‘That sounds good. I hope everything goes well. I’m sure it will. I exect things have improved since Mother’s day.’
‘It’s still a very serious operation. I’m glad Mother was spared knowing I had to have it, anyway.’
Angela’s irritation was so great she crashed the receiver down when she had said goodbye with unnecessary vigour. At every turn she was being accused of being a stranger to Mother, somebody on the fringe of her existence who, unlike Father and Valerie and Aunt Frances and heaven knew how many more people, was not privy to her innermost secrets. What she could not decide was whether it made any difference—whether there was a lesson to be learned from this discovery which might vitally affect her determined attempt to mould her relationship with Sadie differently.
Seventeen
ANGELA RECEIVED A letter from Aunt Frances the following week, shrieking guilty conscience in every line. She had only meant well, Frances said, but on second thoughts she realized she might have gone about it the wrong way—she hoped Angela had not taken offence—she hoped she had not upset her and trusted that they would soon meet again and be friends for her Mother’s sake. Mary had always been proud of Angela, Frances said, and really she had done very well and she had not meant to imply otherwise. In a postscript she asked if she might have any photographs of her mother that Angela might find among Mary’s things. Mary, being the only one left in St Erick, had kept them all when their parents’ house and contents were sold.
It was a job Angela had meant to do but had put off, not through any feelings of distress but because it needed time she had not been able to spare. She and Valerie, sorting through all the stuff in Mother’s double-fronted mahogany wardrobe, had come across two shoe boxes full of letters and cards, all crammed in without any regard for order or tidiness, which was hardly Mother’s way. ‘You take them,’ Valerie said, ‘take them home with you and sort them out—you never know what you might find—Father would only burn them without looking at them. I don’t want to do it—it would only upset me to see Mother’s writing. It wouldn’t upset you, would it?’ ‘No,’ Angela had said, and she had emptied the contents of both boxes into a plastic carrier bag and put it at the bottom of her suitcase and brought it home. It had stayed in the suitcase, under her bed, ever since, untouched.
Untouched, but not unthought of. Every day, when she made the bed, Angela invariably stubbed her toe on the suitcase, which stuck out a fraction from underneath. It was a silly place to keep it, but she could never be bothered to carry it up to the loft where the other trunks and boxes were kept. It was handy where it was at the rate she had been using it. She would curse the suitcase as she kicked against it and then think of Mother’s papers still inside. They were unlikely to contain anything of interest—Mother’s hoarding instincts had lost out years ago to Father’s stronger urge to tear and destroy all communications as they were received. ‘Clutter,’ he would say, and into the ever-burning fire would go the postcards and wedding announcements and newspaper cuttings which Mother would rather like to have kept. Against such odds it was unlikely much could have been accumulated—but then that made the little that had been secreted all the more valuable. Angela was intrigued and yet, in spite of the assurance she had given Valerie, apprehensive. The sight of Mother’s things did upset her, against all reason. It was not that she feared intimate revelations so much as pathos, an inescapable pathos which might be even more unbearable than Aunt Frances’ mischievous gossip.
She wanted none of that. The shabby mementoes were dangerous to her peace of mind and yet when Aunt Frances requested the photographs she was almost glad to be forced to overcome her reluctance. She waited for a particularly sunny, hot Sunday afternoon to go into her bedroom and retrieve the carrier bag and then she deliberately went out into the garden where almost the entire family were doing different things and the noise—from which she was usually so keen to escape—was considerable. The last thing she wanted to do was open the bag on a cold, rainy day when she was alone and the atmosphere conducive to melancholy.
Tim was playing in a paddling pool long since too small for him. Angela could not look at the yellow inflatable plastic pool, a mere three feet in diameter, without remembering Sadie sitting in it, aged one, half scared of the extremely shallow water in it. It was on its last legs. Tim only dragged it out of the garage each year to wreck it further. He filled it to the brim and then jumped into it from the garden wall sending spray everywhere. Max was out, but Saul and one of the next door Benson boys were perched high up in the big elm tree at the bottom of the garden firing arrows at all the shed roofs they could see. Ben was cutting down an apple tree that had suddenly rotted and the high-pitched whine of the electric saw he had borrowed to do the job would normally have irritated Angela into rushing inside.
It was beside Sadie that Angela sat. Sadie lay sunbathing, as far away from all the juvenile activity as it was possible to get. She was lying on a bright orange towel, on her stomach, some books propped up in front of her in a desperate last-minute attempt to revise for ‘O’-levels. Angela did not sit beside her without hesitation. She placed the wickerwork chair she had brought out with her beside the end of Sadie’s towel and did not sit down upon it until Sadie had looked up. If she had turned and looked and saw it was her mother and looked away again without comment then Angela, respecter of privacy above all else, would have moved at least a few feet away. But Sadie said ‘Oh hello,’ and actually smiled and Angela was gratified to feel welcome.
She made a business of settling down, of arranging the cushions on the rather uncomfortable chair properly, of divesting herself of her jacket, of putting cream on her shoulders. It was really very hot. Sadie, in her skimpy bikini, and Tim, in his bathing shorts, were the only ones sensibly clad. Later, they might all go and swim. Fretfully, she fidgeted with the string she had tied round the bag, aware of the scene around her. Too aware. Each and every sound seemed magnified and important, creating an effective barrier against the past contained on her lap. She found herself looking round all the members of her family as though seeking reassurance, as though challenging any ghosts that might arise from that threatening livid green Marks and Spencer’s plastic bag.
‘What are you doing?’ Sadie asked, raising herself up onto one elbow as she half turned to look at Angela, sucking a piece of grass, her sunglasses on her forehead in imitation of girls in magazines.
‘Sorting out Grandma’s papers,’ Angela said.
‘Anything interesting?’
‘I don’t suppose so. I haven’t started yet. I’ve been meaning to do it for months. It’s probably just boring rubbish.’
‘Can’t be more boring than this,’ Sadie said, and turned back to her book.
‘What is it?’ Angela said, knowing she was seeking any diversion.
‘“Great Expectations”.’
‘That’s not boring—it’s a wonderful book.’
‘To you maybe. He just rambles on—acres and acres of stuff—he’s so long-winded—I wouldn’t mind the story if he’d stop padding it out. It sends me to sleep.’
Angela looked down at Sadie as she feigned sleep. Her back was beautifully brown, her skin as dark as a Spaniard’s on her body and yet as fair as Mother’s had been on her face. The combination was curious—such pink cheeks and soft golden tanned brow against the deep dark colour of the rest of her. Angela, who burned easily, envied her.
Cautiously, she emptied the contents of the bag into her lap. The pile of papers was heavy, causing her gingham skirt to sag between her knees. She put her knees together and roughly organized the heap upon them into some sort of order. Packets first, of which there were several, done up with dastic bands. The first contained Mother’s reports, from the Higher Grade School, three of them, for forms I, II and III. Conduct 100 out of 100, Punctuality 100 out of 100, Algebra 100 out of 100, Scripture 100 out of 100, Cookery 100 out of 100. Angela smiled—such a student Mother had been. But Needlework was only 60 out of 100 and Drawing
45 out of 100—the weaknesses had remained the same, to mortify her. Position in the class was first out of forty-three every time. The headmaster, Mr R. C. Wolfe, B.Sc., could not speak too highly of this talented pupil’s industry, application and intelligence. She was a pleasure to teach. She would go far. Angela folded up the reports. Mother had gone nowhere at all.
‘Here,’ she said, tossing the reports to Sadie, ‘read these.’ Sadie read them and laughed, betraying more interest than Angela would have thought possible.
‘Incredible,’ she said. ‘I mean, Grandma was so brilliant—I never realized.’
‘Brilliant and wasted.’
‘Why wasted?’
‘She never made any use of her brains. There were no opportunities. Her father died and she left school at fourteen and went into an office and that was that.’
‘You’re a snob,’ Sadie said, ‘People can be quite happy in offices—we don’t all want to be blue stockings. Anyway, she got married and left the office so it came right in the end.’
‘Did it?’
‘Aw, Mum—don’t go all enigmatic. I can’t stand it. Look at the rest of the stuff, go on.’
Angela picked up the next bundle. Music exam cards. National College of Music, London, Feb. 13 and 14 1920, Reg. no. 9511. Subject of Examination—Piano. Solo 39 out of 40, Studies 23 out of 25, Scales 20 out of 20, Viva Voce 14 out of 15. Result—Distinction, Grade—4. Year after year Mother gained a Distinction and never after the day she married Father touched a piano again. It regularly upset her that neither Angela nor Valerie had ever had a single lesson in their lives. ‘Where,’ she would say, face wretched, ‘where could we put a piano even if we had one?’ Only years later had Angela wondered why they could not have used Grandmother’s piano, stuck unused in the front parlour their entire visiting childhood.
The next packet contained receipts. From P. Jones, Painter, Decorator, Paperhanger Etc. Estimates free—jobbing work promptly attended to—high class pattern books. 1 Quart Gloss Brown 9s 6d, i Gill Gloss White Enamel 3s 6d, 67 yards Bordering @ 9d a yard. Three Large Packets of Whiting is 6d. Total for said decoration £3. 3s 5d. Yours and oblige. Five pounds for settee, deliver Friday. All paid and stamped and kept. Evidence of halcyon days—decorators in and new items of furniture before the decades of doing it themselves and never buying so much as a bench began. Angela did not finish looking at them. She bundled them up hastily.
‘I really can’t bear to look at these,’ she said, ‘they’re too pathetic.’
‘They’re just bills,’ Sadie said, looking at a few. ‘What’s pathetic about prices for things?’
‘It isn’t that. It’s the image it gives me—like a little girl playing at houses—such a good little girl too, who wasn’t going to make her world how she wanted it to be. She soon gave up, anyway. She used to say the money just went and there was never enough of it for even small luxuries so why bother keeping trace of where it went—but I knew she wanted to really. She wanted to be the sort of lady who had an account at the local grocer’s and another at the butcher’s and a nice, shiny, hard-backed red book to write her expenditure down in. Instead of that it was trailing round for bargains and cheap offers, hating it.’
‘Plenty of rich people do that,’ Sadie said.
‘That’s not the point.’
‘You’re always saying that—you’re so sure you’ve got the point and nobody else can have any other that could possibly be right. You’re so determined Grandma was always miserable and unlucky and we all had to feel sorry for her all the time. Maybe you had it all wrong.’
‘I only wish I had,’ Angela said.
She picked up the next bundle—certificates of one sort or another—a baptism card, a confirmation certificate signed by the Bishop, wedding and birth certificates, death certificates, all rapidly discolouring. The last packet was a heavy manilla envelope, Sellotaped across the top. Inside was a collection of greetings cards, from herself to Mother—cards sent on her birthday and her wedding anniversary, garish cards of country cottages with roses round the door, of vases of impossibly grouped flowers, of highly made-up ladies in old-fashioned crinolines. Sometimes they had satin ribbons threaded through them, or bits of embroidery in the corners. They all had extravagant verses—
‘I’m counting my blessings and they’re without number
I know that I owe them to you
You’ve taught the meaning of true love and kindness
Of real joy and happiness too.
If I tried to tell you of my deep affection
I never could make myself clear
So I pray that God’s blessings be upon you
My own Sweetest Mother Dear.’
They were all signed in her own large, slightly backhand writing that had stayed with her until hand-writing lessons at the Grammar School had changed it into a neater italic style. ‘To Mummy, with best wishes for a very happy birthday with all my love and deep affection from Angela.’ Angela smiled slightly at the underlining and the ‘deep affection’. How old had she been? Seven or eight. The messages got more suffocating still later on, rising to a crescendo on the last card of all when she supposed she was twelve—‘To the most wonderful Mummy, with every nice fragment, that makes the world.’ She stared at that incomprehensible inscription—what had she meant? She must have thought such a high-flown mysterious sentiment very sophisticated. The card it was written on—‘To Wish You Every Joy’—had a tiny notebook pinned onto the front which said, ‘A Special Prayer for You Today’. Angela opened it, a smile already on her lips.
‘What memories this day will hold
For you and me dear Mother
Of the many moments we have been
So close to one another
And through them all you’ve shown a love,
So patient and so kind,
You gave me all the happiness
That one could ever find
And though I can’t repay you
In full for all you’ve done
I can but try to make this day
A truly happy one.
So let me pray for perfect peace
Good health for us to share
A future of contentment
For Mother dear so fair.’
She cried. That deprecating smile still on her lips, she wept as she had known that at some time she would, silently, copiously, in the middle of a bright summer’s afternoon.
‘Oh, Mum,’ Sadie said, noticing, sitting up, ‘for heaven’s sake.’
Angela passed the cards to her and lay back on her chair, her eyes dazzled by the sun on her tears. Sadie looked through them all and laughed. ‘But these are just funny,’ she said, ‘they’re priceless—hysterical—you had such awful taste.’
‘They’re painful,’ Angela said, ‘all that exaggerated passion—hurling myself at her—so hungry for her affection.’
‘Didn’t she give it?’
‘Yes, yes of course she did—she was always warm and loving—I spent hours on her knee being cuddled—so gentle, always—but it was never enough—and then look what happened—it stopped and nothing took its place until I met Ben—no wonder she was sad.’
‘But that’s natural—people don’t drool over their mother when they grow up, do they? You don’t get grown women sitting on their mother’s knee, now do you?’
‘No, but it should change into friendship. You can still be close and intimate—’
‘Sounds dreadful to me.’ Sadie stretched and yawned. Angela had stopped crying. ‘I must get my front brown now.’ She lay on her back and closed her eyes and smiled. ‘At least I won’t sit with all my cards to you crying over them in twenty years’ time. Never sent any, did I?’
‘One or two homemade ones, when you were small.’
‘You haven’t kept them, have you?’
‘Of course. The drawings were good.’
‘Well I’m amazed. I would have guessed I’d never sent a single one—I don’t go in for that sort of t
hing.’
‘No.’
‘Did you mind? I mean, did you feel disappointed when you didn’t get cards from me?’
‘Not really.’
‘That means you did. Well, I’ll send you one next year—remind me,’ and Sadie laughed at her own wit. She flicked a fly off her face. ‘Thank god we’re not like that in this family.’
No good asking her what she meant. Already their conversation had been longer and more amiable than it had been for months. Sadie was mellowing. The rudeness, the curtness, the restless rushing from place to place with never more than an hour at home was giving way to an easier and altogether more likeable pattern. The day before she had actually asked if there was anything she could do. It made Angela ridiculously happy. As she lay back in her chair that feeling of happiness came over her as strong as wine flowing through her veins and she felt a little drunk with it. Sadie’s compliments were obscure but nevertheless unmistakable. When she had said ‘thank god we aren’t like that in this family’ Angela knew she was intended to feel flattered. Sadie condemned her relationship with Mother only to approve her own relationship with Angela.
Neither of them spoke. The boys’ shouts and screams and the shrill singing of Ben’s saw still filled the air but it seemed very peaceful to Angela. She looked down at Sadie through half-open eyes, furtively, and saw that she was lying prone, quite calm, neither foot nor hand moving and her face blank of all expression. But she might not feel as relaxed as she looked. Perhaps during the last half hour she had dealt with Angela’s distress more cunningly than it appeared. I was crying, Angela remembered, and visibly upset, and with the slightest encouragement—a single misplaced word or look—I would have run into the house and locked myself into my room. Sadie had coped. She had helped. It was too easy to dismiss her handling of the situation as an accident. She had for so long now assumed that there was no bond between herself and her daughter—that she had failed in that relationship as surely as her own mother had, if for different reasons—that it was a shock to realize that there was any feeling there at all. Sadie had just congratulated her on not creating the conditions Mother had created. She had said ‘thank god we aren’t like that in this family’ and whichever way she interpreted it Angela could only conclude that Sadie was glad and that she thought credit was due.
Mother Can You Hear Me? Page 32
