07
Harry parked the Mini at Hak’s doorway and smiled awkwardly. “Well, here we go.” They were the only four words he had been able to find for the entire journey.
Four words more than Hak could find.
“Nice to meet you, take care of yourself.” He called after her as she slammed the car door behind her, juggled in her pockets for her keys and entered the lobby to her flat. She had lived in Dartmoor Street for three years. At this time, there really was no place like home.
But as she pulled her last step onto the first floor landing, she noticed immediately something as wrong. Her door had been forced, though the enterer had done well to conceal their broken entry. As silently as she could she slipped into the doorway, all senses tingling like a spider at the edge of a waterfall.
She heard…whale song. She sniffed the air to place the sweet smell of frying onion coming from her kitchen. She was not alone. Cautiously, she paused at the half-open door of her kitchen, her sweaty palm gently easing the handle forward, finally digging out the courage to peer her head around the door.
She was punched squarely in the face.
Her knees buckled and she bundled through the door, landing in an heap at her attackers feet.
“Darling?” Hak recognised the pitch perfect voice immediately.
“Eleanor!” Blood dripped from her nose unevenly onto the black and white checked linoleum floor. She lifted herself up dizzily by the edge of the cold porcelain sink. “I might have bloody known.”
“What a relief.” Said Eleanor, as casual as a weathercocks forecast in a breeze.
“Relief?” Black spots jived in front of Hak’s eyes. She ran cold water onto the closest tea towel and bunched it to her face.
“One can not be too careful,” Eleanor replied, flicking back a strand of her long red hair, making no effort to help her daughter, or apologise. She was most aptly described as a handsome woman, she never wore make up or glamorized her appearance in any way; the only thing Hak had ever seen her wear was military fatigues; today was no exception.
“Fancy creeping about the place like a midnight marauder, you nearly gave me a heart attack! You could have been anybody!”
“Creeping around? I live here you lunatic! I knew I should have called the bloody police!”
“That’s not the way I raised you, darling. Besides, there is no law against visiting your nearest and dearest! Bugger, I think I smell the garlic burning.”
Eleanor adjusted the hob heat, and chopped mushrooms with the speed and precision of a vegan samurai; Hak needed her company less than Van Gogh needed stereo. The small kitchen felt like it was shrinking around them. Another person would have made the occupation crammed. Tension rose with the scent of every new ingredient Eleanor added to the wok.
“So what are you doing here?”
“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m fixing us supper! Your cupboards were bare of course, there is a reason you haven’t got yourself a man yet.”
“A very good reason, not that it’s any of your bloody business!”
“My only concern is for your well being my darling, you really ought to look after yourself Henrietta, a woman can not live on pot noodle alone.”
“You’ve broken my nose. Again.”
She scowled, ignoring the complaint. “And I found bacon in your fridge!”
“Oh, here we go…”
Eleanor threw down her wooden spoon and picked up the knife; her short temper was as legendary as her whimsical approach to violence. “I am your Mother, child. I did not raise you to feast on the spoils of the hunter-gatherer! Meat is murder!”
“Don’t go there, you hear me. You are not going to be the one who lectures me on murder any more, you hearing this? Your not due parole for another six months. How did you get out? Have you escaped?”
“There were special circumstances, actually” Eleanor pouted with pride, seeding her peppers. “The board, in their infinite wisdom, saw in me a justification for early release.”
“How?” Hak raged indignantly. “You killed four people when you blew up that lab! Four people with families, and friends, nothing can justify that.”
“My darling, it is my greatest sadness and disappointment that you my only daughter have always refused to join me in the cause. Can we not put the silly past behind us?”
Hak would never forgive and never forget. “Will you just shut up about the fucking Cause? You killed four people! You and your bunch of crack-pot militant soap-dodging cohorts might be able to hide behind your little crusades to raise funds for blind mice, or activating an adoption programme for all the little Bambi’s out there, but the rest of the world can see you for what you really are!”
“You know I will not tolerate your sarcasm. Those foul men were torturing innocent animals in the name of cosmetic science! They were sinners, and for doing what they did against the bounties of our eternal Mother Nature, they were punished accordingly.”
“Punished according to the psychotic gospels of Vegan Vengeance you mean? You’re a mad woman.”
“This is a mad and horrific world Henrietta, only a mad woman would not allow it to rouse them into furious action. I have paid my debt. My Karma is clear.”
Her Mother never failed to offend her, but she dare not turn her back. “I didn’t see you at the funeral this morning.”
“Funeral?”
“My Father’s funeral.”
“Oh, I was with Ben. He thought it would be better if we didn’t get involved in the whole sham. Death is an illusion.”
“Ben?”
“He is my spiritual guru.”
“Of course he is.”
Hak could not tell for certain, but she thought her mother blushed before she added. “And fiancé.”
The news hit Hak like a metric ton of laughing gas. “You’ve met someone who wants to marry you? Did you meet him on the mental ward?”
“I have my regrets darling,” said Eleanor stirring the simmering sauce tasting a little, before adding salt. “Try not to still be top of them, for me?”
Hak hated her. “So why did he ditch you tonight? Has he got somewhere less dangerous to be?”
“Ben is with his mother.”
She paused. “How old is he?”
“26.”
“He is younger than me?”
“Get your ego out of this darling, it is not about you, it is about me. I am in a delicate state.”
“The only delicate thing about your state is your sanity.”
“Jealousy is an ugly thing, daughter, but I forgive you, and you have Ben to thank for that. OK? If it were not for Ben showing me the ways of God, I would surely be lost like you.”
“The ways of God?” Hak laughed. “You are a bloody terrorist, the last thing on Earth you need is advice from a God botherer!”
“I will not have you talk about the father of the child in my womb in this way!”
Hak staggered sideways, suddenly the joke was over. “You’re pregnant?”
The black plague had more maternal instinct than Eleanor. She had fallen pregnant to Andrew McGrew in her early teens; the only reason the birth control failed was because she wanted to milk him dry of all of his fortunes. Hak was an excuse for her mother to become rich, and her father hated them both for the burden.
“How the hell did you get pregnant in prison?”
“Ben was teaching a meditation class, over the last four years our passions became uncontrollable. With Ben’s recommendation the board saw fit to show compassion, after all it has been twelve years.”
“That is the most unethical story I have ever heard.”
“Are you happy for me, darling?” Her tone became tender and loving, manipulative and eerie. Hak had forgotten just how many personalities lived within her Mother, and just how quickly they could surface without warning.
“Of course I am not!”
“Sixty-seven stitches and forty-nine hours of hell raising labour I endured because of you, and this is how you repay me?”
“What about the three broken arms, two cracked ribs, twelve dislocated jaws, twenty-nine stitches and the lifetime of shit you have given me? We are square. Go!”
“Go?” Protested Eleanor in a sweep of melodrama. “You cannot surely be considering throwing a pregnant woman out into the cold winter night!”
“I will not give my blessings to you ruining another child’s life just because you have been brainwashed by a hippy! That poor bastard in your belly will find out exactly what you are capable of over time and I pity them. The child will always have a home here, however, if you set foot in my house again, I will call the police and have you ferried back to the asylum faster than you can say sausage roll. Go!”
She watched closely as her mother packed up her things into a loose over-the-shoulder bag, kleptomania was one of her weaknesses.
When she was finally ready to leave she handed Hak an envelope.
“What is this?”
“It is from your father. He sent it to me in prison six weeks ago, the only thing he ever sent me. He wanted me to give it to you.”
“I don’t want it.”
Eleanor dropped it on the floor at Hak’s feet. “There are many things I do not want, something’s you just have to take. Farewell daughter, I shan’t expect to see you again.” And she left.
Hak bolted the door behind her, picking the envelope from the floor and throwing it in the closest bin. Her head throbbed like a bass amp. She swallowed two painkillers, turned off the lights, and headed for bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment