I wipe my nose with a handkerchief she gave me last week, a little-girl cotton one with embroidered flowers. She says that cotton stings less than a tissue; besides, it’s a little more eco and I know you’d appreciate that.
She squeezes my hand. “You deserve to be loved. Properly loved.”
From anyone other than Mum it would be a cliché, but as Mum has never said any of this stuff before it feels newly minted.
“You too,” I reply.
“I’m not all that sure that I’m worth having.”
You must find this conversation strange in its directness. I have got used to it but you won’t have yet. There were always specters at our family feasts, taboo subjects that no one dared acknowledge, that our conversations tiptoed around, going into cul-de-sacs of not talking to one another at all. Well, now we strip these unwanted guests bare, Mum and I: Betrayal, Loneliness, Loss, Rage. We talk them into invisibility so that they’re no longer sitting between us.
There’s a question I’ve never asked her, partly because I’m pretty sure I know the answer and because—deliberately, I think—we’d never created the opportunity.
“Why did you call me by my second name and not my first?” I ask. I presume that she and Dad, especially Dad, thought Arabella, a beautiful romantic name, inapplicable to me from the very beginning, so they opted instead for starchy Beatrice. But I’d like the detail.
“A few weeks before you were born we’d been to the National Theatre to see Much Ado About Nothing,” Mum replies. She must see my surprise because she adds, “Your father and I used to do things like that; before children came along, we’d go to London for the evening and get the last train home. Beatrice is the heroine. She’s so plucky. And outspoken. Her own person. Even as a baby, it suited you. Your father said Arabella was too wishy-washy for you.”
Mum’s answer is so unexpected, and I am a little stunned, actually. I wonder whether, had I known the reason for my name as a child, I’d have tried to live up to it. Instead of being a failed Arabella, I might have become a Shakespearean plucky Beatrice. But although I’d like to, I can’t linger on this. I asked the question only as a lead up to the real one.
You’re upset that she could believe you committed suicide—after Leo—and knowing the suffering it would cause. I tried to tell you, as I reported it, that she was grabbing at a safety rail, that it was a self-protection reflex, but you need to hear it from her.
“Why did you think Tess had committed suicide?” I ask.
If she’s surprised by the question, she doesn’t show it, not hesitating for a moment in her reply. “Because I’d rather feel guilty for the rest of my life than for her to have felt a second’s fear.”
Her tears fall onto the white damask tablecloth, but she doesn’t mind the waiter’s stare, not caring anymore about “form” and socially correct behavior. She’s the mother in the rustling dressing gown sitting at the end of our beds smelling of face cream in the dark. The glimpse I had as she first shed her old Mumness is now fully exposed.
I never knew so much love could exist for someone until I saw Mum grieving for you. With Leo, I was away at boarding school and didn’t witness it. I find her grief both shocking and beautiful. And it makes me afraid of being a mother, of risking what she feels now—what you must have felt for Xavier.
There’s a short silence, a hangover from a previous time of silences, but then Mum talks into it. “You know I don’t mind much about the trial. Not at all if I’m being totally honest.” She looks at me, checking for a reaction, but I say nothing. I’ve heard her say this before in myriad ways. She doesn’t care about justice or revenge, just you.
“She’s been in the headlines for days,” Mum announces with pride. (I think I already told you that she’s proud of all the media attention?) She thinks you deserve to be on everybody’s front page and topping the bill on the news, not because of your story but because everyone should know all about you. They should be told about your kindness, your warmth, your talent, your beauty. For Mum it’s not “Stop the clocks” but “Run the presses!” “Turn on the TV,” “Look at my wonderful daughter!”
“Beatrice?”
My vision is blurring. I can just hear Mum’s voice. “Are you all right…? Poppet…?”
The anxiety in her voice jolts me back into full consciousness. I see the worry on her face and hate to be the cause of it, but the waiter is still clearing the next table, so it can’t have been for long.
“I’m fine. Shouldn’t have had wine, that’s all; it makes me woozy at lunchtime.”
Outside the restaurant I promise to come and see her at the weekend and reassure her that I’ll phone her this evening, as I do every evening. In the bright spring sunshine we hug good-bye and I watch her walk away. Among the shining hair and brisk walk of office workers returning from lunch breaks, Mum’s nonreflective gray hair stands out for its dullness, her walk uncertain. She seems weighted down by her grief, physically stooping as if not strong enough to bear it. As I watch her among the crowd, she reminds me of a tiny dinghy in an enormous sea, impossibly still afloat.
There’s a limit to how much I can ask her in one wallop. But you want to know if Xavier is buried with you. Of course he is, Tess. Of course he is. In your arms.
7
I arrive for the afternoon session with Mr. Wright a few minutes late. My head still feels strange, not quite in focus. I ask Mrs. Crush Secretary for a strong coffee. I need to tell your story with sharp reflexes, a memory with neurons firing, not half asleep. I want to say what I have to and go home and phone Mum to make sure she’s okay.
Mr. Wright reminds me where we’d got to.
“Then you went to Hyde Park?”
I left Mum and Todd, walking hurriedly up your icy basement steps, pulling on my coat. I’d thought that my gloves were in my pocket, but only one remained. It was mid-afternoon and the pavements were almost deserted; it was too cold to be out for no reason. I walked hurriedly toward Hyde Park, as if there was a deadline to keep, as if I was late. When I got to the Lancaster Gate entrance I stopped. What was I doing here? Was this just a sulk that had needed to find a focus? “I’m not in a temper! I’m going to find my tea set!” I remember my six-year-old outrage as I ran up the stairs. There was a real purpose this time, even if it had been prompted by wanting to get away from Mum and Todd. I needed to see where your life had ended.
I went through the open wrought-iron gates. The cold and the snow were so like the day you were found that I felt time pulling me back through the previous six days to that afternoon. I started walking toward the derelict toilets building, pushing my gloveless hand deep into the pocket of my coat. I saw young children building a snowman with energetic earnestness, a mother watching and stamping her feet to keep warm. She called to them to finish now. The children and their snowman were the only things to be different; perhaps that was why I focused on them, or maybe it was their ignorance and innocence of what had happened here that meant I wanted to watch them.
I walked on toward the place you were found, my gloveless hand stinging with cold. I could feel the packed snow beneath the thin soles of my shoes. They were meant not for a snowy park but for a New York lunch party in a different life.
I reached the derelict toilets building, totally unprepared for the bouquets. There were hundreds of them. We’re not talking a Princess Diana ocean of floral grief, but masses, nonetheless. Some were half buried in snow—they must have been there for a few days—others were newer, still pristine in their bouquet cellophane. There were teddy bears too, and for a moment I was perplexed before realizing they were for Xavier. There was a police cordon around the small building, making a neat parcel of the scene of your death with a yellow and black plastic ribbon. I thought it odd that the police should make their presence felt here so long after you’d needed their help. The ribbon and flowers were the only colors in the whiteout park.