‘Well, yes of course I did. I thought he was very good for you. It’s not every man… Yes, you were lucky to have him.’
Emma steps over the insult (in her new colourful shoes). ‘It’s just you never talk about him or ask about him.’
Her mother looks confused. ‘Well … it’s hardly appropriate… I mean, he’s dead.’
There is a long silence. Emma thinks of all the things she has wanted to say over the past months:You didn’t even come to his funeral; Of course I need to talk about him; What sort of mother are you?
The silence stretches on. Emma can see Betty sitting back as far as she can in her chair.
She draws a breath and hears herself ask a different question. ‘What about Dad– did you like Dad?’
‘Where is all this coming from, Emma? It is hardly the time or place.’
‘But did youlikehim?’ she persists.
Emma’s mother glances at Betty and then looks quickly away. ‘That was between me and your father. We were married for over thirty years.’
‘But he was a lovely man, and you never seemed tolikehim. I don’t understand that.’ It is almost as if she is talking to herself. She is vaguely surprised that, for once, she is saying the words in her head out loud.
‘That’s private– it hasnothingto do with you.’
‘I do get that,’ Emma says thoughtfully, ‘but when I look back, I can’t work out why you two stayed together.’
‘Well, it’s what you did in our family.’
‘And I can’t understand,’ Emma continues, in the same thoughtful tone, ‘why you ever got together in the first place.’
There is a ‘crack’ as Emma’s mother puts her espresso cup down hard on the marble tabletop, and Emma knows she has succeeded in making her mother angry. She waits for the familiar feeling of dread to flood her, but nothing happens. She still feels remarkably calm.
She glances at Betty, who is watching her with a look of intense concentration on her face.
Her mother draws in a sharp breath, and as she starts to speak, Emma realises that her mother wants to hurt her. She is surprised she hasn’t realised and recognised this before. ‘You think you knew your father– well, you didn’t. Oh yes, he was good-looking all right– the strong, silent type, I thought.’ She gives a brittle laugh. ‘But underneath it all he was acommonlittle man.’ Emma’s mother is like an angry wasp– two sharp bits of colour stand out on her cheeks. ‘I made him what he was– he had a good head for figures, but he had no idea how to get on. I didn’t have the choices you had, so I made the best of what I did have and I made the best of him.’
‘I knew,’ was all Emma says.
‘Knew what?’ her mother asks angrily.
‘That you didn’t like him,’ she replies.
Her mother shoots her a look of dislike, disappointment and something else.
And then Emma sees it. How could she not have recognised it before? Her mother is jealous of her.
And with that blinding insight, she sees what makes her mother so very angry– furious in fact. Her mother cannot understand how Emma’s success– and shewassuccessful in her way: in her academic studies, her languages, her career and in her marriage– how all that could have come to someone so lacking in the attributes her mother prizes: looks, figure, poise and social standing.
Emma laughs, and her mother just stares at her.
‘What the hell is so funny?’ she hisses.
‘I was just thinking you got the daughter you deserved.’
But maybe, she thinks sadly,I didn’t get the mother I deserved.
Her mother’s voice cuts in. She hasn’t finished. ‘You think your father was so bloody marvellous. His parents sent him to a good school to help him try and fit in, but his father was just an ignorant peasant. There you go with your family tree, digging into the past. But you won’t like what you find there, I can tell you. I said his father came from a family of wine growers, but Ilied. They weren’t even farmers. Your father came from a long line of jobbing gardeners. That’s why I hated him working in the garden so much. But he just wouldn’t let it go– he had to be grubbing around in the mud. It’s a shame you didn’t take aftermyside of the family more.’
Emma watches her mother struggle to try and gain control of herself. How could she possibly think that being like her father would be abadthing? She hears the creaking in her mother’s voice, a voice that once screamed pure and high, and she realises her mother is losing her furious battle with age. How much energy has she wasted on such a one-sided war– the creams, dyes, surgery and the stream of men? What a total waste.
She wonders how she was ever frightened of this sad woman.
