‘Forgotten is forgiven, Martha. I can’t remember who said that or where I read it but if I had a motto, that would be it. Forgotten is forgiven.’
I told her it was F. Scott Fitzgerald. The curator of @author_quotes_daily had been on a jag.
Winsome offered me a biscuit and asked me if I had any holidays planned.
‘How did you put up with my mother for so long?’
She said oh. Indeed. And then, ‘I suppose because I’ve always been able to remember what she was like before our mother died and I loved her enough to last.’
‘Were you ever tempted just to give up on her?’
‘Daily, I suppose. But you forget, Martha, I was an adult then and she was a child. I knew who she was meant to be. That is, who she would have been had our mother not died or perhaps, if we had had a different mother entirely. I would like to say I did my best, but I was not an adequate substitute.’
I accepted another cup of tea. Watching her pour, I told her I could not imagine how hard it must have been. Winsome said well, nevermind and I decided one day I would ask her about it, but not then because there was more sadness in the way she said those two words than could be managed by either of us, sitting at her garden table, having afternoon tea.
‘Forgotten is forgiven.’ For whatever reason, Winsome said it again.
I repeated it after her. ‘Forgotten is forgiven.’
‘That’s right. Difficult but possible. Unless you want it, Martha, I might have this last biscuit.’
*
Even with four under fucking nine, Ingrid is still Ingrid. Attached to every text she has sent since Winnie was born is a GIF called Sad Will Ferrell. He is sitting in a leather recliner that is vibrating at its highest setting, trying to drink wine and crying as it bounces out of the glass and runs down his chin. It is figuratively her though. It has never stopped being funny.
*
Patrick and I left the hospital after Oliver arrived with Jessamine and the Rory she is about to marry. Nicholas is in America now, working on a special farm.
My parents wanted us to go back with them, to Goldhawk Road, for dinner. Arriving, my mother asked me to come out to her studio because she had a thing she wanted to show me beforehand.
I said, ‘Am I allowed to? Nothing is on fire.’
She flicked her hand, refusing to be mocked, and once we were across the garden, she held the door open and ushered me in. The sensation of being somewhere I had been vigorously discouraged from entering for most of my life was still strange. I sat on a crate in the corner. It was crusted with globs of something white.
In the middle of the room, hidden under a dirty sheet, was some object that at its highest point touched the ceiling. My mother went over and stood beside it, crossing her arms and cupping her elbows with opposite hands in a way that made her look nervous.
She coughed and said, ‘Martha. I know you and your sister tease me for the repurposing but all I’ve been trying to do, all these years, is take rubbish and turn it into something beautiful and much stronger than it was before. I’m sorry if that’s a bloody metaphor for everything.’ She turned and dragged off the sheet. ‘You don’t have to like it.’
My lungs went hard. It was a hollow figure, woven like a cage from wire and what looked like bits of old telephone. My mother had melted and poured copper over the head and shoulders. It had dripped down, into the torso, running over a heart that was suspended somehow in empty space and glowed dully under the lights. She had made me eight feet tall, beautiful, and stronger than I was before. I told her I was fine with the metaphor. And in the shed, before we went out, I told her she was right – the things she had said on the phone and in her letter. I have been loved every day of my adult life. I have been unbearable but I have never been unloved. I have felt alone but I have never been alone and I’ve been forgiven for the unforgiveable things I have done.
I can’t say I have forgiven the things that were done to me – not because I haven’t. Just because, Ingrid says and it is true, people who talk about how they’ve forgiven others sound so arseholey.
*
My mother’s sculpture is too big to be in a house. Supposedly, I am being sniffed by the Tate lot.
*
Patrick and I are not living together.
The same day we’d said goodbye to each other in a corridor surrounded by our own furniture, Patrick turned up at Goldhawk Road and said, both of us standing outside the house, that he wanted me to move back into the flat.
I rushed forward, expecting that he would hug me but he didn’t and I withdrew my arms.