Anne Doughty - The Teacher at Donegal Bay

As bad as that, I thought. I opened the door of the kitchen and went in. When my mother is in a good mood, she leaves it open, so she can hear the phone and the doorbell. When she’s not, she shuts it tight and her hearing becomes even more acute. On such occasions any delay on my part is seen as an unfriendly act. Conversation with my father becomes rudeness to her. On a really bad day she treats it as an act of conspiracy.

‘Hello, Mummy, sorry I got held up.’

She turned round from the sink, a look of feigned amazement on her face. ‘Oh, so you’ve arrived after all,’ she said sarcastically. ‘I’d given you up half an hour ago.’

‘The traffic gets worse all the time,’ I replied easily.

The signals were clear. Whatever I said would be wrong. All I could do for the moment was try to ignore them.

‘Now you can’t tell me, Jennifer, that it was the traffic kept you since four o’clock,’ she began, slapping down her dishcloth on the draining board. ‘You may think I’m a fool, but I’m not that big a fool. Give me credit for some sense. Please.’

The ‘please’ was squeezed out with such self-pity, I could hardly bear to go on looking at her. The lines of her face were hard and her careful make-up did nothing to soften it. Indeed, the Gala Red of her lipstick only accentuated the tight, unyielding line of her mouth. I felt the old, familiar nausea clutch at my stomach.

If Colin were here, she’d be fussing over the dessert she’d made especially for him, making polite inquiries about William John, arch remarks about young directors and comments about hard-working young men needing good suppers at the end of a busy day. It required a fair amount of tolerance but it was better than this.

‘I had to go into town about the A-level texts,’ I said coolly. ‘I thought you said “the usual time” on the phone.’

‘That’s the first I’ve heard of it,’ she snapped, turning her back on me and continuing to scrub. ‘You must’ve been buyin’ the whole shop,’ she threw over her shoulder. She laughed shortly, pleased with herself. She rinsed the sink noisily and then threw back a sliding door and searched through a row of tins.

For two years now, ‘the usual time’ for a Friday evening visit was as soon after five as Colin could get away, collect the car, crawl through the traffic, pick me up in Botanic Avenue with the shopping, and get back across to the Stranmillis Road. It was seldom before five thirty. Often enough it was a quarter to six. But I knew from long experience the facts were not relevant. There was no point whatever in mentioning them.

She opened a tin of peas, flung down the opener and strode across the kitchen towards me. For a moment I thought she was about to strike me, so hostile was the look on her face.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, with exaggerated politeness.

I moved hastily aside as she wrenched open a cupboard behind me and pulled out a saucepan.

‘Can I do anything to help?’ I asked quietly.

She tipped the peas into the saucepan so fiercely the unpleasant-looking green liquid splattered the work surface. She tossed her head and smiled a tight little smile. ‘Well, you might just think of putting a comb through your hair.’

Without a word, I turned and left the kitchen, collected my handbag and made for the stairs. As I passed the dining-room door, I looked in, smiled with a cheerfulness I certainly didn’t feel and pulled an imaginary lavatory chain. My father grinned, looked somewhat relieved, and picked up his paper again.

I locked the bathroom door and glanced around. I felt like the hero in a B movie, looking for something to barricade it with. But there was nothing handy. Brightly lit and dazzlingly clean, all the room offered me was multiple images of myself.

I sat down on the pink velvet stool in front of the vanity unit and stared at a face I hardly recognised. The dark eyes that had won me the part of Elizabeth Bennett in a school production were dull and lifeless, with deep shadows under them. My pale complexion looked much too pale and my long, dark hair had come to the end of the week before I had. I pulled the ribbon from my pony tail and watched the dark mass flop around my face.

‘How about the witch of Endor?’ I said aloud as I pulled faces in the mirror. ‘You look just right for the part.’

But I couldn’t laugh. My dear mother was no laughing matter. I sighed and tipped out my make-up on the immaculate grey surface in front of me. If I did a proper job I might just work off some of the anger I was feeling.

I slid open the nearest bathroom cabinet. My mother never throws anything away and I was sure I’d seen a bottle of cleansing cream the last time I had to look for an aspirin. There it was, at the back, a brand I hadn’t used since I was a teenager. As the cold liquid touched my skin, the faint floral fragrance stirred layers of memory. I shivered.

Harvey’s wedding. My mother in an expensive silk suit. Daddy looking handsome in tails. Everywhere the smell of carnations. Buttonholes for the ushers and sprays for female relatives. My mother had helped me into my bridesmaid’s dress of pink organza and tulle. It was not what I would have chosen, but I had to admit it was pretty and the posy and garland of fresh flowers for my hair that Mavis had sent had quite delighted me. My best friend, Valerie, said the garland made me look like Titania.

I enjoyed the wedding. Managed to do the right thing at the right time. Drank my first glass of champagne and danced with all Harvey’s colleagues after the meal. I even managed to kiss Harvey goodbye with a fair imitation of sisterly love, given how supercilious and condescending he had become since his graduation from medical school. Everything seemed to go so well that I was completely unprepared for the storm that broke over me once we were home from the reception.

I was standing in my slip in my bedroom, the pink organza at my feet, when my mother stalked in and just let fly. I still don’t know what I said or did to provoke her outburst. She said I was full of myself, didn’t know how to behave, was spoilt, big-headed, lazy and idle, and that Mavis would never have asked me to be her bridesmaid if it hadn’t been for her. I’d made a real exhibition of myself at the reception, hadn’t I, smiling up at all the men and chattering away to Mavis’s family as if I actually knew them.

Hurt and taken by surprise, I had demanded to know what exactly was so wrong about the way I’d behaved. What had she expected of me that I hadn’t done? And if I’d done something awful, why hadn’t Daddy said anything? That was when she shouted at me so loudly Daddy heard her in the garage and came hurrying upstairs. Then she turned on him.

It was all his fault. He had spoilt me since I was no size. Running after me and giving me everything I asked for. Always reading to me, and books not suitable for a young girl. Now I was so full of myself there was no standing me. I just did what I liked and walked over her. And he was just as bad as I was. It was two to one against her, all the time.

I applied a little lipstick to my chin and cheekbones and pressed powder gently over fresh foundation. Sometimes the tricks of the drama workshop came in handy. A new face in six minutes flat. But new perspectives take longer, much longer.

From that day, in my seventeenth year, I was never easy at home again and seldom felt free to enjoy my father’s company as I had before. We still did some of the things we’d done previously, theatre, concerts and poetry readings, but there was always a price to pay. Either my mother would insist on coming with us and then pour scorn on whatever we had enjoyed, or she would insist she knew when she wasn’t wanted, stay at home and then sulk for days.