Every Day Is Mother's Day

by Hilary Mantel

  He woke up in the mornings, and Isabel was his first thought. For this reason, he tried to delay the moment of waking. “You’re ever so dozy these days, Colin,” his wife said. “We’ll have to make an effort to get to bed earlier.” The sick pain of loss jolted through him before he had opened his eyes. He saw images of himself staggering through the days, grey-faced, with fatuities on his lips. Daily he took the matter in hand, promised self-discipline, tried to shut her out of his mind. His thoughts fled back to her as the dieting obese think of food, an abstract orgy of longing and inner greed, one thought for the pain and one for the world, systole for living and diastole for Isabel.

  The telephone was ringing. It was the night of the dinner party, wet and black. Seven P.M.

  “59428.”

  “Mrs. Sidney?”

  “This is Mr. Sidney.”

  “It’s Tracey here.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I said it’s Tracey. I’m supposed to be babysitting for you.”

  “Oh yes, hello Tracey,” Colin said with an excess of bonhomie. “When are you coming along then?”

  “I’m not coming, that’s what I’m phoning for, sorry.”

  “Oh but Tracey, now—”

  “Me mam says I’ve got to stop in because me Grandad’s coming.”

  “But surely, Tracey—look, would you have a word with Mrs. Sidney?”

  “No point, is there?”

  “Could I have a word with your mother, do you think?”

  “She’s gone down our Doreen’s shop for a lettuce.”

  “When will she be back?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Look, Tracey, are you sure you can’t come?” Colin took his schoolteacher’s tone, full of aching reasonableness. “You see, it’s letting us down rather badly. This was an important evening for us, and it’s too short notice to get anyone else, so it does put us in difficulties. Now you did promise, Tracey. Did you explain that to your mother?”

  “No point.”

  “Surely she’d understand that a promise is a promise.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Anyway, Tracey, look at it this way, you want your pocket money, don’t you?”

  “Well, it’s only one fifty, isn’t it, and if Grandad sees me he gives me a fiver.”

  “Oh, I see,” Colin said. “Well, I’m afraid I’m not prepared to engage in an auction for your presence, Tracey, that wouldn’t be right at all. So we’ll just have to manage without you.”

  “Tough life, innit?” Tracey said. “Bye.”

  Colin bellowed up the stairs, and Sylvia came out of the bedroom in her bra and half-slip. She had powdered her face and lips very white, preparatory to painting them back in again, and she smelled of Coty’s L’Aimant, which was not this year’s Christmas present.

  “What’s up? Who was it?”

  “It was some half-witted child called Tracey who it seems you’ve engaged as babysitter. She’s not coming.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “Her grandfather’s coming over, and will probably give her a fiver, so she’s not going to put herself out for one fifty.”

  “Oh, dammit,” Sylvia said venomously. She began to scramble down the stairs, her stockinged feet large and flat. “Give me the phone.”

  “Don’t you offer her any more money,” Colin said. “It’s blackmail. We can’t have that.”

  Colin went into the bedroom and contemplated the clean shirt laid out on the bed. He heard Sylvia’s voice raised in expostulation. Shortly she came back into the bedroom, slamming the door.

  “She won’t come. Honestly. It’s not often, is it, it’s not often, that I get a night out? You wouldn’t think one night was too much to ask.”

  “Well, it’s no good taking it out on me,” Colin said.

  “I’m not taking it out on you. What on earth are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know, but honestly, Sylvia, that girl sounded half-witted. When I picked up the phone she said, ‘Is that Mrs. Sidney?’”

  “How could she be expected to know who picked the phone up?”

  “Because I spoke, didn’t I? I said ‘59428,’ I don’t just pick the phone up and breathe into it, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I don’t know what you’re getting yourself worked up for.”

  “I’m getting myself worked up because we’re due at Frank’s in forty-five minutes, and we haven’t got a babysitter, because you make arrangements with some half-witted child that doesn’t turn up. Do you really think it’s safe, leaving them with somebody as clueless as that? How old is she?”

  “She sounded pretty sharp to me,” Sylvia said. “She’s fourteen. I know her mother. Anyway, they’re not going to be left with her, are they, so what are you talking about?”

  “We’ll have to ring Florence,” Colin said.

  “Florence never babysits for us. She doesn’t know how to manage them.”

  “Are they as bad as that? What do they need, qualified nannies or policemen?”

  “There’s no need to get nasty. It’s not the kiddies’ fault, Colin.”

  “Have you got a better suggestion?”

  “Ask her if she’ll have them for the night, then. Go on. Phone her.”

  “You phone her,” Colin said. “You got us into this mess.”

  “I’d like to know why it’s always my problem to fix up a babysitter. You always leave it to me and then you criticise. It’s you that wants to go to this dinner, not me.”

  “All right,” Colin said, “all right. Then I’ll just phone up Frank and say we can’t make it, shall I? Frank goes to a lot of trouble over his dinner parties. He’s very interested in cooking and he goes to a lot of trouble, trying to select the right guests.”

  “And I go to trouble every night of the week. You don’t think about that.”

  “Don’t be so bloody ridiculous, Sylvia. Are we going or aren’t we?”

  “Well, if I phone Florence, you’ll have to go down and get them their sausage and beans. Children have to be fed as well, you know.”

  “I’ll phone,” Colin said. “You see to them.” He stumped off downstairs. He took deep breaths. Self-command, he thought, control, order; he realised, amazed, that this upset had dismissed Isabel from his mind for at least fifteen minutes. But he could not arrange to live in a permanent row. “They can bring their sleeping bags, tell her,” Sylvia shouted after him. Here was material for reworking, for weeks and weeks of quarrels. Colin could hear the children shouting each other down above the noise of the TV set. I’d be more adept at feeding lions, he thought, or giving rabbits to pythons.

  Florence sounded doubtful, mildly shocked. “But the beds aren’t aired, Colin. It’s such short notice.”

  “Sylvia says they can bring sleeping bags.”

  “Well, that doesn’t sound very suitable to me, but I do admit it might be the lesser evil.” Oh, cut it out, Colin thought, yes or no? “They can’t sleep in beds that aren’t aired,” Florence said.

  “Okay, but if we bring the sleeping bags, and listen Florence, they’ve been fed, and I’ll be over for them first thing tomorrow.”

  He put the phone down, relieved. He would have felt such a fool, making his excuses to Frank; Frank seemed to have smart intellectual friends who would not have problems like babysitters, and he would probably not understand. He had been looking forward to this evening, relying on it to take his mind off Isabel. He would rise above his situation tonight, he would be witty and carefree and relaxed, and not, he vowed, not have too much to drink, so that Sylvia gave him warning glances in front of everybody and nagged him all the way home about the breathalyser.

  All he had to do was change his shirt. He ran a comb through his hair and was ready by a quarter to eight, standing expectantly in the hall. Sylvia had painted her eyelids with a luminous stripe of sky-blue, and her eyes beneath, rather bloodshot, appeared angrier than ever. Fuming quietly to herself, muttering under her breath, she dumped bundles and baskets in the hall
, marshalling the children with little pushes and taps on the backs of their skulls.

  “What are you standing there looking so useless for?” she demanded. His brief ebullience vanishing, Colin took her by the arm, steering her into the kitchen for a little private row.

  “I do wish,” he hissed at her, “I do wish that you could manage not to talk to me like that in front of the children. How do you expect them to have any respect for me? What are they going to think about me, if you speak to me like that?”

  Sylvia glared at him. Then she dropped her eyes and disengaged her arm from his grasp. “What does it matter?” she said tiredly. She swerved past him and back into the hall.

  “You undermine me,” he shouted after her. “You’ve got enough stuff there for an Antarctic expedition. One night, they’re going for, woman, not a bloody month.”

  The children were complaining at being dragged away from the TV. They had been looking forward to bullying their babysitter and getting the better of her, and forcing her to let them stay up long past their usual bedtime. Florence was an unknown quantity; she alternated with them between doting and frigidity, and she had no TV set. Packed into the back of the car, they became instantly fractious. They flailed their legs and jostled for room, jabbing each other with their elbows. Karen began to sniffle, and Suzanne took out a pencil she had about her person and dug it into her brother’s leg.

  “For God’s sake, will you stop it?” Sylvia twisted round in her seat to deliver slaps left and right.

  “How can I drive?” Colin demanded. “How can I concentrate on the traffic? There’ll be an accident. You’ll cause an accident if you go on like this.”

  “Oh, Dad, Dad, Dad,” Alistair wailed. “She’s made a big grey hole in my knee. It’ll go septic, Dad. I’ll have to stay off school.”

  At the traffic lights Sylvia lurched over the back of her seat and snatched the pencil from Suzanne. She wound down her window and hurled it out. It struck the windscreen of the car drawn up next to them with a noise like a gunshot and rolled with an astonishingly loud clatter down the bonnet.

  “My God,” Colin said. People in other cars were staring. Scarlet with embarrassment and breaking out in a sweat, he accelerated away from the green light.

  He drew up in Florence’s driveway, under the dark shapes of the dripping trees, and took out his new clean handkerchief to mop his forehead. “Well, we’ve made it.”

  Sylvia swivelled her legs out of the car. “These damn mouldy leaves,” she said. “My evening shoes will be ruined.”

  Florence appeared immediately, looking apprehensive. She must have been watching from the front room, standing in the dark. Sylvia propelled the children towards the house and Colin followed, his arms loaded with their baggage. A sleeping bag escaped from his grasp and unrolled itself like a serpent on the wet path. He dragged it after him, hoping no one would notice. Sylvia was saying, “They’ve been fed, they’re to get straight to bed, they don’t want anything.”

  “But what if they do?” Florence said. “I mean, what will I give them, and in the morning—”

  “Look, you don’t need to give them their breakfast even, we’ll come for them,” Sylvia said.

  “I’m not unwilling to give them their breakfast,” Florence insisted. “It’s not that, don’t think that, Sylvia, but I don’t know what they’re used to, for instance if they have fresh bread or stale.”

  “Stale bread? What would they have stale bread for?”

  “Yuk,” Suzanne offered. “I’m not eating stale bread.”

  “Well,” Florence said, “when we were children we never had fresh bread. Children didn’t have it. It’s bad for them. They can’t digest it.”

  “Go on.”

  “It’s no joke, Sylvia. You ought to be careful what you give them.”

  “Sylvia, it’s gone half-past eight,” Colin said. “We’re late.” Florence turned to him, looking stubborn.

  “Perhaps you can convince her, Colin, as she doesn’t take any notice of what I say.”

  “Florence, if we had stale bread when we were children I expect it was because Mother was too lazy and disorganised to have any fresh in the house.” He turned to Sylvia. “She got fussy as she got older, you know, but when we were kids it was a different story.”

  “I think that’s very disloyal, Colin.” Two red spots appeared on Florence’s cheeks. “I don’t know how you dare. She was an excellent mother, and there was nothing wrong with the way we were brought up.”

  “I’ve not got time to discuss it.” Colin hauled his cuff up again and tapped the face of his watch. “Sylvia—”

  “You’ve not answered my question,” Florence said stubbornly. “About the bread.”

  “Bread?” Colin’s self-control fled now with a great yell into his sister’s face. “Bread? They chew nails, this lot. You could feed them nitroglycerine and ground glass and they’d bloody digest it.”

  Sylvia pulled at his arm, and Alistair, red-faced, wormed among the overnight bags and took Florence by her skirt.

  “Aunty Florence, I’ve got a septic hole in my knee.”

  “What, my pet?”

  Standing on one leg, Alistair pointed to his wound. “You’ll have to get your glasses,” he said.

  Florence bent over his raised knee and looked up with a face full of alarm.

  “It’s all black, Sylvia. Whatever’s happened?”

  “Take no notice of him, it’s nothing.”

  “But it’s black.”

  “It’s from a pencil. It’ll wash off.”

  “I’d better get my first-aid kit,” Florence said. “I don’t think you ought to leave me with him like this.”

  “I’ve told you, it’s nothing. Alistair, I’m going now, and if I hear from your Auntie that you’ve been playing her up there’ll be trouble.”

  “Oh all right, you go,” Alistair said. “I expect I’ll be up all night crying with the pain, that’s all.”

  Suzanne sat down on the stairs and clasped her arms round her abdomen, rocking with simulated mirth; standing amid the baggage, Karen began to scream.

  “We’re off,” Sylvia yelled above the noise. “Thanks a lot, Florence, and we’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “But you can’t leave me with them like this. He might be ill. What if—”

  Sylvia bolted out of the front door, Colin was already in the car. Alistair’s voice followed her, “I expect my leg will be cut off and you’ll have to push me round in a wheelchair,” and Karen’s wails and Suzanne’s snorts of laughter. Mud splashed the back of her tights. She slammed the car door.

  “It’s quarter to nine,” Colin said.

  “How far is it?”

  “Half a mile as the crow flies, that’s all.”

  “As the crow flies? Does that mean you don’t know the way? Oh, what a bloody business it all is. My evening’s ruined before it starts.”

  Colin edged the car out of Lauderdale Road.

  “And Colin, remember you’ve to get up early in the morning to fetch the kids, and before that you’ve got to get us both home tonight.”

  “When do I get drunk, Sylvia? Come on, when have you ever seen me drunk?”

  “You drink too much if you get the chance. You always do, and you know it.”

  “And how often do I get the chance? Come on, Sylvia, when did you last see me reeling round the estate smashing people’s windows and singing ‘I belong to Glasgow,’ and throwing up on the pavement? When was the last time, eh, when?”

  Sylvia lapsed into moody silence. “They’ll settle down,” she said, after a while. “They’ll settle, won’t they?”

  “I hope so. Florence isn’t used to them.”

  “I mean, it’s not just them, all kids are like that. There’s many worse. Florence doesn’t know. Colin, this is a long half-mile.”

  Colin saw that he was in a cul-de-sac. He slowed the car to a crawl.

  “Are we there?”

  “No, we’re not. Look out, will you, a
nd see if you can see Balmoral Road.”

  It was the very edge of Florence’s respectable district, bigger houses well back from the road, flat-land encroaching, street names buried in dripping hedges.

  “Andover Crescent,” Sylvia said.

  “That’s no help. Well, okay, I’ll just drive along it.”

  “Hadn’t you better go back?”

  “If it’s a crescent, it’s bound to go round, isn’t it, use your common sense. I wish you’d learn to drive, Sylvia, then I could have a drink sometimes without you nagging me.”

  “Nobody’s going to get a drink at this rate. I thought you knew where Frank’s was.”

  “If I knew, we’d be there, wouldn’t we? Do you think I’m doing this for pleasure?”

  “There’s no need to get sarcastic. At least three times in the past two months you’ve been over to Frank’s.”

  Fear shot through him, joining the anger churning his intestines. “Not from this direction. I know it from our house but not from this direction. All these streets look the same. And in the dark, too.”

  They drove around for another ten minutes, and then Colin stopped the car at a phonebox. Inhaling the smell of stale urine, he leafed through the directory, a draught from a broken pane blowing piercingly down the back of his neck. The “O” section had been torn out jaggedly, cutting him off at O’Connor. He dashed back to the car.

  “You’re getting soaked,” Sylvia said reproachfully. She was scrabbling through her handbag looking for change. “Haven’t you got Frank’s number in your wallet?”

  “I’ll find another box.” Colin drove on. “Here, I might have, take it out and have a look through.”

  They had by now reached the main road and Sylvia searched through his wallet under the generous light, unimpeded by trees. “Well, I can’t see Frank’s number. I don’t think you’ve got it. Here, what’s this? Social Services. What do you want the number of the Social Services for?”