Chapter 76

Chapter 76

Emma

Jardinera

The next day, Emma is sitting in the small hotel library when Betty walks in.

‘Come and join me,' Emma says. ‘Mum's coming to see me before she heads back to the South of France.'

Emma did eventually manage to get hold of her mother on the phone, and she was adamant that there was no other information on her husband's family. All she would say was that her husband's father came from a distinguished family of wine growers.

So that was it– a dead end. Still, she can't help feeling there's something her mother isn't telling her.

Betty breaks in on her thoughts. ‘Don't you want to see her on your own?'

‘Not really. In fact, definitely not,' Emma says, pulling out a chair. ‘I used to think I had something I needed to say to her. A conversation that would– oh, not make things good between us– but resolve some things, particularly to do with Dad.'

‘But now?' Betty prompts.

‘There is no conversation.'

‘No conversation that would make it right, you mean?'

‘No, it's simpler than that. My mother and I have no conversation. We don't connect in any way I can think of. You might think we'd share a love of my father, but thinking about it, I'm not sure she even liked him.' She pauses. ‘What did you think of her when you met her?'

‘Well, I wouldn't say I actually met her,' Betty says, evasively.

Emma looks at her in surprise. ‘But you must have seen her when she came to the hospital?'

‘Oh, I don't know… I mean, it was very brief…'

‘But surely you spoke to her?'

‘I'm not sure she really knew who I was or how I fitted in… I think, to start with, she thought I was a hospital cleaner.'

Emma looks horrified.

But Betty starts to laugh. ‘I think your mum would get on well with my sister.'

Before Emma can answer, the staccato tap of her mother's heels announces her arrival. She pauses in the doorway– an elegant woman of indeterminate age: sleek, ash bob, precision cut; oval face with the perfect coral mouth; alabaster ankles in nude heels; a charcoal linen skirt with no hint of a crease; an immaculate cream silk shirt. She pulls large sunglasses down to look around the room, pauses a few seconds longer, confident that the room will now be looking back at her.

Then she moves across to their table.

Emma notices that her mother's face has a new, tighter look and a peerless sheen, and she fleetingly wonders if Mathias is a surgeon.

‘Ah, there you are, Emma.' She frowns at her daughter, although her face does not move. ‘I must say you're looking better than in that horrible hospital– although why you decided to come to Paris in August I'll never understand.' She air-kisses Emma and sits down. She ignores Betty. ‘Now, I can't be too long as I have a taxi booked and I still have some shopping to do.'

‘How long are you going to be away?' Emma asks.

Her mother looks sideways at her, distracted. ‘Really, Emma, cerise pink, with that hair. If you can't get it right, at least keep it simp—'

‘Cheerful?' Emma interrupts.

Her mother looks confused. ‘No, I was going to say—'

But again Emma interrupts. ‘So, you're getting the train South this afternoon?'

‘What? Well, yes.' Then, still frowning at Emma's cerise sundress, her mother embarks on a long description of who she will be staying with, where they might go next and who will be there if they do. The names are all new to Emma, but she is barely listening.

As her mother talks and the waiter brings their coffees, she crosses her legs, the soft folds of her new dress settling around her. She can just see the tips of her new lime-green pumps peeping at her from under the table edge.

‘Did you like Will?' Emma asks suddenly. The question has come to her from nowhere, and she sees Betty look up from her coffee in surprise.

‘I beg your pardon?' her mother says, startled.

Emma waits.

‘Well, yes of course I did. I thought he was very good for you. It's not every man… Yes, you were lucky to have him.'

Emma steps over the insult (in her new colourful shoes). ‘It's just you never talk about him or ask about him.'

Her mother looks confused. ‘Well … it's hardly appropriate… I mean, he's dead.'

There is a long silence. Emma thinks of all the things she has wanted to say over the past months: You didn't even come to his funeral; Of course I need to talk about him; What sort of mother are you?

The silence stretches on. Emma can see Betty sitting back as far as she can in her chair.

She draws a breath and hears herself ask a different question. ‘What about Dad– did you like Dad?'

‘Where is all this coming from, Emma? It is hardly the time or place.'

‘But did you like him?' she persists.

Emma's mother glances at Betty and then looks quickly away. ‘That was between me and your father. We were married for over thirty years.'

‘But he was a lovely man, and you never seemed to like him. I don't understand that.' It is almost as if she is talking to herself. She is vaguely surprised that, for once, she is saying the words in her head out loud.

‘That's private– it has nothing to do with you.'

‘I do get that,' Emma says thoughtfully, ‘but when I look back, I can't work out why you two stayed together.'

‘Well, it's what you did in our family.'

‘And I can't understand,' Emma continues, in the same thoughtful tone, ‘why you ever got together in the first place.'

There is a ‘crack' as Emma's mother puts her espresso cup down hard on the marble tabletop, and Emma knows she has succeeded in making her mother angry. She waits for the familiar feeling of dread to flood her, but nothing happens. She still feels remarkably calm.

She glances at Betty, who is watching her with a look of intense concentration on her face.

Her mother draws in a sharp breath, and as she starts to speak, Emma realises that her mother wants to hurt her. She is surprised she hasn't realised and recognised this before. ‘You think you knew your father– well, you didn't. Oh yes, he was good-looking all right– the strong, silent type, I thought.' She gives a brittle laugh. ‘But underneath it all he was a common little man.' Emma's mother is like an angry wasp– two sharp bits of colour stand out on her cheeks. ‘I made him what he was– he had a good head for figures, but he had no idea how to get on. I didn't have the choices you had, so I made the best of what I did have and I made the best of him.'

‘I knew,' was all Emma says.

‘Knew what?' her mother asks angrily.

‘That you didn't like him,' she replies.

Her mother shoots her a look of dislike, disappointment and something else.

And then Emma sees it. How could she not have recognised it before? Her mother is jealous of her.

And with that blinding insight, she sees what makes her mother so very angry– furious in fact. Her mother cannot understand how Emma's success– and she was successful in her way: in her academic studies, her languages, her career and in her marriage– how all that could have come to someone so lacking in the attributes her mother prizes: looks, figure, poise and social standing.

Emma laughs, and her mother just stares at her.

‘What the hell is so funny?' she hisses.

‘I was just thinking you got the daughter you deserved.'

But maybe , she thinks sadly, I didn't get the mother I deserved.

Her mother's voice cuts in. She hasn't finished. ‘You think your father was so bloody marvellous. His parents sent him to a good school to help him try and fit in, but his father was just an ignorant peasant. There you go with your family tree, digging into the past. But you won't like what you find there, I can tell you. I said his father came from a family of wine growers, but I lied . They weren't even farmers. Your father came from a long line of jobbing gardeners. That's why I hated him working in the garden so much. But he just wouldn't let it go– he had to be grubbing around in the mud. It's a shame you didn't take after my side of the family more.'

Emma watches her mother struggle to try and gain control of herself. How could she possibly think that being like her father would be a bad thing? She hears the creaking in her mother's voice, a voice that once screamed pure and high, and she realises her mother is losing her furious battle with age. How much energy has she wasted on such a one-sided war– the creams, dyes, surgery and the stream of men? What a total waste.

She wonders how she was ever frightened of this sad woman.

‘I haven't got time for this!' her mother states, suddenly rising. ‘And don't think for a moment that I will want you at the chateau for my birthday. Quite frankly,' she says, sweeping a look over Emma, ‘you wouldn't fit in.'

Emma almost reminds her mother that it will, in fact, be her sixty-eighth birthday, and that this is very close to seventy, but she finds she has lost all urge to score points over this woman. She sits staring after her as the angry clack of her heels disappears into the distance.

Then she turns and smiles radiantly at Betty.

‘I'm a gardener,' she says. And the word comes to her in Spanish too: jardinera .

It feels as though a scientific equation she has been struggling with has finally balanced. A new connection– the right connection– has been made. If they were a family of poor gardeners, of course they wouldn't have had photos. So that was it. She isn't related to Violet Jessop, but– Emma smiles at the thought– she is descended from a long line of gardeners. Family following family.

Is it enough? Not to be a descendent of a stewardess on the Titanic but one in a long line of gardeners?

Yes, Emma decides; it undoubtedly is.

Betty lets a long breath out and starts to laugh. ‘So much for not talking to your mother.'

‘Would you like to go to Seville?' Emma asks.

As Betty hesitates, Emma knows this last journey is one she will be making on her own. It is time for Betty to go home to Les.