My Animal Life(23)

But not by my father, not for me. This was the fascinating, terrible thing about my father; though, as long as he could, until I was fourteen or fifteen, he banned anything potentially sexual in my life, such as layered haircuts, mascara, lipstick, high heels; though until I was ten I was never allowed to walk even as far as the station (400 yards) on my own, he eventually encouraged me to do all manner of things — work, travel, be independent, try to be famous — that his wife was forbidden. Why? I think now that because I was half him, and he could do anything, I could do anything too. I have heard of other fathers who do exactly the same — urge the daughters onward, keep the mother close at home.

The injustice was obvious to both of us, but Mum was generous, and rejoiced in my relative freedom. She said wistfully, sometimes, after all her three children had finished their qualifications, ‘I’m the only person in the family without a degree.’ Dad would be brusque and dishonest: ‘You’re cleverer than all of us, you know you are Aileen. You don’t need a qualification to prove it.’ Of course, she did need it. I heard that exchange too often.

Never tell someone else what they do or don’t need.

In the end, Mum got what she needed, by leaving, after all the three kids had gone out into the world, after Vic had retired and they had left the Billingshurst community where separation would have meant disgrace in the married middle class they had moved to.

It didn’t last. In my memory it was only weeks. My father was astonished, and despairing, because he adored, and depended on, Aileen. Because she was afraid, she left him without warning. Took the car, and fled to me, who by then was doing a PhD in Wolverhampton. I had to pretend, in answer to my father’s desperate phone calls, to know nothing. As I write this I still feel frightened, because Aunty Eve, who knew Vic didn’t like her, told us, in case we softened, ‘We think he’s got a car and he’s coming to find you.’ And so my mother and I set off on a panicky zigzag trip round unpleasant cheap hotels in Northamptonshire and Leicestershire. The logic behind this was never spelled out, though Mum’s niece Jeanette, her elder sister’s daughter, with whom she had lost touch, was fabled to keep a pub called ‘The Red Cow’ in Kirby Muxloe near Leicester, and in my researches since I have discovered that one side of Mum’s family, the Meakinses, had frequented Northamptonshire for generations. So maybe she was trying to go home, to shelter in the folds of a lost name. In any case, it didn’t work; we rushed around like moths trying to escape from a light that searched us out and drew us back. The terror of it was, ‘He’s coming after you.’

Traumatic. I was twenty-seven, but the idea of my parents splitting up was unthinkable, much though I wanted my mother to be free of fear, and have the life she wanted. She had talked about leaving for years, but only to me, and of course, loving her, I could not dissuade her. I wanted her to be happy because the pity I felt for her unhappiness was unbearable for me.

But how would they cope on their own? Could there be a Mummy without a Daddy, a Daddy without a Mummy? Inside, at this critical moment, I was still six years old. I suspect that somewhere in every child whose parents split up is this helpless terror; the foundations of the world are shaken. The rigid shell that contained all the anger and fear in that marriage had broken, and now it was everywhere, glistening and quivering, terrible, revealed in the open. Every night Mum slept with a knife under her pillow, every day we drove somewhere with me sitting beside her, sedating myself by drinking British sherry from the bottle.

But the truth was very different from Eve’s report. My father was not angry, he was overwhelmed with grief. He had not tried to get a car to replace the one Mum had taken, and in any case had no idea where to find her, though later (perhaps in order to protect his love for me) he always pretended to think she’d spent the time away from him, not with me, as was the case, but with Eve and Albert, who of course he disliked already. When Aileen discovered that he only wanted her back, her resolve crumbled, and she became tearful. Her whole demeanour changed; now she felt she was doing wrong.

Within weeks she was negotiating to go back, or rather, in agony, I was. We all three met at another hotel, gloomy and English; a stiff meal at a small round table. There were obvious conditions, such as no more frightening behaviour and money of her own in a separate account; and there were touching ones, such as ‘us to have friends’, ‘us to have interests’. He agreed to everything, and improvising, I threw in one Mum had not had time to think of: ‘She wants to do a degree. She’s determined.’ ‘Your mother doesn’t need a degree.’ ‘Well she wants one, Dad.’ This time he conceded.