Getting Dirty

Not for the first time I wonder about giving Granny my mother’s diary. Would it make her see my mother as I do, as Daddy must have? I only have to read it to see all the good in her. She had a naughty streak, for sure—her diary makes that clear too—but she was a good person. A person worthy of my father’s love...a love that never waned.

But it’s private—something my father entrusted to me and me alone.

‘Can I ask you something, Granny?’

She looks back at me. ‘Of course, child.’

‘Why did you dislike my mother so much?’

She’s so still and for a second I don’t think she’s heard me, or she’s blanked out, her meds doing something weird, but then she blinks and looks towards the window.

‘It wasn’t that I disliked her. She just wasn’t right for your father—for the Laurens. She was too wild, too young. She was eighteen when Robert brought her home after they eloped.’ She shakes her head. ‘He knew we’d never accept her—not with her...her occupation—so he ran away. He figured we’d have no choice but to accept then, that we’d rather not have a divorce on our hands. The press had already had a field day over us—imagine adding a divorce to it.’

‘But they were in love,’ I say. ‘What did it matter that she was a stripper?’

Granny’s eyes dart to mine.

‘What?’ I say, seeing the horror in her gaze. ‘It’s what she was.’

‘Do you have to say it?’ Her tone is hushed, as though we’re in a public room with a judgemental audience listening in. ‘How can you ask me that? You’re twenty-four—you’ve been brought up to be a Lauren through and through. You of all people should know that it’s not acceptable.’

I shake my head, sadness overwhelming me. ‘It doesn’t mean that she wasn’t a good person, or that she loved Daddy any less.’

I’m a good person and I attend the very kind of clubs you abhor, dear Granny, but it doesn’t mean I love you any less.

‘Love is for fools,’ she quips. ‘Look at your brother and the way Clara takes advantage of his love.’

‘But at least my parents were happy; you can’t say the same for Daddy’s second marriage.’

She balks at my mention of it, such is our shared dislike of my stepmother, but I’m not giving in.

‘If we go by your standards, that marriage should have been perfect. She had her own money, her own status, and look how unhappy they were.’

Granny’s eyes cloud over, and I know some of my words are sinking in.

‘And you know why, don’t you?’ I push on.

She looks back to the window, like it will save her from where I’m heading.

‘Granny...?’

She waves a hand at me to stop and it trembles. She looks so weak, so frail, the stre

ngth she’s mustered to sit up straight seeping from her body as she starts to hunch. I know my father’s death weighs heavily on her, that she has always struggled to come to terms with outliving her only child. And I know that talk of his misery in later years will make that pain more acute, but I can’t stop. I need to say it.

‘Because he never got over my mother—just like you never got over Grandpapa.’

She blinks rapidly and I know she’s fighting back the weakness of tears—that even in front of me she doesn’t feel able to show that level of humanity. It frustrates the hell out of me, and my own emotions are bubbling so close to the surface that I want to scream them free.

‘Yes. And the pain of loving someone,’ she says quietly, ‘only to lose them, is a burden I wouldn’t wish on anyone.’

‘Really, Granny?’ I can’t hide my impassioned disbelief. ‘You’d really rather never have known that happiness with someone than go through the pain?’

She doesn’t answer. She’s still focusing trance-like on the window.

‘You were so lucky to find what you did with Grandpapa,’ I say. ‘And Daddy was so lucky to find it with my mother. I’d give anything for that.’

She looks back at me, shaking her head, her eyes bittersweet. ‘For ever the romantic, aren’t you? I’ve always worried it will get you in trouble.’