These foolish things

There is a heartache behind every act of spite. My mother could be very spiteful. You can fill in the implication yourself. But she could also be very kind and was treasured by her close friends for her loyalty. She rang me one Sunday, early evening.

“Are you alone?”, she asked.

“I am – why do you ask?”, I replied.

“I wanted to apologise for all the heartache I have caused you.”

“Why?”

“We thought we could get away with anything then. I think I learned to think that way in Oxford. We were wrong. “

Catastrophically wrong. Naive. Stupid. But mother was genuinely contrite. For a woman who took the Wallace Simpson adage “never apologise, never explain” and turned it into a way of life, this was a terrible reckoning, a real deathbed confession.

“Why now?”

“I have been sitting here thinking.” She sounded weary, sad, drained.

“It’s alright, mummy. Don’t worry. Thank you. I forgave you a long time ago.

I do not know if at the other end of the telephone the absolution lifted her heart. I thanked her anyway. If you knew my mother, you would understand how enervating that would have been for her and if you saw her at the end, before the stroke that put her into hospital, she was that pathetic – full of pathos – character: head bowed, wringing hands, a tick of gum-baring. All traits of a tormented being. She was a pitiful sound all alone with her remorse. I could picture her in her chair. Grey, stooped, battling on when from day to day she had no company.

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Mother was always meticulous about her appearance. By now, even that pretence had dropped away. Since dad died, she lived a life from bed to electric stair to the meagre breakfast laid out the night before. Her sciatica was agonising and in my last few trips to stay in her hushed home, I could hear her wince as she ascended the stairlift. It was a hollow way to end, in pain and perpetual fear of falling. A fate shared by millions, it seems. This was the woman who had commanded and commandeered hearts. The woman who…well, who retreated into a child world of Jeremy Fisher toys and the memorabilia comfort that was uniquely her life. Whatever she was, whatever she was thinking about, she could be marvellous.

As the song goes: these foolish things remind me of you.

Swathed in cashmere, angora, mohair and alpaca. Jaeger coats. Ocelot. Hermes scarves threaded through that silver slatted ring. Calleche parfum.

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The powder compact with the diamond latticed, silver exterior. The Chinese lacquered atomiser with gold spray. Chocolate pudding. Scarlet lipstick. Tissues blotted with lip imprints where you sealed the Estee Lauder Pure Colour Envy. Brian Leslie hairdos. Shampoo and set. Terry’s Bitter Chocolate. Neopolitans.

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That pink skirt suit with brocade you wore in the photoset when you won me back.

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Mink. Ocelot. Long fingers spread and tracing out the piano keyboard across the restaurant table top impatient for service. Monogrammed handkerchiefs tucked up your sleeve. Two platinum wedding rings – one thick, one thin. Married twice and proud of it. Emeralds. Vodka and tonic. Soft, fur lined leather gloves. Handwritten letters, every day. The Kenwood mixer. Standings the grocer. Dunlop Greenflash. Your Dunlop Maxply tennis racket.

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Cookery books, especially the blue and yellow floral design soft cover book with your personal favourite recipes in it. The Box Tree for my 14th birthday and Michael Gill’s Poole Court. Linton Springs and the tramp we always saw wandering around there every summer on the way to Rosie Johnson’s place to go swimming and drink Dandelion and Burdock. Egon Ronay – required reading and always in the car. Car sweets in those tins, caked in icing sugar and stowed, ever at hand, in the glove compartment. Cordon Bleu. When I was at Oxford. Wigs. Hairbands. The quilted pink Housecoat. The orange tie die-esque playsuit. The black leather hot pants. The ankle length cotton nightie with scarlet sash.

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Those naughty photos – so you and dad. Smoked salmon. The bell you used to summon Miller, the gardener. You driving gloves. The square cake tin, yellow, half peeled-off paper depicting the brand, repurposed to ferry birthday cakes to school. Strawberry and walnut gateaux – Joyce Hartley’s recipe. Your hostess trolly. Lunch at the Red Lion in South Stainley with Granny Wilkinson and that Uriah Heepish waiter you liked who wore a ginger toupe. Avocado delice and coffee with cream in the ground floor room at the Drum and Monkey. The order taken by that feisty, rather brusque and bitter Irish bar woman.

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Allan’s of Harrogate. Brill’s of Leeds. Callard and Bowser’s orange creams. Fry’s Chocolate Cream. Austin Reed in Albion Street where you bought that all grey painting of a becalmed boat that I liked for £40, which was a small fortune. Pink wallpaper in your bedroom. The green silk watermarked wall paper in the drawing room. Schoefields, where we parked. Your painting lessons with Marcus Ford. Bridge lunches with Beryl Barnett , Silvia Hansen and Caroline Blackmore. Bolton Abbey’s hole in the wall. Winter picnics with Thermos flasks of Heinz tomato soup and chicken sandwiches. The wooden toadstool salt and pepper shakers. Green and pink floral bone china tea cups. Your record player – stereo. Beyond the Fringe. Pete and Dud. Not only but also. Sitting at one end of the sofa, feet tucked up and underneath.

Wimbledon fortnight, curtains closed. Undisturbable. The Carl Ecke mini grand piano: “I should think there are a lot of things you’ve never heard of” – your pensée sur l’escalier retort to the school enemy who said she had never heard of your make of piano. “Bovril warms like winter woolies”; second prize in the national competition for a new advertising strap line. Popping in to see Granny Wilkinson in her flat. Geraniums – a whole greenhouse full at Scarcroft. Hateful Skelfield, beloved Calder Hall. Harewood garden before it was commercial – the owls sentinels on the brick summerhouse, weather-worn and faces wearing away, and the seemingly huge waterfall that wasn’t huge at all. M&S in Harrogate and your regional pride: “it’s one of their flagships where they try out new things”. Watching classical music concerts in BBC2. And classic films like My Fair Lady and Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner. Laughing at Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Beyond The Fringe, Fawlty Towers, The Good Life and Dad’s Army.

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Grandways, the first supermarket. Trying the new diner at Wetherby Turnpike – Wimpy burgers, new and excitingly American in 1971. Horton & Hollander’s toy shop in Wetherby. The Wetherby library for the latest Elizabeth Jane Howard. Saddle soap. Bird tables and gentle garden nature – though you were sometimes a hawk and liked to watch the red Kites in the tall trees at Harewood. Mrs. Mulrooney’s sweet shop in Linton…or was it Collingham? Hilda’s sweet shop in Collingham…or was it Linton? The playground at Valley Gardens in Harrogate with the snake headed benches. The duck ponds at Canal Gardens in Leeds and the helter-skelter in Roundhay Park. Walks around the little lake. Open prawn sandwiches -– so Scandinavian and modern – upstairs at Austin Reed’s in Albion Street, Leeds. Betty’s in Ilkley. Uncle Bill Shackleton’s house – the rotund (one legged?) uncle you were so fond of as a girl. I suspect he spoiled you. The Boat Race – a calendar fixture and rooting for your beloved Oxford. John Schlesinger, the boyfriend that nearly was. Bright colours, fashionable, femme fatale. Peaseholm Park in Scarborough. Trips to Kirby Misperton’s Flamingo Park to see ‘Cuddles’ the killer whale. Your visits to Aysgarth and walking along the road between the grassy bank where we played British Bulldogs and the Masters’ accommodation house. The kitchen at Scarcroft with the walk in larder, drying rack pulleyed down from the ceiling.Your Kenwood mixer. The oven you hated. Your walk in wardrobe, where Father Christmas hid his bounty. Jewellery. The Barr emeralds. Aunty Claire. The frost on your relationship with your sister Margaret, who was prim and inhibited and married to that great career army bore, Peter. The hugs and your tears when we departed to return to London. Yours and dad’s favourite seats by the fire in the bar at the Sportsman’s Arms. Ramsgill. Where we took our leave and left you to run away on the burbling brook as we trudged back to live on without you.

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You went gentle into that good night. You wanted to go, although you hesitated at the last because you were scared, I suspect. Now you are gone and we know when you’re around because playing in the background is ‘The way you look tonight’. In Rotoroa, New Zealand, in that utterly charming tea room in the old Spanish Baths that you and dad would have loved, I asked the pianist to play that tune in your memory. It was our moment together after you’d gone. Together with the grand daughter you never met but who you would have absolutely loved. And she, you.

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As Ella Fitzgerald put it.

A cigarette that bears a lipstick’s traces
An airline ticket to romantic places
And still my heart has wings
These foolish things remind me of you.
A tinkling piano in the next apartment
Those stumblin’words that told you what my heart meant
A fairground’s painted swings
These foolish things
Remind me of you.
You came,
You saw,
You conquered me
When you did that to me
I knew somehow this had to be
The winds of march that made my heart a dancer
A telephone that rings but who’s to answer
Oh, how the ghost of you clings
These foolish things
Remind me of you
First daffodils
And long excited cables
And candle lights
A little corner table
And still my heart has wings
These foolish things remind me of you
The park at evening
When the bell has sounded
The pier in France
With all the gulls around it
The beauty that is spring
These foolish things
Remind me of you
How strange,
How sweet,
To find you still, these things are dear to me
They seem to bring you near to me
The sigh of midnight trains
At empty stations
Silk stockings thrown aside
Dance invitations
Oh how the ghost of you clings
These foolish things
Remind me of you
Gardenia perfume
Lingering on a pillow
Wild strawberries
Only seven francs a kilo
And still my heart has wings,
These foolish things,
Remind me of you
The smile of garbo
And the scent of roses
The waiters whistling
As the last bar closes
The song that Crosby sings
These foolish things
Remind me of you
How strange
How sweet
To find you still
These things are dear to me
They seem to bring you near to me
The scent of smouldering leaves
The wail of steamers
Two lovers on the street
Who walk like dreamers
Oh how the ghost of you clings
These foolish things
Remind me of you.

Love you, Mummy x

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