Mother Can You Hear Me?

by Margaret Forster

  Angela had always refused to say that she would never die. When Sadie first found out about death at nursery school when she was four and the class guinea pig died she had not been upset. She had been intrigued. She told Angela the guinea pig was asleep forever. They all buried it in the school garden and the teacher gave a good lesson about flowers dying and coming up again. Sadie was rather surprised when the guinea pig did not come up again. But later, when she realized properly that her father had no parents, that her other grandmother and grandfather were dead and that she had never seen them and was never going to see them, then death took on a new aspect. Where were those grandparents was the most insistent of her many questions—where exactly were they? Burial appalled her. Her face went white and still at the thought of the coffin and bodies and six feet of soil (Angela concealed nothing). But the fact that her grandparents had died in a car crash helped her to accept the fact of their death—a car crash was so easily understandable, so unlike normal life. Why people died continued not to bother her so much as what happened to them after they had done so. One night in the bath she sobbed endlessly and begged Angela not to put her in a box in the ground nor to burn her to cinders. ‘I won’t,’ Angela promised, ‘I won’t, I won’t, but you’re not going to die for years and years and years.’ ‘I want you to keep me beside you always,’ Sadie cried. ‘I will,’ Angela promised, ‘I will, I will.’ At the price of total truth she had temporarily relieved her little daughter. Death no longer meant maggots and wet blackness but merely a long sleep in her own bed. Sadie talked about death a lot for a while, but in a matter-of-fact way. She told Max, when his day of fear came, that it was silly to be frightened of dying. Dying was just going to sleep. Everyone died just as everyone was born—it was natural. It only happened when you were very, very old or very, very ill or very, very hurt in a car crash. Angela had serious misgivings as she heard Sadie come out with it all so pat, but she did nothing about them. Soon enough, one of Sadie’s contemporaries might die and then the whole thing would have to be gone into again. Gradually, the knowledge of what death was would come to her but Angela could not bring herself to foist it upon her.

  Nobody guessed. Angela was quite startled at how little any of those who loved her and were closest to her noticed about what she felt was the dramatic change in her appearance. She felt she looked ashen. Every morning for a week when she looked at herself in the bathroom mirror she was shocked by the greyness of her skin and the huge dark shadows under her eyes. Nobody commented upon it. ‘I look awful,’ she said to Ben, but he looked and shrugged and said he didn’t think so and that he’d seen her look much worse. The children were oblivious to her looks whatever they were, and at school, because she was only part-time, there was no one she saw regularly enough or for long enough to remark on her health. She was glad to be at home and away from Mother’s and Father’s eagle eyes. They would have noticed. Mother would have looked at her suspiciously, and Father would have said ‘You don’t look right—what’s up?’ They would have discussed her condition gloomily and shaken their heads anxiously.

  She felt as ill as she thought she looked—nothing specific, just a terrible tiredness, a feeling of being drained of all vitality. Everything she did was a superhuman effort, which she made but did not know how. When she woke up in the morning her first thought was how wonderful it would be to get to the evening and be able to go back to bed again. She went earlier and earlier each evening until she was hard on the heels of Tim. ‘This can’t go on,’ Ben said, ‘you’ll have to go to the doctor—you must be anaemic or something.’ ‘I’ve always been anaemic,’ she said. ‘Well, you must be more anaemic than usual, that’s all. It’s that awful holiday we had—it’s pulled you down. You just need some iron tablets or something.’

  Her own doctor was away and she felt glad—she felt less foolish before a locum when her story was so weak. She was proud of her health and of her record of hardly ever coming to see the doctor and did not want it spoiled by the hysterical nature of her complaint. ‘I’ve got a soft spot for Mrs Bradbury,’ she had once overheard him saying to his receptionist, ‘she’s always cheerful whatever’s wrong with her.’ The compliment—silly, because the doctor knew perfectly well her cheerfulness had never seriously been put to the test—thrilled her. Remembering it, she did not want to hear herself say ‘I’m tired, doctor.’ The world was full of women who were tired. It was a whine she hated to hear on her lips.

  The locum was nervous, much more nervous than she was. He was young and raw with an alarming Adam’s apple and a strong frown cultivated to make his smooth pink features more acceptable in a doctor’s role. He cleared his throat rather a lot and fiddled with her medical folder in front of him and took a long time to ask her what seemed to be the matter. She felt very old and experienced in front of him. ‘I’m tired,’ she said, and smiled. ‘I know it sounds feeble but I really am absolutely exhausted—I’ve got no energy at all and I’m dragging myself around. It’s gone on for two weeks and it’s getting worse and worse. I feel I’m going to collapse any minute.’ ‘Let’s have a look at you,’ he said, and motioned towards the couch. ‘Take your top things off,’ he said. He sounded her chest carefully, back and front. He looked in her mouth and ears and eyes. He asked her to cough and prodded her breasts and armpits and backbone, and everything he did made her feel even more stupid. ‘I’ll be delighted if you tell me I’m a fraud and kick me out of the surgery,’ she said, but he was too young to want repartee.

  She dressed and sat in front of him, not wanting to laugh in case a laugh ruffled the stern calm he was so successfully achieving.

  ‘How old are you, Mrs Bradbury?’ he asked, though her folder must quite clearly have told him.

  ‘Thirty-seven.’

  ‘Children?’

  ‘Four.’

  ‘Ages?’

  ‘Sixteen, thirteen, twelve and six,’ she said impatiently.

  ‘Mm. You’ve got your hands full.’

  She was growing tired of his ludicrously conventional manner.

  ‘Periods normal?’ he asked, tapping his teeth with a pencil.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. She could not actually remember the date of the last one and knew he was going to ask her. ‘I can’t remember the last one,’ she said, ‘but it wasn’t long ago.’

  ‘Are you on the pill?’

  ‘No. I have been, but Dr Burnett took me off it for a year again, six months ago. What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Could you get back on the couch?’ he said. ‘I’ll ring for the nurse.’

  Faint pinpricks of alarm danced up and down her spine and her stomach felt queasy. He gave her an internal examination, working thoroughly enough to convince her that when he grew up he would make a brutal gynaecologist. ‘What’s this for?’ she said, ‘I’ve just had a smear.’ But he ignored her. She dressed again, flustered and irritated, wishing that after all she had waited until her own doctor came back.

  ‘I rather think,’ he said, ‘that you’re pregnant.’

  ‘What? But I can’t be—I’m still menstruating—it’s impossible—I use a cap and I know I haven’t made any mistake—I can’t be pregnant.’

  ‘I’m sure you are, in fact I’m quite positive you’re roughly fourteen weeks pregnant. It can sometimes happen that periods do continue, or what appear to be periods, though in fact the flow is greatly reduced and you probably thought you were just having a light period, or indeed . . .’

  On and on he droned, pleased to have the opportunity to use all the information he had so recently learned, pleased too—or so it seemed to Angela—that he could put a patient in her place. She hated him violently. She hated the necessity of having to talk to him at all about things she would much rather not have mentioned and now she hated his objectivity, of which he was so proud. There seemed no humanity in him at all. She could imagine without any difficulty the way in which he would tell someone they were going to die. Twice a day he would repeat to himself a little ho
mily about the importance of not getting involved with patients and never realize he was not in any danger.

  Her hatred had distracted her from what the locum was actually saying. ‘. . . no difficulty,’ he ended.

  ‘What? I’m sorry—I missed what you said.’

  ‘I said there shouldn’t be much difficulty arranging an abortion, which is what I presume you would want.’ He was smiling, she thought condescendingly. His fingertips touched as he propped his elbows on his desk and put his hands in a praying position.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, a funny, sharp, distinct little ‘oh’.

  ‘With four children—and at thirty-seven—and I see you had a Caesarian last time. The only thing is we do need to move rather quickly. At fourteen weeks the foetus is getting rather big and it becomes quite a different sort of operation if it is left much longer. I don’t think we have time to try a National Health job quite frankly—you really ought to be done this week. Would you like me to ring Mr John at The Royal Foundation? Dr Burnett usually refers patients to him.’

  He was waiting, his hands now rearranging the other medical folders for that morning. He looked at his wrist-watch surreptitiously. ‘I can’t think,’ Angela said, and he smiled again but got to his feet. Whatever happened, he was going to have a surgery that ran like clockwork. She knew she was fitting in with his preconceived notions about the behaviour of middle-class, middle-aged women. ‘Why don’t you go home and think about it?’ he said, ‘then you could ring me when you reach a decision. Either way, I’ll support you.’ It was a quaint thing to say and made her look at him again. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and followed him stiffly to the door, which he opened with a courtesy that added to her confusion.

  She did not go home, but went straight on to school, where she sat in the staffroom and marked books, as she had planned, over the lunch hour. It was the humdrum nature of her task that anchored her firmly to the world when inside her head she floated through the window out into the summer sunshine. She taught the fourth form with her customary vigour, surprised to hear such a firm, matter-of-fact voice coming out of a throat so dry. She went home and set the table, cut the bread, put sausages into the oven, sliced tomatoes, mixed a salad, moved to the cooker, to the cupboard, to the table, to the refrigerator, to the wastebin, backwards and forwards and sideways in her kitchen, sure of touch, firm of purpose and all around her children asking for glue, for scissors, wanting to know where tennis shoes were, swimming things, racquets, telling her the date of the school fete, of the outing to Brighton, of being in teams and plays and concerts. No pause for thought and yet the thought there all the time—I am to be a mother again.

  She said nothing. She supervised supper absentmindedly and hardly spoke. Of course, she would have the abortion—of course she would. There was no choice. She felt stupid and ashamed and degraded. But what would she tell the children? Her children had to be told something. She could not, like Mother, say that she was going into hospital and that would be that. They would ask why and ‘for an operation, dear’ would certainly not be sufficient. They would demand an explanation as any normal child would—it was she who had been abnormal, too afraid to ask why Mother was in hospital, too terrified to ask what it was. She had gone in and out of that horrible infirmary where Mother lay, white and weak, for a whole month without ever knowing what was wrong. She still did not know. Mother never told her and she never asked. Anything to do with Mother’s body, sick or well, frightened her. But her children would not show the same reticence. Any information would have to be exact. If she said she was having an abortion they would want to know what that was, and told what it was the image of bloody embryo babies burning in an incinerator would without doubt haunt their dreams, and the dangers would not elude their worldly minds.

  Her head ached fiercely by the time they were all in bed. She sat in the garden sipping a large glass of lemonade watching the sun burn the brown brick wall to a ruddy red. An uncomfortable, illicit excitement made her tremble and shiver. She could have this baby. She could become a mother again. And as she sat in the half-darkness of the late May evening it came back to her how magical that time was—that eerie time when she knew she carried a growing baby without being able to feel it. She had walked through life so proudly, shooting sly looks at her own belly when no one was looking, stroking herself furtively with a sense of triumph. She ought not to be seduced by the sweetness of nostalgia, and yet there stole over her a dreamy contentment that made her smile. She could start all over again. Now that she knew what it was to be a mother she could make a better job of it. It would be a girl and what would she call her? Antonia—Rosalind—Cassia—Beth—she repeated them all to herself, a litany of ghosts.

  Ben came home very late and went through the house calling her name before he found her sitting in the garden on the bench under the pear tree, her empty glass lolling drunkenly in her lap. They kissed. He took off his jacket and tie and yawned and stretched and sat beside her. ‘What an awful day,’ he said. She didn’t ask him why. Eventually her silence penetrated his fatigue. ‘You went to the doctor’s,’ he said, ‘I forgot—what happened?’ His tone was not really interested and she felt irritated by his apparent lack of concern. It was all so silly and melodramatic—she couldn’t bring herself to say ‘Darling, I’m pregnant.’ She squirmed at the thought and got up abruptly. ‘Aren’t you hungry?’ she said, and marched into the kitchen, head erect. ‘I was enjoying sitting there,’ he said, ‘there’s no rush. It’s years since you’ve sat in the garden waiting for me to come home—can hardly remember the last time. Do you remember that first summer, when Sadie was born? Scorching. We lived in the garden.’ He rambled on, following her into the kitchen, accepting the sandwich she made and the cheese and biscuits. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘how did you get on?’

  ‘I hate the way you ask.’

  ‘How do you want me to ask?’

  ‘All smug. You hadn’t even remembered.’

  ‘I did in the end.’

  Still she could not find the words. She knew he would latch on immediately to the part of her news that did not matter.

  ‘There isn’t anything wrong is there? Come on, for god’s sake, why all this touchiness?’

  ‘I’m pregnant.’ The viciousness with which it came out relieved her. ‘I know—it’s ridiculous. I’m three months pregnant.’

  ‘But how?’ He looked incredulous and somehow fragile when she wanted him to be strong.

  ‘The usual way, I imagine.’

  ‘You know what I meant.’ They were suddenly enemies, glaring at each other furiously when she wanted to be comforted. She knew perfectly well it was she who was dictating the terms.

  ‘We haven’t had intercourse without taking precautions.’

  ‘Oh don’t talk like that—I hate it—so coy—Christ—what does it matter?’

  ‘Of course it matters.’

  ‘Why? Do you want to pin the blame on me?’

  ‘Blame—don’t be silly—it never entered my head to—it’s just reasonable—’

  ‘I’m not reasonable, I don’t feel in the least reasonable, I don’t want to hear about reason. I feel terrible and all you do is carry out an inquisition.’

  He came over to her and said ‘I’m sorry’ and tried to put his arms round her but she shook him off.

  ‘Don’t you want to know when it will be born—shall we choose a name—I thought Antonia—what do you think of Antonia?’

  ‘Don’t, Angela.’

  ‘Of course it will be a girl. A sister for Sadie.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Well, we’ve got enough boys, don’t you think? I hope it will be a girl.’

  ‘But surely you’ll have an abortion—I mean, these days it’s so easy, isn’t it?’

  ‘Absolutely easy,’ she said, ‘you just get up onto an operating table and wham barn thank you mam out with the knife and the nasty thing cut out and thrown away. No trouble. After all, I don’t want to be a mother again, do I
? Not when I’m such a disaster already—not when we’ve learnt our lesson—we’ve had our fill of mothers, haven’t we—’

  She wept a long time. Ben soothed and hugged her and cursed his own clumsiness and said if she wanted the baby it would be lovely and she was the best mother in the world. It appalled her to discover the man she loved so dearly could find it so difficult to appreciate the turmoil she was in. She allowed him to hold her, and indeed drew the comfort she needed simply from the closeness of his body, but he was for the first time no good to her. He looked after her tenderly, he said he would make all the arrangements and all she needed to do was rest, he would take care of everything.

  ‘There’s Mother and Father,’ Angela said, ‘I don’t want them to know—they mustn’t know—I really couldn’t bear it.’

  ‘You can’t just disappear,’ Ben said. ‘What will I do if they ring—and they will, if you don’t.’

  ‘I’ll tell them I’m going on a teaching course,’ Angela said. ‘I’ve done it before.’

  ‘Christ, as if we didn’t have enough worries.’

  ‘I can’t bear them to worry about me. And the children—I don’t want them to know.’

  ‘Oh now look—’

  ‘I can’t bear them to be upset, and they would be—it’s too horrible—and they might think I was—I was going to die.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ He was angry because the thought of her in danger had never occurred to him. ‘Die?’ he repeated. ‘There’s no question of that. It’s a routine operation—’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘quite routine. Forget it.’

  Nine

  SHE WALKED TO the Royal Foundation Hospital, briskly, though her legs were weak. She walked through the streets busy with children rushing to school and men racing along with raincoats flying in the direction of the tube. None of them knew where she was going, or cared. She was just a woman gaily dressed in a skirt of many colours, stepping out smartly in the morning sun. The day before, Sunday, it had rained and she had been pleased—the greyness of the sky, the persistent dripping of the rain on roof and windows, both had mourned for her and cloaked her misery decently. Round and round she had gone, checking clothes for the children, organizing list after list of food to be bought and meals to be made and jobs to be done until she was dizzy with the effort of it all. But it had to be gone through—mothers did not just go into hospital, not if they could help it. Mothers could not even be ill or have an operation without intense preparation.