Mother Can You Hear Me?

by Margaret Forster

‘Yeah, okay,’ Sadie said. ‘Don’t forget I’ve given her my room.’

  ‘But that’s a negative sort of helping,’ Angela said. ‘I was thinking of something a little more positive.’

  ‘Like what?’ Sadie looked up, that aggrieved expression she assumed at any mention of help already settled on her face.

  ‘Talking to her—involving her in what you’re doing—just to make her feel she belongs. She’s so pathetic sitting there all day—can’t read because of her eyes—can’t do anything really and she’s so bored and—’

  ‘Yeah, okay,’ Sadie said. ‘Goodnight then.’

  ‘Don’t go,’ Angela pleaded.

  ‘I’m going to bed—right?’

  ‘No—every time we even begin to talk about anything that matters you run away.’

  ‘Oh god,’ Sadie said and sat down again, eyes closed, hands gripping the sides of the chair. ‘Get on with it then. What do you want to say?’

  ‘Don’t you feel sorry for Grandma?’

  ‘Christ—that again—of course I feel sorry for her—but I mean, that’s life isn’t it? You make such a sob story of it, carrying on and moaning around—so Grandma’s old and a bit handicapped and everyone’s sorry but nobody can do anything about it, can they?’

  ‘We can be considerate and affectionate.’

  ‘Okay—I’ll be considerate, but it won’t make much difference. Old is old.’

  ‘And when you’re old,’ Angela said, ‘you’ll just accept it, will you? You won’t be bitter or expect anything from anyone—you’ll just sit in your wheelchair and wave your white stick and say old is old, that’s life, folks.’

  ‘You’re so bloody sarcastic,’ Sadie said.

  ‘Well, you talk such rubbish. You know you could make a huge difference to Grandma if you made the effort—like I have to make it—’

  ‘Good old you. I thought we would get onto that pretty soon.’

  ‘Sadie, I try.’

  ‘Humble now. Touching.’

  ‘I try,’ Angela shouted. ‘I know I’m not what she wants—I won’t ever ask you to do it, to be something you’re not—’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Sadie said, ‘there’s no danger.’

  ‘No. I don’t suppose there is. You don’t feel any obligation do you—to me, I mean.’

  ‘No. Why should I?’

  ‘No reason at all. It’s exactly as I wanted it to be.’

  ‘Good. Can I go now?’

  It had been a beginning which Angela knew she had wrecked. Sadie had at least stayed, she had at least begun to express her feelings and Angela knew she had stamped on them. She would have to learn to tread cautiously. She would have to learn also to be cheerful and not make the rest of the family feel guilty. Each day, she must set her face into a look of benign good humour and keep it that way until she went to bed at night—cheerfulness, at all costs.

  ‘You look worn out,’ Mother said one evening.

  ‘Nonsense,’ Angela said, springing up to do something convincingly energetic. ‘I’m perfectly all right.’

  ‘You work too hard,’ Mother said accusingly, ‘on the go all the time, morning, noon and night.’

  ‘So were you,’ Angela said, ‘you never stopped.’

  ‘But I didn’t have a big house or a job,’ Mother said.

  ‘Or a washing machine or a car,’ Angela said, ‘or any of the other labour-saving things I have. You were just a slave.’

  ‘Was I?’ Mother said. It was hard to interpret her tone. ‘Well, even if I was, my life was easier than yours.’

  ‘Oh what a lie,’ Angela said, forgetting forcefulness only put Mother off and stopped interesting discussions in their tracks, ‘mine is much easier than yours. When have you seen me standing in a freezing washhouse with my arms up to the elbows in a dolly tub? When have you seen me blackleading a huge filthy grate—’

  ‘My grate was never filthy.’

  ‘You know what I mean—and all that scrubbing stone floors till your hands bled—’

  ‘They never bled—what nonsense—’

  ‘I saw them bleed—’

  ‘I probably had a little cut one day.’

  ‘Mother, you aren’t listening properly—you’re still pretending you don’t know what I mean.’

  ‘All I know,’ Mother said with surprising firmness, ‘is that for all your fine house and car and so-called modern conveniences you seem more worn out and rushed than I ever was. I had time for a cup of tea with my neighbours anyway.’

  ‘I don’t want cups of tea with my neighbours,’ Angela said.

  Mother was lying back in the wing chair, her white hair spread in fuzzy little clumps against the dark green brocade. Throughout the conversation she had had her eyes shut and her hands clasped neatly on her lap. She seemed to be asleep. Away from Father’s meticulous attentions Angela could not help but see how neglected she looked—her hair was not done properly, nor were her clothes fastened as they ought to be fastened. It was hard to get her dressed, so easy to encourage her to stay in her dressing gown or to put on things in which she did not look or feel her best but which were simple to haul on and off. Angela hated to humiliate her, and her garments were humiliating—the endless layers of vests, some night, some day, some warm weather, some cold weather, all to be changed at regular intervals revealing Mother’s shrunken flesh, of which she was painfully aware. ‘Look at me,’ she would say, ‘just look at me—what a sight,’ and Angela, who longed to lie or find refuge in heartiness, was reduced to platitudes. There was, in particular, the horror of the corset, pink and padded, forcibly strapped in a ludicrous way round Mother’s middle. Angela suggested every day that she should leave it off but Mother insisted—she could not do without it, she would feel cold and undressed and insecure. Suspenders dangled from it like thin strips of healthier skin against Mother’s white, white thighs where varicose veins stood out in sharp relief. Two pairs of knickers, under and over, cotton and silk, and the worst of the business was over at the end of an exhausting half hour.

  Quietly, as eager not to waken Mother as she had once been not to disturb sleeping babies, Angela went on chopping vegetables to make soup and tried to think ahead to what could be done tomorrow. Over the last four days, ever since they had arrived, she had tried desperately to entertain Mother but with only partial success. Shopping had proved too arduous and Mother had ended up sitting in the car as she sat at home. They went to a nice coffee shop in Richmond High Street and had coffee and a pastry and Angela tried to make an event of it but Mother proved remarkably uninterested in either her surroundings or the other customers and was the first to suggest that they should go. Collecting and delivering Tim from school was hardly the diversion Angela thought it might become—she could sit for hours watching the children come out but Mother found it dull. None of the bright faces or the cavortings of Tim and his friends fascinated her. ‘That,’ said Angela, ‘is the school swimming pool.’ ‘Oh yes,’ Mother said, ‘very nice.’ No questions, no curiosity. There seemed little point in hanging about.

  Hardly breathing in case Mother woke from her snooze and the blessed respite was over, Angela scolded herself for unworthy thoughts. She was a woman of intelligence and resourcefulness. The problem of how to please Mother and how to enliven her days ought not to be beyond her. What she needed was entertainment, something different but not tiring, and people about her who would bring out that vitality so long extinguished. She sliced through carrots very carefully so as not to make the smallest sound and looked at Mother again and suddenly she was overwhelmed with remorse. Mother could not help her apathy. She could not become animated at will—she was too old and tired and ill. She was just a poor exhausted soul who needed love, who needed reassurance that she still had a part to play in the world. But what part? Where was Mother’s part, now that she was old and finished, now that the work of bringing them all up was done? Every day, Angela had given Mother little tasks to do, things that they both knew were unnecessary, or which could be ea
sily done in a second by Angela herself, and the play acting that this game called for was insulting to Mother’s dignity. There was nothing useful that she could do and she wanted to do something useful.

  Sadie loved to cook. Flour, butter, sugar, cocoa—all were materials her podgy little hands loved to pound and squeeze and mix. Angela, starved in a wartime rationing childhood, was indulgent to her little daughter. Every rainy November afternoon before Sadie started full-time school she let her ‘help’ to cook. They made cakes, they made pastry. Sadie’s messes went in the oven alongside Angela’s more competent efforts. At supper, they would taste what they had made and compliment each other and Ben would say Sadie’s cake or biscuit or pastry was just that bit better. Until suddenly Sadie became dissatisfied. She watched her buns come out of the oven flatter and less round and altogether inferior to Angela’s. She saw her pastry was grey while Angela’s was golden brown. ‘I want,’ she said, ‘to do proper cooking.’ ‘You are doing proper cooking,’ Angela said. ‘No,’ Sadie said, ‘mine doesn’t look proper—I want to do what you do.’ Then the cooking afternoons became a different experience. Bravely, tears in her eyes, Sadie struggled to do everything exactly like Angela—and failed. The results were only a little better. Angela tried to assist her without her seeing that assistance was being given, but Sadie roared with fury. ‘You’re helping me—I don’t want you to help me—I want to do cooking all by myself.’ But she couldn’t. She stopped trying. Until she was seven years old and able to cope properly she never took part in cooking again. It made Angela sad. ‘What does it matter,’ she pleaded, ‘as long as it’s fun?’ ‘No,’ Sadie said, glaring, her beautiful mouth distorted into a fierce pout.

  Valerie came for the day at the end of the first week, just as the children broke up for their half-term holiday. She came, she said, ‘to help out’.

  ‘I had to get up at six,’ she said as soon as Angela picked her up at the station, ‘the train was freezing.’

  ‘How noble,’ Angela murmured. ‘Mother will appreciate it.’

  ‘Is she getting on all right?’ Valerie said, rubbing her large red hands together to warm them up, to emphasize the extreme cold to which she wished Angela to know they had been exposed.

  ‘I think so. It’s hard to tell—you know Mother.’

  ‘She’s no bother really though, is she?’ Valerie said.

  ‘It depends how you define bother.’

  ‘Well, she’s easy to please.’

  ‘I find her almost impossible to please.’

  ‘We just have nice chats,’ Valerie said, ‘and I make her rest in the afternoons.’

  ‘When is this?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘These cosy chats and jolly rests—you haven’t had Mother to stay for centuries.’

  ‘It isn’t my fault, I—’

  ‘Nobody said it was your fault, Valerie. I simply pointed out that you make these assertions and they’re based on history as far as I can see. You don’t know what it’s like to have Mother to stay as she is now and it just annoys me that you pretend you do.’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re angry.’

  ‘I’m not angry. It just irritates me that everything I say you think you can cap. Don’t let’s talk about it anyway—Mother is the last thing I want to discuss. How’s life?’

  ‘Oh, all right. We’ve been having staffing problems.’

  ‘But how is your life?’

  ‘It just ticks over the same old way. I’m quite happy with my flat and my cat and the church choir—you wouldn’t understand, being a Londoner, being so busy. I’m like Mother—I like peace and quiet and nothing much happening.’

  There were always in Valerie’s words twin rebukes—Angela should not be the one with a husband and four children and Angela should not be solicitous towards Valerie. Those were, by rights, Valerie’s roles. It was Valerie who had spent her entire childhood peering into prams and begging to be allowed to hold babies—Angela had scorned them. It was Valerie, too, who sat with Mother by the fire and drank tea and listened to her dispensing sympathy to friends and neighbours. It was Valerie who adopted a concerned look and asked people how they were. Angela had no time for anyone. She was going to be a career girl and live for herself and openly despise the maternal, caring role. Now that Valerie had turned out to be the spinster on the way to being openly pitied she found the strain intolerable.

  ‘You shouldn’t have bothered,’ Mother said to Valerie as soon as she saw her, ‘really, all this way.’ She was happy, all the same, that Valerie should see her in this different setting, in the midst of a bevy of children, looking as though she belonged for those with an eye ready to be deceived. Tim, for the first time in a long week, though Valerie had no way of knowing it, had shown himself in the light of a small boy devoted to his Grandma. When Valerie arrived, they were sitting playing snap together and Mother was laughing out loud. Tim’s hand, indeed, rested on Mother’s and his face turned upwards with an expression of the greatest affection. ‘She needs to be with children,’ Valerie whispered, ‘that’s the secret,’ and she smiled fondly at her nephew. Later, while they prepared lunch together out of Mother’s earshot, she returned to the topic. ‘How lovely,’ she said, ‘to see Mother with her grandchildren—just what she always wanted—she just loves being with children.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so stupid,’ Angela said in that cruel way she kept for Valerie at her most slushy, ‘being with children doesn’t make the slightest difference to Mother. She’s not even remotely interested in them—she finds them noisy, dirty, rude and a constant disappointment and she compares them constantly with the angels she now imagines we were.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you’re wrong—Mother adores children.’

  ‘She does not. She only adores the theory of children—she only loves them when they can’t speak and they’re lying clean and cooing in their prams. She can’t put up with real children.’

  ‘Well,’ Valerie sighed, ‘I suppose we’ll all feel like that when we get to Mother’s age. We’ll all be fed up with everything.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Angela said contemptuously.

  ‘How do you know? You never can tell.’

  ‘Certainly you can,’ Angela snapped. ‘Pass me that knife will you—thanks—no, I won’t get like Mother. Mother’s not just pulled down by age and illness and her own temperament—it’s just she’s had nothing to do since we all left home. When we went, that was it—one big blank and she’s felt cheated ever since. I won’t be like that. My children aren’t my life. When they’ve gone, I’ll get on with all the other parts of it.’

  ‘Oh well,’ Valerie said, resentful and sulky, ‘that’s nice for you then. But you’ll still need looking after when you’re old and feeble—you’ll still want Sadie to help you.’

  ‘Sadie?’ Angela said, ‘don’t be silly. Sadie won’t help me. I don’t want her to. I’ve deliberately brought her up not to think that she has to.’

  ‘Oh good,’ Sadie said, coming into the kitchen. ‘When is lunch? I’m starving.’

  ‘How are you enjoying having Grandma?’ Valerie said. Angela saw Sadie register and recoil from the unctuous tone.

  ‘Fine,’ Sadie said, picking at the cheese Valerie had been given to grate, ‘it’s nice having her around really.’

  ‘Is it?’ said Angela, sharply.

  ‘Mm,’ said Sadie, suddenly wary, ready to refuse to be drawn. ‘Where’s the newspaper?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Angela said. ‘I haven’t had the luxury of looking at it yet.’

  ‘Hasn’t she grown?’ Valerie said as Sadie slouched off. ‘She’s taller than you already. Isn’t she helping with the lunch? You should make her help, Angela, you really should. If I had had a daughter I would have brought her up just as Mother brought us up.’

  ‘I don’t want her help unless it’s freely given,’ Angela said, ‘she isn’t my drudge.’

  ‘Mother made us help and we never regretted it.’

 
; ‘She did not make us help—your memory is failing you Valerie—we helped because she was too pathetic not to help.’

  ‘But it doesn’t seem right,’ Valerie insisted. ‘I mean, to let a grown girl do nothing in the house when you’re wearing yourself out doing things for her.’

  ‘I choose to do things for her. I like it.’

  ‘But what will she do when she has her own house? What would we have done without Mother’s training?’

  ‘We wouldn’t have imitated her,’ Angela said, ‘and that might have been a good thing.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ Valerie said, retreating into some inner world of her own just as Mother did when she could no longer cope with Angela’s startling announcements. Angela longed for Valerie to attack her, to be equally strong and forthright, and to leave her in no doubt that she was wrong. She would have relished a battle instead of her sister’s withdrawal. ‘Anyway,’ said Valerie, brightening, ‘I came to help. I’ve finished the cheese—what can I do next? I want to be really useful.’

  ‘Just stay with Mother,’ Angela said despairingly, ‘just concentrate on her. I’d rather make four thousand lunches and wash up after them all on my own than sit with Mother for half an hour.’

  ‘Oh, Angela,’ Valerie said, and trailed off, shaking her head.

  Thirteen

  ALL THE REST of the day Angela watched Valerie with Mother and saw herself in every action. When Valerie carefully helped Mother to her unsteady feet—arm round her ample waist, legs braced in an exaggerated fashion to take her weight, face set in an expression of extreme concern—Angela saw how unbearable this solicitous behaviour was to Mother. It underlined Mother’s difficulties. Everything Valerie did was a grotesque parody of what it should have been—all that was needed to get Mother up was the simple offer of a hand to pull on. There was in the inclination of Valerie’s head as she bent towards Mother something offensive—it was as though Valerie was following stage directions of a crude and over-colourful variety. Nothing was spontaneous. Even Valerie’s conversation smacked of condescension with its little set pieces topped and tailed for Mother’s benefit. She sat there, opposite Mother, chattering away with great vivacity, putting in little laughs at the right places and sighing heavily when dismay was called for. There was no sign at all in this thirty-five-year-old woman of the child who had sucked her thumb and spent half her time on her mother’s knee confiding all manner of secrets, no sign of the spotty, fat teenager who had clung to her mother’s arm to and from church on Sundays rather than walk with girls of her own age. Nor was there any indication that it was to Mother that Valerie had gone when, as a young social worker straight out of college, her fiancé had broken off their engagement. Whatever there had been between Valerie and Mother had gone as surely as it had between herself and Mother.