Chapter 26
Twenty-Six
‘Na?ve’ painter of scenes of industrial working life. In later life painted seascapes. Contrast Lowry’s industrial images to his later, less well-known paintings. Discussion point: do we change as we age?
(Taken from Calliope Thorne’s teaching notes.)
She threw open the bedroom door to be faced with Frida’s rigid back. Her daughter was sorting through some T-shirts.
Scowling, Frida twisted round. ‘You could at least knock.’
‘Can I remind you this is my bedroom?’
‘Well, if you shacked up with Mr Silver Fox we’d all be happier. And have a lot more room.’
Callie perched on the edge of the bed, anger firing through her. ‘I will ignore that comment,’ she said tightly, ‘seeing as you’re supposed to be in Ibiza and I’m supposed to be here enjoying some me-time.’
Frida sloped over to the chair in the window and sank onto it. She stared out at the view. ‘From what I can see, you having some time to chill doesn’t suit. You’re more worked up here than at home.’
‘I was having a lovely time–’
‘Until I arrived and spoiled everything.’ Frida huffed and crossed her arms.
Callie stared at her daughter. What was going on with her? ‘To be honest, to be really honest with you, Frida, yes I was. I was painting, relaxing, getting to know Johnny.’
‘Fine. I’ll move out then and find a room.’
‘Oh for God’s sake, that’s not what I meant. And you won’t find anywhere, anyway. It’s coming up to the August Bank Holiday. The town’s rammed. It’s why Johnny and I ended up sharing in the first place. Use your brain, Frida, you’ve got a good one.’
Her daughter glared, bottom lip jutting out. ‘Which is why I want to leave Price’s and go back to uni!’
Callie took several deep breaths. This needed sorting out. ‘And I’m all for that, I really am,’ she said with deliberate calm. ‘In theory. But I want you to think it through. Consider your options. Not rush into anything.’
‘I haven’t got the luxury of time. I’ll miss the clearing window.’
‘In which case, apply next year.’
‘But I don’t want to wait a whole year. I want to do it now. Now I’ve made my mind up.’
‘Frida, can’t you see my point of view? This is all very sudden. Where’s this idea come from? You’ve never mentioned anything about journalism before.’
‘I’ve been thinking about doing something with my writing for ages.’ She glanced up at her mother from under dark lashes. ‘You know I liked that creative writing course I did.’
‘Writing short stories and poetry is very different to journalism,’ Callie said, crisply. ‘And how are you going to fund it?’
Frida threw up her hands. ‘It all comes back to money, doesn’t it? It’s always money, money, money.’
‘Money’s pretty important,’ Callie said, struggling to rein in her temper again. ‘Without it you’d not have a roof over your head, nor food on the table.’
‘But you can manage without a lot of it.’
‘Try paying a mortgage on nothing.’
Frida picked at a thread in her expensive jeans. ‘Tracey travelled the world picking up jobs here and there and she managed fine.’
‘And is working in a seaside café, renting somewhere temporary to live. What’s she going to do when she’s older and picking up casual jobs isn’t so easy?’
‘But she’s happy now.’ Frida leaned forward, her hair swinging. ‘Look at you, Mum. You work all the hours you can and does it make you happy?’
Callie was struck silent. Her daughter’s words were too close to her own thoughts of late but the ingratitude smarted. ‘You haven’t a clue, have you?’ she snapped. ‘You’ve had everything you wanted all your life because I sacrificed my desires and wishes to provide it.’
Frida sprang up. ‘But I never asked you to do that. I wanted you, wanted your time. I would have been happy with beans on toast every night if it meant you had more time for me.’
Furious tears constricted Callie’s throat.
‘I was working, Frida. I was working for you. If I didn’t work how do you think the mortgage would be paid?
How would we have fitted that new boiler we had to have last winter?
Where would your expensive trainers come from?
Your salary from Price’s doesn’t run to all the designer gear you say you have to have.
’ She clutched her chest in actual pain.
‘Don’t you think I battled every day, every single day, with the guilt I felt about putting you in nursery, into after school clubs, so I could work?
Having dreams is all very well but sometimes life doesn’t work out the way you want.
I don’t want to stamp on your dreams, Frida, I really don’t, I just think we need to discuss this, consider it more carefully. ’
‘Your life didn’t work out the way you wanted, you mean.
’ Frida was yelling and crying now, slapping her hips in agitation.
‘But I’ve got dreams and when else am I going to pursue them if not now, when I’m young enough not to have too many responsibilities?
You were trapped but I’m not. I’m free to do what I want and what I want is to go to uni and study journalism! ’
Frida flung open the bedroom door and thumped downstairs.
The front door slammed, making the cottage vibrate.
Callie winced. Then she began to shake. She’d never seen Frida like this, not even in the so-called difficult teenage years.
She’d always thought she and her daughter could talk through anything.
Covering her face with her hands, she began to rock.
What had just happened? It was spoiled brat behaviour and Frida wasn’t like that.
Had never been like that. Was she being influenced by others?
By Leah in Ibiza? Was she finally breaking away from her mother, and could only do this by wounding?
The comments about money Callie could dismiss as being from someone young and inexperienced, but it was the anguish that Frida expressed about not having enough of her time when growing up that really speared.
Surely, when she’d calmed down, she’d see that what Callie had had to do was inescapable. She hadn’t a choice.
Callie found a tissue and wiped her eyes.
Rising on trembling legs, she went to the window and stared sightlessly out.
She had had choices. She could have not gone through with the pregnancy, as had been her first plan.
She’d never told Frida that she’d considered a termination – how could she? Only Donna knew the whole situation.
Maybe she should have continued living with her parents?
It might have been easier. She doubted they would have been as dramatic as to actually throw her out.
They would, however, have found a million other ways to niggle, to get at her, to damage Frida and all with a vile racist subtext.
Frida would have grown up believing herself to be a lesser creature, a stain on their dull, penny-pinching lives.
Instead, she’d taken their money and escaped.
At the time she’d thought she was better off without them.
But she’d robbed her child of family, of grandparents.
Instead, she left her precious child in the care of strangers.
Would Frida have been happier being looked after by her grandmother?
Would she have felt less neglected? In some ways it would have been far easier for Callie, knowing Frida was with family.
Childcare had been a constant battle in her life.
She knew it was for Donna too. An endless juggling of timing, finding the right setting, not to mention the cost. But, unlike Donna, Callie had no one else to share the load.
Had she stayed with her parents she would have had childcare on tap.
But at what cost to her daughter and her own mental health?
No, she couldn’t have inflicted on her daughter the childhood she’d endured.
She just hoped, when Frida had calmed down, she would see that.
Hugging her arms, a vision of her mother’s disapproving thin lipped expression rose. When she’d explained she was going to take a degree and teach art there had been an appalling argument. It had been about money.
‘Get a job,’ her mother had screeched. ‘A nine-to-five job which pays. You’ll get nowhere teaching art.
People don’t want art, you silly girl. Where’s this idea come from?
Folk want televisions and fridges. They want something useful.
Not some daft thing to hang on a wall. If you have to go off and get some degree or other, get one in something which pays; accounting or business studies. ’
And, with a sickening jolt, Callie realised she had just given the same argument to Frida. She’d crushed her daughter’s hopes and ambitions by concentrating on money. She’d turned into her mother.