ALL THE REST of the day Angela watched Valerie with Mother and saw herself in every action. When Valerie carefully helped Mother to her unsteady feet—arm round her ample waist, legs braced in an exaggerated fashion to take her weight, face set in an expression of extreme concern—Angela saw how unbearable this solicitous behaviour was to Mother. It underlined Mother’s difficulties. Everything Valerie did was a grotesque parody of what it should have been—all that was needed to get Mother up was the simple offer of a hand to pull on. There was in the inclination of Valerie’s head as she bent towards Mother something offensive—it was as though Valerie was following stage directions of a crude and over-colourful variety. Nothing was spontaneous. Even Valerie’s conversation smacked of condescension with its little set pieces topped and tailed for Mother’s benefit. She sat there, opposite Mother, chattering away with great vivacity, putting in little laughs at the right places and sighing heavily when dismay was called for. There was no sign at all in this thirty-five-year-old woman of the child who had sucked her thumb and spent half her time on her mother’s knee confiding all manner of secrets, no sign of the spotty, fat teenager who had clung to her mother’s arm to and from church on Sundays rather than walk with girls of her own age. Nor was there any indication that it was to Mother that Valerie had gone when, as a young social worker straight out of college, her fiancé had broken off their engagement. Whatever there had been between Valerie and Mother had gone as surely as it had between herself and Mother.
Dispirited, Angela took herself away from a spectacle she found so distasteful. Lunch over, she said she was going upstairs for a rest. Valerie and Mother eagerly encouraged her. On the way to her bedroom she passed Ben’s study where Sadie was sprawled on the floor using the telephone. She paused, hand on the banister, attracted by the grace and comfort of Sadie’s reclining figure, vivid in scarlet jeans and brilliant blue shirt, as she lay eating an apple, one hand propping her up and clutching the telephone receiver at the same time. Angela smiled at her, not quite stepping into the room but about to do so. ‘Wait a sec,’ Sadie said into the receiver, and then, to Angela, ‘Want something?’ Angela shook her head. She had nothing but the usual things to say—what she wanted was indefinable. Lazily, it might have been unintentionally, Sadie gently tipped the open door with her toe and as it swung towards her Angela backed away and it closed with the smallest of clicks in her face.
Alone in her bedroom, which looked obliquely into Ben’s study at the side of the house, Angela was obliged to draw the curtains in order to obliterate the sight of Sadie still engaged in her private conversation. She did not want to see her daughter, however distantly. She cared that Sadie did not care, that her daughter was indifferent to her misery. It was the trap she had always been so proud of avoiding but now she felt the cloying wraps of self-pity and resentment ensnaring her. It was no good boasting to Valerie that she had brought up Sadie differently—it was no good lying to herself—it was simply that she now found she wanted what Mother had wanted.
Ben had jaundice soon after Sadie moved to comprehensive school. He was in bed for six weeks. After that he staggered about for another three, thin and pinched and still yellow looking. Expert as she was at nursing, Angela could not help but find it a strain. Sadie, aged eleven and full of energy, did not seem to notice. ‘I cannot,’ Angela said, ‘run up and down stairs looking after Ben and then run around down here looking after all of you. Can’t you see that?’ ‘It isn’t my fault,’ Sadie said, ‘I can’t help Dad being ill. You’re always moaning at me.’ ‘I am not moaning at you. I’m simply asking for some consideration. Is that too much? Don’t you care that Daddy is ill?’
Apparently she did not. It was quite extraordinary how she could go out in the morning and return from school in the afternoon and never once ask how he was. Later, when he was downstairs in his dressing gown, Sadie would say ‘Oh—hi’ and then turn to other matters. Yet she was very fond of Ben, she liked him, got on well with him, did things with him, and at that stage never fought or quarrelled—it was just that she appeared to be lacking in common or garden sympathy. But was that the trouble? Angela remained unsure. One day, she overheard Sadie talking over the garden wall to the Carriers, their neighbours on the other side. ‘Oh how awful,’ Sadie was saying, ‘oh that is dreadful—poor you—if there is anything I can do—let me go to the shops for you—no, please, I would be glad to—it would be no bother, no bother at all.’
All Mrs Carrier had done was strain a ligament in her foot.
Valerie, before she left, served a function more useful than she knew. It was nice of her, Angela thought, to ask the question she herself could not ask but which hung in the air all the time. ‘When are you going home, Mother?’ she said as she put her coat on. ‘Oh, soon,’ Mother said, stealing a sidelong look at Angela. ‘I can’t bother Angela much longer—she’s fed up with having a poor old woman to look after.’
‘Don’t,’ Angela said, ‘I hate to hear you say that and you know it isn’t true.’
‘Your Father’s been complaining anyway,’ said Mother. ‘I’ll have to go back soon, see what he’s been up to without me.’ It was at least an attempt at a joke, if a feeble and bitter one, and they all seized the opportunity to make others, equally poor.
‘I’ll write as usual,̻ Valerie said finally, ‘and I’ll telephone. Now take care.’ Mother kissed her. As always, partings of any kind reminded her of the perilous nature of life.
‘Well, she’s gone, that’s that,’ Mother said, sitting down heavily in her chair the minute Ben had taken Valerie off. ‘That’s that,’ she repeated. ‘When will I see her again? And what a long journey back—the expense—hardly worth it when you think.’
‘Oh, don’t look at it like that,’ Angela said, ‘of course it was worth it. She had a good day and enjoyed herself.’
‘But what a long journey back,’ Mother said again, ‘and to what? Nobody at the other end. Oh, I don’t like to think about it—that awful flat of hers—nobody to welcome her—empty and quiet—whatever will she do when she’s old and ill without a husband and a family? It makes me ill to think about it, it does really. Sometimes I lie awake at night and wonder what will happen to poor Valerie, all on her own—oh it’s awful, awful.’
‘Only because you wouldn’t like it,’ Angela said. ‘You’re seeing yourself in her situation and she isn’t you.’
‘But she always loved children—why ever didn’t she marry—she was a pretty girl—’
‘She wasn’t,’ Angela said.
‘Well, she was prettier than many and a good girl and friendly—I can’t understand it—why didn’t she marry?’
‘Nobody ever asked her after that first time.’
‘All on her own—’
‘She likes it. She has her work and she knows everyone in the area and she drives to all her societies in her car and some people might envy her her freedom.’
‘They couldn’t—I couldn’t live like that.’
‘But you aren’t Valerie—she isn’t like you.’
‘Neither of you are, neither of you.’
‘Well then, don’t worry yourself about it.’
‘I worry all the time,’ Mother said, ‘you don’t know half the things I worry about—round and round in my head until I’m dizzy with it.’
‘It doesn’t do any good,’ Angela said, ‘you must train yourself to blot out all these worries when you know they are useless.’
‘Oh, it’s all right for you,’ Mother said, with one of those sudden flashes of spirit she always regretted, ‘you don’t worry about anything. You don’t know what worry is. You’ve never worried.’
Angela found herself smiling, idiotically, a broad grin to hide her confusion. Mother believed what she had said. She saw Angela as confident and fearless, she accepted without question the façade so laboriously constructed. It would be cruel to disillusion her—if that was what Mother wanted, and she did, then that is what she must be given.
‘That’s right,’ Angela said, ‘I don’t believe in it.’
‘I can’t help it,’ Mother said, almost proudly, ‘I was born like that—always a worrier and always with plenty to worry about. Nothing ever went right.’
‘Nothing ever went really wrong either,’ Angela said. ‘Your husband didn’t die, your children all grew up healthy and strong—’
‘You’ve said all that before,’ Mother interrupted.
‘I know.’
‘Well, don’t keep on about it.’
‘You just tell her, Grandma,’ Sadie said, coming into the room and overhearing the last few remarks Mother had made. ‘She’s always going on about things but she doesn’t believe it. She’s so boring.’
‘I didn’t mean that,’ Mother said. Solidarity among adults was very important to her. ‘Your mother is never boring, Sadie, you can’t say that.’
‘Yes I can,’ and smiling directly at Angela, a smirk of a smile, ‘Mum, you’re boring.’
‘Thanks,’ Angela said, ‘I can see I must be.’
‘All mothers are boring,’ Sadie said.
‘My Mother is very interesting,’ Angela said.
‘Oh, I am not,’ Mother protested.
‘You are to me.’
‘Compliments, compliments,’ Sadie said. ‘Anything to eat?’
‘If you make it yourself, and leave the kitchen tidy.’
‘Okay,’ Sadie said and went off.
‘You let her be very cheeky, Angela,’ Mother said, ‘speaking to you like that—it isn’t right.’
‘I’d rather she said what she was thinking to my face.’
‘But she’s so rude.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I don’t know why you stick up for her.’
‘Mothers do,’ Angela said, ‘don’t you remember sticking up for me?’
Especially against Aunt Frances, Mother’s dressmaker sister, who doted on Angela as a small girl but fought with her as an adolescent. Angela remembered Aunt Frances visiting them and how the criticism would begin straight away. ‘What a way to tie a scarf—tie it in the front—tie it like Princess Margaret Rose,’ and Aunt Frances would attempt to do so only to have her interfering fingers pushed away. ‘Oh, she’s naughty,’ Aunt Frances would say, ‘you should make her behave, Mary.’ ‘Leave her,’ Mother would say, ‘it doesn’t really matter how she ties her scarf.’ But Aunt Frances would not take the hint. Mercilessly, she attacked Angela’s hair—‘That vulgar crop’—and her language—‘so coarse’—and everything about her niece that did not meet with her approval. Only once did Mother give in. ‘When you come in from school,’ she said to Angela, ‘please say “Good afternoon, Aunt Frances.” It’s only a little thing and easily done.’ ‘How silly,’ Angela said. ‘What’s wrong with hello?’ ‘Nothing,’ Mother said, ‘for most people, but Frances likes to be formally addressed by young people and it does no harm to give in to her on that one.’ So Angela complied, going as near as she dared to a parody of what Aunt Frances wanted. It gave her great comfort and pleasure to feel that Mother was secretly on her side.
‘Well then,’ Mother was saying, and Angela was startled to realize she had been speaking for some time, ‘that’s that. Another day over.’ and she sighed heavily. ‘Next week,’ Angela said, ‘we’ll go on some outings.’
She had saved them up especially for the half-term holidays—a series of small expeditions to please Mother at one end and Tim at the other. The first was to Woburn Safari Park, an hour’s drive and then a winter picnic in the park when they had been through the animal reserve. She announced the trip at supper with all the enthusiasm she could muster, but there were no shrieks of joy. Nobody wanted to go. ‘I’m not coming,’ Sadie said straight out, ‘and you needn’t think you’re going to make me.’ ‘We’ve been there already,’ Max said, ‘and it’s boring.’ ‘Did you say animals?’ Mother said, ‘I’m not keen on animals.’ ‘This is different,’ Angela said firmly, ‘you’ll enjoy it. It will be a lovely day out in the country—midweek, nice and quiet in October—we’ll have a lovely day.’
It was a disaster, even before the final penalty afterwards. Foolishly, against Ben’s advice, she compelled Sadie to go, claiming her help was necessary, and Sadie’s resentment and fury expressed itself in vicious attacks on Max which led to screams and quarrels in the car that distressed Mother deeply. Though the sun shone brightly and the sky was a clear, sharp blue, the atmosphere was wrong from the start. No matter how much Angela smiled and hummed and tried to arouse some holiday spirit nobody would respond, except Tim, who was still young enough to like going anywhere any time. Very quickly, they were there. Very quickly the animals had been looked at and lunch eaten. In no time at all there was nothing to do and it was only half past one. Angela produced a ball and suggested a game, but nobody would take part. One by one she took her children aside and begged them to try to enjoy themselves ‘for Grandma’s sake’, but her pleading only irritated them. It was all her fault, they said. They had told her they did not want to come, she had forced them, why could they not just go home?
By the time she drove back, Angela could no longer remember why she had ever imagined taking everyone out for the day would be either enjoyable or easier than having them all at home. Mother had got very little out of it. All day she had been quiet and nervous, even more so than usual. Surrounded by such noisy children, she had seemed to feel she was menaced, or so Angela deduced from the way in which she looked from one to another during the many arguments that raged. Who could she be sure of? Who had her interests at heart? Only Angela, and Angela, she saw, could not give her complete attention. She did not say so but Angela thought Mother was missing Father. Instead of blossoming without him, she was fading away to nothing.
Helping her from the car when they got home, Angela was struck all over again by Mother’s frailty. How often, watching Father and Valerie fuss and fret, had she wanted to tell them to leave Mother alone, she could manage perfectly well, but now that she was in sole charge herself she was appalled by Mother’s weakness. Twice on the short trip from car to front door Mother swayed and lost her balance and would have fallen if Angela’s supporting arm had not been there. There was a dreadful inertness about her body that could only be appreciated by contact with it.
‘That was a nice day out,’ Mother said, safely seated in her wing chair and wheezing slightly. The children rushed upstairs to watch television and the sudden silence and calm was healing.
‘It wasn’t much fun for you,’ Angela said, depressed and tired and unable for a while at least to maintain her outward poise.
‘Oh, don’t worry about me,’ Mother said, ‘nothing’s fun for me.’
‘Mother,’ Angela said, eyes tight shut with the effort of keeping control, ‘don’t—don’t say things like that. Please.’
‘But it’s true.’
‘Especially if it is true. Don’t say it.’
Mother didn’t speak after that. She drank the tea Angela had given her—greedily, quickly—and then she appeared to doze. Angela lifted her legs onto a stool and tenderly put her slippers on and covered her with a rug. Then she sat at the kitchen table, bowed down with it all, a teacup in her hand long after it was empty. Sadie, coming in search of her, radiated energy and strength. The enforced day in the bracing autumn air had given her cheeks a glow—she was bright eyed and beautiful in spite of the ugly, torn man’s pullover and the too-tight, soiled trousers.
‘I’m going to stay the night with Sue—just telling you—okay?’
Angela said nothing. She sat and stared at Mother and said nothing.
‘I’m taking my things and going,’ Sadie said, impatiently drumming her green nail-varnished fingers on the table.
‘Okay?’
Angela shrugged. Mother’s face seemed to have collapsed.
‘Well, can I go?’
‘I can’t imagine why you’re asking,’ Angela said, ‘you don’t usually.’
‘So I can go?’
‘Go where you like. There isn’t much point in me keeping you here is there? I’ve made that mistake once today already and paid the penalty.’
‘What penalty? I thought I was very good with Grandma. What am I supposed to have done wrong?’
‘There’s no point in going over it.’
‘Well, don’t get at me. I’ll be back some time tomorrow—as it’s the holidays it doesn’t matter when, does it?’
‘No. Nothing matters.’
‘For heaven’s sake.’
‘Go on—go. You aren’t doing much good here—you may as well go.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Help.’
‘All right then—what?’
‘Just in general. Help me.’
‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’
Still she lingered. Angela watched her fiddling about, picking things up and putting them down, pacing the floor, walking round the table, never quite making up her mind to leave. She knew her own blatant misery had made Sadie uneasy. It was against the rules. Sadie did not quite know whether she was free or not, and uncertainty kept her close.
‘Oh, off you go,’ Angela said. ‘I’m just fed up and ready to take it out on anyone. Have a good time.’
Sadie’s face brightened immediately. ‘Bye.’ she said.
‘Don’t bang the front door on your way out,’ Angela said, ‘you’ll waken Grandma.’
But when Father ‘phoned, Mother was still asleep, two hours later.
‘We’ve been out all day at Woburn,’ Angela said, ‘and Mother’s having a little nap.’
‘Tired her out, have you?’ Father said suspiciously.
‘Not really.’
‘Walked her too far, I’ll bet—how far did you make her walk, eh?—she can’t walk far without tiring, you should know that, you’ve seen what happens.’
‘She hardly walked at all.’
‘You didn’t keep her sitting in that car all day did you? It’s bad for her back.’
‘No, I didn’t. She sat a little and walked a little.’
‘What’s she asleep for at this time then?’
‘She was just sleepy.’
‘Seems queer.’
‘I could sleep myself after all that fresh air.’
‘Have you covered her with a blanket?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll ring back later, just to check she’s all right.’
‘There’s no need for that, Father.’
‘I’ll say whether there’s need or not—I’m the best judge of that,’ and he put the receiver down with a crash.
At nine o’clock, just after Ben had come home, Father rang again.
‘No,’ Angela said, ‘she’s still sleeping peacefully and I don’t want to waken her.’
‘You shouldn’t let her sleep like that,’ Father said, ‘sleeping all crunched up in a chair is bad for her—she has to be kept flat.’
‘She looks very comfortable,’ Angela said.
‘You wake her up,’ Father said, beginning to shout. ‘Wake her up and get her walking about and then put her to bed—do you hear?—that’s the thing to do.’
‘I’ll ring before I go to bed myself just to make sure. Now mind—you get her going and then put her to bed properly—you shouldn’t let her sleep in chairs—and she’ll be awake all night now, her routine will be all to pot.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s easy being sorry.’
‘There isn’t anything else I can be.’
‘You can be a damned sight more careful, that’s what you can be, my lass.’
They stood on top of a cliff, she and Sadie, right on the very edge where the grass began to disappear into cracks. Below, the sea pounded the great black jagged rocks, sending up clouds of spray so high that they imagined they could feel the wetness on their faces hundreds of feet above. Hand in hand they peered down, drawing in their breaths, trying not to be dizzy, laughing at the cries of the boys behind them, all too afraid to stand with them. Sadie was proud to be the daring one but her hand in Angela’s was damp and quivered slightly and her eyes were narrow with fear. She wanted to draw back. Angela sensed this, knew although not a word was uttered that Sadie wished her to be the first to draw back but she chose to stay where she was, trying to communicate her own confidence to her daughter. She squeezed Sadie’s hand and smiled and nodded at her and took another very small step towards the brink, but it was too much for Sadie, and suddenly her hand was withdrawn from her mother’s, snatched away in an instant as Sadie stumbled back shouting ‘You made me! You made me! You knew I was frightened and you made me!’ She flew to Ben and cried and when Angela came back he said ‘That was ridiculous. What were you trying to prove?’ Angela smiled and shrugged. ‘Nothing,’ she said, ‘she knew nothing could happen to her with me there.’ ‘I don’t think,’ Ben said, ‘that she knew anything of the kind.’
Mother seemed confused when finally they shook her awake. Her eyes swivelled round and her mouth drooped open and seemed out of control. She was grumpy and tearful and did not take kindly to the joint efforts of Ben and Angela to get her on her feet as Father had ordered. ‘Oh leave me alone,’ she kept saying, ‘let me be.’ They half dragged her to her room and because she could not face the intricacies of removing underclothes Angela left them on, content to have taken off skirt and jumper and corset. Then they tucked her up and left her with a small lamp on so that she could see where she was when she woke up properly.
‘It was what she dreaded,’ Angela said, ‘being ill here.’
‘We all dreaded it,’ Ben said, gloomily. ‘God, what a drag.’
‘She can’t help it—imagine how you would feel if—’
‘You sound like Valerie.’
‘I feel like Valerie—all morbid and depressed and it-wasn’t-my-faultish and why-does-this-have-to-happen-to-me.’
Her misery grew as the night wore on. Twice she went to peer at Mother, shocked by the greyness of her face and the harshness of her breathing. Tenderness was useless—it was too late, it ought to have been given sixty years ago when Mother was still a young, large-eyed girl singing so sweetly in the church choir, always put on the front row because she was spick and span in a white collar that sparkled. Someone else should have given it then, before melancholy seeped into Mother’s fragile soul and poisoned it for life. Gently, Angela straightened the covers on the bed. She was halfway herself to this sad state. She climbed slowly back upstairs, the carpet cold and rough on her bare feet, plodding away with limbs that felt stiff and painful. Fearful, worried, weighed down by responsibilities it was impossible to evade, she felt she was crawling through each day waiting for the next blow. Being a mother seemed to consist of seeing danger everywhere—seeing it and trying to ward it off and passing the smell of it on to one’s children. She slept curled up, finding comfort in the touch of her limbs, and when morning came she was reluctant to straighten them out.
Mother woke up, hoarse and clammy with perspiration, as soon as Angela drew her curtains, determined to smile and be relaxed and sustain Mother all she could. All Mother could do was pass her dry tongue over her cracked lips. She could not, or would not, speak but answered all queries with a shake of her head. Angela telephoned for her doctor, who was reluctant to come. ‘You must come,’ she said, hysterical at the thought of Father’s next call, ‘please—I’m so worried—I must have a proper medical opinion.’ He came, late in the morning when she had almost given up expecting him, and said Mother simply had a chill and was exhausted. A few days in bed—a light diet—warmth—that was all. Relayed to Father it sounded feeble and ominous, however carefully phrased.
‘Damn,’ he said, ‘damn and blast—knew this would happen—I told you to look after her—just like the thing.’
‘She only has a chill,’ Angela said.
‘Not so much of the only,’ Father said furiously, ‘at her age. I don’t like that. She can be real poorly with a chill, no doubt about it. And how did she get a chill, that’s what I want to know—’
‘Anyone can get a chill.’
‘If they’re not looked after they can—if they sit too long in damp places and that.’
‘Chills come from germs—’
‘And from damp,’ Father said.
‘She doesn’t look too bad anyway.’
‘You don’t know how she looks,’ Father said. ‘I can tell, you can’t. I’d better come up anyways. Can’t mess about like this.’
‘There really isn’t any need,’ Angela said. ‘I can look after her perfectly well—it would only upset her if you came, make her think she’s more ill than she really is. Why not wait, see how she gets on?’
‘I might,’ Father said with a speed that took Angela by surprise. Was he play acting? Had he said he was coming only to keep up appearances? She felt in a strange way disappointed, though the relief was intense.
She sat with Mother most of the day, ignoring the comings and goings of the children who slammed every door in the house at five-minute intervals, endlessly on their way somewhere. Mother seemed undisturbed by the background noise. The autumn sun, diffused rather than blocked out by the orange curtains, hypnotized Angela but Mother did not seem perturbed by the brightness. Sometimes she opened her eyes and turned towards Angela, but there was no animation in her expression. She accepted drinks of water but that was all. She slept a great deal, leaving Angela to fret over trivial but essential details such as whether she should make Mother get up to go to the lavatory. Which was preferable—dragging wet sheets and clothes off, or prodding Mother’s carcass into action? They needed a bedpan and they did not have one. The local shops would not have one. She would have to leave Sadie in charge and go out in search of one. She would have to learn to do necessary things like putting Mother on a bedpan—things other people did so casually in a sensible matter-of-fact way but from which she shrank. No good muttering about getting a nurse as Ben had muttered—nurses could not be so easily got, and even if found and employed they were in this situation a coward’s way out.
‘How is Grandma?’ Sadie asked, helping herself to orange juice, into which she mixed lemonade and ice cubes with great vigour.
‘Not too good,’ Angela said. She had come into the kitchen for five minutes to escape the relendess concentration of her thoughts on Mother and stood more dismayed and distracted than ever, unable to do a thing though the lunch dishes were still strewn everywhere and a cake remained half mixed on the worktop.
‘Poor Grandma,’ Sadie said.
‘Indeed, poor Grandma,’ Angela said. It was wrong, she knew it was wrong and silly and petty, but she allowed herself to add ‘And poor me, don’t you think?’
‘Why?’ said Sadie, ‘what’s wrong with you?’ The note of irritation lacerated Angela’s already torn and bruised feelings.
‘I have to nurse Grandma,’ Angela said.
‘You like nursing.’
‘When it’s something that is going to get better I do—when it’s someone basically healthy—’
‘Isn’t Grandma going to get better?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Well then. I don’t see why it’s any different, frankly.’
‘I’m tired,’ Angela said, ‘and worried and it’s all awful.’
‘Does Grandad know?’
‘Of course.’
‘What does he think?’
‘He wants to come up.’
‘Well, that’s good.’
‘Good? What on earth do you mean?’ said Angela, finding the strength to be suddenly savage. ‘How is it good? Do you ever really think—or put yourself in my position—you’re being kind now, aren’t you, making cosy inquiries when you don’t give a damn—you won’t or you can’t imagine what it is like to be me. I don’t want Grandad fussing about—that will be two of them to look after, won’t it—two of them on my back.’
‘You don’t love either of them, do you,’ Sadie said. She put her empty glass down and stood up. ‘It’s all just duty. It’s horrible.’
‘You don’t know anything about it,’ Angela said. ‘It’s all much too complicated. You can’t talk glibly about love and duty just like that—I don’t know what I feel, except guilty and responsible.’
‘But you don’t care,’ Sadie said, ‘you’re always moaning about them—about having to ring them up and go there—you never stop moaning about it. I don’t know why you bother pretending—why don’t you just cut off—that’s what you’d like to do, isn’t it? Just never see them except once a year for a day or something.’
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ Angela shrieked, ‘that is exactly what I would like—I’d like to be in Australia with my brothers and never know a thing except by a two-week-old airmail—I’d like to be free of the whole business—I can’t stand it another minute—it goes on and on and on and I don’t know what to do.’
‘For christ’s sake,’ Sadie said.
‘What?’ Angela shouted. ‘What? What do you mean with your sneers—no, don’t go—DO NOT GO—you twist everything I say—I give you honest answers and you despise me—you attack me when—’
‘You’re doing the attacking, not me.’
‘—all I want is sympathy and a little understanding and—and—and a feeling of not being on my own in this.’
‘Well, you are on your own,’ Sadie said. ‘There isn’t anything I can do—oh don’t say I can do the dishes—I will do the bloody dishes and the shopping and anything you like—but it won’t make it any better.’
‘I feel terrible,’ Angela said.
‘I thought Grandma only had a cold?’
‘You seemed determined to miss the point.’
‘I’m going out anyway—up to Oxford Street—I suppose this is a bad time to ask if I can have the money for those boots you agreed on?’
‘Get my purse.’
‘I could wait until another day—it’s just as it’s half term—and Sue is going anyway—’
‘Here—take it.’
‘Thanks.’
Still she stood, money in her hand, waiting for that signal Angela knew she must give, then she would be out of the house in a flash, coatless on a cold day, putting the boredom of home behind her. Mother had never let Angela go—never gave the signal. Crouched over the fire in some private misery, or trudging up and down the windy garden unhappily pegging clothes out as the rain threatened to begin, she had remained silent. ‘I’m off then,’ Angela would say. Mother would say nothing. ‘I’m going—back this evening.’ Silence, except occasionally for ‘Off you go then, enjoying yourself,’ spoken dismally. It had always spoiled the first half of any expedition and when afterwards it had been time to return the memory of Mother’s depression had slowed her footsteps right down.
‘Have a good time,’ Angela said, trying hard to smile, ‘don’t worry about me. I’m just fed up—I’ll get over it—don’t let it affect you.’
‘Are you sure? Sadie said, eagerly.
‘Yes, I’m sure. Buy some lovely boots and come back and cheer me up—okay?’
‘Okay.’
Bribery and corruption, Ben would say, but already Angela felt better. She did not want to pass her gloom on—better, far better, to contain her anguish instead of letting it spill out as she had just done with Sadie. Her way was no improvement on Mother’s—explaining and justifying her problems was as disastrous as concealing them. Mother had lost her that way. She was determined not to lose Sadie.
Sadie at six, long before she had settled down with Sue and Joanna, her two close friends by the time she was an adolescent, used to taunt her playmates. She seemed to have them home only to torture them. ‘Say everything I say,’ she would order Alison, one of her constant victims. ‘All right, Sadie.’ ‘No, dumbhead, say everything—say, say everything I say,’ When at last Alison had sorted out what Sadie wanted Sadie would then think up inspired insults. ‘Alison is a fat spotty pooh’ and Alison would repeat it, only just beginning to realize the joke was somehow on her. ‘Why,’ Angela would say afterwards, ‘why were you so cruel to Alison? Why do you make a fool of her like that? And every time she wanted to play something you wouldn’t do it.’ ‘I don’t care,’ Sadie would say. ‘But you will care,’ Angela said, ‘when you’ve lost her as a friend. If you want to keep your friends you must be kind to them.’ Sadie glared at her, her face closed and full of spite. ‘You don’t be kind to me,’ she said, ‘saying that.’
Mother took a little soup in the evening, and a small piece of dry toast taken into her on a tray laid out invitingly by Angela. The tray was tin, of the kind Mother despised, but out of a drawer Angela had dug a white cloth she had once embroidered, scalloped at the edges with a pattern of blue forget-me-nots round them. Mother appreciated that. Ill though she was, she fingered the cloth and said how pretty, nobody did things like that any more, and she liked the pink linen napkin in its silver ring and the delicate china teapot Angela had almost forgotten she owned. Her weary eyes ran over the tray and rested on the white rose in glass jug and she said, ‘Now isn’t that nice—a rose—at this time of year,’ and then, after a pause, ‘I like things to be nice. Your Father just throws things on a tray, never has any appearance—cuts the bread all anyhow and never thinks to match the cup and saucer with the plate.’ ‘But he does very well—for him—doing it every day,’ Angela said. ‘Oh yes,’ Mother said, ‘very well, when you think what he has to do, a man like him.’ Her gaze moved from the tray to the window where a branch of the pear tree tapped against it. ‘Pretty,’ Mother said, ‘that tree—pretty shapes, those branches, even bare. It reminds me of the country. I always loved the country.’
Angela kept quiet. Mother knew nothing about the country. Whenever they took her into the countryside around St Erick she was given to exclaiming over the views and the peace and quiet and then, if there was no village shop in sight, she was bored. But the country, or so she imagined, was clean and pretty and safe and therefore it had her approval. She had never, to Angela’s knowledge, put a pair of Wellingtons on and walked through a muddy field. She had hardly ever accompanied the rest of the family to Bodmin Moor, and when she did, she stayed in the nearest village while they went and climbed or walked. It was Father who really loved the country. ‘We used to have lovely runs,’ Mother was saying, ‘out all day among the fields and hills.’ But ‘runs’ were motorbike rides, roaring through the quiet they were supposed to relish, polluting the atmosphere they liked to think they savoured. ‘I’m a trouble to you,’ Mother suddenly said, her voice now sharp and firm whereas before it had wavered. ‘I should never have come—and now I’m ill it’s more work for you—I prayed and prayed I’d be all right and no bother to anyone and now look.’
‘You are no trouble,’ Angela said. ‘In fact, you being in bed makes me sit down and that’s a good thing. And you picked the right week—no teaching and the children just come and go as they please.’
‘All this waiting on me,’ Mother said.
‘Well, I should wait on you. You’re my mother. If I can’t wait on my mother who can I wait on?’
‘I never waited on mine. I would have done, but she died so suddenly, so young, just like Aunt Sally. She was never old, my mother, she never came to this—she was spared this.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Angela said, ‘but then she missed a lot too—you have to look at it that way.’
‘Do I?’ Mother said, lower lip trembling.
‘Yes, you do,’ Angela said emphatically, ‘your mother never had the pleasure of seeing her grandchildren—not your children anyway. She never saw me. She never saw you bring up a healthy, happy family.’
Mother was silent. She closed her eyes and then said, ‘Have you told your Father about me being like this?’
‘Of course—I had to—he’s cross with me for not looking after you better—for trailing you off to Woburn that day.’
‘I felt ill before we ever set off.’
‘Then why didn’t you say?’
‘Oh, I’m always feeling ill—it might have been nothing, just the usual—and I’m always being a spoilsport, I’m sick of it.’
‘It was a rotten outing anyway—and Father is right—I should have looked after you better.’
‘You look after me beautifully—you’ve been so good—so—’ Angela jumped up. Mother’s eyes were full of tears.
‘Will you speak to Father this evening on the telephone?’ she said.
But when evening came, after a day in which she had been much brighter and stayed awake and reasonably alert, Mother was asleep again, heavily, her mouth open and snores trumpeting forth. Father did not take the news kindly.
‘You’re sure she’s just asleep?’ he said accusingly. ‘You’ve had a good look at her, eh?’
‘Father, the doctor has been and she’s been sitting up this afternoon and talking and she’s had some food.’
‘Good. I’ll have her home the minute she’s fit though. Told her this racketing round would do her no good but she’s that stubborn and then that doctor of ours encouraged her. Tell her Mrs Collins is asking after her, and Mrs Graham and everyone at the ladies’ circle—and there’s a letter from Tom, now what shall I do with it? That’s the point.’
‘Send it here, of course,’ Angela said. At least he was back to his old fussing ways. He knew perfectly well what to do with the letter.
‘Tell her I’ve finished the sitting room—come up nice and fresh—and I’ve cleaned the mirror and put it back—the duster was filthy when I’d done, she should have seen it—and the pictures, I’ve hung them back where they were and everything’s shipshape. Next I’ll have a go at the bathroom—ask her if it’s to be the same colour—she’s the boss.’
‘I’ll ask her,’ Angela said, yawning.
‘At least,’ Father said, ‘she’ll have plenty of company at your place, plenty of you visiting her.’
‘Yes,’ Angela said, ‘we’re all in and out all the time.’
‘And you’ve got Sadie to help,’ Father said.
‘Yes. I’ve got Sadie.’
Sadie was not even in. Half term was a time for long days trailing round shops and stalls, sifting junk and coming home with rubbish, and for lying listening to records in each other’s houses. Morning and evening Sadie said hello to her grandmother and that was that. The boys were better, frequently rushing in to ask something or show something, completely uninhibited by the sickroom atmosphere. All Sadie had done to help was open the door to the doctor.