*
It’s a good meal. Bridget wanted it to be a Scottish meal in Grandma’s honour so there is haggis and neeps and tatties and several very sickly puddings which have nothing to do with Scotland but which she loved. And there’s whisky, best Highland Malt. As soon as we were in the door Dad said would the men like a whisky and Bridget said what about the women so they all had whisky. Dad said he only asked if the men wanted it because at real Scottish funerals it was only the men who went to the graveside; they came back chilled to the bone after most funerals and needed whisky. Bridget said it was amazing how men used tradition to exclude women. Dad just handed her the bottle.
She has drunk most of it but she doesn’t seem drunk. We’re still at the table and it’s two hours since we returned. Everyone seems to be waiting for something but I can’t imagine what. It’s very rare to have the whole family round a table (the whole family except for Stuart and Paula’s children, thank God). I can’t help noticing the physical resemblances between the McKays and their individual likeness to Grandma. It’s more in the facial expressions than the features and of course their very different colouring tricks the lazy eye into thinking they aren’t alike. Bridget is looking closely at everyone too. She says Grandma would have loved this. Everyone agrees. Bridget says she loved her family around her. Everyone agrees again. Bridget says it’s such a pity she hardly ever sat at a family table like this. Nobody says anything. Bridget asks, mock-innocent, when was the last time we all gathered like this? What event? What year? Can anyone remind her? No, nobody can. Bridget says it was such a simple thing, too. Grandma didn’t want gold-plated yachts or diamonds or luxurious penthouses or fur coats – all she wanted was her family around her. And she didn’t get it. Bridget raises her voice as she says her family were no bloody good to her in the end.
Looks are exchanged all along the line. Mum looks at Dad, Dad looks at the whisky bottle, Stuart looks at Paula. Nobody looks at Bridget. Everyone is ready to go. Stuart gets up first and thanks Mum for the meal and says he and Paula must go and pick up the boys. Bridget blows a smoke ring. Paula has gone for her coat. Stuart says, to nobody in particular, that he is glad it is all over and that we all did very well, very well. Bridget says praise from the mighty is praise indeed. Stuart should ignore her, but he doesn’t. He is standing beside Bridget’s chair. He touches her lightly on the shoulder and says he is grateful to her. Grateful! Bridget flinches, she asks what the hell he is grateful for. Stuart says for looking after Mum. It all fell on you, he says. Oh, so you noticed, Bridget retorts, that is a miracle. Well, Bridget says, you must be feeling very pleased now with Mum out of the way, with Mum obliging you by dying, conscience comfortable, is it? Stuart says that as a matter of fact no, it isn’t, it never was, but that he put up with it, his conscience, niggling away. He decided a long time ago he’d had enough and was going to have the courage of his convictions. Courage? Convictions? Bridget squawks the words. She says she didn’t know Stuart had either, it is news to her. Stuart says, quietly, that she likes to see things her way. Bridget snaps what way? Stuart says she liked to see him as a cold-blooded monster who didn’t love his mother and didn’t care what happened to her so long as it did not inconvenience him. Correct, says Bridget. Wrong, says Stuart. Dad interrupts to say they’ve both gone far enough and it is unseemly and we’ve all had a long day and we’re all upset – but he is silenced. Bridget says this is the first time Stuart has said anything interesting in his life and she wants to listen. She invites Stuart to continue. But Stuart says he’s finished, he’s had his say. Bridget says that in that case it didn’t make sense. Is Stuart saying he loved his mother? Yes, says Stuart, once. Oh, once, says Bridget, how funny, she thought love that meant anything lasted forever or is Stuart talking about men’s love? Stuart says it has nothing to do with being a man: he loved his mother once but it just seemed to fade at the same time as his mother’s for him faded.
Now he has done it. Bridget is on her feet, we all quail. She tells Stuart his mother never stopped loving him, how can he be saying these things. Stuart says no, it is Bridget his mother never stopped loving. He says Bridget could give because she received, it was an on-going thing all her life. Stuart says he and Charlie never got a look in from the moment they were grown-up. He says his mother didn’t like men, she saw them as enemies, as nuisances, as tyrants. She saw them as spoiling her life. She only liked women. And that, says Stuart, made a big difference. He tells Bridget not just to blame him for his so-called indifference to his mother: blame her too. Bridget says this is obscene, she cannot believe her ears and Stuart is mad. Stuart shrugs. Paula is signalling to him frantically. He says he’s going now and he’s sorry if he’s upset Bridget but it couldn’t be helped and then he kisses her. And he goes. And Bridget slumps into her seat, stunned.
*
After Stuart and Paula leave, everything is different. We clear the remnants of the meal away. It’s still early. Adrian goes out after worrying about whether it is appropriate (that funeral director’s language had been catching). Mum lights the fire and we all gather round it. Dad stays an hour or so and then leaves to do some telephoning. We three, Mum and Bridget and I, go on sitting there, drinking coffee. Bridget drinks gallons of it. She says she will stay the night if that is all right and Mum says of course, she’s been expecting her to. About nine o’clock Mum asks Bridget how she is feeling. Bridget says she’s fine, just tired. Mum persists. She says to Bridget that she hopes she is not blaming herself for how and where Grandma died or for her having died at all. Bridget smiles slightly. She says no, she isn’t thinking about that, there’s no point, though of course she does blame herself for all those things, how could she not. But what she is thinking about and what is depressing her is what Stuart had said. She’s worried that there is even the smallest grain of truth in what he said? The interrogative note was there in her voice.
Mum says she didn’t know Stuart as a boy. She didn’t know Charlie or Bridget either but I suppose that isn’t the point. Mum says, from what she’s heard, Stuart had a bad time as a child, what with his father’s death when he was twelve, a bad age because you understand so much, and then that move to Newcastle and then back again. Mum says Grandma always told her how good Stuart was as a boy, how he helped her and looked after her and had two jobs, papers and messages, at the shop and he gave her all he earned. Mum says she thinks maybe Grandma didn’t behave too well over Stuart’s divorce and Stuart was hurt. Bridget snaps that Stuart didn’t behave well either, that Grandma was quite right to be furious with Stuart. Mum says that that is her point, that Grandma made her disapproval clear and, however right it was, it angered and hurt Stuart. And then Grandma wasn’t very nice to Paula. Bridget laughs nastily. She says oh come on, my mother was nice to everyone, and anyway – Paula! Mum says firmly that Grandma was not nice to everyone, that she had her ways of being mean, maybe not very serious ways but they were there. Mum says Bridget never did realise how cliquey she and Grandma could be and how they terrified Paula. Bridget tells Mum not to be so bloody ridiculous, that Grandma couldn’t terrify a fly, that she was the kindest, gentlest, most harmless woman in the world. Mum says possibly, but she made Paula suffer. Bridget absolutely screams ‘suffer!’ Mum says Grandma was sly, she mocked Paula’s clothes, she made her feel even more inarticulate than she was, she didn’t treat her as a new daughter.
Mum has certainly roused Bridget from her lethargy. She is furious. She glares at Mum. She tells her that next thing she’ll be saying Stuart was right. Mum is quite plucky. She says Stuart may well be right about his relationship with his mother being determined by her and anyway he can’t be blamed, as Bridget is blaming him, for no longer adoring her. Mum says she actually quite admires Stuart for coming out with it because most men don’t. Their ‘love’ for their mother is only a nice memory, superseded by their love for their wife and children, but it isn’t done to say so. Mum says Charlie wouldn’t say it but she knows he feels it. But as for the other par
t of what Stuart says, Mum goes on, she doesn’t agree with that, she definitely doesn’t agree with how Stuart behaved towards his mother. He more or less abandoned her and that was cruel. He wanted her ‘put away’ years ago and he was wrong to want that when the quality of her life was still good. Mum says that kind of behaviour is no good, it negates all that has gone before. Bridget looks a little happier. This is more what she wants to hear.
Now Mum is trying to be encouraging. She reminds Bridget that it’s all over and her life can change. Mum says Bridget is free, that she can do what she wants without organising her life round Grandma. Days off will be real days off, nights no longer interrupted twice a week. Mum presses Bridget to say she’s glad about this. Bridget won’t. Bridget shrugs. Bridget says she never minded spending her days off with Grandma and she was hardly interrupted at all. Mum says Bridget lies through her teeth. She says Bridget is already romanticising the last five years. She asks her if she’s forgotten the fuss if she had to work late, the frantic phone calls to get a helper to stay? She asks why Bridget doesn’t remember moaning she couldn’t even read a line of a book all evening because of Grandma? Or her exhaustion on bath nights? Or the tedium of having things repeated over and over when she was tired? Or not being able to sleep until noon? Bridget says none of that really mattered. Mum says whether it mattered or not, it is over and you are free so relish it. ‘Relish what?’ asks Bridget. ‘Freedom,’ Mum says. Bridget repeats the word. She says she supposes that’s what it is. Mum says it certainly is to her, that she is going to capitalise on it at once, and that the biggest freedom will be not worrying about the next stage for Grandma. Mum says that in the end we were lucky and does Bridget realise that? Grandma went from being moderately, manageably senile to dying in a few months and that makes us lucky. Bridget should be glad.
Bridget isn’t. She says she can’t think of anything to be glad about. She says now Grandma is dead there is no one she feels ‘like that’ about. Mum asks like what. Bridget says she was so proud of Grandma, she just loved people to admire her. She says she supposes she was possessive and there isn’t anyone she wants to possess or be possessed by now. Mum says she thinks that is a very strange thing to say. She says Bridget talks of Grandma as though she, Bridget, was Grandma’s mother instead of the other way round. Bridget says not at all, Mum is getting carried away. Anyway, she doesn’t want to talk about it. Mum says fine, neither does she, what she wants to talk about is Bridget’s future. Bridget asks irritably what that means, what future, what is there to talk about for heaven’s sake. She will carry on as usual, what else? They never believed on her ward she’d leave, anyway, so rescinding her notice was easy, they were delighted. Mum says what about Karl. Bridget says so what about him. He’s still around, she still feels the same, nothing has changed there either. Mum reminds Bridget she’s forty-three. Bridget says she’s well aware of that, thank you. Mum says Bridget hasn’t even got a place to live that belongs to her, is she going to pay rent all her life? Bridget asks why not, she likes her flat, she has no desire at all to be a home-owner or -maker or any of those things. Nor has she any desire to marry or have children before it’s too late, well it’s too late already, really. Mum says does Karl mean nothing then, that she had hoped etc. Bridget says she knows what Mum hoped and it was her own fault for hoping. Mum says that there will be no gain from Grandma’s death for Bridget then. Bridget says no, no gain, only loss.
Then she goes to bed, leaving Mum and me. Mum is upset. She prods and prods the fire and frowns. She asks me what I think of how Bridget is reacting to Grandma’s death. I say that Grandma has only just died, I don’t even know how I’m reacting myself. It seemed so sudden. After all this time it’s a shock even though she’d been ill so long and was old. I say maybe Bridget is shocked. She doesn’t really seem to have taken it in. She hasn’t cried or anything. She doesn’t seem anything but the Bridget she’s always been. I tell Mum I don’t think she should have nagged Bridget about the future like that. I say she probably can’t bear to think about it, surely we don’t want her to think about it? Mum asks why not. I say that it doesn’t look too appetising to me, Bridget’s future. What will she have? Work? Oh, yes that’s good, it’s a real career and she loves it, it would be terrible if she didn’t have that, much, much worse. But what else? Did Bridget have masses of close friends? Did she hell. She had Karl and she’d just told us what she thought of him and how much he doesn’t mean to her. And she has us but how much is that? We’re not going to be a substitute, for Grandma. She doesn’t love us totally, completely, as she did Grandma. And I say to Mum that I wish she wouldn’t keep using words like lucky and glad and relief about Grandma dying, even if they’re true. I tell her I don’t like it, never mind Bridget. It’s horrible. Mum says she’s sorry. She says she was only being honest, that she feels lucky and glad and relieved now Grandma is dead. But she says she feels a coward too because now Grandma is dead she can ignore the problem of all the other Grandmas and she shouldn’t, she should be inspired to do something and she knows she isn’t going to. She’s going to dodge the issue now. It’s selfish but that’s what she is going to do. She doesn’t want to think about senile dementia or hear about it or read about it ever again. She isn’t an activist and she can’t help it. But somebody, somewhere, will have to do something soon. They’ll have to. We’ve tinkered around enough with the start of life, we’ve interfered with all kinds of natural sequences, and now we’ll have to tinker with the end. Mum says, ‘Your generation, Hannah, will have to have pro-death marches, you’ll have to stop being scared to kill the old.’ Will we?
*
Sunday lunch is abolished. Mum says so. She’s wanted to abolish it ever since Grandma went into hospital but she says she didn’t quite have the nerve. She has it now. Today she says, ‘No more Sunday lunches,’ and Dad and Adrian have a fit. Dad says it’s the highlight of his weekend. Mum says that is pathetic, and get another. Adrian says he’s always starving after his football and what will he do. Mum says she doesn’t know and cares less, that there will be food in the fridge and he must help himself. Adrian says all right he will, but it won’t be the same and he would have thought Mum would be the very one to want to keep an old tradition going. Mum says that the old tradition was that she spent all Sunday morning in the kitchen cooking the sort of meal she doesn’t even like to eat at a time of day when she is never hungry. It was a tradition kept up for Grandma’s sake because there were so few she was still able to appreciate and enjoy. Mum says she loathed the sight of the big hunks of meat Grandma loved, they made her feel sick, she would also rather have a tomato salad with a sprinkling of fresh basil and some good bread. Dad groans, he asks why can’t Mum keep a tradition going for him? He loves joints just as much as Grandma did, isn’t he worth a tradition? Mum says no, she’s had enough.
But what about Bridget? I ask Mum, what about Bridget? Where will Bridget go on Sunday if there’s no big lunch, no focal point? She will feel she hasn’t a family. Dad leaps on this, he says I’m quite right, that we have a duty to keep Sunday lunches going for Bridget’s sake. Mum says rubbish, Bridget prefers eating in the evening too. Dad brightens, he says he has misunderstood, if Mum means we will eat on Sunday evening instead of at lunch time, then that’s different, he can cope, he can adjust. But Mum says no, she doesn’t mean that. Sundays are going to be no-formal-meal-at-all days. Bridget will come on a weekday evening and have supper with us instead. Dad subsides back into gloom. Why does he mind so much? I can’t imagine. I’m glad. I never liked Sunday lunch anyway and without Grandma it would be a mockery.
So that’s it. There’s no one old in our family now. No more grandparents, no elderly relatives we’re close to. There’s no more of that hideous disintegration to watch. I can’t mourn the loss. I can’t even mourn Grandma, I would not truly wish her alive and here and round our Sunday lunch table. Not knowing what lay ahead of her. Even when she was reasonably compos mentis it was painful. She had no real life, not f
or ages. It can’t be meant, intended, that people should die like that, can it? I wonder if being religious makes it all simple and acceptable? If you can say everything is God’s will and he moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform as the Rev. McKay said? I suppose that’s a relief, if you’re a believer.
When my time comes I’m not going to allow it.
When my time comes I won’t trust to mystery.
When my time comes I will say I have had enough and go.
That is, if my time comes like Grandma’s time, if it is the same sort of time.
But if it is, I won’t be able to, will I?
Also available in Vintage
Margaret Forster
DIARY OF AN ORDINARY WOMAN
‘Extraordinary’
Observer
Margaret Forster presents the ‘edited’ diary of a woman, born in 1901, whose life spans the twentieth century. On the eve of the Great War, Millicent King begins to keep her journal and vividly records the dramas of everyday life in a family touched by war, tragedy, and money troubles. From the bohemian London to Rome in the 1920s her story moves on to social work and the build-up to another war, in which she drives ambulances through the bombed streets of London.
Here is twentieth-century woman in close-up, coping with the tragedies and upheavals of women’s lives from WWI to Greenham Common and beyond. A triumph of resolution and evocation, this is a beautifully observed story of an ordinary woman’s life – a fictional narrative where every word rings true.
‘A highly enjoyable read; well-informed, gripping . . . an overview of the period seen from the underside’
Sunday Telegraph
Have the Men Had Enough? Page 27
