The Strange Year of Vanessa M Read online

  3.

  They say there’s nothing like sleeping on a problem. Brain in overdrive? Nervous system out of control? Nothing a few hours’ rest won’t cure. This wasn’t what happened with Vanessa. She woke up crying. Big fat tears soaking the pillow.

  The euphoria of freedom she’d felt the night before had completely disappeared. Now she felt lost, and worst of all, guilty. How could she have abandoned her daughter again? How could she have run away without even trying to talk to her husband? Now everyone would definitely think she was mad. What kind of mother does something like that? All she could think about was those news stories about mothers who drown their children in the bathtub or drive off a cliff with their kids in the back. Mothers she found monstrous, that she fiercely condemned. Was she turning into one of those?

  Even so, the idea of running back home made her feel sick to the stomach. Her daughter’s over-effusive joy, her husband’s questions, her mother’s reproachful looks, grumbling how it was just her luck to have a daughter with her aunt’s genes. Her aunt… of course! Her aunt was her only salvation.

  She took a quick shower, avoiding contact with the shower curtains, which had black specks of mould on them and needed bleaching. There was no shampoo and the only soap was the stuff in the dispenser by the wash hand basin, mixed with water to last longer. The towel was coarse and threadbare after so many years of washing, but at least it smelled of washing powder. The runaway teenager she’d felt like the night before had once again become the fastidious adult who’d long lost the habit of places like these. Fortunately she’d paid the previous night. That way she could dash straight for the car and drive the distance that separated her from the only person she could count on.

  Vanessa’s aunt lived in a fishing village a few miles’ drive from town. It was near enough to be a popular destination for weekend visitors but far enough for its inhabitants to feel untouched by big-city bustle. Fishermen and their families mainly populated it; since 1970’s, hippies, surfers, Buddhists and the full spectrum of peace-and-love subculture had taken up residence, too. Children still walked to school unaccompanied and played in the street with no one to watch over them but the neighbours. The old men still congregated in the park every late afternoon, no one locked the doors of their houses, and cars rarely left their garages. Vanessa had always loved this place, and took years to understand why her mother never let her spend more than one day in her aunt’s house, even during the summer holidays. Later, when she could have gone there whenever she liked without having to worry about her mother’s disapproval, she’d come up against the reluctance not only of her husband but also Diana, who didn’t like this simple little village with its barefoot dreadlocked hippies. They preferred holidays in the Caribbean, those package deals in cramped charter flights, and hotels with three thousand other guests and five swimming pools with shrieking children in every one. And so, over the years, Vanessa had only visited the village briefly, but she’d think of it whenever she sat at a poolside bar in some resort or other, a ludicrous undrinkable pink and blue cocktail in her hand, rumba music pumping.

  The journey back restored her spirits, and when she came to the narrow street lined with low buildings where her aunt lived a smile came to her face. The red door was inviting, like the entrance to a world the opposite of the one she’d been brought up in. It felt like Vanessa in Wonderland. She rang the bell, which tinkled loudly, and waited for her aunt’s high-pitched voice.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s me, Vanessa.”

  “Come in, dear, come in,” her aunt answered quite naturally, as if Vanessa had been there just yesterday, when in fact it was almost a year since she’d last visited.

  She climbed the wooden staircase to the second floor. On her way she met the old lady from the third floor, an octogenarian who had lived there for as long as Vanessa could remember and had always looked like an octogenarian. The old lady didn't recognize her, obviously.

  “If it’s to sell me something, I don't want it, go away!” she snapped.

  “No, don't worry, I’m going to the second floor,” Vanessa answered, making no effort to enter into conversation. She would have liked to say who she was, asked after the old lady’s health, if Silvestre her cat was still alive, but her desire to hug her aunt was greater.

  When she came to the second floor landing, she saw the door was off the latch. Just like Auntie. Vanessa’s mother thought it was inconsiderate not to meet people at the door. It was one of the things she always moaned about on the journey back to town. That and the fact the plates her aunt served cake on didn’t match the teacups. Where have you seen the likes of that for a tea service? Vanessa went in and closed the door carefully. She’d forgotten about the wind chimes hanging behind the door, as if to bless those who entered. Or more accurately, drive off the bad spirits that might arrive with them.

  “Hello Auntie!” Vanessa started, making for the living room.

  “Come in, my dear. I’ll be right there,” her aunt shouted from somewhere inside the house.

  Vanessa sat down on the brown velvet couch covered with cushions of every colour and texture. It was a comfortable room with a lived-in feel, full of framed pictures and 1970’s concert posters on wallpaper with a green palm tree pattern. It was a room where you don't feel you have to ask permission to sit down or take off your shoes, the opposite of her mother’s house, in other words. Vanessa smiled as she looked around.

  “What are you smiling at?” her aunt asked, coming in with a Moroccan tea tray.

  “Nothing special, I was just thinking how different your house is from my mother’s. Are you sure you two are sisters?” she joked.

  “Quite honestly, sometimes I’m not so sure. But mum and dad swore we are” answered her aunt, putting the tray down on the coffee table. ‘Give me a hug, Sweetie.”

  Vanessa loved the way her aunt still treated her like a child. She let her pinch her cheeks and smudge her face with her red lipstick, which she wiped off with spit-moistened fingers. Her aunt hadn’t changed, the dishevelled red-dyed curls, the tunics with gaudy patterns, the wrists decked with big tinkling bracelets. The wrinkles were there all right; but her inner radiance made you forget she was a woman well into her sixties. They embraced warmly and Vanessa burst into tears again. She sobbed like a child, her aunt stroking her hair.

  “Oooh, the state you’re in, my little girl,” she sighed. “I think we need something stronger than tea.”

  She sat Vanessa down in a mountain of velvet and patchwork and went to the sideboard, from which she produced a bottle of gin. She tipped a third of the bottle into the teapot, poured two cups, with two heaps of brown sugar in each, and held one out to Vanessa.

  “Just how the Queen Mother likes it!” she gushed.

  Vanessa sipped her drink carefully, its heat slowly spreading through her body, and soon felt better. Well enough, at least, to explain to her aunt what had brought her here to visit. Not just the part about driving and driving the previous evening, anything to avoid going home, but also how she’d ended up in court, and on the psychiatrist’s couch.

  Her aunt listened attentively, without judging, without asking questions. When Vanessa had finished, her aunt took her hands and placed them over her heart and began to intone chants in a language Vanessa didn’t know. She finished the ritual by snapping her fingers all around Vanessa and blowing in her face. Vanessa knew her aunt to a certain extent and wasn’t too surprised about all this rigmarole. She didn’t believe in that esoteric stuff; wasn’t sure whether it was tribal practice, witchcraft or rituals from some weird religion, but she didn't think it could do any harm so she played along with it.

  “Good, now I’ve cleansed your aura,” said her aunt when Vanessa opened her eyes. “Now wait here while I get a charm.” Her Aunt darted off in the direction of the bedrooms, leaving Vanessa perplexed but – she had to admit it – feeling a little better, as if the thing she felt in her heart was a little less tight now.

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sp; Vanessa went into to the kitchen to look for something to eat, as she suddenly remembered she hadn’t eaten anything since that tasteless sandwich the night before. She opened the fridge and found it full of macrobiotic stuff. It looked more like a laboratory than a fridge, seaweed, tofu, and different kinds of sprouts. Fortunately she found a yoghurt, soy yoghurt, but yoghurt all the same. As she was closing the fridge door, she noticed a man on the other side of the door. Bare torso, grizzled hair on the back of his neck although the crown of his head was almost bald, a bead necklace. Vanessa started, was just about to scream, when she realized it must have been one of her aunt's gentleman friends.

  “Hello, you must be Vanessa. I’m Frank. And I can guarantee you that you will not want that yoghurt,” he said, in a friendly way.

  Vanessa regained her composure, smiled and closed the fridge door. Only then did she notice that not only was this man bare-chested but he was in fact bare all over. And at that she was unable to suppress a little yelp. Why is it that when we see someone in the nude, our eyes fall exactly on the parts that are best ignored? And worse still, they stay there. Which in this instance was not particularly pleasant, as this gentleman was more than just a ‘friend’ to her aunt, and a naked body in its sixties, no matter how much it’s loved, is never exactly a pretty sight.

  “Frank, for goodness sake! Don’t wander around in the nude when we have a guest,” yelled Vanessa’s aunt, holding out a towel for Frank to take.

  “Ah, sorry, it’s habit,” said Frank, wrapping the towel around his waist and taking a bowl from the sideboard.

  Vanessa wasn‘t hungry any more and followed her Aunt back to the living room.

  “Darling, I’m sorry about Frank. He loves to wander around au naturel. But where were we? Ah yes, take this lucky charm. Wear it around your neck, on your wrist, in your knickers, wherever it feels best, as long as it’s in contact with your skin. You have a room here at your disposal, if you need one.”

  Vanessa said thanks and finished her tea in a gulp, trying to shake off the image of Frank in his birthday suit. Her aunt’s invitation was tempting, but the thought of Frank airing his manhood around the house in the middle of the night scared her.

  “Does Frank live here, Auntie?” she asked, timidly.

  “Goodness, of course not, he only comes here for our afternoon lovemaking. At our age no one lives with anyone else, my dear. Just imagine, putting up with an old man snoring beside me. The trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night – you know men at his age have problems with their prostate – and all that morning moaning and groaning at bones that won’t stretch. No way. Each in his own little house, and we have fun when we feel like it or when the pains allow us.”

  Vanessa sighed with relief and decided to stay, if only because she had no idea where else to go. She didn’t want to go home, and even less to another grimy room. Not even a five star hotel would do, as she desperately needed some human warmth around her, the kind that embraces without constricting. Now all she had to do was block out the mental image of her aunt and Frank making love all over the house.

  4.

  The next morning, for the first time in months, Vanessa felt better. Maybe the cleansing of her aura had worked. Or maybe it was the cake? She’d got the idea that the cake Frank had made the previous afternoon, as an offering to dispel the embarrassment, had something funny in it. It had made her feel light-headed, and happy for no good reason. The walls seemed to move now and again, and colours were brighter and more vivid. Now she remembered her aunt being annoyed with Frank and saying something like “You shouldn’t have made that cake, she’s not used to it.” That was more or less the point at which the butterflies on the lampshade began to fly away. Had Frank drugged her? Probably. What do you expect from a Dutch hippie who’d come here on holiday in 1969 and never left?

  Anyway, whether it was the cake with some kind of hallucinogen in it, or the tea with gin in it, she had slept without nightmares or sweats and woken up feeling restored. She finally felt she had the courage to go back home and face up to her life, whether she liked it or not. What else could she do? She didn't want to take too long, as she imagined her daughter was anxious for her to return. Children never forget a promise, and Mimi would surely be watching from the window already, waiting for the metallic blue of her car to show around the corner.

  Her aunt had asked her not to wake her up. It wasn’t just that she hated goodbyes, but she also needed to rest her body. Saturdays were very busy in the Sunshine Centre, where she held aura readings and personal development sessions. She’d left a note on the kitchen table. ‘Live the world that’s inside you,’ it read. Vanessa folded it and stuffed it inside her handbag without stopping to think what the words meant.

  The journey back to town was quicker than she’d expected, maybe because there was less traffic on a Saturday morning. Before rounding the last bend that separated her from her fate, Vanessa pulled over, to take a deep breath and smoke one last cigarette. She made sure to hide the pack of cigarettes and the lighter, because in addition to the interrogation on her sudden disappearance she could do without a sanctimonious lecture on the evils of tobacco, that socially tolerated drug that’s every bit as dangerous as the others, and so on. Her daughter was at the window, as she’d expected.

  The affection in those little arms wrapped round her neck comforted her soul. She covered Mimi with kisses and caresses; sensed her husband observing the scene. She gave him a forced smile. She didn't even know why. Those sad eyes of his and the love he felt for her made her feel uncomfortable. They reminded her she didn't feel the same. She wasn’t even sure she’d ever felt the same. For Vanessa, this marriage was just a routine; unrelenting and monotonous, while for him it was a blazing passion. He would look at her with those love-struck eyes as they watched television, seek her hand under the dinner table, never refuse her anything, even after all these years together. How many women wouldn’t pay to be loved like that? To find someone who lived for her, who asked, “What’s the matter?” with genuine concern? Vanessa felt bad about herself for not appreciating the luck people said she had. And that only made her detest him more, for making her feel like that. She got up and gave him a sympathy hug, which was only interrupted by the screeching voice of her mother.

  “Vanessa! Where have you been all this time? You must be out of your mind!”

  She felt like shouting, ‘Shut up and mind your own business,’ but she had been brought up to fear and respect her elders. Finally Diana arrived to save the day. Vanessa had no idea what excuse her friend had concocted to explain her absence.

  “Vanessa Darling, how was your silent retreat? I told your mother you couldn’t call, it’s not called a silent retreat for nothing after all, but you know what mothers are like, always fretting, anyway you look great, two days’ rest have done you good, don’t you think she’s got a bit of colour back? I do. Here, give me a big kiss, mmmmwah! Everything’s been fine here, same as ever, isn't it? But then you’ve only been gone two days, it’s not as if you’ve been on a round-the-world trip. Right, I’ll be getting off home then and leave you all to catch up on things, call me later, okay? Make sure you do now, byeee!”

  The tension was dispelled, or at least postponed, by Diana’s gushing and Vanessa played along with it. Trust Diana to make up a story like that. She apologized for forgetting to mention her supposed retreat, and especially for not making arrangements for someone to collect her daughter from school and leaving the poor child to fret. Remaining at school until only the night warden was the only one left was one of the most traumatic experiences in the life of a small child. Watching her friends depart one by one, holding their parents’ hands; looking despairingly to the classroom door every time the bell rang; seeing the carer with her coat on already, looking anxiously at the clock, whose moving hands were the only sound; until the carer left too. Fighting back a growing sense of guilt, Vanessa gave a fictitious account of the retreat and her fellow participants, amazed
at how easily the lies came to her.

  She spent the day playing with Mimi, avoiding finding herself alone with her husband and ignoring the silence of her mother, who finally left after lunch. This was a way her mother had always acted, not speaking to her whenever Vanessa did or said anything she disapproved of. And not just with Vanessa. The silent treatment had been common practice when Vanessa’s father was alive too; when he went fishing on the day their cousins from the north were coming, or when he wouldn’t say who he’d been out with the previous evening. She’d stopped speaking to her own sister for years, when she hadn’t worn black to Vanessa’s father’s funeral and then spent ten minutes weeping beside the coffin as if she was the widow. But Vanessa was her daughter, the daughter who had never given her cause for concern, had always been obedient – so obedient she ended up doing a course in management just to put an end to six months’ silence. On another occasion, when Vanessa was preparing to get married, her mother didn't speak to her for three months just because Vanessa had told her she was thinking of doing just a registry wedding. As usual, Vanessa gave in, and had the big fancy church marriage she’d always hoped to avoid, complete with preparation programme, with couples ranging from more-Catholic-than-the-pope to the we’re-not-Catholic-but-we-think-the-ceremony’s-lovely types. She knew she’d just have to apologize for existing as usual, and keep acting as if everything was perfectly normal until her mother came out of her silence, which always happened suddenly, with no mention of the matter, as if it had never happened.

  By the end of the day Vanessa was exhausted and wished she could eat another slice of that funny cake that Frank had made. Instead, she called Diana.