Columbus Day by Janette Jenkins

Author:Janette Jenkins [Janette Jenkins]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2011-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

My mother was miles away.

Every Friday night she telephoned, her voice disappearing as she pressed in her purseful of coins. ‘Devon really is lovely at this time of year. From here, the sea almost looks violet.’

My father stood stiffly in the hall, his scotch glass tight against his shirt. ‘It must be quite something,’ he said. ‘It must really be a picture.’

‘I can’t stay long, of course. I’m off to London tomorrow. I thought I’d do the Hampton Court Maze; he always did like complicated diversions.’

‘Well, I hope you make it there, sweetheart.’

‘I will.’

‘Good.’

‘But Roland—’

‘What?’

‘You will come on Sunday still – won’t you?’

Every week, she told us about the trips she took. On luxury high-speed coaches she travelled all over the country. I enjoyed listening to her descriptions of Babbacombe Bay or Prestatyn, where she always saw neat old men in long brown coats and argyle socks (and they could have been him until she got up close and they turned into someone else). She told us about the rooms she stayed in, the colour of the curtains, the name of the woman who brought in the morning tea. I could see everything, and sometimes I even longed to be there, staring at the crashing turquoise waves, the bathing huts with the paint peeling off, the white brick churches with steeples so high the bellringers had to stand on ladders just to reach the rope-ends.

My mother was miles away, but she wasn’t in Devon. Instead, she had a room in a beautiful white mad-house on the edge of Lake Windermere, where she spent her days sedated, looking through a small-paned window overlooking the water, waiting for the ferry that just might bring her papa to the little blue jetty that stuck out past the garden.

And so she could savour that very first glimpse of him, she carried her binoculars around her neck, and in her handbag a small Polaroid camera to catch the snapshot of his smile, his expression that would say it all.

Every Sunday we travelled up to Cumbria with a bunch of scented roses and a bag full of presents, and she’d bury her hands in them, tearing at the paper, smiling as she found a bottle of pink nail varnish or a bag of peppermint creams. She looked just the same, apart from some spider-thin lines that stretched from the edge of her eyes. Her irises had begun to look paler, like they’d been left in the sun too long, or she’d rinsed them both in bleach.

Her collection of clothes had dwindled into five ankle-length dresses, a black velvet trouser-suit and six tiny pairs of hand-made shoes. Her hair was still long and blonde, and at weekends it was tied in a knot at the back of her neck, a large tortoise-shell comb clipping all the strands together. A woman called Alice came every Saturday with a hair-dryer and a tray of beauty treatments. My mother had frightened at least three of the other patients as she

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