Clare Shaw - The Mother And Daughter Diaries

‘Hi, Roger, sorry I took so long to get back to you—the girls and I have been out shopping and having a wonderful, wonderful time. Together.’

‘You phoned me.’

‘Did I? Oh, yes. Sorry, I’ve had so many calls to make today—work, the hairdressers, Gordon, of course—just someone I met at Victoria’s wedding. Now, what was it I needed to talk to you about?’

‘Jo and Eliza, presumably.’

‘Oh, yes, would you like Jo to stay for a few days next week?’

‘Yes, that suits me fine. Eliza?’

‘Rehearsals. But she could spend a couple of hours with you when I bring them over. If it’s Sunday. Then I could bring her back again.’

‘Fine. Look, you might as well stay to lunch. There’s no need to go all the way home and come back again.’

‘Fine. The only thing is, I would prefer it if your new partner wasn’t there. Well, Jo would prefer it, I don’t mind. After all, we’re both meeting new people. All the time. Practically on a daily basis.’

‘Alice lives here. Anyway, the girls have met her twice now and they all got on fine.’

‘It’s just something Jo said. About being just with you.’

‘Alice did offer to go to her mother’s but I think—’

‘That’s settled, then. About twelve-thirty.’

‘Fine. Alice should be out of the house by then.’

‘Will you be able to bring Jo back on the following Saturday?’

‘Yes, I should think so.’

‘About five o’clock would be good.’

‘I’d rather make it in the evening. About eight maybe.’

‘Six o’clock would be more convenient.’

‘Between six and seven, then.’

‘Fine.’

‘Can I speak to them now?’

‘They’re busy. You could phone back later.’

‘About six?’

‘Seven.’

‘Fine. It’s been a pleasure doing business with you.’

‘Bye, Roger.’

Roger had prepared a cold meat salad for us.

‘You didn’t tell me you were a vegetarian now, Jo,’ he said.

‘I thought Mum had told you.’

I had a choice of answers, starting with the fact that I didn’t know myself, or ‘it must have slipped my mind’, or ‘how come you ate my spaghetti Bolognese, then?’ (which was provocative). I decided to remain completely silent and resist saying something meaningless.

‘Well, there’s vegetarian and there’s vegetarian, isn’t there?’ I laughed.

Jo pushed her salad around on her plate as if she were designing a collage. She cut it up into smaller and smaller pieces, rearranged it, poked her fork into tomato and cucumber and hard-boiled egg and pulled it out again. Her mind was in orbit, it seemed, circling the world and searching for significance. When Jo thought, she thought deeply, penetrating her own soul, searching, probing, reasoning, analysing. She was a lot like I was at that age. Teenage angst, they call it. Eventually you learn to live on the surface, it’s safer.

‘Did you sign up for that additional course for next term?’ asked Roger.

‘Yes,’ muttered Jo, glancing at me.

‘What additional course?’ I almost whispered, hoarsely. I cleared my throat.

‘She’s doing an additional course in IT,’ explained Roger. He had clearly already done his additional course—in smugness.

After lunch, Roger sent the girls upstairs so that he and I could spend some quality time together. Maybe.

‘What’s happened to Jo?’ he asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘She looks like a hat stand, and she hasn’t eaten any lunch.’

‘For God’s sake, Roger, she’s a teenager—that’s what they do.’

‘Only Alice thought…’

‘What the hell does Alice know about having children? She probably thinks ovaries, uterus and fertility are a firm of solicitors.’

‘She’s my daughter, too.’

It is always tempting at such times to launch into the ‘I’m the one bringing them up and you’re the one who walked out’ speech, but I decided against it. Instead, I said nothing.

‘Haven’t you got anything to say on the subject?’ Roger asked, eventually.

‘Not really. I mean, I’m the one bringing them up and you, for whatever reason, decided to leave me to it.’

‘Lizzie, let’s not go over all that again.’

‘No, you’re right. Look, all her friends are the same, it’s nothing to worry about, but if you like I’ll talk to her when she gets back. Don’t make a thing of it.’

‘Fair enough. Does she eat at all?’

‘Of course she does. She had spaghetti Bolognese only yesterday.’

‘I thought she was a vegetarian.’

‘Only a part-time one.’

On the way home, I wanted to think about what Roger had just said, make sense of what he seemed to be implying, but I pushed the thought from my mind as if thinking about it would give it some truth. I screeched to a halt at traffic lights I hadn’t even noticed and banged hard on the steering-wheel, angry with myself for being so distracted, distracted by mere possibilities for nothing had actually happened. I started to sing, and right on cue Eliza joined in. There was a quiver in my voice, a quiver of fear, but I wasn’t even sure what I was frightened of. I slapped my thigh like a pantomime character, grinned and sang louder until everything seemed all right again.

We got home at two-thirty and Eliza had to rush to get ready for her first rehearsal. There was a buzz and excitement about her which rubbed off on me like chalk dust. We sang songs from Chicago all the way to the rehearsal rooms with the car windows open, oblivious to the reactions of passersby. This was what being a good mother was all about and I mentally awarded myself a gold star. I drove back home still feeling exhilarated by Eliza’s buoyant mood, as well as by a sense of freedom as if I had finally deposited my luggage with an airline and could wander around quite unencumbered. What Jo did or did not do for the next six days was not my problem. Or so I wanted to believe.

With both girls occupied elsewhere, I had the house to myself and three hours to do exactly what I wanted. So I chose a particular CD which normally caused groans of complaint, stripped off all my clothes and danced around in the lounge to the thump and grind of Queen. As an afterthought, I quickly closed the curtains then turned the heating up and let myself go.

When I had exhausted myself, I simply wandered aimlessly around the house, looking at the photos on the wall and fingering ornaments as if I were a tourist looking around a stately home.

I found myself in the chaos of Eliza’s room, clothes strewn across the floor like the last day of the January sales, half-finished homework scattered across her desk, an old banana skin on the window-sill. Then I wandered into Jo’s room with its tidy, ordered rows of books and files. An island in our chaotic household. Lists and reminders were drawing-pinned to her notice-board with symmetrical neatness and dated in the righthand corners. The bin had been emptied, clothes folded away, and her dressing-gown hung where it should be, on the back of her door. The walls had been painted magnolia when we had bought the house but the paintwork had become chipped and scuffed in places with the passing of time. Jo deserved some fresh gloss, some new colour and brightness as a fitting background to her tidiness.

I decided to go to the DIY store. Jo would have a surprise waiting for her when she returned from her father’s and I would show her what a supportive, caring mother I really was.

Once at the store, I found myself staring helplessly at row upon row of paint tins, stacked like a child’s cylindrical building blocks, reaching to the ceiling. A small shelf, angled like a lectern, sliced through the endless continuity of tins. On this shelf lay books and leaflets containing square upon square, each labelled with a reference number and name. It was like a colour-coded plan of a cemetery.