‘I didn’t do anything wrong. And I am not a racist.’
‘Well, that’s fine, then. If you didn’t do anything wrong, then that’s fine. But, Mum, be honest with yourself about why you called Seth – someone you never really liked. Be honest, accept that it’s because he only became good enough in your eyes when the alternative was me being with a black man.’
‘That is not true!’
‘Yes, it is. You know it is. Just be honest with yourself and with me for once in your life.’
She is silent, her sneer replaced by the defiance she has whenever she is dealing with me. It’s only me who encounters defiance, her obstinacy and determination to get what she wants at all costs. With everyone else she is conciliatory, apologetic. After all, she is the woman who couldn’t get it right and couldn’t have a baby the ‘natural way’, and then when she managed to get a baby by other means, it didn’t look right. It didn’t blend in so her family always stood out. The shame of that, of not being like everyone else, was a millstone around her neck and she could never apologise enough, do enough to make it right. But with me, she was always strong, stubborn and ultimately a parent. A hardline one, but still a parent.
‘Maybe I simply didn’t like Tyler,’ she states.
‘You didn’t even know him, Mum. You met him for all of five minutes and he was nothing but genuinely welcoming and friendly towards you.’
‘That doesn’t make me racist,’ she says. ‘It just makes me picky about who my daughter spends her time with.’
‘But it’s not up to you. I’m not an extension of you. If I want to sleep with half of Brighton that’s my business. And I like Tyler. He’s a great person.’
‘He’s not right for you!’ Tears seep into her tone.
‘Why not?’
‘I am not a racist,’ she replies.
I shrug. ‘If you say so.’
‘I am NOT!’ I don’t remember the last time she shouted at me. She’s hardly ever needed to. Quiet words and disapproving looks have always worked on me. I am stultified by her shouting, genuinely frightened because she never loses control like this with me. ‘I AM NOT, NOT, NOT A RACIST!’ she continues to shout. Her face is puce with rage, every line heightened. ‘HOW CAN I BE WHEN MY OWN CHILD IS HALF BLACK!’
Mum slams her hand, with its beautifully manicured nails over her mouth. But it’s too late to trap the words that have escaped. She is not talking about me, of course. And she can’t even pretend that she is because I am not ‘half black’. Mum had a child, a ‘real’ child that is biologically hers.
For the second time in five minutes I look properly, carefully, at my mother. I see her now. I see her in sharp focus: the hidden facets of her personality, those parts of her blurred under the things she does, the way she speaks, how she relates to me, are suddenly vivid, clear, apparent. Now I know why she is the way she is.
I wonder if she is finally seeing me or if she has always and will always see her other child, the one that I am the replacement for, whenever she looks at me.
There’s a point when it’s enough. When what you feel is too much, there is too much inside for you to handle any more. I am there. I am at that point. Like the banks of a swollen river, I am too full: another deluge and it will be too much; another drop and I will spill over and out, my being trampled and drowned as everything inside begins to disappear, the less secure bits washed away, the rest submerged. Drowned.
This is the final drop and I am drowning. Among everything, everything that my mother and I went through, I always knew it would be all right because she had chosen me. Out of everyone else, she chose me. But now I know it was only because I was a reminder, a replacement for her other child. And I know, from the look on her face, that her first child, her ‘real’ child, didn’t die, she had them adopted.
I take huge breaths, my chest expands to the limits of my ribcage and then rapidly contracts as I drown, submerged under the torrent of my tears. I can’t even raise an arm, pretend I am waving not drowning. More than anything, I want to make believe that she hasn’t told me that I am a replacement for the one she really wanted. That like everyone else, I wasn’t ‘real’ to her. I drop my face into my hands, try to contain the tears.
‘Oh, Clemency, love,’ she says. I feel her come towards me, her arms out ready to offer comfort and love. Ready to be my mother.
Is that even my name or is it the other one’s name? I wonder as I shrink away from her, prevent her from touching me.
‘Clemency, I’m sorry, I never meant to tell you. I was so young—’
‘I’m going to the toilet,’ I say to her as I try to stem the flow of tears. ‘I’d like you not to be here when I get back.’
‘Clemency—’
‘Just go, OK? We can talk another time, but just go. Please.’
‘I love you, Clemency,’ she says. ‘With all of my heart. From the moment I saw you, I fell in love with you.’
I nod to appease her, to get her to leave. ‘I know,’ I say. ‘I know.’ It’s all very well loving someone, but does it matter if they’re merely a replacement? Does it count if they’re second best, not really what you actually wanted?
49
Smitty
I am my mother’s daughter. I am pretending that the conversation we had last night didn’t happen. I have slept top to toe in the same bed as Seth, like I do every night. And this morning I am up making breakfast for everyone. Toast, cereal, tea, milk, coffee, jam, Marmite, marmalade, butter – all in the middle of the table for when everyone arrives.
Surprisingly since she’s almost always up at first light, Mum, not Sienna, appears first. I set the marmalade jar down beside the butter dish, look up at her and switch on my smile. ‘Morning,’ I say.
She probably hasn’t slept very well, but I can’t see for myself because I don’t look at her for too long. I can only do this if I don’t look at her for too long. I can only sleep in the same bed as Seth if I don’t dwell on our past for too long. I can only be in the same city as Nancy if I don’t remember all the things she has done and will do in years to come for too long.
I go to the toaster, take out the latest pieces to pop up.
‘Clemency,’ Mum says.
She’s meant to tell me everything right now. My mother is supposed to unburden herself and let me into the secrets of her past: what she did, why she did, how she did. I am supposed to listen and let her explain the unvarnished truth of who she is, what she is capable of doing. She did this thing that was done to me. I cannot listen to that. I cannot stand to hear that she did it to someone else for their own good. I’d love to have the luxury of being unconnected, unaffected by the choices she made back then that kept her making certain choices all of my life. I would love to be able to sit here and be as unconditionally sympathetic as any stranger who hasn’t been shaped by Mum’s choices can be.
‘Yes, Mum?’ I say. ‘Is everything OK?’
She says nothing, so I have to turn to face her. And then I switch on another smile. Grin at her because I am her daughter. I don’t have a handbag to root through, but I know how to pretend, how to forget and act like something isn’t happening. ‘Not fancying toast this morning?’ I ask. ‘Do you want scrambled eggs instead?’
She wraps her pink dressing gown around herself, pulls out a chair. ‘No, no, toast will be fine.’
‘Great,’ I say.
50
Smitty
I’ve brought her flowers and fruit and magazines.
I chose pink carnations, plump, green-flesh white grapes and a selection of magazines filled with fictional stories, and was reminded as I vacillated over every decision that I don’t know this woman. Despite the time I spent with her, she is a virtual stranger and I have no idea if any of these are to her taste.
My grandmother by birth is propped up in her bed, frail and unhappy. Dad felt how she looks: frustrated, angry, defeated. We’re alone, as she’s requested. My other mother looked unsure, uncertain that I should be
left alone with this woman. She flitted from fixing the pillows behind my grandmother, filling the water jug, fixing the cushions behind me on the seat, arranging the flowers I brought in a vase – constantly leaving and returning, fussing and fixing, until there was nothing left for her to do. She’s worried about secrets being shared, created; concerned that I will find out something I shouldn’t from a woman who obviously has form for twisting the truth. It probably never occurs to her that me being a virtual stranger to both of them would lead my grandmother to make the request she has.
Dad’s parents died when I was a baby; Mum’s parents never really took to me. It was nothing very personal – they never really took to Nancy, either, when they were alive. They sent Christmas presents – birthday presents were an indulgence that no one should have simply for being born – and they tolerated us if we showed up for a few hours’ visit. Although, admittedly, they showed that blood did in fact influence how much they didn’t take to me by not leaving me anything in their wills. Nancy got some jewellery and some Premium Bonds. I got nothing, as Nancy reminded me at various points over our teenage years, because I was not real.
I wonder if this woman realises that I don’t want anything from her, that I don’t expect anything from her will, but she will still be leaving me something no one else in her family will have – the memory of witnessing her death because I am not real, having not grown up in this house with the rest of her real family. That’s why she’s asking, of course. Because, to her, I am not real enough to be considered part of the family she would not ask this of.
‘How do you want me to do it?’ I say. No polite small talk or meaningless words. She doesn’t deserve to have a slow, lingering death if she’d rather it was over now, and the irony of her condition means that what is killing her is preventing her from killing herself.
Her tremors are pronounced today: she is sitting still, her frustration evident, but her body shakes uncontrollably. Her eyes, though, can stay focused on me. I have pulled one of the chairs from by the window closer so she can look at me without having to turn her head. Something like a smile comes through the strained lines of her face. ‘You … you will help me?’
‘I don’t want to,’ I state. ‘But, yes.’ I sigh; push breath out loudly, resignedly. This is wrong. It’s the wrong thing to do. ‘Yes, I will do it.’
My grandmother by blood is suddenly lighter, freer in how she holds herself. For her, this is the right thing, what she wants.
‘You have to speak to your doctor and your nurse, though,’ I say. ‘Tell them this is what you want, make them understand that you’ve thought this through and it’s your choice. And then I’ll help you.’
Her body still trembles, but she is back to being pensive, unsure.
‘That’s the only way I can help you. That’s my only condition.’
She says nothing for a time. Eventually, so eventually I think she is not going to speak to me again, she states, ‘Agreed.’
‘Right.’ I’d been hoping she wouldn’t agree. It would have given me an easy out then. I only have her word that she will do it. But I have to trust her. She trusts me enough to ask me to do this for her, so I have to trust her back. Anyway, who wouldn’t do something that could possibly prevent the person, the granddaughter, who has risked everything to help you, from going to prison?
‘How …’ I can’t quite believe we’re going to have this conversation. ‘How do you want me to help you?’
Slowly, haltingly, she explains it all to me and she starts by telling me where to find a key to the house.
Part 7
51
Smitty
I am counting down time until I have to do this thing. The key burns a hole in my pocket, and the ‘plan’ burns a hole in my mind.
In the workshop at Karina’s Jewels, I used to have a clear glass jar that I would fill with beads when I was counting down to something. It lived at the centre of the first shelf, between the plastic drawer set of different wires and the drawers of different sandpaper grades, and I would drop a coloured bead in every day. Karina said that I should be doing it the other way round, that I should put the same number of beads as number of days into the jar and take one out each day. That way, I could see the days until D-day (whatever ‘D’ happened to be) getting closer and closer. I explained, though, that I needed to see how patient I had been, how many days I’d survived without D-day. Doing it my way was as a visual reminder to myself that no matter how long it seemed until something arrived, it would always come;
I’ve been trying to fill up the days until this D-day arrives. She has a specific day in mind – it will give her a chance to get her affairs in order, she said. It will be soon, but not that soon. Until then I have to get from here to there without the benefit of a bead jar.
Now that I’m not looking after Lily and Sienna I can work during the day again, but I can’t face it. Being in the workshop during the day makes me claustrophobic and scared. I keep wondering what’s going on outside, what I’m missing out on. If I do this thing, there’s every chance that I won’t have the ability to walk around whenever I want during the day. I need to enjoy it as much as I can.
Working at night fills up those sets of hours, keeps me away from the flat and Seth and Nancy and Mum. Seth doesn’t speak to Nancy at all. She gave him a look the first day he was there, to try to gauge what was happening. ‘I’ve told Smitty everything, Nancy,’ he said. ‘No more secrets, no more lies, OK? Leave me alone now.’
He works a lot at the kitchen table, sometimes he walks up into Portslade to work in a café, but we make polite conversation and I generally avoid him because if I’m around him too long I dwell on our past.
I want to tell someone. I want to tell someone what I’ve decided to do and I want them to tell me that it’s the right thing, or the wrong thing, or that it’s something. I just want to share the knowledge, the decision that has become the weight of the world and is pressing down on my shoulders.
My feet have walked me all over Brighton and Hove these past few days and here I am outside a church. It is a little deeper into Hove and seems welcoming. It is a large bright-red brick building on a junction and the way the building stretches out along the side road and main road, it reminds me of someone offering a hug, standing still with their arms outstretched in hopeful expectation. To the side of the building that sits on the main road there is a large arch and at the end is a huge tower, topped with a green steeple that reaches right up into the sky, as though attempting to touch the heavens. The doors are open and I step into the church.
I’m going to light a candle for Dad, see if I can sit in the quiet and talk to him. Maybe it’ll be the same as telling someone else. A glass wall with double doors set into it greets me when I enter the church. It separates the main area from the entrance and, I’d imagine, must have significantly cut down on their heating bills.
There is a mass going on so I move towards the noticeboard to wait patiently for the service to finish. I stare at the flyers pinned to the corkboard, the handwritten welcome note from the priest, the signs asking for volunteers to help them with various activities.
A whoosh and the glass doors are open, and the priest leaves first. His white hair looks almost unrealistically perfect and, I suspect as he walks past in his green vestments, that he might curl his hair. Wouldn’t that be something – a priest in rollers! I watch the people leave, quite a few for a Wednesday morning mass. Some people have got out their Sunday finest but most of them are dressed as though they do this as part of their normal daily routine.
The steady flow slows to a trickle and I am about to step into the church but have to stop because there is someone I wasn’t expecting to see about to leave the mass. Quickly, I step back in case the person – Tyler – sees me.
I risk another look and notice he isn’t alone. He is pushing a wheelchair in which sits an elderly woman who wears a red and black hat that is an elaborate design of lace and netting. I move back to my s
pace beside a pillar where hopefully I’ll be out of sight.
Who is the woman? His mother? Grandmother? Great Aunt? They are the last to leave and, as they approach, it’s obvious Tyler’s going to find it difficult to open the doors on his own.
I step forward, my fingers close on the metal D handle and pull it open as far as it will go. Then I step across and open the other door.
‘Ahh, thank you, thank you,’ the woman in the wheelchair says with a strong Jamaican lilt. ‘You’ve appeared like an angel to save my feet being bashed on yet another door.’
I smile but keep my head lowered to avoid looking at the man who is pushing her. I can sense him staring at me, willing me to raise my head. Technically, we’ve not had a falling out and we can still speak to each other, but realistically, I’m far too humiliated and guilt-ridden to face him. Once they have cleared the doors, Tyler says a heartfelt, ‘Thank you,’ but still I do not lift my gaze.
I don’t even glance at them as they move towards the doors to the outside. I close the door I am holding on to, and shut the other one behind me as I enter the church.
The church has white walls and cream pillars that flank the pews all the way down to the altar. The pews are in a light-coloured wood, while the altar and pulpit are carved from white marble. It seems an effort has been made to create a bright, light space. When I was younger I used to think that Heaven was a bright, white space that was also warm and comfortable. It would be filled with clouds and gentle soothing music. You could have whatever you wanted, you could be alone or with people, you would never get tired but you would sleep if you wanted to. You would never be hungry, but you could eat anything you wanted. It was the most amazing place in the world and you would always feel wonderful.