filled with something that wasn’t envy; it was closer to wistfulness, a nostalgia for what might have been. Her own house felt like a showroom, a furniture store pretending to be a home. The dining room had the grandest bay window Fiona had ever seen, a curved wall made entirely of windows that opened onto the garden, and a chandelier the size of a pram. On the first floor were half a dozen bedrooms and two bathrooms, both with bidets, Fiona noticed, with a stabbing ache of nostalgia for Italy. On the second floor, the polished wood of the landing pale gold beneath an enormous skylight, Jennifer turned down a corridor and opened a door set apart from those of the other rooms. ‘Come on,’ she said. She led Fiona down a short flight of steps into a room with a dormer window and sloping ceilings, the smallest room so far, empty apart from a bed and a desk, its only decoration a row of posters on the walls. Genesis. Barclay James Harvest. ‘This is my room,’ Jennifer said, enthusiastic for the first time. ‘My kingdom.’
Fiona picked up a troll from a shelf near the bed, stroked its shock of orange hair. ‘I didn’t know you were into progressive stuff,’ she said, pointing at the posters.
Jennifer nodded, but showed no sign of wanting to talk about music. She sat down on the bed and patted the space beside her. ‘This is where I hide,’ she said.
‘Your mother’s nice,’ said Fiona, sitting down, still holding the troll.
‘She’s a bit full-on sometimes.’ Jennifer sighed. ‘She wants everyone to be happy. All the time. It can be very wearying.’
‘She was lovely with me.’
‘You’re new. She’s got to win you over.’
‘Well, that’s better than being treated like a stranger in your own home.’
‘Is that really what it’s like for you?’
Fiona nodded. She lifted the troll to her mouth and kissed it.
‘I’m not sure I want to call her Ruth,’ she said. ‘It feels a bit weird.’
‘Just humour her, all right?’
