Death of a Unicorn

I was confused in my own reactions to this growing relationship. Of course it was a great practical convenience. My mother became far easier to cope with. She was happier, whined and wept hardly at all, slept all night, seemed less feeble, made fewer demands on my time and emotions. I had to insist on doing my share of the nursing or Fiona would have taken it all on herself. And Fiona clearly got satisfaction from the relationship, so I was glad for her.

But there was no denying that I was also jealous. At a surface level I was simply jealous of Fiona’s openly expressed fondness for my mother. I do not mean that I too wanted to be kissed at each meeting, or would have permitted it. With me she was open, friendly, interested, as she would have been with almost anyone; but for my mother she seemed to feel something particular, and I’m afraid I minded. Browning has long been my favourite poet, and the husband in My Last Duchess seemed to me, in these moods, marginally less of a monster.

At a different level I was also jealous of Fiona, of her ability to love my mother. For thirty years I have more than fulfilled my duty as a daughter. After my mother’s stroke Mark tried to persuade me to put her in a home; from this disagreement, and from the extra demands on me which resulted from keeping her at Cheadle, I date the decline of our marriage, though given Mark’s character and mine he was probably destined to turn to a Julia-figure around now—but there’s no point, in talking about what might have happened. I can fairly claim that in the world’s eyes I have been an admirable daughter—but all without love, and what is the good of that? Irrational feelings of guilt I know are the lot of many women my age; I am lucky to have so much to take my mind off them. But to my disgust I became aware of a growing impatience with Fiona’s ability to think of my mother as a worthwhile person and not, as she was in my eyes, an embarrassing and useless wreck, a monument to all my defeats in our long war, crumbling but still erect where it had always stood, in the heartland of my life. Once recognised I could control the impatience, but not get rid of it.

One evening about a fortnight after her arrival we gathered before supper. It had been a heavy but satisfactory day for me, a flood of summer visitors safely handled, a further step in the negotiations with the film company about The Gamekeeper’s Daughter, a meeting—myself, Fiona, Simon and two men from Burroughs—at which the accountants had finally seemed to realise that we were going to computerise the accounts to suit our own needs and that if they didn’t co-operate I would take the business elsewhere; and before all that, before anyone else was awake, a fulfilling couple of hours in which what had promised to be a no more than a linking scene between plot and sub-plot had, in that mysterious manner I suppose all writers are used to, become an episode of real interest with a life of its own, and with the prospect of sending unexpected currents of that life through scenes yet to come. I was tired but cheerful. An extra source of satisfaction had been the way in which Simon had coped with the accountants. Their computer man, though only a few years older than him, had started to patronise him as an amateur and Simon, for the first time ever in my presence, had, so to speak, made his true weight known. It gave me hope that he might indeed be able, as he had said, to get by on his own.

‘It’s been a good day,’ I said. ‘I thought we’d have some champagne.’

‘Any excuse, Fiona,’ said Simon. ‘It’s her Achilles heel. Good days we celebrate, and bad days we need cheering up.’

‘It happens about once a month,’ I said. ‘Even with Ronnie’s gadget. I think I’ve been fantastically abstemious.’

‘Is there another glass?’ said Fiona. ‘So I can take some to Granny?’

‘I’ve only put one bottle to chill.’

‘Just a mouthful, Aunt Mabs.’

‘Oh, all right.’

When she came back she said, ‘There’s something I wanted to ask you, Aunt Mabs. I don’t get it. I was reading one of the old account books, 1952, all about repairing the roof on the Banqueting Hall. Gee, they did things cheap those days.’

‘I was paid four pounds a week for my first job,’ I said.

‘On a joke mag,’ explained Simon.

‘No, I got ten pounds for that. This was selling lampshades for a frightful old harridan in Beauchamp Place. I haven’t thought of her for years, thank heavens. What about the roof ?’

‘Where did the money come from?’

The question ambushed me.

‘How much?’ said Terry.

‘Round a hundred and forty thousand pounds,’ said Fiona. ‘All it says in the book is “Cheque”.’

‘Christ!’ said Simon. ‘That wasn’t cheap! That was money those days! We must have sold some Canalettos.’

‘It would say in the books,’ said Fiona. ‘It doesn’t.’

‘Are you OK, Mums?’ said Simon.

‘Nose trick,’ I said. ‘Always worse with champagne. No, for God’s sake don’t slap me—I can’t stand that. I’ll be all right.’