I imagine my mother before I was born, when she knew I was there swelling inside her. She is a young woman, a girl really, eighteen, fresh off the boat and wandering alone in London, a head full of Duran-Duran, neon lights and growing worries. Her name is Siobhan and I hold her in my mind's eye, watching her movements and her fears and her plans. She does not see me watching her because I am not yet born. But I am there all the same, questioning her, wondering what she will do as six weeks tick to ten weeks and her problem grows bigger and bigger.
Twelve years later, when I am a young girl who talks too much and asks Big Questions, she will tell me a secret that silences us for days. I remember her now, confessing: "The truth is, I never thought I'd have you. I was so young, God, it was stupid, stupid." Then: "Sure when I came over to London, I came here to end it." And she will turn away from me and wallow in her daily stupor of halfs and shots.
I don't know how it happened, but when I think of my mother and her change of heart, most often I picture something trivial, a small moment on a grey day in London, as quiet as the way she was to live the rest of her life. So, here she is now: Siobhan, eighteen, standing on the platform-edge at Bond Street station waiting for her tube, a problem growing inside her and a resolute look on her face. I imagine the tube train speeding towards her – one minute to go – the train that will take her to a clinic in Kilburn, a white coated doctor, a pill, slight pain and a spot of blood. I feel her hands start to shake as she clutches the inside of her coat pockets.
I picture the seconds rush forward as the train arrives and my mother shuffles on. The carriage is crammed so she curls herself into a space by the doors. Pin-striped arms spread broadsheets into gaps between bodies as the doors slide shut and our carriage shakes; twelve minutes to Kilburn. My mother, quiet, thoughts buried under the weight of the tunnel. Now Baker Street emerges from the dark and people waiting on the platform-edge slide into view like figures on an old cinema reel. As the train slows, each frame of the reel becomes more distinct: a young woman with red earrings and blonde hair; an elderly Indian couple stood stiffly side-by-side (I don't know why Indian; perhaps my mother's aversion to "foreign folk" makes it amusing for me to have them there); a small girl neatly pleated and pressed, peering into each carriage as it rolls to a stop, trying to capture in her eyes the slowing images inside.
These are the people who will ride with my mother to Kilburn clinic pain spot of blood and simple end. Those who are abandoning her at this station press close to the doors, waiting to exit in search of Sherlock Holmes and the waxen fame of Madame Tussaud's. The doors give way and pour them out as a crush of new bodies surges forward. I watch my mother brushed aside by swift city life, the one empty seat unclaimed by her until it is too late. The elderly Indian couple swoop in, wife nesting herself down with husband in front marking their patch. My mother stands back, one small hand groping for the rail by her side as we lurch forward once more.
A break for freedom at Finchley Road as we surface into London grey light. My mother lifts her face to the sights beyond our curved windows, dreaming of one day sharing in these neat rows of oak trees and tidy Victorian homes. (Later in life I will bear this same dream.) And now she is a bird, a swallow – why not? – flying up above the tracks (for have we not all dreamed of flying away, just once?). The tube train whooshes beneath her whiteredblue as she soars above the spotless homes. I am there, weightless in her tummy as she glides away from worries clinics pills pain blood mingling into nothing and all she feels is air, cold London air whisping her cheeks. She soars higher towards a growing white, skin drenched by clouds which hold their breath above Kilburn, threatening to vomit morning rain on the figures below…
… A sudden jolt: my mother swings her gaze from window back to carriage.
"Ladies and gentleman, I'd like to apologise for this delay to your service. The problem seems to be a tail-back of trains caused by signal failure at Willesden Green. We're being held here for a few moments … we'll be on our way as soon as I get the all-clear."
The old Indian gentleman tuts and fidgets in front of his wife who looks away and ignores him.
"Jus' bloody typical, isn' it? A-1 service in London, huh? Bloody criminal."
"Quiet, baba," she urges in a hushed tone.
"No, not quiet. Bloody we'll be late is all."
I watch my mother turn to him. Quiet. I imagine the Indian gentleman catch her eye and humpf gruffly, muttering under his breath. Then one; two; six minutes slide to ten and more, but the wheels stay resolutely silent. And (as so often on our grey days) the clouds keep their promise and rain drops. My mother turns her face back to the window, glimpsing a ghost of her reflection in the glass. And as I watch her stand and stare, I notice for the first time that her hands no longer shake.
That is what I picture. A defeat, perhaps, or a submission to time. I will never know why she kept me. Perhaps she realised that she didn't want to be alone. I like to think that as she waited quietly for her life to move ahead, she glimpsed a vision of the family we could be. I like to imagine that that vision was enough to stop her. But still I wonder if – lying on her bed in those last days, when we waited together not speaking of all the small things which were about to be lost – I wonder if she thought she had made the right choice.
--
A Nearly Done Thing was read by Susannah Holland at the Liars' League Dreams & Visions event on Tuesday 13 November, 2007.
Kathryn White is thrilled to have her first ‘publication’ with Liar’s League. A barrister by day, she harbours ambitions of one day finding more time to write and read. Kathryn recently completed the Intermediate Fiction course at City University; she also attended an intensive course in Creative Non-Fiction with The Arvon Foundation in 2006.
Susannah Holland trained at The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. She played Mariane in Tartuffe at The Bristol Old Vic, and Grace in A Day in The Death of Joe Egg. Most recently she was Irina in The Three Sisters at The Theatre Museum.
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