“She’s picking it up from you, Betty. The way you are. How can she grow into a confident young woman when she sees you kowtowing to Thomas? You’re always making your lists of things to do, to keep him happy. She’ll end up like you.”
Betty felt a tidal wave of upset rising inside her. She tried to put a stop to it before it broke to the surface. “Don’t say that, Mum. Martha’s nothing like me. She’ll leave home and meet someone. She can be something I’m not.” Her last words rose upward. She needed to believe that her daughters would make different decisions to her own. “All you have to do is come around for tea. Be friendly with Anthony and civil with Thomas’s parents. It will help to fix things between us all.”
“I’m not the one who’s broken them.”
“Please, Mum. Just show up on time and behave. Is that really too much to ask?”
“Hmm.” Zelda hesitated. “I’ll try my best. Do you remember that story Martha told us, about a tiger and a unicorn?”
Betty smoothed a hand over her hair, relieved that things were agreed. “Not really. She shares them with you more than me.”
“I’ll tell it you now,” Zelda said. “I think it’s relevant.”
The Tiger and the Unicorn
A girl lived in a house at the edge of a forest. She had two best friends, a tiger and a unicorn. The tiger was fierce and strong. Though other people found him scary, he made the girl feel safe and protected.
Her other friend was a unicorn. She was magical and fun. They rode through the forest together with the wind in the girl’s hair. The unicorn was mischievous and liked to play pranks.
The girl loved them both but found it exhausting, to keep her friends separate all the time. She thought how wonderful it would be if the three of them could learn how to be content together.
However, the tiger sniffed when she suggested this. “I am a beast. I have my own ways. If I eat the unicorn, I cannot be held responsible because it’s in my nature to do it.”
The unicorn shook her mane and whinnied. “The tiger is no fun,” she told the girl. “I’ll be bored in his company. He always tries to be in charge, and we won’t be able to do what we want.”
The girl was torn, because she loved them both. She didn’t want to offend either of her friends so she continued to spend time with them individually. However, when she was with the tiger she acted in one way, changing to suit him. And when she was with the unicorn, she acted in a different way.
Soon she began to feel that her personality was being split in two, and she just wanted to be herself.
One day, as she walked through the forest, she met a third creature, a bear. He lay on the ground and lazily scratched behind his ear. “You look troubled,” he said to the girl. “What’s wrong?”
The girl sighed and told him her problem, that she had two friends and they were making her choose between them. “Real friends wouldn’t do that,” he said. “They might be different, they might not mix, but they would never make you choose.”
The girl nodded. The bear was right, so the next day she spoke to the unicorn, and then the tiger. She told them the same thing. “We must find a way to all get along, so I can be myself. Or else we’ll have to go our separate ways.”
The unicorn tried her best. She tried to be friendly to the tiger and was there when the girl wanted to play. But the tiger could not change. He sulked and wanted the girl to himself.
One day, the tiger ate the unicorn up whole. As he sat smacking his lips, the girl broke down in tears and asked him why he couldn’t respect her wishes. “Because I couldn’t help it,” he said. “Because I am a tiger.”
25
House
On Saturday, Rose and Will wandered into the library without their mother. They stood in front of the desk, both wearing bewildered expressions. “Mum made us walk here on our own,” Will said to Martha. “She said she didn’t want to see anyone, and we had to pack our own bags.”
Martha wondered if the anyone she wanted to avoid was Zelda.
“She’s in a weird mood,” Rose added. “She said you were lurking in our back garden at night.”
As she stored their overnight bags under the desk, Martha’s neck grew a little hot.
“I was merely returning Will’s trousers. Next time, I’ll teach the pair of you how to sew, so you can do it yourselves,” she teased. “Then I won’t have to visit your house at midnight.”
Rose and Will stared at her.
“I can’t do sewing,” Will said.
“I’m scared of needles. And pins.” Rose narrowed her eyes. “Are you wearing makeup?”
“A little bit...”
“It looks nice. Your lips are all pinky.”
“What are we doing this afternoon?” Will asked.
Martha wasn’t sure what to tell them. Lilian had forbidden her from introducing the kids to their great-grandmother, but she didn’t have a choice. “A, um, family friend is joining us,” she said. “We might all have a nice, quiet afternoon, down at the beach.”
While Will and Rose squabbled over which letter the Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone DVD should be filed under, H or P, Martha took the job application form out of the drawer. She read through it again, refreshing her memory of the headings and what she had to complete.
“Are you finally going to fill that in?” Suki peered over her shoulder. “There’s only a few days left.”
Martha nodded. She wrote down her name and address then set down her pen. She wanted to share her story of what the library, and doing things for others, meant to her, but her discussion with Lilian made it difficult to concentrate.
“Just think of your Cumulus Vitae,” Suki prompted.
“Cumulus is a type of cloud,” Martha replied. “It’s a Curriculum Vitae, and I don’t have one.”
“Right.” Suki laughed. “I usually write notes down first. Then I copy them into the form. I make sure my passion shimmies through.”
Martha agreed this was a most proactive approach. She mused for a while, then took up a blank piece of paper. She picked up her pen again and waited to see if her words would start to flow.
The library started to fill with parents and children. Most of the Saturday morning crowd were usually well behaved, but some rolling about on the floor always took place, mostly by children and occasionally some adults, too. Martha smiled with encouragement as Will stepped in to separate two young boys who were hitting each other over the head with the beanbags.
Three mothers brought a rug, which they spread on the floor, and proceeded to lay out a picnic of carrot sticks, hummus, sausage rolls and crisps in the fiction section.
“Can they do that in here?” Rose asked Martha. “It is allowed?”
“It’s never happened before,” Martha said. “Please ask them to move to the edge. And tell them not to leave any rubbish behind.”
Rose shrugged and meandered over to the group. She pointed towards the other side of the room and the mothers nodded and gathered their things together.
Later in the morning, Clive strolled through the door. He carried a coffee in a large cardboard cup, from a posh coffee shop in Maltsborough. He sipped at it rhythmically with loud slurps. “Everything under control, Martha?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at her.
It was the first time she’d encountered him since she fled from the reading group. She was determined not to show any weakness and sat up a little taller in her chair. “Yes. All is fine,” she smiled. “I’m taking a look at my application form. It’s all looking very, very positive.”
She watched Clive’s Adam’s apple dip as he swallowed his coffee. “Fantastic,” he said flatly. “I, um, look forward to reading it.”
After the library closed, Martha walked back to her house with Will and Rose. She made cheese sandwiches for their lunches, served with crisps and big mugs of tea. Then she explained that an old friend was going to be joining them that afternoon. “Her name is Zelda and I think you’ll like her.”