Every Day Is Mother’s Day - Hilary Mantel

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      ‘I said I’m sorry. Can we have a bit of peace? I said,’ he raised his voice for the children in the back, ‘can we have a bit of peace?’

      The most difficult thing was not knowing: how many months. Evelyn took down the calendar and pored over it. You could not be positive that the missing Thursdays were implicated. That would be a jump altogether too far ahead.

      ‘Do you want to go to the doctor?’ she said. ‘It would cost.’

      Muriel said that it was free now.

      ‘Free? Nothing’s free. What sort of stupid talk is that?’

      She didn’t know what was going on in the world, Muriel said craftily. Craftily, because it was Muriel’s scheme to have her inadequacy prick her, so that she would buy a television set. Evelyn wouldn’t have one in the house, not while she was alive; and after her death she expected to exercise some sway. After all, they hadn’t missed the radio when it had broken down, and they didn’t feel the lack of newspapers. Soon after the last war Muriel had been sent with the month’s money to the newsagent’s. It had been wrapped up in a piece of paper, and she had lost it. Evelyn couldn’t see her way to finding the money twice over. So the shop had stopped delivering. Evelyn had never read them anyway. All the news was the same, and all bogus. The papers took no cognizance of the other world, except when they found some cheap talk of poltergeists or table-turning to fill the pages up.

      ‘And where do you go?’ she demanded of Muriel. ‘Where do you go, that you know so much?’

      Muriel didn’t answer that question. Either Evelyn knew where she had been, and was mocking her, or she did not; in which case, her powers were on the wane, the long battle was drawing to an end. They tell you what’s free at the Class, Muriel said. They tell you what you can get for nothing.

      It was strongly in Evelyn’s mind now that it must be someone from the class who was the father of Muriel’s child. But it was no use bothering Muriel about it, no use trying to get anything out of her. It did cross her mind that something malign in the house might be responsible for the girl’s condition; but she had to admit that in her extensive experience she had not heard of such a thing. There were unnatural unions, but did they come to fruition? Muriel looked as if she would come to fruition, quite soon. No, surely her first thought was right. The lax Welfare had turned their backs. Some half-wit had prevailed on a quarter-wit. Only one thing she would have liked to find out; was he in some way deformed?

       Social Services Department

       Luther King House

       Tel: 51212 Ext. 27

       10th October 1974

      Dear Mrs Axon,

      I must apologise for the delay in contacting you, but Miss Axon’s file was mislaid when the Department moved to new offices recently, and has only just come to hand.

      As Miss Axon has not attended our Daycare Sessions since the move to The Hollies, we are anxious to know whether any difficulty has arisen. Miss Taft of this Department wrote to you on July 3rd, but you may perhaps have overlooked this letter. If it is convenient for you, I will call at your home on October 15th at about 3 pm, and I will hope to see Miss Axon then and have a chat with her. If this date is not convenient perhaps you would kindly telephone me at the number above.

      Miss Taft is now attending a course, and as she will be away for six months Miss Axon’s case has been handed over to me. I hope to be able to help you with any problems that arise.

      Yours sincerely,

      ISABEL FIELD

       CHAPTER 2

      ‘Isabel,’ Colin said. ‘Isabel.’

      ‘Don’t slobber, Colin.’

      ‘You are unkind.’

      ‘Oh?’

      ‘You are vastly too good, Isabel. You make it plain.’

      ‘Yes.’ Isabel wound down the window of the car. A dank semirural darkness entered. She lit a cigarette.

      ‘Colin, why do you always lock the doors?’

      Heaving and sighing.

      ‘The car doors, Colin, why do you insist on locking your passengers in? Oh, come on, Colin. A bit of coherent conversation.’

      ‘The A6 murder,’ Colin said.

      ‘What?’

      ‘This. Murder. Similar. Circumstances. Night, a field, or a tract of, I don’t remember, some open ground, I suppose, by the side of the road. Hanratty. Before your time.’

      ‘Oh, Colin.’ She put out a narrow cold hand to find his face. ‘Colin, you are a worrier.’

      ‘Personally, I think the conviction was unjust,’ Colin said. ‘I’m against capital punishment. The truth is, Isabel, now forgive me, it’s rather maudlin I know, but the truth is Isabel, I’m against death. Death in any form.’

      She sighed, in the damp darkness of the passenger seat.

      ‘Sylvia,’ he said. ‘Sylvia is forbidding me eggs. My arteries. She read these things. Aagh.’ He let out a long breath, releasing his tie further with one hand. He heaved across to her, wet and sweating. ‘Do you know, sometimes I feel very much like suicide. But I had a good idea the other week. I thought I would buy myself a record of the Marches of Souza. And if I felt really tempted to suicide, I would play it. You wouldn’t kill yourself after that – after you’d marched about a bit. It would be too ridiculous. Isabel, Isabel.’ He pressed his face into her neck. It was a source of constant amazement to him that she did not pull away; not every time.

      This is October. Isabel is just a name on a letter, received by someone else.

      This is Colin off to his evening class. Sylvia is clattering the dishes together in the sink, slamming them with dangerous force on to the stainless-steel draining board. It is clear that she thinks Creative Writing a waste of time. Early evening bouts of violence echo from the lounge; the air hangs heavy and blue with gunsmoke, the children squat before the TV set, their mouths ajar.

      ‘You see nothing of them,’ Sylvia says. (This conversation has been held before.)

      Colin reverses himself and strides back into the room, swerving to avoid cracking his shins on the coffee table. Blocking the TV he treads the carpet before his offspring like a Lippizan stallion; but not very like.

      ‘They,’ he reports, ‘see nothing of me.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘I wafted in there and stood in front of the television. They didn’t address me by name. They saw me merely as an obstruction to their view.’

      ‘Waft?’ Sylvia says. ‘You couldn’t waft. Never in a million years could you waft.’

      ‘They’re in a state of advanced hypnosis. Deep Trance. Tell me,’ he says, ‘why couldn’t I have gifted children? It would have been an interest for me. Why can’t they all be little Mozarts?’

      ‘We haven’t got a piano,’ Sylvia says.

      ‘I’m away.’ Going out, Colin stuffs his notebook into his pocket.

      In the hall mirror he glimpses his own face, weakly handsome, frowning, abstracted. He loosens the knot of his tie. Despite what Florence said about him aging, he looks years younger than his wife. He tries the effect of a boyish lopsided grin. It reminds him of something; his father’s hemiplegia perhaps. He erases it from his face and departs, banging the door behind him.

      There were some eighteen people in the classroom, rather more female than male, rather more old than young. Teacher was rubbing the leftover

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