The Perfect Mother. Margaret Leroy
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‘For goodness’ sake, she’s only got to sit through a pantomime.’
‘She’s not well, Richard.’
‘They were really looking forward to it.’
‘So was she. I mean, she’s not doing this deliberately.’
He sits up, sprawls back on the pillow and yawns, disordered by sleep, his face lined by the creases in the pillowslip. He looks older first thing in the morning, and away from the neat symmetries of his work clothes.
‘Give her some Calpol,’ he says. ‘She’ll probably be fine.’
‘She feels too sick,’ I tell him.
‘You’re so soft with those children.’ There’s an edge of irritation to his voice.
I feel I should at least try. I get the Calpol from the bathroom cabinet, take it to her room and pour it into the spoon, making a little comedy act of it. Normally she likes to see this, the sticky recalcitrant liquid that won’t go where you want it to, that glops and lurches away from you. Now she watches me with a slightly desperate look.
‘I can’t, Mum. I feel too sick.’
I take the spoon to the bathroom and tip it down the sink.
Richard has heard it all.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, let me do it,’ he says.
He gets up, pulls on his dressing gown, goes to get the Calpol. But when he sees her pallor, he softens a little.
‘Dad, I’m not going to,’ she says. ‘Please don’t make me.’
He ruffles her hair. ‘Just try for me, OK, munchkin?’
I watch from the door as she parts her lips a little. She’s more willing to try for him; she’s always so hungry to please him. He eases the spoon into her mouth. She half swallows the liquid, then noisily retches it up.
He steps smartly back.
‘Sorry, sweetheart. Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.’
He wipes her mouth and kisses the top of her head, penitent. He follows me back to the bathroom.
‘OK,’ he says. ‘You stay. It’s a damn shame, though, when they’ve paid for the tickets and everything. Especially when Mother hasn’t been well.’
I think of them: Adrian, his affable father; and Gina, his mother, who favours a country casual look, although they live in chic urbanity in Putney, who reads horticultural magazines and cultivates an esoteric window box, who reminisces at some length about her job as an orthodontist’s receptionist. There’s something about Gina I find difficult: I feel colourless, passive, beside her. It’s not anything she says; she’s always nice to me, says, ‘You and Richard are so good together.’ Sometimes I feel there’s a subtext that I’m so much more satisfactory than Sara, Richard’s highly assertive first wife. But it’s almost as though it’s hard to breathe around her, as if she uses up all the air.
‘Daisy can write them a letter when she’s well,’ I say.
‘It’s not the same,’ he says, frowning.
Richard’s intense involvement with his parents fascinates me. I know that’s how it must be for most people, to have your parents there and on your side, to worry about them and care what they think about you; yet to me this is another country.
Sinead comes down when I’m making breakfast, still in her dressing gown but fully made-up, with her iPod. She takes one earpiece out to talk to me.
‘Cat, I really need your opinion. D’you think I look like a transvestite?’
‘You look gorgeous.’ I put an arm around her.
It’s part of my role with her, to be a big sister, a confidante, to be soft when Richard is stern.
‘Are you sure my mascara looks all right?’ she says. ‘I’m worried my left eyelashes look curlier than my right ones.’
‘You’re a total babe. Look, I’ve made you some toast.’
‘How is she?’ she says then.
‘I don’t think she can come.’
She sits heavily down at the table, a frown like Richard’s stitched into her forehead.
‘Do I have to go, then?’ she says.
She’s cross. She’s too old to go to the pantomime without her little sister. Daisy was the heart of today’s outing, its reason and justification: without her it doesn’t make sense.
I put my arm round her. ‘Just do it, my love. To please Granny and Grandad.’
‘Snow fucking White,’ she says. ‘Jesus.’
I overlook this. ‘You never know, you might enjoy bits of it.’
‘Oh, yeah? You know what it’ll be like. There’ll be a man in drag whose boobs keep falling down and lots of EastEnders jokes, and at the end they’ll throw Milky Ways at us and we’re meant to be, like, grateful.’
She puts her earpiece back in without waiting for my response.
They leave at twelve, Sinead now fully dressed in jeans and leather jacket and the Converse trainers she had for Christmas, resigned. I go to Daisy’s room. She’s sitting up, writing something, and I briefly wonder if Richard was right and I was too soft and I should have made her go. But she still has that stretched look.
She waves her clipboard at me. She’s made a list of breeds of cats she likes, in order of preference.
‘I still want one,’ she says.
‘I know.’
‘When can we, Mum?’
‘One day,’ I tell her.
‘You always say maybe or one day,’ she says. ‘I want to really know. I want you to tell me exactly.’
I rearrange her pillows so she can lie down, and I read to her for a while, from a book of fairy tales I bought her for Christmas. There’s a story about a princess who’s meant to marry a prince, but she falls in love with the gardener; and he shows her secret things, the apricots warm on the wall, the clutch of eggs, blue as the sky, that are hidden in the pear tree. I read it softly, willing her to sleep, but she just lies there listening. She’s pale, almost translucent, with shadows like bruises under her eyes. Maybe it’s my attention that’s keeping her awake. Eventually I tell her I’m going to make a coffee.
When I look in on her ten minutes later, she’s finally drifted off, arms and legs flung out. There’s a randomness to it, as though she was turning over and was suddenly snared by sleep. I put my hand on her forehead and she stirs but doesn’t wake. I feel a deep sense of