Chapter TWO
NOT LONG AFTER MY MOTHER WAS DISCHARGED FROM DELAPOLE, my father announced that we were moving to the countryside. My mother’s doctor had suggested that this might be a good idea.
“He said we might all benefit from a change of scene,” my father said as the three of us sat at the kitchen table. “I mean, like they say, a change is as good as a rest. It’ll be good for you, too, Jesse, living in the country. It’s about time you got yourself outdoors more, some color in your cheeks. It’s a damn shame all that time you’re spending by yourself in that bedroom of yours.”
“Yes, it’s a damn shame,” my mother said.
I wanted to say that, unlike her, I did at least venture beyond the backyard on a regular basis. And if anyone needed more color in her complexion it was she. She looked, as I’d heard Mrs. Brockett comment to one of our other neighbors, “like death warmed up, no pun intended, mind you.” But instead I said nothing, preferring to stir another spoonful of sugar into my tea and listen to my parents above the musical rattle of the spoon against the cup.
“I don’t want to move,” my mother said, her words round and misshapen as she chewed slowly on a peanut-butter sandwich.
It was after two o’clock, but she still wasn’t dressed. She wore the nylon dressing gown my father had bought her as a birthday present during her hospital stay. I had helped him pick it out, imagining her sweeping down sparkling cruise-ship corridors in its extravagant pink ruffles and puffy wide sleeves. Now, in our cramped, dirty-dish-cluttered kitchen, it looked garish and far too bright, like a fancy-dress costume, and it only added to my mother’s off-kilter aura. “I’m happy where I am,” she added, wiping crumbs from her mouth with the back of her hand and running her tongue over her chapped lips.
“You could have fooled me. If this is your version of happy, then …” My father faltered and took a gasping sip of his tea. “Look, Evelyn,” he said after he’d swirled the liquid around his mouth then swallowed it down. “I think we all need a change of scene. I do. And Jesse’s schoolwork’s been suffering.”
“No, it hasn’t,” I countered. It was true that my marks had slipped when I was doing all that letter writing. But the day my mother had arrived home—her face a pale moon, her arms loose and thin as sticks beneath a saggy pullover—the idea of a glamorous world-traveling mother sunning herself on the deck of a cruise ship had suddenly seemed as absurd to me as it had to my schoolmates. I’d stopped writing my letters and tried to focus on my lessons again.
“See,” my mother said. “Jesse doesn’t want to move, either.”
This was not true. I was longing to move. Longing to go anywhere. I was tired of the teasing at school, tired of Mrs. Thompson gazing over her desk at me as if I were a sickly, abandoned waif, tired of the curtains that twitched every time I walked down our street, and tired of Mrs. Brockett peering over our backyard wall to press me for information. I was so tired of everything that I didn’t even balk at the idea of moving to some country village. Perhaps, if I was lucky, my father would purchase one of those houses perched at the edge of an eroding cliff and within months we’d find ourselves pitched into the sea.
“We need a new start,” my father said, letting his teacup clatter down onto its saucer. “You need a new start. And, quite frankly, I’d like to be somewhere that the whole bloody street isn’t sticking their noses in our bloody business.”
“Oh, right, that’s it,” my mother said, nodding sagely, as if everything had become clear. “That’s going to suit you down to the ground.” She chewed as she spoke, and I could see globs of peanut butter stuck to the roof of her mouth. “You’ll put me out there in the middle of nowhere hoping everyone will forget about me. I’ll be like that woman … what’s her name, Jesse? That one in the film we saw the other day, the one they stuck in the attic until she set it on fire?”
“Mrs. Rochester,” I answered.
“Yes, that’s right. Mrs. Rochester,” she said, wagging a finger at my father. “The mad woman in the attic, that’ll be me.”
We had watched Jane Eyre on the television the previous Sunday afternoon, and I felt ashamed to remember now that I had, in fact, imagined my mother as the first Mrs. Rochester, burning down the house and herself to make way for a sensible, Jane Eyre–like stepmother for me.
“Don’t say such things in front of Jesse.” My father shook his head, making the narrow shaft of sunlight that shone through the curtained window move like a spotlight above his balding head.
“Oh, come on,” my mother said. “You’d be happier without me.”
My father let out a heavy sigh. “Oh, for God’s sake, Evelyn, don’t be so stupid.”
She swallowed a mouthful of sandwich. “Oh, no, don’t go calling me stupid. I know you wish I’d done a better job of this.” She thrust her arms out from under the puffy-sleeved dressing gown, and for the first time I saw the bold red scars across her wrists.
DESPITE MY MOTHER’S PROTESTATIONS, it became clear that we were moving, with my father exhibiting a level of determination that I hadn’t quite realized he was capable of. It took him a few weeks, but finally he announced that he’d found “the perfect house” outside Midham, a village about fifteen miles northeast of Hull. He told us cheerily that it was still within driving distance of his job, adding later, when my mother was out of hearing, that his journey to work would give him “a bit of much needed peace.”
The week after that, Auntie Mabel came round to help us pack. My mother’s older sister, she always arrived in a cloud of cigarette smoke and thick, flowery perfume—smells that lingered in the house long after she left. Mabel was an Avon lady, and she carried one of the catalogs with her wherever she went, whipping it out of her massive PVC handbag whenever the opportunity to make a pitch for her products arose. She hosted Tupperware parties as well, and she seemed convinced that all my mother needed was a little makeup and a few fully sealable sandwich containers to set her all to rights.
“You should come over to my house next Saturday,” Mabel said, flicking the ash of her cigarette with a glossy red fingernail filed to a hazardous point. She and my mother had spent twenty minutes halfheartedly tossing items into boxes when Mabel decided that it was time to retreat to the kitchen for a cup of tea. I’d been told to keep on wrapping my mother’s best glasses in old copies of the Hull Daily Mail, but after a few minutes I got bored and followed them. Mabel had taken off her shoes and had her feet up on one of the chairs; she was wiggling her stocking-covered toes and blowing long puffs of cigarette smoke into the air. My mother sat hunched over the kitchen table, her teacup nestled in both hands.
“We’re going to have cheese sticks and some of those little hot-dog sausages,” Mabel continued. “And I’m going to do a makeup demo on the woman who lives next door. Ooh, you should see the state of her, Evelyn. A right bloody mess, she is. Set myself a challenge there, I have. Mind you, you’ve got to feel sorry for the lass. I mean, seven bleeming kids and another one on the way. If I was her, I’d make my husband tie a knot in it, I really would. Either that or chop the damn thing off.” She flashed me a look. “Ooh, I suppose I shouldn’t go saying such things in front of such tender young ears, should I?”
I rolled my eyes toward the ceiling. I hated it when adults pretended they felt some sort of obligation to censor themselves in front of me. At least I was past the age when they thought that spelling things out would leave me bewildered.
“Oh, I don’t care,” Mabel said, waving a thick ribbon of cigarette smoke from in front of her face. “You’re going to have to learn sooner or later that all men are bastards, isn’t she, Evelyn? I mean, I should know. I’ve been out with more of them than I care to mention. And not one of them was what I considered marriage material. Mind you,” she said, slapping her pink, plump hand down on the table. “I might have been better off if I’d ruled out the ones that were married already.” She laughed, throwing her head back so I could see the rows of gray fillings in her back teeth.
“Oh, you are terrible, you Mabel,” my mother said, darting her tongue across her crinkled lips. “And you’re right—you shouldn’t go saying such things in front of Jesse. You know how easily influenced young girls are.”
I rolled my eyes again. “Mum …” I protested, wanting to suggest that if she was so concerned about the influences in my life she might try exerting a few more positive ones herself.
“Oh, don’t you worry, Ev. Our Jesse’s a sensible lass, aren’t you, love? And when she gets married, I’m sure—”
“I’m not getting married,” I interrupted. “And I’m not having children.” Those were two things I was certain of. As far as I could tell, people who were married were never happy. And those who had children were downright miserable. My own parents were definitely a case in point. While my mother was probably the unhappiest person I knew, Auntie Mabel—unmarried, childless, and currently without what she referred to as a “fella”—was indefatigably cheerful. Though sometimes I had the feeling that even her cheeriness was forced, slapped on with the same overstatement as her shimmery blue eye shadow.
“Of course you’ll get married,” Mabel said, swatting the air dismissively as I opened my mouth to protest. “I expect even I’ll take the plunge one of these days. Just got to find the right man—rich, stupid, and just about to kick the bucket!” She barked out another laugh, then took a puff of her cigarette before leaning across the table to crush the lipstick-ringed butt. As she bent forward, I could see down the front of her dress, the deep slit of her cleavage and the massive pale mounds of her breasts spilling over the top of her pink lacy bra. Her whole chest was like two well-stuffed cushions, and I found myself thinking how nice it would be to rest my head there. “Everybody gets married in the end,” she concluded.
“Uncle Ted’s not married,” I countered.
“Yes, well,” Mabel said, pulling out another cigarette and tapping the end on the table. “There’s not a woman on the planet stupid enough to marry our Ted.”
Ted was Mabel and my mother’s older brother. He didn’t come to see us much, but when he did he always made an impression. Reeking of hair oil and Brut, he smoked even more than Mabel, swore incessantly, and always showed up bearing lavish or rather odd gifts. My mother said he would have visited us more often if he didn’t spend so much of his time in prison.
“Yes,” my mother said. “Never been anything but bloody trouble, our Ted. You’re right about that, Mabel, you definitely are. I mean, you’d think he’d have learned his lesson by now. Almost forty-three and still messing around like a big kid.”
“Well, he never was the brightest spark, was he?” Mabel put her cigarette to her mouth and raised her eyes to the ceiling.
Every time he got out, Ted was soon involved in what even I could see were not the most intelligent of crimes. Once, he was caught breaking into what turned out to be the local chief constable’s house, tripping an alarm that connected right to the police station. Another time, he was arrested for passing forged pound notes that, according to my father, looked more like Monopoly money than the real thing. Most recently, he’d been sent away for “receiving stolen property” after he was caught trying to sell a vanload of illicitly acquired vacuum cleaners door to door in a rather upscale suburb of York. As a petty criminal, poor Ted was working at a considerable disadvantage, since he had deception written all over his boyish features. People didn’t believe him even when he was telling the truth, which he swore he sometimes did.
“I hate to think of him in there, I really do,” my mother said, pursing her lips and shaking her head drearily. “I mean, it must be terrible to be locked up all the time like that.”
“You ask me, he must like it. Otherwise he wouldn’t keep going back, now, would he?” Mabel said.
“I know, but it must be terrible. It makes me really upset at times to think about him, it does.”
“Look,” Mabel said sharply, “don’t you go getting yourself all in a tizzy about our Ted. He can look after himself. It’s you I’m worried about right now. Come on, how about it? Come over to my house on Saturday night. I know you’d have a good time. I’ve got some lovely stuff, Ev. You’d be amazed what they can do with plastic these days.”
“No, no, you’re all right, Mabel,” my mother said, listlessly shaking her head. “I just don’t think I’m much company. I’ll be better off staying home and getting ready for the move.”
Mabel reached across the table to pat my mother’s hand. “What you need is to get yourself out of yourself. Have a bit of fun. I mean, it can’t have been much of a picnic after … well, when you were away.”
My mother shrugged and pulled a tight-lipped smile. “No, but I’m back now, aren’t I?” Her voice fell dim and flat.
“Yes, yes you are,” Mabel said. “And that’s why you should come over on Saturday. We’ll have some laughs. No blokes, just us girls together for a change.”
“Can I come?” I chirped. I pictured myself sitting among a group of big-boned, ample-bosomed women just like Mabel, their wide arms jiggling as they lifted their cigarettes to their puckered lips. They’d swig mouthfuls of copper-colored sweet sherry and laugh from their bellies as they told dirty jokes. The idea seemed so comforting, like being wrapped in blankets on a cold winter night.
Mabel ignored me and continued. “You should come, Ev. You won’t have much of a chance of that once you’ve flitted, now will you? You’re going to be a bit out of touch out there. I mean, it’s a good forty-five minutes on the bus. And fares aren’t exactly cheap these days.”
“Can I go to the party?” I asked again, afraid of what lay ahead of us and wondering if I’d ever see Auntie Mabel again. As far as I knew, aside from her annual trips with her bingo club to see the Blackpool Illuminations, she never ventured outside Hull.
“No, you bloody well can’t,” my mother snapped. “Now, why don’t you get them glasses packed while me and Mabel finish off our teas.”
AFTER I LEARNED ABOUT our move, I went to the library to find out some information on Midham, since all my father had been able to tell us about the place we would soon call home was that it had two pubs and a newsagent’s shop, critical services as far as he was concerned. There was nothing about Midham in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and it didn’t even merit a speck in the Reader’s Digest Atlas. When I’d asked the librarian if she could help me, she’d steered me toward a slim book on East Yorkshire history which noted that there had been a small Roman settlement there and that Midham had been listed as a thriving market town in the Domesday Book. And that was it. For almost nine hundred years, apparently, nothing worth mentioning had taken place there. Even when I finally turned to the Royal Automobile Association Road Atlas, I found that the village was nothing more than a tiny black dot alongside a thin strand of road. Its only redeeming feature, as far as I could tell, was that it was two miles from the coast. Not close enough to fall into the sea—at least for a few centuries—but close enough that I thought my father would easily be able to drive us for a day out at the beach.
We didn’t go to the seaside much. But when we did, despite the interminable trek my mother always insisted upon in order to find the “right” spot for us to sit in, despite her complaints about other people’s loud radios, snogging teenagers, the way the sand got into everything, and the tide that came in too fast, I liked it: the smell of seaweed and brine, salt crusting my skin, sand easing its way between my fingers and toes, and the sound of the waves, arcing and falling like long reluctant breaths.
The first time my parents took me to the seaside, I was three years old. My mother often told how, as soon as we arrived on the beach, I’d broken free of her arms and run, fully clothed, right into the waves. “You were a little madam, you were,” she’d say, tutting her disapproval each time she told the story. “Didn’t take a blind bit of notice when I shouted at you. Oh, no, you were determined to run into that water, no matter what I had to say.”
I didn’t remember this incident, but I loved the idea of it, loved to think of myself as a chubby-legged toddler, racing away from my yelling mother to plunge into the cold waters of the North Sea.