Days of Grace by Catherine Hall

Author:Catherine Hall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-05-06T04:00:00+00:00

After lunch I felt rather jolly.

‘Let’s have a drink,’ I suggested. ‘To celebrate.’

Rose looked at me as if I had lost my mind. ‘What?’

‘Well, we’re all still here,’ I said. ‘All three of us. I think that’s worth a toast, don’t you? There’s a bottle of port in the kitchen cupboard. Can you get it?’

She wasn’t convinced. ‘You’re ill,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you’re not supposed to drink.’

I winked at her. ‘Think of it as medicine.’

By the time she brought the bottle the sky was dark. She drew the curtains and pulled her chair close to the bed, then poured an inch of port into two glasses. She passed one of them to me. I cleared my throat.

‘To Grace!’ I said. ‘To her first Christmas.’

And to my last, I thought, suddenly calm at the idea. Not long to go now.

Rose raised her glass. ‘To Grace!’

We touched glasses and drank. I held the port in my mouth for a long and lovely moment, enjoying the taste of it. I looked fondly at Rose, who held the baby snuggled against her shoulder.

‘Here we are,’ I said. ‘We’ve got our own nativity, mother and child. Although I don’t know what that makes me.’

Rose giggled. ‘You’re the midwife. I can’t imagine she got any thanks in the Bible but Mary couldn’t have done it without her.’

As I sipped at my port, I felt hazy and happy, as if the alcohol was washing the rotten parts of me, making me clean.

‘I wonder what she’s doing,’ Rose said.

‘Who?’

‘Mum.’ She sighed. ‘She’s probably remembering last Christmas and what a mess it was. She’s probably still angry about it all.’

‘She’s probably missing you,’ I said carefully. ‘And I’m sure she’s wondering about her grandchild. Don’t you think she’d like to meet her?’

Rose stiffened, and lifted her chin in her old determined pose.

‘She’s not going to,’ she said, her voice stubborn. ‘She didn’t want her to be born. She wanted me to get rid of her, remember?’

I remembered. But I also remembered the relief in Rose’s voice when she had mistaken me for her mother on that night in her bedsit. I remembered her tears when she saw the rose in her room. I remembered other things too, uncomfortable, unsettling things. I thought of my own mother and of how the small seed of separation that was planted on the day that I left her had grown, winding around my heart like the convolvulus in the garden, choking it until she was gone forever. I thought about Mrs Rivers and Grace, and of how they had been lost to each other.

I tried to persuade her. ‘I think your mother was trying to protect you.’

She shook her head, unconvinced. ‘Well, it didn’t work.’

‘It wasn’t that she wanted Grace dead,’ I said. ‘She didn’t know her. She wasn’t thinking of your child. She was thinking of you.’

The port had loosened my tongue.

‘You could telephone her. Just to tell her that you’re both all right.’

‘I don’t want to talk to her.’

There was an awkward silence and my happiness slunk away.

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