Peter Dickinson - Death of a Unicorn

‘Hi, Gran,’ she said, and without any sign of distaste kissed my mother on the mouth, then took her hand and held it.

‘I’m Fiona,’ she said. ‘I’m Jane’s daughter.’

She had slowed her twitter but otherwise might have been talking to any normal person. My mother had begun to make a waving gesture at not being able to see the screen, but slowly turned her head and stared.

‘My dear,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, my dear.’

Tears welled in her rheumy eyes and I thought she was about to begin one of her bouts of silent weeping, but it didn’t happen.

‘Mom sends her love,’ said Fiona.

‘Jane?’ said my mother. She can only have been trying to puzzle out who this girl with the Millett face could be, but Fiona took the question straight.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Jane’s fine. She’s learnt to fly. Happy as a squirrel all day long.’

She’d speeded up. My mother flicked her hand angrily towards the TV, a much more commanding gesture than her usual feeble fidgetings. I turned the sound down.

‘What did you say, dear?’ she said. ‘I’m getting a little deaf.’

‘Jane’s very happy. She’s learnt to fly. In an aeroplane.’

‘How lovely. And your name is . . .’

‘Fiona.’

‘Fiona. That’s Scottish. My daughter Jane married a Scot. He took her away. They always do.’

‘Well, I’m Jane’s daughter. And I’ve come back to see you, Gran.’

‘Not Gran. That’s ponsy, darling. I don’t want to hear it again.’

Fiona glanced at me.

‘Granny,’ I mouthed.

‘Right, Granny. I’ll remember.’

‘And you’ve come to stay for a long time? How lovely.’

Full of curiosity, astonishment, admiration and absurd wriggling little jealousies I watched and listened to the almost meaningless repetitions and retracings, a slurry of rotted-down memory from which now and then some new phrase would emerge to show that my mother had partially grasped something Fiona had said, perhaps several sentences ago. Fiona coped with this mode of conversation with perfect composure and sympathy, which was no doubt why she was able to elicit more intelligent responses than I would have been able to—or, I have to admit, would have wished to. In the end, though my mother showed little sign of tiring, I had to butt in.

‘I’ve an appointment at nine,’ I said, ‘and I’ll have to settle her down before that. So I’m afraid . . .’

The vague animation on my mother’s face faded at the sound of my voice.

‘I’ll give you a hand, Aunt Mabs.’

‘Oh, you don’t want to. It’s medicines and ointments for bedsores and other little unpleasantnesses.’

‘You just show me how.’

‘Well, if you’re sure . . .’

So I heaved the old carcase around, and emptied the bag and so on, while Fiona watched. My mother hardly grumbled at all and seemed perfectly happy when we left her propped up and staring at an advertisement for cheap jeans.

Fiona took to visiting my mother daily. It was not a formality. I would have sympathised (could have understood better than I did) if these visits after the first few days had consisted of a quick peck on the cheek, a few ritual phrases about health and weather, and then leaving with the catharsis of duty done. But Fiona would stay for an hour on end because she wanted to. They conversed, not usually as coherently as on that first morning, but even on bad days with something being exchanged to and fro. For all her energy the child had a patience I found unbelievable. I had to assume that it came from the Lowland Scots ancestry of my brother-in-law.

‘It’s just like digging out our fort, Aunt Mabs. That’s slow work, slow. You spend a morning and an afternoon on your knees, brushing away a half millimetre of dirt at a time, and if you strike lucky you find a chip of charred timber. I’ve been meaning to ask—what’s “ponsy”, Aunt Mabs?’

She didn’t seem to find the explanation silly or unacceptably snobbish, merely a detail of the behaviour of our tribe and interesting for that reason.

‘You got to listen hard,’ she went on. ‘Sure she gets things wrong and she doesn’t know what she’s saying part of the time, but you’ve got to take it all on board and run it through a kind of sieve, the way we did at the fort, and then you pick through what’s left and sometimes there’s a wee bit that isn’t a pebble and isn’t a clod and you turn it over and over and suddenly you see it might have been part of the handle of a jug. And then you find a few more bits and you begin to guess what kind of a jug, and then it gets easier because you know what you’re looking for now. I’ve been taking up some of the old account books and reading through and asking her about things. Gee, they’re fascinating. Mostly she doesn’t remember but suddenly she’ll come out with something about Mr Wheatstone trying to give notice or having the Americans in the Park—that must have been in the Hitler war, I guess—and I’ve got another piece of my jug.’

‘I think you’re a wonder. I’d never have the patience.’

‘Mom warned me you and Granny didn’t hit it off, uh?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘It’s because you’re so like her—much more than Mom is.’

‘Be careful what you say, darling. It may be true, but you’re on dangerous ground.’

‘Right.’

I was confused in my own reactions to this growing relationship. Of course it was a great practical convenience. My mother became far easier to cope with. She was happier, whined and wept hardly at all, slept all night, seemed less feeble, made fewer demands on my time and emotions. I had to insist on doing my share of the nursing or Fiona would have taken it all on herself. And Fiona clearly got satisfaction from the relationship, so I was glad for her.

But there was no denying that I was also jealous. At a surface level I was simply jealous of Fiona’s openly expressed fondness for my mother. I do not mean that I too wanted to be kissed at each meeting, or would have permitted it. With me she was open, friendly, interested, as she would have been with almost anyone; but for my mother she seemed to feel something particular, and I’m afraid I minded. Browning has long been my favourite poet, and the husband in My Last Duchess seemed to me, in these moods, marginally less of a monster.

At a different level I was also jealous of Fiona, of her ability to love my mother. For thirty years I have more than fulfilled my duty as a daughter. After my mother’s stroke Mark tried to persuade me to put her in a home; from this disagreement, and from the extra demands on me which resulted from keeping her at Cheadle, I date the decline of our marriage, though given Mark’s character and mine he was probably destined to turn to a Julia-figure around now—but there’s no point, in talking about what might have happened. I can fairly claim that in the world’s eyes I have been an admirable daughter—but all without love, and what is the good of that? Irrational feelings of guilt I know are the lot of many women my age; I am lucky to have so much to take my mind off them. But to my disgust I became aware of a growing impatience with Fiona’s ability to think of my mother as a worthwhile person and not, as she was in my eyes, an embarrassing and useless wreck, a monument to all my defeats in our long war, crumbling but still erect where it had always stood, in the heartland of my life. Once recognised I could control the impatience, but not get rid of it.

One evening about a fortnight after her arrival we gathered before supper. It had been a heavy but satisfactory day for me, a flood of summer visitors safely handled, a further step in the negotiations with the film company about The Gamekeeper’s Daughter, a meeting—myself, Fiona, Simon and two men from Burroughs—at which the accountants had finally seemed to realise that we were going to computerise the accounts to suit our own needs and that if they didn’t co-operate I would take the business elsewhere; and before all that, before anyone else was awake, a fulfilling couple of hours in which what had promised to be a no more than a linking scene between plot and sub-plot had, in that mysterious manner I suppose all writers are used to, become an episode of real interest with a life of its own, and with the prospect of sending unexpected currents of that life through scenes yet to come. I was tired but cheerful. An extra source of satisfaction had been the way in which Simon had coped with the accountants. Their computer man, though only a few years older than him, had started to patronise him as an amateur and Simon, for the first time ever in my presence, had, so to speak, made his true weight known. It gave me hope that he might indeed be able, as he had said, to get by on his own.