Yours sincerely
Michael Hunter
ps This is only the name I was given in the home, as I was told you did not give me one (if it was you) or maybe it just didn’t get passed on.
Pps I do not have very many papers either, hopefully we will not need them to find out the truth.
Steph wrote out the letter from Michael’s rough draft, while his mind lurched between possibilities and impossibilities, starting with the idea that anybody who could be his mother could be living, as the advertisement said, in a ‘country house’. He did not try to curb Steph’s sudden crazy faith that his mother had been found by pointing out that while he did indeed have brown eyes, he had been born in 1961, not 1955; it seemed unkind to disappoint her. Besides, what if it was just a mistake, a misprint, an oversight? He could miss finding his own mother because of a clerical error! It could do no harm to look into it.
Jean’s reply came at once. She invited Michael to come to tea on the following Friday, 15th March, at four o’clock. ‘I do not go out, so I hope it will not inconvenience you to come here. The house is not hard to find.’ There followed directions.
In the days between the arrival of Jean’s letter and the day of his visit Michael worked on the bare fact that his mother had not been heard of since around 1971 until it seemed almost plausible that she should have changed her name, kicked the drugs, married a wealthy man, be living in a country house, and miscalculate her son’s birth by six years. By the day of the visit he was ready to forgive her, quite ready to overlook the shortcomings of the drug-raddled teenager, on and off the game, who had given birth to him and then disappeared.
I will admit to misgivings about the whole thing after his letter came. And it was only after I had replied to him that I realised it had been a mistake to invite him for four o’clock, because it would give me nearly the whole day to wait feeling nervous, and worrying. That was why I deliberately gave myself lots to do that day, so that my restlessness could be directed into preparing a proper welcome. It started with food. The immediate problem of what to give him to eat became, almost before I knew it, an obsession with feeding him that I can only describe as maternal. And although to begin with it felt hardly natural (for after all, the last person I had provided food for had been Mother) I gave in to it. I had never until that point bothered much about what I now consider to be proper cooking although since the day I pulled out the buddleias I had found myself looking forward to supper each evening, more than I ever had before. I had been eating more and things were beginning to taste better. I suppose, in the same way that I was now paying new attention to bathing, dressing and sleeping, I had begun to enjoy the little acts of care that I bestowed upon myself when I cooked. These things start, I think, with oneself. Only after I had begun to make myself comfortable (in every sense) did I find myself inclined- qualified, you might say- to care for anybody else. Poor Mother, really. I cared for her in a way, of course, the best way I could at the time, mimicking the manner in which she had cared for me when I was a child. My caring was as perfunctory and spiritless as hers was. Not that that makes it my fault. I wasn’t myself.
Anyway, having the whole day to fill before Michael’s arrival was the start of it. Thinking first about giving him tea when he arrived, I baked a cake, and standing in the kitchen beating it all up by hand, I tried to remember when I had last made one. It must have been for Father; he liked cake, anything sweet. I had a light hand with a cake, he said. I had forgotten that entirely, and it was nice to remember again. Not that I made many cakes even for him, certainly not as many as I wanted to because although Mother did not bake, it annoyed her if I turned out too many things he liked. She said it was bad for him but the truth was she hated to see him delighted. When she saw him happy, especially if the source of it were anything to do with me, she must have felt she was being done out of something that should have been hers.
While the cake was baking (it was a Madeira cake and I used the electric oven to be certain of the temperature; the Aga has its virtues but I wouldn’t trust it for a Madeira) I realised that that would be just the start. Because if things went well over tea he would stay, and I would have to give him supper, and I did not think my usual fry-up would quite do. I looked in the freezer and found fillet steaks. There were broad beans and runner beans, packets of smoked salmon, strawberries and raspberries from the garden, and ice cream. My mind filled with possibilities; in fact I think I permitted myself an anticipation close to greed. Of course they didn’t have anything like chips or potato croquettes but I had a few potatoes that I thought I could manage to do something with. That was what led me to the recipe books, because I remembered seeing Delia do something once with a few potatoes and cream and garlic. Well, I had to tear myself away in the end, from those books. The pictures! Not to mention the wonderful-sounding recipes, and all the advice and things to learn. I felt so excited at the thought of reading these books properly, and even put Larousse Gastronomique by my bed. But I had so much to do. There was a string of garlic hanging in the kitchen that I had not touched until that day. I even found one or two usable onions in the pantry, while I was getting olive oil and vinegar and mustard and so on, and outside in the garden there was any amount of thyme, rosemary and sage in the borders, and a bay tree. It amazed me, that in the same way that those cookery books were filled with wonders, all these good things were just here, waiting until I should notice them and have use for them. Such quiet gifts.
The woman who opened the door was not his mother. Yet Michael felt, even as he was calculating that she was at least ten years too old, that there was something about her.
‘It’s me,’ was all he said. Her face crumpled, he opened his arms and folded them round her. He liked her lemony warm scent and the smell of her clean hair, that was like a white wire brush tickling the side of his face. As they drew apart Michael scanned her face again for a similarity with his, and he found it in her long, blue eyes. Outwardly they were quite unlike his own, but he saw in them a shade of supplication. Even while her mouth was smiling and producing ordinary, conventional words in a frenzy of flustered politeness- had he found the house easily, he must come right in, would he like to sit down- her eyes were imploring him to belong to her. They held a dignified plea that he not disappoint her, perhaps also a warning that she would be unable to bear it if he were about to deny that she could mean anything to him. Michael recognised it. He returned her gaze and said nothing. It seemed to him suddenly that neither of them could withstand indefinitely, or even for much longer, the dull ache of not mattering to anyone else, and in their wordless acknowledgement of this they were related, conjoined.
I want to write about my first impressions of him. Since he’ll never read this I can, can’t I? I was terrified, of course, in case he was going to turn up with all sorts of documents, even photographs perhaps, that would prove I wasn’t his mother. And even if he didn’t, he would be bound to have bits of information about his natural parents that I might not be able to keep up with. I imagined him saying something like, ‘So, tell me about my father’s time in Australia. He did go to Australia, didn’t he?’ Or even worse, my time in Australia, I mean suppose his real mother had been brought up there or he knew she’d gone there after having him or something? If the questioning got too dangerous I could always claim a bit of senile memory loss, but only up to a point. All these worries, which I was trying so desperately to hide, almost stopped me from noticing what he looked like when I first opened the door. I was so frightened that he was just going to look at me in disgust, accuse me of fraud or some terrible thing, and leave. But I did notice at once how tall he was. And I could see he was good-looking, although very thin. I realised that when he hugged me. I could almost breathe his hunger, and I immediately felt glad that I had thought so much about food for the visit. It was as if I had instinctively known what he would need, in the way mothers are supposed to. But the most striking thing about Michael was that he looked so tired. Tired in the mind, I mean. His eyes darted round a bit to begin with, taking in me, the house and everything, and then he looked at me and did not move his eyes from mine. There was a mildness in the look he gave me, but also a kind of film over his eyes that made them seem too bright, as if they were concealing, not very successfully, some terrible fatigue. Would it be fanciful to say that I saw straight in to the weariness of his soul? I don’t know. The point was that he let me see it, his eyes did not leave mine.