May #2
‘Well,’ I said, wrapping my arm around her shoulders, which had become bonier with age, ‘we’re here to do exactly that.
Happy birthday weekend, Mum.’ I didn’t tell her that Peggy and I had been in touch earlier in the week, and that she was all set to bring over one of her famous lemon drizzle cakes – my mother’s favourite – later in the day.
‘Oh, thank you both,’ she said, clapping her hands together and losing one envelope in the process. As Noah bent down to retrieve it, she added : ‘I’m delighted you’re here.’
After the usual tug of war with the bags, we bundled into the house through the back door, past my father’s wellies and walking stick, which were right where he’d left them.
When he died, I worried about my mother, too, but not for the same reasons as my uncle.
My father’s suits and shirts still took up half of the wardrobe.
She still stayed up until half-past ten every night to watch the news, almost always falling asleep in her chair, because that’s what he’d always wanted to do.
I worried that, like the slugs that chewed at her salad leaves, the past would eat away at her future.
For some time, though, she’d seemed to accommodate both quite comfortably.
In the kitchen, my nostrils began to tingle, and not in a good way. ‘Is something burning, Mum?’
She scrunched up her forehead and for a few seconds nobody moved, nobody spoke. Eventually :
‘Allow me,’ offered Noah, slipping on the pair of oven gloves resting on the side and opening the top door of the Aga. ‘Phew, stand back.’ He took the smoking tray of blackened ginger biscuits – usually my mother’s speciality – back out the door and into the garden.
‘Blast.’
‘Did you set the timer, Mum?’
She looked at me with raised eyebrows and said, in a tone that told me she thought I was criticising, ‘Yes, I did.’
‘Well, don’t worry, they’re only biscuits.’
She started rootling around in the cupboard, mumbling something about measurements.
‘Mum?’
‘Yes?’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Making another batch.’
‘You don’t have to do that, really.’
I considered telling her about Peggy and the cake, but before I’d opened my mouth again, she’d started sifting flour.
Like the rest of the house, my room was in the exact state I’d left it when I moved to London : there was a tall tower of old videos in one corner and a slightly shorter tower of CDs beside it ; I’d tacked photos of friends and family directly onto the walls and by now half were hanging at wonky angles ; lined up neatly on my desk were folders filled with colour-coded notes from my school exams ; beside them, beaded bracelets and necklaces dangled from a handmade jewellery stand.
More than once I’d offered to go through my belongings and do a clear-out, but my mother said they weren’t any trouble and she would tell me if they ever were.
Because of the childhood tokens, Noah and I tended to sleep in the spare room whenever we came to stay.
The first time we did, he said he was relieved, that it would make him uncomfortable getting sexy surrounded by snapshots of me as an adolescent.
It was plain in the way that spare rooms often are, with lemon-yellow walls and a matching furniture set – wooden wardrobe, chest of drawers, bedside tables.
One of my mother’s hand-stitched patchwork quilts covered the bed, this one in various shades of blue, and on the windowsill were some shells we’d collected at the beach.
The window overlooked Peggy’s garden. There was no sign of her, but I could see her old blind terrier, Billy, nosing his way between potted plants.
It was a peaceful room, a good room to be ill in.
‘Here, I’ll do this,’ said Noah, slipping my bag off my shoulder. ‘You go and spend time with your mum.’
‘Are you sure?’
He planted a kiss on my lips. ‘That’s why we’re here.’
I went in for another kiss.
Downstairs, the smell of burning had been replaced with the sweet scent of melted butter and golden syrup. As I walked up behind her and curled my arm around her waist, she was adding sugar and fresh ginger to the saucepan.
‘Can I help?’
‘Do you remember what comes next?’ she asked, taking the pan off the heat.
For a moment I thought she was being serious, but when I laughed, so did she. She’d been making those ginger biscuits from a recipe inherited from her own mother ever since I was born. ‘How could you doubt me?’
She waited, then she began to list the rest of the ingredients. ‘So, flour …?’
‘Flour, ground ginger, bicarbonate of soda.’ I recited them as I would the lyrics of a song and grabbed a wooden spoon and a bowl. Next, I cracked an egg and stirred in the bright-orange yolk. ‘OK, we’re ready for you.’
After she’d poured in the cooled sugary mixture, I kneaded the lot to make a dough. Then, together, we scooped up small handfuls, each of which we rolled into balls and placed on the tray she’d pre-lined with baking paper.
‘There, quick and easy,’ she said, as she slid the tray into the top oven.
I was about to remind her to set the timer when I heard it ticking.
Later that afternoon, after a pot of tea and a plate of the biscuits, the three of us went for a walk on the beach.
It was windy and I’d forgotten to bring a hair tie with me, which meant loose strands whipped at my cheeks.
When I resorted to walking along holding them back from my face with both hands, Noah offered me his scarf.
I’d told him he wouldn’t need it, that it wasn’t cold out, so he smiled smugly when I snatched it from him and eagerly wrapped it around my head, tying it in a knot beneath my chin.
‘So, how does it feel, Janey,’ he asked, ‘the final day of your sixties?’
‘Strange,’ she said, brushing away from her forehead a strand of her own hair, shorter and salted. The rest was covered in a proper waterproof bonnet of sorts.
‘Why strange, Mum?’
‘Well, it doesn’t feel all that long ago that I was your age and you’d only just been born.’ As she spoke, the lines on her face moved, like they were listening to the rise and fall of her voice.
‘You were my age when you had me?’
‘I was ; thirty-five.’
Noah’s coat pocket started to ring, and she said she was surprised he managed to get any signal out here.
‘Sorry, I should take this.’
As he answered and walked ahead, she linked her arm through mine.
She didn’t say anything and neither did I, but the air was thick with expectation.
In an instant, I was fifteen again and she and I were walking towards the sea, as we often did, her waiting for me to pluck up the courage to put into words what was bothering me.
Even though the tide was low, and the waves small, we could hear the water rocking against the sand.
We were wearing wellies. Noah had the same size feet as my father and had taken to borrowing his whenever we visited.
The first time I’d suggested it, I’d bitten down on my lower lip as I’d waited for my mother to answer, not sure how she would respond.
In fact, she was thrilled and said something about it being like dear old Dad was walking with us.
After, she gave them a brush and returned them to their place by the door.
When I turned back towards the house to see how far we’d come, I could spy three sets of prints, which gradually faded away in the distance. ‘Mum?’
‘Yes?’ She kept her gaze forward, as she always did when she could sense I was about to open up, not unlike the flowers in her garden at the start of spring.
‘How did you know?’
‘What’s that?’
I paused, my train of thought swept up with the gulls overhead, who were having no trouble voicing their opinion.
She too looked up to the sky, tilting her head left and right in line with their arched wings.
‘How did you know that you wanted children?’
If she was surprised by my question, she didn’t show it.
I still remember the moment when I told her, early on in my relationship with Noah, that she shouldn’t expect to become a grandmother.
I remember my voice cracking with regret as I said it, regret that I was taking something elemental away from her, and the relief I felt when she said, her face unchanged, that she was more than happy to remain, simply, my mother.
Looking back now, I suppose it must have been similar to the relief that Noah felt when I reassured him that I wasn’t yearning for motherhood.
That day on the beach, though, she did squeeze my arm before she said, with a slight shrug of her shoulders, that she just knew.
‘I think I always had done, ever since I was a little girl. Things were more straightforward then, or more predictable, whichever way you want to look at it. Your father and I got married, and it was the next step.’
I glanced at Noah, who was still talking on the phone, his free hand animated, and asked, in a hurry, ‘But did you long for it?’
‘Motherhood?’
‘I suppose, yes.’
‘I think so, after a while. But it took time. Most of my friends had their children in their twenties, and at that point I hadn’t even met your father. We were quite old, by those days’ standards, when we had you.’
‘And you were happy you did?’
‘Happy we had a child?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, of course, darling ; otherwise I wouldn’t have you.’
When I looked at Noah again, he was returning his phone to his pocket and waiting for us to catch up. He smiled at me, and I smiled back.
‘So, what’s for dinner?’ I asked my mother.
Before answering, she squeezed my arm again.