Space Hopper Read online

  * * *

  It felt like madness, sitting in the kitchen, waiting for her. This quiet moment, the clock ticking, the sun casting a bright beam across the floor; this moment in which I did nothing other than wait, this felt the craziest. I had to repeat a mantra to myself, yes, you are really here, otherwise I might have started trying to convince myself I was on a ward somewhere, in a coma, having a vivid dream. I was conscious of my heart beating, of the random need to scratch my leg, I touched my arm softly, felt the material so vividly under my fingertips; this time in the past was as real as the rest of my life. And what if it hadn’t been? If it wasn’t real, then what would I do differently? Nothing. It was like worrying; it really made no difference to the outcome.

  I heard the front door open and I inhaled sharply. I braced myself, so as not to appear too madly keen to see my mother enter the room. She smiled that broad easy smile and sat down opposite me.

  ‘Good kid,’ I said.

  ‘Like a dream,’ she said. ‘I just want to protect her.’ She gazed into my eyes and I knew that last night’s conversation had merely been on pause. ‘What’s your husband like?’ she asked, getting up again immediately and pouring milk into a small pan on the stove.

  ‘Eddie? He’s a good man. He’s got kind eyes, know what I mean?’ My mother nodded, stirring the pan absent-mindedly, her concentration directed at me. ‘He’s good with numbers, always been in finance.’ A tiny grimace flashed over my mother’s face. ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Sounds boring. But he’s not boring, he’s gorgeous, and funny and a great dad.’

  ‘Good in bed?’ she asked, grabbing a bag of oats from a cupboard.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, and felt myself redden. I don’t know if I looked sheepish, but I felt embarrassed at the directness of her question, and the fact that I had never had a mother-daughter type talk about sex with anyone, let alone my actual mother. ‘He’s got brown hair, he lets it get too long, and I have to remind him to get it cut. He’s tall; I can really lose myself in his arms.’

  My mother left the wooden spoon in the pan and leaned back against the counter, folding her arms. ‘He’s starting to sound good now,’ she said.

  ‘He’s training to be a vicar,’ I said, putting a stop to my mother getting dreamy-eyed over my husband. She frowned slightly.

  ‘Really?’ she said, returning to the spoon.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It seems a world away from finance.’

  ‘It is, but he’s the same man. I’m not sure either finance or religion really suit him. But he’s doing what he needs to do, what he’s made for.’

  ‘The love of my life was not my usual type,’ she said. ‘Faye’s father was in law enforcement.’ She said it like it was a dirty word, but any shock I felt was nothing to do with his job description.

  ‘I didn’t know she had a dad,’ I said. ‘I mean – you know what I mean.’

  ‘He was a lovely man, but it was complicated. We loved each other, but…’ She gazed out of the window, and then busied herself making porridge and tea. I watched her and waited, I pressed record on my memory button to ensure I stored this image of her moving gracefully around the kitchen, stirring, pouring, reaching up for a packet of sugar and then putting everything on the table. Domestic perfection. She placed a jar of jam on the table.

  ‘We get through a lot of this, good old Henry,’ she said, dolloping a spoonful into the middle of her bowl.

  ‘You were saying about Faye’s dad,’ I said, a flicker of something stirring inside me deep down. I knew nothing about my father. I knew I must have one – biologically – but I’d barely thought about him, never mourned his loss, and I suppose that’s because you can’t lose something you never feel you’ve possessed, never known. Vaguely, now and then as a child, or a teenager, I had imagined a father coming to collect me from Em and Henry. But if I took the fantasy too far, I realised I didn’t want that to happen. I had wanted my mother, always, but not a stranger. I felt safe with Em and Henry. And Henry was all the father I needed: reliable, practical, kind.

  Because I had no mental image of my father at all, I know it was a conversation I’d never had with my mother as a child, because I wouldn’t have forgotten if we had spoken about it. As I got older, without giving the idea too much pointed thought, I kind of assumed I was the product of a one-night stand. Not love.

  ‘You said he was the love of your life, but…?’ I said.

  ‘But he’s married, and has other children, and he’s high-ranking. The sort of job which would be ruined by a scandal.’

  ‘But if you loved each other, why can’t he help you?’

  ‘I moved away to protect him, to stop him having to make choices that could ruin everything for him.’

  ‘But didn’t he want to see me?’ I said. She looked confused. I didn’t realise my mistake at first and then I felt the word ‘me’ in my mouth as awkward as a marble. I tried to ignore it.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said.

  ‘You know, his daughter? Didn’t he want to get to know her?’

  ‘Uh, well I moved away when I was pregnant. He didn’t know. This was all years ago, obviously; I was in Ireland. He would have been thrown to the wolves if he’d been found out. He had other children, and a good wife. He was doing good things in his community, making changes, making a difference. I loved him, but I just couldn’t do it to him.’

  ‘You must have broken his heart,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll never know,’ she said.

  ‘But you do know, don’t you? He loved you, and you loved him. Maybe you should have let him choose.’ It wasn’t that I felt indignant that she’d left someone who might have loved me, but more that it seemed a terrible shame to not let a person know that they had a child in the world; and also I wanted my mother to feel loved – as much love as possible. She deserved that, and she’d walked away from it.

  My porridge sat untouched on the table. Jeanie stirred hers slowly and the jam made a pink swirl in it.

  ‘Maybe I should have let him choose, but I didn’t. I chose, and now it’s in the past. And that is where it must be left.’ She searched my face, her eyes roaming mine. ‘Love is not just about taking what you want, you know. Love can certainly make you feel justified in taking what you want, you can let it make you do things, or you can make sensible choices that sometimes lead you away from love. But listen to me.’ She reached her hand out and put it over mine. ‘Listen, there is always plenty of love to be found. I lost some things, but gained others. I minimised the heartache of others, and I’ve found a special kind of love in bringing up Faye by myself. It’s precious.’

  ‘Will you tell her about him?’ I said, knowing that she wouldn’t.

  ‘It’s just me and her, and that’s enough for now. One day, if she wants to know more, I’ll tell her. I think if I tell her too much, it will just create an unnecessary longing in her. An itch that can’t be scratched. An itch that doesn’t need to exist for her.’

  My mother wasn’t around when I reached the age I might have started asking questions, and she was right, I’d never had much of an itch to know my father. That longing had always been superseded – completely overshadowed – by my longing for her.

  ‘Look, Jeanie, last night you were saying that you wouldn’t see old bones, you were worrying what would happen to Faye if you weren’t around.’

  ‘Yeah, I want you to be there for her.’

  ‘Like a godparent?’ I said.

  ‘Just a promise,’ she said, fluttering her fingers as though a promise is an easy thing to give away.

  ‘Well, maybe her father would want to look after her,’ I said.

  ‘No, he can’t do that,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Why not? Is he dead?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t even know if he’s still where I met him. But all the upset that I tried to avoid by leaving in the first place would all come flooding back. Why save him from drowning before, if only to drown him now?’

  ‘Is he a
good man?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, and I have no doubt he would love her, but to ask him to take care of her? That would mean his wife and family taking her in. That would be like handing a chicken to a fox. No. Where Faye goes if I die will need to be a place where she at least starts on a level playing field. Better still, a place that starts with love and open arms, not folded arms and accusations.’

  I felt a twinge of curiosity. I wondered if my mother was wrong, and maybe living with my father – if she could have found him – might have been a good thing. And then, like a trailer for a movie, I saw before me an imagined life that unfolded like a roll of carpet: a life without Em and Henry, a life that led me down a divergent path where perhaps I wouldn’t meet Eddie and where I would have children, but they wouldn’t be Esther and Evie. My mouth was suddenly dry, and I wanted to stop talking about things that might change my future; a future I was happy with, apart from my mother not being there.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about him anymore,’ she said, and I was glad of it.

  I put a spoonful of sweet porridge in my mouth. It was delicious.

  ‘Well, what about Em and Henry?’ I said, planting a seed of what was to come.

  ‘What? Godparents? No! They’re too old,’ she said.

  ‘They’re safe, secure and they live nearby. They’d do a good job,’ I said, in the knowledge that I was recommending them for a task they’d already done, and succeeded at.

  ‘Oh, but they’d be boring,’ Jeanie said, pouting.

  ‘They’d be perfect.’ I felt crushed and defensive of the sweet, kind people that took me in, loved me and kept me safe.

  Jeanie just shrugged. ‘They’re nice,’ she said, and it wasn’t a compliment. I wanted to chastise her like a child who hadn’t thanked someone for a gift.

  ‘Jeanie, they care about you, both of you, I could see that when I met you at their place. Don’t be mean, please. You know they’d do anything for you.’ She shrugged again, and I dropped it.

  ‘Anyway, about you, old bones and that. It may never happen,’ I said, feeling like a fraud, knowing she would be dead fairly soon and, all of a sudden finding it hard to swallow, I let my spoon just sit in the bowl.

  ‘It will,’ she said.

  I covered my face with my hands and sighed, my breath rebounded off my palms, warm and moist.

  She concentrated on her food now, and her tea, and smiled as if to wash away the unpleasant topic of conversation.

  ‘After this, let’s go into town, okay?’

  ‘That sounds nice,’ I said. I knew I shouldn’t get so upset, it’s not as though I didn’t know what was going to happen to my mother. There were no surprises here.

  * * *

  We strolled into town; we walked and talked. It was one of the nicest times in my life, and yet I can’t tell you what was said. Isn’t it funny that I had planned to commit everything to memory during these visits to the past, and yet I couldn’t? Maybe all that mattered was that it was a lovely moment, shared with someone so special. I guess the thing is, we weren’t discussing matters of serious consequence, and so I didn’t feel the need to remember it. That’s how most of life is, I guess.

  Did you have a nice time?

  Yes.

  What happened?

  I don’t know!

  I became ultra-conscious again as we walked past shops leading into town. The contents of the shop windows were drawing my eye, making me smile and shake my head. 1970s toasters, hand whisks, vacuum cleaners with the long bag at the back, very little chrome, and lots of that avocado green, lemon yellow and baby blue. Women were wearing cream slacks with sharp creases in the front, or A-line skirts, and almost everyone seemed to have a perm, except Jeanie. I was in a living museum of my own childhood. All the things I had seen in shop windows as I grew up, all the things I had noticed day after day, all the things no one ever seemed to buy, which stayed in the window for years. Mannequins that always looked slightly dishevelled, with hair that didn’t fit, standing at jaunty angles, plastic hands on anorexic hips. I also saw the things I had always wanted, always desired, in other shops. We never had any money and I never asked for anything, not from my mother or from Em and Henry. But some objects your eyes settle on, and they don’t leave your sight line until your feet carry you too far away, and then the image travels with you in your mind’s eye, and into bed at night to stay with you there, gradually fading while you sleep until they are no longer there in the morning. Not reappearing until you pass the shop window again…

  Roller skates. Shiny, metal, with red straps that go over your shoes.

  I saw them and remembered that as a child I wanted them so badly, and vowed that if I ever got rich that is what I would buy with my money.

  I stopped and stared at the skates. My mother walked on a few paces before realising that I had fallen behind. When she stopped and turned I heard her laughing.

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ she said. ‘Faye always stops and stares at those skates; you really are like two peas in a pod.’ She came back and stood beside me at the window.

  Those were my skates. Not similar, but actual. I had that pair of skates when I was about six or seven years old and, the thing is, I realised something important in that moment as I gazed at them through the glass.

  I realised that I couldn’t remember how I got them.

  15

  The cold of the glass window pressed against my hot forehead as I stared at the skates. ‘Jeanie,’ I said, staring straight ahead into the shop. ‘Can Faye roller-skate?’

  ‘No,’ she said, and I turned to look at her. ‘She’d love to, but skates are well out of my price range.’ She shrugged. ‘But she is excellent at hula-hooping.’

  She was right, I was. I still am.

  My mother walked and talked about how she’d learned to hula, and I drifted beside her, listening, soaking her up, gathering all the jigsaw pieces of her life that she was giving me. Every piece was a clue; an important part of the whole. I walked slowly, my face raised to the sun, and sometimes it felt like my feet weren’t touching the ground, and my mother’s voice became a backdrop to my own curious mind. The question I couldn’t shake was the one about the roller skates. How could they have come into my possession when I was a child? Em and Henry wouldn’t have bought them for me, I don’t think, and anyway, I had them before I lived with Em and Henry. My mother couldn’t afford them and we had no relatives. The question meandered through my mind, detouring here and there. I would never have stolen them as a child, I was no thief, but then again… people change.

  I had an epiphany and I needed to be alone.

  ‘Do you mind,’ I said, cutting my mother off mid-sentence. ‘Sorry, do you mind if we split up for a little while? There’s a couple of things I need to do.’

  ‘Of course.’ She touched my cheek, I loved the way she did that. And she smiled like I was the only person in the whole world that mattered to her, which ironically, I was.

  Anyway, she told me she would get something for dinner, and asked if I would stay. I thought about the time difference between here and home and knew that previously twelve hours in the seventies had equated to just three in my present, so two days here might mean half a day there. At that rate, with Eddie being away for a week, my absence wouldn’t be noticed; I’d had the foresight to take a few days off work, just in case. I accepted her invitation and hoped to stay overnight. The excitement bubbled inside me, as if I had suddenly been told Christmas was rearranged for today. We agreed to meet in half an hour and when she disappeared around the corner, I backtracked to the little shop that sold the roller skates.

  * * *

  One of the things you need to know about that shop, which was called Serendipity, is that it’s a family-run store. I mean, back then all shops seemed to be like that, but this one I knew was still going, thirty years on. The lady that owned the place back in the day still owned it and, as far as I knew, still worked there a few days a week. When we visit that area, my child
ren love it because it sells all sorts of knick-knacks; treasures that little girls and boys keep for ever. Small things that can be hidden in the palm of your hand. Tiny, glazed animals that a child knows so intimately, because its details can only be seen when it’s held very, very close to your eyes.

  So when I opened the door to the shop and the little bell rang, it felt as familiar as opening my own front door. There was coolness inside like a cold drink on a hot day, and there were shelves and stacks adorned with colourful objects and large illustrated anthologies of children’s poetry and stories. The bell brought footsteps from the back of the store, and a young lady in her twenties came to the counter like sunshine in a billowing yellow blouse with a huge collar, a brown skirt and red sandals. She was tying an apron around her waist and I smiled at her as though she were an old friend. She frowned for a fraction of a second before smiling back at me; in the etiquette of smiling, people are disconcerted when someone they don’t know beams at them as though they’ve known them for years. This was a lady I knew, the owner of the shop, but younger than I’d ever known her. And what struck me is how little a person changes. As long as you can place them in context, a person is completely recognisable, whether they are seven or seventy. People who run small shops in small towns are minor celebrities and so I knew a lot about her: the man she had married, and the children they’d had, when their shop was burgled, and when they raised money for charity; all those things and more, without ever really knowing her properly, and she not knowing me at all.

  ‘Do you need any help?’ she said brightly.

  ‘I’m just looking,’ I said, and steered into a small aisle, let my fingers touch items lightly, as though I were counting them. It’s impossible not to touch things in that shop.

  ‘Let me know if you can’t find what you’re looking for,’ she called.