One morning I called her and announced, like a child, ‘Guess what? I’m already up’ and she said, ‘Are you! Well done.’
She said, ‘What was that bang?’
I told her I was getting a cup out of the cupboard because I was making tea and she said, ‘That’s very good.’
Her voice was the only thing I ever heard from her end, no noise in the background. If I asked her what she was doing, she would say just sitting. I apologised once and said she must have to go, she must have work to do. She said her public would just have to wait for boundary-pushing installations. I had never heard her joke about her work before.
She never asked me why I had rung on that occasion or this one – she knew I called in panic, in boredom, in loneliness, when the silence of the house became unbearable. I did not notice for a long time that no matter what time it was, my mother never sounded drunk.
In between, I walked until I could feel my heart beating. Mostly the towpath, across Port Meadow or, early enough that it would be empty of students and tourists, through the park of Magdalen College. The deer grazed and ignored me.
Then, although she did not ask, I began to tell my mother what had happened, about my marriage, and children, and Patrick. She told me to say what I liked; nothing could shock her. She said, ‘I’ll see the most poisonous thing you’ve ever said to him and raise you something much worse I’ve said to your father.’
I told her that, to begin with, I was angry because he hadn’t noticed there was something wrong with me. That is what I thought. But he could not have missed it. It must have occurred to him at some stage, or he had known from the beginning. Whichever, he didn’t do anything because he liked it that way. That was so obvious now – me being the problem, Patrick getting to be the hero. Everyone thinking he was so amazing for putting up with such a difficult wife. Save lives all day at work, comes home and keeps going. Everyone thinking, what a busman’s holiday that marriage must be.
I said that he should never have accepted the way I treated him but he did because the only thing he cared about was having me, the thing he’d always wanted. He just accepted everything and always let it be my version of the story, believing that way he wouldn’t lose me. I said, not me – a version of me he made up when he was fourteen. I said he should have grown out of it like everyone else does, instead of marrying his own invention.
He gave up his own chance to be a father. He shouldn’t have let me take that from him. He shouldn’t have made me responsible for that.
I told her it was Patrick’s fault I am not a mother. I lied, but so did he.
For a long time I went on that way. Mostly my mother listened without saying anything. She never seemed shocked, even by the things I could barely bring myself to say aloud. She just said of course, of course. I’m not surprised. Who wouldn’t feel like that?
Finally, I exhausted myself. I said Patrick and I should never have been together. We had broken each other. Our marriage never made sense. And then I was quiet.
It had been nearly a month, hours and hours of every day, and as though it was now her turn my mother said, ‘Martha, no marriage makes sense. Especially not to the outside world. A marriage is its own world.’
I asked her to please not get philosophical.
Her thin laugh annoyed me. She said, ‘Alright but Maya Angelou –’
I cut her off. ‘Please don’t Maya Angelou me either. I know I’m right. We were dysfunctional. We made each other dysfunctional. I had to be the one to end it but I know it’s what he wanted too. He was just too passive to do it. Of course it’s sad, obviously. But it is best for everyone. Not just us.’
‘Yes – well.’ My mother sighed. ‘What time will you get there tomorrow?’ She had seemed about to say something else.
I asked her what tomorrow was.
‘Christmas Day.’
I was quiet for a minute, trying to imagine it, driving by myself to London, seeing my father, facing Ingrid, the chaos of her children, Rowland’s excruciating conversation, the endless, pointless friction between Winsome and my mother. Her drinking. ‘I don’t think I can. I think it’s too many people.’
‘It’s only going be Winsome and Rowland, me and your father. Sorry, I thought I told you that. Your cousins are elsewhere. Ingrid and Hamish have taken the boys to Disneyland. I have no idea why. And for ten days – you could do every room in the Louvre twice in that time.’
She waited for me to ask where Patrick was, then after a moment of silence said, ‘He’s gone to Hong Kong. It will be a difficult day. I know. But will you come?’