Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness - Alexandra Fuller [49]
MUM BROUGHT HER NEW BABY back to Lavender’s Corner and her perfectly-lit, cinematic life continued on schedule. Vanessa slept through the night from about the day she was born. “She hardly ever fussed. I just fed her occasionally and put her in a pram at the bottom of the garden,” Mum says.
“Because she looked like the neighbor?” I ask.
Mum gives me a look. “No, Bobo, Vanessa did not look the least bit like the neighbor, more is the pity for your Awful Books.” There’s a pause while Mum allows me to feel deeply ashamed of my cast aspersions. “No,” she continues. “I put her at the bottom of the garden so that I could get on with my painting.” My mother sighs. “Well, I thought she’d be all right because she was a very placid child and she had Suzy to look after her. Suzy was very protective. God help anyone who got anywhere near Vanessa’s pram.”
And so one sunny, bright morning in late June, Mum put Vanessa under the pepper tree, as usual, and returned to the veranda to paint. Vanessa was still too young to sit up or do much of anything except continue to process the indigestible amount of Shakepeare that had been read to her as a fetus. Meanwhile, the dry season had started, and the light had taken on a quality of bushfires and dust. “Oh, the colors that day. I’ll never forget. It was all ocher with shades of purple,” Mum says. “You know? One gets absorbed by the world.”
An hour or so later, out of the corner of her eye, Mum became aware of Suzy racing back and forth from the bottom of the garden to the veranda, trying to get her attention. She dropped her paintbrush and ran out onto the lawn.
“Vanessa was gone,” Mum says. “I looked around wildly. But I couldn’t see her and I couldn’t hear her. And then finally I noticed the pram, twenty feet off. Somehow the brake had come undone, and it had rolled away and tipped up. Vanessa was all bundled in the hood, covered in blankets. She was absolutely crimson in the hot sun.” Mum shakes her head. “I got such a fright,” she says. “That was it. I never painted again.”
BEFORE THE DRY SEASON HAD ENDED, a further accumulation of mishaps and tragedies bumped up against history and by the beginning of the next short rains, my mother was in a world she couldn’t recognize. First, one of Dad’s polo ponies chased Violet through a barbed wire fence. “I found her standing in the paddock, her belly ripped open, her neck bleeding, her legs in ribbons,” Mum says. Mum sent an urgent note to Charlie Thomson up in Molo and meantime she tried smearing May & Baker powders and liquid paraffin on the wounds. Violet trembled. Blood gushed down Mum’s arms.
Charlie arrived the next day. He shook his head. “Better to destroy her,” he said. “It really would be kindest.” But looking at Mum’s face, he surrendered and gave Violet something for the pain and something else to limit the spread of infection. “It would really be kindest . . .” he started to say again, but Mum shook her head. Charlie left. For another day and night, Mum stayed with Violet. Every six or eight hours, the alarmed ayah brought Vanessa to the paddock. Mum fed the baby distractedly, never taking her eyes off the mare.
Dad came home on Friday afternoon to find both Mum and Violet half mad with exhaustion. Mum trying to hold the horse upright. Violet trying to die. “If I let go of her, she’ll give up,” Mum said.
Dad stroked the mare’s neck. “Yes,” he said, “she will.” He waited with Mum an hour or so. Then he said, “All right, Tub.”
“I know,” Mum said. She dropped the halter rope. The mare sighed, and then slowly lay down, first buckling her knees and then with an enormous effort collapsing her haunches. Mum pulled off her jersey and draped it over the horse’s shoulders. “Good-bye, Violet,” she said, tears running down her nose and onto the horse’s neck. Dad took Mum back to the house and sat her down at the kitchen table with a glass of