J Doreen

Doreen
She was a bit of all right, was Doreen. Everyone said so - except
Carolyn, her daughter. Doreen looked thirty, told everyone she was
thirty-five, acted twenty and was, in fact forty-two. Carolyn told
everyone the truth - but no-one believed her. They all thought that she
was jealous of her beautiful and talented mother.
Doreen prided herself on her good taste, and she would never dream of
buying anything less than the top of the range. Carolyn said that it
was because she was a snob - but everyone else knew better. Doreen
liked quality items because of her impoverished childhood, they said.
Used to hand-me-downs for clothes and tea-chests for furniture, she now
sought consolation from her sad memories in a cheerful 'middle class'
environment. Carolyn said that their expensive home and elegant
furniture reflected an inappropriate Bourgeois attitude.
Doreen wore her hair very long because, she said, long, shiny tresses
enhanced a woman's femininity. Carolyn said that she had only grown it
to spite her own mother, who had always insisted that the young Doreen
had it cut short, to avoid head lice. (In a family of nine girls,
infestation was a serious problem.) Doreen experimented with make-up
and fashion accessories as though she was a young teenager. And her
dress style was completely at odds with most women of her age. Once she
attended a charity luncheon wearing a tight, black leather mini skirt
and black lipstick and nail varnish. She said it was because she liked
to identify with the younger generation - but Carolyn said that she was
trying to defy Nature by dressing up like a chicken, instead of the
mother hen that she really was. Certainly, she was enjoying no small
degree of success in her battle with time, for she actually looked
youthful and stunning as she stood on the podium to deliver her speech
about the plight of homeless teenagers in the city. She fluttered her
long, false eyelashes at the guest of honour, and had secured a cheque
for two thousand pounds before he had finished his coffee.
Doreen had a hunk of a husband. It was her second marriage, and the
tanned and muscular James was ten years her junior. They were very much
in love, and would gaze, doe-eyed at each other across the simple
Nouvelle Cuisine that they enjoyed each evening. They made a handsome
couple - both slim, blonde and beautiful. Carolyn said that they were
self-obsessed and bordering on anorexia. She complained that she had to
get chips from the chip shop and pizza from a take-away if she wanted
to eat real food. Doreen told her that her unwholesome diet was the
reason why she had spots. James said that it was giving her
'love-handles.' And Carolyn's resentment simmered. She liked James only
fractionally less than she liked her mother.
Doreen would never turn away a friend in need, for her own family had
ignored her teenage and later her marital problems too often. She would
always listen carefully to confidences, and would offer practical
advice, or support. Carolyn maintained, however, that she never
supported her in her hours of need. She could quote countless instances
when she had asked Doreen for money for clothes or a C.D. and had
politely, but firmly been refused. On many occasions, too, Doreen had
not allowed her daughter to attend parties and discotheques with her
friends - and she had actually banned her latest boyfriend from the
house! So much for human understanding, thought Carolyn, when she
couldn't even understand her own daughter.
Doreen would help complete strangers. Once a week she would drive
thirty miles to a women's prison to participate in counselling
work-shop sessions - for she proudly possessed a First Class Honours
Degree in Psychology. Her advice poured forth, like oil on troubled
waters, and most of the inmates had derived enormous benefit as they
swam in her words of wisdom. But Carolyn said that she only went
because Thursdays were half-day closing in their hometown, and she had
nothing better to do. Indeed, why did she always stop at the shopping
mall that was situated not a mile from the prison? And why did she
always come home with four designer label carrier bags?
Doreen worked two mornings a week in a charity shop, selling donated
goods for the benefit of the elderly. She could persuade her customers
to part with large sums of money on items that they didn't need -
simply because they wanted to please her. Her melancholic gaze of
disappointment would soften the hardest bargain hunter, and profits
were doubled every time she worked behind the counter. Carolyn said
that she did it because she saw her own old age looming ahead of her,
and she wanted to invest in a safe future. Why else would she keep on
and on about the plight of the elderly? Who cared, anyway? Carolyn
thought first and foremost about herself - and she knew that her mother
was just the same. Deep down, in some dark cavern of her soul that was
always concealed by her superficial benevolence.
It was during the celebration of Carolyn's eighteenth birthday when
the tragedy occurred. Carolyn had arranged to go out with friends that
evening to celebrate, having waived Doreen's tearful protests that she
had arranged a family gathering and that Carolyn was supposed to have
been the guest of honour.
"That'll teach you to ask me first," said her ungrateful daughter,
maliciously. "I'm fed up with you trying to organise my life. Well -
you won't get away with it any more, because I'm an adult now." Her lip
curled scornfully as she turned away with a final coup de grace.
"So you can just p---- off!" Doreen was mortified. She had arranged
for her oldest sister to fly over from Australia for the occasion, and
most of the others had come from miles away as well. She pleaded, she
sobbed and she tried everything that she knew had worked when she had
needed to persuade people. But nothing worked. Carolyn was adamant.
There was only one thing left to try. Swallowing her pride, Doreen
picked up the telephone and dialled the number of her ex husband -
Carolyn's natural father. She cringed at the thought of begging him for
a favour - but he was the only person to whom Carolyn, in this frame of
mind, would listen. And she might even agree to stay at home tonight -
if only to spite her mother by obeying her father. Carolyn was
complicated, but the underlying factor in her relationship with Doreen
was the amount of blame that she placed on her for the break-up of her
marriage to Anthony.
Anthony, predictably, sounded smug at the idea of being able to
succeed where his ex wife had failed. It was a novel experience for him
- and he intended to make the most of it.
"Yes&;#8230;.all right. If you insist." He wasn't going to make it
easy. "But you'll have to come and fetch me because my car's off the
road." Doreen tutted. She really hadn't got time to go gallivanting
down to Sussex - there was so much to do for the party. But then she
reminded herself that, without Carolyn, there would be no party. So she
jumped in her little sports car and set off on the sixty-mile
journey.
But Doreen never arrived. The police said that she must have given a
lift to a hitchhiker, because forensic evidence showed the presence of
strands of dirty dark hair on the seats, and greasy fingerprints on the
doors. He had strangled her with her own scarf and had left her naked
body in a ditch.
James was inconsolable. Carolyn told him cheerfully that he was young
and good looking enough to find a replacement quickly and that in no
time at all he would get over it. That was the precise moment when -
completely out of character - he hit her. In his grief, he left the
arrangements for the funeral to his stepdaughter, who was enjoying her
new self-importance with a tasteless cheerfulness. In the end, she
hadn't catered for half the amount of people who turned up, and the
whole thing was a fiasco. Carolyn allowed people who were mere
acquaintances to take up seats that should have been left for family
members, and Doreen's sister from Australia was left outside in the
pouring rain because all the seats had been filled. As Carolyn looked
at the coffin, she could almost hear her mother's groan of annoyance.
She sat, uncomfortably through the service, thinking,
"Yes, all right. I know that you could have done it better!" But
instead of her imaginary mother being displeased, Carolyn was certain
that, from her new home in the sky she replied,
You've done really well, Carolyn. You're just a kid who's suddenly
discovered what it means to be responsible. Hold your head up and shrug
off the criticism. You've done your best and I'm proud of you.'
'Silly cow!' thought Carolyn. 'She can't even say what she really
thinks - even after she's gone.
Then, just as the coffin was being conveyed through the little
curtains, a curious thing happened to Carolyn. It was as if some great
tube had come along and sucked out her insides. She felt empty. The
life she had known was finished, for she had no-one to hate any more.
She had no-one to blame for everything. She had no-one to make nasty
remarks about. She had no-one to defy, to outsmart or to mock. The
reason for her existence was, at that moment being burnt in an
incinerator, and Carolyn didn't know how she was going to go on living.
Until then, she hadn't cried - but suddenly, it was as though a volcano
had erupted. Everyone turned in disbelief to stare, as great sobs
wracked her body, and she buried her face in her hands.
Doreen had counselled bereaved people during her short life - and now
Carolyn needed her to counsel her.
"I'd listen to you this time!" she screamed, silently. "Where are you
when I really need you, you selfish cow!" But her insult didn't make
her feel better. Her only comfort would have been to call her a selfish
cow to her face.
Somehow, all the mourners fitted into the house, although there wasn't
nearly enough food. Many of them wept openly, and all of them bore
evidence of having wept. Everyone was talking about Doreen and the acts
of mercy that she had performed. It seemed that everyone had some
special reason for being grateful to her. Carolyn mingled amongst them,
silently.Then, one of the mourners said,
"She was a bit of all right, was Doreen." And for the first time in
her life, Carolyn said, emphatically,
"Yes. She was."