In 2015, my brave, funny and unbelievably stubborn mother finally lost her battle with cancer. Since then, I have missed her with greater and lesser degrees of intensity with each day that has passed, but I cherish my memories of her and the precious time we spent together.
She had a keen eye and a sharp wit, but she was very much a product of her generation and a rather old-fashioned upbringing on a farm in rural Essex. My parents had a long and not very happy marriage - she passed away just short of what would have been their 50th wedding anniversary - but it would never have occurred to her to leave my father. She was very much of the mindset: “you’ve made your bed, now lie on it.” Her parents before her were much the same, the product of a union between two people who fell in love and then discovered after they were married how little they had in common. In my mother’s view, the only way to survive decades of marriage was to have the occasional extra marital dalliance and I was aware from quite a young age that she was doing precisely that. I didn’t judge her for it, but it was not a mindset that made sense to me. Apart from the obvious complications of sustaining a parallel relationship with two men without them finding out about each other, I didn’t see how any partnership that is rooted in lies and deceit could possibly thrive. So, I’ve always valued honesty and transparency above all things in my relationships. I have had two marriages to date, but I was faithful to both my husbands. My mother thought that I was rather puritanical and that my belief that infidelity in a committed relationship is a deal breaker was rather holier than thou. So, it’s fair to say that her attitude to this subject was very different to mine.
This was far from being the only area of life in which my mother and I did not see eye to eye, but we never let it come between us. In fact, we often enjoyed a good-humoured joke on the subject of lovers and their desirability or otherwise. But there was one particular incident that brought this subject out of the realm of theoretical debate into reality, and I look back on it as one of the funniest moments we shared together.
One dreary Sunday afternoon in late autumn we were sitting in a companiable silence in the living room of her Georgian house. It was the sort of day whose drab monochrome sky made the passing of time feel particularly monotonous. I recall that there was a strange stillness in the air that day and the only sound to be heard, except for the occasional rustle of my mother’s newspaper, was the steady ticking of the old grandfather clock.
All of a sudden, we were both abruptly jolted from our state of torpor by the harsh grating sound of the front gate swinging open on its hinges. We weren’t expecting any one and it seemed like an unusual time of day for it to be the postman. I reluctantly rose from my chair and went to see who this unwelcome stranger could be. When I opened the front door, I was greeted by a delivery boy bearing a long, unwieldy looking parcel, which he abruptly thrust into my arms.
“Needs a signature” he muttered, casting a curious eye over my shoulder at the grand looking hallway behind me. I could see him looking at the ornate Chinese vase on the table and thinking to himself that it must have cost a fortune. I swiftly signed and shut the door firmly behind his retreating back. My mother looked up with a quizzical expression and raised an eyebrow as I returned to the living room with my package.
“Did you order something from Amazon for me?” I asked.
“No darling”, she replied. “It’s not your birthday and it’s too early to be thinking of Christmas presents.”
“That’s odd”, I remarked. “I haven’t ordered anything but this parcel has my name on it so someone must have ordered it for me.”
We both gazed suspiciously at the parcel as though it held the answer to some explosive secret. I began to examine its smooth contours through the wrapping paper to see if I could guess at its contents. This is something I’ve been doing since I was a young girl, as I love to prolong that feeling of excited anticipation you get before opening a gift.
“Darling, for goodness sake just open it!” my mother exclaimed impatiently. “You never know, you might have a secret admirer!”
I laughed at this suggestion, not thinking for a moment that she might be on the right track. At that point in time, I had recently separated from my second husband and I was not in the least bit interested in swapping my single status for another relationship. Nonetheless, my curiosity was piqued and having failed to guess at what the parcel might contain or who the mysterious sender could be, I was now impatient to open it. So, I ripped the masking tape from around its bulky circumference and tore a large strip off the top right corner of the package. Inside, amidst multiple layers of protective wrapping, I was surprised to find a long box with a Hobbs label on it.
“I love Hobbs!” I exclaimed. “But I never buy anything from there unless it’s in the sale and I definitely didn’t order this.”
“Well someone must have!” my mother retorted. “Look and see if there’s a note inside it somewhere.”
Despite turning the package and its contents inside out, no such note materialised but I was thrilled to fling open the box and discover a rather exquisite and expensive looking pair of black knee-high boots. Almost the instant I did so, I heard a ping on my mobile notifying me of a new message. It didn’t occur to me that the two things could be connected, but I glanced at my phone anyway in case it was something important. To my surprise, I saw that I’d received a text from a former boyfriend who I hadn’t heard from in a very long time. The message read:
“I heard from mutual friends that you’ve been having a hard time. This is just a little something to let you know that despite time and distance I’ve never stopped thinking about you. You previously made it very clear to me that you wouldn’t take me as your lover, but I hope that now you’re separated from your husband you’ll reconsider.”
I was so astounded by the bluntness of his message and the inappropriacy of his gift that I barely knew how to react. My mother must have read the expression on my face because she instantly said:
“I was right, wasn’t I? Is it from Jake?”
I didn’t bother to ask her how she knew, as she had always had a sixth sense for those things, so I just nodded incredulously. My mother clapped her hands together in girlish glee and let out a deep belly laugh, of the kind I hadn’t heard since she’d been diagnosed with cancer six months previously.
“That’s wonderful, darling. And what a superb pair of leather boots!”
“How can this be wonderful?!” I exclaimed. “I may be separated from Alejandro but Jake is still very much married; so, this gift is entirely inappropriate. Furthermore, I don’t even know if they are leather!”
I’m not sure at what point the material of the boots became as important to me as the morality of whether or not it would be acceptable to keep such an inappropriate gift; but it seems that my love of boots outweighed my sense of guilt.
“Actually,” I replied, “there is one way to tell if they’re real leather and that is to smell them.”
Reluctant to waste any more time, I quickly applied my puppy-dog nose to the task and began sniffing at the boots. As I was doing so, my mother remarked drily:
“Do you mean to say that if the boots are leather you will keep them even though they are a gift from a married man? And may I ask if this also means that you’ve changed your views on the subject of extra-marital affairs?”
“Of course not, mum!” I replied indignantly. “But I can’t very well send them back to the address they came from or his wife will find out that he sent them to me. And if they are leather, then they are way too good to be sent to the charity shop.”
“Ah, I see!”, my mother exclaimed. “In that case, you have quite a dilemma on your hands. Perhaps you should take them to the cobbler in Saxon Square and say to him: “I’m thinking of having an affair with a married man, but I can’t decide if that is the right thing to do. Could you kindly help with my decision by letting me know if these boots are made of genuine leather?”
