Mother Can You Hear Me?

by Margaret Forster

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Margaret Forster

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Angela Bradbury has an appalling mother – self-effacing, self-sacrificing, expert at emotional blackmail. But in her relationship with her eldest and very difficult daughter, Sadie, Angela realises that she is imposing the same resentments and guilt that her mother inflicted on her.

  About the Author

  Margaret Forster is the author of many successful novels, including Lady’s Maid, Have the Men Had Enough? and The Memory Box, two memoirs, Hidden Lives and Precious Lives, and several acclaimed biographies, including Good Wives.

  ALSO BY MARGARET FORSTER

  Fiction

  Dame’s Delight

  Georgy Girl

  The Bogeyman

  The Travels of Maudie Tipstaff

  The Park

  Miss Owen-Owen is At Home

  Fenella Phizackerley

  Mr Bone’s Retreat

  The Seduction of Mrs Pendlebury

  The Bride of Lowther Fell

  Marital Rites

  Private Papers

  Have the Men Had Enough?

  Lady’s Maid

  The Battle for Christabel

  Mothers’ Boys

  Shadow Baby

  The Memory Box

  Diary of an Ordinary Woman

  Non-Fiction

  The Rash Adventurer:

  The Rise and Fall of Charles Edward Stuart

  William Makepeace Thackeray:

  Memoirs of a Victorian Gentleman

  Significant Sisters:

  The Grassroots of Active Feminism 1838–1939

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Daphne du Maurier

  Hidden Lives

  Rich Deserts & Captain’s Thin:

  A Family & Their Times 1831–1931

  Precious Lives

  Good Wives:

  Mary, Fanny, Jennie & Me 1845–2001

  Poetry

  Selected Poems of

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Editor)

  For Theodora Joy Ooms,

  sixteen years too late.

  Mother Can You Hear Me?

  Margaret Forster

  One

  ANGELA BRADBURY WAITED many years to tell her daughter Sadie the story of how she came to exist. It was, she thought, a beautiful story, full of romance and passion, and Angela had many times imagined, with tears of happiness in her eyes, how she would tell it. ‘It was a lovely day,’ she would begin, her voice low and quiet, ‘a hot, still day even though it was only March, and we went to the seaside, your Father and I, on bicycles, with a picnic in the basket on my handlebars, and when we got there we swam even though the water was freezing cold and then we crouched among the sand dunes and ate our picnic and then—’ her voice would surely break ‘—and then we made love and you were conceived.’ Sadie would ask why she had wanted a baby and Angela had a touching explanation—honest but tender. ‘I worried so much whether it was the right thing to do,’ she would say, ‘I didn’t know if I wanted to be a Mother with all it meant but your Father persuaded me—wanting a baby so badly was enough, he said, and it did not need justifying. It would be visible evidence of our love for each other, he said, part of an inevitable natural pattern, and I should not be afraid. And as soon as I knew you were on the way I was so happy I knew he had been right.’

  But unfortunately Sadie never asked, not once, ever, not a hint of curiosity and if Angela tried to foist the charming tale upon her she groaned and said ‘For chrissake, Mum.’

  On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays Angela was in the habit of ringing her Mother, who lived in St Erick, a country town in north-west Cornwall. She rang her at six thirty precisely. If for some reason she was delayed, her Mother rang her to see what was the matter. They rarely rang each other apart from these rigidly fixed times that were as much part of Angela’s life, as getting up or going to bed. The ’phone calls hung over her but were essential to her peace of mind. After she had chattered to Mother for at least five minutes she would make some acceptable excuse and hang up, feeling immediately relieved and, if Mother had been in good spirits, which was rare, even happy.

  To answer the telephone on a Sunday afternoon and hear her Father’s voice was alarming and meant disaster. She gave the number and he said, ‘Is that you, Angela?’ which irritated her. Who else could it be since her voice was surely that of an adult female and no other adult female lived in the house? In ways like that she was cruel to him.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she said, curtly, though she had caught the despondency in his voice and interpreted it correctly with great speed. ‘Is anything wrong?’ Because she was a Trewick by birth, Angela knew that this was the expected thing to assume.

  ‘It’s your Mam.’

  Naturally. It always was. Nothing else made the stomach lurch with such violence.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘She’s took bad. I took her breakfast in, bran and that, got her up, got her dressed and nice, said she wouldn’t bother with her hair but I said oh no we’re not starting that game and I did it, best I could like, anyways I got her going and I thought hello her mouth’s a bit funny but she says she’s all right, bad tempered like, and anyways when I came from getting a loaf—I had to get a loaf or I wouldn’t have left her—anyways she says she wants to lie down so I took off her slippers and she lay down on the settee, but her colour was bad mind’—

  He had to be heard out. Even if she could have brought herself to, Angela would never have interrupted. She listened almost dreamily, absent minded, picking at a bit of fluff on her sleeve. Perhaps he would go on forever and nothing need be done.

  —‘anyways she tries to get up to go to the doings and she was away, down in a flash, head missed the fender by an inch, like a log, couldn’t move her and she’s shaking and her face all screwed up—what a business—oh dear—so I grabbed the poker and banged on the wall for Mrs Collins and luckily she was in and got the message—anyways she came in and between us we got her back on the settee—she’s a deadweight, you’d never think, till you come to lift her—and Mrs Collins says straight away “she’s had a stroke, Mr Trewick” and by god she was damned right, the doctor said “she’s had a stroke” soon as he’d seen her, and I must say he came quick, just a young fellow but very nice, “she’s had a stroke” he says, but that was yesterday—what a night—and now this morning she’s worse, a bit of pneumonia got into her the doctor says—’

  ‘How awful,’ Angela said. He had paused too long for breath for her to ignore the break. ‘Poor Mother.’

  ‘Poor Mother all right,’ Father said, ‘you’re dead right there—thought she was a goner—but anyways I’m managing and we’ll see how she goes—the doctor’s coming back this afternoon and he’s given her pills and everything, course she can’t hardly swallow, can’t speak either, it’s a job getting anything into her but I’m managing and Mrs Collins is very good’—

  ‘I’d better come down,’ Angela said. There was no alternative. She despised herself for the gr
udging way in which she said it, but Father did that to her.

  ‘Valerie’s coming,’ Father said, his voice rising with triumph. ‘I didn’t ring her first, mind, only she rings Sunday afternoon and I couldn’t keep it from her, now could I, so she knew first.’

  Angela ignored that part. The assumption that she might be offended at Valerie being told first was too crass to go along with. He did it deliberately, fostering, he thought, a spirit of rivalry that would breed closer contact, quite unable to fathom that there was no competitive relationship at all between his daughters in this respect. Angela would have been grateful if only Valerie had been told. Valerie would have been grateful if only Angela had been told.

  ‘I’ll get an early train tomorrow from Paddington,’ Angela said. ‘Gives me time to get organized.’

  ‘I don’t think it will be a wasted journey, lass,’ Father said. ‘Thanks very much.’

  Father’s humility was never convincing. He wasn’t really thanking her. He understood very well that thanks were inappropriate, but he liked to cast himself in the role of the pathetic old man who needed help. Till she got there, at least.

  There had been other journeys like this one over the last five years, other calls to rush to Mother’s bedside because she was sinking fast. Only she never sank. She recovered miraculously from her many and various ailments and berated Father for presuming to summon the family. Each time she went, Angela packed a suit for the funeral, carried away by Father’s gloom. She packed a black suit and a cream silk shirt and a black and silver necklace because Father didn’t like bare open necks. He would want her to look smart, would not allow grief to be an excuse for slovenliness. He and Mother both disliked Angela’s clothes—they frequently reminisced about how neat and well turned out she used to look before she went to London. They said her clothes now were like dressing-up clothes, completely ridiculous for a teacher and mother of four children. There was no need for it, they said. Both of them paid great attention to their own clothes and were immaculate whatever the time of day. Especially Mother. Every afternoon of Angela’s childhood Mother had changed from her morning skirt to her afternoon skirt even when they were both threadbare. The distinction was extremely important to her—pride in her appearance was not due to vanity but to the importance of keeping up morale.

  The first time Father had summoned her, when Mother, aged seventy, had a severe attack of influenza, Angela had travelled first class with Max, her new-born son, in a carrycot. She could remember the snow outside and the light it reflected into the grey, dusty compartment where she sat huddled in a corner breast feeding her baby, wondering if her milk would survive the strain of getting up from bed to make a three-hundred-mile journey. She had hoped Max, ten days old, and winter—it was January—would excuse her from going at all but Father’s voice was so bleak. ‘She’s sinking fast,’ he said, and there seemed no alternative, not unless one had a heart of stone, not unless one wished to be entirely selfish. She had arrived. Mother rallied. She opened her eyes to look at Max, her first grandson, and smiled and stretched out a finger to touch him where he lay on the bed. It was like a miracle watching the baby grip the finger and watching the life blood flow back into Mother. ‘I knew it would do the trick,’ Father had said, boastfully. Angela was home in a week, drained by all the emotion, leaving Mother a little radiant with the drama of it all and Father ebullient. She survived again and again and again, though never growing immune to the horror of it all.

  This time, she travelled second class. The fares had shot up, the cost was exorbitant. The train, as ever, was packed with the deprived of the entire country. Nobody affluent ever seemed to travel by train, not from Paddington to Penzance, or if they did their affluence was obliterated by the crushing mass of people. There were children everywhere, sweets stuck in their hot hands in the most ridiculous fashion, no thought given to how they were to amuse themselves when the sucking palled. It wearied her to see it. Even when the children squabbled and yelled she could not bring herself to feel sorry for the harassed mothers. They had brought it upon themselves. They had neglected their duty as mothers. Angela glared at them furiously. Sit nicely, they said, sit quietly, sit straight, sit, sit and look out of the window—it was sickening. Proper mothers would have brought crayons and paper and story books and puzzles. Proper mothers would have played with their offspring. Proper mothers would have understood the children’s frustration. Angela tried not to look. She sat and thought how determined she had been to be a proper Mother. Like Mother, she thought, without ever having defined what that meant.

  The baby was beautiful, after an agonizing birth—ordinary, but agonizing. Angela felt no ecstasy. They had done so many awful things to her—shoved tubes up her nose, yelled at her to push when she didn’t want to push and the pain had been all the more terrible because it was unexpected. ‘What am I doing wrong?’ Angela had shouted back at them, but nobody seemed to know. She had done all the right exercises, she had been calm and kept her head, and then quite suddenly there had been an explosion of pain and they were forcing her to take the gas and air she did not want. So there was no ecstasy, or even relief—only a deep shame and misery. She lay on the high bed while they mopped up the blood that seemed to be everywhere—‘All over the floor,’ the nurse who was cleaning it said crossly—feeling utterly sad and even frightened. She had no strength. She could not lift an arm or move her head. Her face was stiff with dried tears and her hair stuck to her forehead with sweat. They brought the baby over to her, tightly wrapped in a blanket. The shock revived her. It struck her as magical—a face she did not know but which she had created. And the pity of it engulfed her, bringing the tears again fast and furious. So pitiful—such a pathetic scrap and she herself so battered and exhausted. It was all too much to understand and yet all night she lay puzzling it out when all she craved was sleep. I am a Mother, she said to herself over and over again. What does it mean? And into her poor tired head swam pictures of her own Mother who had gone through all this before and never spoken of it.

  She saw the bright orange door opening before the taxi had stopped. Father had recently painted it—‘Two coats, inside and out, best Dulux, no messing’—and would want it noticed. What a joke taxis were outside London, such slow friendly cheap things with drivers carrying luggage for you so quaintly. Father would have seen it coming round the corner, on the look out for half an hour. Trewicks were always on the look out. There was a mirror in the corner over the television so that the front door and gate could be seen from anywhere in the room. Nobody ever needed to knock on a Trewick door—it always opened, sometimes alarmingly, as soon as the startled caller’s hand moved towards the bell. If the visitor had not been seen by Father, he would have been heard, yet the bell was piercing as though the small house had secret wings and corridors not visible.

  ‘Good journey,’ Father said. He rarely asked questions. He made statements which you either contradicted or agreed with.

  ‘Not bad.’

  ‘Get yourself in then. Come and see her. Take your coat off first. Don’t want wet coats near your Mother, not in her state.’

  He stood and watched her remove her coat, frowning hard. Briskly, he shook all two raindrops off it and hung it up correctly on a hanger.

  Valerie, sister Valerie, was sitting on the bed, a tin bowl of water in one hand and a piece of cotton wool in the other. ‘Just moistening Mother’s lips,’ she murmured. Her spectacles were filmed over with the steam rising from the water. ‘Hot water?’ Angela said. ‘She seems so cold,’ Valerie said, moving the cotton wool with exaggerated care over Mother’s cracked and swollen lips. Angela sat down, on the other side of the bed. Mother was propped up on three pillows, her white bushy hair pushed in weird directions. Her eyes were closed, her skin grey. Angela took her hand, lying limply on top of the blue coverlet, and said, ‘Mother, can you hear me? It’s Angela.’ Slowly, slowly, with enormous effort Mother’s eyes opened and tried to focus—eyes drugged and bloodshot but stil
l bright blue. Her lips moved but no sound came from them. Angela squeezed her hand again and bent right over Mother’s face. ‘Mother, can you hear me? It’s Angela—Angela.’ And this time Mother smiled and managed to whisper ‘Angela’ and to return the faintest of pressures with her hand. The smile was the same wistful slip of a smile for which Angela had striven all her life.

  ‘She prayed to God you would come,’ Father said from the foot of the bed. ‘Didn’t you Mam? Eh?’ He came round to where Angela sat and leant over her and shook his head. ‘Bad,’ he said solemnly, ‘very bad.’ Too quickly, Angela jumped up, shaking the rackety old bed enough to spray Valerie with her own hot water, and went out of the stifling room and upstairs to the bathroom where she buried her face in the same blue and white striped towel that once she had taken for swimming on Thursdays after school. It smelled peculiar, but would have been washed vigorously in the dolly tub last week. Her Father would not have a washing machine—no need. He would not send things to the laundry either—no need. He said that he had to have something to do and that he could manage and went on breaking Mother’s houseproud heart by ruining her treasured scraps of linen.

  She washed her face, battling with the usual claustrophobia the house gave her. The bath had a strange contraption across it to help Mother get in and out since arthritis had begun to cripple her. A large green rubber mat lay in the bottom of it so that she would not slip. Father frequently pointed it out. ‘That’s her mat,’ he would say, taking you into the bathroom so he could point, ‘so she won’t slip. And her special thingamebob for getting in and out—but I still stay near, oh yes.’

  She went back downstairs, relatively composed but surly. Father made her surly, with suppressed fury. He was sitting in front of the fire, arms crossed, legs thrust out, right in front of it in his patched leather armchair. She stood in front of the window, watching the rain fall on the privet hedge, making it glossy and a darker green than it really was. It was a viciously neat hedge, cut as soon as it showed any signs of growth. She did not want to sit down, shunned even the intimacy of sharing the fire. But Father said, ‘Sit yourself down’ and she had to obey. She sat primly on the edge of a hard upright dining-table chair, as far away as it was possible to get in that small cramped room.