Death of a Unicorn

Having determined not to day-dream, inevitably I began. I was actually on my feet, standing by the window, running my fingertips vaguely down the bobbly old wallpaper and thinking about the room in Dolphin Square where I began my real writing, when I heard a faint but definite movement from the corridor. I stood still. At first I thought it was the East Wing Ghost. You never see him. He just moves around, muttering in what we think is Old Dutch, and opening and closing doors. There is something comic about him. I mean this literally. Strangers who have chanced on him have never been frightened but have often mentioned a sudden impulse to laugh. What was he doing over here? And comedy was far from what I felt at the sound. Footsteps and a slithering, trailing whisper.

I crossed the room and opened the door slowly.

My mother was shuffling towards me. She had contrived to get one arm into her dressing-gown and then had given up, so that it was trailing along behind her. As usual since her stroke her head was tilted sideways, but her mouth was not hanging open. She held in front of her, as though it was the purpose of her visit, one of the small towels we use for wiping the dribbles from her face. I was appalled to see her. How on earth had she managed the stairs? Was she going to start wandering round the house at odd hours? She might have slipped and broken her neck. Oh, but if only she had!

‘Mummy, darling,’ I said in the calm, amused voice I have trained myself to use, ‘what are you up to? It’s not breakfast for an hour yet.’

She looked at me with her old sharp arrogance, but with no apparent recognition, and came shambling on. I moved to meet her, intending to turn her gently in her tracks and lead her back to bed, but she tugged her arm determinedly free of my grip and pushed on into the room. I dare say I could have had my way with a struggle, though she is still surprisingly strong—the apparent feebleness of her movements is misleading, the result, according to Dr Jackson, of lack of confidence in her own motor control. I followed her in, mysteriously relieved to have a tangible reason for not being able to do my work.

‘I just came up to make sure you were all right, Mabs, darling,’ she said.

It was her old voice, perfectly clear, but slowed. She had not spoken to me but to the room. Now she faltered, apparently perceiving that it was empty. She shuffled to my desk, pushed at the chair, patted my typewriter. Being electric it responded by printing a few meaningless letters. She nodded approvingly, then turned and looked at me.

‘Where is . . . ?’ she began.

Her eyes dulled. Her mouth dragged open.

‘Urrh? . . . Urrh?’ she mumbled.

It was the same question. Where was Mabs? Where was the child she had borne and trained, and fought for, to take Cheadle over and keep it going, and to bear and train and fight for another child to do the same in its turn?

I guessed what had happened. Long ago, when I had first come back to Cheadle to live, and get ready to take up the responsibilities of my inheritance, my mother had deeply resented the two early-morning hours in which I lived a life beyond her grasp. Her attack had not of course been direct, but had consisted of excuses for interruptions, getting up earlier than she ever used to, for instance, and losing some essential article of clothing and then coming up to try and make me help her find it. My first permanent victory over her had been to make her stop, to keep my two hours mine, untouchable:

Over the years her attitude changed, partly because like many strong-willed people she was capable of thinking her defeats into victories, of altering the past so that what had happened became what she had decided would happen; partly also because she began to realise how my books were contributing to Cheadle; also because she read and enjoyed them, though she can hardly have read a book before in her life. (Mark used to say that the real reason for my success in my genre is that I have all the time been unconsciously striving to win her affection and approval. This may be true. I hope there is more to it than that.) Over the years too she must have grown used to the sound of my typewriter, as regular as the birds’ dawn chorus. Her room is not directly below my writing room, but only the opposite side of the corridor on the floor below, and the machine is ‘silent’, not silent. She may never have heard it more than subliminally, but this morning she must have missed it. The erratic connections of her brain had functioned after their fashion—indeed the momentary clarity of her speech showed that something remarkable of that kind must have happened. She had come to see why the noise was not there. What was wrong? Where was Mabs, her Mabs? Once, almost, Mabs had escaped, ceased to be hers. Had it happened again? Was she going to have to track her down, bring her home, all over again?