ANGELA BRADBURY WAITED many years to tell her daughter Sadie the story of how she came to exist. It was, she thought, a beautiful story, full of romance and passion, and Angela had many times imagined, with tears of happiness in her eyes, how she would tell it. ‘It was a lovely day,’ she would begin, her voice low and quiet, ‘a hot, still day even though it was only March, and we went to the seaside, your Father and I, on bicycles, with a picnic in the basket on my handlebars, and when we got there we swam even though the water was freezing cold and then we crouched among the sand dunes and ate our picnic and then—’ her voice would surely break ‘—and then we made love and you were conceived.’ Sadie would ask why she had wanted a baby and Angela had a touching explanation—honest but tender. ‘I worried so much whether it was the right thing to do,’ she would say, ‘I didn’t know if I wanted to be a Mother with all it meant but your Father persuaded me—wanting a baby so badly was enough, he said, and it did not need justifying. It would be visible evidence of our love for each other, he said, part of an inevitable natural pattern, and I should not be afraid. And as soon as I knew you were on the way I was so happy I knew he had been right.’
But unfortunately Sadie never asked, not once, ever, not a hint of curiosity and if Angela tried to foist the charming tale upon her she groaned and said ‘For chrissake, Mum.’
On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays Angela was in the habit of ringing her Mother, who lived in St Erick, a country town in north-west Cornwall. She rang her at six thirty precisely. If for some reason she was delayed, her Mother rang her to see what was the matter. They rarely rang each other apart from these rigidly fixed times that were as much part of Angela’s life, as getting up or going to bed. The ’phone calls hung over her but were essential to her peace of mind. After she had chattered to Mother for at least five minutes she would make some acceptable excuse and hang up, feeling immediately relieved and, if Mother had been in good spirits, which was rare, even happy.
To answer the telephone on a Sunday afternoon and hear her Father’s voice was alarming and meant disaster. She gave the number and he said, ‘Is that you, Angela?’ which irritated her. Who else could it be since her voice was surely that of an adult female and no other adult female lived in the house? In ways like that she was cruel to him.
‘Yes, of course,’ she said, curtly, though she had caught the despondency in his voice and interpreted it correctly with great speed. ‘Is anything wrong?’ Because she was a Trewick by birth, Angela knew that this was the expected thing to assume.
‘It’s your Mam.’
Naturally. It always was. Nothing else made the stomach lurch with such violence.
‘What’s happened?’
‘She’s took bad. I took her breakfast in, bran and that, got her up, got her dressed and nice, said she wouldn’t bother with her hair but I said oh no we’re not starting that game and I did it, best I could like, anyways I got her going and I thought hello her mouth’s a bit funny but she says she’s all right, bad tempered like, and anyways when I came from getting a loaf—I had to get a loaf or I wouldn’t have left her—anyways she says she wants to lie down so I took off her slippers and she lay down on the settee, but her colour was bad mind’—
He had to be heard out. Even if she could have brought herself to, Angela would never have interrupted. She listened almost dreamily, absent minded, picking at a bit of fluff on her sleeve. Perhaps he would go on forever and nothing need be done.
—‘anyways she tries to get up to go to the doings and she was away, down in a flash, head missed the fender by an inch, like a log, couldn’t move her and she’s shaking and her face all screwed up—what a business—oh dear—so I grabbed the poker and banged on the wall for Mrs Collins and luckily she was in and got the message—anyways she came in and between us we got her back on the settee—she’s a deadweight, you’d never think, till you come to lift her—and Mrs Collins says straight away “she’s had a stroke, Mr Trewick” and by god she was damned right, the doctor said “she’s had a stroke” soon as he’d seen her, and I must say he came quick, just a young fellow but very nice, “she’s had a stroke” he says, but that was yesterday—what a night—and now this morning she’s worse, a bit of pneumonia got into her the doctor says—’
‘How awful,’ Angela said. He had paused too long for breath for her to ignore the break. ‘Poor Mother.’
‘Poor Mother all right,’ Father said, ‘you’re dead right there—thought she was a goner—but anyways I’m managing and we’ll see how she goes—the doctor’s coming back this afternoon and he’s given her pills and everything, course she can’t hardly swallow, can’t speak either, it’s a job getting anything into her but I’m managing and Mrs Collins is very good’—
‘I’d better come down,’ Angela said. There was no alternative. She despised herself for the grudging way in which she said it, but Father did that to her.
‘Valerie’s coming,’ Father said, his voice rising with triumph. ‘I didn’t ring her first, mind, only she rings Sunday afternoon and I couldn’t keep it from her, now could I, so she knew first.’
Angela ignored that part. The assumption that she might be offended at Valerie being told first was too crass to go along with. He did it deliberately, fostering, he thought, a spirit of rivalry that would breed closer contact, quite unable to fathom that there was no competitive relationship at all between his daughters in this respect. Angela would have been grateful if only Valerie had been told. Valerie would have been grateful if only Angela had been told.
‘I’ll get an early train tomorrow from Paddington,’ Angela said. ‘Gives me time to get organized.’
‘I don’t think it will be a wasted journey, lass,’ Father said. ‘Thanks very much.’
Father’s humility was never convincing. He wasn’t really thanking her. He understood very well that thanks were inappropriate, but he liked to cast himself in the role of the pathetic old man who needed help. Till she got there, at least.
There had been other journeys like this one over the last five years, other calls to rush to Mother’s bedside because she was sinking fast. Only she never sank. She recovered miraculously from her many and various ailments and berated Father for presuming to summon the family. Each time she went, Angela packed a suit for the funeral, carried away by Father’s gloom. She packed a black suit and a cream silk shirt and a black and silver necklace because Father didn’t like bare open necks. He would want her to look smart, would not allow grief to be an excuse for slovenliness. He and Mother both disliked Angela’s clothes—they frequently reminisced about how neat and well turned out she used to look before she went to London. They said her clothes now were like dressing-up clothes, completely ridiculous for a teacher and mother of four children. There was no need for it, they said. Both of them paid great attention to their own clothes and were immaculate whatever the time of day. Especially Mother. Every afternoon of Angela’s childhood Mother had changed from her morning skirt to her afternoon skirt even when they were both threadbare. The distinction was extremely important to her—pride in her appearance was not due to vanity but to the importance of keeping up morale.
The first time Father had summoned her, when Mother, aged seventy, had a severe attack of influenza, Angela had travelled first class with Max, her new-born son, in a carrycot. She could remember the snow outside and the light it reflected into the grey, dusty compartment where she sat huddled in a corner breast feeding her baby, wondering if her milk would survive the strain of getting up from bed to make a three-hundred-mile journey. She had hoped Max, ten days old, and winter—it was January—would excuse her from going at all but Father’s voice was so bleak. ‘She’s sinking fast,’ he said, and there seemed no alternative, not unless one had a heart of stone, not unless one wished to be entirely selfish. She had arrived. Mother rallied. She opened her eyes to look at Max, her first grandson, and smiled and stretched out a finger to touch him where he lay on the bed. It was like a miracle watching the baby grip the finger and watching the life blood flow back into Mother. ‘I knew it would do the trick,’ Father had said, boastfully. Angela was home in a week, drained by all the emotion, leaving Mother a little radiant with the drama of it all and Father ebullient. She survived again and again and again, though never growing immune to the horror of it all.
This time, she travelled second class. The fares had shot up, the cost was exorbitant. The train, as ever, was packed with the deprived of the entire country. Nobody affluent ever seemed to travel by train, not from Paddington to Penzance, or if they did their affluence was obliterated by the crushing mass of people. There were children everywhere, sweets stuck in their hot hands in the most ridiculous fashion, no thought given to how they were to amuse themselves when the sucking palled. It wearied her to see it. Even when the children squabbled and yelled she could not bring herself to feel sorry for the harassed mothers. They had brought it upon themselves. They had neglected their duty as mothers. Angela glared at them furiously. Sit nicely, they said, sit quietly, sit straight, sit, sit and look out of the window—it was sickening. Proper mothers would have brought crayons and paper and story books and puzzles. Proper mothers would have played with their offspring. Proper mothers would have understood the children’s frustration. Angela tried not to look. She sat and thought how determined she had been to be a proper Mother. Like Mother, she thought, without ever having defined what that meant.
The baby was beautiful, after an agonizing birth—ordinary, but agonizing. Angela felt no ecstasy. They had done so many awful things to her—shoved tubes up her nose, yelled at her to push when she didn’t want to push and the pain had been all the more terrible because it was unexpected. ‘What am I doing wrong?’ Angela had shouted back at them, but nobody seemed to know. She had done all the right exercises, she had been calm and kept her head, and then quite suddenly there had been an explosion of pain and they were forcing her to take the gas and air she did not want. So there was no ecstasy, or even relief—only a deep shame and misery. She lay on the high bed while they mopped up the blood that seemed to be everywhere—‘All over the floor,’ the nurse who was cleaning it said crossly—feeling utterly sad and even frightened. She had no strength. She could not lift an arm or move her head. Her face was stiff with dried tears and her hair stuck to her forehead with sweat. They brought the baby over to her, tightly wrapped in a blanket. The shock revived her. It struck her as magical—a face she did not know but which she had created. And the pity of it engulfed her, bringing the tears again fast and furious. So pitiful—such a pathetic scrap and she herself so battered and exhausted. It was all too much to understand and yet all night she lay puzzling it out when all she craved was sleep. I am a Mother, she said to herself over and over again. What does it mean? And into her poor tired head swam pictures of her own Mother who had gone through all this before and never spoken of it.
She saw the bright orange door opening before the taxi had stopped. Father had recently painted it—‘Two coats, inside and out, best Dulux, no messing’—and would want it noticed. What a joke taxis were outside London, such slow friendly cheap things with drivers carrying luggage for you so quaintly. Father would have seen it coming round the corner, on the look out for half an hour. Trewicks were always on the look out. There was a mirror in the corner over the television so that the front door and gate could be seen from anywhere in the room. Nobody ever needed to knock on a Trewick door—it always opened, sometimes alarmingly, as soon as the startled caller’s hand moved towards the bell. If the visitor had not been seen by Father, he would have been heard, yet the bell was piercing as though the small house had secret wings and corridors not visible.
‘Good journey,’ Father said. He rarely asked questions. He made statements which you either contradicted or agreed with.
‘Not bad.’
‘Get yourself in then. Come and see her. Take your coat off first. Don’t want wet coats near your Mother, not in her state.’
He stood and watched her remove her coat, frowning hard. Briskly, he shook all two raindrops off it and hung it up correctly on a hanger.
Valerie, sister Valerie, was sitting on the bed, a tin bowl of water in one hand and a piece of cotton wool in the other. ‘Just moistening Mother’s lips,’ she murmured. Her spectacles were filmed over with the steam rising from the water. ‘Hot water?’ Angela said. ‘She seems so cold,’ Valerie said, moving the cotton wool with exaggerated care over Mother’s cracked and swollen lips. Angela sat down, on the other side of the bed. Mother was propped up on three pillows, her white bushy hair pushed in weird directions. Her eyes were closed, her skin grey. Angela took her hand, lying limply on top of the blue coverlet, and said, ‘Mother, can you hear me? It’s Angela.’ Slowly, slowly, with enormous effort Mother’s eyes opened and tried to focus—eyes drugged and bloodshot but still bright blue. Her lips moved but no sound came from them. Angela squeezed her hand again and bent right over Mother’s face. ‘Mother, can you hear me? It’s Angela—Angela.’ And this time Mother smiled and managed to whisper ‘Angela’ and to return the faintest of pressures with her hand. The smile was the same wistful slip of a smile for which Angela had striven all her life.
‘She prayed to God you would come,’ Father said from the foot of the bed. ‘Didn’t you Mam? Eh?’ He came round to where Angela sat and leant over her and shook his head. ‘Bad,’ he said solemnly, ‘very bad.’ Too quickly, Angela jumped up, shaking the rackety old bed enough to spray Valerie with her own hot water, and went out of the stifling room and upstairs to the bathroom where she buried her face in the same blue and white striped towel that once she had taken for swimming on Thursdays after school. It smelled peculiar, but would have been washed vigorously in the dolly tub last week. Her Father would not have a washing machine—no need. He would not send things to the laundry either—no need. He said that he had to have something to do and that he could manage and went on breaking Mother’s houseproud heart by ruining her treasured scraps of linen.
She washed her face, battling with the usual claustrophobia the house gave her. The bath had a strange contraption across it to help Mother get in and out since arthritis had begun to cripple her. A large green rubber mat lay in the bottom of it so that she would not slip. Father frequently pointed it out. ‘That’s her mat,’ he would say, taking you into the bathroom so he could point, ‘so she won’t slip. And her special thingamebob for getting in and out—but I still stay near, oh yes.’
She went back downstairs, relatively composed but surly. Father made her surly, with suppressed fury. He was sitting in front of the fire, arms crossed, legs thrust out, right in front of it in his patched leather armchair. She stood in front of the window, watching the rain fall on the privet hedge, making it glossy and a darker green than it really was. It was a viciously neat hedge, cut as soon as it showed any signs of growth. She did not want to sit down, shunned even the intimacy of sharing the fire. But Father said, ‘Sit yourself down’ and she had to obey. She sat primly on the edge of a hard upright dining-table chair, as far away as it was possible to get in that small cramped room.
‘What do you think of her?’ Father said. ‘Eh?’
‘Oh, she’s that all right. I don’t think you’ll have had a wasted journey.’
‘It doesn’t matter about the journey.’
‘Children all right?’
‘Fine.’
Valerie came out of the downstairs sitting room that had been turned into a bedroom. She was tiptoeing and had her finger to her lips. She sat down beside Father and sighed, passing a hand over her forehead.
‘Have you changed her?’ Father asked.
‘She wasn’t wet,’ Valerie said, ‘I’ve just looked. I’ve washed her face and rubbed some salve on her lips. I’ve taken the quilt off and put a heavier one on instead and another blanket. But I’ve opened the side window just a crack to let some air in and—’
‘Oh no,’ Father said, and got up. ‘No, no, no—not an open window. Definitely not.’
‘But it’s so hot and stuffy,’ Valerie protested, ‘it’s not healthy to—’
‘I’ll say what’s healthy,’ Father said. ‘In this rain—and her so cold—you’ll kill her,’ and he went towards Mother’s door.
‘Don’t go in now,’ Valerie said, ‘you’ll waken her—I’ll creep in and do it if you insist.’
‘I can creep myself,’ Father said.
He opened the door, watched by both daughters, who knew his clumsiness. He stepped carefully inside, leaving it open, and began to move round the bed in the narrow space between wardrobe and dressing table, but with his eyes fixed on the offending window towards which he edged his way he forgot the little stool that jutted out from beneath the washstand and tripped over it. Putting out his liver-spotted old hand to steady himself he pulled the lace mat off the chest of drawers and brought down the tin-framed photograph of Mother’s mother. ‘Goddam,’ he said, and looked towards the bed. Mother did not stir. He got to the window and closed it and stood for a while fussing with the curtains. Then he went over to the bed and twitched the blankets and felt Mother’s head, and shook his own.
‘I think I’ll go for a quick walk,’ Angela said, when they had all taken up their positions again and the silence grew.
‘In this rain,’ Father said.
‘It was wet coats and shoes I was thinking of,’ Father said, ‘not you minding the rain. Wet things in the house—that was what I was meaning. At a time like this, in her condition.’
‘I’ll hang my coat in the washhouse when I come back.’
‘And wet hair?’
‘I’ll dry it.’
Father pursed his lips and started jabbing with the poker at a big piece of coal on the fire.
‘No consideration,’ he said, ‘always the same.’
‘Want some coal brought in when I’ve got my coat on?’ Angela asked.
‘There’s plenty coal in the bin.’
‘Coming, Valerie?’
‘Oh no—I’ll stay with Mother,’ Valerie said with a tired martyred smile. ‘I’m exhausted anyway.’
She walked to the cemetery. There wasn’t much choice. Two slabs of land owned by the council, one for the dead and one for a huge sprawling estate where she had spent half her life. Her bedroom window had overlooked the cemetery—it was the first thing she saw each day, those white tombstones and the long rows of yew trees leading upwards to the new crematorium. She had a great affection for it, not finding it in the least morbid or depressing to spend hours walking in it. It was extremely well laid out, very formal, with broad poplar-lined paths and little iron-work bridges over thin trickling streams which appeared to irrigate the dead. There were flowers everywhere—not just wreaths, poor shrivelled things, but rows and rows of blazing geraniums beneath the trees and enormous square beds of vulgar, vivid dahlias at all the intersections. All her relations, both the Trewicks and the Nancarrows, both sides were buried there. Father used to take them round all the graves every Sunday morning and she had never thought it the least odd. Indeed, the tombs of her ancestors had always impressed and satisfied her. James George Trewick, her great-grandfather, was the oldest of them all, buried in the only overgrown corner of the cemetery where the trees and bushes had thickened around the graves to form an almost impenetrable wall. She knew the dates off by heart—born 23 January 1832, died 1 November 1894. Her favourite was her great uncle William’s because he was born and died on the same day with exactly fifty years between, but the prettiest grave was her Mother’s mother. Of pale grey stone, an angel stood with spread wings above the oblong of turf where Beatrice Nancarrow lay beneath a giant sycamore tree. The wings from the tree were deemed a menace every year and as a child she had been set to gather them up and put them in the green grass-clippings box beside the stream. She would come with her Mother and Valerie on a Tuesday afternoon when they were little and Mother would take a small pair of shears out of her shopping basket—wrapped in a thick cloth for fear of accidents—and a cushion to kneel on—for fear of rheumatics—and she would laboriously cut the grass on the six feet by four feet oblong grave. Angela would be sent to get water from the trough and then she and Valerie would dip small scrubbing brushes into the water and dab them with scouring powder and scrub the stone angel, who was encrusted with scaly black stuff. They never got much of it off, but the sight of it distressed Mother so much they always tried very hard. Most of Mother’s distress was about things like that, out of proportion and puzzling to a child, but none the less distressing. When they had done all they could, they would find a bench in a shady place and have a drink and a biscuit. The atmosphere came back to Angela strongly as she followed the twisting narrow paths that connected the main thoroughfares. Of contentment, of basking in Mother’s approbation and enjoying a job shared with her. It had bound them very close. It had been easy, sitting there, to curb her vitality and control her exuberance the way all of them tried to do with Mother. To suit Mother, to gain her approbation.
The beautiful baby cried a great deal. Angela took it home and looked after it devotedly, enjoying the need to wash so many nappies and clothes, enjoying the slavery and the chance to prove how anxious she was to do the right thing, but the baby cried and drove her frantic. It gained weight, it was pronounced fit and well, it was not sick but it cried. She seemed to have no natural instinct that told, her what was wrong and no natural ability to deal with the problem. And the crying was so heartbreaking, so desperate and insistent. She tried putting the baby where she could not hear it but then worry forced her to go and listen. Mother said, ‘You can’t expect perfection’ and the clinic said, ‘Babies do cry’ but neither source of wisdom consoled her. She felt it was her fault when the baby cried and could not forgive it. She cried herself with self-pity and resented the hours spent walking up and down, up and down, holding the small sweaty bundle of unhappiness that was her baby. She loved it so much, she had tried so hard, it was so unfair. The neighbourhood was full of neglected babies who slept all day and night and never caused a twinge of concern. She felt terrified, sure that she had taken on—wilfully—a role she could not fulfil. She wasn’t like Mother. She wasn’t patient and tender and quiet. Her poor baby would notice the difference.
‘Mother, can you hear me? It’s Angela.’ She sat where Valerie had sat, her wet hair wrapped in a towel to appease Father. Mother opened her eyes and tried to smile. It was hard to know whether to talk to her. My voice will come from a long way off, Angela thought, and it will not be clear to her. All she can appreciate is my physical presence, my being there. The hugs, the strangling hugs she had once given Mother—oh, the crushing, bruising kisses, the tight gripped hand-holds, the all-embracing cuddles so that Mother cried out for breath and Father shouted, Stop that. And the caresses, the endearments—‘I love you so much, so-so much, I love-love-love you—oh I love you best in the whole world’—on and on until Father was goaded into a fury. She had never wondered why. Mother did not object. Mother remained passive but allowed the demonstrative display to continue. But to take Mother in her arms now was impossible. It was hard even to kiss her convincingly, though it was not physical distaste that prevented an embrace—it was fear that Mother would find her out, would sense the difference between what had been and what now was. Even if it was what Mother most wanted and needed it was the last thing she could give.
Valerie crept in, revived by the revolting milky sugary drink she had made herself. She sat on the other side of the bed, her face solemn and lugubrious. She spoke to Mother in a sickening creepy whisper that Angela found patronizing. She wanted to say to her sister ‘Oh for christ’s sake shut up’ but didn’t. Valerie crumbled too easily. She was the youngest child, a wartime baby, a clear mistake yet loved more freely by Mother than any of the four of them. Once, when Valerie aged two had been in hospital with scarlet fever and had just returned home, weak in the legs, Mother had cried out to Angela, ‘Oh look at her—the darling!’ and Angela had hated her.
The hatred, over the years, had been distilled into irritation and lately into indifference. Valerie was welcome to Mother.
‘What do you think?’ Valerie whispered, leaning over the bed and peering into Angela’s face. ‘What are you smiling at?’
‘You.’
‘I don’t see why. What have I said?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You aren’t very nice, Angela, in the circumstances.’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘All I asked was what you thought about Mother—about whether you thought—you know—if she’ll—’
‘Die?’
‘Sssh!’ Valerie put a hand over her own mouth, and gestured towards Mother, an expression of the greatest anguish on her face.
‘No,’ said Angela, I don’t think she will. Unfortunately.’
‘Oh, Angela!’
‘Oh, Valerie. She’s old and tired and unhappy. Why want it prolonged?’
‘You used to cry when Mother was ill—you used to have nightmares that she would die—you used to wake up screaming, I remember you did, and that was why, and now you’re so callous, it’s horrible.’
The room used to swim with blood—everything that was brown became blood—the chest of drawers, the wardrobe, the end of the bed, the door, the window ledge, the linoleum surrounds on the floor—blood everywhere and Mother dead. And she did scream, until Mother came and held her tightly and kissed her brow and soothed her sobbing. ‘I dreamed you d-d-died,’ she wailed and Mother said, ‘Well, I’m not dead. I’m alive,’ and the reassurance was bliss, almost worth the horror of the dream that had gone before. Mother was alive. She would fall asleep happy and comforted totally. Nothing else in the whole world mattered except that Mother was not dead.
‘Just think,’ Valerie said, breathing heavily and flushed with anger, ‘just think what it feels like to be Mother.’
‘You know, do you?’
‘I try—even if I’m not a Mother myself—I try—and I can’t imagine anything worse than lying in bed desperately ill feeling—’
‘Oh shut up, Valerie. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Valerie began to weep. Her shoulders shook alarmingly: the large tears plopped onto the blue nylon eiderdown, staining it. Making Valerie cry was so easy. Mother used to get so cross—‘Leave the poor little thing alone,’ she would say, as Valerie’s fat, tear-streaked face came into view—‘Don’t torment her so.’ ‘She torments me,’ Angela had cried, but Mother didn’t believe it. Watching Valerie yet again on Mother’s knee being cuddled and petted Angela would vow secret vengeance. She forced Valerie to play games she did not want to play and terrorized her when Mother was out of the house. They were never allies, except against Father.
Angela got off the bed and sat on the only chair. She picked up Mother’s Bible, full of texts and cuttings from the Parish Magazine, and held it in front of her face so Valerie would feel ignored. Mother read the Bible every day with self-conscious virtue. Father, who did not believe a word of it, quite liked her to do it and if she was low would push it upon her—‘Here, Mother, see what the good book can do for you. Valerie alone of the four of them had followed in her footsteps. In the part of Manchester where she lived she was a pillar of the church, never away from the place—so much so that Father cruelly alleged she had her eye on the curate. The two older brothers, Tom and Harry, never went near any religious establishment but since they were in Australia it was Angela’s defection that hurt most.
Cautiously, after a few minutes flicking, Angela lowered the book. Valerie had composed herself. Her nose was red and shiny and her eyes still swam behind the huge spectacles but she was quiet.
‘I’ll stay up tonight if you like,’ Angela said, ‘I haven’t done it yet.’
Valerie nodded. ‘You won’t keep Father out,’ she said, ‘he comes and goes all night—never settles.’ They stayed silent for a while, the silly squabble forgotten. Mother’s gasping filled the tiny cramped room, up and down, up and down, with a rumbling, rough sound every few breaths that was most alarming of all. With nothing to do they were acutely aware of each other.
‘How are the children?’ Valerie said, eventually, and Angela knew she must be kind.
‘Fine. Sadie thinks of nothing but boys and pop music, Max is all football, Saul loves school and Tim loves me. That’s about it.’
‘You are lucky,’ and Valerie sighed. A familiar theme. ‘Just like Mother,’ Valerie went on, ‘four children—except only one girl.’
‘Fortunately,’ Angela said.
‘What?’
‘That I only have one girl.’
‘But why—Mother preferred girls—do you remember how thrilled we were when she said she loved her boys but she liked girls best? And only recently she said to me boys were a washout, never came near after they were grown up, just grew away from you, but girls grew closer.’
‘Oh god,’ Angela said.
‘What’s the matter? It was a compliment—you and I have stayed close.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ Angela said, ‘I feel a million miles away. Boys have the right idea.’
‘I don’t understand you,’ Valerie said, ‘I don’t really. Don’t you like Mother? Don’t you like Sadie? What’s wrong with you?’
‘I think you should go to bed,’ Angela said.
Father took a long time pretending to settle down for the night. He reappeared twice after he had officially retired upstairs to say, ‘Aren’t you going to ring them up at home? Eh?’ ‘No,’ said Angela carelessly. ‘Why should I?’ ‘Oh, you’re not like your Mother,’ Father muttered, shuffling off, ‘not like her at all—she’d have fussed and fretted about you all, worrying herself sick.’ And worrying us with her incessant worrying, Angela thought. I won’t do it. I don’t want that kind of relationship—I want to cut through it, I want no guilt or remorse, I want Sadie to be as free as air. All the long uncomfortable night she sat thinking about her vow never to tie her children to her apron strings, never to give them cause to want rid of her. She had intended to cut the knots herself before they were tightened. She must not need her children too much. They must not need her too much. But that kind of balance was proving so hard to maintain.
Towards morning she woke from a doze to see the light coming through the thin curtains. There was something different about the room. With a start of alarm she realized she could no longer hear Mother’s awful breathing. Jumping up, she bent over the sleeping form in the bed thinking only that Father would never forgive her if he had not been called and Mother had died. But she wasn’t dead. Her breathing had simply become normal, or near normal, and to hear it one had to go closer and listen. Angela felt Mother’s forehead and looked critically at her complexion. There was no doubt she was improving. Smiling, Angela went quietly into the kitchen and made herself some tea. She took it back into the bedroom, relieved that she had not woken Valerie or Father, and sat sipping it feeling amused. Another sinking fast journey over. Mother’s resilience was staggering—one could not help being amazed by it.
‘Hello, Angela,’ Mother said, and Angela was so startled she spilled some of the tea. Mother’s eyes were fully open and clear. She smiled and raised her hand slightly and Angela felt extraordinarily happy.