Doris was her mother’s older sister. She’d died as a teenager during the Blitz. She’d not had the courtesy of adding to the family history by being eliminated by a German bomb, however. Instead, it was an inglorious but nonetheless appropriate finish to a life that had been characterised by unfailing rapacity: She’d choked to death on a piece of black market pork which she’d whipped off her brother’s plate at Sunday dinner when he left the table to make an adjustment to the wireless out of which, like a saviour, Winston Churchill was due to speak.
Barbara had heard the story often enough as a child. Chew everything forty times, her mother would say, else you’ll end up stiff like your auntie Doris.
“I’ve prep to do for school, but I don’t like prep,” her mother went on. “I played instead. Mummy won’t like that. She’ll ask. And I don’t know what to say.”
Barbara bent over her. “Mum,” she said. “It’s Barbara. I’m home. I’m going to turn on the light. It won’t scare you, will it?”
“But the blackout. We must be very careful. Have you drawn the curtains?”
“It’s all right, Mum.” She switched on the lamp and sat on the bed at her mother’s side. She put her hand on her shoulder and squeezed lightly. “Okay, Mum? That better?”
Mrs. Havers’ eyes went from the window to Barbara. She squinted. Barbara reached for her spectacles, polished away a grease spot on one of the lenses by rubbing it against her own trouser leg, and slipped them back on her mother’s nose.
“She has a snake,” Mrs. Havers said. “Barbie, I don’t like snakes and she’s brought one with her. She brings it out and she holds it and she tells me what it wants me to do. She says snakes crawl up you. She says they crawl inside. But it’s so big and if it gets inside me, I’ll-”
Barbara put her arm round her mother. She crouched to duplicate her mother’s position. They were face-to-face, heads resting on knees. “There’s no snake, Mum. It’s the vacuum cleaner. She’s trying to frighten you. But she wouldn’t do that if you’d just manage to do what she says. She wouldn’t even bother. Can you try to behave?”
Mrs. Havers’ face clouded. “Vacuum cleaner? Oh no, Barbie, it was a snake.”
“But where could Mrs. Gustafson have got a snake?”
“I don’t know, lovey. But she has it. I’ve seen it. She holds it and waves it.”
“She’s holding it now, Mum. Downstairs. It’s the vacuum cleaner. Would you like to go down and have a look at it with me?”
“No!” Barbara felt her mother’s back go rigid. Her voice began to rise. “Because I don’t like snakes, Barbie. I don’t want them crawling up me. I don’t want them inside. I don’t-”
“Okay, Mum, okay.”
She saw that she couldn’t pit her mother’s frail coping skills in psychological warfare against Mrs. Gustafson. It’s just the vacuum, Mum, isn’t Mrs. Gustafson silly to try to scare you with it was not going to work to maintain the fragile peace in the house. Their peace was too volatile, especially when it rested on her mother’s failing ability to stay firmly grounded in the here and now.
She wanted to say, “Mrs. Gustafson’s as afraid as you are, Mum, that’s why she resorts to frightening you when you get a bit wild,” but she knew her mother would not understand. So she said nothing. She merely drew her mother close to her and thought with longing and loss of that studio in Chalk Farm where she had stood beneath the false acacia and allowed herself a moment to dream of hope and independence.
“Lovey? Are you still up?”
Barbara turned from the window. Moonlight made the room a place of silver and shadow. It fell in a band across her bed and pooled round the odd, ball-and-claw legs on the chest of drawers. The full-length mirror that hung on the door of the built-in clothes cupboard-“Look at these, Jimmy,” her mother had said. “What a nice touch! We won’t need wardrobes here.”-refl ected the light in a shaft of white against the opposite wall. She’d hung a cork board there when she’d turned thirteen years old. It was supposed to hold all the souvenirs of her adolescence: programmes from the theatre, invitations to parties, mementoes from school dances, a dried flower or two. It held nothing at all for the first three years. And then she’d come to realise it never would unless she pinned to it something more than unrealistic dreams. So she’d clipped newspaper articles, first human interest stories about babies and animals, then intriguing pieces about small acts of violence, and finally sensational columns on murder.
“Not the thing for young ladies,” her mother had sniffed.
No indeed. Not the thing for young ladies.
“Barbie? Lovey?”
Her door was half-closed and Barbara heard her mother’s fingernails scratching against it. If she was absolutely quiet, she knew there was a slight chance that her mother would go away. But it seemed an unnecessary cruelty after what she’d been through that day. So she said:
“I’m awake, Mum. I’ve not gone to bed.”
The door swung inward. Light from the passage behind her acted as accent to Mrs. Havers’ gaunt frame. Especially her legs, human spindles with bulbous knees and ankles that were emphasised by the fact that her housecoat was rucked up and her nightdress too short. She toddled into the room.
“I did a bad today, Barbie, didn’t I?” she said. “Mrs. Gustafson was to spend the night with me here. I remember you said that this morning, didn’t you? You were going to Cambridge. So I must have done a bad if you’re home.”
Barbara welcomed the moment of rare lucidity. She said, “You got confused.”
Her mother stopped a few feet away from her. She’d managed a bath on her own-with just two quick supervisory visits-but she hadn’t done as well with the post-ablutionary rites, for she’d doused herself with so much cologne that it seemed to surround her like a psychic aura.
“Is it near Christmas, lovey?” Mrs. Havers asked.
“It’s November, Mum, the second week of November. It’s not too far from Christmas.”
Her mother smiled, obviously relieved. “I thought it was near. It gets cold round Christmas, doesn’t it, and it’s been like that these past few days, so I thought it must be Christmastime. With the fairy lights on Oxford Street and those lovely displays in Fortnum and Mason. And seeing Father Christmas talking to the children. I thought it was near.”
“And you were right,” Barbara said. She was feeling enormously weary. Her eyelids seemed pricked by thousands of pins. But at least the burden of further dealings with her mother seemed lifted for a moment. She said, “Ready for bed, Mum?”
“Tomorrow,” her mother said. She nodded as if satisfied with her decision. “We’ll do it tomorrow, lovey.”
“Do what?”
“Speak to Father Christmas somewhere. You must tell him what you want.”
“I’m a bit old for Father Christmas. And at any rate, I’ve got to go back to Cambridge in the morning. Inspector Lynley’s still there. I can’t leave him on his own. But you remember that, don’t you? I’m on a case in Cambridge. You remember that, Mum.”
“And we’ve all the invitations to sort through and the gifts to decide upon. We’ll be busy tomorrow. And busy, busy, busy as bees until after the new year.”
The respite had been brief indeed. Barbara took her mother by her bony shoulders and began to guide her gently from the room. She chattered on.
“Daddy’s the hardest to buy for, isn’t he? Mum’s no problem. She’s got such a sweet tooth that I always know if I can just find chocolates-you know the kind she loves-I’ll be all right. But Dad’s a trick. Dorrie, what’re you going to get Dad?”
“I don’t know, Mum,” Barbara said. “I just don’t know.”