julia 3

‘Would you like a glass of wine?’  In my mind I think ‘I’d like a huge Vodka’ but I know she has a limited range of alcohol, usually of the cheap and not so cheerful variety.  For want of anything else on offer I say that I would.  My mother leaves the room. There is a moment’s silence as Brian and I try to find some means of communicating. Despite telling myself I should not say it I blurt out.

‘You must like it here.’ He tries to smile again, but his attempt is overcome by a questioning look.

‘No telephone signal’ I say cheerfully. He takes a deep breath, as if cushioning a blow. It was not meant that way but I realize too late that Brian appears to have no sense of humor.

‘It is very pleasant, yes.’ 

‘Do you visit often?’ I ask. He looks at me with thoughtful eyes. He is considering his response.

‘I live here mostly at weekends.  During the week I am up in London.’

His reply sets me back.  He lives at Cove House?  That isn’t the description of a casual visitor.

‘I see’ I reply, but of course I don’t.

‘Janet is going to explain all in due course.’  It is strange hearing my mother called by her birth name.  When they were together my father called her ‘Netty.’  I assumed she tolerated it because it was born at a time when they both got on, when they were young lovers.  It was perhaps the last thing to go in their relationship.  

‘I was taken aback by the house, it has changed so much’ I say.

‘It needed a lot of work doing on it. It had almost reached the point of no return.’ He takes a sip of wine and looks out to sea and for a moment I know he wants to be out there, away from this stilted conversation.

‘Did you do the work?’ It is a stupid question.  This man in front of me has never lifted a hammer in his life.

‘No, manual labour is not something I have time for.’  He says the words ‘manual labour’ as if they are beneath him.  At this point mother returns with a glass of wine.

She places it on a coaster on the freshly polished side table.

‘Brian works at the Foreign Office and was involved in the arrangements for the visit of the American aircraft carrier.  Did you see it?’ She asks.

‘Yes I did unfortunately.’

‘Why unfortunately’ she responds sharply.

‘Because it shouldn’t be there.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it is a symbol of all that is wrong with the world, that’s why.  It should be scrapped along with all other weapons.’ She has done it, she has pressed the button, because she already knows how I feel about military matters and the politics of war.  I have been in the house less than half an hour and she’s hit the target. I try to keep myself under control.

‘So you are one of those who think the world would be better off without any peacekeeping force then?’  Brian cannot resist entering the affray. 

‘What I find difficult to understand Brian is at what precise moment a tactical weapon becomes an object of peacemaking, is it the same time that an average soldier doing what he is paid to do suddenly becomes a ‘hero’, or perhaps it is the moment when the leaders of undemocratic regimes we have supported for years suddenly become dictators?’ Brian’s face creases with obvious distaste.

The doorbell rings.

‘I’ll get it’ says Brian. 

My mother is not amused. 

‘Why do you say these things? Why do you have to say all these things that you think?’  She hisses.  For a moment I am taken aback by a question that seems utterly ridiculous.

‘Why do I say what I think? Because it’s who I am, that’s why.  Because if you don’t express what you believe then who are you? Don’t you say what you think?’ 

‘Not always.  Not if it means I offend people or upset them.’

Oh those words.  How can she even utter those words? I wish my father was in the room to hear them, but he is not and I am at a point I have been so many times before where I know that pursuing the conversation will achieve nothing other than prolonging the agony.  So I keep my mouth shut and then to my utter dismay catch the conversation from the hall. It is Brian’s voice I hear. It is bright and breezy.

‘Hello Val, how are you?  Good journey?’

Val? They’ve met already?

‘Hello Brian.  Not too bad, bit of a delay near Godalming.’

‘Let me take your things.’

The parallel universe is getting stranger by the minute. My outrage knows no bounds and I begin to shake.  I tell myself to take deep breaths.  In this moment I have a choice and I know it.  I can give them a piece of my mind and walk, or I can take control of myself.  If I do the former it will prove to Brian that my mother was right all along, that I am headstrong, unstable and thoughtless. If I do the latter I might just find out what the hell is going on, and just how dark this deception has been.

 

Clearly uncomfortable, my sister walks into the room.  She suddenly looks like a younger version of mother who despite years of neglect has remarkably retained some of her original good looks. Valerie has that impeccable middle class look.  The one so many top female MPs seem to perfect.  Her age is rigorously denied by foundation creams and blusher, her eyes accentuated by eye liner, and not a single auburn hair is out of place even when the wind has been blowing. She wears couture clothing her jacket decorated with an Opal brooch pinning an expensive silk scarf. Her perfume wreaks of affluence and reaches me well before she does.  She is Audrey Hepburn to my Marie Helvin.

‘Julia’ she utters feebly.  I gather she was not expecting me to arrive before her.

‘Hello Valerie’ My voice is cold and unforgiving.

‘I tried ringing you….’ Her voice trails off. 

‘Darling, would you like a glass of wine?’ My mother takes over. She has seen the chasm between us and is offering Valerie a lifeline.

‘Let’s go in the kitchen.’ They do, and I am left with Brian once again.

‘I am sensing this is difficult for you’ he says. It takes a moment for me to summon a response that doesn’t involve ‘fuck’ or ‘shit’ and I realize that I will not be able to hold on to my feelings much longer.

‘Well you see Brian it is like this. When you arrive home and find that it is no longer your ‘home’, when your mother has taken in a stranger of whom you have no prior knowledge, and then you discover your sister is already best friends with them; you can imagine that ‘difficult’ is way off the mark.’  I want tell him what to do with his old mans slippers and coiffered hair, but he will win. He will triumph and so will the other two.  They will comfort themselves with the knowledge that they were right all along and that I am the banshee I have always been. I will not have that. I will not.   

 

‘You are always welcome here, so nothing has really changed.’  For a moment I can’t believe what he has just uttered.

‘Well that’s very kind of you Brian, but I don’t really see that it is your prerogative to   

invite or exclude me.’  He looks at his wine glass and I notice something in his eyes, is it retribution?  I have witnessed similar looks in court many times.

‘Well that’s where you are wrong Julia, for you see Cove House belongs to me, I own it.  Your mother sold it to me six months ago. You are now sitting in my house.’

My mind is on overdrive but it clicks out of gear.  The wheels are spinning but nothing is connecting.

‘We discussed the options, and Janet agreed that if I purchased the house for a nominal sum she would have some capital and would therefore not be reliant upon me.  Marriage can be such a difficult thing if one partner holds the purse strings, don’t you agree?’

I am now in a place somewhere beyond comprehension.  Where the information I have just been given is melting my mind, burning the synapses so that they can’t function in any realistic way. 

‘Are you two married?’ I ask naively. 

‘Yes, three months ago.  Tenerife.  We can show you the photographs later.’

It is no good it is all too much.

‘I don’t want to see your fucking photographs!’ I shout.

‘Julia! Language!’ It is my mother she has come in on the end of the conversation.

‘Language!? You are upset by use of bad language when you have kept this hidden from me! What the hell do you think this feels like?  Does she know about it?’ I point to my sister lurking in the doorway.

‘Valerie was maid of honor’ Brian says in an imperious voice. He is out for the kill.

‘You bitch. You selfish bitch.’ I point my finger at her wishing it was the barrel of a gun.

‘I told them it would be like this’ whispers Valerie and disappears back into the kitchen.

‘Why?’ I ask.

‘Why what?’ answers Brian.

‘I am talking to her’ I say sharply, pointing at my mother.

‘Because we don’t get on Julia, we have never got on. Every time we meet it ends up like this, you have always been difficult.’

‘Difficult? I am difficult?’

‘And when your father left you took his side…’

‘No I didn’t!’

‘You said you understood why he went. You kept seeing him and it was quite clear where your allegiance lay.’

‘I tried my best to help you both when he went, despite your bitching about him all the time.’ I insist.   

‘You make me feel unhappy.  Now Brian and I are together I am not going to put up with it.’

Suddenly I see it all.  The conspiracy is complete. She has told Brian how difficult I am, and how I make her life a misery. He has offered to defend her.  ‘You don’t need her any more’ he has told her, she has him for support, and Valerie? Well Valerie has slipped into the role of good daughter which she can do quite readily with Brian as a buffer between her and mother.  They all win.  My mother gets rid of the only person who is honest with her, Brian gains control of the house, and Valerie uses Brian where she has always used me in the past. I am redundant.  I have suddenly become the ghost on the stairs, no one will ever hear me again. 

 

‘Given the circumstances then I won’t stay. I don’t want you feeling unhappy’ I reply. I am trying not to sound dramatic. I don’t feel dramatic, just gutted.

‘That is your choice Julia’ says Brian in a brutally patronizing manner.

‘We are happy to have you visit, but not if you are going to upset your mother.’ My mother squeezes his shoulder as if to thank him for his intervention.  I want to tell him to fuck off and that he will regret his decision, eventually my mother will turn out to be something he has not bargained for, but I realize it is pointless. Brian is the sort of man in late middle age who has finally found a woman who will respect him, a woman so stuck in her own self loathing that she looks up to his diamond patterned cardigan his grey slacks and those pipe smokers slippers.  He is nourished by her adulation, but he does not realize that like the pot plants that used to wither on the window ledge, the day will come when she will refuse to attend to his needs and begin to expect from him what he cannot provide, and he too will perish.  It is what happened to my father who was driven mad by her self centred demands.  Oh everything looks good, the paint is new the carpets soft, but underneath it all the reality is that it is no more than the make up on my mothers face.  Surface dressing.

‘I’ll get my things’ I say, and I leave the room.

I am on the ferry back home, and in the taxi on the way I come to understand something fundamental about my mother, which is that that she cannot face the truth. She never knew how to love an honest child.  She could not pretend to love me and I cannot pretend to love her or that anything will change.  Deep inside me however there is a small child holding up a placard on which are written the words ‘why won’t you love me anyway.’

The problem now is how to reach that child to tell her that I do.