Every Day Is Mother's Day (7 page)

“What’s this?” she said to the secretary.

The woman looked up resentfully. “Your messages.”

“This last one—Mr. Sidney. Who is Mr. Sidney?”

“A personal call, that was.”

Oh yes, Isabel thought. Colin. Who’s going to leave home for me. She sat down at her desk and took the evening paper out of her bag. She read of a car-crash and a dog that had drowned. She did not want to go home, did not relish the evening ahead of her. But then she did not look forward, either, to the next working day. There is something radically wrong with my life, she thought, that I have fallen to such vicious amusements; and such stretches of emptiness between them.

It was almost seven when Isabel arrived home. The house was a brick-built bungalow, ten years old, of a solid and uninspired design. The lamps burned at each side of the wrought-iron gates, but Mr. Field had not drawn the curtains. She put the car into the garage, and let herself in at the front door.

There were no lights on in the hall, and before she found the switch she caught her foot against something soft, lying beside the telephone table. She bent down and explored it with one hand. It was a plastic carrier bag, a small one full of laundry. A tablecloth—which had been clean, she thought—a few pairs of socks, one shirt. Token laundry, this. Damp blue powder clung to her fingertips. She flicked it off. Her heart began to beat faster. Anger and fear, she thought, fight, and flight. If
only we could ever do either. She tried to calm herself, standing with one hand against the wall. Mr. Field appeared at the top of the stairs.

“Is that you, Bella? You’re very late.”

“Just as well, it seems to me.”

He cringed at her tone.

“Come down here,” she said.

“I’ll make you a cup of tea. Oh Bella, please don’t work yourself up.”

He came down and stood before her, blinking and contrite, a man of seventy.

“You’ve been drinking,” she said.

“Just a nip.”

She kicked out viciously at the bag of laundry. “There’s nothing wrong with the washing machine.”

“Bella, I have to have some life. Your mother left me.”

“The launderette. Why?”

“Meet someone.”

“Anybody in particular?”

“No,” he mumbled. “But you can always find someone at the Washerama.”

Her mouth was dry. She could picture them, loose-mouthed women with bare blue legs, buttons hanging off their coats. It was in the autumn that you noticed them. Had they any homes to go to?

“I suppose you brought her back with you. Do you have to bring them here?”

“It’s too cold for the park. Be human, Bella.”

“Oh, I feel sorry for you, I really do, having to get a bundle of washing together. I suppose otherwise the attendant turns you out, does she?”

“They watch you. They’re mean old cows. But they can’t stop people talking to each other, can they? Lonely people, Bella, like your father.”

“Oh, don’t start with that pathetic tone. You nauseate me.
What happened to Woolworth’s café? That was favourite last year, wasn’t it?”

He turned away, moving slowly towards the kitchen. “I’ll put the kettle on,” he said.

“You disgust me,” she shouted after him. “Take the sheets off your bed and put them in the machine. I’m not going into your room.”

I always say that, she thought, but I shall have to go, and look at his clothes for lice. What can I do to stop him, whatever can I do? Unshed tears were choking her. She blundered into the living-room, snapped on the TV and slumped in front of it, staring without seeing, biting her lip till it bled.

“London Bridge is falling down,” Muriel sings, “bawling round, trolling frown.” One word is as good as the next. Her mother tells her she is going to have a child. She is making plans to sing to it.

When is it going to be born, Muriel wants to know. Tonight? You stupid, stupid girl, Evelyn says to her. She glowers. You should know that, not me. Despairing, she reminds herself how little comprehension Muriel has ever shown of past or future. Look, she said, you count, nine months. Nine months from the day you…got it.

There are two things she can do. Take Muriel to a doctor, or go to the Welfare and tell them what has happened. Lay the blame at their door, where it belongs. If she had stayed in the house with me, Evelyn thinks, she would have come to no harm, or comparatively little. If she does either of these things, it will be in an extremity. She is afraid that Muriel will be taken away. “Taken away,” she says. “There are places for people like you. There are places for girls who have babies and no husbands.” She thinks of the uniformed guards taking Muriel away, to shave her head and beat her. It is something she has often imagined. But then she imagines closing the door, finding
herself alone; alone with her companions. When Muriel follows her up the stairs at night, and she feels them creeping up, creeping up snapping from the bottom stair, she always plans that if they get too close she will put her hand on Muriel’s chest and push her slithering down to them, fat bait, something to lick their lips over.

Sunday: Sylvia cooked roast beef (she does it brown, a full twenty-five minutes per pound plus twenty minutes), roast potatoes, carrots, frozen peas: rhubarb crumble, at which she is a dab hand, and custard.

“Look,” Colin said, his hand half over the mouthpiece. “I can’t talk now. But why not Thursday?”

“Because Thursday is the writing class.”

“But you don’t really want to go there.”

“How do you know that I don’t?”

“You said you didn’t find any profit in it.”

“No, but much pleasure.”

“Isabel, please—look, I’m in the staffroom, I can’t talk.”

“Then what was the use of telephoning?”

“I wanted to fix something?”

“Well, then. But not Thursday.”

“It’s just that it’s such a good chance. Sylvia knows that I go out on Thursday.”

“Tell her you’re going out another night.”

He was awed by the simple terms in which she saw his predicament. “I—well, she might not just accept that.”

“That’s your problem.”

“Well—which night then?”

“Monday.”

“People don’t go out on a Monday. At the end of the week, that’s when they go out.”

“For pleasure, but not for business. You wouldn’t be going out for pleasure, would you, Colin?”

“No, that’s true. All right, I’ll think of something to tell her. Can we go to a film, would you like that?”

“Yes.”

“All right then, I’ll pick you up at half-past seven Monday, and we can have a drink first.”

“Fine,” she said. “Goodbye.”

“Isabel—”

But he had heard the click. He knew she had gone, and still went on calling her name. He stood still. He realised that her plan was better. He could see her on Monday, and on Thursday too. After the class they could go to the Duke of Norfolk. He would see her two evenings instead of one, and it was Friday already.

Where had she been last night? He hadn’t asked her. He could have raised the point, he could have said, ah, then why did you miss the class last night? But he hadn’t questioned her on that one. He’d been too relieved to hear her voice. She always seemed to be out, or engaged with a client. He rushed to the phone between lessons, piles of exercise books slipping about under his arm, wedging the receiver under his chin, trying to juggle his cigarettes and his lighter for a quick drag before the next forty-minute period. Sometimes Luther King House was engaged, solid, for hours. All the weary morning he rang her, through to spam fritters and steamed fruit pudding, and into the afternoon. Once he dropped a whole pile of books, and his colleagues looked up from their marking and card games, and he felt they had noticed he was agitated and red in the face. When he heard her voice at last he could hardly believe his luck was in; it seemed to him a miracle that she walked on the same pavements in the same town, that the line distorted her voice, like anyone else’s.

The tall and shady trees, the disconsolate sparrows huddling in the trees: these protected Evelyn and Muriel from observation. The oncoming winter stripped them of their shade, but because it was winter there was no need for Muriel to walk in the garden. By the end of October the plots were fenced by black arms held aloft, mourners from some more fervent culture; Brewer, Petty & Co. nailed up their signboard on 3 Buckingham Avenue, and Evelyn’s closest neighbours moved away. Sylvia remarked, when they next visited Florence, that the house would remain unsold until after Christmas; no one wants removals, she said, with Christmas upon us.

Evelyn gave Muriel some of her own old dresses. At five months, even six, Muriel didn’t show too much. She was tall, and ungainly at the best of times; her clothes had never been in the height of fashion. When in the end the dresses began to strain and pull in the middle, Evelyn went into the conservatory, and delved about among the boxes. She came out grey to the elbows with dust, lengths of fabric laid across her forearms.

She had found a pair of old blue curtains, very large. She hung them out on the line to get rid of the smell of must. When she brought them in they smelled of soil. Saxe-blue, she said, very nice. She took out a treadle sewing-machine and ran up a couple of garments for Muriel, two identical. She didn’t need a pattern. She could wear them turn and turn about. She wanted for nothing, Evelyn said.

Cards from the Welfare dropped through the letterbox; apart from the household bills, there was no other post. Muriel collected a stack of the cards. She held them in her hands and shuffled them until they were greasy and turned up at the corners. Evelyn took them from her in the end and burned them.

“Do you want to go to the doctor?” Evelyn asked. “Because if you do they’ll take it away when it’s born, and you’ll have nothing to show for it.”

Muriel seemed to have lost interest in life. She sat a good deal of the time with her eyes closed, her fingers in her ears. Then her fingers would pinch her nostrils closed; when Evelyn had first seen this trick she had been distraught. “What is the smell?” she had demanded, trying to drag Muriel’s hand away from her face. “What is the smell?”

Soon she understood that Muriel was enjoying one of her strange holidays from the world. There was nothing she could do until the girl repacked the tattered baggage of her personality and came home. Sinking into immobility, Muriel would allow Evelyn to manoeuvre her around like a piece of furniture, putting her wherever convenient. I don’t know how I am going to manage, Evelyn thought, if she is like this when the baby comes.

So Monday morning brought relief. Muriel was back. Her pale eyes travelled around the house, without interest, but more freely than of late. “You are being a good girl today,” Evelyn said kindly. Muriel got up and took herself upstairs to the lavatory.

Evelyn was in the kitchen when the knocking started up at the front door. Muriel heard it too. I know what is done, she thought, or what can be done, when that noise starts up. She remembered to rearrange her clothes, or to do as much rearrangement as was necessary under the enveloping blue dress. She watched her large feet going before her, placing themselves slightly sideways on each descending stair.

Evelyn snatched the pan off the stove. As she blundered down the hallway, she felt tiny malignant hands pull at her skirt and catch at her ankles. She could not, could not, make headway.

Her face contorted with effort and alarm. “Muriel!” Muriel turned her head, gave her a blank look, her hand on the catch of the front door; then a slow, spreading smirk. The door swung open, framing mother and daughter, as if they had come to open it together in an expansive gesture of welcome.

A young woman stood on the doorstep.

“I don’t think we’ve met,” she said. “Isabel Field, Social Services.”

As she said this, she put one foot over the threshold. Presumptuous, Evelyn thought. For a moment she moved forward to block the doorway; stepped back just as the girl’s eyes began to widen in surprise.

“Delighted,” Evelyn said. “I can’t think why we haven’t met.”

Standing in the hall, the girl unwound a long woollen scarf from round her neck.

“I’ve written,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I’ve called before.”

“Really?”

“You’ve been out, perhaps.”

“Very likely.”

“So I’ve been unlucky.”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Are you well, Mrs. Axon?”

“Quite well, thank you.”

“And is Muriel well?”

“Come through, Miss Field.”

Muriel sat and stared into the fireplace, pulling at a thread of her blue dress. She gave the visitor one glance devoid of all interest, then slumped down further into her chair.

“Hello, Muriel.” Isabel stood before her, but her client would not look up. She took a chair; leaning forward, a hand extended, she tried to engage Muriel’s attention. Her voice was gentle, almost timid. She doesn’t know how to go on, Evelyn thought.

“How are things, Muriel?”

“You’ll find,” Evelyn said, “that Muriel has no small talk. It’s a big disadvantage to her, socially.”

“It’s not really small talk, is it?” The girl glanced up at Evelyn. “I am here on business, after all.”

“Yes, but there’s no compulsion, is there? You don’t have to come. She’s not committed a crime.”

“No, no, of course not, but we are very concerned about Muriel. It’s months since she’s been to the Day Centre.”

“Well, she has a full life.”

“Really? That wasn’t the picture we’d formed.”

“We?”

“Social Services. It’s unfortunate that so many people have handled Muriel’s case, but we do have records, you know.”

“Well, look for yourself. She’s happy enough. She didn’t like the class.”

“Didn’t she?” Concern crossed the girl’s face. She’s all hot and strong when she talks to me, Evelyn thought, and gentle as a mouse with Muriel. But now she’s wondering what to do.

“I didn’t know that. She should have said something at the time. What didn’t she like?”

“She doesn’t care for being regimented. She likes a bit of independent action, Muriel.”

Again, Miss Field’s attention flickered over her client. “She seems so…so cut off. Is she often like this?”

“Now and again. She’s a grown woman. She’s got a tongue in her head.”

“I wish she’d use it.”

“How would you like it, Miss Field, if strangers came into your house enquiring into your circumstances? Suppose it were your own home?”

Now the girl blushed, a deep guilty red.

“Well, in a sense, Mrs. Axon, I wouldn’t like it at all. But I’m not trying to interfere, only to help Muriel. You see, looking at her there, hardly moving, her body all drooping, not speaking—well, it crosses my mind that she could be suffering from depression. Clinical depression. Of course, that would be a matter for your GP, in the first instance.”

“I’d take her to the doctor,” Evelyn said, “if I thought it would help.”

“Yes, do take her, because if he thinks she is depressed, there are some excellent drugs. Then, if she felt better in a month or two, she might try the class again.”

“You think that’s what’s the matter, do you? Depression?”

“It could be.”

“You don’t notice anything amiss with her physically?”

“Better let your doctor be the judge of that. I’ll try to call next week, and you can tell me how you got on.” She looked around at Muriel again, again put out her hand. “That’s an unusual dress, Muriel. Where did you get that, then?”

Muriel closed her eyes, screwed them up, and grinned.

“She’s got a sense of humour, hasn’t she?” Miss Field said. She patted Muriel’s wrist. And Evelyn’s patience snapped.

“Sense of humour? Lovely dress?” The girl’s head snapped back in shock at her ugly tone. “I made it for her. I do adorn her, I deck her in all the modes. Yes, she’s a wonderful personality, my daughter, not a beauty, but very striking. Isn’t she, Miss Field?”

The girl straightened up. She was staring at Evelyn, her mouth slightly ajar.

“Perhaps she has a beau.” Evelyn laughed. “Perhaps she slips out when I sleep in the afternoons, and meets him in the park. No wonder you get no answer when you knock, Muriel’s on the razzle.”

The young woman turned, with a strange and frozen expression, and looked at Muriel. Stared, Evelyn might have said, as if she were seeing her for the first time. Muriel lifted her face, like an animal sniffing for water; she looked, her mother thought, particularly unintelligent and unappealing, just at that moment. Without a word, Miss Field scooped up her briefcase, and got herself most precipitately from the room. Evelyn followed her to the front door. The girl jerked it open, and took a deep breath of the leaf-mould air. “I’ll see you again,” she said, and fled down the path towards her car.

Evelyn watched her go with fleeting amusement, thinking that she would likely not be back; but they might send another one, there were plenty in reserve. Something had struck a chord. Her neck felt stiff, her eyes strained, with the effort of keeping her gaze averted from the middle of her daughter’s body. She returned to the sitting-room.

“Thanks to me,” she said. “Thanks to my tact, young lady, you aren’t locked up by now. A month from now you won’t be able to hide it.”

Muriel sat examining her hands. She always looked at them as if they belonged to someone else, and she was surprised to find them attached to her wrists.

“How many times have I told you about going to the door?”

Oh, once twice, thrice, Muriel replied uncaringly.