Isa and May

by Margaret Forster

  I am getting carried away, as I often do.

  It struck me today, as I was walking across Hyde Park, that I don’t really fully live in my own times. I often don’t see what is actually there. I see the trees, I see the grass, I see the Serpentine – I don’t mean that I’m not seeing my surroundings. But I don’t seem to see the real people. I wipe away all their reality. Instead, I fill the park with women in long dresses and men in frock coats, and other nonsense. I see children with hoops. Only the horses and dogs stay the same, because they never change. I love the past and live in it too much.

  Ian once told me that I was the most unmodern young woman he had ever met. He said I was an anachronism (he said it quite admiringly, I think – it wasn’t a complaint). I denied this. I said I drove a car, was that not modern? I use a computer, I send e-mails, I have an iPod; was all this not modern? I wear contact lenses, I have a contemporary hairstyle, I am nearly always in jeans – all modern. What, I asked him, is unmodern about me? He said my language, my thought processes, my mindset – I didn’t let him continue, and anyway he was laughing too much to go on. We ended up in bed, in a very modern way.

  But, of course, he is right. My mind at the moment is all the time in another century, though I hadn’t realised that this showed in my speech and mannerisms. I am comfortable in past times. The people are so familiar to me. I like to be with Queen Victoria or Sarah Bernhardt and all the others much more than I enjoy the company of my contemporaries. What a strange admission. Is it some kind of retreat, some sort of escapism? But from what? I don’t think it can be, since there’s nothing I want to escape from. I am content with my life. I love my family, I love Ian, I like my friends. It’s more a matter of identification, and of being sure of things. The past is so secure, all over and done with, all ready to be explored. The future was always exciting, but it also worries me now. I am no longer in a hurry to get to it. When my grandmothers talk about the past, it all makes sense to me, doesn’t bore me in the least. I encourage them, I always want more detail, and I go with them all the way.

  I suppose this isn’t healthy. I ought to be living more in the present (though what does that mean? It’s impossible not to be living in it) and thinking about the future. Planning. Fulfilling my parents’ and grandmothers’ expectations, settling down and having children.

  And I haven’t even thought of it.

  I can’t get on for the moment with delving into Sarah Bernhardt’s grandmothering, though another session with Claudia is near enough to mean that I should – I have to take May for a check-up, back to the hospital. ‘More of your heroic volunteering, eh?’ Ian teases me. He is not so wrong. I did volunteer, knowing how busy Mum is, and knowing, too, that May would prefer me to take her. Mum would be abstracted. She’d be silent, incapable of chat, and this would make May tense. So I am going to take her. I quite understand May’s hatred of hospitals, her fear that once inside she’ll never get out, and that unmentionable things, over which she has no control, might be done to her. She always – I’ve taken her before – starts muttering to herself as we get near the building, and the getting her out of the car is an ordeal. But I have strategies to deal with this, oh yes. I’ll manage fine.

  And I did, on the whole. She was clinging so hard to my arm, complaining she had indigestion something chronic, as we walked into the hospital that she almost unbalanced me and I had to stop and distract her by pointing out the pictures lining the walls of the corridors. She wasn’t interested in the art, but the prices gripped her, and she repeated each one as we passed – ‘A hundred and twenty pounds for that! A hundred and fifty for that! A cat could have done it.’ This way I got her to the lift without having my arm dislocated. Once in the lift, crowded of course, the presence of a man whose face was entirely swathed in bandages, except for holes for his eyes and nostrils, had May beginning to swear under her breath – ‘Oh Gawd, damn it to hell, oh bloody hell,’ over and over. He couldn’t hear her – there were two nurses talking loudly to each other between us and him – but I nudged her and said, ‘Sssh,’ as though she were a child, and she stopped.

  Her agitation increased, though, as we tried to find the right clinic, which was so badly signposted we had to ask a passing nurse to help us. When we found it, there was a woman in a wheelchair almost blocking the entrance and we had to work our way round her, with May acting terrified of falling, which is what she does when she’s nervous – there’s nothing wrong with her walking beyond a bit of stiffness when she attempts stairs. The small waiting room was crowded, with only one chair free, so obviously May had to have it, and I stood rather awkwardly beside her. I had to let go of her hand, which was slippery with sweat. She’d shut her eyes and was frowning hard.

  We waited forty-five minutes. Nobody complained. It seemed to be an exercise in stoicism, and May proved good at it. She barely moved a muscle, remaining with her eyes closed (though they flickered every time a name was called, and she peeped under her eyelids to see who was leaving). The calling-out of a name had such an electrifying effect – people who had been slumped in their chairs jumped up, making a mess of gathering their stuff together, their bags and papers and coats, as though they hadn’t been expecting to be called. No one was ever ready and prepared, however long the wait, then suddenly they were on their feet and rushing, as though they were catching a train and not merely walking into another room to see a doctor who wasn’t going anywhere.

  ‘May Wright!’ The call, when it came, had exactly the same effect on us as it had had on everyone else. May choked on her barley sugar, gasped, coughed, turned red, clasped her chest with one hand and clutched me with the other. ‘Take it easy, Granny,’ I said, at the same time as catching the sleeve of my jacket in the arm of the chair as I struggled to help her up. ‘May Wright!’ The call was repeated. ‘We’re coming!’ I called back, and promptly tripped over May’s feet as she sat back down again. At last we staggered towards the open door, May still spluttering and me half dragging her into the room. There was a man, quite a young man, sitting sideways at a desk crowded with a computer, folders and papers and an empty mug. ‘Sit down, Mrs Wright,’ he said, with a pleasant enough smile, and to me, ‘Do you want to pull up a chair too?’ I pulled one up and plonked myself down. ‘How are you feeling today, Mrs Wright?’ he said, still with a benign smile, but by then I’d realised it was fixed, he wore it like a tie. At once, May started to lie. All the way there she’d been telling me how dreadful she felt, too dreadful to be able to go to the hospital at all, too ill to be able to do anything but stay in bed . . . Now she said she was very well and could she go home, thank you?

  The doctor – Dr Horrocks (his name was on a badge he was wearing, which also said he was a registrar) – said he was delighted to hear Mrs Wright was so well, that was great. His smile took on a different quality. He was amused, he knew May was lying and why she was lying – or, in a more fashionable phrase, why she was ‘in denial’. He knew she was so afraid of being whisked off to a ward that she wasn’t going to mention that she still had no appetite and had some stomach pains and felt sick. He kept saying good, good, and shuffling papers on his desk and peering into a folder. Then he said she seemed to be making a good recovery after her unpleasant experience but that she should take things easy and be careful what she ate from now on and did she have a diet sheet? May said yes, and it was like being back in the war, no this, no that, but she was sticking to it (another lie). He asked her what she’d had for breakfast and she said a banana, adding that bananas are very good for you, she’d been told. Dr Horrocks gave his real smile again (maybe he has a grandmother?) and said yes, they are, but don’t eat too many. It seemed that the potassium level in her last blood test had been a little high, and bananas are full of potassium. He wanted her to eat more protein, some fish maybe if she couldn’t manage meat. By this time, May was on her feet, sure that the dreaded appointment was over, and she’d won and could go home. But Dr Horrocks said he’d like to examine her now and would s
he lie on the examination table. ‘Would you like to help her?’ he said to me, and turned to wash his hands.

  May was back in a state of dread. The doctor had drawn a curtain round the examination bed before he went to the sink, and May and I went behind it. It was quite high, and as she perched on the edge, I had to lift each of her legs and swing it on to the table before she could lie down. I didn’t know if she needed to undress, but I took her shoes off, and she lay back, a look of exquisite embarrassment on her face. Dr Horrocks appeared round the curtain and I made to leave. ‘You can stay if you want,’ he said, so I had to. He stared in some bewilderment, I thought, at May’s clothes. She had on her favourite tweed skirt, which came up rather high, the waistband nowhere near where a waist might have hoped to be. I stepped forward and, with a struggle, unzipped it and pushed it down. But underneath lay May’s petticoat, a slippery old satin garment, once eau de Nil in colour and now more of a grey. That had to be yanked up out of the grip of the skirt – really he should have given her a gown and told her to strip off. He was beginning to realise this, but went ahead anyway now that May’s bloated flesh had emerged amid all the satin and tweed. It was such a sad sight, so humiliating, but May couldn’t see herself, and the doctor was used to it, I imagine, so it was I who somehow felt humiliated. I had to keep swallowing hard to avoid weeping – to be old and ill and come to this, all of it inevitable (not, of course, inevitable – but it seemed so) . . .

  The prodding stopped. May was pronounced fine. I helped her up, tucked in the slip, pulled up the skirt. She got down herself, saying what a to-do, but looking cheerful. Dr Horrocks said he would see her again in three months’ time, but if she had any pain or bleeding she should call her GP immediately. ‘Don’t leave it too long,’ he said. ‘Don’t ignore what you thought was just indigestion, like last time, will you?’ May said she wouldn’t. She was all charm now, giving a happy little laugh as I helped her on with her coat, and thanking him umpteen times. She walked quite smartly to the lift, saying she didn’t need my arm, there was nothing wrong with her, and hummed contentedly all the way down to the ground floor. I suggested that instead of going straight to the car we should go and have a cup of tea, to celebrate the ordeal being over. She thought that a good idea and we set off to a little Italian café I knew just up the road.

  It’s a suitably May-ish place. I knew she’d like it and she did – the gingham tablecloths, the waitress service, the proper wooden chairs with padded seats, and the plain chunky white cups and saucers all met with her approval. She drained the whole pot of tea while I sipped an espresso, which I was told would rot my insides. There was no one else in the café, so May’s loud belching offended no one. My mobile rang. It was Mum, wanting to know how things had gone. I said fine, and passed it to May, who held it well away from her because she’d read you could get brain tumours by holding mobile phones too close to the ear. I don’t, of course, know what Mum said, but whatever it was, May was not pleased. Her good humour of the last half an hour visibly evaporated. She said ‘for the time being’ and ‘I have to watch it’ and a lot of grunts before ‘bye’, when she gave me the mobile back. Mum had already hung up.

  ‘Typical,’ May muttered. ‘Her. Ringing up, ’stead of being here.’

  ‘She’s very busy at work, she’s—’

  ‘Oh, I know that, don’t you tell me that, I know she’s busy, she’s always busy; she’s always in that lab place staring down her thingummyjig.’

  ‘It’s important,’ I said. ‘She’s doing research into—’

  ‘Don’t tell me, I’ve heard it a thousand times. It should have been her taking her own poorly mother to hospital, but oh no, where is she when wanted, always the same story.’

  What a rage she was in, ugly to behold, resentment in every word. There was nothing I could do to placate her except take her home and settle her in her chair and make more tea and put her wireless on. She won’t have it that work can be more important than the demands of family (and she won’t admit that she’d rather have had me with her anyway than her daughter). It was Jean’s job to take her, to put her first, and no excuses are acceptable. Do as you would be done by is her motto, and she fails entirely to see that her daughter is doing as she would like to be done by. May feels some kind of code has broken down, and doesn’t recognise that my mother is trying to change it. And yet she, my mum, is constrained by May’s old standards and expectations. She’s struggling against them, and it isn’t certain – well, to me it isn’t – who will win.

  V

  MUM FOUND ME lying prone on her sofa at three in the afternoon, my hands over my face in best melodramatic fashion. I heard her come into the house, put her car keys on the hall shelf, and drop her briefcase. When I reckoned she was about to come into the sitting room where I lolled, I shouted, ‘I had to get out of my flat. I’m going mad.’ She made a clucking sound, not unlike one of May’s grunts, hard to interpret. ‘Was that exasperation or sympathy?’ I asked. ‘Just a minute,’ she said and went off, coming back soon with coffee for both of us.

  The thing about my mother, as I’ve said, is that she is so infuriatingly calm and reasonable. I long to see her panic, lose her temper, launch into wild exaggerations, talk hysterically – anything but this maddening self-control. If that is what it is. She’s just never messy, as I am. She is always composed, as she was today, coming in to the sight of me lying moaning and groaning about nothing very much on her sofa. She didn’t ask what the matter was. She knew she didn’t have to – out it would all pour. As it did.

  My mother listens carefully, properly, even when, as today, what she is listening to is incoherent. She listens, waits till I’ve at last stopped talking nonsense, and then she sorts out my incoherence. Well, she tries to. She does a précis first of what I’ve blurted out, to check she’s got the drift of it right, and then she reflects for a long time. Finally, she offers some sort of solution, often so obvious I cannot believe I never thought of it myself. Not this time, though. Anything to do with my MA puzzles her. I know she has never seen the point of my dissertation, though she is too kind to have said so. What puzzles her is that she doesn’t see how it could possibly contribute usefully to any existing body of knowledge, and this is what her own work is about, moving the frontiers of science forward and all that. Essentially, her attitude to my kind of research is the same as May’s, though she would deny it. I don’t think she considers what I’m doing is a total waste of time (as May does), but she would like to be able to see the relevance of it. Dad, on the other hand, doesn’t much care what I study. He sees my doing an MA as a kind of settling down, and doesn’t worry about where it will lead. He sees this sort of academic career as safe, a relief to him after my long time travelling and TEFLing in Japan, then Italy, Spain, and briefly in Thailand. A year of this would’ve been fine but almost four had been stretching it. But Mum, I think, is a little disappointed in me. She wants me to have what she calls ‘a sense of direction’, and doing an MA doesn’t qualify. What, she occasionally asks, am I going to do afterwards? She doesn’t ask this in a hectoring manner – she asks it almost apologetically, as though she thinks she shouldn’t be asking. And I can’t give her an answer. I’d like to have this sense of direction she wants for me, who wouldn’t? Beattie and I were always wishing we knew what we wanted to be, to do, and we envied those of our age who wanted to be doctors or lawyers, or chefs, or even ‘worthless’ things (according to our teachers) like models. But what was our aim? We just wanted our lives not to be dull, all tidy and laid out, the stations along the route ticked off one by one – just not that. Variation, excitement, the unexpected, that’s what we wanted. Beattie never got it, but I did. It’s just that in the end it became exactly what I didn’t want. I was cured.

  But not in my mother’s opinion, though she never voices it strongly. She still sees me as restless, thrashing about, choosing as an MA subject something amorphous. I’ve tried to explain that to me there is some shape to my quest – well, �
�quest’ is rather a grand term, but that’s what it feels like – if only I could convey this. However lightweight it sounds to her, studying the links between grandmothers and grandchildren may yield some significant knowledge. I repeat, grandmothers are not nothing. They have a place in feminist history. They can’t just be ignored. They have had an impact, they have contributed something and that something has had little recognition. It is not as simple as merely giving birth to daughters who have in turn given birth – that isn’t what I’m interested in, the straight line of inheritance. No, what I’m looking for are links, consequences, direct connections that have had, and still have, significant results. Grandmothers set in train . . . what? That’s what I’m trying to find out, and my mother can’t see why I’m bothering, or what difference it would make if I did establish that there was, and is, a pattern. But all she said this time was that what seemed to be worrying me, so far as she could make out, was the title of my dissertation. She suggested it was pointing me in the wrong direction and making me feel I was acting under false pretences because I no longer agree with it. So, she said, why not change it? Why not simply change the title? Think of one that better sums up what you think you’re doing. Everything might then fall into place.

  I said, at first, it was a stupid idea. Claudia would have a fit. Probably I’d have to reapply to do the MA. I said there was nothing wrong with the title, why ever had she thought changing it would help? But as I hauled myself out of my slump on the sofa, I began to toy with new wording. The title was so imprecise. I could sharpen it up, perhaps. Then Dad came home and I stopped going over and over it in my head, and we all had supper. We talked, inevitably, about May. I went over the hospital visit, said she seemed fine now. ‘It won’t last,’ Mum said.