Once We Were Mothers Read online

GWEN: Really?

  ALI: Well, she thought she was by herself. Still does. And that’s what counts. I was jumping in and out of hedges with a hat pulled down over my nose. I don’t know how MI5 do it – I’m covered in scratches. But she looked left she looked right, she was just brilliant. And she’s so pleased with herself.

  GWEN: It means you’ll have more time.

  ALI: I suppose so.

  GWEN: I’m going to have to do something about those carers. One of them kicked out at me today.

  ALI: Kicked you? But that’s dreadful!

  GWEN: They’re like that. But when you’re on your own, you’re vulnerable.

  ALI: Where did she kick you?

  GWEN: As she was passing.

  ALI: No, where on your body? On your leg?

  GWEN: It doesn’t matter.

  ALI: Yes it does, show me. If she kicked you then I must report her. Have you got a bruise?

  GWEN: Of course not.

  ALI: I’m sorry? If she kicked you then…

  GWEN: I was speaking metaphorically.

  ALI: She kicked you metaphorically?

  GWEN: Lashed out at me. You don’t know what it’s like. You wait till you’re old.

  ALI: You can’t say things like that.

  GWEN: Look who’s here!

  FLORA enters.

  ALI: Saved by the bell. I don’t think so. You can’t slander people like that.

  GWEN: Flora, what’ve you been up to?

  FLORA: Reading. Inside Soaps. It’s my favourite.

  ALI: Mum. I’m serious. Flora could you put the kettle on, I just need to get something straight with your Gran.

  GWEN: So, you walked to the day centre.

  FLORA: Yes, all by myself I did.

  GWEN: Well, sort of.

  FLORA: No, I did it.

  GWEN: That’s not what a little bird told me.

  ALI: Stop it.

  FLORA: I did. You’re wrong.

  GWEN: No I’m not. Your mother was watching you all the way.

  FLORA looks at ALI disappointed.

  ALI: (To GWEN.) How could you? (To FLORA.) Yeah I watched you. But you still did it. No mistakes. All right. I’m sorry. I know I’ve got to let you go, just like any other teenager, but it’s hard.

  FLORA: Go where?

  ALI: Out into the big wide world.

  FLORA: Don’t worry Mum. I want to stay with you for ever. Can I phone Rachel now?

  FLORA leaves. ALI turns to GWEN.

  ALI: Don’t you ever do that again.

  GWEN: You’re the one insisting on the truth.

  ALI: You can do your worst on me, but not Flora.

  GWEN: I don’t know what you mean. Why would I want to hurt poor Flora.

  ALI: She’s not poor Flora.

  GWEN: Well, whatever you say. I haven’t got the strength to argue with you Alison, not any more.

  ALI: And the galling thing was, she really was ill. She wasn’t faking it this time. I’d tried to tell Flora her Gran was ill but it wasn’t easy.

  FLORA enters and sits with them.

  GWEN: I wish we had a better relationship, as mother and daughter.

  ALI: Me too.

  GWEN: You’ve been very brave, Alison, coping with all this. I know how disappointing it is, but it’s a mother’s role to accept what she’s given.

  FLORA: Are you dying?

  GWEN: I’m a sick woman.

  FLORA: What’ve you got?

  GWEN: Innards.

  FLORA: Oh. When are you going to die?

  GWEN: Not for a while yet. I hope.

  FLORA: Do I have to die too?

  ALI: We all do. One day.

  FLORA: Which one?

  ALI: I don’t know.

  FLORA: But how will I know what to do?

  ALI: Darling, don’t get yourself all worked up.

  FLORA: But I won’t know how to do it!

  ALI: You learned traffic training didn’t you? You didn’t know that this time last month.

  FLORA: You were there.

  ALI: Only the first time.

  FLORA: I do it by myself now.

  ALI: Yes. You do it fine.

  FLORA: I do.

  ALI: Yes.

  FLORA: I do it fine. Anyway I fancy Jason.

  GWEN: What?

  ALI: From the centre?

  FLORA smiles happily.

  FLORA: He’s got biiiiig hands. I got to ring Rachel.

  FLORA moves to the side of the stage and phones.

  GWEN: Do you know this boy?

  ALI: Jason’s too large to be a boy.

  GWEN: Large?

  ALI: He’s built like a house. Well, I don’t know about in the carrot department, obviously, but the rest of him – massive.

  Screams and shrieks of laughter from FLORA on the phone.

  FLORA: (On phone.) No, you didn’t! What did he say? Rachel!

  ALI: And listening to her I realised suddenly that she was growing up. At last. It had taken her so long that I’d missed the cues. There she was giggling on the phone to her friends for hours, spending her Saturdays at HMV, teasing her father for being old fashioned, fancying a bloke with big hands. A proper teenage girl. She hadn’t watched Pinocchio for months. And that was when I remembered what she said to me when we brought her home from that last operation, looking so disappointed.

  FLORA: I’m not a real girl.

  ALI: Is that what you thought the operation was going to do?

  FLORA: Yes. It happened to Pinocchio.

  FLORA leaves.

  ALI: And now she is. She’s a real girl.

  ALI weeps.

  Not the one I dreamed of 19 years ago. She had ballerina’s feet and could dance like an angel from the moment she set foot in her first ballet class. Perfect turn out, pink tights, hair in bunches. Oh God, I have to let go!

  Scene Fourteen

  Kitty’s Story (10)

  KITTY enters and takes off her coat. She starts when she sees JEANETTE sitting in the darkness, waiting.

  KITTY: Oh my god!

  JEANETTE: Where’ve you been?

  KITTY: (Disappointed.) Jeanette?

  JEANETTE: Only me.

  KITTY: Sitting there, you looked… I’ve been to the circus.

  JEANETTE: Where?

  KITTY: I had to catch a train.

  JEANETTE: To go to the circus.

  KITTY: I didn’t intend to.

  JEANETTE: You’ve been to Nottingham haven’t you?

  KITTY: No.

  JEANETTE: I might be the athlete and not the brainbox of the family but I read the papers. Just like you do. You went to the police.

  JEANETTE indicates a box file marked ‘Cuttings’.

  KITTY: I had to find out. He’s confessed to killing two of them. Two girls.

  JEANETTE: I know. But the police would have…if there was any chance…

  KITTY: There’s always a chance. He was in the area four years ago. I just wanted to see him. To ask him, just for two minutes. Just one question.

  JEANETTE: They wouldn’t let you of course.

  KITTY: I only want to know where she is. It’s not unreasonable. Under the circumstances. They solved one case fifteen years after the child went missing.

  JEANETTE: How many more boxes of these have you got?

  KITTY: I was going back to the station when I saw the posters. I bought a ticket on impulse really. I sat behind a woman with two children, all in their Sunday best. The girl had a net petticoat with rosebud braid round the hem and her brother’s hair was all wet down with a parting that didn’t come naturally and ants in his pants, all over the shop he was, till the clowns ran in and scared him. I watched the little girl who sat there, good as gold while her brother was slapped and cuddled and then the trapeze artists came on. And oh they were beautiful, this one girl just flew. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, like a dragonfly. And just for a second, I thought… It wasn’t her of course.

  JEANETTE: No.

  KITTY: When she took her bow she wa
s right near us. She was thirty if she was a day. And close up she had a hole in her tights and sweat marks under her arms. But the little girl didn’t see that. She didn’t clap like everyone else. She stood up, and raised her arms above her head, reaching, like she wanted to be lifted up, up where the magic happened.

  JEANETTE: You know, when I saw the box marked ‘Cuttings’ on the table I opened it thinking they were going to be about me.

  KITTY: But you’re all right. You’re always winning something or other – I can’t keep up with it.

  JEANETTE: If I was you’d be living with me and dad, in the flat, we’d be together. A family again.

  Beat.

  I got the record player mended. It’s at the flat. Why don’t you come. Just come.

  KITTY: I can’t.

  JEANETTE: You mean, won’t.

  KITTY: It’s not your problem.

  JEANETTE: What? It bloody is! All my life you’ve made me pay for being the kid who came home rather than the one who went missing. Don’t make that noise Jeanette, don’t touch her things Jeanette, don’t bloody remind me that you’re alive Jeanette.

  KITTY: But you are.

  JEANETTE: Well I’m sorry that I survived. Okay? That it wasn’t me. Does that make it better? Cos I’ve sure as hell tried everything else. You know, I didn’t ask for this, I didn’t do anything to her! It wasn’t me. So why am I paying?

  KITTY: I don’t know. If I could turn the clock back…

  JEANETTE: There’s no point! I want to be happy now. I don’t want to live with ghosts.

  KITTY: I don’t want to be like this. I don’t have a choice. Don’t you see?

  JEANETTE: What about me!

  KITTY: Until I feel her bones and know without a doubt they’re hers, she’s not dead. She’s alive somewhere and I have to wait for her.

  JEANETTE: She’s not coming back. You’re stuck. I can’t stay here. I have to believe Susannah’s dead.

  KITTY: And I that she’s alive.

  JEANETTE turns to go.

  JEANETTE: All you have to say is Jeanette, it’s not your fault.

  KITTY: It’s somebody’s fault.

  JEANETTE: Whoever killed my sister, killed our family too.

  JEANETTE goes leaving KITTY alone.

  Scene Fifteen

  Ali’s Story (10)

  ALI calls up the stairs. GWEN is sat in a chair.

  ALI: Flora! Flora, come downstairs please. I’ve got something to tell you.

  FLORA enters.

  Dad and I are going to Florence for a week.

  FLORA / GWEN: But what about me?

  ALI: You can stay with Rachel.

  FLORA’s face brightens. ALI turns to GWEN.

  And you are old enough to take care of yourself for seven days.

  FLORA: Okay.

  ALI: It’s this easy?

  GWEN: But what if I take a turn for the worse?

  ALI: There are doctors, carers.

  FLORA: You will come back?

  ALI: Of course.

  FLORA: You promise?

  ALI: On my mother’s life.

  FLORA: Who will look after me?

  ALI: Rachel’s mum.

  FLORA: And you will come back?

  ALI: Yes.

  FLORA: After how many days?

  ALI: Jesus, Flora, seven! I told you, seven!

  FLORA: I don’t like to be shouted at!

  ALI: I know! But that’s what happens when you go on and on. I’m sorry but I’m not the perfect mother.

  FLORA: Well I’m not the perfect either. Bugger! Bugger! Bugger…fuck!

  GWEN: Well really.

  ALI: (Trying to keep a straight face.) Flora!

  FLORA: I know, I know. I’m going there.

  FLORA exits.

  GWEN: Well. You think Rachel’s mother’s going to put up with that?

  ALI: I hope so.

  GWEN: You’re not serious about going?

  ALI: Never more so.

  Scene Sixteen

  Kitty’s Story (11)

  KITTY: I like to think of her somewhere green. In the country surrounded by trees and animals, she always loved animals. When she was tiny we used to go and stay with my Mum. They lived in a tythe cottage on the estate where my dad was a gardener. There was an old gate at the bottom leading onto a wood. In spring we’d go through and collect primroses, in autumn cob nuts and blackberries. In summer the gate became tangled with long grass and marguerites so I’d have to lift her over. My dad made us a swing out of a plank and an old bit of rope. I’d hold her on my lap and we’d pitch to and fro. Legs up, legs under. Mum passed away some time ago, more’s the pity, she’d know the ground I’m standing on. Anyway on my better days that’s the sort of place I imagine Susie living happily now. But there is still no end to it. No final cover to close and say, that’s it, off to sleep now, end of story. I imagine her future as I did when she was a small child. But now I have to imagine her, older, with different hair, clothes, friends. A teacher perhaps, or a secretary – she always liked nice clothes – with her own office and on the wall the same Chinese girl picture she had in her bedroom. Maybe one day she’ll look at it and think, I wonder what they’re doing at home. And it’ll be a Tuesday – I don’t know why – except I’m doing the ironing and I’ll hear the door bang and her special shoe sound on the lino down the hall, the heels slapping, sort of lively and I look up and there, there she is. My Susannah Rose swinging on the door frame. Hi mum, I’m back. And we’ll…… Maybe when she has her own children she’ll feel the pull, need to revisit where she came from. And I’ll be here. Because that’s what mothers are, they are home. They are where you go when you have good news, or bad news or when you’ve fallen and have nowhere else to run. They are safety. The centre of it all, where it went wrong or right, the beginning and end.

  Scene Seventeen

  Milena’s Story (10)

  MILENA: I have my two children. A boy and a girl. There are folk tales in every country which mothers use to remind their children to be good, to stay safe, to explain away fear. My daughter has created her own story complete with a new name. The Princess vanished, along with innocence, and the girl I found in a refugee camp, guarding her little brother like a she-wolf, had the face of a stranger, an old woman. Faruk, no longer round, still smiles but his eyes are flat. Vacant. It’s a response to ward off blows. My daughter is fiercely protective, always anxious. She has learned survival and the cost has yet to be counted. I told them I had a baby who died. I told them this to keep them safe. My daughter, who had always longed for a sister, a doll to dress and join forces with her against Faruk, was unmoved. She and Faruk have become inseparable. She had no interest in another sibling. Faruk smiled and ducked his head. The child of forty fathers and no fathers died and no one grieved. In a country saturated with loss and guilt, the air toxic with scores yet to be settled, there was no more room. We live with my in laws again, as before. But I am the past my husband wants to forget. I have been invaded by war. I am occupied territory. There was help. A mobile ambulance unit that performed abortions for victims of war. But they wouldn’t help me. They were sorry they said, but it was too late for me.

  Nevenka was with me for the births of the Princess and Faruk. This time, when the pains began, I kept moving, wandering the hilltop behind our town – what was left of it. And what was left of me gave birth alone, heaving and bleeding into the floor of the forest, my back pressed against a tree, my mind fleeing the pain up into the blue between the leaves. And when it was over, bursting between my thighs into the sharp air, I wept to be rid of it, to be rid of shame. I had no say, no choice. I could not look at the eyes of all those men staring at me from a child’s face the rest of my life. I turned its face into the soil. There was a small struggle. Then stillness and it was done. I buried the child in the woods. The place is marked as I am now. She is not alone.

  The country is full of graves and we, the living, their only monuments. This is what war is, killing people.


  Scene Eighteen

  Ali’s Story (11)

  ALI: I am organised. Passport money travellers’ cheques.

  GWEN: Are you sure this is a good idea? What about the cat?

  ALI: Neighbours.

  GWEN: Dog?

  ALI: Kennels. That’ll be fun. It’s a full moon.

  GWEN: And Flora?

  ALI: She’ll be here any minute. I told you. I’ll drop her at Rachel’s on the way to the airport, meet Jim there and then I’ll worry for a week in Italy and come home again. You have got our number haven’t you?

  GWEN: I’ll be fine.

  ALI: Course you will. She should be back by now. Maybe she missed the bus. Should I…no.

  GWEN: I could have looked after everything for you if only you’d asked.

  ALI: I know. And thanks but…

  GWEN: I’m perfectly capable of running a household. Did it for years till your poor father…I’m not past it you know. I’d be like a housekeeper. You wouldn’t know I was there. Then you could take up your dancing properly again. Make something out of all that training.

  ALI: What’re you saying?

  GWEN: You had such potential.

  ALI: A week, that’s all I’m asking for! You don’t have to kneecap me, I am coming back.

  GWEN: Oh you are being dramatic, when have I ever done anything but support and encourage you to use your talents? If you’ve chosen to bury them under running around caring for a handicapped child…

  ALI: But that’s what you do for kids. And then you let them go.

  GWEN: You talk as if I hadn’t raised two children myself.

  ALI: One in New Zealand and the other still digging tunnels under the wire.

  GWEN: Flora’s not trying to escape.

  ALI: No Mum. Maybe not. But she should be.

  GWEN: When’s your flight?

  ALI: I’m going to look for her. It’s nearly dark. If the bus got diverted or broke down she’ll panic. I know her. Now if she phones…

  GWEN: If you’re this worried here, what’re you going to be like halfway across the world?

  ALI: It’s not but I have every right to be anxious. Our whole life is such a disaster I can only cope by being anxious. Okay?

  GWEN: Look. At the end of the garden.

  ALI: Mum I can’t do this…

  She stops, watching.