Mother Can You Hear Me?

by Margaret Forster

  There were tears in her eyes when Ben broke her reverie by stopping for petrol. Hastily, she blinked them away. How terrible to be so self-pitying, how disgusting to fantasize an escape from a quite ordinary predicament. The noise of the filling station, with lorries grinding their way in and out, was a relief. She could not afford to slip into a trough of gloom and depression. She got out of the car and stood up straight and walked briskly up and down. The anticipation was by far the worst part—once Mother was in the car and the visit had begun the fear would fade a little, she would be too busy to torture-herself. She began to hum as she got back into the car and smiled brightly at Ben when he returned from paying for the petrol. ‘That’s better,’ he said, and began to whistle himself, sitting at ease in that totally relaxed way she so envied, even his face quite calm and almost unfurrowed. Her own was never calm. Surprised by mirrors or shop windows, hers was taut and anxious. Tension ruined her looks. She had that dark-eyed look that made women old before their time.

  They arrived at Drewsteignton on the edge of Dartmoor before three in the afternoon and immediately drove to the beginning of the footpath that led up to the moor. The path rose steeply so that very quickly there were views of the countryside below. Angela raced ahead of Ben, who was no climber. She paused a good hundred yards ahead of him and turned and cupped her hands and shouted. The sheep scattered in fright and Ben sat down holding his side. She ran back down and pulled him up and pointed towards the top of the moor. ‘All around me eagles were yelling,’ she said, laughing, teasing him with her sudden energy and vitality. ‘No, that isn’t right—“All was still, save by fits the eagle was yelling and starting around him the echoes replied.”’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Ben said, ‘First prize, no doubt.’

  ‘No, runner up in the Schools’ Verse-speaking Competition. I only got a medal. The winner got a cup.’

  ‘The good old days,’ Ben said.

  ‘No, now are the good days.’

  ‘You weren’t saying that this morning.’

  It was too late to attempt to climb further. They followed a stream down, black and murky in the fading light, pausing to look at the subtler browns and greys of ground and sky. It was so still that they heard the grass crunch under their feet and every pebble they loosened crashed like a boulder in their path. Yet Angela was not quite separate. Visions of the children mingled with the clouds and an image of Mother sitting waiting in her chair hung between them. But she did not speak of them. She did not mention them as they got into the car and drove to the hotel. She did not refer to them as they bathed and dressed for dinner and sat in front of the fire sipping sherry. Ben said ‘Happy?’ and she said ‘Yes’ very firmly. They ate a delicious meal and had two bottles of wine and she told herself to savour the bliss.

  Mother had never had this. Sadie could not be sure that she would have it. Mother, in her depressions, whatever and whenever they were, never had anyone to understand and support her and tell her that was better when she managed to smile. Mother had to go it alone. Wheeling his bicycle up the side passage, peering in at the kitchen window, grimy and tired in his boiler suit, Father would see Mother looking mournful and come in and say, ‘Now what’s up? What’s the tale of woe this time?’ and he would say it furiously. Mother never replied. With set face and perhaps a tear or two, she would put out his meal and Father, who could get nothing out of her, would say, ‘I don’t know—you try your best—you work hard—and then you get this at the end of the day.’ This provoked Mother to come out with whatever it was. Invariably, Father would say, ‘Well, I can do nothing about that, lass,’ and sink at once into his own much gloomier and more threatening misery, from which Mother in turn rescued him. Mother knew if she went on being sad Father would shout at everyone else, ‘Look at your Mother,’ he would yell, ‘she’s had enough of you lot—now leave her alone—give her a rest.’ It was Father she wanted a rest from.

  ‘At least,’ Angela said, ‘it will be a rest from Father. For Mother, I mean.’

  ‘Spare me,’ Ben said, ‘don’t spoil a lovely day.’

  ‘No,’ Angela said, ‘no, I won’t.’

  ‘Why don’t we go away for a couple of weeks and do this all the time?’ Ben said. ‘We could go off somewhere to the sun, just the two of us—’

  ‘The children,’ Angela said, ‘who would look after them?’

  ‘We could get someone.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know—but somebody—someone’s au pair—the Bensons go off all the time—half the neighbourhood do. I mean, Tim’s six—none of them are babies any more.’

  ‘They hate me going,’ Angela said, ‘and then if we flew—both of us—the worry—’

  ‘I knew you’d say no.’

  ‘I haven’t said no. There are so many problems—you talk as if it was an easy thing to do—it’s worse than arranging an Everest expedition—just the thought—’

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘Now you’re spoiling the day. I won’t forget it. It would be lovely. I’ll think about it. It would be marvellous to be just us, like in the beginning.’

  ‘And at the end.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It will be just us in the end—when your parents are dead and the children grown up and gone.’

  She stared at him, shocked. ‘What an odd way to put it,’ she said.

  They prolonged the evening, prolonged the night, prolonged breakfast next morning, relished every scrap of time, but eventually they were there, outside the house in St Erick. The more pathetic it became, the more Angela smiled. The harder she wanted to cry, the harder she laughed. Feelings of panic, of wanting to run away, were matched by an external casualness that astonished her. Her one object was to soothe Mother and reassure Father and her own fears could not be allowed even the most mild expression.

  They had made a bed up in the back of the long estate car in spite of Mother’s protests that she would most certainly not use it, that her back would not permit her to even consider it, that she would never get upright again, that the motion of the car would make her sick if she was lying down. ‘Don’t worry,’ Ben said, ‘you don’t have to lie there if you don’t want to but it’s there if you need to.’ The thought of needing to worried Mother even more. ‘I hope I’ll be all right—eh?’ she kept saying, as though one of them had queried her hope. The longer they took about going, the more agitated she became and yet they could not just put her in the car and depart because Father kept shouting, ‘Don’t hurry her—plenty of time lass—no need to hurry now.’ ‘Oh shut up for goodness sake,’ Mother said. ‘There you are,’ Father said, ‘you’ve got her flustered.’

  But there was an air of triumph about their final leave-taking. Mother sat in the front looking pretty in her new feathered hat, bought after much searching by Valerie. Father stood at the gate, leaning on it, looking slightly debonair so that there seemed not the slightest need to worry about him. They all waved and Mrs Collins came out and waved too and the postman paused before going to the next-door house and waved. The car started smoothly and off they went and really it could not have been easier. Ben sang and was attentive to Mother’s needs without fussing and Angela in the back allowed herself to relax just a little until, as they joined the motorway, Mother said, ‘I knew I should have gone to the bathroom again,’ and gave her little laugh.

  ‘No problem,’ Angela said, far too quickly, ‘pull in at the next garage Ben.’

  ‘Can’t we just stop by the road?’ Ben said, not thinking, not seeing Angela’s glare through the driving mirror.

  ‘Sorry to be a bother,’ Mother said.

  ‘No bother,’ Angela said, ‘Ben was daydreaming.’

  ‘What I meant was—’ Ben began, but Angela cut him short.

  ‘There,’ she said, ‘services one mile. Stop there.’

  They stopped there, and ten minutes later, and twenty minutes after that with Mother becoming increasingly distressed at her inability to control her bladder. She gr
ew more rather than less embarrassed however nonchalant Angela tried to be. They tried hard to reassure her that they stopped just as regularly with the children, but her own feebleness depressed her. Gradually, one problem overcome, another took its place. Mother started to doze off and then brought herself to with frightening jerks of her frail neck every few minutes, but though this showed her exhaustion she would not give in to it. The bed in the back was resisted. That was being an invalid. Moreover, it was somehow indecent to stretch out in the back of a motor car. It showed faint-heartedness and Mother was determined to be resolute. She agreed to sit in the back with Angela and to have cushions at her head and to put her feet up sideways but that was all. ‘Good job your Father isn’t here,’ she said occasionally.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well—you know,’ Mother said significantly, ‘me being like this—watching me—if anything should happen.’

  Angela did not say, ‘if it happens, it happens’. She was proud of managing to resist a platitude Mother would find so abhorrent. But the more she thought about what Mother had just said, the more it disgusted her. She wanted to tell Ben to put his foot down and roar along at eighty miles an hour and not consider Mother so carefully—foot down, fast as possible and never mind upsetting Mother. Nothing was ever going to please her for more than a minute. Nothing was ever going to reassure her. She was seventy-five and incurably ill of worry and doubt about every kind of future. ‘Go a little faster, Ben,’ she said. ‘Mother doesn’t mind, do you Mother?’ Mother didn’t hear—she had fallen into one of her snatched sleeps. Ben gradually increased speed until they were going at over seventy miles an hour and Angela felt a small thrill of satisfaction. She was beating Mother without Mother knowing it.

  There was a long period—two, three years—when Sadie invented unreasonable worries for herself. Usually, they were to do with school. In the evening, after supper, she would torture herself with the memory of something she had or had not done. ‘Miss Newton told me to put away the crayons in the drawer in her desk and I forgot and she’ll be angry.’ ‘Don’t be silly,’ Angela would say, ‘she won’t be angry at all.’ ‘You don’t know—she’ll never ask me to do anything again,’ and Sadie began to cry. ‘For god’s sake, Sadie, don’t be so stupid.’ ‘It isn’t stupid—she asked me—she said I was the only one she could trust—she’ll never trust me again.’ ‘Sadie, stop it,’ Angela said sharply, ‘this is ridiculous—you’re in a state over nothing—and anyway you can’t do anything about it.’ ‘I know, I know,’ and Sadie cried harder. Angela got up. She went to the telephone. She lifted the receiver and made a pretence of dialling. ‘Hello?’ she said, ‘Miss Newton? This is Sadie Bradbury’s mother—Sadie has forgotten to put some crayons in your drawer and she’s so worried. Yes, I told her that. Yes, thank you—that’s very kind—good night.’ Angela came back to the table. Sadie was absolutely silent, staring at her with awe. ‘Miss Newton says it doesn’t matter in the least,’ she said. The shock tactic cured Sadie every time. Somehow, Angela’s bluff was never called, her deception never revealed. And gradually Sadie grew out of her obsession with trivial duties she knew were of no importance.

  They rang Father as soon as they got in, even before they properly greeted the children or unpacked the car. ‘Just a quick ring,’ Angela said, ‘just to say we’ve arrived safely and that’s all.’

  ‘Good. How’s your Mother? How did she stand up to it?’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘You went nice and slow, eh?’

  ‘Oh yes. I’m going to make Mother some tea now so I’ll ring off.’ And she did, at once. Unless the limits of her tolerance were outlined Father would never be off the telephone.

  Mother was sitting on the sofa at the end of the big ground-floor living room looking overwhelmed and reduced in size to a mere dot of crumpled clothes. The sofa would not do for her. Fifteen years of children bouncing on it had taken out of sides, seat and back any support they had ever been able to give. She sent Max upstairs to bring down the one proper chair they possessed, an upright wing chair that stood in the corner of her bedroom and had clothes thrown over it. ‘You shouldn’t have,’ Mother said, moving gratefully into it nevertheless, ‘you should just ignore me.’

  But Angela could see she said it in hopes of being contradicted. She was waiting for her life to be transformed now that she was at her beloved daughter’s. Already, sitting in a chair watching other people do things, the difference was not as great as it ought to have been.

  ‘Which would you rather,’ Angela said, ‘eat now with the children or later with Ben and me?’

  ‘I don’t eat much,’ Mother said.

  ‘Well,’ Angela said, ‘when would you rather not eat much?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t mind. Whichever is easiest,’ Mother said. She did not like to be teased.

  ‘Then eat with us,’ Angela said, afraid eating with the children might after all seem insulting.

  Mother sat and watched the children eat. ‘They haven’t washed their hands,’ she said, ‘none of them, not even Sadie.’

  ‘Ooooh, Grandma,’ Sadie said, ‘tell tale tit.’

  ‘She’s a liar anyway,’ Tim said, ‘I’ve washed mine.’

  ‘Tim,’ Angela said, ‘you do not call Grandma a liar. Ever.’

  ‘Why not? She told a lie.’

  ‘She didn’t—she just looked at your hands and saw they were filthy so even if you have washed them you haven’t washed them properly.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Tim shouted.

  ‘Tim, you do not swear in this house.’

  ‘You do—everyone does.’

  ‘I do not.’

  ‘Shouting at your mother,’ Mother said, ‘naughty boy. My little boys never shouted at me.’

  Nobody, Angela remembered, ever had shouted at Mother, neither the boys nor Valerie nor her, but then Mother had not shouted at them. For twenty odd years she had been a mother who had brought up her children without shouting at them.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Angela said when the children had left the table and scattered round the house, ‘how you managed not to shout at us.’

  ‘I don’t like shouting,’ Mother said, ‘it’s horrible. And I don’t like violence, especially in families.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ said Angela, ‘but I shout all the time—and I’m violent—well, I slap the boys often and thump them when I’m angry. No wonder my children shout back, I suppose. I just get so furious with them.’

  ‘They’re difficult children,’ Mother said. Angela, watching her closely, thought she was blushing slightly.

  ‘How are they difficult?’

  ‘Well, they aren’t quiet, are they—they’re very strong personalities—you let them do what they want—treat you like an equal.’ Mother’s blush deepened with the excitement of daring to criticize.

  ‘But I don’t let them do what they want—that’s the point—that’s where all the trouble starts.’

  ‘Oh well then,’ Mother said, ‘never mind. Is Sadie to do the dishes?’

  ‘No,’ Angela said, but she did not want the subject changed. ‘It must be,’ she said, ‘it can’t be how they were born—I’ve made them argumentative.’

  ‘You can’t do everything right,’ Mother said. ‘Where is Sadie? She isn’t helping you.’

  ‘She’s gone out, I expect.’

  ‘But she didn’t tell you—’

  ‘She doesn’t have to tell me every time she goes in or out.’

  ‘—and it’s dark—at this time of night—’

  ‘It’s only seven o’clock.’

  ‘Still, you should know where she is.’

  ‘No,’ Angela said, ‘I don’t think so. She’s capable of looking after herself. I don’t want to live in her pocket or have her living in mine. She has her own life to lead.’

  ‘Oh Angela,’ Mother said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re her Mother—she’s only fifteen—dear me—’

  It was
the fashion, in their area, to send children to holiday camps on their own as soon as they were eligible. Not as Angela had been sent on holiday on her own, put on the train to a relative’s and collected at the other end, but really on their own from the beginning. It was said to be good for them but Angela privately wondered. All the same, she found herself saying to Sadie when she was eight, ‘Would you like to go to a children’s holiday camp for a week?’ ‘Who with?’ ‘Just yourself.’ ‘No,’ Sadie said, decisively. ‘Why should I?’ ‘I just thought it would give you something exciting to do one of the weeks we’re at home in the summer holidays—you’d enjoy it—there would be lots of children of your own age—you’d have a great time.’ ‘I don’t want to go,’ Sadie said. ‘I would have loved it at your age,’ Angela said. Afterwards, she chided herself for her foolishness. Sadie sulked, aware that she had somehow been feeble and clinging and unadventurous and that Angela might despise her.

  Angela was standing staring into the dark garden, where she could see nothing at all, when Sadie came in and put the light on.

  ‘Why on earth wasn’t the light on?’ Sadie said. ‘Where’s Grandma? Where’s Dad?’

  ‘I didn’t feel like having a light on.’

  ‘Oh, the moody blues,’ Sadie said, humming. She picked up the newspaper and turned to the television programmes.

  ‘Grandma is in bed,’ Angela said. ‘Dad’s gone for a walk in the park.’ But Sadie was not listening. Her queries had been mere conversation and were not expected to be given answers.

  ‘Do you think,’ Angela said, trying to make her tone light and free from any kind of whine, ‘that you could help Grandma while she is here?’