Mother Can You Hear Me?

by Margaret Forster

  The children came home to find her sitting in her dressing-gown in the kitchen peeling onions. She needed the onions for supper but they were a good cover for her despicable weak tears. ‘Want a cup of tea?’ Sadie asked, making one for herself, but that was all, no searching looks or questions, for which Angela told herself she ought to be thankful. No secret, fearful sidelong glances to see if she was all right, none at all like the ones she had constantly given Mother, especially once, after another unexplained spell in hospital. Mother had taken to wandering up and down at night, backwards and forwards across the tiny top landing where there was barely room to move, three paces across, three paces back, shuffling along in her pink, furry, pom-pom slippers that were loose at the heel. There was no escaping her on the way to the bathroom if one was unlucky enough to waken in the night. ‘Did I waken you? I’m sorry, dear—it’s the pain—if I keep moving the pain isn’t so bad.’ She had merely grunted and dashed back to bed, horrified, offering no comfort. Many nights she heard Mother’s shuffle and thought of her pain, whatever it was, and she cringed. She pulled the blankets over her head to shut out the small sounds Mother was making. She never sympathized, never extended any offers of help. Mother must have thought she did not care. Mother must have thought her callous. Mother, at that time, was looking for a mother.

  ‘Want a cup of tea?’ Sadie repeated, and Angela tried to look behind the toss of the head and studied yawn. Sadie stood waiting for the kettle to boil, tapping the edge of the cooker with a spoon, whistling until the kettle began to whistle. She did not look at Angela—it seemed many weeks since she had looked directly at her at all. Ben had told them, in the end, what their mother’s operation was for—he had respected her wish to keep it secret from the parents, but not from the children. He said Sadie had been phlegmatic. He said she had asked ‘Will Mum be all right?’ and when he had said but of course, perfectly all right, it was nothing, she hadn’t mentioned it again. While Angela was in hospital Sadie alone had visited her and been gay and cheerful and full of breezy anecdotes. There was no suggestion Sadie worried. And yet, as Angela accepted her tea, she sensed, in the quick flicker of the eyes going over her face, a certain doubt and hesitation. She did not want Sadie to cringe as she had cringed—she did not want her privately speculating on her mother’s misery and retreating from it with terror only to be plagued with guilt and remorse. ‘I’m perfectly all right,’ Angela said loudly, ‘just a bit tired and sorry for myself.’

  They used to drive, three times a year at least, down the motorway to St Erick. If they could, they set off early on Sunday morning, about seven, and so avoided heavy traffic. But occasionally they were obliged for one reason or another to go on Friday afternoon as soon as Ben returned from work and then it was impossible to escape the nightmare of a crowded M4 with all the cars jostling for position between the serried ranks of gigantic lorries on their last lap before home and determined not to give an inch. They all hated it. ‘Not the motorway,’ the children would cry, but it was the only sensible route to take. Inevitably, because so many other people thought likewise, the heavy traffic meant accidents. They witnessed several spectacular crashes. Worst of all, when Sadie was seven, they once had to crawl past the most horrible scene on the other side of the road. The police were there but the ambulance had not yet arrived. On the road lay a man whose head was one mass of dark-red blood. It oozed onto his chest and flowed onto the road where he lay half under a car. In spite of his injuries he was attempting to raise himself up and as he levered himself up on his elbow the blood from his head wound seemed to come from a fountain so furiously did it spurt. ‘Don’t look, Sadie,’ Angela said, ‘Don’t look.’ She couldn’t have said anything more calculated to inflame Sadie’s curiosity. Sadie clawed her way to the window, pushing aside Max and Saul, who were equally determined to see, and because the thought of Sadie’s terror if she saw the spectacle before them was unbearable, Angela turned in her seat and with one violent shove pushed her onto the floor of the car where she lay screaming with the pain of banging her head. ‘If you’d said nothing,’ Ben said, ‘she wouldn’t have batted an eyelid.’ ‘She would,’ Angela said, ‘it would have kept her awake all night. I don’t want her ever to have to see such dreadful things.’

  Mother and Father had been curiously over-excited by the story of the out-of-order telephone. Frequently, just to assure themselves that it was now mended, they made spot checks in the weeks that followed. Barely able to crawl back upstairs to bed, Angela would hear the telephone ring and it would be Father, at ten in the morning. ‘’Phone all right then?’ he would say, and when Angela allowed exasperation to show in her voice ‘just making sure it would be all right for tonight when you ring—don’t want your Mother sitting here waiting and nothing happening.’ She did not dare take the telephone off the hook as she wanted to do. Driven to another subterfuge to escape Father’s persistence, she told Ben to say she had a cold and was staying in bed for a couple of days. Naturally, they then rang night and day to see if she was better.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said, forced to capitulate and resume talking to them, ‘it was just a cold and sore throat.’

  ‘Maybe it was tonsillitis,’ Mother said hopefully, ‘you don’t want to take any chances with tonsillitis.’

  ‘It was just a sore throat.’

  ‘Valerie’s turned into tonsillitis,’ Mother said, ‘it was awful—she was off all last week with it, never been so poorly she says since her appendix.’

  ‘Really?’ Angela said, yawning, quite unable to arouse any enthusiasm for Valerie’s lost appendix, which had loomed large in their childhood and now had something of the status of an historical event. For a year, it had grumbled. Every now and again Valerie would be sent home from school weeping and clutching her side, and how Mother fussed and fretted over her, quite sickeningly. She would sit for hours stroking Valerie’s forehead in the most stupid useless way, and was up all night refilling hot water bottles to press to the sore side. Angela was moved to a camp bed so that Mother could sleep with Valerie ‘in case anything happened’. One Christmas Eve it did. The appendix burst and Mother and Valerie went off in an ambulance, half the street watching. Mother looked noble following the ambulance men, who carried Valerie wrapped in a thick red blanket. There was a little crowd of people gathered at the gate. Mother didn’t speak to them. She bowed her head in a dignified way and drew her coat about her. Angela could see how she was admired for her composure.

  ‘You want to watch a sore throat,’ Mother was saying, ‘don’t let it go on too long—get yourself to the doctor’s if it isn’t better soon.’

  ‘Oh, it will be—I don’t need a doctor. I’m fine.’

  ‘So you say,’ Mother said, ‘but I know you—you don’t look after yourself, you won’t pay any heed even if you are ill. Ridiculous. You were always the same.’

  Mother might be right. She hadn’t ever given in to illness. Sometimes she had forced herself out to school when the ground upon which she walked seemed to be coming up to hit her. On those days she would lurk in the cloakroom, sitting on the shoe bench half hidden in the coats hanging down, hoping nobody would discover her and see that she was shaking and send her home. Once she was indeed found and sent home with a streaming cold that had narrowed her eyes to little red slits and she had felt humiliated. ‘You?’ Mother had said when she opened the door. ‘You ill? Good heavens, I can’t believe it.’ Angela had crawled upstairs and cried with mortification. She was the strong one. She was the healthy one. It did not suit her to be ill, with all that implied.

  Nothing had changed. She hung up on Mother, with promises to take care, and began at once to organize the evening meal. There was no reason at all why she should not leave them all to fend for themselves, except that she could not do it. Her stomach still ached, the tiredness had not lifted, and she felt awful.

  ‘I might be late tomorrow,’ she said when they were all eating. ‘I don’t know exactly when I’ll be back. Take your keys. T
im, you’re going to the Bensons for tea.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ Max said, preparing not to listen to the answer, but when she said, ‘To the hospital,’ he looked interested. ‘Why?’ he said. ‘What for? You’re not going in again are you? Bloody ’ell.’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ Angela said, ‘I’m going to the clinic for a check-up.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Oh for god’s sake,’ Sadie said, ‘what do you think for, you fool?’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ Max said, ‘for your eyes, isn’t it?’

  ‘Christ,’ Sadie said, ‘you are so bloody thick and stupid I could strangle you.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ Max said, ‘it could have been for her eyes for all I knew.’

  ‘I have never in my life been near a hospital about my eyes,’ Angela said wearily.

  ‘He’s just a cretin,’ Sadie said.

  ‘Shut up, you fuckin—’

  ‘Max! No swearing—now stop it—’

  ‘—she is anyway—always showing off, thinks she knows everything—’

  ‘At least I know—’

  ‘I am trying to explain arrangements for tomorrow.’

  ‘—bye,’ Sadie said, and rushed out.

  ‘Max, you know why I was in hospital. Daddy told you. I’m going back just so they can check everything is all right, which it will be.’

  ‘I forgot,’ Max said, not so belligerent now Sadie had gone, ‘it was to have that poor little baby killed, wasn’t it.’

  ‘Killed?’ Tim echoed.

  ‘You are so thoughtless,’ Angela said.

  ‘Well, it’s the truth.’

  ‘Since when have you been so keen on truth?’

  ‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t say it.’

  ‘To spare my feelings, that’s why.’

  ‘My feelings were hurt when you did it,’ Max said, ‘you didn’t think about my feelings, did you? Oh no.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Angela said, ‘just shut up.’

  Plenty of time, in the clinic next day, to think about what she should have said, about how cleverly she ought to have turned the conversation, but no, she had been brusque and impatient. Presented with an opportunity to explain how miserable she felt she had let it go. ‘Can I borrow that book?’ the woman next to her said. The book was a magazine Angela was not even looking at. ‘Of course,’ she said, and hurriedly passed it over. ‘They pass the time, don’t they? When you’re waiting and worrying, I mean.’ The woman was very thin and pale. Angela saw she had a stick at her side. ‘It’s mostly the time I fret about,’ the woman said, ‘with two little ones at home you can’t help it, can you?’ ‘No,’ Angela said, ‘you can’t.’ ‘And I worry about what they’ll say when I get in there—we all do, don’t we?’ ‘Yes,’ Angela said. ‘I mean, they never take into consideration that you’re a mother, do they? With their “come in tomorrow” and all that. If they say that to me again I’ll just say you must be joking—how can I go in again?’ The question hung in the air and Angela did not know if the woman wanted an answer or not. ‘What are you here for?’ the woman suddenly said, throwing the magazine she had flicked through onto the table. ‘A check-up,’ Angela said. ‘I had an abortion a month ago. It’s just to see everything is all right.’ ‘Oh well then,’ the woman said, ‘you’re sitting pretty, aren’t you? Excuse me, there’s a friend.’

  The woman got up, with difficulty, and went over to the other side of the room where she spoke to a bright, nervous-looking girl who looked terrified as she was approached. ‘Hello, Irene,’ Angela heard the woman say, ‘how are you, then?’ ‘Fine—and how about you?’ ‘Not so good—it’s in my leg now, in my leg and my neck.’ ‘I’m sorry,’ the girl said, clutching her bag even more tightly to her and looking desperately to right and left. At that moment, her name was called and she leapt up and almost ran down the corridor. ‘Good luck,’ the woman shouted after her, but Irene ignored her. The woman began to limp back to her place and Angela realized she too was afraid of her, but it would be too pointed to change her seat. ‘Nice girl, Irene,’ the woman said. ‘Got a baby of six months and her husband ran off when all this began.’ Angela smiled politely and nodded. ‘We started off together,’ the woman said, ‘in the same ward, but she’s doing better than me. I’m a goner.’ I must move, Angela thought, but could not. ‘It’s my kids that worry me most—I mean, what will happen to them? It’s not the dying of cancer worries me, it’s the kids, that’s the point. What happens to kids when their mum dies?’ ‘I’m sure—’ Angela began, wetting her lips, ‘I’m sure you won’t die.’ ‘What?’ the woman said, and laughed. ‘Listen, I’ve got hardly no chance. They think I don’t know. They stood at the end of my bed and one said to the other “what kind of prognosis would you care to give?” and the other said “with that secondary in the bone marrow—well you know as well as I do”. They said that—to each other, mind, then they both turned to me as if I were a dummy and said, “We’re sending you home, Mrs Green.” It made me sick. So I know, you see. It’s a matter of time, and then what about my kids?’

  There were other people looking at them, frowning, with distaste, and that hostility to the crippled woman’s shrill cry for help forced Angela to try to answer when she would rather not have done. ‘What about your husband?’ she began, but the woman interrupted her. ‘I’m divorced,’ she said, ‘long ago. These two of mine aren’t his anyway—their father didn’t want to know. I’ve managed on my own up to now.’ ‘What about your mother?’ Angela said, ‘haven’t you a mother who would help?’ ‘A mother?’ the woman said, ‘a mother? Listen, I’ve got a mother. My mum is around all right—every day—sounds good doesn’t it—but do you know what she says to me—she says if I got up off my backside and did something, got a bit of life into me, she says I’d soon feel better. She thinks I should just buck my ideas up instead of feeling sorry for myself. It makes you laugh—there’s my mum, in hysterics because her new front door doesn’t fit properly, telling me not to moan. She doesn’t understand.’ ‘No,’ Angela said, ‘but at least she’s there—I mean, you can rely on her—it’s better than being without any mother at all.’ ‘I sometimes wonder,’ the woman said, and then her name was called, and as she trailed off there was such a clear lightening of everyone’s spirits that Angela was ashamed of mankind.

  There was an occasion so long ago that Angela, though she could remember her feelings clearly, could not place it—yet another of those times when Ben was away and she was alone with Sadie. She woke up one morning to find every bone in her body aching and her head swimming and her skin burning. Far off, though it was only in the next room, she heard Sadie crooning to herself, all alone, happy for the moment and yet not for long. Sadie needed her. Sadie could not even get out of the cot by herself Sadie could not change her own nappy or feed herself Soon, the crooning changed to intermittent crying and then a strong insistent bawling. ‘Ma ma ma ma,’ Sadie screamed and rattled the bars of the cot. Angela struggled up and instantly collapsed beside the bed, her legs giving way underneath her in the most alarming fashion. She tried to call out to Sadie to reassure her but could only cough and croak. She lay on the floor, willing herself to get upright, telling herself over and over again to come on, come on, Sadie needs you. She managed to sit up and take detp breaths and by degrees she got onto her feet again and worked her way round the furniture to the door. She staggered into Sadie’s room and at the sight of her Sadie gave a great scream of delight and began to shout ‘out out out out.’ But Angela could not let her out. She sat at the side of the cot and clung onto the bars. Sadie pulled her hair and bounced up and down and cried harder. She knew she must force herself down the stairs and ring someone. She left Sadie, who began to wail and shriek hideously, and began the long trek down the stairs driven by the absolute necessity of getting help for Sadie. She was her mother. She could not faint or give in or cry uselessly in the baby fashion she wanted to for her own mother. There was no possibility at all that she might give in and sleep again
for a while and leave Sadie to take her chance.

  Ten

  IT WAS ON a Saturday, midday, with Ben and the boys watching the football preview on television, slumped stupid and passive, gorging crisps and drinking forbidden cokes. Sadie out—parts unknown. And Angela wandering in the garden picking up pears full of September wasps. The holidays had been good. They had gone to St Erick en route for the Scilly Isles and Mother’s teeth were fixed and Father helped with the garden. They had been cunning—four days before their real holiday and three days on the way back, tanned and refreshed after the heat. That way, it had not seemed too bad and their excuses each time—must leave for the Scillies, must leave for work and school—carried conviction. It was perhaps always the way to do it.

  Angela stayed in the garden. So much of the summer had passed her by in a daze of worry about one thing or another and now she felt rested and refreshed. She even felt philosophical. There was nothing she could do about Sadie—Sadie was going her own way and grieving about it, pining for the lost intimacy and trust of childhood was no good. There was nothing she could do about Mother either—Mother had drowned herself in her own misery long ago and could not be rescued. Neither of them were really her burdens and she must not convince herself that they were. That secret contract she imagined she had sometime signed was not after all binding. She could be herself. She could even sometimes think of herself first without necessarily undermining the whole edifice of motherhood.