Mother Can You Hear Me?

by Margaret Forster

  Richmond Park was almost deserted, the early morning athletes and dog walkers put off by the hard rain. She trudged along to the Round Pound and then veered off left, following the line of trees that stretched in a rough line towards the river. That way, it was more like real country whereas down beside the road the frustrating feeling of a municipal park persisted. The rain was harsh and coldly cleansing, the air sharp and icy fresh, stinging her face, hurting her throat as she gulped it down, eager to drive out the muggy, beery, disgusting stench of the house she had just left—an overall smell of decay that had made her feel sick. No possibility today of flinging open doors and windows to let the wind blow through the rooms. For days the cigarette smoke would cling to curtains and the odd hidden stub would reek until she tracked it down and got rid of it.

  She ought to have brought the boys with her, away from that contaminated place, but they were still asleep. The noise had been so tremendous—music so loud that people had rung from several streets away to complain—that they had taken refuge in her bed, all three of them, frightened by it. Language unbelievably foul and vicious had floated up the staircase as little gangs of louts forced their way past the flimsy barrier, and the laughter from those others who jammed the hall swept upstairs in great threatening waves. She had lain there, one arm round Tim, remembering that somewhere down there was Sadie, in a gold lurex tee shirt that was far too tight and a pair of black satin jeans that followed every contour. Mother would have had a fit, yet she, she said nothing. At eleven, Ben had had enough. He had gone down and ordered them all out, and they had gone with none of the fuss or trouble he had anticipated. He came to bed angry, telling Angela it was her fault, that she ought never to have allowed such unsupervised chaos, saying that she had only agreed to please Sadie.

  He was right, but was it a crime to want to please one’s daughter? Angela had gone on lying awake long after the boys had been taken back to bed and the house was quiet. To want to please—she did not want to force Sadie in any particular direction, she did not want Sadie to have to hide her way of life because it was different from that of her parents. She had heard Sadie going to bed with her two chosen girlfriends who were staying the night and as smothered giggles and hasty sssh’s emerged from her room Angela had smiled, a little happier. At least Sadie had been pleased. But now, walking in the park, purging herself of her house’s unpleasant atmosphere, depression returned. Her Wellingtons squelched in the muddy leaves as she plodded on, wishing she did not have to go back to the kind of scene there was bound to be at lunch when Sadie emerged without the protective covering of those friends, who would have gone. She walked down towards the gate that led into their road, wondering how long she could manage to stay out—but it was mean to leave Ben to begin clearing up the mess, mean to let the boys get up to pools of vomit still lying in corners of the living room.

  Lunch was a tense meal, with Sadie sitting opposite white-faced, hollow eyed and speechless. Nobody spoke much, except Max, who complained constantly about the smell which lingered everywhere.

  ‘It will wear off,’ Angela said.

  ‘You shouldn’t have let them smoke,’ Max said, ‘it isn’t healthy—it gives you lung cancer—just breathing it in gives you it—I’m probably getting it now—’

  ‘Good,’ Sadie said.

  ‘You shut up—it’s all your horrible friends—they kept me awake half the night with their swearing.’

  ‘Baby,’ Sadie said.

  ‘There’s glass outside to clean up,’ Ben said. ‘It’s dangerous—somebody deliberately smashed milk bottles on their way out.’

  ‘How do you know it was deliberate?’ Sadie said.

  ‘Because six milk bottles standing in a wooden holder do not take themselves out onto the doorstep and break themselves into extremely tiny pieces.’

  ‘Okay, okay.’

  ‘And there are two banisters broken,’ Ben said. ‘I hope somebody is going to mend them.’

  ‘They were wobbly already,’ Sadie said.

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well, all this fuss about two broken banisters,’ Sadie said, lips curling with contempt, ‘you’d think it was the end of the world.’

  ‘They cleared up quite well in here,’ Angela said, nervous.

  ‘Quite well?’ Sadie said, glaring. ‘We spent bloody hours washing the floor.’

  ‘You missed the sick,’ Ben said.

  ‘Oh, what a fuss,’ Sadie said, pushing her chair back, ready to go back to her room, aggrieved.

  ‘I hardly think you can claim we’ve made a fuss,’ Angela said, ‘I think we’ve been very good considering—’

  ‘I knew it!’ Sadie shouted, her eyes closed, one fist pounding her forehead. ‘I just knew it—I was waiting for the self congratulation to start—okay—so you’re both heroes letting me have a party—thank you very very very much—thank you—great. Now can we just forget it?’

  They let her go. ‘She didn’t mean to sound like that,’ Angela said quickly, ‘it’s just how it comes out. She’s exhausted—she can’t really hear how she sounds.’

  ‘You’re always on her side,’ Max said. ‘Of course, if it was me it would be different—you’d shout then.’

  ‘I’m really fed up with Sadie,’ Ben said, ‘you do seem to make rather a lot of excuses for her.’

  ‘Because nobody made them for me.’

  ‘That was different. You aren’t to Sadie as your Mother was to you.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Obviously you aren’t—it’s quite a different situation—your Mother was weak and you were strong. Sadie is as strong as you—you don’t have to handle her like china. I’m really bored with the whole business—if you’re not handling your Mother carefully you’re handling Sadie carefully. Neither of them are worth it—I don’t know why you waste your time—all this putting them first—I mean, what is this? Some kind of charity you’re running?’

  It was rare for him to be angry, and even then Ben’s anger was not a frightening thing, nor did it last. The children knew it too and counted upon it, whereas her own temper was something they dreaded. ‘Don’t put her in a temper,’ was a warning Angela often heard one child beg to another and though it made her ashamed it also made her smile at their naïvety. She was never ‘put into’ tempers—they just came, like the wind, and startled her by their violence. But now, when she ought to be angry and raging, it was she who was calm and quiet and Ben who temporarily shouted and grew red in the face. She sat in the empty kitchen and thought about what he had said. She saw herself as caught in the crossfire between Sadie and Mother—she saw herself as being shot at by both of them from different angles—but Ben saw her as deliberately setting herself up as a target. While she was ill in the summer she had thought for a short time that he might be right—there she had been, wounded and withdrawn from battle, her thoughts turned inwards and away from Sadie and Mother, and they had survived her detachment. Perhaps she ought to resolve to be detached all the time—to cut out of her heart those feelings of pity and sorrow and guilt that made her melt in their hands though they never guessed it.

  ‘The party went very well,’ she said that evening on the telephone to Mother, knowing that Sadie, who was eating left-over trifle behind her in the kitchen, could hear every word. ‘Sadie and her friends cleared up beautifully afterwards.’ She heard Sadie scrape the plate unnecessarily hard. ‘No,’ she said, ‘there was no damage to speak of.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Mother said. Now that the event was over and no disasters had occurred, she had lost interest in the topic. But to Angela, practising her new coolness, it seemed Mother was more cheerful.

  ‘I went to the doctor’s today,’ Mother said.

  ‘Oh, really?’ Angela said, casual, determined not to probe further than she needed to.

  ‘Yes, to be checked over you know—it’s six weeks since I was in hospital—’ Father in the background shouted ‘six weeks and three days’—‘and they said to go to my own doctor
after six weeks so your Father made the appointment and we got a taxi—’

  ‘Well done.’

  ‘—and down we went. He says my heart is sound and my lungs clear and my blood pressure lower than it has been for years and my insides as good as new.’ Mother sounded excited and happy. ‘Of course, it’s all nonsense—I’m an old woman—everything’s wrong with me—but the doctor thinks I’m better than I am so I suppose I have to listen to him.’

  ‘Yes,’ Angela said emphatically, ‘you do.’

  ‘He even said a change would do me good.’ Father was shouting again. ‘What?’ Mother said, pretending to Angela she could not hear. ‘Your Father’s shouting—oh, I’m not going to tell her that.’ Fearfully, Angela struggled not to fall into the trap she sensed—she did not have to press Mother to tell her what Father was shouting. She waited for Mother to go on, saying nothing and hating herself for cowardice. ‘Your Father says I have to tell you that the doctor was asking when I was off to visit my daughters now I am so much better—says a little trip would be just the job before the winter sets in.’

  It was cruel to pause for even a second. ‘Well,’ Angela said, voice croaky and thick, ‘when are you? You know you’re always welcome.’

  ‘Eh?’ Mother said, with a deprecating little laugh. ‘No, I’d never manage it—if you were nearer—and I’d only be a nuisance.’

  ‘Of course you wouldn’t,’ Angela said. ‘If you think you can stand the journey—I could come and get you in the car.’ The offer had to be made—in the name of common decency it had to be made.

  ‘Eh?’ Mother said again, and the telephone receiver went blank for a moment as she turned aside from it to confer with Father. ‘Your Father says that would be grand.’

  ‘Well then,’ Angela said, ‘that’s settled. Let’s make it as soon as possible, before the clocks go back. I’ll discuss it with Ben and ring you back.’

  She found, as she put the receiver carefully down, that she was trembling. She went into the kitchen, where Sadie had moved onto cake, and sat down, trying to compose herself, waiting for Sadie to notice her distress and ask what was the matter, but no inquiry came.

  ‘Grandma is coming to stay,’ she blurted out.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Sadie said, neither shocked nor surprised. ‘When?’

  ‘I don’t know. Soon.’

  ‘Will Grandad come with her?’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t even thought about it.’ Which would be worse—Mother alone or Mother with Father? Hard to decide.

  ‘You don’t look very happy about it,’ Sadie said, licking her spoon, which still had cream from the cake on it.

  ‘So you do notice,’ Angela said, ‘you’re not made of stone.’

  ‘Ha ha.’

  ‘It wasn’t a joke.’

  ‘What’s so awful about Grandma coming anyway?’

  ‘If you can’t see, I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Well, that’s a relief.’

  Angela knew she could not afford to say ‘Sadie, have you no compassion?’ or anything else emotive that would have her daughter out of the house in one minute, and it seemed important for reasons she only dimly comprehended that Sadie should do no such thing. So instead she said, ‘I don’t think Grandma will be able to get up all those stairs, not even as far as my bedroom.’

  ‘That’s no problem,’ Sadie said, ‘she can have my room. I don’t mind. How long will it be for?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Angela said, almost weeping, ‘oh, I don’t know.’

  ‘Okay, okay, sorry I asked,’ Sadie said.

  It was eight years since Mother had been, the year before her fall, two years before the first heart attack. She and Father had come for three weeks in the long summer holidays, every day an eternity. Windsor Castle, Whipsnade Zoo, Greenwich, Hampton Court—every day an outing somewhere just to keep things moving, just to prevent that awful plummeting of the stomach when Mother sighed and said, ‘Well, what can I do?’ Evenings at the theatre—Sadlers Wells, D’Oyly Carte Opera, ‘The Mousetrap’—anything suitable. Mountains of food of a kind they never ate—puddings galore—snacks slipped in with home-made scones and cakes and late-night suppers with gallons of tea. Sudden devotion to television programmes they had never watched, and all the time that overpowering feeling of unease, of failing Mother at every turn no matter how hard she tried.

  ‘It’s too much,’ Ben said when finally she roused herself to tell him, ‘you’re just not up to it—and it isn’t even the holidays.’

  ‘Half term is next week. Ideal.’

  ‘Agony,’ Ben said, ‘you can’t possibly have her.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Angela said, hearing the hysteria in her voice but powerless to control it. ‘Can’t possibly have my own Mother who is coming to stay for the first time in eight years? Are you listening to yourself? You’re being absurd—it’s my own Mother—how could I ever not want the poor soul if she wanted to come? The world would be a rotten place if daughters had to look for excuses not to have their own mother—when she’s a mother like mine—so good and gentle—who did so much for me—when she isn’t a harridan or a busybody—’

  ‘She’s a martyr,’ Ben said, ‘and that’s worse. And anyway the point isn’t what your Mother is like, it’s what you are like when she is around. That’s the point.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t want to hear your points. There’s no argument. Mother is coming and I’m going to welcome her. It’s the least I can do—and I do welcome her, I really do, it’s just that—that—’

  ‘The strain kills you,’ finished Ben.

  ‘Strain? It’s so shameful to even mention the word—I ought to be thrilled—elated—’

  ‘Well, you’re not.’

  She went and sat in Sadie’s room. It was very small indeed, smaller than she had realized. Angela gazed round her dismally. Mother would not like the rush blind on the window, she wouldn’t be comfortable without thick curtains, but then there were old curtains galore in the house. She would not be comfortable either with stained floorboards underfoot but one rug lifted from any of the rooms upstairs would easily cover the entire floor space. The bed was out of the question. Sadie slept on a mattress—the base of the bed was somewhere in the garage swathed in polythene because Sadie said divans were suburban. There was nowhere at all for clothes—except for an old restaurant hat-stand over which Sadie flung everything. Mother would need a chest of drawers, if they could get it in. All the cut-out pictures, mostly of naked bodies, would have to come off the walls and the bare bulb dangling in the corner would have to have that other suburban touch, a lampshade. The room, for Mother, was totally unsuitable, but it was on the ground floor next to the downstairs bathroom with no steps of any kind to be negotiated. It could with little effort be made presentable.

  Father did not after all intend to come, though it was a delicate matter finding out. Mother, he said, would enjoy it more if it was just her treat, and after triumphantly decorating the bedroom he could now move onto the living room while Mother was out of his way. ‘There’s plenty of you to look after her,’ he said. Valerie said the same. ‘You’ve got enough on your plate, heaven knows,’ Valerie said when she rang, ‘but then Sadie is there to help.’

  ‘Help?’ Angela said, ‘Sadie? She’s given up her room and that will be that.’

  ‘Won’t she help Mother?’ Valerie said. ‘A big girl like that? Can’t she help her get dressed and that kind of thing?’

  ‘Valerie,’ said Angela, ‘how often did we help our grandmother get dressed or undressed?’

  ‘But Mother isn’t Grandma,’ Valerie said, ‘it isn’t the same at all, Angela.’

  ‘She is to Sadie.’

  ‘How can you say that?’ Valerie said. ‘Oh no, you’re wrong—Mother is quite different—I’m sure Sadie will be only too glad to help her—anyone would be.’

  ‘It isn’t worth arguing about,’ Angela said.

  It had taken Sadie a long time to accept that Mother was Angela’s m
other. The idea amused her, but she didn’t believe it. ‘But she’s so old,’ Sadie said, ‘she can’t be your mother.’ ‘When I was little like you,’ Angela said, ‘she wasn’t old. She was like I am now.’ Sadie still was not satisfied. She would stand in front of Mother and question her—was she really Angela’s mummy? Driven finally to accept the relationship, she was never quite happy about it. She whispered ‘I wish Grandma wasn’t your mummy,’ into Angela’s ear. ‘But why? You like Grandma—she’s a lovely lady.’ ‘Yes,’ Sadie whispered, ‘but she’s old—her legs without her stockings are all withered and the veins stick out.’

  Twelve

  ANGELA TRIED, BRAVELY, to turn it into a treat. Ben would not let her drive all the way there and back on her own, nor would she let him fetch Mother by himself, and so, the usual complicated domestic arrangements complete, they set off together on Monday morning as soon as all the children were at school. ‘It will be rather nice,’ Angela said, ‘driving on our own.’ Ben said nothing. They were going to stay at an hotel near Dartmoor that night and pick up Mother the next day before driving back again. ‘It’s ages since we had a night in an hotel on our own,’ Angela said. ‘Don’t you think it was a brilliant idea of mine?’ ‘Brilliant,’ Ben said, flatly.

  There was always the thought that they might crash or get miraculously lost or delayed in some perfectly acceptable way. The ordeal ahead might never happen, though being a Trewick by birth Angela could draw no comfort from such an idea. Looking out of the car window as mile after mile of motorway flashed safely by, worrying silently about whether the Bensons’ au pair girl was really reliable enough to hold the fort for one night, she tried to imagine an accident in which she would not be hurt but somehow immobilized—obliged to spend months lying in a white room with soft music in the background and kind nurses hovering over her to say, with a smile, at intervals, that she was not to worry, everyone at home was fine, she was fine too, everything in the whole world was fine, all she had to do was lie there and not move and not think. Occasionally one of the children would appear at her side, looking wonderfully well and happy, and even Mother took part in this curious ritual, wishing Angela well and assuring her that she was perfectly all right herself.