Mothering Sunday

by Noel Streatfeild

  Anna looked at the flowers in her hand. Yes, she had picked enough. She glanced at her watch. She would go and see how that rhododendron was getting on. It was the only one to have come badly through the winter. A pity for it was certain that as it was bought by Felicity it was expensive. Anna’s face softened. Dear Felicity! Would there be a parcel from her for Mothering Sunday? If there was it would only be because Virginia or George had reminded her. There never had been a Mothering Sunday which had been remembered by Felicity unaided. Anna could see her as a child. “Next Sunday! Mummie it can’t be! It was only Ash Wednesday last week. Why didn’t somebody tell me?” Why didn’t somebody tell me. Such ordinary words but somehow so entirely Felicity’s. But when somebody tried to, and so loving a somebody at a heart-rending moment, what had it done? Built a wall of reticence behind which Felicity had retired, only darting out occasionally, and then a strange Felicity, chattering so there could be no chance for real talk, even darting off to gossip to Doe rather than be alone with her mother. Anna had sometimes toyed with the idea of writing, only what could you write? There were no words in which a mother could say to a daughter, “I did not want to know what I was forced to know and I’ll never mention the subject to you,” for even that would be resented. That her mother, of all people, should know would never be forgiven. But Felicity still loved her and so, as if to comfort her for the loss of herself, she had shared Virginia with her. Virginia! Virginia was everywhere. She had helped to plant the sick rhododendron Anna was on her way to see. “Give it lots and lots of leaf mould, Smith. It says on the label it’s a very unusual plant.” Smith was a dour old man, and did not like interference in the various gardens he looked after, but he did not mind advice from Virginia. The garden was full of plants which he and Virginia had planted together. There was still the remains of what Virginia had christened the bluebell glade, planted in an unlikely spot on her eighth birthday. A few bluebells still flowered and probably would again this year. The water butt was crimson because Virginia had painted it. “Why always green, Grannie? Red is so gay.” There were at least half a dozen nesting boxes, three bird tables and two bird baths all erected by Virginia. What did Virginia think when, after treating the house as her second home, suddenly she was not welcome? She would, at first of course, have asked, thinking it was some temporary hitch, if Doe had a cold or some such inconvenience. When had it dawned on the child she was not wanted? Children were so sensitive and Virginia more than most, and fourteen was such a hyper-sensitive age. Long, long ago she would have known that her mother was not on easy terms with her grandmother. Did Virginia think the sudden closing of the house to her had to do with that? Anna prayed not. Felicity’s family was so detached. George going off every day to the Stock Exchange, and to his club on his way home; over the years learning not to anticipate knowing where his wife or daughter might be, and certainly not expecting them to be home to welcome him. Felicity, loving her daughter but vague of course. “Did I say I’d go with you, darling? But I’d love to only I didn’t know to-day was Wednesday. I thought it was Tuesday. Why didn’t somebody tell me?” Upstairs Virginia and Miss Selby working, or Virginia alone reading, playing her gramophone or just dreaming. Of course Felicity was right, it was a nuisance having a governess at the table for every meal and probably having Miss Selby by the day was a sensible plan, but it did seem, from what Anna could pick up, that Virginia was a great deal alone. Of course there was dear Nannie, but even the best and most sensible of Nannies, when they were kept on officially to look after the linen and mend clothes, were aggravatingly possessive towards their ex-charges. Virginia loved Nannie but she got on her nerves sometimes. It was very worrying not to see the child. Anna did not believe in too much time on a child’s hands. When Virginia was with her she let her select what she would do but she saw to it that she was always doing something. In her own home there seemed, from the sound of it, so many evenings when she was at a loose end. “Oh, I play the gramaphone. Yes, sometimes I read, sometimes just nothing.” Anna, gazing back towards her own upbringing, lit by Miss Macintosh’s fervent belief in what the devil did with idle hands, could not actually remember a time, except during illness, when any one in her home idled. Her mother knew every woman should grow up able to do everything in her home better than those she employed. Between Miss Macintosh’s lessons and her mother’s insistence on hours in the kitchen, stillroom, laundry, linen room and all the rest of it Anna and her sisters were endlessly busy, but they had been happy. When she had married Harry she had reason to bless her mother. Harry, younger son of a family used to luxury, liked everything done as it had been done in his home. It was hard enough for him, just because he foolishly fell in love, to give up the gay, wandering life he adored and settle down to work for his rich cousin, Tom, without as well having a home lacking in the comforts, even luxuries, to which he was used. Though Harry had been dead for thirty-five years it contented Anna to remember that with an inadequate staff, and babies just arrived or on the way, Harry had lacked nothing. His clothes laid out just as he liked them, always brushed, always pressed. No matter whom he brought to the house, or how many, there was food of which he could be proud, wine served at the right temperature, blazing fires, cigars to hand. Harry was not interested in how things happened as long as they happened, or he must have marvelled. Fortunately he accepted that a woman might have duties to see to and, having greeted her husband’s friends, Anna could leave them to their sherry until dinner was served. If he could have seen the kitchen! His wife, her evening gown pinned up and covered by an apron, at her stove, cooking and issuing the orders. “Chop that finely Agnes, and then see to the burgundy.” “Don’t cry about it, Kathleen, sweep up the pieces and then get out some more glasses.” “Oh, nurse, I’m afraid your supper tray will be a little late again to-night but Mr. Caldwell has brought some gentlemen back to dinner.” “Kathleen, the basting spoon, please.” “Yes, Agnes, I’m ready for that now for the sauce.” It was before the days of make-up for everybody, so just as dinner was being dished up she would run to the scullery and wash her hands in scented soap she kept there for the purpose, and then stand for one moment outside the back door to cool her face, which was flushed from the stove. Then into Harry and his friends just in time for Kathleen’s nervous “Dinner is served.”

  Anna had not brought up her girls as she and her sisters had been brought up. Partly the times had changed but the real reason was in herself. It was three years after Harry died before she used her heart. She bought the house, arranged everything for the children, lived, ate, even laughed, but where were those three years? Spent in a nightmare of dodging memories. She could not look at a photograph of Harry; could not see a thing he had touched; could not speak to a man who even by an inflection of voice reminded her of him. Harry died in March and war was declared that August. It shamed her now to realise the appalling suffering that had gone on all around her; the casualty lists; so many names she knew; so many husbands of her friends and she felt nothing. Then suddenly Henry was commissioned and, appalled, she had woken up. Henry was no longer a boy; he had grown up; he had taken extra military training at Eton and to her he was still the fifteen-year-old he had been when his father died. Of course it was not like that really; you did not live and be unconscious at the same time, but when Harry died of pneumonia she had come to a standstill, even physically; no part of her had functioned normally. When Henry told her of his commission, though he must often have spoken of it before, it was as if land blossomed again after a long freeze. Anna had looked round. Jane was fifteen and running the family and the house. Margaret thirteen. Felicity eight and baby Tony three. She was filled with remorse; how neglectful she had been! How wrapped in herself! She had said as much and found none of the children appeared to understand what she was talking about. Her mother’s and even more, Miss Macintosh’s training, and as well presumably something in herself, had carried her along; she had done the right things and said the right things. But she knew where s
he had drifted and from that moment took a grip of herself, especially of her mind. She unpacked the photographs of Harry, hung them on her walls and forced herself to look at them. She had his grave photographed and forced herself to look at that too. “You’re dead,” she said, to the photograph, “under that stone. Dead, dead, dead! I’m never going to see you again. I’ve got to bring up our children without you. I’ve got to live without you. I’ve got to live without the physical love you taught me to need.” From that moment she had put Harry behind her and given herself to her children. Henry was her first business; he was off to France which, at that time, was almost certain death for a second-lieutenant. How was Henry facing that thought? Harry had said, “We’ll have to manage a bit of money later on to let Henry loose in Paris. He’ll need the corners knocked off him or he’ll grow up a prig.” Henry went to France, though not to Paris, and should have had the corners knocked off him in a way Harry had not imagined, but Harry’s cure for corners was probably the right one. The war finished. Henry was still alive and still inclined to be a prig; at least so Anna thought, but you cannot give just an outward showing of love, with no inward intuitive love for three years, and three vital years at that, and know your son. What had Henry suffered in the war? What did Henry feel about anything? Anna did not know then and had never known. She had watched him climb ladder after ladder, growing more pompous at every rung, and she knew nothing about him. When she spoke of her children by their surnames to Doe she was showing her that to speak of her employer’s children by their christian names was an impertinence, but this was not the case when she spoke of Sir Henry. She knew it was strange but in her mind she never thought of him as Henry; he was always Sir Henry.

  The new rhododendron was against the fence which divided Anna’s property from her neighbour’s. Fred Pickering had spent his life manufacturing safes; bigger, stronger, more burglar-proof safes each year, but still just safes; useful, even magnificent, but without whimsy and Fred had a soul for whimsy. “When I retire, M’ria,” he had said at intervals to Mrs. Pickering, “we’ll have a snug little place and I’ll let meself go. If I want anything, no matter how fancy, I’ll have it, and the same goes for you, me old dear.” Fred had retired and built his snug little place, and he had let himself go. He studied books on topiary and then improved on what he had read. He had a yew tree and this he clipped into an armchair. “Great, isn’t it, Mrs. Caldwell?” “Sit right down and lean back. Not many people can say ‘Have a nice sit down in me yew tree.’” He had green fingers and his garden blazed with flowers from early spring until the first frosts, but his flowers were of secondary importance. From behind each plant gnomes peeped, flying fairies hung from his trees and shrubs, plaster rabbits sat in rings on his lawn, plaster frogs bordered his pond, concealed lights lit up fairy grottoes and concealed switches turned on musical boxes; his greenhouse had contorting glass at each end. “Nothing like a good laugh, Mrs. Caldwell.” He had been a fat little man when he had first become Anna’s neighbour; now he was a thin, white, wrinkled little man. People said to Anna, “Oh, do you know Mr. Pickering? Extraordinary little man with all those awful things in his garden,” but Anna did not see Fred Pickering like that. When the Pickerings had first arrived she had called. Fred had been out but M’ria, anxious, twitching, scattering her aitches right and left, had been at home. It was summer and Anna had asked to see the garden, partly because where there was a garden you always did ask to see it, partly because M’ria would surely be happier walking than sitting on the edge of her chair. All the whimsies had not in those days arrived but there were plenty. M’ria pointed them out. “There’s one of those gnomes again behind that lily.” “Those rabbits are only a beginning; Fred reckons to ’ave no end of a set-up, he’s ’aving toadstools, made as well.” Anna smiled and said gentle, admiring things, and was entertained; she had never before known a garden full of oddities. M’ria saw or felt amusement behind Anna’s words, and something, either loyalty to Fred or a dawning liking for Anna, emboldened her to speak. “Fred’s Dad was killed when ’e was seven, the eldest of six, two being twins. That was the end of being a kiddie for him. ‘You’ll ’ave to be the man of the ’ouse now,’ his mother said. She was a muddler from what I saw of ’er. Worked in the safe factory Fred’s Dad did and there was a pension, but she wasn’t a good manager; always short she was and whining to Fred. He was a good boy; delivered papers, ran errands, looked after the younger ones and that, and as soon as he was old enough got a job in the firm and done wonderful. Looked after his mother he did, Mrs. Caldwell, till the day she died.” M’ria did not mention them but Anna could see a trail of whining, ill-spelt letters begging for this, demanding that. She had smiled her understanding and M’ria, losing her nervousness, had gone on. “But for all he did so well Fred wasn’t really willing to grow up so young, if you get my meaning. He never had time to play, not after his Dad was taken; he never complained but he never forgot neither; he’s always been a bit boylike and he always planned that when he could retire he’d have what he missed, so to speak.” M’ria shot an anxious glance at Anna. “You think it funny, I daresay?” Anna was thinking how understanding of M’ria to see all that, and, humbly, how unlikely it was that she would have seen so clearly and sympathised so thoroughly if there had been a Fred in her life. She felt M’ria had spoken more openly than was her custom and if she did not say the right thing she would leave her self-conscious and abashed. “I’m glad he has everything now. I’m glad he had the ability to remember what he wanted and what he had missed. I have five children, Mrs. Pickering; my husband died when the youngest was a baby. I failed, through thinking of myself, to give them all they wanted. I wonder if they will remember what they wanted and find it for themselves in the end?” M’ria could not follow this. Mrs. Caldwell had money and where there was money a child could have what it wanted within reason. Didn’t she know! Fred had never let her children go short of anything for long, but Anna had put her mind at rest and, in doing so, had left M’ria with a feeling that should she need her Anna would be a friend. Yet when M’ria most needed a friend she had been unable to ask for help. The second world war, through which so many millions of less balanced people than M’ria passed more or less intact, broke M’ria. Both she and Anna were overlaid with refugees and it was some weeks after the war had started before Anna had time even to ask how M’ria was faring. Then one day, hanging some of her young evacuees’ washing out to dry, she saw across the fence M’ria staring at her. She called out a cheerful greeting and was surprised at getting no reply but a loud, utterly unamused, laugh. After a minute M’ria sidled up to the fence and looked at Anna out of the corners of her eyes; her lips were slack and moved without making words. At last she became conscious of Anna’s pitying eyes. She made an obvious effort to grip her straying wits. She held her head. “I get so confused, Mrs. Caldwell. There’s so many of them, and Fred and me have been quiet so long. I seem like I can’t stand it. Then there’ll be bombs . . .” her voice trailed away, her scared eyes clung to Anna for a second, then she gave another of her unamused, vacant laughs and walked away. Anna wanted to do something, but what? She could not go to Mr. Pickering and talk about nervous breakdowns. He must know if there was anything wrong. She did ask the doctor if he had seen Mrs. Pickering lately, but he had not and was rushed off his feet and was not looking for extra patients. He asked why and Anna said, choosing her words with care, that she seemed strained, which he had brushed aside with “Who isn’t these days?” Anna could say no more; you cannot order the doctor to visit your neighbours. Then one night bombers passed on their way to a raid. One pilot lost his way and unloaded his bombs on the woods and village half a mile from Anna’s and the Pickerings’ houses. Anna was in the hall serving cocoa to her evacuees, whom she had put under the stairs, when she heard the screams. She left someone in charge and ran outside. There was a bright moon and by it Anna could see M’ria. She was running in circles, her hands over her ears; she screamed as she ran. Fr
ed was trying to calm her. “M’ria, it’s Fred. It’s over now. They won’t come back.” Anna saw he could not manage alone. She came into the Pickerings’ garden and took charge. M’ria had not a stitch on. Anna said calmly, “Get a coat or something, Mr. Pickering, it’s chilly.” While Fred was away she talked to M’ria as she would to a frightened child. It did seem as if M’ria could still recognise a friend, for she ran less frantically and her screams softened a shade. When the coat came Anna was able, not to put it on to her but to throw it round her, and to persuade her towards the house. “I hear your evacuees have all left,” she said conversationally to Fred. “So fortunate.” That choice of words was comforting to Fred. It had seemed to him a major shame that his M’ria should be stark naked in the garden, and had there been evacuees looking on he did not know how he would have borne the shame for her, but Anna only thought it fortunate they were not there; nothing more dramatic than that. “Now what Mrs. Pickering needs,” Anna went on, “is something to make her sleep. Would you ring the doctor and explain, Mr. Pickering?” But M’ria needed more than a sleeping draught. They did between them get her into bed but she had lost all control; it was hopeless. “She must be certified right away,” the doctor said, and rang for another doctor and an ambulance.

  Rumours ran round the neighbourhood as to what had happened, but the raid was far more interesting than Mrs. Pickering, and what was one mad old woman when three young ones had been killed? Only Anna and the doctor knew the whole story. After a time only Anna knew how Mrs. Pickering was getting on. Every Sunday Fred went to see her. “No, she doesn’t know me, Mrs. Caldwell. She looks queer, they don’t let her wear her teeth, you know. Lovely set she had and always kept them so nice.” “Not better, no. Laughed all the time to-day, she did. Better than when she cries. I know she doesn’t know where she is but I don’t like to see her cry. Of course it’s not real laughing, if you get my meaning.” Anna remembered M’ria’s laugh and inwardly shuddered. Had life got anything worse to offer than to see the person you loved reduced to a witless lump of flesh? How foolish, as well as shameful, was the fuss she had made at losing Harry. Harry, who had left her in his prime; handsome, witty, loving.