Unfortunately, Mother, who had worried about Miriam all her life, now hardly concerned herself with her. Miriam felt abandoned, but I was more powerful now; I tried not to let her attack Mother.
At first, when Miriam and I saw Mum and Billie together, usually fresh from a pile-high book-buying spree at Hatchards, we couldn’t avoid their absorption in one another; it was a revelation, particularly when they showed off the rings or haircuts they’d bought each other. Then, one time at lunch, Billie asked whether Miriam “had” anyone. Certainly Mother had never had a high opinion of any of Miriam’s boyfriends; she considered them to be “boys”-immature, not worth the space they inhabited-rather than men. Miriam could only answer, “I am lucky enough to have several children to bring up.”
This time, when we met, Billie was polite to Miriam, but there was no doubt she considered her to be borderline cracked, which made sense in the circumstances. Like when Billie mentioned something “marvellous” going on at the Tate Modern, Miriam’s response was to say how stupid it was that the place was called Tate Modern rather than the Modern Tate, which, in her view, would have been less pretentious, more accurate. Billie said that would be like calling the Houses of Parliament the Parliament Houses.
As this tricky conversation developed, I could see that in such circumstances Miriam might easily revert to her teenage self, never far from the surface at the best of times, and I wondered whether she might seize some object and attempt to hurt the wall with it. As it was a cold day, the rising heat from her body almost warmed me, but the one thing I didn’t want was for her to have a stand-up row with Billie. Mother sat there almost oblivious, like a tortoise in front of a street parade.
I had thought about whether Miriam might say she had “met someone,” whether she and Henry might become official. But Miriam was not thinking like that; she was already too angry. What infuriated her was that not only had the two women been travelling and buying pictures-some of them costing 3,000 pounds-but that the women were designing an artists’ studio for their garden, which they were intending to have built as soon as they found an architect they liked. Mother and Billie seemed to think they could do it “for less than 15,000 pounds.”
Like everyone in Britain, Mother had made more money from property than she had from working. She had sold the house, paid off the mortgage and kept the rest of the cash, which she was now going through at a tremendous rate. “If I spend it all before I die, I won’t care,” she said to me. “I’ll borrow more, too, on my credit cards, if I need it.”
“Quite right,” I replied. Even more laudably, she gave none of her money to her children or grandchildren, even though Miriam complained with increasing volume that her house, which she had bought cheaply from the council, was falling apart. It hadn’t been decorated for years and the roof was rotten. For some reason which Miriam couldn’t fathom, Mother seemed to think her daughter should work for a living.
Miriam blamed Billie for being a “bad influence,” but Mother had changed too. When Miriam suggested the women might be too old to embark on such an adventurous building project, Billie refused to accept she was old.
“Old is over ninety,” she said defiantly. “Soon people will be living to three hundred.” “That’s right,” said Mother. “We’re not too old to sit through an opera, as long as it’s got two intervals and a nearby toilet.” She opened her bag, and the two women grabbed a bunch of “rejuvenating” pills, swallowed with rapid swigs of organic wine. “No one calls me Grandma, either,” said Billie threateningly.
I wondered whether, on the phone, Miriam had said something to Mother about being a neglectful grandmother, because Billie then informed us that, after marriage, domesticity was surely the lowest form of life. Certainly she abhorred anything which involved schools or bovine earth mothers, with their plastic bottles of milk and identical, filthy-faced children all called Jack and Jill.
Now the two women were off to the hairdressers for the afternoon, followed by more shopping and a party given by a local artist. If the women had to be helped to the street and into the taxi, it wasn’t because they were infirm but because they were so pissed and giggly.
On the way back in the car, Bushy was silent; me too. Miriam was sitting there trembling; we could hear her jewellery humming. She was tighter than a tuning fork. It had taken us a while to realise, but Mother was gone for good. She would always talk to us, but we were no longer at the centre of her life. She didn’t appear to even like us much, as though we were old friends she’d fallen out with. She had discharged her duty and gone AWOL.
Miriam said at last, “You sit there all Zen and beaming and I can’t stand it.”
“What can’t you stand about it?”
“You not saying anything! If you ever do that analyst’s shit with me, I’ll wring your neck.”
“Maybe I was quiet, but I was enjoying myself. What’s wrong with you? Didn’t you try out the loving-a-girl thing yourself?”
“You think I enjoyed it? Anyhow, those girls weren’t in their seventies, they had bodies. Mother is pissing away the family money. A studio…Sculpture. A box at the opera. Jesus-mostly all they do is drink.”
“The money’s hers,” I said. “It’s a pretty good thing those old girls have got going. What a decent way to go at the end, the two of them occupied and adoring one another.”
“Why doesn’t she want to give us anything? I’ve got a new man to feed now! He will take it for granted I will look after him!”
“Did you tell her about Henry?”
“She will think he’s the same as the others. To her they’re all no-good scum. But what about the grandchildren she now ignores?”
“We’re adults,” I said, tiring already of having to be the adult. “Soon the children will be. They can make their own way.”
“You’ve always been down on me, you and Mother.”
I said, “But I am the one with reason to complain, if you want to hear about it. When you were at home, Mother was arguing with you. When you were out, you made sure she was worrying about you. What room was there for me?”
“I had awful problems,” she said. “Made much worse by the fact you thought I’d lived a worthless life. You with your books and long-word talk, quoting poetry and pop songs, mocking me for my craziness. You do it less now, but you were always a sneery show-off! In Pakistan you didn’t back me up at all.”
“Fuck off.”
“Now you-”
She was holding my arm. I grabbed her other hand. I may be a talking specialist, but no one could argue with the fact that a cuff across the face would improve my sister’s temper, except she seemed to think a punch would advance mine.
In the traffic, Bushy slammed the brakes on and turned round. “You two-stop! No fighting in the car. That’s what I say to the children.”
Miriam was trying to hit me, but I’d grabbed her wrists, thereby increasing the danger that she’d head-butt me. After the cars behind us began to hoot, Bushy was driving with one hand and was in our faces yelling while trying to push us apart with the other.
“Any more of this and I’m going to stop the car right here and throw you both the fuck out! Jesus-you’re worse than kids!”
To calm herself down, Miriam decided to stop off at Henry’s flat. She wasn’t intending to go in and “bother” him, but stand outside and look up at his windows, “to think about him being in there not patronising me-not treating me like shit-unlike you and Mother and her bitch girlfriend!”
I could see Bushy’s eyes in the mirror. I shrugged; I’d long known it wasn’t worth arguing with Miriam. He parked the car not far from the river, we walked to Henry’s, and after watching Miriam stand there for a while, looking up, Bushy said, “Go on, Juliet, up you go! I’ll come back later,” and off we went.