Chapter 33
Poppy
We’ve watched the video with the curtains closed, to block out the sunshine that was glaring off the screen, and now the room feels heavy and dark. The streaks of sun that are creeping in around the fabric are casting golden yellow stripes, like spotlights, filled with dancing dust particles.
We are both silent, and both, I suspect, confused.
She is dressed in white, her hair a fuzzy blonde halo around her head, and she’s sitting on the lap of her own mother, chubby knees poking out of what looks like a home-made dress.
My grandmother, who of course I don’t remember at all, does, indeed, look a little bit stern, trying to smile but seeming uncomfortable with having her picture taken.
My grandfather, who is a tall man wearing a lot of Brylcreem, is standing behind with his hand on her shoulder, with the same half-grimace on his face.
It’s not quite got that frozen-sepia look that you see on really old pictures, but it’s hard to imagine them as living, breathing people – the people who created my own mother. People she lived with and laughed with and loved and grieved for, just like we are grieving for her.
It made me sad to think about that, so I distracted myself with sorting out the video.
It took a bit of messing around accessing the video sharing account – password MyGrubbyAngels999, which makes you wonder who MyGrubbyAngels numbers 1–998 belonged to – but we got there in the end, and sat back and watched as our dead mother graced the flat-screen in glorious technicolour.
Seeing her there – perched on the bench we’d just been sitting on, in the garden we’d just been enjoying – was surreal. As though if we looked out of the kitchen window right now, she’d be there, with a cup of tea, watching the blue tits.
I’m not sure whether we’re lucky to have this final chance of spending time with her, or whether it is simply dragging out an already long and painful process.
Even as I think it, I feel guilty – the amount of effort that she and Lewis have put into this project, at a time when most people would just be wallowing in self-pity, is staggering.
She was even trying to help us as she approached death, and I know I’m being ungrateful to even consider not seeing it through.
But … well, this is hard. I’m not good at dealing with complicated emotions, which is why I’ve streamlined my own life to the point of non-existence.
I don’t have close friends, or serious relationships, or children, or even pets.
I have my work, my shallow social life, and my mother.
Or, I had her, at least. Over the years there have just been one too many knocks, and at some stage I suppose I gave up even trying to get up and fight the next round.
Now I’m being plunged back into the messy, mucky, extremely disorganised world of my family, and being asked to make decisions that I’d rather not have to make.
Rose is looking as shell-shocked as I am, slouched on the sofa holding a mug of coffee that I know must be stone cold by now. Her poor ankles look swollen from the heat, and her hair is like a wild animal around her head. I can tell she’s feeling awful, probably on several different levels.
Last night, she was more open. More honest. More drunk, to be fair. But I can’t keep her drunk forever, and this morning she’s retreated back into her shell a little, as though she’s worried about the repercussions of even one frank conversation with me.
That hurts, and when things hurt, I tend to block them out, and ignore them until they go away. Thanks to our mother, however, that’s not an option here – which was all part of her cunning plan, I’m sure.
‘So,’ I say, switching the TV off and throwing open the curtains. She cringes as the light hits her, as though she’s a vampire in a movie. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think it’s weird,’ she says, shuffling up the sofa to get out of the direct sunshine.
‘The whole thing. I miss her so much, and want to talk to her so badly, and when she does those bloody videos, they feel so realistic that I think I can. The way she talks, as though the camera is actually us, and we’re with her? ’
‘I know,’ I say, sitting opposite her on the armchair.
Mum’s armchair, the floral fabric worn down and shining from all the times she laid her hands on it.
‘It is weird, how she does that. But I don’t suppose we should be surprised, should we?
She spent her whole life acting – and this is just another type of it, I think. Another role.’
Rose frowns at me, and seems upset by something I’ve said. I have no clue what.
‘I don’t think that’s fair,’ she says. ‘I think she means every word – she’s not just following a script, is she?’
‘That’s not what I meant!’ I reply, exasperated. It’s so grating, the way we are both ridiculously quick to jump to the wrong conclusion about each other – it is starting to grind me down.
‘What did you mean then?’
‘I meant that she’s doing it all very deliberately – she is ill when she’s making these videos, isn’t she?
Really ill. But she’s pretending not to be, putting on a show, throwing in a few funny lines.
She wants us to do certain things, and she knows she’s manipulating us into doing them, leading us in a certain direction.
I’m not saying she doesn’t mean it all – she obviously does.
I just mean that she’s not daft – she knows us so well, she is predicting how we will react to things, building in light and shade so we don’t just get bogged down in it all.
She’s trying to make it … fun, as well as making it matter.
‘And that way she talks to the camera? All isn’t-this-marvellous-girls?
That’s her using her professional skills for a very personal goal.
I’m not criticising it, I’m amazed by it.
That, in her last few weeks, she chose to do this.
For us. Because, like she keeps saying, she loved us so much. Does that make sense?’
I’ve explained it as well as I can, and if Rose still wants to interpret it as me being a cow, she’s welcome to. I think part of her still wants me to be a cow, because then I’d be easier to ignore.
She nods, almost reluctantly, and sips some of her coffee, immediately pulling a face when she realises how cold it is. I should make her a refill – but we have a decision to make first.
‘What do you think, then?’ I ask, rubbing the worn fabric of the armchair as though I am trying to absorb any last traces of my mother’s touch. ‘About the dad thing? Do you want to know or not?’
She surprises me by answering immediately, and firmly: ‘Yes. I really do.’
Some of my surprise must show on my face, and she gives me a little smile, as though she’s satisfied to have shocked me with something.
‘Because of Joe,’ she explains. ‘I mean, it’s not as though I believe that our genetic make-up is the be-all and end-all of who we are – Joe is nothing at all like his dad, for example, even though I do sometimes worry that Gareth will rub off on him every summer when he goes and stays with him.
‘But Joe has asked about my father, and I’ve never been able to answer properly because I don’t know myself.
And one day, he’ll be in the same boat we’re in now – when I’m gone, I mean.
He’ll be the one with the questions, and there’s no way I’ll be capable of pulling off one of these A–Z affairs.
I’m not organised enough for that, or selfless enough – I’ll probably spend my last weeks on earth eating cheesecake and pairing socks and watching box sets of Poldark—’
‘I love Poldark,’ I say, unable to stop myself interrupting. Her smile returns, bigger this time, as she replies: ‘Who doesn’t?
‘Anyway,’ she adds, leaning forward and looking at me intensely, ‘you can’t say that you’ve never been curious, can you?
It was always odd – she was so open about everything else, but this one thing just foxed her every time we mentioned it.
I always secretly wondered if our dad was somebody …
you know, famous? Like maybe we were the illegitimate love children of Robert Redford or something? ’
I bite back a giggle at that idea, but can’t deny that similar thoughts had crossed my mind.
‘I know what you mean,’ I say. ‘Except not Robert Redford – I think she’d have mentioned it, relentlessly, if she’d ever met him. But maybe one of those British actors she worked with back in the Seventies? Like Robert Vaughn, or Timothy Dalton before he was Bond, or Ian McShane?’
‘She did always have a bit of a thing for Ian McShane, didn’t she? Always looked a bit dreamy-eyed when Lovejoy came on the telly …’
‘Or,’ I say, pouncing on a new idea with what is probably far too much enthusiasm, ‘didn’t she do a stint in theatre with Richard Harris?’
Rose bursts out laughing, and her whole body is shaking so hard that cold coffee is sloshing out of its mug, and splashing on to her thighs. I’ve not seen her laugh like this for so very long, and it is joyous to behold.
‘What?’ I say, grinning at her. ‘What’s so funny?’
She wipes the tears from her eyes – the good kind, this time – and takes a few deep breaths, trying to stifle her giggles.
‘It was the look on your face, sis,’ she says, ‘the look on your face when you said that. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so excited. You do realise, don’t you, that you’ve just suggested that Professor Dumbledore is our dad?’