I would have laughed but I didn’t. It was rare for Clive to make a joke, although he’d probably thought she was about to do steak.
It was the most merciful coincidence that Clive appeared when he did, not a moment too soon, although quite what he was doing there at that time with his tube of nonfluorescing fluorescence I have not been able to fathom to this day. Inadvertently, he had saved me from the skillet in Maud’s grasp and yet he still seemed oblivious to the tension in the room.
“Lights!” he barked, as if we’d just finished a rehearsal, and they flicked on, whipping away the secretive screen of half-light and flooding us with stark reality. There was Arthur at the entrance to the kitchen, stage-managing the switch. Arthur too? What was he doing in the room? I thought. And when had he arrived? I was confused. I can’t put my finger on why, but the whole episode had an air of performance.
I started to fumble around on the floor, pretending I’d been interrupted in looking for something I’d dropped. I needn’t have worried; nobody seemed to think it odd that I was down there. Then I saw Clive throw the skillet into the sink and along with it—to my utter amazement—his test tube of precious nonfluorescing fluorescence, then go to Maud, who still looked fixed to the spot. I watched as Clive put his arm round her waist, lovingly, I thought, and half escorted, half carried her out of the room.
“Good night,” he said cheerily, but I was a little disappointed. I couldn’t believe that Clive, of all people, would throw away half a year’s hard work on a whim in the middle of the night. Perhaps we just needed to purify it further. Perhaps the Woods glass was set incorrectly? I was looking at the sink and deciding whether or not to go over there and save what I could of the substance when Arthur strode up to it and ran the cold tap. That was it. Anything that might have been saved a moment ago had now been washed away. I had to stop myself thinking about it.
Arthur helped me up from the floor.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” I replied, but I had to bite back the pain that shot through my legs and arms, all the while pretending to search the floor anxiously, dreading him asking what I was looking for, knowing that if he did I’d be completely flummoxed. My face was hot and stung, my cheek tight with swelling below my left eye.
“But poor Clive,” I continued. “He’ll be really disappointed, after all that hard work. It didn’t even fluoresce.”
“I’m sure he’ll get over it,” Arthur said rather dismissively. “Would you like a glass of water to take to bed?” he asked, holding one out to me.
“Yes, please.” I took it and, looking down intently, wished him good night into the water.
Later, in bed that night, I understood that I should have told Maud about the surrogacy. Either that or I shouldn’t have presumed she’d be too drunk to notice. Of course she thought I was a whore. What else could she think? It was my own fault.
Chapter 16
A Nuclear Test and Titus
On Good Friday, just two days after the skillet incident, my mother, Maud, died—at fifty-four years old—shortly after five in the afternoon. She and Clive had spent the entire day together. Clive had packed a picnic all by himself and they’d driven to a little cove on the Dorset coast called Seatown, which isn’t a town at all but a beach full of pebbles with high limestone cliffs rising up on either side of it and a lone guardhouse perched halfway up the hill. It had been their favorite picnic spot during my childhood summers, but that day was still wintry and they drove the car almost onto the beach and picnicked looking through the windscreen at the stormy sea and beyond. I don’t know what they did for the rest of the day but they were out in the drizzle in the car until midafternoon, while I worked alone in the laboratory upstairs.
It happened around teatime. I was iodizing some white-mantled Wainscot caterpillars in prep to section them, when I heard Clive shouting my name. “Virginia! Virginia!” I knew something was up. I’d never heard Clive shout before.
“Virginia, quickly!”
I raced downstairs and found him at the bottom of the wide hall stairs, clutching the thick oak newel post for support. His breathing was heavy and he was staring at the floor by his feet.
“It’s your mother,” he said. “She’s fallen down the steps.” I looked about me, not understanding. “The cellar.” He tilted his head in the direction of the cellar door, which I now saw was open.
I walked over to it and peered down the steep stone steps. I could see only the darkness. I looked back at Clive. He was very still, very quiet, leaning on his post. Was he too shocked to go to her? Was Maud really there?
“Down here?” I asked softly.
He nodded.
I flicked on the light and illuminated Maud at the foot of the steps. She was lying perfectly still on her back, her hands and legs splayed out wide to the sides, like a child acting dead.
“What does she look like?” Clive asked quickly. “Is she moving?”
“No.”
I knew she was dead, but I went to her anyway, listened and felt, unsuccessfully, for any sign of life. Clive clutched his post. I called for an ambulance, then tried halfheartedly to resuscitate her, but she reeked of so much alcohol that I became light-headed with the vapor.
Finally I went to Clive, prised his hands from their post and held them. He was in shock.
“She would have died instantly, Clive,” I told him, “and she wouldn’t have known a thing about it. She was too drunk.”
“Thank you,” he said.
There was a long silence. Poor Clive, I thought. What a shock it must be to face, so suddenly, the end of nearly thirty years of marriage. Then a really strange thought popped into my head. I have no idea why, and I’m sure you’ll say there were far more appropriate things to think at the time, but I was simply hoping that they’d enjoyed their car picnic a few hours before.
Then I thought of the stories of their early love affair, when they’d had to keep it a secret from her father. I thought of them in the photograph on the table in the drawing room, the one taken before I was born on what looks like a Parisian balcony (although I’d never thought to ask them), and the adoration with which they are gazing at each other.
I think almost the instant that you hear of somebody’s death, it’s a bit like when someone comes back again after a very long time: all those moments you’ve had with them pop immediately into your head, all the most loving moments, from a more distant past. And never the more disturbing ones since.
“Virginia,” he said, “I left the cellar door unlocked. She must have mistaken it for the kitchen one.”
“It’s not your fault, Clive,” I tried to reassure him, but he didn’t look up.
“Go and phone Moyse,” he said. “Go and phone Dr. Moyse.”
“Clive. There’s no need—”
“Just phone him, please, Ginny. I want him to see her.” With that, he took himself off and locked himself into his small study behind the kitchen.
I’m not proud of it—far from it, believe me—but I think you should know that from the moment I saw Maud’s lifeless body splayed out on the cold stone at the foot of the cellar steps right up to this very day, I have not shed one tear for her, nor felt one pang of sorrow. At first I thought it must have been the shock. Her death was so sudden that I thought perhaps I hadn’t yet given myself a chance to believe it and feel it. For years afterwards I searched for my grief, thinking it had somehow become trapped within me and just needed a nudge to be released. Each day I waited, and when I felt that rather than getting closer it was moving farther away, I’d spend hours thinking of her, of my childhood, reminding myself of the comfort and love and wisdom she’d given me. I’d think of picnics by the river, the lardy cake she’d make on our birthdays, the smell of her hairspray, the feel of her skin and her lips, and I’d insist that the tears and the grief should pour out of me. But they never came, and it wasn’t because I didn’t love her, miss her and want her.