They were always much too early for the train. All Trewicks traditionally stood on freezing station platforms half an hour before there was any likelihood whatsoever of their train approaching, and if, as often happened, that train was delayed then their early arrival became even more absurd. Angela stood, ramrod straight, beside Father, knowing it was no use suggesting the waiting room or the buffet for a cup of tea. Trewicks did not have wanton cups of tea at all hours of the day—a cup at breakfast, a cup at lunch, a cup at teatime and that was quite sufficient thank you very much. The wind snaked in through the arch at the end of the platform, blowing the litter along with it and stinging the eyes that strained to see the express that still had not come. Father stamped his huge army style shoes. ‘Perishing,’ he said. Angela said nothing. She turned up the collar of her coat partly to keep out the wind but also to hide from Father’s scrutiny. Any minute he would begin.
‘I just hope she’ll be all right,’ Father said at last, shaking his head doubtfully. ‘I don’t like the look of her at all, not at all. It’ll be a long job.’
‘Well, don’t rush her,’ Angela said, weakly. The faintest hoot of a train’s whistle was only her imagination.
‘Oh, I won’t rush her, no fear, but if she stays in that bed much longer anything could happen. And of course you leaving will bring her low, bound to, but it can’t be helped, we’ll get over it, no choice.’
‘I’ll keep in touch,’ Angela said. ‘I’ll ring every day.’
‘When will you be down again, then?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Not coming for Easter, eh?’
‘I don’t think so. Not this year.’
‘It disappoints your Mother, but there you are. Easter isn’t what it was, I keep telling her but she doesn’t see it that way, she can be cantankerous at times about things like that.’
Still the train did not come. Numb with cold and dread, Angela found herself wondering what in Father’s opinion Easter had once been. All she could recall were new clothes and a procession in a church filled with heavily scented lilies, and at home brightly coloured eggs that looked exciting and tasted dull.
‘What did you think of her?’ Father was saying.
‘Well, she’s been very ill. I thought she seemed amazingly recovered, considering.’
‘Course, you don’t see what she’s like when you aren’t there—plays up something chronic on occasions—doesn’t like this and that, just wants left—it’s shocking. I have to humour her out of it.’
‘Yes,’ Angela said.
‘She misses all of you, that’s half the trouble,’ Father said, ‘not having any of you anywhere near.’
‘We aren’t that far away,’ Angela said, ‘Valerie and I.’
‘Hundreds of miles,’ Father said, ‘couldn’t be further away if you’d tried.’
The train sped into the station like an angel of deliverance. Father was immediately taken up with procuring her a seat as though she was incapable of getting one herself. He pushed and shoved on her account and shot perfectly innocent passengers venomous glances for presuming to sit on a seat he had had his eye on. ‘Here you are, Angela,’ he bawled from the end of the carriage, ‘look lively or somebody’ll snatch this one too, they’re that eager.’ To please him, she took the badly positioned seat he had selected. ‘I’m not stopping,’ he said, ‘I’ll get back to your Mother. A good journey now—all the best.’ It was his one endearment, a euphemism for all the hundreds of loving remarks he could not condone. Angela was careful to control her strong desire to clap her hands and laugh at her approaching freedom and instead went with him to the door and waved until he was out of sight. She immediately felt sick with relief.
Listless and with an aching head she slumped in the corner seat she had moved to and watched the countryside flash past. It had always been the same—she had always wanted to leave even though the chain that bound her to home was the tender one of her Mother’s love which she must not fail. Why else had Mother lived? All of them, all four of them, were her life’s blood, literally. Nobody could be cruel to Mother, nobody could find it in them to be callous and to be truthful would involve both. The fields gave way to moorland a she tried to rid herself of all the images that stayed so firmly in her head. Mother, lying in that awful stuffy crowded little room without even a view—without a glimpse of sky or trees, all day staring at the shrouded window bothered by that clumsy fool, dependent upon him for every mortifying service, with only death ahead and until then the terrible necessity of dressing and eating and dragging herself around at his querulous insistence. And Father, a strong powerful working man reduced to making messes on trays and buying half pounds of corned beef and washing tea towels, doing his best in an impossible situation. Father and Mother both, hurt and betrayed by their children’s desertion, looking back bewildered to the service they had rendered unstintingly to their own elderly parents. Nobody was doing for them what they had done for others. Mother looked after every sick person in the street—she laid out the dead and helped bring into the world all the babies and shopped and cooked for anyone who needed it. The words ‘poor old’ were always on her lips—poor old Mrs This, poor old Mrs That—and now it was poor old Mrs Trewick and she could not understand it. It was impossible to fathom how it had all gone wrong. Why, Angela pondered, why do I not want to be with my own Mother, why, speeding East, do I rejoice even while I am miserable?
At three years old, Sadie changed. The tantrums ceased as mysteriously as they had begun and Angela was delighted with the composed, rather grave little girl who emerged from the chrysalis of babyhood. Kisses and cuddles, once so freely given and clamoured for, were now bestowed as a great favour, or refused abruptly. It was extraordinary to Angela to experience the bodily hunger she had for Sadie now that her embraces were so often rejected—she found herself crushing Sadie to her and when Sadie fought to get loose she felt sad: Sadie even refused comfort. It was never any good rushing to pick up Sadie when she fell and cut her knee—she was up and wiping the tears away before her mother could get to her. Consoling Sadie was a luxury. Angela vowed not to make a fuss about it and tried to rejoice that her daughter was developing such pride and independence but instead secretly regretted the rapid passing of that animal closeness they had enjoyed. She is my daughter, Angela thought, yet already she is pushing me aside and there are things going on in her head that I know nothing about. Who caused the breach? Or was it inevitable? She could not decide, and chided herself for making too much of it.
The taxi ride home was one of barely supressed euphoria. How such happiness could come so quickly out of such depression Angela did not know, but as she hurtled through the noisy congested roads towards the street in Richmond where she lived there was a smile on her face and she felt as though she could get out and run, so overpowering was her newly discovered vitality. Nothing daunted her because once again she was temporarily released. She was young and well and happy and utterly removed from the clutching cruel hands of old age and family responsibilities whose miseries had so recently filled her with gloom. The guilt was there, but away from Mother and Father’s actual presence she could push it into the furthest corner of her mind and refuse to look at it. The pain that was intolerable when confronted with their plight dulled to an ache and as quickly to a mere surface sensation.
The front door stayed resolutely shut as she paid the taxi off. No Trewicks here, breathing down the neck of time. She could not find her key and had to ring the bell, which brought a stampede. Tim fought Saul to open the door and Max tried hard to do it for both of them. They fell on her like a pack of wolves, shouting bits of news and voicing grudges and complaints. Behind them stood Ben, grey looking and crumpled. ‘Thank god,’ he said, ‘it’s been chaos.’ She hugged them all, still happy through the rising chorus of demands, taking in the untidiness of the house without comment, only glad to be back. The warmth, the space, the colour, the comfort, the shouts and screams and laughter dazzled her. So qu
iet, at Mother’s, so hushed and sepulchral. She took off her coat and made her way to the kitchen and began automatically to re-possess her territory, moving objects back to where they ought to be and organizing her domain. Ben’s triumph was a meal in the oven, pizzas for all, with a salad laboriously prepared to go with it and two sorts of icecream to follow. They sat down at once and ate it and drank a bottle of wine and Angela almost wept at the bliss of it.
Sadie wasn’t in. Ben said she had rarely been in. He grumbled mildly at her selfishness—no help given or offered—but did not make much of her defection. She came in much later, when the boys were all in bed, casual as ever.
‘Oh, hello,’ she said, in Angela’s direction, throwing down the army kit bag she trailed everywhere with her. ‘God, I’m exhausted—those fuckin’ Munford kids want strangling.’
‘Don’t babysit for them then,’ Angela said.
‘Any tea?’ Sadie said. She regarded her black nail-varnished nails closely. ‘Christ,’ she said, ‘this stuff comes off easily.’
‘I hear you haven’t been around much,’ Angela said.
‘So?’
‘Well, it would obviously have helped Dad if you had, that’s all.’
‘You never mentioned you wanted me to do anything.’
‘No. I know. I just hoped common decency—’
‘Oh god—look, you’re just back—do you have to start straight away?’
It would be quite easy, Angela thought, for my eyes to fill with tears but I won’t let them because that is what Mother did to me. There was such a strong temptation to take everything Sadie said at face value, to believe the worst.
‘How’s Grandma, anyway?’ Sadie said. Angela thought how Father would have said he thought she would never ask.
‘Much better,’ she said.
‘Oh good,’ and then, brusque and irritable, ‘Was it awful?’
‘Yes.’
A grunt in reply. A yawn. How awful she looked in her black drainpipe trousers and the big man’s V-necked sweater torn and ragged at the elbows. The afro perm was coming out leaving her hair bedraggled and wispy. There were dark smudges under her eyes, thick with blue eye shadow, and a prominent spot, much tampered with, on her chin.
In Angela’s head was a fantasy of how it should have been—Sadie, bright and sparkling, apron on, coming to the door to fling her arms about her mother, ushering her in, sitting her down with the utmost solicitude, assuring her everything was under control. Sadie, stirring something on the cooker, face awash with sympathy, urging her mother to tell her everything, everything, ready with understanding words to share her ordeal. Sadie telling her not to worry, Sadie urging her to rest, Sadie in harmony with her silent wishes.
‘I’m off then,’ Sadie said, ‘if there isn’t any tea.’
‘You could make some,’ Angela said.
‘Mm. Never mind. Bye—’ and the door closed as she went to bed, lumping her bag.
Mother had got all that. In bed, Angela went over the occasions upon which Mother had come home and she and Valerie had vied with each other to make her feel like a Queen. They baked cakes and put on the best teacloth and screamed if Mother so much as moved a finger. They watched her eagerly as she ate and ran to provide her with more jam, more milk for her tea, more of anything in the world which it was within their power to give her. They removed her shoes and fetched her warmed slippers and hung about her like guard dogs. But there was never any real response, beyond a smile and a sigh. Angela turned over and tried to block out the memories of failing Mother. The time she went out to the theatre on a free ticket a friend had given her, worrying about whether she should go at all because Father was at the Club (the pub) and Tom and Harry were at Scout Camp and she and Valerie, nine and seven, would be alone. Go, go, Angela begged, I can look after Valerie, we will be all right, I can do everything, please, please—and Mother went, nervous, unsure, telling Mrs Collins next door to keep an ear open. They were so good. They read books and listened to the radio and laid the table for breakfast next morning so that Mother would not have to do it when she came in. They made their own supper—a cup of tea and cheese on toast—and then they went to bed. Valerie fell asleep straight away but Angela lay awake, listening for Mother. She wanted to hear her exclaim with pleasure and say ‘Oh, they’ve tidied up and laid the table, the darlings.’ Instead Father came in first and there was a sudden roar ‘Goddam! Boiled dry!’ which Angela couldn’t understand, but then, a minute later, she heard Mother at the gate, laughing, thanking her friend, and the click-clack of her feet on the path and then Father, ‘That’s the last time you’re going out leaving them—boiled dry—look—steam everywhere—another five minutes and there would have been a fire—we can trust Angela you said—trust Angela—’ Mother crept upstairs as Angela’s tears reached a new crescendo. ‘You left the kettle on,’ she said, dully, ‘I shouldn’t have left you.’ Then, seeing Angela’s distress, she tucked her up and kissed her and said it didn’t matter. But it did. It was never forgotten. Mother had been let down and Father had made capital out of it.
Sleepily, Angela told herself she didn’t want Sadie to support her. Too tired to analyse her daughter’s attitude, she knew only that it was more right to treat her, Angela, as Sadie treated her, than to be treated as Mother had treated her. Mother bred what she wanted. She bred what she wanted. These things did not, could not, happen on their own. It seemed, late at night, a comforting thought, though she did not know why.
Three
TEACHING ENGLISH PART-TIME was not arduous, but a week away and it seemed so. With everything in her life so finely balanced, Angela found getting back into it difficult. The backlog of marking, the disruption of her classes while she was absent, the upsetting of a carefully worked out term’s scheme of study—all meant that instead of slipping effortlessly into school on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings she had also to stay there each afternoon in order to catch up. And if she stayed afternoons, she had to shop and cook when the children came in and everything became frantic. She felt more and more like Father, flustered these days if he was five minutes late setting off to buy a cake nobody wanted anyway.
Furthermore, it was Mother’s birthday on March Ist and that event loomed over Angela with an awful intensity. Whatever she was doing, as she struggled to organize herself, she thought only of what she could buy Mother, knowing that since she had already bought everything Mother could conceivably want the task of selection was becoming impossible. Mother’s instructions were not to send anything this year—she wouldn’t be here long, it wasn’t worth it. The same instructions had been given for the last ten years and served only to whip everyone concerned into a frenzy of worry. Mother’s birthday had always been the most important day in the calendar—quite why Angela could not fathom, but it always had been, more important to the family than Christmas Day or their own birthdays. Shillings were saved for weeks and weeks beforehand by all four children and then they would all go off to trail round the same shops, often bumping into each other, in the search for the right present for Mother, an object as elusive as the Holy Grail. Mother protested every year that she wanted nothing but a kiss and didn’t care for presents and didn’t want them spending the little money they had on her but they refused to believe her, and vied with each other to please her most. Angela especially. She saved her shilling pocket money for many more weeks than the others and pondered how to spend the total for many more hours.
Pleasing Mother was the hardest task in the world. ‘You won’t please your Mother,’ Father used to say, usually straight after he had displeased her himself. He said it angrily, but also triumphantly, obscurely proud that she would not be pleased. If Mother had been good at lying, they might never have known whether she was pleased or not, but she was always unable to avoid truthful answers to their direct questions. ‘But is it the right green?’ she would be asked, of a cheap scarf bought to match a particular hat. ‘Do you think it goes, Mother?’ And the gentle reply would
devastate the inquirer. ‘Well, perhaps a shade darker . . . but it’s perfect’—and oh the disappointment then and the rush upstairs to hide humiliation in a pillow. But if the agony of failing was bitter, the joy of occasionally succeeding was sweet indeed. There was the pearl necklace, bought in the market for seventeen shillings and sixpence, admired by Angela for months as it lay gleaming on the dark blue velvet cushion inside the box. Every week she stopped and inquired the price and fingered it lovingly under the stall keeper’s watchful eye. Every week she counted her money and left it where it was, reluctantly, until the day came when the man said, ‘Tell you what, I’ll knock half a crown off and keep it until you’ve got seventeen and six, right?’
He wrapped it for her in pink tissue paper. She bought some gold thread and tied it up with a big bow on top. Her heart thudded as she gave it to Mother—who cried out with delight and fastened it immediately round her neck and rushed off to put on her one good jumper to show it off to better advantage. Mother, who had neither the taste nor the energy for deception, was ecstatic. Nothing since had ever pleased her quite as much as that pitiful strand of toy beads from a ten-year-old child.
This year, Mother was seventy-five. Once, while Angela was lovingly brushing Mother’s thick auburn hair, she had asked her if it would turn white when she was an old lady. ‘I might never be an old lady,’ Mother had said. ‘What?’ Angela said, the brush still because her hand was suddenly too weak to continue, ‘What?’ ‘I might not live long enough to be old,’ Mother had repeated, it seemed with satisfaction. ‘Don’t say that!’ Angela screamed, and broke into noisy sobs which would not be suppressed. Mother was full of remorse. She comforted Angela and said it was just that as her own mother had died young, and her father too, she had never thought of herself living to be older than they had been. And now Mother was seventy-five, and in any case her parents had not died as young as Angela, in that moment of shock, had been led to believe. Mother’s conviction that she would never be old amounted only to a morbid fancy, but it remained implanted firmly in Angela’s mind as a dreadful prophecy that would surely be fulfilled.
Mother Can You Hear Me? Page 4