“He wants to phone again,” Suzanne said. “I’ll go with him, shall I, and see if he does?”
Oh God, he thought, is it worth it? This is only the Christmas holidays. It is only two weeks and a half. What will happen when the summer comes?
Evelyn had made herself a cup of tea. It had been an ordeal. When she had found that the front door was open after all, she had stood hesitating on the step. Once, she would not have been able to nerve herself to go in.
“I’m tired of your tricks,” she said out loud, and pushed the door open carefully. The hall was empty.
Muriel got up sleepily at the sound of the key turning in her prison door. She rubbed her eyes. Evelyn could see the dent in the cushion where her head had rested. She went over to the window and pulled back the curtains, but night was coming down and she saw that there was no point in it.
“I was locked out,” she said to Muriel. “Didn’t you hear me knocking on the window?” She sighed and went into the kitchen.
Muriel followed her. Evelyn talked, to keep the silence away. Muriel had an elaborate air of not listening: humming to herself, twiddling her fingers in front of her eyes.
Now, that overcoat, Evelyn said. Nothing was made nowadays as well as it used to be, neither coats nor mothballs. Of course, she had put it carefully in the wardrobe, not knowing when it might be needed. After all, it had been practically new. At some time she must have transferred it to the old chest in the lean-to. And over the years she had forgotten it. Who would have thought it would have kept so nice? Seeing it hanging up had given her such a turn.
Evelyn’s tone was easy, conversational. She was anxious to make it clear that she did not hold the business against her daughter. In matters of this kind, Muriel was as innocent as the day is long.
Evelyn put a cup of tea down before Muriel. Muriel began to devote all her attention to it, gazing into its depths avidly.
How long now? Evelyn thought. She had made no preparations, as yet. Clearly, she would have to take responsibility. She would have to do it all. She tried to remember Muriel’s birth, whether there had been difficulties, whether it had been painful. It was all so long ago now.
In the days after their marriage, the house had been very tidy. She had polished and swept all day. Clifford came and went. He went out to business. He was a handsome, taciturn man, a fastidious eater, a vegetarian. He shaved twice a day. She did not really know him well, not well at all.
She had made an appointment with the doctor, an elderly and sallow man.
“Well, I suppose you know your condition,” he had said. “It is sufficiently evident.”
She had gathered her courage, clearing her throat softly. “How does this come about?” she asked.
The doctor had looked up at her. “My dear lady.” He chuckled without a semblance of humour. “My dear lady.”
She had told Clifford the same night. He was not pleased. But he said that no doubt the child could be trained to be not much inconvenience. After all, he had never imagined that he would be a dog-owner, but the Airedale was very well-behaved.
Unfortunately, soon after Muriel was born, the Airedale chewed up a rug and Clifford took it away to the vet’s. Muriel lay quietly in her cot. Clifford’s temper was short, but she gave no cause for complaint.
A brief sharp pain interrupted Evelyn’s thoughts; now she remembered. She had been left alone to scream, on a high white bed. The landscape of her pain had been her high, knotted, purple stomach. The parasite was straining to be away. A woman with a clamped mouth had stuck her head around the door, and asked her to please have some consideration.
And dangling from the doctor’s hands, upside down and blood-smeared, like someone horribly executed: Muriel Alexandra, a lovely daughter.
She looked at Muriel in pity, turning at once to exasperation.
“Now what is that you have there?”
She pulled the bit of card out of Muriel’s hand. It was tatty, crumpled, thumbed; a reminder from the Welfare. Dates and times. The Day Centre. Miss Field has called.
“How long have you had this?”
No answer.
Evelyn ripped it through once. I’ll burn it, she said. If you have any more, give them to me at once and I’ll burn them all.
Muriel raised her head and gave her a direct look, engaging her eyes. It was something she did so seldom that Evelyn was shot through with alarm. She understood that she was being threatened.
“Why should they bother about you?” she said. “Why should they come looking for you? What are you worth, to anybody?”
Muriel subsided. She tapped her fingernail rhythmically against the side of her cup. Strange, Evelyn thought, but it was some time now since she had wondered how her daughter had come by the baby.
“You can drive nature out with a pitchfork,” she said, “but she gets back in.”
Muriel got up and opened the cutlery drawer, jerking it as she always did, as she always did to irritate her mother. She took out a fork and fingered it speculatively.
“Put it down,” Evelyn said. “You’ll prick yourself. Don’t go touching my things.”
Muriel threw down the fork with a clatter, and slammed shut the drawer. She seized the dishcloth and wrung it between her hands, dripping greasy water onto her feet. She flung it at the table and moved across the room, tapping the chairbacks with her knuckles and slapping the palm of her hand against the cupboard doors.
“Stop it, stop it.” Evelyn got up, pushing her chair back, convulsed with anger. “Everything in this house is
