I think I figured it out. Grief-Magdalene-Prayer, and yesterday I went in search of the Queensbury house. I remembered the road, its roof was in sight of our garden, they were that close, and the turn onto their track a right hand before the crocodiles. I’d been meaning to look for ages. Andy drove, I leaned forward looking for the door. There’s a photograph of us all, me and my siblings and them - Alice, Emma, the whole crowd in our infant summer bare-foot sand and crinkled eyes to the sun shapes, brown bodies and straw hair. I remember the door and how it led to the courtyard in which long lunches were had by drinking adults. My mother and father were everywhere in my thoughts.

I found it, sort of, the door gone, the wall rebuilt to make terrible modern gates and divided land. I think I found the house. I stood and recalled us all where somewhere in some parallel world we still run amok unseen and only heard vaguely over the wall, a seventies childhood of absence and freedom. As I got into the car I said, I think I’ve worked it out. We’d been talking about the messages coming, what did they mean. Earlier that day I’d had a long conversation with a sibling about her. And my mother’s kaftan had made a reappearance. We all have our own parents, what I mean is, we share them in name and body but not experience. And this: I think I need to grieve her.

Since she died I’ve felt liberated. I did so much work before. The last half decade was my own fiftieth and the turning point, menopause and memoir and each brought an untangling. When she died I felt at peace. We saw each other. She said sorry, and thanked me. It was a conclusion. My mother died and was gone, through the doors and on to some other place where she is probably just as busy, in fact I know she is. But we all have our own mother, and as we bumped along the dirt road away from the Queensbury house, I said, I think she’s asking for my help and at that minute, as we paused at the junction, Andy said, Hare. There she was, smaller than the one I’d seen before but unquestionably sat upon its sprung hind legs, ears cocked, a pause like us before another car came screaming past and she bounded away into vines.

I think she’s asking me to help her. Which undoubtedly I will but also, there’s something typically rounded about this, given the circumstances. Love is so simple in its giving and so obvious in its missing.

Eleanor

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