Mother Can You Hear Me?

by Margaret Forster

  ‘Send it here, of course,’ Angela said. At least he was back to his old fussing ways. He knew perfectly well what to do with the letter.

  ‘Tell her I’ve finished the sitting room—come up nice and fresh—and I’ve cleaned the mirror and put it back—the duster was filthy when I’d done, she should have seen it—and the pictures, I’ve hung them back where they were and everything’s shipshape. Next I’ll have a go at the bathroom—ask her if it’s to be the same colour—she’s the boss.’

  ‘I’ll ask her,’ Angela said, yawning.

  ‘At least,’ Father said, ‘she’ll have plenty of company at your place, plenty of you visiting her.’

  ‘Yes,’ Angela said, ‘we’re all in and out all the time.’

  ‘And you’ve got Sadie to help,’ Father said.

  ‘Yes. I’ve got Sadie.’

  Sadie was not even in. Half term was a time for long days trailing round shops and stalls, sifting junk and coming home with rubbish, and for lying listening to records in each other’s houses. Morning and evening Sadie said hello to her grandmother and that was that. The boys were better, frequently rushing in to ask something or show something, completely uninhibited by the sickroom atmosphere. All Sadie had done to help was open the door to the doctor.

  Fourteen

  ‘I’M THINKING,’ SADIE said when finally she was home again, ‘of going Youth Hostelling this weekend with Sue and Joanna. Okay?’

  ‘In October?’ Angela said.

  ‘What’s wrong with October—you said the weather was perfect when you dragged us off to Woburn—lovely healthy bracing air, you said.’

  ‘That was for the day—you were coming back to a warm house and bed.’

  ‘I’m really not worried about houses and beds.’

  ‘But what would you do all day—you hate walking—and what if the weather suddenly changed?’

  ‘Look, that’s our problem.’

  ‘Where would you go? You know nothing about Youth Hostelling.’

  ‘You don’t have to know about it to do it. We haven’t decided where to go yet.’

  ‘It all sounds very vague.’

  ‘But can I go?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘I mean, you don’t mind? It will be one less to look after anyway, won’t it.’

  ‘How very thoughtful,’ Angela said.

  ‘But you don’t mind?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘You always say that but you always sound as if you do.’

  ‘Well I don’t. I just haven’t the energy to sound enthusiastic. And I’m probably a bit jealous—I wish I was fifteen and going off on mad weekends instead of nearly forty and stuck at home looking after a sick mother. I expect that’s why I sound gloomy. But you know I like you to enjoy yourself.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Sadie said, and then, as she drifted off, ‘I just wish you would enjoy yourself too.’

  Angela paused in her dreary task of sorting out the washing to go in the machine. She had wanted Mother to enjoy herself too, but she hardly ever did. Tom used to make her laugh and even got her to be silly, to fool around with them, but that was on very rare occasions and other memories of Mother in high spirits were dim and unconvincing. Mother lacked gaiety. She had no exuberance. And now Sadie thought she was in the same mould—someone apparently incapable of enjoyment. Angela shoved dirty socks and trousers into the machine, sickened by this glimpse of how her daughter saw her—and rightly. Not for months and months had she been carefree and her own laughter sounded strange to her when she heard it. It was dismal. It was an indictment of her whole way of life. Worse, really, than Mother’s melancholy had been to them because whereas Mother had been plainly sad, even if none of her children knew why, she herself was strident and bad tempered and plainly nothing except unpleasant.

  ‘Don’t be depressed about being depressed,’ Ben said, ‘that would be the end. What do you expect anyway—how could you be a bundle of fun at the moment? You worry about your Mother, with reason, and you worry about Sadie with less reason but still with some cause. It’s only common sense that you’re not exactly cracking a joke a minute.’

  ‘Sadie thinks I never enjoy myself—it isn’t just that I’m not jolly. She thinks I have no pleasures.’

  ‘All adolescents think that—at fifteen you can’t understand that pleasure isn’t necessarily noise and crowds and action. You can’t even imagine work could be a pleasure.’

  ‘I can’t see any way out. I can’t abandon Mother.’

  ‘You don’t have to abandon her. She’ll be better soon and then she’ll go home and you’ve more than done your bit—you can take it easy then.’

  ‘I already take it easy for most of the time—hardly ever going to see them—hiding behind letters and telephone calls.’

  ‘Most people,’ Ben said, ‘do not ring their mothers up every day, write every week and spend at least four weeks’ precious holiday with them.’

  ‘Most people don’t have mothers like mine.’

  Sadie began having a friend to stay the night when she was very young. Because she had never in her whole childhood and adolescence been able to have a friend to stay the night Angela encouraged the habit. She realized the excitement and fun and though it quite often ended in disaster—Sadie fell out with the friend at two in the morning—she knew it was worth it. The best part was talking before they fell asleep. Sadie and the friend would drone on for hours and it amused Angela, as she put Max and Saul to bed, to hear their chatter. Often they would talk until ten or eleven when she herself was going to bed and then she had to go up and be severe. One night they were talking so loudly they did not hear her as she mounted the stairs. Angela heard the friend say, ‘Sadie, do you hate your mother?’ She paused, knowing she ought not to listen but wanting to hear the reply so desperately that she overcame her scruples. ‘Sometimes,’ Sadie said, cautiously. ‘I love my dad,’ the friend said, ‘I love him best. Do you love your dad best?’ ‘Sometimes,’ Sadie said. ‘My mother,’ the friend said, ‘is the most horrible woman in the whole wide world. She’s mean and nasty to me—she doesn’t love me at all. Does your mother love you?’ ‘I think so,’ Sadie said. ‘I wish my mother wasn’t my mother,’ the friend said. ‘I wish Susie Barker’s mother was my mother, don’t you? Don’t you wish Susie’s mother was your mother? She’s so pretty and gentle and lovely—don’t you wish she was your mother?’ There was a long pause. Angela began rationalizing Sadie’s ‘sometimes’ before it was said. ‘No,’ Sadie said, firmly, ‘no, I don’t.’ ‘Do you like your mother better than Susie’s?’ the friend said, shocked. ‘Yes,’ Sadie said, ‘I do. I like my mother better than anyone’s mother because she’s mine, isn’t she?’

  Angela was so relieved and glad she crept back down the stairs without saying a word and for weeks and months afterwards that sentence of Sadie’s thrilled her and brought ridiculous tears to her eyes whenever she thought of it.

  Sadie was up early. Hearing the muffled bangs so early in the morning Angela thought first of Mother and half rose with alarm thinking that Mother had fallen out of bed—until she remembered Sadie was going Youth Hostelling. She lay back down again, relishing the feeling of well-being which had come to her after an unexpectedly good night’s sleep. She had gone to bed so depressed and miserable, racked with fears for them all, her head full of absurd images in which she saw herself as a lightning conductor for all that might come to harm them and did not know how long she could go on standing tall and straight and strong. She had screwed her eyes up tight to get herself to sleep and had thought that when it came it would be full of nightmares in which her wailing children would extend their pitiful arms towards her as she sank into a deep and black grave where Mother already lay. But no. She had slept deeply, without dreams of any kind, and now in the morning half light she was able to smile at her bedtime hysteria. She put out a hand to touch Ben, still sleeping fast, and then she got up and put on her dressing-gown and left the bedroom quietly so
as not to disturb him.

  Down in the hall, Sadie struggled with her borrowed rucksack, desperately trying to pull the straps over the top.

  ‘I can’t get the fucking thing closed,’ she said.

  ‘Language,’ Angela said automatically, but not feeling that usual sense of impotence.

  ‘I’m going to be late—bloody thing,’ Sadie said, kicking the rucksack. She looked even more unkempt than was normal and the black stuff she had plastered round her eyes made them look horrific and evil.

  ‘Have you had anything to eat?’ Angela said, kneeling down and beginning to empty the entire rucksack in spite of Sadie’s restraining arm.

  ‘I don’t want anything to eat.’

  ‘Go and have some toast and a hot drink and I promise by the time you’re finished this will be ready.’

  ‘Oh god,’ Sadie said, but she went and Angela heard the kettle being put on and the clink of the stone lid as the bread bin was opened.

  The child had no idea. There was not a Trewick gene in her. Out they came, the awful muddle of already soiled clothes that ought not to have been put in at all, the enormous mud-encrusted Kickers shoes that ought to have been on her feet, the jumble of maps and packets of biscuits, crushed and unappetizing before she had even set off, the waterproof anorak she had taken without Max knowing and ought to have had on the top ready for use, and a sequined waistcoat for which Angela could not account. But she would confront Sadie about nothing. Quickly, efficiently, she repacked the rucksack and had it ready and waiting when Sadie came back, still clutching a mug of tea and ramming toast into her mouth.

  ‘There,’ Angela said, ‘that’s better.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Have a good time. Ring if you get lost. Have you enough money?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And don’t hitchhike—not in any circumstances. Understood?’

  She stood on the doorstep for a minute, watching Sadie lumber off down the street, fidgeting with the straps of the rucksack before she had gone twenty yards. It was a slightly misty autumn morning, still cold and damp at seven o’clock, but Angela could tell that by midday the sun would have broken through. She would have given anything to be going off to walk in the New Forest, though how much walking Sadie would do remained to be seen. Half way down the street, Sadie turned and waved and made a funny face and then she was gone, turning the corner to Sue’s house. Angela picked up a milk bottle that had fallen down and set it neatly with the others on the doorstep. God knew where Sadie would end up for the night since organization was another absent talent, but she had managed to refrain from cross-examining her. Sadie was on her own. She refused to agonize over her prospects the way Mother had spoiled everything by agonizing over hers. When she eventually came back she must be greeted with a smile and her bedraggled appearance must not be criticized.

  Quietly, her new mood of resolution making her feel almost light-hearted, her rested body ready for another difficult day, Angela went down the passage to the little end room where Mother was and gently opened the door. A whole night was a very long time not to have looked at an invalid and slight twinges of apprehension stirred in her stomach. But Mother looked comfortable and was still asleep. Carefully, taking care not to disturb her, Angela felt the bedclothes but they were quite dry. Pulling the curtain to one side she took a good look at Mother—her colour was gone, but then she had been ill, and her expression was stone-like, as it often was, but there was no harsh breathing. In a little while, when she had savoured the peace of the early morning house a little longer, she would wake Mother up if she was still asleep and wash her and perhaps today she would be strong enough to get up for a little while and even to talk to Father, who otherwise would become impatient and suspicious.

  There was time to go through the ritual of making real coffee, to grind the beans and heat the pot and warm the milk and best, most luxurious of all, to sit at the kitchen table drinking it without being either hurried or disturbed. Being alone was something she had never had enough of. She had never been alone. At training college from the beginning she had shared a flat, and then she had married Ben straight away without that intervening few years in a bedsitter so many of her contemporaries had experienced. Often, she fantasized the state of being alone and wondered what difference it would have made to her. She imagined an immaculately tidy flat and meals when she liked them and long walks at strange times. Then she thought of Valerie once saying, a hectic weekend with them behind her, ‘Really Angela, I wouldn’t have your life for anything—you haven’t a minute to call your own.’

  Mother of course thought the opposite. Mother used to say repeatedly, ‘And then you’ll all grow up and go away and I’ll be on my own.’ She even said it if they were all out on a Saturday. ‘I’ve been on my own all day,’ she said pathetically. Solitude put Mother in a panic. Mother had never in her life made coffee and sat drinking it alone, daydreaming. She had snatched cups of tea between tasks that demanded her full attention and if she saw a break in the heavy routine coming up she had automatically filled it. Not to think, that was Mother’s object—only to do, and by doing exorcize that jealous devil inside her that told her life was never meant to be like this.

  Sounds of the boys stirring upstairs brought Angela to her feet. What rubbish to foist such thoughts onto Mother. ‘I’m not clever,’ Mother would say, forced to comment on anything upon which she did not wish to give an opinion, ‘I’m not clever like you—it’s no good asking me what I think.’ No talk, no real talk, just a string of platitudes linked together with sighs and exclamations, but perhaps that was something to be grateful for. If Mother ever chose to unburden herself properly it might be too much to bear. Angela set out cereal bowls, put milk and marmalade on the table, and wondered if that self-consciousness between parents and grown-up children might not after all be a good thing. The inhibiting factor might be a good thing. All these years she had regretted Mother’s reticence she had perhaps been making a big mistake and ought instead to have welcomed it—perhaps reticence, on both sides, was the only thing that made the mother-daughter relationship bearable. Perhaps, now that she felt the same thing happening with Sadie even though she thought she had laid quite different foundations, perhaps she should simply let it happen and not fight it, not see it as a measure of her own failure. Perhaps she ought to recognize that a wall had gone up and instead of beating her fists against it, just lean thankfully on it. Why, after all, admire those families where mother and daughter wept openly on each other’s shoulders and bore daily witness to each other’s more personal distress?

  ‘You’re looking very cheerful,’ Ben said when he came down to breakfast, ‘and real coffee—this is my lucky day.’

  ‘And Sadie’s gone,’ Max said, ‘good riddance.’

  ‘How unkind,’ Angela said, ‘she doesn’t say that when you go.’

  ‘I never go,’ Max said.

  ‘Too true, too true,’ Ben said, ‘you love us too much to tear yourself away.’

  ‘Do you want me to go away?’

  ‘The odd hour of absence might not be grieved over,’ Ben said.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Oh, can’t you take a joke?’ Angela said.

  ‘It wasn’t a very nice joke.’

  ‘I’m off,’ Ben said. He kissed Angela on top of her head. ‘Keep it up,’ he said, ‘there’ll be a special prize if you look the same this evening when I come home as you do this morning.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  She sat a little while longer chatting to the boys, listening to their plans for the day, lazily trying to analyse why there should be such a complete lack of restraint with the boys and yet not with Sadie. They did not worry her. She was confident and sure in all her dealings with them. She could show her affection easily and felt close and secure in their company. Sadie, who was shrewd and highly sensitive to atmospheres, probably saw this, but how did she interpret it? Did she see herself as different, or Angela as different to her? Or perhaps s
he never thought about it at all.

  Angela had never met Tom’s wife—none of them had. Tom met her in Brisbane two years after he emigrated. She was called Jo-Ellen, which Mother thought outlandish. There was not much correspondence—a card at Christmas, the occasional brief, badly written letter, and a photograph of each child as it was born. Jo-Ellen had four girls in a row, exactly two years in between each. Angela, who had Sadie the same month Jo-Ellen had her second daughter, used to show Sadie the photographs of her cousins and tried to make them mean something to her. With Ben an only child, Valerie unmarried and Harry, from whom nobody ever heard, childless, Tom’s children were Sadie’s only cousins. When the last of Tom’s girls arrived Sadie was six years old. Angela opened the envelope with the Australian stamp and without thinking said, ‘Oh how awful—poor Jo-Ellen has had another girl.’ ‘Why is it awful?’ Sadie said, looking at the photograph of the anonymous baby. ‘Well, she has three already—four girls—an all-girl family without any boys.’ ‘So?’ Sadie said, eyes beady, frown ferocious. ‘It’s nice to have both,’ Angela said, beginning to be ashamed. ‘I wouldn’t like all girls or all boys.’ ‘Why does it matter?’ Sadie said, with one of those sophisticated looks for which she was already famous in the family (‘she was born old,’ Mother said). ‘It doesn’t really,’ Angela said, weakly, and then, ‘anyway, I’m glad I’ve got both.’ ‘You nearly didn’t,’ Sadie said, ‘with three boys and only one girl. You nearly had all boys.’ ‘Yes,’ Angela said, ‘Wasn’t I lucky to have you first? Daddy always said let’s have a girl first to be sure. It would have been dreadful to be a mother without a daughter.’ Sadie smiled, a small satisfied smile. Angela was relieved, but knew that if Sadie had been just a little older, she would have found her out.