or discipline and perhaps she
hadn’t. She was a grade-A worrier, her appearance of insouciance hard won, her lightness of touch maintained by a real effort of will. Her love held me steady as much as it kept me afloat
– I knew instinctively what would disappoint her. This kind of love is a massive – if unconscious – effort for the person doing the loving and many of us, the lucky ones, float
complacently in the benign amniotic safety of maternal love, swatting away its unwelcome excesses, giving no thanks. I did.
When I was miserable in Oxford, she took me out for meals and sent me money for massages. Parcels arrived for me constantly: books, poems, carefully copied out in her familiar handwriting,
Chanel lipsticks, and once, as I prepared for my finals, a huge bunch of spring flowers – my favourites, scented blue hyacinths, parrot tulips and dark tendrils of ivy – with a card
that read ‘nearly time to come out, Persephone’.
When, later, I struggled after Theo was born, isolated and anxious, she would make the two-hour train journey to visit us in London almost weekly, rocking Theo’s tense colicky little body
over her shoulder and dancing with his peach-fuzzy cheek against hers, one hand cradling his wobbly head as she sang ‘Cheek to Cheek’. She tried to teach me what Olivier understood
instinctively: how to enjoy the baby, to relax and savour the delicious animal warmth and otherness of him. I didn’t quite get it then. Soon I will, when the new baby comes.
Now she is gone and it makes no sense. She was just here, my borrowed dressing gown too big for her little frame, drinking a cup of coffee and planning her Rome itinerary. I know exactly how it
felt to hug her goodbye but I experience a complete imaginative failure at the idea of her dead. I
know
she is, but I can’t feel it, so I just get on with things. Presumably it will
sink in eventually.
After the funeral we return to London. My sister moves in with us – she can’t stand to be in York – and we spend a grisly Christmas, whose only redeeming feature is that no one
tries to pretend it’s remotely OK, together in our flat with her and her father and the saddest, most stunted Christmas tree any of us has ever seen. Then, in the dark, short, dead days
between Christmas and New Year, we head off to the abandoned Millennium Dome, where an optimistically named ‘Christmas Wonderland’ has been installed. We are hoping to amuse Theo but
the scene before us is pretty dismal: a few scrappy fairground rides dotted here and there in the semi-darkness. It’s chilly under the damp wet canvas and there’s that muddy marquee
smell, mingling with stewed hot-dog onions and the acrid burnt-sugar tang of candyfloss. I find a hard chair to sit on and watch as my sister takes Theo on a shudderingly slow miniature train. She
is smiling, but the smile doesn’t reach her eyes, which are blank with unhappiness. Theo, in contrast, is beaming unreservedly, his cheeks round and ruddy. He is wearing a bright yellow
oilcloth coat like a tiny sea captain and his fat fists thump the plastic steering wheel in delight.
Olivier isn’t watching, he’s looking at me, with an odd, sort of appraising expression.
‘
Quoi?
’ We still speak French to each other all the time. His English has improved enormously, but it doesn’t feel right – we fell in love in French and
I’d rather he deal with my linguistic infelicities than I deal with his. It seems key to our relationship somehow.
‘So what do you think about moving to Paris, seriously?’
He’s raised this before but I haven’t really been paying attention, have had other things on my mind, but now, next to the sweating hot dogs, it all comes out, properly.
His job (in a French investment bank), he believes, will not exist for very much longer; they are restructuring and things don’t look good for him. There is, however, the possibility of
doing the same job, or even a slightly better
hadn’t. She was a grade-A worrier, her appearance of insouciance hard won, her lightness of touch maintained by a real effort of will. Her love held me steady as much as it kept me afloat
– I knew instinctively what would disappoint her. This kind of love is a massive – if unconscious – effort for the person doing the loving and many of us, the lucky ones, float
complacently in the benign amniotic safety of maternal love, swatting away its unwelcome excesses, giving no thanks. I did.
When I was miserable in Oxford, she took me out for meals and sent me money for massages. Parcels arrived for me constantly: books, poems, carefully copied out in her familiar handwriting,
Chanel lipsticks, and once, as I prepared for my finals, a huge bunch of spring flowers – my favourites, scented blue hyacinths, parrot tulips and dark tendrils of ivy – with a card
that read ‘nearly time to come out, Persephone’.
When, later, I struggled after Theo was born, isolated and anxious, she would make the two-hour train journey to visit us in London almost weekly, rocking Theo’s tense colicky little body
over her shoulder and dancing with his peach-fuzzy cheek against hers, one hand cradling his wobbly head as she sang ‘Cheek to Cheek’. She tried to teach me what Olivier understood
instinctively: how to enjoy the baby, to relax and savour the delicious animal warmth and otherness of him. I didn’t quite get it then. Soon I will, when the new baby comes.
Now she is gone and it makes no sense. She was just here, my borrowed dressing gown too big for her little frame, drinking a cup of coffee and planning her Rome itinerary. I know exactly how it
felt to hug her goodbye but I experience a complete imaginative failure at the idea of her dead. I
know
she is, but I can’t feel it, so I just get on with things. Presumably it will
sink in eventually.
After the funeral we return to London. My sister moves in with us – she can’t stand to be in York – and we spend a grisly Christmas, whose only redeeming feature is that no one
tries to pretend it’s remotely OK, together in our flat with her and her father and the saddest, most stunted Christmas tree any of us has ever seen. Then, in the dark, short, dead days
between Christmas and New Year, we head off to the abandoned Millennium Dome, where an optimistically named ‘Christmas Wonderland’ has been installed. We are hoping to amuse Theo but
the scene before us is pretty dismal: a few scrappy fairground rides dotted here and there in the semi-darkness. It’s chilly under the damp wet canvas and there’s that muddy marquee
smell, mingling with stewed hot-dog onions and the acrid burnt-sugar tang of candyfloss. I find a hard chair to sit on and watch as my sister takes Theo on a shudderingly slow miniature train. She
is smiling, but the smile doesn’t reach her eyes, which are blank with unhappiness. Theo, in contrast, is beaming unreservedly, his cheeks round and ruddy. He is wearing a bright yellow
oilcloth coat like a tiny sea captain and his fat fists thump the plastic steering wheel in delight.
Olivier isn’t watching, he’s looking at me, with an odd, sort of appraising expression.
‘
Quoi?
’ We still speak French to each other all the time. His English has improved enormously, but it doesn’t feel right – we fell in love in French and
I’d rather he deal with my linguistic infelicities than I deal with his. It seems key to our relationship somehow.
‘So what do you think about moving to Paris, seriously?’
He’s raised this before but I haven’t really been paying attention, have had other things on my mind, but now, next to the sweating hot dogs, it all comes out, properly.
His job (in a French investment bank), he believes, will not exist for very much longer; they are restructuring and things don’t look good for him. There is, however, the possibility of
doing the same job, or even a slightly better
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