Country Wives Page 18

  “Well, I’m glad we’ve met at last. I’ve always wondered what you were like, but Dad dying like he did … it’s all too … much.”

  The whole emotionally charged scene was abruptly shattered by a further crisis as a client rushed in carrying in his arms a big mongrel dog with blood running from its two front paws. “He’s been wading in a pond and he’s cut his feet; it’s terrible. They’re in ribbons. There must have been broken glass. Do something. Quick!”

  Spurred into action, Mungo dashed to open a consulting room door while Kate grabbed a wad of tissues to catch at least some of the blood and fled with the client into the consulting room. By the time the crisis was over and the dog safe in Graham’s hands, and she’d wiped up the trail of blood on the floor of reception, Kate’s mother had gone. “I’m going for my break. Is that all right?”

  Stephie, who’d witnessed Kate’s distress, nodded. “Of course, take as long as you like. I didn’t know…”

  “Neither did I till last night.”

  Kate had made herself a cup of tea and gone to take refuge in the accounts office to drink it. Rage had boiled up inside her. Now she knew that the loving, smiley person she’d always imagined her mother to be simply didn’t exist. But when she reasoned it out, if her mother had been kind and motherly, she would never have dumped her. In truth, she was as hard as nails; that was why she’d done what she’d done. With her clenched fist Kate wiped away the tear escaping down her cheek. It felt cold, so she put her hands on the radiator to warm herself, but that did nothing to stop her trembling.

  Insensitive was another word which sprang to mind. How could she imagine for one moment that she, Kate, would let Mia spend Christmas on her own? Did her mother have no understanding of feelings? Did she, in fact, have any genuine feelings? That was the question, because the dabbing of the handkerchief to her eyes was a total sham. It was simply her method of trying to get her own way. Well, if that was how the cookie crumbled, then Kate Howard wasn’t fool enough to fall for it.

  The trembling had almost stopped, so Kate picked up her cup and drank her tea. The hotness of it spread through her, and gradually she began to get herself together. OK, she wanted to get to know her, see her sometimes, but live with her? No chance.

  What really hurt was the heart-searing realization that the mother standing at the desk this morning no way matched up to the mother of her imagination. Kate remembered how as a child she’d spent hours dreaming about her own mother, imagining eating hot buttered toast by the fire on winter evenings, seeing her proud, smiling face in the audience at school concerts, being met by her at the school gate—all those simple things which illuminated a small child’s life. Instead it was Mia who’d done all those things for her. As her dad had said, it was Mia who cherished her. How right he was.

  There was a knock at the door and Miriam had come in. She’d paused in the doorway for a moment and then she’d put her arms around Kate. “Mungo said, so I’ve come, if it helps. What a quandary, my dear.”

  “Do you know the worst thing? What must hurt Mia so much is that she’s been my mother all these years, and I’ve never, ever, called her Mum. Not once. How could I have been so thoughtless? I’m so ashamed.”

  Miriam, with no answer to that, had squeezed her shoulders and remained silent.

  KATE had rung her mother as soon as she’d got back from holiday with Mia, but there’d been no reply to the messages she’d left on her answer machine. Now, Kate felt dumped all over again. Why had she sought her out if she was to forget her immediately?

  Then, out of the blue, the phone rang at home one evening and it was Tessa, begging forgiveness. “I was so upset, Kate, about not seeing you at Christmas, and I just couldn’t…” There was a break in her voice, and then she continued more decisively, “I felt so low. I’m sorry, Kate, I really am. When I heard your voice on the answer machine, I could have cried. But I’ve got over it now, and I’m asking you to come to see me. Will you, please?”

  Kate didn’t answer immediately.

  “Please, Kate.”

  “Of course, I’ll come to your house and see it as you suggested. When shall I come?”

  “Saturday? I’ll be free that day.”

  “Right. About three?”

  “Lovely. I’ll pop a map in the post.”

  The rest of the week Kate spent in a whirl of anticipation. She tried her best to hide her excitement from Mia. But Mia saw through her. “I don’t mind you being excited, you know. You don’t need to be secretive about your mother. I’d like to know.”

  “Dad said I wasn’t to hurt you and I don’t want to, but I can’t help but be excited.”

  “It’s only natural. I shan’t be able to wait until you get back to hear all about it. The house and that, you know.”

  “Thanks, she’s been so upset about me not going for Christmas. That’s why she hasn’t rung me back.”

  “Understandable. Yes, understandable.”

  Kate recognized from the tone of her voice that Mia was striving hard to be reasonable and finding it very difficult, so she changed the subject. “You know the man who’s bought Dad’s train set? When is he coming to collect it? Because we need to clear up some of the rubbish he’s got up there and make sure Mr. Whatever-he’s-called gets what he’s bought and nothing personal of Dad’s.”

  “You’re right. I’d better get on with it.”

  “If you like, I’ll do it,” Kate said gently.

  Relieved, Mia replied, “Do you mind? I can’t face it.”

  “I’ll start right now. I’ve done all my work for Miss Beaumont for tomorrow night, so why not?”

  Gratefully, Mia answered, “Wonderful. If there’s anything we should keep, put it in a box all together and when I feel better…” She made a vague gesture with her hand. “I’ll … you know.”

  “Right. Here goes.”

  Kate switched on the light at the top of the attic stairs and for a mad, mad moment thought her dad was sitting in his chair waiting for her. It must have been the way the shadows fell as her eyes adjusted to the bright light. Her heart missed a beat and her throat tightened. It was time this train set went, because it was so strongly associated in her mind with her father that she could feel him here as though he’d left his soul behind in the attic when his heart stopped beating.

  It felt intrusive handling all his boxes of train paraphernalia. Shoeboxes filled with signals, and rails, and tiny sandwich boards with old slogans half rubbed away, damaged bushes, sheets of imitation brick for the outsides of station buildings, bogies with wheels missing, rusting wheels, the odd window taken from a discarded signal box. Oh, look! She remembered him replacing his old signal box. Of course! Here it was, useless, but loved too much to be thrown away. An invoice for old carriages he’d pounced on in triumph at a sale. She’d been with him that day; clear as crystal came the memory of his excitement at finding them and of her hand in his, and being half afraid of the crowds looming above her four-year-old head.

  Shoeboxes had been his favorites for storing precious things: one full of notices and handbills about exhibitions. Oh! Here was the one for the time he went to London and had upset Mia by buying an early engine which had cost the earth, when in truth they’d needed a new boiler more.

  Another held a motley collection of tiny people and animals for use on platforms and the like. Some badly made, others, as he got more skillful, she supposed, admirable in their minuteness, and wasn’t that tiny skirt on that tiny girl a bit cut from that favorite old summer dress of hers? And that red coat the woman was wearing? Surely she’d worn that coat to infant school? Searching the box was like seeing her life revealed year by year. How odd that she’d never noticed before.

  Kate blew the dust off another box, sealed with sticky tape. She peeled away the dusty stickiness, took off the lid and there, staring at her, was a photograph of herself in the garden by the trellis in a dress she didn’t recognize. Oh, God! It wasn’t her, it was her mother! Startled, she swiftl
y put the lid back on again. When her heart had slowed its pounding, she cautiously opened the box again and reverently began looking at a past she shared with her dad. But it wasn’t just the past, it was her mother’s too. He’d saved birthday cards and Christmas cards she’d sent him. Notes she’d left for him when she’d had to go out before he got home, even a note she’d left for the milkman one day long ago. Curiously Kate studied her mother’s handwriting and saw it was very like her own.

  Separately, all together in an envelope, she found photographs obviously taken by her dad because he was renowned for his lopsided photos. Some were blurred as though his hands were trembling as he held the camera, but there was no doubt of their subject matter: they were of her mother first and last. Her mother, slim and dark; her mother dressed up for something special; in a swimsuit by the sea; several of her mother obviously pregnant; her mother at the door of what appeared to be a hospital holding … yes, holding a baby. So, that must be me. Her and me. Me with her. My mother. Kate drank in this picture in all its aspects, unable to stop looking at it, thrilled to the core. Eventually she put them all back into the envelope, her feelings totally confused. There were letters too, in another envelope in the box, mostly ones from Dad to Mum. He’d had a way with words in those days, had Dad. They were love letters she wouldn’t have minded receiving. She wondered what her mother had thought of them.

  Kate put the box on one side to take downstairs and hide in her wardrobe. That box most certainly mustn’t go with the rest.

  Then, most painful of all, she found hidden under a shelf behind a vast pile of old model railway magazines another thick envelope of letters he’d written but never sent. All with “Tessa” written on the envelopes and stored in date order. They were dated regularly throughout the first year of Kate’s life and then they trailed off and, around her first birthday, they stopped altogether. That was when Mia had replaced her. One by one Kate opened them and read all about her dad’s tender love for her mum in every line: a pining and a longing which revealed so poignantly a depth of feeling she never knew he was capable of. Poor Dad! Loving her like that. How did he survive her going?

  “Kate! Are you all right up there? That serial we’re watching—it’s just about to start. Are you coming?”

  Guiltily she shoved the letters into the shoebox along with the photos and squeezed the lid on. “I’m on my way.” In haste, so as to prevent Mia from coming up, she got together all the boxes which could be taken with the train layout and, taking the one into which she’d crammed all her dad’s own memorabilia under her arm, she switched off the attic light, went down to her bedroom, pushed aside a pile of shoes she should have thrown away months ago, put the box in the bottom of her wardrobe and heaped the shoes back inside to hide it, so Mia wouldn’t find it.

  Somehow she found it difficult to meet Mia’s eyes when she got downstairs and sat staring at the TV, scarcely able to follow the plot because her mind was so full of what she’d just read. Her dad had suddenly, in one evening, become quite a different person from the one she thought she knew. For her father’s sake Kate realized she’d have to give her mother time if nothing else. Simply because he had loved her so.

  Mia patted her hand. “Finished it all?”

  Kate nodded.

  “Nothing to keep?”

  “No. It’s all in piles. Waiting.”

  “He’ll be here to take it away on Saturday. The check’s gone through the bank now, so the money’s secure. There wasn’t anything for me to see, then?”

  “No.”

  “I see.”

  Kate leaped up. “I’ll make us a drink.” Before Mia could agree with her, she’d disappeared into the kitchen. Now it was Mia’s turn to be unable to follow the TV. Because she knew Kate so well, she guessed she was hiding something. What, she didn’t know, but there was something Kate didn’t want her to know. If there was something up there about how much Gerry had loved that Tessa, there was no need to hide it; she’d always known. A stranger pair there couldn’t have been. Tessa had been a fool, because she, Mia, had reaped all the benefits of loving Gerry and having Kate. Nothing, nothing Tessa could do could take the last eighteen years from her, so she’d hug that to her heart no matter what happened. Saturday would be here before she knew it, and what had been Gerry’s passion would go out of the house for good with that model railway man; and perhaps, worse, she’d lose Kate that day too.

  KATE, eager to see her mother, was at the house promptly at three o’clock. She parked at one side of the U-shaped drive because the road was too busy for her to park at the curb, but there was no one there. She stood back from the front door and looked up at the house. It was very new, beautifully painted, with lavish bay windows and expensive net curtains at each of them—being so close to the road, they were necessary. Two smartly clipped bay trees grew in square cast-iron tubs at either side of the door, and the beginnings of a wisteria, a favorite of Mia’s, grew on the far side of the right-hand window.

  She tried the doorbell again and smiled at the tune it played. Mia would have laughed at it had she been with her. So … the big meeting of mother with daughter had finished before it started. Kate went to sit in her car to wait. Just in case. She might turn up. Just might. I’ll wait until half past three; she could have been held up in traffic. Kate wondered what car she drove and played a game of guessing while she waited. Every part of the house and front garden was as neat as a pin and shouted money. Well, stuff it. Tears welled in her eyes. Her mother seemed to be making a career out of dumping her. Then, as she prepared to pull out to drive away, she saw in her rear mirror a BMW turn into the drive and park. So instead she reversed, parked and got out.

  Her mother leaped out. “Kate! I’m so sorry! I went shopping and didn’t realize the time. Can you forgive me?” From the backseat she hauled several expensive-looking carrier bags. “This is all for you.”

  Kate’s heart sank and resistance to enticement grew inside her, but when she saw what her mother had bought for her she caved in and accepted. “How did you know my size?”

  “I didn’t. I guessed.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you; it’s all so lovely. This top and these trousers! I’ve been longing for a pair like these for weeks.” But she didn’t give her a kiss of thanks as she would have given Mia.

  “Tea! I’m parched. Have a look around while I get it ready. The bedroom at the back will be yours if you like it.” She wagged a teasing finger at her and disappeared into the back.

  Kate wandered about the house, admiring her taste in furniture and the good eye she had for interior decoration. She loved the collection of silver snuff boxes she had, and the modern art on the walls, and the huge, inviting, cuddly goatskin rug before the ornate electric fire. When Kate saw the bedroom her mother had said would be hers if she so chose, she gasped with delight. Such an elegant quilted throw on the big single bed, the huge matching curtains looped back by tasseled cords, a long-pile carpet invited her to try the texture of it with appreciative fingers. It was a bedroom she could only dream about, and with its own bathroom too. Surely it wasn’t real marble on the floor? It was. My God! A pink marble bathroom. What a joy!

  When she got back to the drawing room, the tea was laid out on a trolley, all lace doilies and delicate china, with a Georgian silver teapot—the whole works.

  “Tell me, Kate, what do you think?”

  “You have a lovely home.”

  “I’ve got an eye for choosing furnishings, haven’t I?”

  The question popped out of her mouth before Kate could stop it. “You’ve never married, then?”

  “No, never. Not to say I haven’t had the opportunity but … sugar?”

  “No, thanks. Why?”

  “Didn’t see any reason why I should. I have a good job and simply didn’t have any interest in any encumbrances. Do you think I should have?”

  Kate shook her head. “Nothing to do with me; I just wondered.” She munched on a tiny sandwich, so unlike
one made by Mia, which would have had the filling pouring out over the edges and be lavishly buttered and chunky. Mia always joked that it was her generous nature which made her sandwiches turn out like they did. “You’ve never had any more children? I mean, I haven’t got a brother or a sister somewhere?”

  Her mother shook her head emphatically. “No, you have not. Once was enough.” She looked as though, given the chance, she would have snatched back that last sentence. “Childbirth isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  “Being a mother isn’t all it’s cracked up to be either, apparently. Well, not as far as you’re concerned.”

  Her mother looked hurt. “Kate! How unkind.”

  Kate waited for the lace handkerchief to come out, but it didn’t. “You did leave me. At two weeks old. That takes some effort to understand. In fact, I can’t understand and probably never will.” Kate couldn’t work out why she was coming out with such unkind things; some devil seemed to be goading her. “Didn’t you give me a thought? Didn’t you care about who would look after me when you were gone?”

  “Of course I did. You had Gerry. I’m not entirely heartless.”

  “No?”

  “No. I lost my identity when you were born. I wasn’t me. I was Katrina’s mother and not Tessa Fenton, solicitor. And you woke in the night to be fed. Night and day demanding food. It was exhausting. I wasn’t cut out for it. Believe me, I was tormented by what I did.”

  Kate helped herself to another sandwich and said with a sarcastic edge to her voice, “Well, you needn’t have worried; Mia’s done an excellent job.”

  “She may have, but she can’t give you what I can give you.” She waved her hand in the air, encompassing the elegance of her drawing room. “A house like this to live in, a room like yours upstairs, clothes like these, and if you get to college, which I’ve no doubt you will, being your mother’s daughter, you’ll have no worries about money. I’ll see to that.”

  Kate gasped for the second time that afternoon. “You really mean that, don’t you?”