The Bad Mother's Handbook Read online

  All that sacrifice.

  ‘Well, you said it.’

  ‘Well, then. That makes two of us, doesn’t it?’

  The words flew out and collided in midair. There was a moment of deafening silence.

  Then Charlotte threw her book against the wall and it dropped down on top of her pot of pens, scattering them across the desk. At the same moment Nan walked in, wide-eyed with fear. She pushed past me and tottered over to the bed.

  ‘Eeh, love,’ she said, putting her hand on Charlotte’s shoulder.

  Rage boiled up inside me at the gesture. Just who should be getting the sympathy here?

  ‘Get OFF her!’ I shouted, and they both flinched but stayed where they were. ‘YOU,’ I barked at Nan, ‘it’s YOUR fault, all this. We wouldn’t be in this mess if it wasn’t for you. Get out and leave us to it.’

  They moved closer together and Nan lowered herself down on the edge of the bed. She put her arm round Charlotte’s bulk.

  ‘Talk sense, Karen,’ Nan muttered.

  I thought I was going to hit her.

  ‘Talk sense? Talk sense? That’s the pot calling the bloody kettle, isn’t it? There’s no one comes out with as much rubbish as you, and it’s me who has to put up with it on a daily basis, it’s a wonder I’m not off my head.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re not? Anyway it’s not Nan’s fault, Mum. Whatever else, it’s nothing to do with her.’ Charlotte’s face looked small under her fringe, but very fierce.

  ‘Oh, isn’t it? Isn’t it? Well, I’ll tell you something you don’t know, lady.’

  ‘Karen,’ said Nan faintly.

  I didn’t even look at her.

  ‘For a start, it was Nan who made me keep you. Just hang on, she told me. Have the baby, and then if you’re still not suited, put it up for adoption, there’s plenty of women who’d jump at the chance. Of course when I’d had you she knew I’d never be able to give you up. She said she’d look after you—’

  ‘She did!’

  ‘Only some of the time. And that’s not the point. She changed my mind, ruined my life. I had such plans . . .’

  ‘Oh,’ said Charlotte tartly, ‘put another record on. Come on, Mum, we all know it was you who fucked up. You can’t blame it on anyone else. Not even Dad.’

  ‘A lot you know. You’re not even eighteen. You wait till you get to my age and the best years of your life are behind you and you know there’s no redeeming them, see how you feel then about decisions that got made for you.’ It was true what they said about a red mist coming down in front of your eyes. There was a buzzing sound too, and my heart was leaping with extra surges of boiling-hot blood. I stepped forward shakily and pointed down at Nan. ‘She isn’t even my real mother.’

  Nan turned her face into Charlotte’s shoulder and I waited for the thunderclap. She just stared back, cool as you like.

  ‘Did you hear what I said? I’m adopted. Nan isn’t my mother.’

  ‘Well,’ said Charlotte, ‘same difference. She brought you up, didn’t she? What’s that make her, then?’ She was breathing fast and clinging on to Nan, who had her eyes shut. ‘At least she wanted you, which is more than I can say for my mother. From where I’m standing it looks like you got a pretty good deal. Now, would you get out of my room, please; I’m supposed to be watching my blood pressure.’

  *

  To my amazement Mum turned on her heel and swept out. I’d thought she was going to hit me at one point, or have a heart attack. Her cheeks had gone really pink and her eyes all stary. My own heart was pounding in my chest and my throat was dry.

  After a minute Nan and I untangled ourselves. She fished a hanky from her sleeve, wiped her eyes and blew her nose. Then she began rooting in her cardigan pockets.

  ‘Have a Mintoe,’ she said, offering one up in a shaking hand. ‘She dun’t mean it. She loves you. That’s why she could never give you up.’ She wrestled with the cellophane wrapper.

  ‘I don’t care,’ I said, and at that moment it was true. My insides were churning but my head was clear. I gripped the Mintoe in triumph. ‘Oh, Nan. I can’t believe I said all those things to her face, they’ve wanted saying for so long. It feels brilliant. How did I manage it? It was like I was possessed.’

  Nan turned to me and smacked her minty lips. Her bottom dentures jumped forward suddenly and she popped them back in with her index finger. ‘Pardon,’ she said. We both began to giggle with nerves.

  Then the door flung open and Mum was there again.

  ‘How dare you laugh at a time like this!’ she shouted. She held up a photo frame in front of her face. It was the one she keeps on her dressing table; me on a stretch of mud at Morecambe in a white sun-hat and knickers, hair blowing across my face. ‘Look! You were five when this was taken and just look at you! Picture of innocence! And it turns out in the end you haven’t the sense you were born with. All those times I’ve warned you!’

  Nan and I sat and watched as she tossed the photo onto the desk where it sent more pens clattering off and knocked over my clay elephant I’d made in Year 7.

  ‘Bloody hell, Mum. You’ve broken its trunk off.’

  ‘You’re having an abortion.’

  I could have said, ‘Yeah actually, I am, in two days’ time. You can come along and cheer if you like.’ But at that very moment two things happened. Nan drew in her breath and put her hand over my bump; and I felt the baby move.

  It wasn’t the first time, I realized now; there’d been flutterings before, like when a nerve twitches, only deep inside. But I hadn’t clocked what they were, until this moment.

  ‘You’re having an abortion,’ Mum said again.

  If it had been a request; if she’d sat down and held me like Nan was doing; if we hadn’t said those awful things to each other five minutes ago. But Fate gets decided on littler things than that every day.

  ‘You’re wrong, Mum.’ Flutter flutter. ‘I’m keeping this baby.’

  Nan’s arms tightened around me.

  ‘Don’t talk soft. You’re not fit.’ Mum leaned forward and spat the words at me. And if I hadn’t decided by then, that would have swung me.

  ‘Well, I’m a damn sight fitter than you. At least I won’t make this baby feel guilty all its life,’ flutter flutter, ‘at least I won’t try and make it Responsible for my own shortcomings. If you didn’t want me, eighteen years ago, that’s fine. But I’m not going to do to this baby what you did to me. Poor bugger. It deserves a better chance than I had.’

  Can foetuses clap? I was sure I could feel a round of applause down in the left side of my pelvis. Washed in adrenaline, the thing was going berserk.

  Mum’s face had gone that nasty colour again and her legs were trembling.

  ‘You’ll change your mind. Or I’ll never speak to you again.’

  ‘There’s worse things than babies,’ said Nan. ‘They’re nice, babies are.’

  ‘Damn you both,’ said Mum.

  *

  THERE’S worse things than babies, dear God in heaven there are.

  It was all drinkin’ i’ th’ owden days, an’ feights all t’ time. The children used come runnin’ across the fields shoutin’, ‘Harry Carter’s feightin’ again,’ an’ we’d all go an’ watch. He lived at t’ top o’ t’ brow, an’ he were allus after the women even though he was married. His little lads would be pushin’ through t’ crowds an’ shoutin’, ‘Don’t feight, Daddy,’ but he never took any notice. He was forever askin’ Herbert Harrison’s wife for t’ go wi’ him, an’ she’d allus tell her husband on him, it were like a game. They just wanted an excuse. One time I was stood wi’ a big crowd watchin’ them stagger about the street and Dr Liptrot came up alongside me. He didn’t see me, though, he were glued to th’ action. Finally Herbert Harrison knocked Harry Carter down, then he turned an’ walked off. Harry got up, rubbed his chin an’ stumbled towards us. I ducked away, but as he drew level Dr Liptrot patted him on the shoulder and said, ‘Now, then, let that be a lesson. Feightin’ dogs come l
impin’ whoam.’ Harry stopped for a second, looked at the doctor, then hit him so hard he knocked out both his front top teeth.

  It weren’t just the men who drank, neither. My grandmother Florrie used to have a big oak sideboard with a long dark patch on the top. Once she caught me an’ Jimmy playin’ wi’ matches outside on the flags and she dragged us in and pushed us reight up again’ the drawers of this sideboard. ‘Do you know what made that mark?’ she said. I shook my head; I’d only have been about seven and she could be very fierce. ‘A neighbour set herself afire with an oil lamp,’ she told us. ‘She were dead drunk, an’ she came running out into t’ yard and staggered in here, all i’ flames. She laid her arm along this sideboard, an that’s why there’s a mark.’ She put her face close to ours. ‘So think on.’ ‘Did she die?’ Jimmy asked. ‘Of course she did,’ said my grandmother, and she clipped us both hard round the ear.

  I never saw it happen myself, but as soon as I knew the story it was in every dream I had for months. Jimmy never said owt, but I know he dreamt it too.

  There was a lot of drunkenness in them days. My grandfather was allus on t’ spree, my mother said. He used to knock his beer ovver and lap it up off table top like a dog, he were terrible. And when he’d spent up he’d go and stand outside the pub and wait for people to treat him, he had no shame. Even as a little girl my mother was sent wi’ a jug to t’ Waggon an’ Horses for him, when he was too idle to get his own ale.

  His friends laughed an’ called him a ‘character’, but Florrie had another word for it. At his funeral do, when they’d had a bit, some of ’em were singin’;

  ‘Me father was an ’ero

  ’Is brav’ry med me blush

  They were givin’ free beer up at Bogle

  An’ me father got killed i’ t’ crush.’

  My mother said it was disgustin’, an’ they were all tarred wi’ t’ same brush.

  Then after, two of his mates from t’ colliery were tellin’ tales about him, how he’d gone to t’ pictures once to see a Charlie Chaplin. He’d not been gone above an hour an’ he was back in t’ pub, an’ they said, ‘What’s up, Peter, were it not a good show?’ An’ he said, ‘They turned all t’ lights out, so I got up an’ came whoam.’ They were all two-double laughin’.

  ‘Aye,’ said another man, ‘an’ there were a time when we went to see the Minstrels at Southport, an’ a chap came on and sang “Danny Boy” an’ he were really good, so all th’ audience started shouting, “Encore! Encore!”. An’ Peter called out at t’ top of his voice, “Never mind bloody Encore, let bloody man sing again!” ’

  Someone else said they remembered Peter Marsh coming out of the polling booth once, very pleased because he’d said to himself, ‘Well I’m not voting for ’IM’ – an’ put a great big cross next to t’ candidate’s name. Was he soft i’ th’ head, or was it just the drink? No one seemed to care, it didn’t matter, ’cause he was such a Character.

  Florrie wasn’t laughing, though. She had twenty-two years of his meanness wi’ money and his not bothering about the babies she’d lost. She never married again; I think she’d had enough of men. So she lived with her daughter Polly, and then me when I came along, and it became my dad who had us all on a piece of string wi’ his antics.

  There were times as Jimmy hated his father, hated his comings and goings and the fact he would never marry our mother. ‘He loves you, in his own way,’ Mam used say. ‘He gave you his name.’ ‘ That just meks it worse!’ said Jimmy. She had no answer to that, ’cause it was true. I think she felt it was her fault she couldn’t keep him.

  So as he got older Jimmy started to go wanderin’, all ovver t’ fields an’ down by t’ canal. He’d walk an’ walk, as if he were lookin’ for summat. An’ he ran errands for people an’ made a bit o’ money that way. He used to see a lot of Mrs Crooks at Hayfield House; she was a widow and had never had children of her own. ‘I’ll pay thee Friday,’ she’d say to him, an’ she allus did. Then one day, he should have been at school, Harry Poxon saw him at t’ side of t’ canal, leanin’ ovver wi’ a stick. ‘Tha’ll faw in,’ he said. That were t’ last time he were seen alive. They were five days wi’ a grapplin’ hook before they found him, under t’ bridge at Ambley. Mrs Crooks sent forget-me-nots for his coffin and all the school lined up an’ sang ‘There’s a Friend for Little Children’.

  He were only ten when he died.

  *

  THREE O’CLOCK in the morning and there’s somebody standing at the bedroom door.

  ‘I can’t sleep. The baby’s kicking.’

  ‘Go back to bed, Charlotte,’ I mumble, still only half out of a dream.

  But it isn’t Charlotte, it’s Nan.

  Chapter Seven

  All night I’d been dreaming I was drowning; now I’d wakened to the image of the baby lying face up, motionless, under water, and a terrible chill of knowing it was somehow my fault.

  Then as my head cleared I thought about how its body was actually floating inside me now, this very minute, hair flowing round its huge head, and how everything would all gush out—

  I couldn’t face school. I lay in bed till eleven staring at the ceiling.

  ‘I’ll tell them I’ve had flu,’ I said to Mum when I finally made it downstairs.

  ‘Say what you damn well please,’ she replied.

  So I walked out through the front door, down Brown Moss Road, Gunners Lane and out onto the Wigan road. I was going to walk until I dropped off the edge of the world.

  By the Cock Inn I turned right and started down the public footpath to Ambley, past the golf course and Hayfield House behind its screen of trees. I didn’t know where I was going, didn’t care. Rooks cawed overhead and sparrows flirted in the dust on the rutted track. Elderflower and dog roses were still thick among the hedgerows; you could smell the fertility in the warm air.

  I turned off the track, scrambled down the canal bank and began to make my way along the towpath. A barge chugged past, castles and roses round the door, Jack Russell perched on the roof. The middle-aged woman steering smiled and nodded. Now there was an idea; I could always go and live on a boat, sail off up the Manchester Ship Canal and start a new life. A blackbird ran across my path chuck-chucking, and the baby fluttered. You daft tart, I told myself. That’s exactly why you’re in this mess now, starting a New Life.

  As I drew level with the Fly and Tackle I realized I was thirsty. I fished in my pocket to see if I had any money and extracted £3.30 in loose change. I climbed up the worn stone steps onto road level, checked for traffic and crossed over.

  After the brightness outside, the interior of the pub was dark and I had to blink a few times before I could get my bearings. I’d passed the place enough times on the bus, but I’d not been in before; it was a bit of an old gimmers’ place, popular for Sunday lunches and real ale. Squinting, I made out movement behind the bar. A fat bald man was drying glasses and singing ‘Born in the USA’ over the jukebox. There were sweat stains under the armpits of his shirt.

  ‘Have you got a telephone?’ I asked, hovering by the door.

  He pointed to an annexe by the ladies’ and carried on being Bruce.

  Inside the booth I checked my watch and dialled Daniel’s mobile number. ‘Please have it switched on,’ I prayed. There was a click.

  ‘Hell-o.’

  ‘Daniel! It’s me! Hey! – What’s that moaning sound?’

  ‘Hey. Just a minute, I’ll move somewhere a bit quieter. That’s better. They’re doing some sort of charity karaoke at one end of the common room. Just what you need after a hard morning’s physics, some boil-ridden Year 10 apeing Noel Gallagher at top volume. Are you all right? I saw you weren’t in registration this morning—’

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine, just not feeling very schooly today. Look, have you got any frees this afternoon?’

  ‘Surely you mean Study Periods? Actually I have one genuine, and one by default because Mr Chisnall’s away at a conference so he’s set us work to do in the libra
ry. I do hope you’re not going to suggest bunking off.’

  ‘Too right I am. Can you get away at all?’

  ‘What, now?’

  ‘Yes, please. It’s a bit of a crisis. Another one. Sorry.’

  ‘No problem, I’m on my way. Are you at home?’

  ‘God, no. Do you know the Fly and Tackle?’

  ‘At Ambley? We went there two Sundays ago for my mum’s birthday. Nice line in pies, dire jukebox. OK, I’ll be with you in . . . twenty minutes. Don’t do anything foolish.’

  He rang off. I got two halves of cider and went outside to wait.

  I sat at one of the wooden tables and watched the glinting cars hunching over the little stone bridge, and the water sliding under it. The banks were lush and the trees bent low with green fruits. Two swans glided past sending a V of ripples behind them that broke the reflection of a perfect sky. If only I’d had a camera. The scene was idyllic, something like the picture on the front of Nan’s old toffee tin she uses for storing buttons. I’d come back here, I promised myself, and take a picture of this place; maybe even do a painting, and give it to Nan. She’d like that.

  At last Daniel’s shiny red Ka, last term’s present for passing his driving test, bobbed over the bridge and disappeared into the car park. Thirty seconds later he emerged through the back door into the beer garden, blinking. If only he’d do something about his hair, I thought meanly.

  ‘There’s a man in there auditioning for Stars in their Eyes,’ he said lifting his long legs over the bench and laying his jacket down carefully.

  ‘I know. Nuts in their Head, more like. They’d have to strap him into some corset to get him to look like Bruce Springsteen. And put a paper bag over his face. Here.’ I slid his glass over.

  ‘Cheers.’ He took a long drink. ‘Now, this crisis. You’ve not changed your mind again?’

  ‘God, no. I still want the baby.’