Blessed Are the Cheesemakers Page 14

  Abbey swallowed her response. She felt shaky and emotional and didn’t want to be sitting here bickering about letter writing. She wanted to tell her mother what she had been through. She wanted to cry and be showered, if not with sympathy then at least with advice for how to get on with her life. Rose certainly had the experience when it came to men.

  “Oh, Rose, you won’t believe—” she started.

  “You won’t believe how much—” her mother said at the same time, ignoring the intrusion and continuing to talk over the top of her daughter, “has gone on here since you left, Abbey.” She lit a cigarette and kept going. “I got a part in an ongoing tea-bag commercial not long after you went. It was huge. I was voted one of the top ten most popular TV stars. Can you believe it? From a tea commercial? Anyway, that led to a tiny role on EastEnders as one of Phil Mitchell’s girlfriends. Well, I just blew the producers away, Abbey. Totally blew them away. Next thing you know I have a starring role in What Am I Like? Did you get that over in Bali Hai? It was a gas sitcom, Abbey, you’d have loved it. Four seasons it lasted. Four wonderful seasons. And now I am playing Marilyn Monroe’s part in a West End production of Bus Stop. Me and Marilyn Monroe, the critics have said we could be sisters. What do you make of that?”

  Her mother, Abbey slowly realized, seemed to be displaying all the symptoms of extreme nervousness, not a Rose-like condition by any stretch.

  “Look,” Rose twittered, fanning her hand around the sitting-room walls at the selection of fussily framed magazine covers all featuring her beautiful face. “Radio Times, You magazine, Hello, of course, two lots of Woman’s Own and the Sunday Times magazine, can you believe it?”

  “Rose,” Abbey said, “are you not going to ask me what I’m doing here?” She examined herself for signs of being hurt by her mother’s self-obsession and apparent lack of interest but nothing painful seemed to have penetrated her. She felt surprised, bewildered even. But there was nothing new about that. She supposed she must be immune to Rose, and this was, after all, vintage Rose.

  “What you’re doing here?” Rose repeated, stubbing out another cigarette, then plastering on an empty smile and looking at the fussy gold clock on the mantelpiece above the fussy marble fireplace. “Well, I think I know what you are doing here. Let me see,” she said, unconsciously checking the time again, “yourself and the lovely Bruce are back for reprogramming or whatever it is you people go in for, you’ve dropped in for a visit to show me that you’re still alive and haven’t been cooked up in a big stew, and in a few minutes you’ll be out the door back to Bula-Bula and then it’ll be another ten years before I see you again.” The empty smile froze as she looked at her daughter, then she launched a sad little frown across the wrinkle-free terrain of her brow and let her eyes fall mournfully to her hands, which sat in her lap as she fidgeted with her rings. “I’ve learned to live with the pain of your abandonment, Abbey,” she said. “I’ve moved on. I’ve had to. I couldn’t just sit here for year after year weeping and wailing and waiting for my only daughter to stop turning her back on me.”

  Abbey had actually forgotten what a brilliant actress her mother was. She could have sworn she even saw her bottom lip quivering. She wondered why she didn’t find the woman’s gall more offensive. Suddenly an image of herself, abandoned at school for yet another lonely weekend, crept into her mind. Rule number one, she remembered herself scratching into an exercise book, don’t get sucked in. Rule number two, don’t get angry. Her mother, she recalled, had rung her at school to say her best friend Jacinta Jolly (stage name) had taken seriously ill with meningitis and needed Rose at her hospital bed should the end come sometime soon. When Abbey had turned on the television that night to see the two of them tripping down the red carpet at a televised celebrity do, she had devised the two-rule system to save herself the agony of dealing with her mother’s lies.

  Don’t get sucked in, she thought, sitting there staring at her. And don’t get angry. “Actually, Bruce and I are not together anymore,” she said as calmly and confidently as she could. “I’ve left him in the islands. I’ve come home, Rose.”

  Her mother’s mournful look was instantly twisted into one of extreme panic. “You’ve come home?” she asked, appalled. “Home where? And what about Bruce? You can’t leave the poor man alone on the other side of the world without his faithful companion to help him, you know, do the stuff, you know, whatever it is he does, Abbey.” She was so irritated she was having trouble lighting another cigarette, even though the one she had been smoking still burned in the ashtray. “What about your marriage vows?”

  “What do you care about marriage vows?” Abbey asked, suppressing the nugget of anger she felt over her mother’s about-face on the subject of Bruce, a man she described on the only occasion she had met him (their wedding) as giving new definition to the expression “damp squib.”

  Rose opened her mouth as if to say something, then thought better of it. “I just want what’s best for you, Abbey, you know that,” she said in a sugary tone. “And you and Bruce were such a delightful couple, made for each other even. What could possibly have gone wrong with such a match made in heaven?”

  “Bruce was cheating on me, Rose,” Abbey said. “He was fathering children with another woman. Not me.” Hearing herself say the words out loud, Abbey felt sure, for the first time really, that leaving Bruce behind had been absolutely the right thing to do. At the mention of children, however, her mother’s eyes bulged and she choked on a lungful of smoke.

  “And you?” she said, waving at the cloud in front of her face, her voice unable to hide her horror. “Are there grandchildren?” She tiptoed over the last word as if it were green slime about to swallow her mules.

  Abbey dug her nails into the palms of her hand to help maintain her composure. “No,” she said, trying to look at Rose but only managing a spot on the floor. “I can’t have children. That was a one-in-a-million chance. You know. Before.”

  Rose was confused. “Before?” she asked. “Before what?”

  “Before, when I was pregnant,” Abbey said, the pain in her palms barely keeping her temperature from rising, “with Jasper’s baby. You must remember that? Mum? The termination?”

  Rose’s face drained to match the color of her spotlessly cream calico couch. “Jaysus, Abbey,” she said. “Jaysus feckin’ Christ Almighty Amen.”

  Abbey misread her mother’s anguish as remorse for what had happened all those years ago and felt her resolve start to crack, her confidence to slide. “I know,” she said in a voice that suddenly sounded small. “When the doctor told me that my ovaries were all messed up I couldn’t help but think maybe it was punishment for—”

  “Stop!” her mother interrupted abruptly, holding her hand up in a halting maneuver. “Please, Abbey, just stop.” She pressed her halting hand to her temple and Abbey saw that it was shaking. “That was a long time ago and there’s no need to be dragging it up now,” she said. “It’s water under the bridge.”

  I got sucked in, Abbey thought. Now, don’t get angry.

  “I’m dragging it up now because it’s affecting me now,” she said carefully. “Jasper’s baby was it, Rose, my one chance in a lifetime to be a mother.”

  Her mother shook her words away, turning her head to one side and holding up both hands to stop any more reaching her.

  “For God’s sake, Abbey, stop it,” she said. “Being a mother isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, you know. You don’t know the half of it.” She stood up and straightened her gown before looking at the clock again, edgy and flustered. “You really should try to get over it.”

  “Get over it?” Abbey said in amazement, watching her mother suck up her panic and metamorphose into a perfect hostess again. She felt like she was riding a roller coaster.

  “Would you like something to eat before you go?” Rose said, gesturing for Abbey to stand up and completely ignoring the point the previous exchange had reached. “You must be starving. Look at you, you’re a stick figure, Ab
bey, apart from that bosom, you need feeding up. How did you get here again?”

  Abbey chastised herself for thinking that the subject of her painful past could be talked about with the woman who had designed it. “I’m not hungry, Rose,” she said. “I’ve come from Australia. I was staying with friends for a few days after I left Mar . . . after I left Bruce in the islands. I got the Heathrow Express to Paddington and a cab here. But what do you mean, before I go? I haven’t got anywhere to go, Rose. I thought I would stay with you. Here in the flat. I’ve got nowhere else to go.”

  Her mother seemed to be battling a complete nervous collapse. Her face was positively alive with the effort of trying to settle on an acceptable emotion. It hovered on horror then switched to terror, then settled on something between the two and stayed that way.

  “Jaysus feckin’ Christ Almighty A-bloody-men,” her mother cried, wringing her hands in exasperation. “I can’t deal with it, Abbey. I just can’t. Oh, what have I done to deserve this?”

  With the clink and tinkle of the wringing hands, something clicked in Abbey’s brain. The rings. Her mother was wearing rings. On her wedding finger. Quite a collection.

  “You’re married,” she said stupidly.

  “Oh, Abbey,” her mother said, grabbing her cigarettes and lighter from the arm of the sofa, “we need to talk. We really need to talk.” Lighting up yet again, hands still shaking, she swept past Abbey and into the kitchen, her daughter following just in time to catch her feverishly snatching something off the refrigerator door and shoving it in the trash can. Her mother whirled around in the little galley kitchen and gasped when she realized Abbey was right behind her.

  “It’ll be the end of me,” she said. “You’ve no idea. The very end of me, Abbey.”

  For a moment Abbey thought she was actually crying. “Would you like a cup of tea?” Abbey asked calmly and politely, in the absence of knowing what else to do, and moved to fill the electric jug.

  “Tea? Now? Yes,” her mother said vehemently, as though it was the most brilliant suggestion ever made. “You make the tea. I’ve just got a quick phone call to take care of. Just one quick call.”

  She disappeared into the hall, slamming the door unnecessarily behind her, leaving Abbey to discover where things were kept in the claustrophobic kitchen. As she marveled at the enormous array of tea bags, Abbey worked out what was happening, barely needing to employ her brain in the process. It was pretty obvious. Her mother had always been hysterical about her age, claiming for many years, even at Abbey’s sixteenth birthday party, to be just twenty-seven. She never for a moment considered that anyone else had a better grasp of math than she did. She had always been terrified of growing old and ugly, and had preferred to entertain men many years her junior.

  Her new husband, Abbey assumed as she poured boiling water into the teacups, would no doubt be very young and no doubt very unaware that his wife had a daughter in her late twenties. This hardly bothered her. She’d spent half a lifetime being explained away as a niece or a neighbor or a complete stranger.

  “How did she get in here?” her mother had once said to a gentleman caller as she shuffled Abbey out the back door of their old flat upon finding her up late at night. “Climb in the window,” she’d whispered before closing the door and locking it.

  Abbey had noticed at once that there were no photos of herself anywhere. Lord knew there wasn’t space on the sitting-room walls. She smiled. “Answer your fecking phone, you great eejit!” she could hear her mother urging in desperation in the hallway. Abbey carried the used tea bags to the trash can and pressed the pedal with her foot to open the squeaky lid. The tea bags slid off the spoon and into the garbage, coming to rest on a scrunched-up photograph. Aha, thought Abbey, reaching for it. So that’s what her mother hadn’t wanted her to see. There had been a photograph on the refrigerator. The kitchen door opened just as her fingertips hovered at the brim of the can and her mother’s scream gave her such a fright she remembered it had been some time since she’d been to the bathroom. She turned to see her mother puce with rage.

  “Don’t you feckin’ dare!” she shrieked. “You little monster. You’re going to ruin everything, Abbey. Everything. Everything I’ve worked so hard for all these years, you meddling little monster,” and with that she burst into tears that Abbey knew were real because they streamed down her cheeks.

  “Rose, Rose, calm down,” she said as soothingly as she could in the circumstances, pushing a hot cup of tea into her mother’s hands. “Drink this. Come on, let’s go and sit down. It’s all right, I understand. Don’t worry. I understand.” Her mother laughed through her tears and said, “I don’t think you do,” but nonetheless let her daughter push her back into the sitting room.

  “He’s young, isn’t he?” Abbey asked, once she had settled her trembling mother back on the sofa. Rose laughed and nodded, then cried even harder.

  “And he doesn’t know about me?”

  “It’s not that,” Rose sobbed. “It’s just that he’s due home any minute. Jaysus God, Abbey, I can’t get hold of him on the phone. You’ve got to go.”

  Abbey felt her patience on the rule number two front seriously stretch. “I’ve told you, Rose,” she said tightly, “I haven’t got anywhere else to go. In case you’ve forgotten, you’re it. It’ll only be for a couple of days. You can tell him I’m the daughter of an old school friend or something, can’t you? Lying to him obviously isn’t a problem.”

  Her mother slammed her mug of tea down on the oak sidetable and let it erupt and overflow into the neighboring ashtray. “Abbey,” she said, choosing a pitiful look over an angry one, her eyes dramatized and aged now by blackened mascara smudges, “you have got to go. You can’t stay here. You just can’t.” She pushed herself off the sofa, suddenly looking every one of her forty-six years, and moved toward Abbey’s bag, picking it up off the floor with shaking hands and holding it out toward her daughter.

  “You’re kicking me out?” Abbey asked, aghast. “But, Rose . . .”

  “I’ll give you money,” Rose said, shaking the bag at her daughter. “I’ll give you money to go somewhere else, to live somewhere else. Abbey, please, just—”

  The sound of a key rattling on the other side of the flat’s front door paralyzed Rose mid-sentence. So, thought Abbey, his balls didn’t need to be in a sack after all.

  “Don’t come in,” her mother whispered hoarsely, her back still to the door as she stared at her daughter. “Don’t come in,” she tried again, whatever was eating at her swallowing the words, as the fumbling of the keys stopped and the latch clicked. “Go away,” Rose croaked as the door swung open and Abbey reeled at the shock of who it was stumbling through and slamming it behind him.

  His hair was longer and slightly thinning, there were the beginnings of a business-lunch paunch lurking under his suit and he wore a chunky gold bracelet on the wrist that was twisting at his collar to release his tie. He looked so grown-up that Abbey barely recognized him, yet how could she ever forget him? It was Jasper Miles and he was wearing a wedding ring.

  “I say,” he said, shocked, as he registered just who it was gawking at him from the sitting room. “Goodness.” He put his briefcase underneath the telephone table the way, no doubt, he always did.

  “This could be embarrassing,” he said awkwardly. “Rose? Darling?”

  For a split second, Abbey felt a thrill at seeing him, this smudged version of her first, perhaps her only true love. She had imagined this moment many times over the years. The moment when the Jasper Miles of her dreams, young and handsome and pulsating with hormones, would see her, smiling and gorgeous and happy, and curse the day he let her slip away.

  But here she was, none of those things, and here he was married to her mother. The quiver she felt in her stomach wasn’t a thrill of joy, she suddenly realized, as it gathered momentum and started roaring through her body. It was white hot, pure and overwhelming rage.

  “You complete and utter bastard,” Abbey said
in a voice she didn’t know she had the venom to produce. “You wanking, stinking, cutthroat, jerk-off, heartless fucking bastard!” Rage engulfed her, and pushing past her paralyzed mother, she found herself springing at Jasper and punching him hard in the throat.

  “Jesus,” he gurgled, clawing at his neck. “Help.”

  But Abbey hadn’t finished. Bringing her knee up swiftly she planted it smack in the middle of his groin, then as he doubled over in pain, she brought it up again, catching him under the chin with a sickening crunch. Jasper staggered back onto the telephone chair, moaning, as Abbey stood in front of him, shaking like a leaf, and wondering how else she could hurt him. She drew back her arm and whacked him with a right hook to the side of the head that spun him off the chair and onto the floor.

  It took a moment to realize that although she had stopped screaming, she was still being engulfed by noise and pain. Her mother was slapping her from behind and shrieking at her to leave Jasper alone.

  “Get off him,” Rose was howling. “Leave him alone! Leave my beautiful baby alone!”

  As quickly as the despicable rage had swept Abbey up and claimed her as its own, it deserted her, leaving her huffing and puffing and staring in horror at the specter of her mother kneeling at Jasper’s side, weeping as she kissed his balding head.

  “Leave my beautiful baby alone,” she sobbed again. The words clanged around the little hallway as Abbey tried to gather herself. They said it all. The father of Abbey’s unborn child was now her mother’s baby. Hello and welcome to painful reality number 6957, thought Abbey.

  The flat was quiet apart from the soft sound of Rose weeping as she soothed Jasper, who was bleeding slightly from the mouth, and Abbey felt a sudden enormous sense of embarrassment at what had just gone on. Yet in the surreal aftermath of such a raw and exhausting scene, she felt compelled to dig deeper.