Mother Can You Hear Me?

by Margaret Forster

  ‘She looks very comfortable,’ Angela said.

  ‘You wake her up,’ Father said, beginning to shout. ‘Wake her up and get her walking about and then put her to bed—do you hear?—that’s the thing to do.’

  ‘I will,’ Angela said.

  ‘I’ll ring before I go to bed myself just to make sure. Now mind—you get her going and then put her to bed properly—you shouldn’t let her sleep in chairs—and she’ll be awake all night now, her routine will be all to pot.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s easy being sorry.’

  ‘There isn’t anything else I can be.’

  ‘You can be a damned sight more careful, that’s what you can be, my lass.’

  They stood on top of a cliff, she and Sadie, right on the very edge where the grass began to disappear into cracks. Below, the sea pounded the great black jagged rocks, sending up clouds of spray so high that they imagined they could feel the wetness on their faces hundreds of feet above. Hand in hand they peered down, drawing in their breaths, trying not to be dizzy, laughing at the cries of the boys behind them, all too afraid to stand with them. Sadie was proud to be the daring one but her hand in Angela’s was damp and quivered slightly and her eyes were narrow with fear. She wanted to draw back. Angela sensed this, knew although not a word was uttered that Sadie wished her to be the first to draw back but she chose to stay where she was, trying to communicate her own confidence to her daughter. She squeezed Sadie’s hand and smiled and nodded at her and took another very small step towards the brink, but it was too much for Sadie, and suddenly her hand was withdrawn from her mother’s, snatched away in an instant as Sadie stumbled back shouting ‘You made me! You made me! You knew I was frightened and you made me!’ She flew to Ben and cried and when Angela came back he said ‘That was ridiculous. What were you trying to prove?’ Angela smiled and shrugged. ‘Nothing,’ she said, ‘she knew nothing could happen to her with me there.’ ‘I don’t think,’ Ben said, ‘that she knew anything of the kind.’

  Mother seemed confused when finally they shook her awake. Her eyes swivelled round and her mouth drooped open and seemed out of control. She was grumpy and tearful and did not take kindly to the joint efforts of Ben and Angela to get her on her feet as Father had ordered. ‘Oh leave me alone,’ she kept saying, ‘let me be.’ They half dragged her to her room and because she could not face the intricacies of removing underclothes Angela left them on, content to have taken off skirt and jumper and corset. Then they tucked her up and left her with a small lamp on so that she could see where she was when she woke up properly.

  ‘It was what she dreaded,’ Angela said, ‘being ill here.’

  ‘We all dreaded it,’ Ben said, gloomily. ‘God, what a drag.’

  ‘She can’t help it—imagine how you would feel if—’

  ‘You sound like Valerie.’

  ‘I feel like Valerie—all morbid and depressed and it-wasn’t-my-faultish and why-does-this-have-to-happen-to-me.’

  Her misery grew as the night wore on. Twice she went to peer at Mother, shocked by the greyness of her face and the harshness of her breathing. Tenderness was useless—it was too late, it ought to have been given sixty years ago when Mother was still a young, large-eyed girl singing so sweetly in the church choir, always put on the front row because she was spick and span in a white collar that sparkled. Someone else should have given it then, before melancholy seeped into Mother’s fragile soul and poisoned it for life. Gently, Angela straightened the covers on the bed. She was halfway herself to this sad state. She climbed slowly back upstairs, the carpet cold and rough on her bare feet, plodding away with limbs that felt stiff and painful. Fearful, worried, weighed down by responsibilities it was impossible to evade, she felt she was crawling through each day waiting for the next blow. Being a mother seemed to consist of seeing danger everywhere—seeing it and trying to ward it off and passing the smell of it on to one’s children. She slept curled up, finding comfort in the touch of her limbs, and when morning came she was reluctant to straighten them out.

  Mother woke up, hoarse and clammy with perspiration, as soon as Angela drew her curtains, determined to smile and be relaxed and sustain Mother all she could. All Mother could do was pass her dry tongue over her cracked lips. She could not, or would not, speak but answered all queries with a shake of her head. Angela telephoned for her doctor, who was reluctant to come. ‘You must come,’ she said, hysterical at the thought of Father’s next call, ‘please—I’m so worried—I must have a proper medical opinion.’ He came, late in the morning when she had almost given up expecting him, and said Mother simply had a chill and was exhausted. A few days in bed—a light diet—warmth—that was all. Relayed to Father it sounded feeble and ominous, however carefully phrased.

  ‘Damn,’ he said, ‘damn and blast—knew this would happen—I told you to look after her—just like the thing.’

  ‘She only has a chill,’ Angela said.

  ‘Not so much of the only,’ Father said furiously, ‘at her age. I don’t like that. She can be real poorly with a chill, no doubt about it. And how did she get a chill, that’s what I want to know—’

  ‘Anyone can get a chill.’

  ‘If they’re not looked after they can—if they sit too long in damp places and that.’

  ‘Chills come from germs—’

  ‘And from damp,’ Father said.

  ‘She doesn’t look too bad anyway.’

  ‘You don’t know how she looks,’ Father said. ‘I can tell, you can’t. I’d better come up anyways. Can’t mess about like this.’

  ‘There really isn’t any need,’ Angela said. ‘I can look after her perfectly well—it would only upset her if you came, make her think she’s more ill than she really is. Why not wait, see how she gets on?’

  ‘I might,’ Father said with a speed that took Angela by surprise. Was he play acting? Had he said he was coming only to keep up appearances? She felt in a strange way disappointed, though the relief was intense.

  She sat with Mother most of the day, ignoring the comings and goings of the children who slammed every door in the house at five-minute intervals, endlessly on their way somewhere. Mother seemed undisturbed by the background noise. The autumn sun, diffused rather than blocked out by the orange curtains, hypnotized Angela but Mother did not seem perturbed by the brightness. Sometimes she opened her eyes and turned towards Angela, but there was no animation in her expression. She accepted drinks of water but that was all. She slept a great deal, leaving Angela to fret over trivial but essential details such as whether she should make Mother get up to go to the lavatory. Which was preferable—dragging wet sheets and clothes off, or prodding Mother’s carcass into action? They needed a bedpan and they did not have one. The local shops would not have one. She would have to leave Sadie in charge and go out in search of one. She would have to learn to do necessary things like putting Mother on a bedpan—things other people did so casually in a sensible matter-of-fact way but from which she shrank. No good muttering about getting a nurse as Ben had muttered—nurses could not be so easily got, and even if found and employed they were in this situation a coward’s way out.

  ‘How is Grandma?’ Sadie asked, helping herself to orange juice, into which she mixed lemonade and ice cubes with great vigour.

  ‘Not too good,’ Angela said. She had come into the kitchen for five minutes to escape the relendess concentration of her thoughts on Mother and stood more dismayed and distracted than ever, unable to do a thing though the lunch dishes were still strewn everywhere and a cake remained half mixed on the worktop.

  ‘Poor Grandma,’ Sadie said.

  ‘Indeed, poor Grandma,’ Angela said. It was wrong, she knew it was wrong and silly and petty, but she allowed herself to add ‘And poor me, don’t you think?’

  ‘Why?’ said Sadie, ‘what’s wrong with you?’ The note of irritation lacerated Angela’s already torn and bruised feelings.

  ‘I have to nurse Grandma,’ Ang
ela said.

  ‘You like nursing.’

  ‘When it’s something that is going to get better I do—when it’s someone basically healthy—’

  ‘Isn’t Grandma going to get better?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Well then. I don’t see why it’s any different, frankly.’

  ‘I’m tired,’ Angela said, ‘and worried and it’s all awful.’

  ‘Does Grandad know?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What does he think?’

  ‘He wants to come up.’

  ‘Well, that’s good.’

  ‘Good? What on earth do you mean?’ said Angela, finding the strength to be suddenly savage. ‘How is it good? Do you ever really think—or put yourself in my position—you’re being kind now, aren’t you, making cosy inquiries when you don’t give a damn—you won’t or you can’t imagine what it is like to be me. I don’t want Grandad fussing about—that will be two of them to look after, won’t it—two of them on my back.’

  ‘You don’t love either of them, do you,’ Sadie said. She put her empty glass down and stood up. ‘It’s all just duty. It’s horrible.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about it,’ Angela said. ‘It’s all much too complicated. You can’t talk glibly about love and duty just like that—I don’t know what I feel, except guilty and responsible.’

  ‘But you don’t care,’ Sadie said, ‘you’re always moaning about them—about having to ring them up and go there—you never stop moaning about it. I don’t know why you bother pretending—why don’t you just cut off—that’s what you’d like to do, isn’t it? Just never see them except once a year for a day or something.’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ Angela shrieked, ‘that is exactly what I would like—I’d like to be in Australia with my brothers and never know a thing except by a two-week-old airmail—I’d like to be free of the whole business—I can’t stand it another minute—it goes on and on and on and I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘For christ’s sake,’ Sadie said.

  ‘What?’ Angela shouted. ‘What? What do you mean with your sneers—no, don’t go—DO NOT GO—you twist everything I say—I give you honest answers and you despise me—you attack me when—’

  ‘You’re doing the attacking, not me.’

  ‘—all I want is sympathy and a little understanding and—and—and a feeling of not being on my own in this.’

  ‘Well, you are on your own,’ Sadie said. ‘There isn’t anything I can do—oh don’t say I can do the dishes—I will do the bloody dishes and the shopping and anything you like—but it won’t make it any better.’

  ‘I feel terrible,’ Angela said.

  ‘I thought Grandma only had a cold?’

  ‘You seemed determined to miss the point.’

  ‘I’m going out anyway—up to Oxford Street—I suppose this is a bad time to ask if I can have the money for those boots you agreed on?’

  ‘Get my purse.’

  ‘I could wait until another day—it’s just as it’s half term—and Sue is going anyway—’

  ‘Here—take it.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Still she stood, money in her hand, waiting for that signal Angela knew she must give, then she would be out of the house in a flash, coatless on a cold day, putting the boredom of home behind her. Mother had never let Angela go—never gave the signal. Crouched over the fire in some private misery, or trudging up and down the windy garden unhappily pegging clothes out as the rain threatened to begin, she had remained silent. ‘I’m off then,’ Angela would say. Mother would say nothing. ‘I’m going—back this evening.’ Silence, except occasionally for ‘Off you go then, enjoying yourself,’ spoken dismally. It had always spoiled the first half of any expedition and when afterwards it had been time to return the memory of Mother’s depression had slowed her footsteps right down.

  ‘Have a good time,’ Angela said, trying hard to smile, ‘don’t worry about me. I’m just fed up—I’ll get over it—don’t let it affect you.’

  ‘Are you sure? Sadie said, eagerly.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure. Buy some lovely boots and come back and cheer me up—okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  Bribery and corruption, Ben would say, but already Angela felt better. She did not want to pass her gloom on—better, far better, to contain her anguish instead of letting it spill out as she had just done with Sadie. Her way was no improvement on Mother’s—explaining and justifying her problems was as disastrous as concealing them. Mother had lost her that way. She was determined not to lose Sadie.

  Sadie at six, long before she had settled down with Sue and Joanna, her two close friends by the time she was an adolescent, used to taunt her playmates. She seemed to have them home only to torture them. ‘Say everything I say,’ she would order Alison, one of her constant victims. ‘All right, Sadie.’ ‘No, dumbhead, say everything—say, say everything I say,’ When at last Alison had sorted out what Sadie wanted Sadie would then think up inspired insults. ‘Alison is a fat spotty pooh’ and Alison would repeat it, only just beginning to realize the joke was somehow on her. ‘Why,’ Angela would say afterwards, ‘why were you so cruel to Alison? Why do you make a fool of her like that? And every time she wanted to play something you wouldn’t do it.’ ‘I don’t care,’ Sadie would say. ‘But you will care,’ Angela said, ‘when you’ve lost her as a friend. If you want to keep your friends you must be kind to them.’ Sadie glared at her, her face closed and full of spite. ‘You don’t be kind to me,’ she said, ‘saying that.’

  Mother took a little soup in the evening, and a small piece of dry toast taken into her on a tray laid out invitingly by Angela. The tray was tin, of the kind Mother despised, but out of a drawer Angela had dug a white cloth she had once embroidered, scalloped at the edges with a pattern of blue forget-me-nots round them. Mother appreciated that. Ill though she was, she fingered the cloth and said how pretty, nobody did things like that any more, and she liked the pink linen napkin in its silver ring and the delicate china teapot Angela had almost forgotten she owned. Her weary eyes ran over the tray and rested on the white rose in glass jug and she said, ‘Now isn’t that nice—a rose—at this time of year,’ and then, after a pause, ‘I like things to be nice. Your Father just throws things on a tray, never has any appearance—cuts the bread all anyhow and never thinks to match the cup and saucer with the plate.’ ‘But he does very well—for him—doing it every day,’ Angela said. ‘Oh yes,’ Mother said, ‘very well, when you think what he has to do, a man like him.’ Her gaze moved from the tray to the window where a branch of the pear tree tapped against it. ‘Pretty,’ Mother said, ‘that tree—pretty shapes, those branches, even bare. It reminds me of the country. I always loved the country.’

  Angela kept quiet. Mother knew nothing about the country. Whenever they took her into the countryside around St Erick she was given to exclaiming over the views and the peace and quiet and then, if there was no village shop in sight, she was bored. But the country, or so she imagined, was clean and pretty and safe and therefore it had her approval. She had never, to Angela’s knowledge, put a pair of Wellingtons on and walked through a muddy field. She had hardly ever accompanied the rest of the family to Bodmin Moor, and when she did, she stayed in the nearest village while they went and climbed or walked. It was Father who really loved the country. ‘We used to have lovely runs,’ Mother was saying, ‘out all day among the fields and hills.’ But ‘runs’ were motorbike rides, roaring through the quiet they were supposed to relish, polluting the atmosphere they liked to think they savoured. ‘I’m a trouble to you,’ Mother suddenly said, her voice now sharp and firm whereas before it had wavered. ‘I should never have come—and now I’m ill it’s more work for you—I prayed and prayed I’d be all right and no bother to anyone and now look.’

  ‘You are no trouble,’ Angela said. ‘In fact, you being in bed makes me sit down and that’s a good thing. And you picked the right week—no teaching and the children j
ust come and go as they please.’

  ‘All this waiting on me,’ Mother said.

  ‘Well, I should wait on you. You’re my mother. If I can’t wait on my mother who can I wait on?’

  ‘I never waited on mine. I would have done, but she died so suddenly, so young, just like Aunt Sally. She was never old, my mother, she never came to this—she was spared this.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Angela said, ‘but then she missed a lot too—you have to look at it that way.’

  ‘Do I?’ Mother said, lower lip trembling.

  ‘Yes, you do,’ Angela said emphatically, ‘your mother never had the pleasure of seeing her grandchildren—not your children anyway. She never saw me. She never saw you bring up a healthy, happy family.’

  Mother was silent. She closed her eyes and then said, ‘Have you told your Father about me being like this?’

  ‘Of course—I had to—he’s cross with me for not looking after you better—for trailing you off to Woburn that day.’

  ‘I felt ill before we ever set off.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you say?’

  ‘Oh, I’m always feeling ill—it might have been nothing, just the usual—and I’m always being a spoilsport, I’m sick of it.’

  ‘It was a rotten outing anyway—and Father is right—I should have looked after you better.’

  ‘You look after me beautifully—you’ve been so good—so—’ Angela jumped up. Mother’s eyes were full of tears.

  ‘Will you speak to Father this evening on the telephone?’ she said.

  But when evening came, after a day in which she had been much brighter and stayed awake and reasonably alert, Mother was asleep again, heavily, her mouth open and snores trumpeting forth. Father did not take the news kindly.

  ‘You’re sure she’s just asleep?’ he said accusingly. ‘You’ve had a good look at her, eh?’

  ‘Father, the doctor has been and she’s been sitting up this afternoon and talking and she’s had some food.’

  ‘Good. I’ll have her home the minute she’s fit though. Told her this racketing round would do her no good but she’s that stubborn and then that doctor of ours encouraged her. Tell her Mrs Collins is asking after her, and Mrs Graham and everyone at the ladies’ circle—and there’s a letter from Tom, now what shall I do with it? That’s the point.’