Astonishing Splashes of Colour Read online

  Adrian looks defensive. “No, not really—”

  Paul stops crunching peanuts. “What book?”

  “Yes it was.” Jake’s voice is sounding more confident. “You wanted to write a book about our family, and when you did, you decided you were going to look for an exciting family secret, didn’t you?”

  “The book is fiction,” says Adrian.

  “Oh,” says Paul, “that book.”

  “It’s just that, when I really thought about it—” Adrian looks uncomfortable, moving his neck awkwardly, as if his shirt collar is too tight. He doesn’t look a healthy colour at all. I worry about his blood pressure. “It seemed odd that there hadn’t been a funeral—”

  “Nothing odd about that,” says Dad. “Lots of people don’t have funerals.”

  “No, they don’t,” says Paul.

  “Yes, they do. Far too expensive. Waste of money.”

  Paul bites a sausage off a stick and points the empty stick at Dad. “Most people do something: have a memorial service, or scatter ashes somewhere. They don’t start pretending the dead person never existed.”

  “Anyway,” says Dad, “you have the truth now. She left us to get on with it on our own. Does it make you feel any better?”

  “But you didn’t tell us that, did you?” says Adrian. “You told us she was dead.”

  “What about the car accident?” says Jake. “None of that was true?”

  “I was protecting you,” says Dad, pacing around the room. “You were all young. You couldn’t handle being deserted—better to lose a mother in death than desertion. How could you have coped with the idea that your mother didn’t want—?”

  “Don’t poison their minds like that,” says Margaret. “Feeding them with your warped ideas—”

  “You left us without a word of goodbye,” says Paul. “I went to bed one night and you weren’t there in the morning. You hadn’t even washed my jeans. You promised they would be ready for the first day of the holidays. I found them screwed up on the floor by the washing machine, mixed in with everyone’s socks. I was never able to get rid of the smell.” Paul’s cheeks have gone very pale, almost blue, but a pink flush is creeping upwards from his neck. He is forty-two years old, and he’s angry. I have never seen him angry before. Only ever indifferent.

  The smell of Paul’s jeans, the smell of babies, the smell of your mother. I’ve identified the emptiness inside me: I don’t know the smell of my mother. I have no memory of smell.

  “I don’t know who is who,” Margaret says, and she sounds annoyed. She looks carefully at all of us, one at a time, as if she is trying to match us up with our childhood selves. I’m Kitty, I want to shout. Look at me, notice me, remember me as a baby. But I can’t find the words.

  “You lied to us,” says Adrian to Dad.

  “I protected you,” Dad says again. “Don’t look at me like that. You do all sorts of things for your children. You’d have done the same for Rosie and Emily—”

  “You’ve got children?” says Margaret. “I’ve got grandchildren?”

  She looks excited. Why? Are grandchildren more valuable than your own children?

  Anyway, it’s all in the biographical notes at the front of his books. Married with two daughters, lives in Birmingham. Does she even know he’s a writer?

  “And you went on lying to us all that time,” says Adrian. “For thirty years, I believed she was dead. I am astonished by the scale of your deception.” He is calming down, as he finds words to substitute for his anger.

  “But you weren’t deceived, were you?” says my father. His hands are working compulsively in his lap, washing with imaginary soap, round and round, wringing out and starting again. “You decided that you knew better.”

  “And it turned out I was right. I just needed to make things easier in my mind.”

  “Easier?” shouts my father. “How can it be easier to be abandoned—like unwanted orphans, left to fend for ourselves? I didn’t even know how to work the washing machine—”

  Martin next to me is strangely still. I can hear him breathing very evenly. He’s still devouring sandwiches, but it’s an automatic process and I’m not sure that he is chewing them enough. I try to move closer to him, to reassure him a bit, but he moves away at the slightest contact.

  I’m having difficulty with Margaret. The others all remember her, they have pictures in their minds. They can remember having breakfast with her, going to school with her, being read bedtime stories, calling her in the night when they felt sick. Did she tell them off, was she often angry? They’ve never told me bad things. Perhaps they’ve forgotten all that—the bad things slipping out of reach, the good things sharp and bright in their memories, cancelling out her anger, her frustrations. I can only produce a crinkled skirt, a lap, a low voice singing “It’s been a hard day’s night.” Nothing more substantial than a vague memory of warmth, and the wedding photos, which are over fifty years old. There has never been any place in my imagination for how she might have been if she had stayed with us. That she would grow old, that her hair would go grey and her voice would be harsh and shrill. It has never occurred to me that she could be alive.

  “Well,” says Margaret. “Tell them the rest, Guy.”

  Dad stops pacing and stares at her. “There’s nothing else to say,” he says. “Only the fact of your desertion—”

  “What about the women?” she says. “You can’t have forgotten Angela, Helen, Sarah and the rest. More than one on the go at the same time—popping in and out of my house in relays—”

  “My house,” says Dad. “It was never your house.”

  Margaret looks at him triumphantly. “Quite,” she says, and almost smiles, looking round at everybody for their reaction.

  “I don’t remember any women,” says Jake.

  “You were too busy playing your violin,” says Adrian.

  “There weren’t any,” says my father.

  “What?” shouts Margaret. “What about Angela, Helen, Sarah, Philippa, Jennifer, Lucia? Dozens of them, one at a time, two at a time, one in the morning, another in the afternoon, two in the evening, another at night? Are you telling me I’ve got that wrong?” She looks as if she might spit at him.

  “I remember Lucia,” says Paul. “She used to bring me comics.”

  “No,” says Adrian. “That was Philippa. Lucia brought sweets.”

  They knew about the women. They knew. Why didn’t anyone tell me? Martin is still breathing heavily. Jake jumps up and takes a bowl of crisps from the table. “Have a crisp,” he says and offers them round. We all obediently take a handful and crunch them together. Salt and vinegar, strong and sharp. Martin puts his crisp in with the next sandwich, but I still don’t hear him chewing. I worry that the crisp will scratch his throat.

  So what do most women do if their husbands are unfaithful? Not just with one woman: lots and lots? I look at James, but can’t imagine it. I think I would have to leave. But what about the children?

  “Anyway,” says my father. “They never came again after you left.”

  “No, of course not,” says Margaret.

  “No, really. I gave them all up for you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. What was the point of that?”

  “They became irrelevant.”

  She looks at him, clearly amazed. “Well, that’s logical.”

  My father doesn’t reply. He looks out of the window. It’s raining and the room has darkened so we can’t see each other clearly.

  “I thought you were dead,” says Paul suddenly. “I can’t believe you did that.”

  “Did what?” she says. “I didn’t tell you I was dead.”

  Martin gets clumsily to his feet. “Stop it!” he shouts. “Stop it, all of you. This isn’t our mother. She’s only come to upset everyone. She’s not real, you know. My mother has been dead since I was fourteen. You’re just encouraging her when you talk such rubbish. She’s not my mother—”

  He walks over to Margaret. She flinches a
s if he’s going to hit her. But he just throws an arm out over her head. “Go away!” he shouts. “Leave us alone!” He stands motionless over her for a moment, tears pouring down his cheeks. Then he turns his back on her and marches out of the room. We hear the front door slam behind him.

  “Well,” I say loudly, “someone needs to go and see if Martin is all right.”

  There’s a heavy silence, as if everyone is talking frenetically, but without sound.

  “Looks like it’s me again, then, doesn’t it?” I’m not sure if I have said this out loud, but I get up anyway.

  I’ve always been the baby, the kitten, the Kitty. So if my brothers become children, I go further back into nonexistence. There doesn’t seem to be a part for me in this performance.

  I find Martin on the seafront. It’s been raining or drizzling for some time now and the sky is heavily overcast. It presses down, forcing our thoughts inwards. Martin is standing near the edge of the water, hurling stones into the sea, a fighting machine with no enemy. He’s soaking. I want to take him home and find his brown slippers, make him a drink in his Pooh Bear mug. There are only a few other people on the beach, mostly with dogs, some serious walkers. A young man stands in the shelter of the sea wall practising juggling.

  “Hello,” I say to Martin, but he can’t hear me against the sound of the waves. They rush up and break noisily, then suck back, the pebbles shrieking an anguished protest as they’re forced back under the sea.

  I stand next to him, watching the power of his right arm as he flings the stones far out into the water. He must know I’m beside him, but he gives no sign.

  A larger than average wave is gathering strength on its journey inwards; it’s going to come much further up the beach. At the last minute, I turn and run back, just avoiding a soaking. Martin doesn’t react, and when I look round again, he’s standing in a few inches of water as the wave lazily creeps up the beach. He looks down for another stone to throw and doesn’t notice that his shoes are full of water.

  When the wave has retreated, I go back and shout at him. “Move back, Martin, you’re getting soaked!” I know he can’t get much wetter, but I need to say something.

  He ignores me, so I grab his hand and try to pull him back. He looks down, but doesn’t seem to recognize me.

  “Come on! Move further back!” I yell.

  I can’t shift him. It’s like trying to move a concrete statue. But I don’t give up. It must be possible to reach him somehow.

  He stops resisting me and I nearly fall over.

  “Kitty,” he says, “what are you doing here?”

  I’m tired of shouting. I crunch back over the pebbles, away from the sea, hoping he’ll come too. Once I can hear his footsteps following me through the shingle, I stop and sit on the stones against the sea wall. I draw my knees up and Martin sits down heavily beside me. We are sheltered here from the wind and the rain, and a quietness settles over us. A man with a metal detector walks past us, head down, eyes on the stones just in front of him. Rain drips off his yellow waterproof jacket.

  I begin to realize how wet I am. My hair is plastered to my cheeks, rain is sliding off the ends of the hair and on to my jacket. I can feel the damp reaching my pink dress.

  “We ought to go back,” I say. Where’s James? I came to find Martin, and James should come to find me.

  “Do you want to?” says Martin.

  I hesitate. It all seems so frightening. “I don’t know,” I say.

  “She’s an impostor.” Martin starts building a small tower with the pebbles beside him. His voice is hard and he’s no longer crying.

  “But why?” I say. “Why would someone pretend to be her? What would be the point?”

  He shrugs. “Maybe she’s after the money.”

  “What money?”

  “What she could inherit from Granny and Grandpa.”

  “But there isn’t any, is there?”

  “She wouldn’t know that, would she?”

  This is surprisingly logical for Martin. I start to play with the wet pebbles. Their colours have risen to the surface. The reds and blacks glow, strong and vibrant, the browns and yellows gleam. They shimmer when moved, changing shades, as if the wetness wakes them and releases their rich textures from a dry, grey sleep.

  “There must be a way to find out,” I say. “Ask questions, things you remember. See if she remembers them.”

  “But she might have forgotten them anyway,” he says. “And I might remember them wrong.”

  I think of the images in the wedding album and compare them with the woman with the long white hair. In the photographs, she seems tall, graceful, neat. There’s a seriousness in her expression that I’ve always liked. The woman in Granny’s house is sharp and angular and—furious. But anyone’s appearance would change in such a long time.

  I start to wonder if I can identify an independence, a self-will in both images, a tilt of the head, the line of her jaw. Am I really seeing this, or am I just embroidering the links?

  “Dad obviously thinks she’s real,” I say. “He recognized her.”

  Night-feeding. My mother and I were once alone together in the deep silence of the night. Shouldn’t there be something inside me that remembers it subconsciously, that should recognize my mother if she returns?

  Martin’s tower falls over and he sits looking at it. A large black poodle runs up and stands in front of us, wagging its tail. His fur is strangely flattened by the rain. Martin picks up a stone and throws it along the beach. The poodle scampers off and then stops, perplexed, unable to work out what he’s looking for.

  “Kitty,” says Martin.

  “What?”

  He pauses. “Nothing.”

  We sit in silence for some time. I really want James to come and find me. The owner of the poodle appears along the edge of the sea and the dog dashes into the water to meet him.

  “I was fourteen when she left.”

  He is going to tell me something. Something he’s not said before.

  “She used to fight everyone—”

  I look at him in surprise.

  “I mean people who were nasty to me. She would go into the school and see my teachers, the headmaster, the children who were bullying me, their parents. She never gave in, she made them sort things out. I think she might have beaten up the children herself if they weren’t punished properly.”

  I look at him and he’s crying again. “I didn’t know you were bullied,” I say.

  “Well … They used to call me Simple Simon, didn’t they? I couldn’t do things as quickly as them.”

  “Oh, Martin.” I want to give him a hug and tell him that he’s a brilliant lorry driver, and the best brother in the world.

  “So why did she do all that and then leave me behind when she went, as if she couldn’t care less about us?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “One day, she just wasn’t there any more. I remember the date: July 21st, the first day of the school holidays. We got up for breakfast and there wasn’t any. We looked everywhere for her. We thought she might be shopping, or gone for a walk, or out in the garden. Back in bed.”

  I could see the boys searching for her, running out into the garden, opening cupboards, looking under the beds.

  “We called her. We thought she was playing a game. ‘We give in,’ we shouted. ‘You can come out now.’ But she didn’t come out. She never came out, ever again.”

  Where was I in the middle of this search? Asleep in my cot, or running around on my little toddler legs, calling “Mummy, Mummy”?

  “Then Dad came back and told us about the car crash.”

  I watch the water of the rain piercing the water of the sea. Gulls swoop down, balance on the surface and ride the waves. They rise and fall with nonchalant expertise, unthreatened by the hostile weather. The day, the sky, the sea are grey, but there is a vigour to the greyness here on the beach. It is not cold and lifeless, it’s rich and multi-layered.

  I imagine myself
awake at night, listening for Henry’s breathing, because I know that this is what mothers do. The love that children never hear. Did she do that for me? Do I know about it in some secret inner part, or did I lose it somewhere in the thousands of nights between then and now?

  “Why did she do it?” says Martin, with a catch in his voice. “How could she leave her own children?”

  “I don’t know.” To leave Henry would have been so inconceivable that I can’t think myself into the role. Margaret left five children. Inconceivable five times over.

  “If it is her,” he says, “I hate her.”

  “Kitty!”

  And here comes James, finally, a bit later than acceptable. He stumbles awkwardly over the shingle, stopping to look and shout at regular intervals. “Kitty! Where are you?”

  “Over here,” I shout, but my voice gets caught up and lost in the wind.

  He stops and turns round, looking in all directions. I stand up and wave to him, my clothes wet and cold against me, my hair sticky and salty round my face.

  James sees me and immediately changes course. He moves determinedly towards me and I stay standing. I want him to hold me for a bit when we meet.

  “You took your time,” I say.

  James is obliging. He puts his arms round me and holds me tightly. “Kitty,” he says gently and pats me rhythmically on the back.

  Martin stands up next to us. He doesn’t speak. He half smiles, then looks away at the sea.

  A woman walks past us, fiercely pounding across the stones. She looks like Granny’s friend from the funeral, but I’m not sure, so I watch her carefully. She won’t meet my eyes. She strides on with her head down, so I don’t find out if it’s her or not.

  The three of us climb the stone steps back up to the road. It is quieter now, further from the sea. My pink dress is dark enough to be red and sticks to me uncomfortably. I wonder if it’s transparent.

  “Have I missed anything?” I ask James. “Has she explained anything?”

  “There’s a lot of arguing going on, but as far as I can make out she had some kind of breakdown. She says she didn’t know what she was doing.”